I am not remembering this from the first Trump administration at all. I suppose it has to do something with the allegedly sacred right of return for Palestinians.
Than the Palestinian leadership should negotiate with the Israeli government rather than go on quixotic quests to destroy Israel. Even if they think a final settlement would cause a Palestinian Civil War.
To be blunt about, the Anti-Israel people could argue that the Palestinians and their allies are going to out number Jews, so the sensible thing would be for the Jews to depart because the Palestinians and their allies will never change.
I'm generally inclined to agree with that but that leaves us with the problem without a solution phase. Maintaining the Occupation forever isn't really a good thing for Israel. It distorts the society and you are never going to convince enough people elsewhere that it is a necessity.
A unilateral withdrawal and settling from the boundaries will lead to what is happening with Gaza on a larger scale. You can't just get rid of the Palestinians because that would be a moral atrocity. They won't negotiate a settlement because they see "No Israel" as the just solution.
You are assuming a very generous ability to connect the dots. During 2024, the protestors at Columbia were privileged to demand being fed at the buildings they were holding hostage. So yes, I suspect that they expected people to bend to them because they are so righteous.
I just don't get the thought process of the Palestinians or their so called allies. It should be obvious to anybody with half a brain cell that the Palestinians can't defeat Israel militarily and nobody is going to come down to save the Palestinians and impose a solution on Israel.
This means that the final settlement would be Israel vanquishing the Palestinians, which would be morally horrible, Israel unilaterally deciding the borders of a Palestinian state, or a negotiated deal. The Palestinians and their allies seem to think that a negotiated deal with Israel is too horrible to contemplate.
There have been a few things about the protest movement that confuses me and nobody seems to have an answer.
1. If MAGA were to say that they were not anti-Semitic because there are MAGA Jews than a lot of people on the liberal-left side would laugh at them. Yet, they want Jews to believe that the Pro-Palestinian movements are not anti-Semitic because there are some Jews in them.
2. The Pro-Palestinians in the West would have us believe that the Palestinians want a secular and multicultural Palestine. We have decades of statements from real actual Palestinian leaders about what they want plus how other Muslim majority countries are set up and that won't be friendly towards the Jews. Why should we believe people who aren't in control on what they say the Palestinians want and not the actual Palestinians?
Everybody used to be a lot more forgiving about youthful indiscretions. These days not so much. It is a much more punishing system. It is also unclear whether a night in the tank is the worse they can expect these days.
Part of it is what Jaybird says and part of it is a privilege so exceedingly high that they can't even comprehend good faith disagreement let alone punishment.
1 week ago
The Trusk administration is sending letters to foreign cities and governments and demanding them to stop DEI initiatives. This is taking the American Empire thing way too literally.
No, I think it would be a civil war like in Ireland in the 1920s between the people who accepted the Irish Free State and those that did not. You analysis is also spot on. Lots of people including Palestinian leadership, other Muslims, and their Western allies have been telling the Palestinians for decades that only total victory would do for them. Israelis have also been getting a total victory message but also other messages. Nobody brings this stuff up when talking about a final deal.
I'd also like them to answer why the dozens of self-proclaimed Muslim states, where they can't even treat the wrong type of Muslim well let alone non-Muslims are not apartheid states but Israel it is. It's similar to how apparently Israel is the only ethno-state in the world while the self-proclaimed Arab states are not or other states with ethnic favoring laws stronger than Israel's are not. Jews and the Jewish State are held to the standard of absolute perfection while the the other countries get graded on a sliding scale.
It would be nice if Pro-Palestinian forces can come out and actually describe what they mean by Zionist occupation in geographic terms rather than just rallying at the Occupation. I suspect that the keep talking about the Occupation vaguely because they don't want to show a division in the Pro-Palestinian movement between those that realize that they can't destroy Israel and the best the Palestinians are going to get is the WB and Gaza and the people who believe that "No Israel" or "No Israel/No Jews" is the only just solution.
