100%.

I try to remind myself, though, that it would be a waste of time trying to yell at this tidal wave of rage that’s bearing down on us just as it would to yell at an actual tidal wave. I think we need to be grabbing sand bags and securing our food supplies and looking to get to the other side of this period of history. I think it could easily last a generation. And if we’re really, really effective (and lucky) it could be as short as another decade. But there’s no use rubbernecking or bellyaching. We just need to focus on fixing this broken-ass world.

I think you’re right not to spend any energy on this, and I agree that it would be performative to pretend to be sad that he left the world. In some ways, our society is better for normalizing honest reactions to things.

However: I want to encourage you to think about what it means to define him as vermin. Within the meaning of this word is the belief that he is low enough on a hierarchy of worth that he no longer falls under the protections and values we afford to “human”. And furthermore, he is of a group that can only be effectively dealt with through extermination.

Personally, I don’t think this is a useful philosophical concept. It’s very central to the philosophies that Charlie Kirk sought to popularize: the idea that some people, through their worldview and lifestyle have forfeited any minimum universal protections we afford to humans, and instead should be eradicated. Obviously, his criteria of human worth was more or less an inverse of yours, but personally I’d reject his overall framework.

I’m really sure whether I truly disagree with it. But I definitely believe that the framework itself inherently benefits the fascist project far, far more than it could benefit a socialist project.

I definitely don’t encourage you to mourn him. But I would encourage you to ask whether you really think there’s utility in agreeing with him at all on the principle that humans can be vermin.

They learned their lesson the hard way. We might too.

Can you link to the source article?

Special crayons?

I really don’t think the next Democratic president will be a Zionist.

It’s like abortion and guns. There used to be pro-gun Democrats and anti abortion Democrats, but culture changed and those are no longer positions you can hold off you want to get elected to any position.

In 2028, defending Palestinian genocide is going to be as electorally viable as saying abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare”.

Perhaps I was too poetic: that was my point.

You can’t point to the IDF and say, ‘Hey! Look! See how they’re doing the same shit Nazis did??’ if people aren’t well informed about all the shit that Nazis did.

Yes, I understand that. Which is why it would be a mistake to forget it.

It’s not coincidental that the Holocaust is our most useful case study in understanding and explaining Israel’s crimes against Palestinians. If you want to oppose genocide, it is a mistake to try to do so by “forgetting” about a genocide.

Remembering previous genocides is an important part of preventing/halting genocides.

I think my point stands.

Israel has clearly lost most of the Democratic voter base. They’re losing conservatives too, but it’s really hard to overstate the importance of losing Democratic support. American Jews are increasingly unwilling to support the Zionist project, and Israel has always depended greatly on international support for everything from financial assistance to providing the actual Jewish bodies who are needed to actually move into settlements and birth more Israeli Jews.

We’re not far from a day when Israel loses access to their US weapons and tech infrastructure. But their economy was never designed to work without American Jews visiting and moving to Israel.

Personally, I’d like to see the international community force the adoption of a democratic one state solution. And I think that’s no less far-fetched than something like a return to the previous status quo.

Yeah, using Downs as an insult isn’t cool.

Respectfully, I think you’re repeating a widespread myth: this is not an immovable situation. Israel’s system of apartheid is actually very cumbersome and expensive, and the country has been very weakened over the last two years. It really isn’t hard for me to see this government collapse in the next three years.

I get where you’re coming from, but slow your roll on “It’s time to forget what happened in 1940-45”.

Understanding history is a vital part of not repeating mistakes.

This article is by Yarden Michaelis and Nir Hassan. I hope folks are watching it for them, because I fear they’re going to be arrested for publishing this. It’s flatly illegal in Israel to publish stories that are “demoralizing to the war effort” regardless of veracity.

And then there’s also right wing harassment and violence. I really applied these journalists for their courage and hope they stay safe.

This is a weird take, because everyone within Israel – both critics and supporters – more or less acknowledges that this is a vindictive ethnic cleansing campaign.

Most Israeli Jews support it because they would like Gaza’s people and infrastructure to be erased. Some oppose it, often because they recognize that the damage to Israel’s standing is a catastrophe. But this claim that it’s a legitimate war with legitimate aims is not something anyone in Israeli society says except to international audiences.

Oof. That’s bleak. Thanks for sharing, though.

It’s particularly crazing that this article asserts a massive rise in antisemitism by citing the Anti-Defamation League.

Recently, the Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. were at record highs. … In Los Angeles County, data from 2022 showed that anti-Jewish hate crimes rose more than 90%, the largest number of such crimes ever recorded in the region.

It then links to an article NBC published about the release of a report by the Anti-Defamation League. It’s kind of crazy, because the ADL has been going through an increasingly public conflict between members of the staff, donors, and former staff over the way that current President of the ADL has been nakedly cooking their numbers to justify crackdowns on Pro-Palestinian activism. Even a lot of mainstream liberal zionists in groups like J Street have been openly complaining that Jonathan Greenblatt is destroying the credibility of the ADL and the usefulness of their published research.

I guess NBC hasn’t been paying attention.

Beverly Hills is full of rich, aggrieved, out-of-touch radical centrists who don’t like the political progressivism of Los Angeles. I think some of the residents are constantly looking for ways to visibly perform their opposition to the politics and culture of the rest of the city.

What’s the opposition look like in Argentina?

In the US, our president is putting to the test how corrupt you can be when you don’t face a credible opposition. As awful as corruption is, getting caught stealing from your citizens doesn’t threaten one’s power unless there’s an appealing political alternative.

Researchers following the adoption of AI predict around 92 million jobs are projected to disappear by 2030, even as roughly 170 million new roles are expected to emerge, McKinsey & Company has found.

What in the fuck does this mean?

Huh. That looks kinda interesting. It’s not a game I’m likely to buy, but I’m fascinated by the design of this. Thumbs up.