Like the Palestine-Israel conflict which a lot has happened since it started, you can barely argue or talk about it if you are literally out of the loop without mistepping because its just a too complex situation for us westerners.
If you want to understand conflicts, you need to read about their history.
I don’t. I deliberately avoid news of any kind. It’s either too depressing or none of my business. I do not take sides. I neither condemn nor condone, I merely acknowledge that someone or something exists or that some event is occurring.
It’s not necessarily that I don’t have opinions on what I do learn through osmosis, just that I realize they’re futile or unlikely to be convincing so there’s no use discussing them. I merely exist and the rest of the world happens around me whether I like it or not.
Unhealthy? Probably, but this is the only way I have found a measure of peace.
What do you say to people who tell you “But everything is political!! You’re participating in politics by not participating!” or “Wow such privilege, being able to just ignore <this routine political event that everyone is frothing at the mouth about today>”?
I just shrug and say you’re probably right. I can’t find the exact quote but it’s something like “Pacifists only exist because others do violence on their behalf” and I think it’s applicable here as well. But, look, I barely have agency over my own affairs, so I’m not going to waste energy futilely worrying about the affairs of others.
I think that reflects the biggest conspiracy of the modern age tbh. As long as everyone’s focused on specific aspects of American politics (as they do worldwide) they aren’t focused on areas of their own lives where they can make positive change, political or otherwise. And here in the US, our political leaders actually love it that everyone’s obsessed with one person in one branch of our government because it’s the politics that affects their lives the least and they can do the least about. It’s actually smarter to focus on yourself and managing your own affairs.
don’t… there is nothing but despair in here
Once upon a time, there was a man named Abraham, who beget two sons, who each beget one of two shitty peoples, who both claim some mystical sky daddy gave them the right of land ownership. And they’ve been fighting ever since, barring an occasional peace that always got broken. But now, one side is curb stomping the other hard, largely in part due to outside aid.
This is a pure anti colonial struggle and the Zionists are using religion as the justification for apartheid and genocide.
If the israelis were Hindu the Palestinians would still be fighting for their freedom.
TLDR News. They usually have a sub 10 min YouTube video that will get you up to speed on the facts of the matter on one of their channels. Either TLDR News Global or TLDR News EU in most cases. It’s almost always a good place to start at least.
If you want to stay sane; do not.
But also please do because we need people to be aware of how fucked shit is
State into the void until it states back
Like we’d ever let having no understanding of a topic get in the way of having an opinion on it…
Forget all daily news. Read the deeper articles, only from high reputation sources.
This exactly. And with this conflict in particular, question everything you read and take every step you can to find the truth. If you hew strictly to what’s true, you’re never wrong, that’s the beauty of it.
Also, in this one, you gotta learn a good bit about local and regional history, and the religions as well. This is essentially a sectarian conflict framed as a fight over territory. And with the daily news, my god. I clicked on one link where the headline was “Scholars find evidence of genocide in Gaza”, and the substance of the article was actually about how the evidence in question was falling apart under the weight of independent review and single source reporting that came from Hamas. You really have to put the work in to get to the facts.
Wikipedia’s current events portal covers current events and conflicts with links to plenty of background info.
Just pay attention and whenever you see or hear something that Makes you say “wait what?” Go look it up and educate yourself.
You don’t necessarily need to participate in the conversation, observe it, gather opinions and cross reference with trusted sources.
Of course in person you can’t just whip out your phone and look stuff up, or shit I guess you can, but you can always say “I’m not informed enough to speak on this, can I get back to you?” and in my experience people will respect that, giving you a chance to go educate yourself on whatever the topic at hand was.
Frankly, I would like to know the secret to the opposite. 🤢🥹
Join the NFL. I hear TBI is great for no longer remembering things
I don’t think about it. I’m not rich enough to influence it.
I mean, sure, I feel sad about the middle east, but there’s also Ukraine, also human trafficking in Southeast Asia and around the world, human rights violation and cultural genocide in Xinjiang and Tibet, also dictators around the world, + every other problem in the world. The fuck can I do? I’m just some broke ass peasant with severe depression.
The moment I read more news is the moment I’d just breakdown in tears about the suffering around the world and wanna swallow a bottle of pills… so I can’t. I don’t even have the guts to watch Schrinder’s list, because the trailer is already too depressing for me.
Memes are enough, make fun of autocrats as stress-relief…
I think mistepping generally just gets you in trouble if you try to act like you know what you’re talking about or insist that a given position is correct. Just say you’re not the most informed and are looking to learn more or understand people’s perspectives rather than assert one thing or another.
Never let Zionists gaslight you about this being a complex issue.
Chomsky’s UN speech on Palestine is a good starting point in my opinion.
Afterwards look up “Nakba” and read up on the Balfour Declaration and Theodor Herzl, the inventor of Zionism.Chomsky and Illan Pappé’s joint book On Palestine is a great read. My introduction on the conflict was Alan Dowty’s book Israel/Palestine which was very insightful to me. I read it around 2010(?) though so maybe there’s better more recent works.
Norman Finkelstein is great. Finally, BadEmpanada on YouTube
search for News articles, or posts online. maybe “aggegate sites are not the best” but its basically like wikipedia, piqued you curiostiy to search more sources. of course many “news” are often just propaganda articles, often times its opinionated, reads like a gossip, or have ragebaity title. sources like “Faux, cbs, ,etc” are mainstream and have right wing biases. more independant would be sources that arnt controlled by MSMs type syndication.
