But Seriously...

Was it something I sharted?

 

I am seeing this across the board: some people are genuinely surprised by the desire for a nuanced discussion, especially when Israel was attacked.

I think some of this is occurring because there's a generation of people who have only seen Israel become further right, religion decline across the board and have been accustomed to Israel being able to defend itself.

They are also frustrated by the lack of nuanced discussion, and the persistent misinformation. Everyone should be pissed that there is no solution to these issues, regardless of the catalyst.

 

A friend of mine works with an Israeli team and he says some of them have set their slack statuses to things like "Out of Office: drafted."

 

that's what I'm here for. irl it's just people parroting the stuff they hear in the media. I genuinely appreciate that people of jewish faith can and do feel a certain way. I also feel horrible for the citizens of Palestine. The governments of both places.... not so much. But it's the nuanced discussion that I hope to read on here. Also the jokes, because normal people either get their panties in a wad or they just go way out of bounds. And you fucks aren't normal.

 

Hey MSU, now is probably not a good time to be showing hitler on your scoreboard

 

When would be a good time?

 

Certainly not while the game is in progress. Wait until the score is final.

 

holocaust anniversary? Remind those fuckers how good they have it over here

 

The US support of Israel is another thing that simply isn't well-understood. Promises made in 1945 count for fuck-all today, and the constant discussion of the Holocaust feels ignorant of several other similar genocides in that region, many of which are straight up happening now (Yemeni famine).

I think there is a certain undercurrent of support because there's a portion of US leadership (especially in the Senate) that is heavily influenced by radical religious ideology. Israel figures into that in one sense by a loose interpretation of shit from Revelations, and in another sense by a hedge against calls for literal Crusades. When you hear people like Ted Cruz take a pointed interest in Israel it should trigger some alarms based on the religious implications of his...er...beliefs on US policy.

Part of the reaction to this current wave of violence has been fueled by the perception that an Israeli theocracy isn't inherently preferable to an Iranian theocracy, which I think is a relatively new thing. Religiosity in the US started to decline in the 90s and at this point, I see that decline being precipitously accelerated by organized religion's involvement in politics. Increasingly, I see the younger crowd viewing that as unwelcome at best and dangerous at worst. That perspective certainly applies to opinions on foreign policy, especially to a generation whose entire worldview has occurred in a post-9/11 political landscape. The competition between "Ancient Imaginary Friend Book Clubs" having real consequences in terms of de-stabilization, military call-ups and economic consequences is something your average young adult has no patience for, and if you ask them they increasingly view religion as a problem, not a facet of diversity (and the biggest threat to a more equitable society, aside from climate change).

Another is the slow simmering tensions caused by climate change. Much of the upheaval in this part of the world has to do with the "traditional" ways of farming/sustaining life at a village level no longer being viable. I saw it firsthand in Honduras and Indonesia: the small-scale farming isn't viable, and the people who depend on it now face starvation, destitution or they move to cities that increasingly have no place for legions of unskilled, uneducated and conservative-leaning folk, many of whom are incredibly vulnerable. When in the cities, they find themselves lured by religious groups, gangs, or "trades" that are predatory at best. They fill slums, stretch threadbare social safety nets, and direct very real outrage at whatever target seems convenient....in the Muslim world, I'd imagine a LOT of that ire is pointed as Israel. As those ranks swell, the rhetoric grows stronger and stronger, and the government starts lurching more to the right....This issue is internal to a given country, but it definitely dampens the appetite for refugees, immigrants and similar populations of...uneducated, unskilled, and vulnerable folks.

This is what drove the so-called "Arab Spring". It explains why Egypt and Iran aren't in a hurry to open the gates to Palestinians, at least at some level, and it explains why the Saudis are trying to court the West: they need to export that oil money quickly and convert it to something more sustainable. The Saudis have long insulated themselves from hosting refugees, and I think that tactic will imperil their "leadership" amongst the Muslim world pretty quick, and they are more likely than most to find themselves in an inhabitable (if not already inhospitable) landscape.

I have to imagine the Israelis benefit from the Palestinian dynamic in some way, perhaps as an exploitable labor force or something? The Israelis definitely have leveraged the status quo to it's maximum benefit, that much is clear.

 

thank you for the time to write all this. I'm definitely on the side who wants to understand it on a nuanced level, because while I don't think it has immediate implications for the US now -- let them right it out over there -- as you said, our appetite for religion in politics is falling precipitously and I'm afraid that this is what could happen here if/when it gets out of hand. I think we'll nip it in the bud well before that point, but it should certainly serve as a warning.

 

Cutting out the "religion" is going to have longer term implications than that, when the only people trying to help those climate-impacted folks trying to farm are ecumenical Christian/ Mormon/ Islamic drilling wells, and bringing other relief. The governments / militaries don't care and won't replace those efforts.

 

No argument, those governments are not concerned with the health/viability of those communities, until they come to the capital with guillotines in mind.

I think at the community level, religion is fine. It helps bring people together, keeps the peace, and provides some sort of guidelines. At the national level, with money and power at stake...it gets icky fast, because more often than not it provides a justification for truly horrific shit done to an outgroup or "other", and it tries to rationalize or justify things that simply cannot be reconciled.

Imagine the near impossible task of explaining to a bunch of semi-literate farmers who simply want to perpetuate a way of life stretching back centuries why they can't and who's to blame...it's far easier to just say "because God is mad because of Jews", and then claim you cannot be held culpable when they go off to act on those "teachings". We seem to be slightly more insulated from this kind of shit, but there are people who still think hurricanes are because God hates queers.

Rush's observation is pretty potent: at the community level, aid is received and everyone says how nice and charitable the IFBC (Imaginary Friend Book Club) people are...and those same organizations turn around and siphon money to fund politicians who foment the very same sets of conflicts, lack of sustainability, power and corruption that cause the crisis in the first place.

The governments don't care and the churches/mosques/whatevers seem to for a very potent reason: they don't have to care when the job has already been farmed out.

 

I have a theory that as newspaper readership has declined, they've responded to the fact that their dwindling audience is more increasingly the news/politics die-hards. They've moved from a position of trying to inform their readers, to a position of assuming their readers are already informed, and are serving them "takes." There seems to be an undercurrent of assuming that the "default" narrative is already implicitly understood, and that they're providing alternative perspectives that, while perhaps mostly wrong, will yield a small amount of marginal understanding to someone already well informed.

 

I've got an extension that blocks anything associated with Rupert Murdoch (WORKS FUCKING WONDERS), so I can't open the link.

Da fuq is it?

 

New York Times rehires Hitler-praising freelance journalist Soliman Hijjy to report on Israel-Hamas war

 

our local newspaper just keeps reporting on the fact that the Buc-ees, which bought land for a building like a decade ago, keeps getting delayed. Oh, and there's a new HEB in the rich side of town! Fuck the rich people!