Rex
2d ago
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The have a very effective political lobby in congress that directly affects the candidates running and laws enacted in the country. Whether that’s Americans lobbying on behalf of Israel or Israel directly lobbying them is irrelevant. I think this should be uncontroversially true but examples abound. This influence appears to supersede regular Americans policy and candidate preferences and directly affects me in myriad ways.
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They clearly have the ability to influence our foreign affairs and relationships. Trump carries plently of blame for this war - but again, it seems plainly obvious to me that Israel is the reason we’ve attacked Iran twice now. There were no shortage of people telling Trump it was a bad idea. The Israeli agenda carried the day.
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Israeli concerns, preferences, and agenda repeatedly is shown to be more important than America and Americans. I don’t know what to make of USS Liberty other than that US military seems more concerned with Israeli outcomes than American lives or money.
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The USA and its citizens are reputationally impaired by #1-3.
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Israeli preferences and concerns are privileged in US media. CBS and Ellison seem to have an explicit agenda on this point. And then you have things like the Free Press and Bari Weiss coming from the other angle with “independent media” and podcasts. I put independent in quotes since I’ve seen reporting that she was bankrolled by the Israeli lobby.
I guess those are the big ones but I imagine I could come up with a few more. Additionally:
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People may say that all this is driven by Americans and American preferences for Israel and therefore israel is not to blame. That’s really irrelevant to me. Maybe that gets around the law. But the outcome is the same. And I don’t put it past Israel to be exploiting every tactic available, legal or otherwise, to have their hand directly on the wheel here.
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Chinese and Beijing do not have this level of direct effect on my day to day life - other than our easily manipulated politicians disrupting things trying to counter the Chinese superpower threat - a threat narrative that I find less than persuasive.
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The threat of global jihad and terrorism seems to have been overblown or contained. Again, the only way this influences me is the additional security theater and tax dollar spent on that over the years. Maybe this issue was comparable back in the bush days since our whole society was oriented around terrorism. But I’m also pretty critical of the whole GWOT these days, but that mania seems to have died down thankfully.
It’s a pretty simple equation really. The US is well equipped to counter other foreign threats and none of these other “enemies” have the keys to our house.
Rex
2d ago
I don’t know what to add to this thread other than to say that when I was much younger, and as recently as 5 years ago, I was always perplexed by anti semitism. I live on east coast so I know some Jews IRL. I was a big fan of Seinfeld, Larry David, Albert Brooks and dozens of other Jewish comedians and entertainers. I thought israel was a pretty badass country.
At some point thought, i guess i just started noticing too many things to ignore. Humans are excellent pattern matchers. Prior to Oct 6, I was already fed up with their behaivor. And I wasn’t singling them out. There’s lots of groups of people that are just so stereotypically antisocial that I’m crucial of.
After October 6 the volume was turned up significantly on their subversive antics. I’ve got zero love or respect for Hamas, but the Jewish and Israeli response to this was outrageous.
Then we get to this Iran Nuclear strikes and this war. Where I am at right now is israel is the single biggest external threat to the USA and my day to day life - bar none. More than china. More than islamists. More than europe. More than Russia.
I can only imagine how many others followed this same evolution. I’m sure there are some good Jewish people that would push back on all of this. And they may have some valid points. But the overwhelming amount of evidence on the other side of the ledger carries the day in my personal opinion. OPs story is just but one example. They are just so darn disproportionate in any response to a real or perceived slight.
Other option: the geo-physical event is coming in the near to medium term and he’s moving to safer territory. At least that’s where my mind went. South America is speculated to ride things out better than North America.
Edit: on a more serious note (not implying the GE is not serious, just less serious), maybe he just realized NZ is a terrible hedge. It seems to me that the commonwealth countries are far more pozzed than the US. It seems hard for me to imagine the government there will be friendly, despite what money can can throw around. As someone else mentioned, if shit hits the fan, they will not let him live the good life while their fake country collapses.
Rex
25d ago
Fascinating. I love a good conspiracy theory. Something about DarwinismTM doesn’t sit right with me. I’m not a young earth creationist, but it does seem there are a lot of big outstanding questions. And it’s presented to every Westerner as a fairy tale story in school.
Why is this? Well it’s obvious. Politics.
Try bringing this up in typical PMC company and see their reaction.
No kidding. It’s my opinion. How would you suggest we quantitatively prove a relative threat?
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