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The Enthusiasm Gap Mystery

I haven’t said much about the 2014 election. And I’ve said nothing about 2016. I won’t say anything about 2016 until people actually start announcing they’re really running because literally nothing that I can say at this point would be anything other than wild speculation.

I haven’t said much about 2014 for a couple of reasons. First, we’re not really going to get an accurate picture of exactly how it’s going to turn out until September. Most people aren’t paying attention at this point of the year since there’s too much grilling and beaching to be done. And secondly, because it’s not going to produce shocking results. Democrats are definitely not going to do well. I strongly suspect that control of the senate is going to hinge on Kentucky. If Alison Lundergan Grimes can wrestle that seat away from Mitch McConnell, the senate will remain in democratic hands. But I digress.

My point in this post isn’t to look at all of the races across the country. I want to talk about the enthusiasm gap everything is incorrectly analyzing. Democrats have an enthusiasm gap problem. That part is true enough. It’s always true in midterms. But everybody seems to be missing the reason for the lack of enthusiasm on the part of democrats.

It boils down to the inherent difference between conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are inherently blindly loyal and less critical in their thinking. They’re republicans, and they will always show up to vote for the republican. It doesn’t matter who that republican is, and if that candidate has ever done anything for them. That’s not a dig, that’s a fact that has been demonstrated in study after study. I’ve been asking this question for several years now;

Tell me something that republicans have done in the past 30 years that has benefited you personally.

I have literally gotten no answer to that question since I started posing it. Even the trolls go quiet for that post. And yet they vote, oh how they vote. 

Liberals are different. Some (significant) percentage of liberals do assess the democrat put before them. They don’t just show up and check off whichever name appears in the democratic column. And if they deem their democratic choice "unworthy", they just don’t show up at all. Liberals don’t show up to vote against someone in midterms, while republicans show up to vote against someone or something in every election. For about the last 20 years, republicans have been conditioned to believe that voting is an exercise of opposing something. They lost their platform when Poppy Bush lost his shot at a second term. Against is literally all conservatives are for anymore. And since we know that conservatives thoughtlessly do what they’re told by their party to do, they faithfully show up and enthusiastically vote "anti" every single time they get the chance to. 

Liberals generally like to be for things and for people. And liberals have held onto ideas they’re for; access to education for all, fair wages for everyone, equality for all, providing for the most vulnerable among us, and equality of opportunity. When those things are on the ballot, liberals show up in great numbers. The midterm enthusiasm problem that democrats have, is that they’re increasingly not for those things anymore. Since they’re demonstrably not for those things, they’re having a harder and harder time getting a party message together. A Rahm Emanuel type candidate running for congress in DesMoines is not going to inspire liberals to show up and vote. A Bill de Blasio or an Elizabeth Warren, on the other hand will manage to beat the odds and win by a landslide. Why? Because they’re for the things that liberals are for, and that democrats used to be for. Both Warren and de Blasio managed to raise more money than their opponents who were well funded by corporate interests. They did so, despite being perceived as the long shot underdogs. So people gave them money believing they had almost no chance of winning. That’s enthusiasm.

There was nothing wrong with de Blasio’s better known democratic opponents. They were fine in the grand scheme of democrats. But de Blasio ran as a flaming fucking liberal. He ran on a platform of raising taxes on the wealthiest New Yorkers to pay for free pre-k education for all New Yorkers. He ran on a platform of ending the racial profiling that the NYPD had been practicing for twenty years. He wants to get rid of the horses in Central Park. For the love of God, is there anything more granola crunching than saving the horses? And you know what? He beat his ‘just fine’ democratic opponents by a big enough margin to avoid a runoff election. And then he went on to just embarrass the republican candidate by kicking his ass to the tune of a 50 point spread.

I started volunteering for his campaign when he was polling in fourth place. And you know what? I knew that he was going to become the next mayor of New York City. I started donating generously to Elizabeth Warren’s campaign, when she had no chance of winning because I knew she was going to win.      