It's somewhat odd that the Pro-Palestinian movement feels the need to keep a united face while the Pro-Israel movement openly argues between the Two States and the Israel gets WB/Gaza factions. I don't think this unity helps Palestinians but the movement feels the need to keep it up.
One of my theories on why Arafat and Abbas could not come to final agreement with Israel under Barak and Olmert respectively is that neither of them wanted to start a Palestinian Civil War. A final deal with Israel would always meet with hollowing denial from the more militant factions because there was no Right of Return and Israel remained in tact. The Pro-Palestine faction in the West resembles this in that the more militant are in control and the one that might be more accommodating to reality keep silent out of fear for their lives and not wanting to divide the movement.
2 weeks ago
Journalist harassed by the dirtbag left for covering a May Day protest in Manhattan.
Remove all the civilians where? Netanyahu's government might be able to do this if the civilians were removed to Green Line Israel. The current Israeli government did not do this during the earlier phases of the Israel-Hamas War. Egypt isn't going to take them in.
Israel can ethnically cleanse Gaza but Israel should absolutely not ethnically cleanse Gaza. That would be extremely immoral and evil. It would be useless. Hamas is holding on by the skin of it's teeth and is going to lose power in Gaza sooner than latter. Nobody wants them there besides a few activists in the West and themselves.
What Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are doing now is wrong and excessive. I was a big supporter of Israel during the Israel-Hamas War but further brutal action despite some hostages is not going to do anything but make Israel look bad. It will be immoral as well.
Israel has it's own defense/weapons industry. Stoping to sell weapons to Israel won't actually change the power levels. There are too many people indulging both the Israelis and Palestinians on in stupid fantasies but Israel has a lot more power to carry on those stupid fantasies.
Chris, how on earth does this level of ideological dogmatism help the Palestinians? Israel exists. It is not going to stop existing. Something like 45% of the world's Jews live in Israel and they aren't going anywhere.
The Pro-Palestinian forces can scream ethnic cleansing, while ignoring the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe and the MENA region, and settler-colonialism as much as they want. It won't do anything to help the Palestinians. Nobody is going to swoop down and force the solution you want on Israel.
The Pro-Israel and the Pro-Palestine side are being extremely stupid and ignoring facts on the ground.
1. There are 10.1 million Israelis. Around 77% of them are Jews. It is a wealthy developed democracy with a government, army, and citizenry willing to fight for their country. They also have the bomb.
2. There are 5 to 6 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
3. Nobody is going anywhere.
4. The Palestinians can't militarily defeat Israel and nobody is going to swoop down and save them.
5. Israel can't bomb it's way out of this.
6. This means that the I/P conflict will end by unilateral Israel withdrawal or negotiation.
7. The negotiations means settlers out of the WB and No Right of Return for Palestinians.
8. Not recoginizing this and rigidly adhering to ideology means the conflict continues forever.
So your opinion is that societal improvement is impossible and nothing can or should be done to make humans better? Taboos about what can't be said have tremendous power.
See also this. Iranian high school principal tries to lead students in saying Death to Israel and they respond by Death to Palestine. Other Muslims are not that into the Palestinian cause anymore. So any strategy based on a collapse of Western support and assuming that no where else supports Israel is just dumb strategically.
Even if there is a collapse in support for Israel, doesn't mean that the world would be willing to swoop in either. They aren't doing this for the Uyghurs in China or Rohingya in Myanmar. It still seems like a lot of magical thinking.
It also assumes that Israel won't be able to find support elsewhere. Israel and India have been getting a lot closer. Hindus and the Israeli or even Jewish Right are finding things to bond over.
So basically I think even if that is the goal, it still shows bad strategic thinking. The Palestinians won't be stronger. The world isn't going to rush in. Israel can find allies elsewhere.
