In an interesting manifestation of the horseshoe theory, Jewish Zionists and the far right agree that the ongoing campus protests are expressions of a growing anti-Jewish trend in the US.
I don't really agree that that is horseshoe theory. The other end from the far right is the far left, which would definitely not agree that it's anti Jewish. Zionists are far from leftists, zionists and leftists have not seen eye to eye in... longer than I've been tracking politics. Zionists have always been close to conservatives in many respects.
haroldbkny
1d ago
I'm glad you posted this, because I wanted to rant about this, since it's the most irritating feminist trend I've seen since 2017ish, but I didn't know how to phrase any of it in a way that would be "leaving the rest of the internet at the door".
I do think that, like other commenters have called out, the trend is childish and virtue signaling, and no one is being sincere. I think takes like this:
If a bear attacks you, people will believe you, if a man attacks you, people will not believe you.
do more to show exactly what feminists think about men, as opposed to how women are actually victimized by men in society.
What is the difference between a bear and a man? Maybe that men are people and bears are not? Men have other people who love them, and trust them, and care about them. Is that perhaps the reason why people may give men the benefit of the doubt in the case of an ambiguous he-said-she-said situation, but not give such benefit to a bear? Do men not deserve such a benefit over bears, because, you know, they're actual people and bears are not?
haroldbkny
1hr ago
Billionaire Jewish donors and powerful Jews in the media are working overtime to pull the most powerful levers possible to put out Israeli propaganda
I ask this out of curiosity: what Israeli propaganda are you referring to? I feel like I only ever see the following messaging these days:
- people and organizations denouncing Israel
- people and organizations staying as quiet as they can
- lone jewish people writing op-eds about how scared they are and how they think everyone is out to get them and they think everyone is antisemitic
I think maybe I only ever saw one billboard that was funded by a pro Israel organization that was specifically calling out Claudine Gay.
I could believe that well-situated individuals or organizations are using more shadowy means to put pro-Israeli pressure specifically on large organizations, but I don't really feel like I've seen much in the way of propaganda that's pro-Israel. I'm thinking of propaganda as big funded things like ads, flyers, commercials, demonstrations, people giving away free stuff, benefit concerts and generally things that are designed to change the mindsets of average individuals. Mostly things seem either neutral or anti-Israel, and certainly the popular mindset seems to be moving slowly towards anti-Israel, so I'm wondering what sort of things you're referring to.
Since then, the behavior of Israel, Zionists, and frankly Jews in general has made me hate Israel just as much as I hate Iran or Saudi Arabia
Once again, I am genuinely curious about what behavior you're referring to. This might be totally obvious to everyone, and I might just be the odd-man out simply because I don't pay attention to the news very much, but I want to know what things have you seen that have changed your mind. I have seen Jewish people and Zionists I know be very defensive and quick to call things antisemitic, but that's no different now than it was before, just ramped up a bit.
haroldbkny
5d ago
The Kibbutzim are communes
That's definitely true. I don't know much about past Zionism, I guess, mostly just about the last 15 years, maybe.
haroldbkny
19d ago
I had a fairly traumatic life event happen recently. It's made me think about whether I'm really leading the life I want to. I fill my life with lots of fun and educational media, and I value learning new skills a lot. I play several instruments and have several other hobbies, and I love getting better at these things. I'm a very successful software engineer at a big big tech company, building very niche systems, striving for operational efficiency and delivery of small new features.
But it almost feels like I'm filling my life with valueless hobbies, and wasting my time. These fill my time and keep me busy and somewhat happy, but they don't really make the world a better place or bring me closer to the people I love.
I wonder if I should be doing something greater with my life, to try to make the world actively better, instead of just existing in it. There must be something I can do. I feel like I worked so hard to become an engineer in big tech, and my skill set includes management skills, design and coding skills, and business skills. I'd like to leverage those skills in some way. How did one leverage skills such as these to try to do something that is more impactful? The sheer magnitude of the question paralyzes me, and I never end up making progress on it
These sort of traumatic life examination-prompting events happen every few years, and I usually just eventually go back to existing and doing what I'm doing. I don't know if that is if either me getting over the trauma which allows me to go back to normal, or if it is me chickening out from a greater calling, choosing a selfish comfortable and non impactful life over trying to actually make the world better. I have had also many traumatic (in a different way) events in the past that have ended up making me scared about my ability to maintain my life as is, so striking out on something new (especially if I don't even know what it is) is extra terrifying to me.
haroldbkny
1d ago
It’s impossible to outrun a bear should it decide it wants to hurt you.
That's why we are not calling it by its secret name, Arth, we'd all be attacked before we could finish typing our post on the Mott----
haroldbkny
1d ago
Was I the only person on the planet that went with "huh, that's a cool optical illusion"?
Was there another way to view it besides a cool optical illusion? Was there some crazy blue/gold dress controversy that I wasn't aware of?
haroldbkny
1d ago
That's interesting, I was thinking of this slightly differently. Everyone talks about the hippie protests of the 60s as this big purposeful, meaningful thing that changed American culture for the better and were protesting a meaningless war, etc. This whole Columbia thing has gotten me to reconsider how much the hippie protests actually had a point from the get-go. Did they also start out, and maybe even stay, as a bunch of petulant teens complaining without having much of an agenda, or list of demands, or purpose? Did we ascribe the meaning and purpose to these protests after the fact, at least in some cases?
I agree with you but I also want to play devil's advocate a little bit. Do you, and I, and others actually feel like it'd be better to have a society that values the strong over the weak? It's not hard to imagine how that sort of society could be dystopian, too.
And is it a binary choice, or is there a middle, too, where we can have the strong and weak valued equally, or strong is valued over weak, but not so much that we get the effects we're seeing in society today? If I had to choose a society one way vs the other, I'm not sure which I'd choose.
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