Hey, ya want the right to campaign on "we shoulda stayed in Afghanistan" go right ahead! Yell "we shoulda stayed in Iraq too!" Wrap W's mantle snug and tight around your shoulders! That'll own those libs.
Most of it depends on real life events. Israel has been trending in a pretty illiberal direction for a while now. That's putting a lot of strain on pro-Israeli liberals. It used to be really easy to defend Israel in the Aughts. Things have gotten a lot harder.
Quite so, Saul, these are just foreshocks of the building tectonic electoral pressure but the Israeli's ignore them at their peril. There are a lot of countries that can blaisely ignore the opinion that the electorates of other nations hold of them- Israel simply is not one of them.
Absolutely the pressures we're seeing on Biden are from identarians, african americans and many young voters. But a couple decades ago there were fewer of all of them and now there are more. The current trajectory is a recipe for disaster without even talking about what ruin Israel's flirtation with Bibi's brand of politics has done to Israel domestically.
Sure, but it's -easy- indulgence because we are -not- responsible for those Islamic states. We just aren't. We don't fund them, we don't cover for them, we don't give them particularly good trade terms, we don't fight for them and generally we can't find them on a map. Those Islamic failure states are just magical islamics floating out there in the gauzy minds of intersectionalists- perpetually infantilized and paid little mind.
Israel is not treated that way. It gets much from the liberal international order of which it is part and of those to whom much is given, much is expected.
It is but they escape that hypocrisy trap because we do not treat the state of Israel the way we treat all those Muslim majority/supremist states. And neither you, Lee, nor Israel wants us to treat the state of Israel the way we treat all those Muslim majority/supremist states. So this is a fruitless complaint.
Sure, I understand why Jewish people, secular and semi secular, would view it that way. Since I'm not particularly fond of the intersectional left that doesn't bother me since it's a self defeating prospect for them. As they draw their tent smaller and smaller it'll soon encompass little more than the faculty lounge of the institutions the intersectional left is hijacking and then, after a little while, not even that.
I suspect, strongly, that this is an internet thing. If you looked at the things you looked at in the 90's: the classroom, the teachers desk, what the teacher said around parents (and likely around students) in school; you'd know about what you could know back in the 90's about what the teacher thinks about any given subject of the day.
What has changed is that teachers have social media sites where they can talk to peers and others about what they believe. Moreover there're now third parties who find it very useful to seek out examples of those teachers saying such things and then blow it up on a giant national billboard. Those things generally didn't exist in the 90's.
Sure, but it will entirely satisfy Group A which, remember, is the group that actually matters to Israel's survival and prosperity. It will also badly undercut Group B's ability to win recruits and influence future generations of voters. As Jesse observes, it's pretty easy to complain about Israel phsyically controlling Palestinian lives and expropriating Palestinian territories the way Likud has been doing more or less overtly in the West Bank ever since Sharon was felled by that most unfortunate stroke. It's a whole 'nother thing if you remove those factors. Most young people and voters won't care about Israels' origins or even the plight of Palestinian refugee descendants if the Palestinian question within Israel is answered concretely.
Nothing, note, is gonna shut up the identarians on the internets of course. For them you're going to just have to touch grass.
The time for that kind of deal making is long past Lee. The Palestinians flopped out at the turn of the millenium on that. If Israel dragged her settlers, kicking and screaming, out of the West Bank like they did in Gaza and said "We're done, no more occupation" then the majority of group B and the overwhelming majority of group A would be generally satisfied. Without the occupation everything else just becomes theory. Refugees, the history of Israel's founding, everything.
Sharon’s withdrawal sent the anti-Israeli left into a tailspin that left them in confusion for the better part of half a decade. It was only, really, the West Bank issues and the rise of Bibi that let them get their feet back under then at all.