There were also Israeli governments in willing memory that were willing to negotiate a final deal with the PLO. The PLO rejected these deals. Sharon withdrew from Gaza and Hamas decided to turn it into a quixotic attempt to destroy Israel. Although to be fair to the Palestinian leadership, I also think they didn't want to start a Palestinian Civil War by signing such a treaty.
The Palestinians and their allies seem to have a real need for a psychological victory against Israel. They want Israel to be punished in some way rather than a negotiated deal.
Chris, there are somewhere between 7.4 million to 7.7 million Israeli Jews. They have a government, army, most likely the bomb, and a long history of showing that they are going to stay and fight to stay. Every attempt at physical force or military force to get the Jews out since 1920 failed even when the power levels were more equivalent.
The Israelis aren't going anywhere. The Palestinians aren't going anywhere but everybody seems intent on acting out a repeated bad Greek tragedy again and again. The alleged allies of both groups encourage the most obstinate and unrealistic thinking rather than something that could result in a functional but cold peace.
What good does a bunch of activists and college students yelling genocide and settler-colonialism and Jews go home to Poland do for the Palestinians? The world isn't going to come down swooping in to resolve the I/P conflict anymore than they do for other ethnic conflicts? This is like a weird area where Saudi Arabia is being the most sensible.
I do not get the strategy of the Pro-Palestinian side at all. Attempts to use force to defeat Jews/Israelis have basically failed since 1920 but they idea of actual negotiations to resolve the situation seem intolerable to contemplate. The times where Israeli governments were willing to negotiate an end of the Occupation including taking the Settlers away were just deemed to be not real because the Israeli governments had some demands of their own like no return flood of refugees that would basically be a back door one-state solution. There seems to be a real emotional need for Israel to be defeated in someway.
The Pro-Palestinian movement in the West seems to use Palestinians in the same way that Evangelicals use Israelis. As a way to fulfill their fantasies. They have adopted rhetoric that alienates both the hundreds of thousands of Israelis that were protesting Netanyahu before 10/7 and after 10/7 and also the majority of Diaspora Jews. People who might be useful allies but have Greenline Israel gets to exist. Instead, they went all in on settler-colonialism and Israel needs to be destroyed with the Jews needing to go arguments.
It makes sense when you realize that a lot of these people don't care for Palestinians per se but mainly take up the Pro-Palestinian stance because it fits into the anti-capitalist, anti-American, and anti-West narrative running in their heads. Some or many of them also believe that the Democratic Party is the only thing preventing too true leftism from breaking out in American politics.
2 weeks ago
Harvard's report on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the wake of 10/7 is out:
he antisemitism report was produced by a task force made up mainly of faculty, but that also included students, a former Hillel director and Harvard’s chief community and campus life officer, whose title was changed from chief diversity and inclusion officer on Tuesday. The report said that bias incidents had been occurring before the Hamas attack and were intensified by the war in Gaza. It found that antisemitism seemed to be more pronounced in branches of the university with a social justice bent, including the graduate school of education, the divinity school and the school of public health.
A similar task force held hundreds of conversations with Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students, staff and faculty members about anti-Muslim bias. That task force summed up the feelings expressed by many of those people in two words: “abandoned and silenced.”
The antisemitism report recounted an episode in which a student asked not to work with an Israeli partner, and an instructor granted the request because “in their view, a student who supported the cause of an oppressed group should not be forced to work with a student identified as a member of an ‘oppressor group.’”
In another episode in the report, a recently admitted medical student recounted arriving for a visitation day and encountering students yelling “Free Palestine” from a walkway, apparently to discourage Zionists from attending the school.
The report said that some courses on Israel and Palestine were partisan and politicized. These courses were disproportionately taught by nontenure track faculty members, who were not as carefully vetted as more senior faculty are, the report said.
I still think that a big reason for the current problems is the decline of malls and hangout culture teaching teens in general and young men in particular how to socialize.
It occurs to me that the Protestors care about Palestinians in the same way that Evangelicals care about Israelis.
