functor
11mo ago
The only reason why labour would be pro Israel is because of the incredible ethnic activism by jews. Historically, Australians have had little reason to care about Israel/Palestine while a rich, influential and rabid minority have been aggressively pushing their ethnic agenda. Israel is a lot less popular with the population at large than with politicians who get free trips to the wailing wall. Causing a conflict over an issue where only 21% of Australians support the parties position is not a smart move. Clearly their voters are more pro Palestine than the politicians swayed by the lobby.
functor
11mo ago
Eisenhower probably had a great deal of personal power over them. It has probably declined since then.
functor
11mo ago
The question is if they have given a dementia patient the nuclear codes. Either they have taken the nukes away from the president which means the president isn't actually in charge or a dementia patient is controlling the nukes. Both are bad options.
functor
11mo ago
The marriage of the woke left and military industrial complex is something few of us would have expected. The "Bush lied, people died", crowed demonstrating against the patriot act got turned into war hawks. Palestine is the one exception however it is exceedingly difficult to pin Hamas on Putin-bots. Assange should be a hero of the left who fought against the actual power structure, the surviellence state and the military industrial complex. Instead, the military industrial complex became the guardians of woke on a moral crusade against evil Putin. If the deepstate is running social media, that is considered good as the military industrial complex ensures that the woke values of the rand corporation.
In 2003 the media allowed for some criticism of the war in Iraq. Bagdad Bob was on TV. Today no journalist beside Tucker would ever interview a Russian. Those who don't support Lockhead Martin financed think tanks are equivalent to MAGA voters and transphobes.
Granted this is somewhat similar to what happened to the right during the Bush years. People who were nominally libertarian became supporters of spending trillions of dollars on wars with no real benefit while supporting measures that expanded state power to unprecedented levels. It will be interesting to see if the left has an equivalent realization to Iraq had no WMD.
functor
11mo ago
In the short term absolutely. The average age of ordination is 33 years old which means that for priests below the age of 47 social conservatism is the norm. The boomer liberals will continue to hold the high offices but these really liberal age groups are now well into their 60s. In 20 years the super conservative generations will be pusing 70 while the liberals will be dead. The next two decades are going to be tumultuous within the church.
functor
11mo ago
https://padreperegrino.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/Screen-Shot-2023-11-09-at-08.21.43.png
The Catholic church is going to lurch to the right. Well over 70% of Catholic priests ordained in the US during the past 14 years are conservative or very conservative/orthodox. The leftists priests were ordained in an era in which liberalism was accepted while gay men weren't accepted in society at large. Gay men became catholic priests yet weren't that interested in social conservatism. Few young gay men are using the church as their closet today.
The catholic church has a fair number of converts from protestant churches who want something more conservative. Liberals within the catholic church are more likely to leave and go to a faster moving church. The interesting clash is going to be between cultural catholics who are liberals at heart and converts to catholicism who aren't actually into the whole Jesus thing but watch Nick Fuentes and are purity signally their basedness.
functor
11mo ago
Everyone wants to be special and be more trendy than everyone else. Being truly intellectual or inventing something or being elite at sport is hard. It is easier to follow fashion. Just show how woke you are or buy the latest hype-beast merch to signal how superior you are to the normies. Learning the latest pronouns is easier and lower effort than other ways of showing elite status.
The issue is that the normies catch on and then the trend setters have to move to the next thing. When soccer moms like gay marriage the cool kids have to do trans. When the HR-lady at a saw mill is taking about trans the cool kids have to move on to something else. Eventually the trend goes too far. Big butts are nice on instagram so people get a bigger butt. Eventually the butts get too big so going bigger to beat the normies becomes nonsensical. At that point the cool kids have to find a new trend. Talking about LGBT is not a good way to signal how with it you are these days. Pride was pushed far as a new stripe could be added when the old flag was being used on discount crocks at dollar stores. Eventually there are too many stripes and the flag is no longer useful.
Also young people are struggling with dating. Inceldom is exploding and women are not having an easy time either. The sexual revolution did not benifit the masses. The sexual revolution benefited an elite of men and a handful of deviants. The number of incels and women angry at being pumped and dumped far outstrips the number of trans people and men sleeping with hundreds of women. If an ideology benefits a few but hurts the many its popularity will dwindle.
So most voters don't care and don't have an interest in the issue. Those who do lean pro Palestine and there are few of their voters that are actually pro Israel. No reason to cause conflict over such an issue.
Israel is a great threat to Palestine and the lack of a Palestinian state is a direct threat to the Palestinians. There is no reason except the donors to value Israel higher than Palestine.
Israel is diversifying its support from the US and investing a lot more in lobbying in Europe and other places. They don't want to be dependent on one state. Unfortunately that is having an impact in other parts of the world when more politicians are going on paid trips to Israel and more Israeli lobbying money enters politics.
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