The problem democrats have is that they’re trapped between their liberal base and Citizen’s United. You can’t win an election in America unless you have the biggest pile of cash. In 94% of all congressional elections, the candidate with the most money wins. Think about that; ninety-four percent. Democrats can’t be for the people without getting money from the corporations. And that’s why they have been putting forward uninspiring, corporatist ‘lite’ candidates in the midterms.

Republicans walked away from every single tenet of conservatism, and that didn’t matter. Small government? Peh, Reagan and W grew government in ways we had never seen before. Fiscal responsibility? Who fucking cares cause "deficits don’t matter". Not intervening in the world’s problems unless we have to? The Bush doctrine effectively crapped all over that idea. And yet, they still show up. With nothing to show for themselves, they still show up. With no coherent platform, they still show up.

There would be no enthusiasm gap if democrats ran liberal candidates. Why? Because liberals are still passionate about traditionally democratic principles. Democrats need a platform. Liberals are not inspired by the "anti" doctrine. We’re not automatons, and we have principles we hold more dear than we do our party. And therein lies the enthusiasm gap.

Read me now, quote me later; this strategy of "stop the impeachment efforts against President Obama" that democrats have cooked up isn’t going to work. We need something to vote for, not something to vote against.         

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Andrew Sullivan Is A Douche With No Credibility

Credibility is something that we either don’t understand or no longer have any use for. In an effort to explain what credibility is (and to bring it back in style), I will occasionally be highlighting pundits or "journalists" who inexplicably still have a voice, despite the fact that they have no credibility. I say occasionally because exposing media hacks isn’t my mission here, and there are plenty of places you can go for that. But every once in a while, I read something that really steams my beans and I have to write about it. 

Andrew Sullivan is a twat waffle. He has been espousing liberal views since his "awakening", without ever acknowledging that we were right about everything.

This piece showed up in my G+ feed. It was posted by one of my progressive peeps who thought it was worth sharing. I disagreed because this piece embodies everything I despise about Andrew Sullivan, who lost all credibility in the Bush years (it actually started earlier). My problem with Sullivan is that he pretends that he’s invented the less batshit crazy ideas he’s been espousing over the past 7 years (or so) without ever acknowledging that liberals had it right all along. He does this while peddling (and advancing) right wing fallacies.

Let’s unpack this heaping pile of poop so that I can show you where I’m coming from by looking at the paragraph that bitched me out the most;


Like Ricks, I don’t believe my general inclinations politically have changed that much over the years. I prefer smaller government in general; I too believe in a robust defense; I have few issues with the free market; I think marriage and family are critical social institutions; I’m still a believing Christian; I have deep qualms about abortion and abhor affirmative action; I’m a fiscal conservative; want radical tax reform, cuts in unfunded entitlements, and culturally,..

 
Let’s discuss. "I prefer smaller government in general". Are you still being a fucking child and referring to regulating Wall Street as "big government" intrusion into your life? Who the fuck is for "big government"? And why are you caricaturing the liberal position? Asshole.

"I too believe in a robust defense". Again, what the fuck does this mean without clarity? Do you believe in spending twice as much as the next X number of countries combined? You know, the way the Soviet Union used to before it went bankrupt? Are you down with spending billions of dollars on planes that don’t work and tanks that the army doesn’t want? Again, the implication that liberals want to leave the US defenseless is bullshit. Asshole.

"I have few issues with the free market". That’s just fucking stupid, no matter how you look at it. Are actually still humping the free market unicorn that helped itself to 60% of your retirement funds in 2007? I get why Rick Santelli and Jim Cramer still hump that unicorn. They’re getting paid handsomely for their stupid. But you Andrew Sullivan, you’re doing pro bono stupid, you unmitigated, unabashed asshole?

"I think marriage and family are critical social institutions; I’m still a believing Christian". And liberals are what? On the other side? Godless sodomite heathens? I’m sorry, but the implication that the right wing has a monopoly on God or spirituality is total bullshit. Liberals happen to do this whole thing better by not foisting our beliefs on other people, and certainly not legislating based on what we do or do not believe. The implication that conservatives have nailed this down, despite the obvious fact that they’re doing it all wrong makes you (say it with me) an  asshole.

"I’m a fiscal conservative". Guess which party actually reduces deficits? Asshole.