2 weeks ago
The allegedly Pro-Palestinian protestors apparently have no regret about going against Biden and latter Harris despite the fact that the people in the White House are egging Netanyahu on in his worse and things would be very different if Harris was President. These people don't care about the Palestinians accept as totems for their self-actualization and their rants against America and capitalism. I live in an area that was thick with Pro-Palestinian protests from 10/8/2023 to 11/5/2024. After Trump got elected they all just went away despite the fact that Trump is persecuting real actual Palestinians in the United States and talked about America annexing Gaza. They will re-emerge in 2026 when "Anybody but Kamala" becomes "anybody but a Democratic politician."
I have a friend from my hometown who I knew since elementary school who is a Mason. He's only two years older than me. The fraternal orders gained a reputation of being dodgy and uncool during the 1960s. They weren't replaced with much as a replacement though.
I actually have a bar where I am a regular. It's nice. From what I've read, the English pub is undergoing a crisis that started because of high land prices and got worse because of COVID. The increased social intolerance against casual drinking and the fact that there are easier ways to earn a living, especially if big breweries can't legally subsidize pubs, doesn't help.
I am not remembering this from the first Trump administration at all. I suppose it has to do something with the allegedly sacred right of return for Palestinians.
Than the Palestinian leadership should negotiate with the Israeli government rather than go on quixotic quests to destroy Israel. Even if they think a final settlement would cause a Palestinian Civil War.
To be blunt about, the Anti-Israel people could argue that the Palestinians and their allies are going to out number Jews, so the sensible thing would be for the Jews to depart because the Palestinians and their allies will never change.
I'm generally inclined to agree with that but that leaves us with the problem without a solution phase. Maintaining the Occupation forever isn't really a good thing for Israel. It distorts the society and you are never going to convince enough people elsewhere that it is a necessity.
A unilateral withdrawal and settling from the boundaries will lead to what is happening with Gaza on a larger scale. You can't just get rid of the Palestinians because that would be a moral atrocity. They won't negotiate a settlement because they see "No Israel" as the just solution.
You are assuming a very generous ability to connect the dots. During 2024, the protestors at Columbia were privileged to demand being fed at the buildings they were holding hostage. So yes, I suspect that they expected people to bend to them because they are so righteous.
I just don't get the thought process of the Palestinians or their so called allies. It should be obvious to anybody with half a brain cell that the Palestinians can't defeat Israel militarily and nobody is going to come down to save the Palestinians and impose a solution on Israel.
This means that the final settlement would be Israel vanquishing the Palestinians, which would be morally horrible, Israel unilaterally deciding the borders of a Palestinian state, or a negotiated deal. The Palestinians and their allies seem to think that a negotiated deal with Israel is too horrible to contemplate.
There have been a few things about the protest movement that confuses me and nobody seems to have an answer.
1. If MAGA were to say that they were not anti-Semitic because there are MAGA Jews than a lot of people on the liberal-left side would laugh at them. Yet, they want Jews to believe that the Pro-Palestinian movements are not anti-Semitic because there are some Jews in them.
2. The Pro-Palestinians in the West would have us believe that the Palestinians want a secular and multicultural Palestine. We have decades of statements from real actual Palestinian leaders about what they want plus how other Muslim majority countries are set up and that won't be friendly towards the Jews. Why should we believe people who aren't in control on what they say the Palestinians want and not the actual Palestinians?
Everybody used to be a lot more forgiving about youthful indiscretions. These days not so much. It is a much more punishing system. It is also unclear whether a night in the tank is the worse they can expect these days.
Part of it is what Jaybird says and part of it is a privilege so exceedingly high that they can't even comprehend good faith disagreement let alone punishment.
The Trusk administration is sending letters to foreign cities and governments and demanding them to stop DEI initiatives. This is taking the American Empire thing way too literally.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/may/08/stockholm-rejects-us-letter-urging-city-to-reverse-diversity-initiatives
This is clever. It couldn't happen to a bunch of nicer people.
