ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
Maybe it was the weather, but that night I found her very alluring.
User ID: 812
You said
Yes, it will quite obviously entirely change the US policies towards the whole of the Middle East, including Israels enemies. If you are in denial about this, I suspect you are in a minority, even among zionists.
That's some strong vocabulary, and does insinuate that by 2032-36, we would have seen the type of policy reversals that I described. That institutional inertia, i.e. the airtight legal architecture and bureaucratic path dependence, is the decisive factor in the US-Israel relationship. And anything short of overturning those thick set of constraints, even by a trifle, is frankly a consolation prize. Realistically, yes, aid packages can be delayed, conditions can be dictated, criticisms can mount, and specific arms transfers can be slowed or scrutinised. Variants of that have already happened in limited ways under Republican Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr.
Re AIPAC, consider that it is a human organisation run by humans with very human judgements that are neither perfect nor 100% rational. Yes, public opinion has turned against Israel and even American Jews by extension.
Yes, they're a fundamentally pro-Israel lobby, and obviously wish to preserve a pro-Israel public consensus for that reason alone. That by itself isn't evidence of anything.
AIPAC is headed by American Jews. They are naturally concerned by the rise of rancid antisemitism both online and IRL that doesn't care to distinguish Netanyahu from IDF/Mossad from Israel from regular Jews. And that could directly impact their immediate livelihoods. In their minds, protecting American Jews is analogous to defending Israel.
To you, this wave of antisemitism may be justified or at least excusable, because this time the Jews have truly earned it by bombing Palestinian babies. But to the group whose ethnic and cultural history is marked by the Holocaust, multiple ethnic cleansings and pogroms, and all around scapegoating, that just brings up very unpleasant memories irrespective of context. So yes, they want "their" candidates to win. But even if they don't, the US-Israel relationship would still be protected by institutional inertia.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
5d ago
Yes, it will quite obviously entirely change the US policies towards the whole of the Middle East, including Israels enemies. If you are in denial about this, I suspect you are in a minority, even among zionists.
If you believe the US-Israel relationship is built on some billion shekels, then sure that's a possibility.
But what about the extensive interoperability created from decades of joint ops? What about the co-developed missile defence systems? Multiple mid-level officials across the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community, as well as key committees (Armed Services and Foreign Affairs) have entire careers, doctrines, and planning assumptions built around the US-Israel relationship, and favour continuity. Multiple laws, MOUs, and bipartisan resolutions across 8 decades have created locked-in commitments. Changing this needs a historically rare sustained coordination across both parties to amend many, many layers of complex legal procedures over a foreign policy issue.
Are you willing to bet AOC can girlboss her way through such overwhelming institutional inertia and rewrite war plans and agreements to overturn 8 decades of sustained policymaking?
Well like any movement, they build their case gradually. See the pro-life movement.
@FtttG 's point is that these movements rarely impact foreign policy, abortion is a domestic matter. But the fact that both BLM and Palestine protests erupted across Europe, Australia and New Zealand clearly shows they were US culture war exports.
Well, never mind then. I don't think it's a claim even they seriously believe in, just like the one-state proponents, because their real audience is domestic (not the Gazans). "Queers for Palestine" is a loyalty test, it is inconsistent but the real currency is status and tribal payoff.
That is why I don't see any "gotchas" working against the Palestine movement for now. The sexual violence and homophobia should've sufficed. But a "gotcha" only works when a non-trivial number of politically neutral or moderately-aligned people are already experiencing private friction with the movement, and the side shooting the "gotcha" carries enough status and optical legitimacy to attract more supporters. Yes, it can still damage the target. Yes, it can expose the contradictions in the coalition. But it won't make the Zionist opposition more attractive. "What is a woman" works because opponents of trans ideology aren't immediately dismissible as unhinged cranks, and it turns beliefs and internal logic directly held by its proponents against them. Zionism is politically homeless in American CW.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
My read is @FtttG was using Instagram as a byword for "reductive, zero nuance, zero context, sheltered takes from privileged people supporting the current thing out of peer pressure". Just like George Floyd 2020 and ACAB. The human mind is drawn to one-note takes with cut and right moral clarity, so naturally they get the most decibels both online and IRL.