I’m sorry, but I despise Andrew Sullivan, and he gets no credit for being slightly less batshit than he has been in the past.

That’s not to say that credibility can’t be rebuilt. I absolutely believe that it’s possible for someone to have an epiphany and see where they went horribly wrong. But  I need to hear you Andrew Sullivan, break down for me in great detail where you believe you went horribly wrong. Because I need to review that thought process before deciding if you’re worth spending my time on. There is no turn toward credibility without clearly laying out the basis for the "I was wrong" epiphany. You can’t just admit to being wrong about one war or one president and then go about telling me what you think, as if I need to give a flying fuck. You were wrong about everything. The very foundation upon which you built your belief system was wrong. Wanna know how I know? Because the internet archives every piece of steaming shit you foisted upon the world.

You certainly can’t rebuild your credibility while still caricaturing the side that was right all along. You can’t falsely paint me as a big spending, all controlling, spiritually empty wuss who would leave this country defenseless in order to explain your incredibly stupid beliefs about how the world should work. You were wrong about everything. Leave me out of it because it’s all on you. And you certainly don’t get a cookie from me for not being wrong 100% of the time anymore while you’re still calling me an idiot.

I’m sorry, but if you’re a liberal who listens to this jackass because he’s suddenly telling you what you want to hear, you’re the only reason why he still exists. Without you, he disappears because he certainly hasn’t retained his batshit crazy republican audience. He’s calling you an idiot every single day. Stop helping him!

Credibility doesn’t come from telling you what you want to hear. It comes from creating a history of being either correct in analyzing situations, or explaining the reason for an incorrect analysis. I’ve been wrong about stuff. Just go through my archives about health reform. I was not correct in everything I said about the way it was going to turn out. I acknowledged that I was wrong, and proceeded to show you the basis of my ongoing analysis.

Why admit to being wrong? Because I don’t expect you to take me seriously if I don’t. Despite the way that credibility has been disregarded and undervalued in our culture, I still feel it’s important for me to have it.

Liberals and conservatives have both devalued credibility. Conservatives have done it exponentially more, but liberals do it too. Liberals do it when they point to a douche like Andrew Sullivan and say, "he knows what he’s talking about". No he doesn’t. And telling you something you want to hear doesn’t make him right or credible, especially since he’s still calling you an idiot.

Stop it! Stop listening to people who have already shown you they have no credibility, and no regard for their own credibility. If you’re right, you can find plenty of credible people to show you that you’re right.

As for Andrew Sullivan, he’s going to have to go much further in building his credibility now that he’s been playing the stupid game he’s been playing for the past several years. I need to see him crawl on his hands and knees to beg (for example) Robert Reich’s forgiveness for not acknowledging that Reich has been right about everything he’s ever said over the course of thirty years. He needs to apologize to Bill Clinton about every stupid and demonstrably wrong thing he said about him. He needs to apologize for advancing the mythological version of Ronald Reagan in order to claim that there’s value in conservatism. I want to hear Sullivan talk about the eleven-times-tax-raising Reagan that blew up the deficit and sold arms to terrorists. I need for him to acknowledge that every single aspect of FDR’s New Deal were exactly the right policies to create prosperity and growth for America. To summarize, I need him to acknowledge that liberals have been right about just about everything. Okay, we fucked up when we built ghettos in America. I can acknowledge that. It was a mistake. We really should have integrated low income housing into middle class neighborhoods, but at least we tried to do something. Live and learn.

Hindsight should be 20/20. And until Andrew Sullivan’s is, he can kiss my right-all-along liberal ass.           

 

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Jon Stewart: Bad Jew?

Hardly.

I missed this, but apparently the unhinged Israel-is-good-and-righteous-at-all-times lunatics went after Jon Stewart. When he did the first (very short) bit about what’s happening in Gaza last week, I noted how unusual it was for Stewart to bring up Israel. He never does it. Literally, never. I always assumed that his silence on the matter was an effort to to keep the peace with the unhinged Israel-is-pure-as-the-driven-snow crowd.