No, I think it would be a civil war like in Ireland in the 1920s between the people who accepted the Irish Free State and those that did not. You analysis is also spot on. Lots of people including Palestinian leadership, other Muslims, and their Western allies have been telling the Palestinians for decades that only total victory would do for them. Israelis have also been getting a total victory message but also other messages. Nobody brings this stuff up when talking about a final deal.
I'd also like them to answer why the dozens of self-proclaimed Muslim states, where they can't even treat the wrong type of Muslim well let alone non-Muslims are not apartheid states but Israel it is. It's similar to how apparently Israel is the only ethno-state in the world while the self-proclaimed Arab states are not or other states with ethnic favoring laws stronger than Israel's are not. Jews and the Jewish State are held to the standard of absolute perfection while the the other countries get graded on a sliding scale.
It would be nice if Pro-Palestinian forces can come out and actually describe what they mean by Zionist occupation in geographic terms rather than just rallying at the Occupation. I suspect that the keep talking about the Occupation vaguely because they don't want to show a division in the Pro-Palestinian movement between those that realize that they can't destroy Israel and the best the Palestinians are going to get is the WB and Gaza and the people who believe that "No Israel" or "No Israel/No Jews" is the only just solution.
It's somewhat odd that the Pro-Palestinian movement feels the need to keep a united face while the Pro-Israel movement openly argues between the Two States and the Israel gets WB/Gaza factions. I don't think this unity helps Palestinians but the movement feels the need to keep it up.
One of my theories on why Arafat and Abbas could not come to final agreement with Israel under Barak and Olmert respectively is that neither of them wanted to start a Palestinian Civil War. A final deal with Israel would always meet with hollowing denial from the more militant factions because there was no Right of Return and Israel remained in tact. The Pro-Palestine faction in the West resembles this in that the more militant are in control and the one that might be more accommodating to reality keep silent out of fear for their lives and not wanting to divide the movement.
Journalist harassed by the dirtbag left for covering a May Day protest in Manhattan.
I think this is a bad idea that will hurt Israel more than it helps Israel in the short and long run.
Remove all the civilians where? Netanyahu's government might be able to do this if the civilians were removed to Green Line Israel. The current Israeli government did not do this during the earlier phases of the Israel-Hamas War. Egypt isn't going to take them in.
Israel can ethnically cleanse Gaza but Israel should absolutely not ethnically cleanse Gaza. That would be extremely immoral and evil. It would be useless. Hamas is holding on by the skin of it's teeth and is going to lose power in Gaza sooner than latter. Nobody wants them there besides a few activists in the West and themselves.
What Netanyahu and Ben-Gvir are doing now is wrong and excessive. I was a big supporter of Israel during the Israel-Hamas War but further brutal action despite some hostages is not going to do anything but make Israel look bad. It will be immoral as well.
Israel has it's own defense/weapons industry. Stoping to sell weapons to Israel won't actually change the power levels. There are too many people indulging both the Israelis and Palestinians on in stupid fantasies but Israel has a lot more power to carry on those stupid fantasies.
More from the email security administration:
https://www.404media.co/the-signal-clone-the-trump-admin-uses-was-hacked/
Swoop down and enforce the preferred solution of Pro-Palestinian forces on Israel.
Chris, how on earth does this level of ideological dogmatism help the Palestinians? Israel exists. It is not going to stop existing. Something like 45% of the world's Jews live in Israel and they aren't going anywhere.
The Pro-Palestinian forces can scream ethnic cleansing, while ignoring the ethnic cleansing of Jews in Europe and the MENA region, and settler-colonialism as much as they want. It won't do anything to help the Palestinians. Nobody is going to swoop down and force the solution you want on Israel.
The email security administration:
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/d49bd4585dd7f1f908b685c0c7a63aa470e09d15defda21f1a31eb5bde100c8a.png
Who knew that Trump was trying to teach Americans Buddhist dharma?