The Israeli’s have tried hanging on to the occupation, it bears noting again and again that the occupation of the West Bank doesn't -DO- anything for Israel, and they keep getting the same result with the Palestinians continuing to be unhappy because, (reasonably) they're still occupied and (unreasonably) because Israel exists and with the anti-Israeli left international continuing to steadily gain ground. The only thing you keep suggesting is to continue the occupation, continue to shriek about how antisemitic the Arabs and the intersectional left are and continue to go round and round with the Palestinians which can only be expected to yield the exact same result.
If your worst fear was true then Israel would not be particularly worse off tactically than before and it’d have secured its demographic and moral future for the foreseeable future. And that is assuming the absolutely worst-case scenario. The far more likely outcome would be you’d have a sullen Palestinian statelet as your neighbor which would present no substantive threat to Israel. And if Israel were no longer in Gaza and the West Bank then the intersectional left would be cut off at the knees. Screaming about past history is all well and good for them but it’s not the same kind of outrage generator that the occupation and the settler movement is.
"There has to be some point where people say to both Groups B and C to shut up because they are being ridiculous, the Palestinians got what they allegedly wanted and it is time for them to do something productive."
Yes! That point is when they have no substantive reasonable claims to prosecute. Sharon got Israel half way there when he pulled out of Gaza. If Israel had washed its hands of the West Bank as well then this supportated sore would finally have been lanced. You insist on treating the Palestinians as a group- the West Bank is responsible for the actions of the Gazans etc... but that goes the other way too. If you unoccupy Gaza and remain in occupation in the West Bank then YOU'RE STILL OCCUPYING THE PALESTINIANS.
Hey, I've already said that the Israeli's should take material steps to cut the legs out from under the social justice left's anti-Israeli program- but they don't want to.
Perhaps that'd carry more weight if Hamas had sprung wholly formed from the forehead of Athena but it didn’t and the Israeli right was very much one of their boosters right up until Hamas got off their leash and made the Israeli right look like schmucks on October 7th.
But even if one thinks that group B is a threat, and in the long term "forming young minds" arena they are not completely powerless, then that makes taking substantive steps to defang them even more imperative. If the Israeli’s weren’t physically in control of the Palestinians as a day-to-day matter, then Group B’s strongest argument would be gone. But the Israeli's don't want to do it. Even you don't want to admit it. I've seen you, occasionally, grudgingly, admit the settlements have to go but you, and most Israeli’s continue to try and imagine you can trade that policy for some kind of concession from people who despise you. Israel’s enemies can read the global room too and they want ill for you- why would they EVER make that deal?!?! It is 2024, not 1830 and Israel doesn’t have the option of just purging the Palestinians out of those territories- not if it wants to remain itself.
An entertaining side bar but irrelevant. Jews in general probably shouldn't care about what group B says about them, but they DO- a lot- you certainly do!
But group A? That group providing all the commerce, ammunition and other things that makes Israel the thriving little superstar country in the Middle East it is? At the bare minimum the Israeli's should care a heck of a lot what those people think of her. Once upon a time the Israeli's very wisely cared a lot about what those people thought about them. Now? Seems like they're not caring as much. I keep pointing out that Group A is substantive and important but you keep going right on back to the intersectional dimwits on the internet in Group B. It's odd.
Well, let's look at the score board. Lined up in steady alliance with Israel now in Group A we have... let's see: The President of the United States, all but a tiny handful of Senators of the United States, all but a tiny handful of congressfolks of the United States. Looking around internationally we see pretty much every country in the developed west openly trading with, supporting and being generally sympathetic to Israel. Oh, also pretty much every major commercial business entity. From these figures Israel is receiving billions in trade, billions in aid and, from the US, virtually endless streams of ammunition and tech along with substantive blanket voting support at all international fora.
Lined up in the vocal critics of Israel corner we have, in Group B, a grab bag of powerless left-wing university, social media and entertainment figures, a grab bag of deranged right wing "the Jews will not replace us" figures and a scattering of non-governmental organizations and institutions all of whom are committed to issue a lot of jaw-jaw about Israels' behavior but have little to no substantive actions they can take against the Israeli state. It is true they have many nice things to say about the hapless, inept and incapable Palestinians who they generally treat as agency-less children who must be coddled and protected.