He’s Jewish so if he was of the opinion that Israel can do no wrong, sharing that opinion would be unsurprising, right ? I mean, it’s human nature to band with your tribe and be more forgiving and understanding of what your own people are doing. I always assumed that his silence was a sign that he didn’t want to ruffle feathers among the the pro-Israel crowd with his objectivity. The reality of the world is that when  a Jew says that these bombings are atrocious, it means more than when anyone else says it. When a famous Jew says it, all hell may break loose. It means more because that Jew grew up learning our history of persecution and suffering. We know how many times we’ve been scattered all over the earth, and we know why. So when we conclude that Israel is doing wrong, it has the voracity that comes with being intimately aware of the history.

Jon Stewart is very open about his Jewiness, which is why the attacks against him are unhinged. He’s not ashamed of who he is so implying that he’s anti-semetic is patently absurd. First the offending clip. He starts at 4:53 and stays on the topic for roughly 2 1/2 minutes.  

 

 

That was it. Two and a half minutes of what Jon Stewart does; present empirical facts in a way that highlights the absurdity of the situation. That sent back bench, right wing whackadoodle extraordinaire, Mark Levin into a tizzy. He started off with this little nugget of crazy;

As you well know, the Israelis are doing everything humanly possible to use their technology and their weaponry to limit civilian casualties. But Hamas is doing everything possible to kill its own people, because apparently that’s the price of a good press release.

Huh. Some might say that a 70% – 80% civilian casualty rate indicates either a lack of effort, or a lack of competence in regard to minimizing casualties but eh, evidence! Who needs to introduce facts into the conversation when there’s so much irrational emotion to present as fact?

Then Levin goes on to call Stewart a "little twerp" several times, which is funny, since in terms of audience size, Levin seems to be projecting. Then he rants on about "Jon Stuart Liebowitz". Ummm, does he understand that using Stewart’s name in that way has a seriously anti-semetic tinge to it?

And then David Horovitz jumped in with an editorial in The Times Of Israel. He was more civil, but equally unhinged. He starts off his piece by saying;

That Jon Stewart, he’s sooooo funny. Just watch his amusing take on the current Israel-Gaza conflict. Really, it’s a nonstop laugh fest. Yeah, it misrepresents what’s going on here. But hey, it is funny, and all those millions of Americans who watched it on Monday know that it’s just satire, don’t they?

Okay so at this point, I’m prepared to be informed about all of Stewart’s "misrepresentations". He goes on;

Our super-smart, engagingly frustrated host starts up despairing over a news report of the intensifying conflict which says Israeli troops are poised to invade Gaza, and which ends with the words “as the aerial bombardment from both sides continues.”

Stewart: “Tastes great. More killing.”

See, right off the bat, I’m unhappy. Because, first up, he’s begun with talk of Israel being set to invade Gaza, but without any cited reason — such as, say, Hamas being a terrorist organization with a notorious track record of suicide bombings, individual killings, kidnappings, and incessant rocket fire. And, second, because the implication here is that the combatants — Israel and Hamas — are both happy to be back killing again, and that’s just plain false. Hamas is avowedly committed to the destruction of Israel and holds to a perverted interpretation of Islam that claims killing Jews, Christians and non-believing Muslims is your guaranteed path to paradise if you also die in the process. Israelis, by contrast, would much rather live and let live. (We left Gaza unilaterally in 2005, under international pressure, hoping that the security risk would be worth it, and that we’d be rewarded with tranquility rather than rocket fire, but I wouldn’t expect Stewart to go back that far.)

Okay, well you didn’t demonstrate that Steward misrepresented anything, you’re just upset that he didn’t make Israel’s case for their part in the bombardment. How does an otherwise intelligent person think they’re doing anything productive here? If the goal is to discredit Stewart, it didn’t work. So then he continues "exposing" Stewart’s misrepresentations; 

Stewart: “Both sides are engaging in aerial bombardment, but one side appears to be bomb-better-at it. (Studio laughter at the wordplay.) Most Hamas rockets are neutralized by Israel’s Iron Dome technology, and Israeli citizens can even now download a warning app. (Cut to clip of Israel’s US ambassador Ron Dermer explaining how Israelis can know where and when they’re being attacked.) So Israelis seem to have a high-tech, smart-phone alert system.”

