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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 28, 2025

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You know, right now I'm listening to the news on the radio and it's another interview with someone about what is happening in Gaza.

I have two options:

(1) Everyone in the world is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. There is no starvation, no Israeli blockades, and the hard-core Zionists who want an ethnically Jewish state for an ethnically Jewish people are just lined up waiting with bouquets and gift baskets to hand over to the Palestinians once they take control of Gaza.

(2) Maybe, just possibly maybe, the IDF are fudging the truth about what they are doing and the Israeli government is being hands-off in hopes that the problem will solve itself - no need for a Palestinian state when there are no more Palestinians (be that 'encouraged forcefully to emigrate to other countries or dead of famine and disease').

I think Hamas are terrible and should disappear if at all possible. But when people are dying, I don't give a flying fuck about their politics. Even the most obnoxious hair-dyed queer tranny activist, if they were literally starving to death, I'd say "help them" and not "hur-dur, they should have picked the right side in the political fight". Stop people dying of starvation first, worry about rooting out the terrorists second.

What I'm reading on here is awfully like all the commentary about problems in red states, with gleeful gloating about "natural disaster/economic crash serves them right for voting for Trump".

Even the most obnoxious hair-dyed queer tranny activist, if they were literally starving to death, I'd say "help them" and not "hur-dur, they should have picked the right side in the political fight".

You are kinder than many people here.

Both things can be true. Hamas apologists can be lying about the extent of hunger currently and the actual risk of famine, and the IDF can be fudging the truth and the Israeli government might be foot-dragging food aid in hopes that hunger will put more pressure on Hamas and weaken resistance.

I'm skeptical that Israel's plan is literally to have hundreds of thousands of dead bodies littering Gaza as they die of starvation.

You know, right now I'm listening to the news on the radio and it's another interview with someone about what is happening in Gaza.

Is it really such a stretch for people in this community to believe that a collection of NGOs staffed by the usual suspects who are the source of 100% of the information coming out of gaza might bend facts a bit?

Yes, when the people telling me "you know, these are the Usual Suspects" are falling over themselves to lick Israel's boots.

Ignore those photos of starving people, it's all photoshopped by Hamas and their Western stooges!

You know, right now I'm listening to the news on the radio and it's another interview with someone about what is happening in Gaza.

I have two options:

(1) Everyone in the world is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel.

No, everyone who is in your curated source of news is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. Or is dumb as dirt and don't realize they're patsies for same.

But when people are dying, I don't give a flying fuck about their politics.

That's not how war works, or ever has.

No, everyone who is in your curated source of news is a lying liar who loves Hamas and wants to obliterate Israel. Or is dumb as dirt and don't realize they're patsies for same.

Reporters. Doctors. Independent charities. People on the ground. All lying shills for Hamas, while the saintly IDF forces are just misunderstood bunnies.

My news isn't curated, unless by that you mean "someone turns on the radio set to the national broadcaster station at work".

I'll say this for present day Israel, they've really successfully ridden the "any breath of criticism is anti-Semitism, are you a Nazi who wants to Holocaust us all over again?" wagon to get people blindly on their side.

Yes, reporters lie all the time. It's not hard to find doctors who are rather biased also. As do members of independent charities, including about whether they're actually independent.

My news isn't curated, unless by that you mean "someone turns on the radio set to the national broadcaster station at work".

Someone at that national broadcaster is curating it.

That's a lot of words to not specify if you've ever spent even 30 seconds considering the rammifications of a sincere belief in a warrior afterlife paradise.

On a very related note, the NYT just walked back their expose on the dramatic starving kid. Apparently they never bothered to check any of the details, just believed what his mother said at face value. In the new reporting he "suffers from a “muscle disorder” for which he receives specialized nutrition and physical therapy." and has “cerebral palsy, hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder”.

I think Hamas are terrible and should disappear if at all possible.

And yet you believe everything they say, even though they blatantly lie all the time and have for decades. Good grief man, look at the extreme disparity between those two strawmen you constructed up there.

What I'm reading on here is awfully like all the commentary about problems in red states, with gleeful gloating about "natural disaster/economic crash serves them right for voting for Trump".

No, it's not. Military action you deliberately provoked by acting like Dark Eldar is not "bad luck" now matter how much mindkilled Manichaens want to think it is.

In the new reporting he "suffers from a “muscle disorder” for which he receives specialized nutrition and physical therapy." and has “cerebral palsy, hypoxemia, and was born with a serious genetic disorder”.

I wonder if this is related to the Muslim penchant for cousin marriage.

No, I don't believe what Hamas says, because it's not Hamas saying it. We very much have Israeli government sources saying stuff. We also, since I don't live in America, have voices from other parts of the world saying things.