"Every problem has an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
In 2026, some flavours of antisemitism are acceptable in common parlance when sufficiently couched in progressive speak about Palestinian suffering ("poor brown babies colonised by white (adjacent) people"). Muslim antisemitism is excusable (if not justified) for the same reasons why anti-whiteness is excusable. White antisemitism, less so, because holocaust and uncle-Adolf. However, it is inconvenient to give too much oxygen calling out these folks (real as they are) when they're attacking Jews, at risk of giving ammo to the pro-Israel narrative.
Though I am surprised that @FtttG hasn't heard of "Rainbow Hamas", since they tend to overlap with this demographic:
you're almost equally likely to encounter a well-meaning young person who's simply upset by gory war footage in her Instagram feed
They also overlap with the noble savage myths in woke academia, which insist that any retrograde practices like slavery and superstitious anti-female, anti-gay violence in indigenous cultures were amplified (if not outright imported) by white colonialists. Modern portrayals of Native Americans (see RDR2 and Yellowstone/its spinoffs) are basically Bay Area woke self-inserts wearing Native aesthetics. Even if they know this isn't true, it's simply not optically feasible to acknowledge, let alone reconcile with progressive priors ("Should I support the browns or the brown gays?"). You don't wanna steelman colonial apologists, because again, it's a decibel contest!
Regardless of if they truly believe it or not, hardcore progressive pro-Palestinians have to pretend the browns they so zealously defend won't go back to oppressing women and uncle-Adolfing all Jews and gays.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
I don't imagine it should be a big deal since Trump is sitting President now. 2020 was a low CW flashpoint for the right, but 2024 was a rebound.
ZeStriderOfDunedain
Ze Strider
6d ago
But MKC is "booing" the politician over the abuse allegations, not because he's an "outgroup" (he mightbe, but that's not what he's arguing). It's not nearly as incendiary as the comment you linked to, and no more incendiary than the Platner threads.
You say this like the institutional apparatus that no single President can overturn is somehow ancillary to "some politicians". It all comes down to Zionist Inc, who are "beyond" supposedly anything?
Pointing to high spending and a few costly policy choices (missile stocks, etc.) does not by itself demonstrate that the relationship is held together by a uniquely captured political class rather than by a thick combination of strategic continuity, bureaucratic path dependence, legal commitments, and mutual military utility. Those layers can absorb a good deal of friction before they actually reverse. The fact that the relationship remains costly for the US does not prove it is irrational from the standpoint of the institutions that maintain it, it only proves that the costs of reversing it are real and that the institutions have so far judged them worth bearing.
And the engine behind this is the strength of the American state apparatus itself.
I repeat, we're talking 8 decades of joint planning, co-developed systems, intelligence sharing protocols, formal MOUs, and career tracks across the Pentagon, State Department, and intelligence community have embedded the relationship into the operating assumptions of the national security bureaucracy. Key committees treat this continuity as the default. Legal and procedural commitments accumulate over time. Once a foreign policy relationship reaches that level of sustained institutionalisation, reversing it would require the entire state apparatus crafting a uniquely exigent response against its own characteristic habit to resist abrupt shifts. That is a much higher bar than generating noise or imposing marginal costs.
You are free to trust AIPAC’s revealed sense of urgency more than the institutional analysis. But urgency is not the same as fragility. A lobby can be highly competent at defending a structure that is still deeply embedded, and still feel the need to spend aggressively when the political weather turns against it.
Zionists, Mossad, the CCP, competent as they are, are still run by humans. They're not the calculating hiveminds you see in Hollywood. IRL conspiracies are messy, imperfect, and boring. Internal churns happen, personalities and egos clash, some of them are rank incompetents who simply knew the right people, and some of them are greedy bastards who just want to add more zeroes to their bank account.
All of these facts sit comfortably together.
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