And then group C which are material enemies of Israel is Hamas and similar military groups, some luke warm MENA nations, arguably China, Russia and Iran.
Now, it can be readily admitted that Group A, which generally treats Israel and the Israeli’s as a capable people with agency who are expected to make decisions and accept tradeoffs; have been saying to the Israeli’s “Hey Netanyahu and your collective gambit to just pack the Palestinians away in Gaza and ignore them has obviously, bloodily, failed and you need to tell us what the plan is going forward and, no, ethnically cleansing the territories isn’t going to fly nor is slow motion ethnically cleansing Gaza.” It is also true that Group B says on various social media and journalist venues something roughly like “Argle bargle *social justice speak* Palestinians are precious marshmallows who are the original intersectional post-capitalist feminist icons who can do no wrong mwargle!”
Now I look at the Israeli’s, being lavished with treasure, substantive privilege and being treated like adults and I listen to them complain that they’re not being treated like the international equivalent of a diaper crapping infant left to freeze on a door stoop and my sympathy level is… well… not high. I mean, how dare Israel’s friends tell it that it’s not allowed to have it’s cake and eat it too? How. Dare. They?!?!?
Eh, like Jaybird said elsewhere, the Israeli's clearly think they have too much sympathy and too many allies right now so they want to run those number down a bit.
Here's a question: The new version of We Didn't Start the fire is chronologically disjointed- to make it rhyme and scan they leap around in time back and forth for issues which bothers me enormously. Is the original also chronologically disjointed? I feel like the issues it rhymes off are, more or less, in order at least by decade.
On “Open Mic for the week of 4/1/2024”
Hey, ya want the right to campaign on "we shoulda stayed in Afghanistan" go right ahead! Yell "we shoulda stayed in Iraq too!" Wrap W's mantle snug and tight around your shoulders! That'll own those libs.
"
Final-fishing-ly. Though six months is waaay too long out.
"
Yeah drill down and I suspect you'd still find the internet behind it.
"
Most of it depends on real life events. Israel has been trending in a pretty illiberal direction for a while now. That's putting a lot of strain on pro-Israeli liberals. It used to be really easy to defend Israel in the Aughts. Things have gotten a lot harder.
"
Quite so, Saul, these are just foreshocks of the building tectonic electoral pressure but the Israeli's ignore them at their peril. There are a lot of countries that can blaisely ignore the opinion that the electorates of other nations hold of them- Israel simply is not one of them.
Absolutely the pressures we're seeing on Biden are from identarians, african americans and many young voters. But a couple decades ago there were fewer of all of them and now there are more. The current trajectory is a recipe for disaster without even talking about what ruin Israel's flirtation with Bibi's brand of politics has done to Israel domestically.
"
By all means, go for it. It'll do worse than bounce off their titanium self regard- it'll reinforce it but, so long as it's cathartic, go for it.
"
Sure, but it's -easy- indulgence because we are -not- responsible for those Islamic states. We just aren't. We don't fund them, we don't cover for them, we don't give them particularly good trade terms, we don't fight for them and generally we can't find them on a map. Those Islamic failure states are just magical islamics floating out there in the gauzy minds of intersectionalists- perpetually infantilized and paid little mind.
Israel is not treated that way. It gets much from the liberal international order of which it is part and of those to whom much is given, much is expected.
"
It is but they escape that hypocrisy trap because we do not treat the state of Israel the way we treat all those Muslim majority/supremist states. And neither you, Lee, nor Israel wants us to treat the state of Israel the way we treat all those Muslim majority/supremist states. So this is a fruitless complaint.
"
Sure, I understand why Jewish people, secular and semi secular, would view it that way. Since I'm not particularly fond of the intersectional left that doesn't bother me since it's a self defeating prospect for them. As they draw their tent smaller and smaller it'll soon encompass little more than the faculty lounge of the institutions the intersectional left is hijacking and then, after a little while, not even that.