Let me see if I understand the point he’s making here: Having falsely implied that Israel is as keen on killing as Hamas is, Stewart now seems to be criticizing Israel for not being as vulnerable as Hamas would like it to be to those Hamas rockets that are sent to kill us. He seems to be bashing us for having those tech smarts. It’s a bad thing that we developed a unique, astonishing Iron Dome missile defense system, without which hundreds of us would be dead? It’s a bad thing that we developed an app to warn us that the rockets designed to kill our citizens are heading this way?

Israel isn’t as keen on killing as Hamas is? Really? The Israeli death toll is around 30 and the Palestinian/ Hamas death toll is over 700. If this imbalance doesn’t suggest an enthusiasm for killing by Israel, I don’t know what does. Is Horovits suggesting an inadvertent killing proficiency going on here? How does one accidentally get so proficient at killing? Curious. But don’t believe your own lying eyes, believe Horovit’s feelings that Israel are the good guys.

Then he goes on to sound super stupid by "misunderstanding" what Stewart was saying about how absurd it is to warn civilians that bombs are coming, with smaller bombs. I’m not going to pick apart the rest of it because it’s more of the same. You can read it for yourself if you want, but he didn’t expose any "misrepresentations", so much as demonstrate how smart people turn really stupid when they let emotions form their opinions.

So in response to the super crazy Zionist whackadoodles, Jon Stewart brilliantly did this;     

   

 

I can’t conceive of a better way to demonstrate the level of crazy here, than the way Stewart did it.

I suspect this will be the last time he brings up the topic of Israel, and that’s too bad because no one is as good at exposing hypocrisy, lies, or absurdity, as Jon Stewart is. Plus, he has the Jew shield against allegations of anti-semitism. Not that it stops the whackos from accusing him of it, but it does demonstrate just how crazy they are. 

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Otherwise Intelligent People

Here we go again in Gaza. We’ve seen this movie before; hamas does something ineffectual to provoke Israel and Israel responds by slaughtering hundreds of innocent Palestinians. Now right off the bat, I know that smoke is coming out of some of your ears.

First a little background about me. I’m Jewish. Iranian born, raised in California from the age of about 3 1/2 (so the US is really all I know). I come from, what we assume is 1000 generations of Jews. We have to assume because there were name changes on both sides of my family. We think we know the original last name on my mother’s side, but we haven’t made any headway on my father’s side. We know that his family name must have been changed in either his father’s or his grandfather’s generation. His father is more likely, since there is literally no one on this planet with my last name, who isn’t directly related to me. By directly, I mean second cousin. We found that second cousin in Jerusalem when we saw a store called, "[my last name] Souvenirs". I bring up the name changes because it’s kind of a big deal thing that occurred, and it’s mostly unique to Jews. When Hitler was letting his freak flag fly, there were (I’m guessing) millions of name changes in order to sound less Jewy and avoid that whole being tortured and murdered thing. Not knowing who you are is kind of a big deal. I’m not one with an attachment to family or family history. My son is. I gave him up for adoption when he was born (don’t worry Zionisits, I gave him to a nice Jewish family to raise). We reconnected almost five years ago. The being adopted thing has given him an obsession with learning who he is. His obsession made me realize that I am a little bummed that I can’t go to ancestry.com to find out how it all started. I’m pretty sure that my son’s determination will eventually produce a family tree but still, it’s a weird thing that only Jews deal with. I grew up nonreligious, but fairly Jewy nonetheless. I learned about Hitler and Masada, I read both of Leon Uris’ books (my father knew him) and was well versed in the suffering of our people.

When my son moved to Israel, I was excited to visit him. Because I wanted to spend time with him, but also because I wanted to see Israel. He moved there because his parents had taken him when he was a child, and he loved it. He promptly got his Israeli citizenship and prepared for his mandatory military service. He left the US, a complete Israeli AIPAC style hawk. He didn’t come back that way. He was still very pro Israel the first time I visited. He was in Jerusalem so I stayed in Jerusalem. We actually drove all across the country because I wanted to see as much as I could.