The Pro-Israel and the Pro-Palestine side are being extremely stupid and ignoring facts on the ground.
1. There are 10.1 million Israelis. Around 77% of them are Jews. It is a wealthy developed democracy with a government, army, and citizenry willing to fight for their country. They also have the bomb.
2. There are 5 to 6 million Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza.
3. Nobody is going anywhere.
4. The Palestinians can't militarily defeat Israel and nobody is going to swoop down and save them.
5. Israel can't bomb it's way out of this.
6. This means that the I/P conflict will end by unilateral Israel withdrawal or negotiation.
7. The negotiations means settlers out of the WB and No Right of Return for Palestinians.
8. Not recoginizing this and rigidly adhering to ideology means the conflict continues forever.
So your opinion is that societal improvement is impossible and nothing can or should be done to make humans better? Taboos about what can't be said have tremendous power.
Actually, most people are just scared about this escalating out of control.
India attacks Pakistan over the militant strike in India Kashmir:
https://www.reuters.com/world/asia-pacific/multiple-loud-explosions-heard-pakistani-kashmir-reuters-witness-2025-05-06/
See also this. Iranian high school principal tries to lead students in saying Death to Israel and they respond by Death to Palestine. Other Muslims are not that into the Palestinian cause anymore. So any strategy based on a collapse of Western support and assuming that no where else supports Israel is just dumb strategically.
https://jihadwatch.org/2024/12/iran-students-shout-death-to-palestine-to-show-their-opposition-to-the-islamic-regime
Even if there is a collapse in support for Israel, doesn't mean that the world would be willing to swoop in either. They aren't doing this for the Uyghurs in China or Rohingya in Myanmar. It still seems like a lot of magical thinking.
It also assumes that Israel won't be able to find support elsewhere. Israel and India have been getting a lot closer. Hindus and the Israeli or even Jewish Right are finding things to bond over.
So basically I think even if that is the goal, it still shows bad strategic thinking. The Palestinians won't be stronger. The world isn't going to rush in. Israel can find allies elsewhere.
There were also Israeli governments in willing memory that were willing to negotiate a final deal with the PLO. The PLO rejected these deals. Sharon withdrew from Gaza and Hamas decided to turn it into a quixotic attempt to destroy Israel. Although to be fair to the Palestinian leadership, I also think they didn't want to start a Palestinian Civil War by signing such a treaty.
The Palestinians and their allies seem to have a real need for a psychological victory against Israel. They want Israel to be punished in some way rather than a negotiated deal.
Chris, there are somewhere between 7.4 million to 7.7 million Israeli Jews. They have a government, army, most likely the bomb, and a long history of showing that they are going to stay and fight to stay. Every attempt at physical force or military force to get the Jews out since 1920 failed even when the power levels were more equivalent.
The Israelis aren't going anywhere. The Palestinians aren't going anywhere but everybody seems intent on acting out a repeated bad Greek tragedy again and again. The alleged allies of both groups encourage the most obstinate and unrealistic thinking rather than something that could result in a functional but cold peace.
What good does a bunch of activists and college students yelling genocide and settler-colonialism and Jews go home to Poland do for the Palestinians? The world isn't going to come down swooping in to resolve the I/P conflict anymore than they do for other ethnic conflicts? This is like a weird area where Saudi Arabia is being the most sensible.
I do not get the strategy of the Pro-Palestinian side at all. Attempts to use force to defeat Jews/Israelis have basically failed since 1920 but they idea of actual negotiations to resolve the situation seem intolerable to contemplate. The times where Israeli governments were willing to negotiate an end of the Occupation including taking the Settlers away were just deemed to be not real because the Israeli governments had some demands of their own like no return flood of refugees that would basically be a back door one-state solution. There seems to be a real emotional need for Israel to be defeated in someway.
