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Culture War Roundup for the week of August 4, 2025

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Discrimination against whites is a hard sell when the executives & the board are white[*]. Moreover, 'Trump voting white' isn't a protected category.

The China analogy doesn't work because China is naturally positioned as a competing power while Israel is strategically, culturally and spiritually positioned to be collaborative power.

Broadly, Jews are found in 2 places: US and Israel. When America flourishes, Jews flourish. That's to Israel's benefit. Strategically, Israel's enemies are Islamist. So, they want to ally with an anti-Islamist power : USA. Israel is a liberal & open democracy. It wants to ally with a liberal and open democracy : USA.

Israel wrecks the relationship with middle eastern countries

America wrecked its relationship with the middle east all by itself. Israel fought the Suez Crisis on US & UK's behalf. Saddam Hussein's overthrow was classic American overreach. Intervention in Afghanistan was first a cold war exercise, and later a response to 9/11. Syrian efforts were a proxy war against Russia. Iran-US relationships soured because the Shah was overthrown and Americans were taken hostage. Jordan and Israel actually have pretty decent relations. The Saudi, UAE and Israel relations have been on a consistent up and up. Qatar always plays all sides, Israel or no Israel.

So, can you name a country who's US-country relationships got wrecked by Israel ?

they were all about owning the libs by taking out DEI efforts specifically hurting Chinese people.

The analogy doesn't work because American Jews are 'the libs'. The majority of American Jews live in NY and California. American Jews (pre Oct 23) overwhelmingly voted for deep-blue candidates in deep-blue cities. They subscribed to generally 'blue' opinions such as : 'Netanyahu bad', '2 state solution good' and 'Trump bad'.

There is healthy skepticism towards Israel from within the Jewish community itself. America's temporary sycophancy towards Israel has more to do with recently empowered fundamentalist Christians signalling to their voter-base during Trump2, than a deeply rooted allegiance to Israel.


[*] The discussion of how specific whites are being discriminated against is longer conversation about the sub-racial dynamics among whites people. I think white groups (rich and poor) both benefit from not opening this pandoras box.

Discrimination against whites is a hard sell when the executives & the board are white

Why? They're old, and got into their position before the discrimination regime was implemented. Is there a rule somewhere that we have to wait 2 generations for discrimination to run it's course, before we're allowed to call it discrimination?

Yes, because if the judges don't bellyfeel it, they won't make a useful ruling. Yes, the conservatives on the Supreme Court believe as an intellectual matter that anti-discrimination rules cut both ways and disallow discrimination against whites. But in their gut they know it's all about helping blacks and think that's the right thing, so they make sure to leave a hole any time they make a ruling against discriminating against other races. When it comes to Jews, though, their belly is firmly in line with anti-discrimination.

Moreover, 'Trump voting white' isn't a protected category.

Tell that to the FEMA employee that told workers to skip Trump-voting houses in the aftermath of Hurricane Milton. Anti-White discrimination may be a hard sell, but it's not impossible.

Israel is a liberal & open democracy.

Ehhhhhhhh...it's definitely both of those things when compared to its regional neighbors, but in any sort of absolute ranking it has all sorts of problems; a crazy runaway judiciary, excessive military entanglement in politics, endemic public corruption, etc.

Israel fought the Suez Crisis on US & UK's behalf.

UK and France. The US told them quite firmly to stop, which they did. The US was not particularly pro Israel until Lyndon Johnson, who let himself get bossed around by his very pro-Israel foreign policy guys.

Israel didn't directly instigate Iraq 2 of course, but many of the higher ups in the executive branch who were pushing for an invasion of Iraq were ardent Zionists (see the Office of Special Plans, which also involved an espionage scandal involving an analyst passing information to Israel through AIPAC).

The US was not particularly pro Israel until Lyndon Johnson, who let himself get bossed around by his very pro-Israel foreign policy guys.

Also because Israel's leading enemies (at that point they were Egypt and Syria) had recently declared for the Soviet side in the Cold War. The reason why the US Deep State allowed the Israeli lobby in in the first place was mostly Cold War politics.

Israel didn't directly instigate Iraq 2 of course,

A bit of an understatement: the Israelis advocated against it, on the grounds that if any regime changing was to happen, it should prioritize Iran.

The American response was allegedly that Iran would be next. Which actually makes a fair bit of sense if you are planning to take down both, since it's easier to drive from Kuwait and Saudi into Iraq than do a cross-Hormuz amphibious invasion, but no one exactly remembers them of being good planners.