"
I suspect, strongly, that this is an internet thing. If you looked at the things you looked at in the 90's: the classroom, the teachers desk, what the teacher said around parents (and likely around students) in school; you'd know about what you could know back in the 90's about what the teacher thinks about any given subject of the day.
What has changed is that teachers have social media sites where they can talk to peers and others about what they believe. Moreover there're now third parties who find it very useful to seek out examples of those teachers saying such things and then blow it up on a giant national billboard. Those things generally didn't exist in the 90's.
"
The graveyard of empires retains its title.
"
Reading over that looks like we got out very cheap indeed. Thank goodness we did.
"
Sure, but it will entirely satisfy Group A which, remember, is the group that actually matters to Israel's survival and prosperity. It will also badly undercut Group B's ability to win recruits and influence future generations of voters. As Jesse observes, it's pretty easy to complain about Israel phsyically controlling Palestinian lives and expropriating Palestinian territories the way Likud has been doing more or less overtly in the West Bank ever since Sharon was felled by that most unfortunate stroke. It's a whole 'nother thing if you remove those factors. Most young people and voters won't care about Israels' origins or even the plight of Palestinian refugee descendants if the Palestinian question within Israel is answered concretely.
Nothing, note, is gonna shut up the identarians on the internets of course. For them you're going to just have to touch grass.
"
The time for that kind of deal making is long past Lee. The Palestinians flopped out at the turn of the millenium on that. If Israel dragged her settlers, kicking and screaming, out of the West Bank like they did in Gaza and said "We're done, no more occupation" then the majority of group B and the overwhelming majority of group A would be generally satisfied. Without the occupation everything else just becomes theory. Refugees, the history of Israel's founding, everything.
"
Sharon’s withdrawal sent the anti-Israeli left into a tailspin that left them in confusion for the better part of half a decade. It was only, really, the West Bank issues and the rise of Bibi that let them get their feet back under then at all.
The Israeli’s have tried hanging on to the occupation, it bears noting again and again that the occupation of the West Bank doesn't -DO- anything for Israel, and they keep getting the same result with the Palestinians continuing to be unhappy because, (reasonably) they're still occupied and (unreasonably) because Israel exists and with the anti-Israeli left international continuing to steadily gain ground. The only thing you keep suggesting is to continue the occupation, continue to shriek about how antisemitic the Arabs and the intersectional left are and continue to go round and round with the Palestinians which can only be expected to yield the exact same result.
If your worst fear was true then Israel would not be particularly worse off tactically than before and it’d have secured its demographic and moral future for the foreseeable future. And that is assuming the absolutely worst-case scenario. The far more likely outcome would be you’d have a sullen Palestinian statelet as your neighbor which would present no substantive threat to Israel. And if Israel were no longer in Gaza and the West Bank then the intersectional left would be cut off at the knees. Screaming about past history is all well and good for them but it’s not the same kind of outrage generator that the occupation and the settler movement is.
"There has to be some point where people say to both Groups B and C to shut up because they are being ridiculous, the Palestinians got what they allegedly wanted and it is time for them to do something productive."
Yes! That point is when they have no substantive reasonable claims to prosecute. Sharon got Israel half way there when he pulled out of Gaza. If Israel had washed its hands of the West Bank as well then this supportated sore would finally have been lanced. You insist on treating the Palestinians as a group- the West Bank is responsible for the actions of the Gazans etc... but that goes the other way too. If you unoccupy Gaza and remain in occupation in the West Bank then YOU'RE STILL OCCUPYING THE PALESTINIANS.
"
Gosh, maybe they should do something to defang the only substantial complaints of the intersectional left then!
"
Hey, I've already said that the Israeli's should take material steps to cut the legs out from under the social justice left's anti-Israeli program- but they don't want to.
"
It's not nothing, but it's not a lot.
"
Perhaps that'd carry more weight if Hamas had sprung wholly formed from the forehead of Athena but it didn’t and the Israeli right was very much one of their boosters right up until Hamas got off their leash and made the Israeli right look like schmucks on October 7th.