The Pro-Palestinian movement in the West seems to use Palestinians in the same way that Evangelicals use Israelis. As a way to fulfill their fantasies. They have adopted rhetoric that alienates both the hundreds of thousands of Israelis that were protesting Netanyahu before 10/7 and after 10/7 and also the majority of Diaspora Jews. People who might be useful allies but have Greenline Israel gets to exist. Instead, they went all in on settler-colonialism and Israel needs to be destroyed with the Jews needing to go arguments.
It makes sense when you realize that a lot of these people don't care for Palestinians per se but mainly take up the Pro-Palestinian stance because it fits into the anti-capitalist, anti-American, and anti-West narrative running in their heads. Some or many of them also believe that the Democratic Party is the only thing preventing too true leftism from breaking out in American politics.
Harvard's report on anti-Semitism and Islamophobia in the wake of 10/7 is out:
he antisemitism report was produced by a task force made up mainly of faculty, but that also included students, a former Hillel director and Harvard’s chief community and campus life officer, whose title was changed from chief diversity and inclusion officer on Tuesday. The report said that bias incidents had been occurring before the Hamas attack and were intensified by the war in Gaza. It found that antisemitism seemed to be more pronounced in branches of the university with a social justice bent, including the graduate school of education, the divinity school and the school of public health.
A similar task force held hundreds of conversations with Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students, staff and faculty members about anti-Muslim bias. That task force summed up the feelings expressed by many of those people in two words: “abandoned and silenced.”
The antisemitism report recounted an episode in which a student asked not to work with an Israeli partner, and an instructor granted the request because “in their view, a student who supported the cause of an oppressed group should not be forced to work with a student identified as a member of an ‘oppressor group.’”
In another episode in the report, a recently admitted medical student recounted arriving for a visitation day and encountering students yelling “Free Palestine” from a walkway, apparently to discourage Zionists from attending the school.
The report said that some courses on Israel and Palestine were partisan and politicized. These courses were disproportionately taught by nontenure track faculty members, who were not as carefully vetted as more senior faculty are, the report said.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/29/us/harvard-antisemitism-islamophobia-reports.html
On the other blog, my brother pointed out that non-tenure track faculty feeling more free to be extremely partisan seems counterintuitive.
I still think that a big reason for the current problems is the decline of malls and hangout culture teaching teens in general and young men in particular how to socialize.
It occurs to me that the Protestors care about Palestinians in the same way that Evangelicals care about Israelis.
The allegedly Pro-Palestinian protestors apparently have no regret about going against Biden and latter Harris despite the fact that the people in the White House are egging Netanyahu on in his worse and things would be very different if Harris was President. These people don't care about the Palestinians accept as totems for their self-actualization and their rants against America and capitalism. I live in an area that was thick with Pro-Palestinian protests from 10/8/2023 to 11/5/2024. After Trump got elected they all just went away despite the fact that Trump is persecuting real actual Palestinians in the United States and talked about America annexing Gaza. They will re-emerge in 2026 when "Anybody but Kamala" becomes "anybody but a Democratic politician."
https://www.thebulwark.com/p/pro-palestinian-activists-gave-trump-boost-no-2024-regrets-biden-harris-gaza-israel
I have a friend from my hometown who I knew since elementary school who is a Mason. He's only two years older than me. The fraternal orders gained a reputation of being dodgy and uncool during the 1960s. They weren't replaced with much as a replacement though.
I actually have a bar where I am a regular. It's nice. From what I've read, the English pub is undergoing a crisis that started because of high land prices and got worse because of COVID. The increased social intolerance against casual drinking and the fact that there are easier ways to earn a living, especially if big breweries can't legally subsidize pubs, doesn't help.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/dec/30/number-of-pubs-in-england-and-wales-falls-below-39000-for-first-time
Left without commment:
https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:4llrhdclvdlmmynkwsmg5tdc/post/3lof5h56yus2r?ref_src=embed&ref_url=https%253A%252F%252Fwww.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com%252F2025%252F05%252Fthe-cognitive-fitness-and-in-touch-with-the-working-american-candidate