The first and most obvious thing I saw was that the Arab neighborhoods were ghettos. Having grown up in America, and seeing ghettos full of brown people, my assumption is that they were created for the Arabs just like our ghettos here were created for everyone darker than dark beige. I don’t believe there’s something inherently inferior about poor people, nor do I believe they’re lazy. I understand the institutional circumstances that were set up to make getting out of those ghettos almost impossible. Here in the US, those ghettos were created by well meaning liberals who horribly miscalculated when they created whole communities for low income housing. You can’t segregate people like that. They have to be intermingled with everyone else. When you segregate them into their own neighborhoods, you create institutional hurdles like inferior schools, mold ridden homes that create a lifetime of debilitating asthma, food deserts, and a whole host of other things we don’t really think about. Everything about our ghettos is true of all ghettos.

So right off the bat, Israel and I aren’t off to an awesome start. I saw massive self segregation that I really didn’t think much of at first. After all, we see this all around the world; people hanging out with their own kind. That’s why every big city has a China Town, Korea Town, and Little Italy. What my brain recorded, but didn’t process until later was how granular that segregation is. Russian Jews separate themselves from Russian gentiles, Ashkenazis hang out with other Ashkenazis, Sephardics hang out with other Sephardics, and Arabs have their own neighborhoods. I didn’t fully process the strict social hierarchy I was looking at. One morning before my son came to meet me at my hotel (still in Jerusalem), I decided to walk around and do a little exploring. I saw a black woman walking toward me. I saw people spitting and yelling at her. She wasn’t doing anything but walking. It was appalling. I didn’t bring it up to my son because I didn’t want to get into a long discussion wherein he tells me how awesome Israel is, and I tell him what I saw with my own lying eyes. I saw xenophobia everywhere. There’s a bizarre and palpable "fear of the other" thing going on there.

My son wanted to show me Tiberias, where he wanted to move. We Google mapped the directions and got back a strange result. Google didn’t lead us directly there. It instead wanted us to do a giant letter "c" excursion. I asked my son why this was, and he looked at the map. He realized that it was because Google didn’t want us to go through the West Bank. Naturally, I wanted to go through the West Bank because I’m inherently curious. We drove past the illegal settlements. They looked like luxury prisons to me. All of the windows were tiny, probably because of the high likelihood that there would be bombing there. I really thought that it took a special kind of asshole to live there. At one point, we pulled over on the side of the road to have a cigarette (yes, I was still a filthy smoker back then). It was June, noon, and really hot. Some farmers next to us were waving us in to sit with them in their shade. They poured us some of their coffee and offered us some of their cigarettes. My son spoke just enough Arabic to communicate with them. They were Bedouins whose family were, for generations from the spot we were standing on. Their family farm now belonged to an Israeli who was paying them a pittance to work the farm. The thing that struck me was how generous these people were, sharing what little they had with us. I understand that this story is anecdotal and I don’t tell it to you to make a statement. I tell it so that you can understand what I saw.

When we were coming back into Israel, we made the mistake of stopping at a security checkpoint, instead of slowly rolling past it (the way my son told me everyone did). They asked for ID. My son pulled out his Israeli ID and I pulled out my passport, knowing it was going to cause me problems because it caused me problems every time I pulled it out. It’s a problem because my United States passport says that I was born in Iran. Not surprisingly, we had to pull over for a security check. We were there for 45 minutes while they combed through every inch of the car. The inside, the trunk, under the hood, and the undercarriage. At one point, my son says, "she’s Jewish". The kid "guarding" us said, "I know. It’s a Jewish name". So at this point, one has to wonder if there have been a rash of attacks against Israel by US citizens from predominantly Muslim countries (where Jews came from), or do we have a serious case of xenophobia going on here?

Anyway, that’s just some of what I saw when I was there. I know that I’m more observant than most people, but I honestly don’t see how anyone can not see the xenophobia.