But even if one thinks that group B is a threat, and in the long term "forming young minds" arena they are not completely powerless, then that makes taking substantive steps to defang them even more imperative. If the Israeli’s weren’t physically in control of the Palestinians as a day-to-day matter, then Group B’s strongest argument would be gone. But the Israeli's don't want to do it. Even you don't want to admit it. I've seen you, occasionally, grudgingly, admit the settlements have to go but you, and most Israeli’s continue to try and imagine you can trade that policy for some kind of concession from people who despise you. Israel’s enemies can read the global room too and they want ill for you- why would they EVER make that deal?!?! It is 2024, not 1830 and Israel doesn’t have the option of just purging the Palestinians out of those territories- not if it wants to remain itself.
"
Thanks Michael, you're aces.
"
An entertaining side bar but irrelevant. Jews in general probably shouldn't care about what group B says about them, but they DO- a lot- you certainly do!
But group A? That group providing all the commerce, ammunition and other things that makes Israel the thriving little superstar country in the Middle East it is? At the bare minimum the Israeli's should care a heck of a lot what those people think of her. Once upon a time the Israeli's very wisely cared a lot about what those people thought about them. Now? Seems like they're not caring as much. I keep pointing out that Group A is substantive and important but you keep going right on back to the intersectional dimwits on the internet in Group B. It's odd.
"
Well, let's look at the score board. Lined up in steady alliance with Israel now in Group A we have... let's see: The President of the United States, all but a tiny handful of Senators of the United States, all but a tiny handful of congressfolks of the United States. Looking around internationally we see pretty much every country in the developed west openly trading with, supporting and being generally sympathetic to Israel. Oh, also pretty much every major commercial business entity. From these figures Israel is receiving billions in trade, billions in aid and, from the US, virtually endless streams of ammunition and tech along with substantive blanket voting support at all international fora.
Lined up in the vocal critics of Israel corner we have, in Group B, a grab bag of powerless left-wing university, social media and entertainment figures, a grab bag of deranged right wing "the Jews will not replace us" figures and a scattering of non-governmental organizations and institutions all of whom are committed to issue a lot of jaw-jaw about Israels' behavior but have little to no substantive actions they can take against the Israeli state. It is true they have many nice things to say about the hapless, inept and incapable Palestinians who they generally treat as agency-less children who must be coddled and protected.
And then group C which are material enemies of Israel is Hamas and similar military groups, some luke warm MENA nations, arguably China, Russia and Iran.
Now, it can be readily admitted that Group A, which generally treats Israel and the Israeli’s as a capable people with agency who are expected to make decisions and accept tradeoffs; have been saying to the Israeli’s “Hey Netanyahu and your collective gambit to just pack the Palestinians away in Gaza and ignore them has obviously, bloodily, failed and you need to tell us what the plan is going forward and, no, ethnically cleansing the territories isn’t going to fly nor is slow motion ethnically cleansing Gaza.” It is also true that Group B says on various social media and journalist venues something roughly like “Argle bargle *social justice speak* Palestinians are precious marshmallows who are the original intersectional post-capitalist feminist icons who can do no wrong mwargle!”
Now I look at the Israeli’s, being lavished with treasure, substantive privilege and being treated like adults and I listen to them complain that they’re not being treated like the international equivalent of a diaper crapping infant left to freeze on a door stoop and my sympathy level is… well… not high. I mean, how dare Israel’s friends tell it that it’s not allowed to have it’s cake and eat it too? How. Dare. They?!?!?
"
Eh, like Jaybird said elsewhere, the Israeli's clearly think they have too much sympathy and too many allies right now so they want to run those number down a bit.
On “Who Remembers the Fire?”
Here's a question: The new version of We Didn't Start the fire is chronologically disjointed- to make it rhyme and scan they leap around in time back and forth for issues which bothers me enormously. Is the original also chronologically disjointed? I feel like the issues it rhymes off are, more or less, in order at least by decade.
On “Sam Bankman-Fried Gets 25 Year Prison Sentence”
So you're saying that at some point Joe fishin' Biden is gonna pardon SBF? Seems wildly, insanely unlikely.