Pongalh
1d ago
There's a brass tacks, Anglo-libertarian bias to a lot of these responses, which I also share. But to hear Catholic Integralists e.g. speak of vigilance in their statecraft as soul craft agenda, I can see them being as dedicated to policing people's hearts and minds in a way on par with communists.
Pongalh
7d ago
Would you say the black person who says, "I don't want to be assumed to vote Democrat just because I'm black" is more sympathetic to this SCOTUS decision than one who's fine with that assumption?
Pongalh
9d ago
"Agreed. And if critics of Israel would regularly acknowledge this, I would be much less likely to conclude that they have "sinister motives" as you put it."
But when people call out Israel for not sharing our values (in being an ethno-religious state), that's also called Antisemitic. As it stands, I feel like I'm being asked to pick a side in the Shia vs. Sunni dispute. I say the line is being drawn arbitrarily. The whole intra-Middle East dispute spectrum, which includes the Israeli pov, is ALL awful.
Pongalh
9d ago
Yes, just assume that the critics already know these other things and that focusing on Israeli, er, malfeasance has sinister motives. That their not talking about violence and horribleness that afflicts Sub-Saharan Africans etc. must be due to a suspiciously strange obsession with Israel, which is just a random country like Bulgaria or Turkmenistan that is being unfairly singled out.
"Can you explain what this means?"
That they are a longstanding and obvious ally, an outpost of our Western way of life in the Middle East that is fundamentally on a higher moral plane (likewise, that even if you agree, you don't think Israel's problems should be our problems; nope, not good enough, it just MUST be Jew hatred.)
Pongalh
9d ago
When you criticize or condemn Israel for something, do you criticize or condemn other countries that behave similarly or worse?
Do you care about the treatment of the Palestinian Arabs? If so, how do you feel about the treatment of Palestinian Arabs by Arab countries such as Lebanon?
These kinds of whataboutisms chalk up to antisemitism what is really about a lack of cognitive omnipotence. (Or the fact that Americans aren't allegedly joined morally at the hip with the Arab World, but they are with Israel, making criticisms more tempting.)
Pongalh
9d ago
"I'm particularly interested in the answer because I am situated in the category whose existence you appear to deny (no issue with Jews as an ethnicity or religion, large issue with the state of Israel in its current form - not even as a theoretical concept, as I've previously argued they should have just taken some land from the Germans and founded it on the Baltic coast back in 1945 instead)."
That pro-Israel classical liberals can't see this as the same nonsense that conflates the NAACP with all black people is beyond me. My theory: Jewish identity politics for some on the right is the one identity politics to rule them all. Meaning, its correctness is positively correlated with the incorrectness of all the other, admittedly more odious and societally detrimental kinds of identity politics.
"There can be no absence of identity politics, so choose the relatively best one, which also happens to nullify the other, worse ones! Yes, it means being hyperbolic and engaging in disingenuous rhetoric, but that's the price to pay, and it's worth it."
Pongalh
11d ago
Someone on this forum pointed out that the ability to make more people without men and women having sex at all is technologically possible. So don't sweat it!
Pongalh
11d ago
Doesn't research claim women are unhappier than men? That recent UK polling data certainly claimed that, despite women officially doing better than men. AFAIK being unhappier makes you worse off, period. So don't sweat it!
Pongalh
15d ago
Unless you're asking the bottom of society? In other words, the people who become nurses?
Pongalh
16d ago
And they make good money doing this so there's no clear reason they should stop.
Makes you wonder how. Presumably people with "real" jobs and things happening outside of streaming are sending them money?
Malcom Collins actually agrees that the depiction of the child is a bit off, giving the pedo accusers something to latch on to. Strangely adult features on what is supposed to be a child (in which case, robbing it of what is supposed to be attractive to a pedo, come to think of it, defeating the point?).
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