Now to back to the slaughter of innocent Palestinians. So three Israeli teenagers are killed and the Israeli government concludes that hamas is responsible. There’s no evidence pointing at anyone specific but nonetheless, Israel knows it’s hamas. Hamas denies it (of course they did) and at some point, ISIS says it’s them. There are conspiracy theories floating around that it was Israel, who wanted to start this bombing campaign of Gaza so that they can take the next step toward annexation. Israel is actually responsible for that insane conspiracy theory. They released an emergency call that the teenagers made during the incident. To be more specific, they released an edited version of the tape, where the last 8 – 9 seconds were cut off. That would be the 8 – 9 seconds where you can hear the gunshots. The gunshots on the tape make it pretty likely that those kids had been murdered on the spot and yet, Israel went on a two week search for live people. It was curious. To be clear, I don’t believe that Israelis murdered these kids. I would be more inclined to believe that the whole thing was fabricated, but I don’t really believe that either. I don’t know what happened, and neither does Israel. So then a Palestinian kid is murdered by some Israelis cause, is there a more effective way to display your moral superiority than to behave in the same way the people you refer to as barbarians do? And then hamas does what hamas always does; they start firing their utterly ineffective rockets on Israel. They know that those rockets won’t make it to Israel because they didn’t last time they fired them. Iron dome works, and everyone knows it. But hamas does this because they know what Israel is going to do next; make it rain with bombs in Gaza. Neither hamas nor Israel has any regard for the innocent Palestinians who are being imprisoned in Gaza. Hamas want the civilian death toll will be high, in the hope of winning the PR war. Israel doesn’t give a shit what the civilian death toll is for a couple of reasons. They want to annex Gaza and they don’t care how many innocent Palestinians die. They believe that all Palestinians are responsible for the actions of a radical minority. This is the point at which some people point in one direction and lay all of the blame there. I’m sorry, but Israel and hamas are in an unholy partnership here and if you can’t see that, it’s because you’re being guided by your emotions.  

Gaza is a prison. It’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison, it’s a prison. Everyone who has been there and seen it with their own lying eyes said it’s a giant outdoor prison. Now you can refuse to click on any of those links because you don’t want to know what you don’t want to know, but that would make you no different than Louie Gohmert, Michelle Bachmann, or any of the other anti-science members of the republican party. You’re a climate denier, denying the climate in which the Palestinians in Gaza have been forced to live.

Or, you can do what I did and objectively read everything you can on the matter. I left a lifetime’s worth of emotion and shared cultural perspective on the table in regard to Israel. I have no motivation to be "anti-Israel. None. I decided to educate myself and objectively assess the situation.               

Do you think that maybe trapping 1.4 million people on just 140 sq miles of land might perhaps produce some extremists? Most liberals and thinkers of other political persuasion understand that our intervention in Iran is "why they hate us". They hate us because we installed the Shah as their leader. We created the theocracy that Iran is today. Iran was on its way to being a fairly secular country until we empowered the mullahs. Some of us understand that Obama’s indiscriminate drone strikes in Pakistan are creating a future generation of terrorists every time they kill an innocent Pakistani. We understand that a straight line can be drawn between our actions in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen thirty years ago, and 9/11. We understand that the way we left Iraq will surely bring more terrorism our way. And yet, when it comes to Israel, some people lose all objectivity. Israel is creating the radicalized members of hamas. To absolve Israel from all of the killing here is ludicrous. Israel is creating its own terrorism, just the way we helped to create ours. Are there batshit crazy terrorists that Israel had nothing to do with creating? Of course. Is Israel creating more of them? Of course. 

I correct the bullshit. I correct right wing bullshit, and democratic bullshit. I don’t plan on stopping at the Israeli border. You can disagree with me, but you can’t accuse me of irrationality here. I have reasons for my conclusions, and they’re based on all of the facts, not just the ones I like.

I want Israel to survive and prosper. I don’t see how that’s going to be possible if they stay on their current course of genocide. Yes, it’s a genocide when you’re slaughtering people that have no planes, no navy, and no military. If Israel cared about minimizing civilian casualties, their bombings wouldn’t have an 80% civilian death rate. They would have sent in ground troops to target the actual terrorists.

I’m not going to defend the indefensible or keep my mouth shut about it. That’s what the good people of Germany did once. I sincerely wish they had spoken up.


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