The American response was allegedly that Iran would be next.

Assuming that the purpose of a system is what it does, and liberally applying Occan's and Hanlon's razors, the best explanation of the Bush administration's Iraq war policy was that the US Deep State and Republican-aligned elites wanted to invade Iraq in order to replace Saddam with a government that would allow the US to attack Iran from Iraqi territory, and that 9-11 provided political cover. They obviously failed, but they could have succeeded if 9-11 hadn't made it politically unacceptable to include Al-Quaeda in an anti-Iranian coalition.

I'd add 'and Democrat-aligned elites' to that as well. As the quip went, they were for it before they were against it, and Saddam was a long-running sore that Clinton bombed as well. Had he not been taken out, we'd probably be debating how incompetent / missed opportunities the US had to pre-empt the basis for the Iranian nuclear program, and Saddam's inevitable response to that becoming public knowledge.

Sounds like quibbling over priorities. They also said taking out Saddam would aid in regime-changing Iran.

Also, was what you're mentioning said in public, or in private? Because if it was the latter, you can't blame the public for not knowing what was deliberately kept from them.

Sounds like quibbling over priorities. They also said taking out Saddam would aid in regime-changing Iran.

'Don't do [course of action] unless you're going to do it the right way' may be dismissed as quibbling over priorities, but it is still a caution against, and are not even indirectly instigating the [course of action] either.

On a material-level, if you are going to invade both countries as the neocons intended, then your second sentence is objectively true. It would be far easier for the US to launch from Kuwait and Saudi Arabia into Iraq than into Iran (you could drive), and then from Iraq into Iran (you could drive), than to launch an amphibious invasion of Iran.

Also, was what you're mentioning said in public, or in private? Because if it was the latter, you can't blame the public for not knowing what was deliberately kept from them.

When the result of private discussions are later publicized, and have been public for nearly two decades now, it is a distinction without a difference. Someone can claim the later public revelations were lies, or self-serving after-the-fact deflections, but absent that we can absolutely blame people for not knowing a historical record exists.

'Don't do [course of action] unless you're going to do it the right way

When he says "if you take out Saddam, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region... and I think that people sitting right next door, young people, and many others, will say 'the times of such regimes, such despots, is gone'...", to you it sounds like "don't invade Iraq, and if you're going to do it, hit Iran first (or at least do both)"?

When the result of private discussions are later publicized, and have been public for nearly two decades now, it is a distinction without a difference.

If there was no difference, why did they not discuss it in public to begin with?

but absent that we can absolutely blame people for not knowing a historical record exists.

That's like blaming people for being familiar with front page headline news, but not the correction notice on page 19, stuck between obituaries and classifieds.

When he says "if you take out Saddam, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region... and I think that people sitting right next door, young people, and many others, will say 'the times of such regimes, such despots, is gone'...", to you it sounds like "don't invade Iraq, and if you're going to do it, hit Iran first (or at least do both)"?

Do you live in a world where politicians say the same things in public as in private, particularly if they have reason to believe a party is already committed to a course of action?

Even if you do, would you consider Netanyahu's remarks and advocacy evidence of instigating?

If there was no difference, why did they not discuss it in public to begin with?

Are you asking why private diplomatic conversations are not immediately publicized? Simple- because private conversations occur, and keep occurring, on the premise of confidentiality.

Hence why the revelations came out as the tail end of the Bush administration via US diplomats writing end-of-term tell-alls, and not from the Israeli side of the relationship.

That's like blaming people for being familiar with front page headline news, but not the correction notice on page 19, stuck between obituaries and classifieds.

I would absolutely blame people for taking strong positions solely off of front page headline news lines at the time. It is a terrible practice, both because emergent news is often wrong and because media also lies with enough regularity that you should regularly be looking for correction notices.

I would also blame people who for ignoring rather relevant and available information sources on their claimed subjects of interest. People with strong interests or claims on how the US government works can be expected to be familiar with notable examples of the genre of government tell-alls of departing / former government staffers, particularly for exceptionally analyzed / researched historical examples like the Bush administration's Iraq War processes.

the Israelis advocated against it

Netanyahu advocated for it and he's by far the longest serving and most influential modern Israeli PM. All of the people who advocated against it are either politically irrelevant or dead.

EDIT: accidentally a word