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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   26116 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 11, 2025

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So there's generally a lot of questions about why R politicians such as Ted Cruz are so pro Israel.

There are a lot of theories about AIPAC, money, and Evangelical beliefs about judgement day.

But from what I've seen the truth is that it's about staff. More specifically, lawyers.

To start off with a bit of preamble, it's more common to get screwed in the legal system than a lot of people think.

While the ideals of the practice of law talk about the zealous representation of clients, in reality lawyers have their own careers to worry about. Judges hold grudges. Other potential clients hold grudges.

Most of the time things work out because in a typical criminal or civil dispute the judge is genuinely disinterested. There are a lot of business lawsuits, there are a lot of criminal prosecutions. The one before them isn't special.

However there are a lot of legal issues around political campaigns and judges definitely have opinions about which party they'd like to see win.

Election law is a legal specialization. There are also relatively few clients since lawyers typically only work for either the Rs or Ds.

So for a local lawyer going against party brass in court because their client is getting screwed in the nomination is a potentially career limiting move. They may get cut off from representing other candidates in the future.

There's a similar problem with judges. In theory if a judge is being biased the lawyer should call him out and aggressively go after him in the appeals court. But if the lawyer expects to have twenty more cases before that judge, is it really a good idea to do that? Letting your client get screwed is just so much easier.

In theory the bar association should step in when something like that happens, but they really don't. They tend to defend their own, especially if the client who got screwed is someone they don't like.

Remember it was easier to throw Michael Avenatti in prison than to disbar him.

So where do the pro-Israel Jewish organizations come in?

Simple, they know a lot of lawyers with experience on election issues. They can fly someone in, pair them with local counsel, aggressively defend their client, then fly home and go back to their normal practice.

They are unconcerned with local patronage networks or pissing off local judges, within reason.

It's just incredibly beneficial to Republican politicians to stay friendly with the pro-Israel Jews.

It's a multi-factorial issue.

There's a bunch of pro-Israel political donors who'll spend lavishly on Israel supporters/threaten attack ads against perceived hostile politicians. Republicans grovel for the Adelson seal of approval. Media power. Lawyers may well be part of it too.

But these politicians like Cruz also say 'god commands us to support Israel'. Why disbelieve them? Furthermore the US is a special outlier in support for Israel, much more than say Britain or Australia or Canada. The US also has a large evangelical contingent while lawyers are more international. Presumably it's not just about lawyers.

But these politicians like Cruz also say 'god commands us to support Israel'. Why disbelieve them?

People are frequently dishonest about their motivations. Often they don't even understand them.

You'll never hear a politician say "I don't really care enough about X to have an opinion, but I think position Y is what voters want." People don't want that kind of honesty.

"god commands us to support Israel" is rhetorically useful because it ends the conversation.

But is that really a popular message? Does Cruz think it makes him look good? It might make him look good to evangelicals who he might want to rely on or court favour with but America as a whole? Surely it's a small minority who believe 'we should support Israel for theological reasons'. That just opens up all kinds of problems for Cruz such as 'why should you be trusted with the nuclear codes if your foreign policy views are so dependant on religion', it makes most sense if he's just being honest.

This is way too much words and speculation. The actual reasons are quite simple: Muslim Arabs did 9/11; Muslim Arabs would do 10k 9/11s if they were capable of doing so, they say so themselves; Muslim Arabs also hate Israel and sometimes divert their hate in that direction; Muslim Arabs also disrupt other important interests to normal people like international boating trade; Muslim Arabs that have been allowed into America or borne to such people statistically disfavor the Republican party.

There is no reason for a Republican to be in favor of any Muslim Arab until you get to the "they hate Jews" dregs level. Instead, what the actual question is why would anyone support Palestine ever. They are losers who lose, and they lose while intentionally killing civilians. It is hard to think of a valid reason to support not just Hamas, but ANY Palestinian. They elected Hamas after all. Hamas continues to sustain support at levels unheard of in the US for a political party.

So it is all odd, probably nonsensical, arguments to convince anyone on the American right that Palestinians aren't bad. I certainly think that there is good evidence that they are deserving of a nuke to the face and subsequent scattering if not deserving in a full elimination.

I think you'll enjoy John Derbyshire's take: https://www.nationalreview.com/2002/05/why-dont-i-care-about-palestinians-john-derbyshire/

Little has changed in 2 decades

GWB, is that you?

So Muslim Arabs are terrorists, disrupt international shipping with rockets, and vote Democrat?

9/11 was masterminded by a rogue Saudi. The vast majority of Arab Muslims do not make it their life's work to blow up anyone. Of those that do, most will join regional projects like Daesh and murder their local neighbors (who are often also Muslim), not far-away Americans.

There are causal arrows in either direction for "the US supports Israel" and "Muslim Arabs tend to hate the US". Sure, in an alternate world where Israel had been founded in the Mojave instead, Muslims would still not be thrilled about the US support for various repressive regimes starting with the Shah, but I think 90% of the butthurt is about Israel (which is seen as a US colony).

Hamas needs to be wiped of the Earth in the same way that the NSDAP was. However, the Allies got rid of the Nazis (at least as a relevant political force, many adjusted well to the post-war environment) without genociding Germany. Starving Gazan kids in the hope that sooner or later Hamas will also starve seems a terrible way to accomplish that goal.

I think that apart from minor dogmatic differences, American Muslims and Evangelicals have a lot in common. The idea that sex should only happen between husband and wife, with implications for birth control, LGBT rights, abortion. I would expect that Islam would have a generally similar attitude towards germ-line gene edits in humans, embryo selection, MAID. Neither seem to care a lot about key concerns of secular Westerners such as animal welfare, climate change or AI x-risk.

I think one factor everyone is forgetting is that it didn’t actually cost much to be pro-Israel for the last 20 years. It didn’t cost much to be pro-Palastine either. Go to AIPAC conference once a year “blah blah unbreakable commitment to the continued existence of the state of Israel blah blah” pass Go, collect 2 million dollars in PAC money. Or alternatively, “blah blah illegal apartheid regime, boycotts and sanctions” all the college students clap, your leftist card is now good for another three years even though 80 percent of your votes are solely for the benefit of Raytheon. There had only been minimal violence since the end of the Second Intifada, and it looked like things would only get better in the future.

Now, supporting one or the other carries significant costs, and someone is going to hate you whomever you pick. Each choice is also going to permanently associate you with it’s own set of gory videos showing various unsympathetic behaviors by your guys. Politicians have spent the last two years trying to figure out the new reality and how to best exploit it for votes and campaign contributions. In conclusion, blah blah rational argument, blah blah updating my Bayesian priors blah blah Aella HBD whatever give me updoots.

But the Republican legal movement is overwhelmingly Catholic, which is not by the standards of US conservatives particularly Zionist.

People on the Republican judge track don't get involved with small legal troubles of senate nominations or congressional campaigns. The disputes are too small and they don't want to make enemies in the party.

Getting on the bad side of a Republican patronage network (https://scholars-stage.org/patronage-vs-constituent-parties-or-why-republican-party-leaders-matter-more-than-democratic-ones/) can tank any future nomination.

edit:

Also I have the sense that it's more acceptable for a lawyer at a prestigious largely Jewish firm to do pro bono work for a pro Israel Republican than it would be for a lawyer at a prestigious non Jewish firm to help a pro life republican.

Do you have any evidence or specific examples? Even anecdotes? Or is this merely idle speculation?

Partially speculation, partially extrapolation from what I've seen in Canada.

Really what I've seen is more organic than how I've presented it... Pro-Israel Jews make it a point to get their kids to volunteer on campaigns or get summer jobs in politics. Some of people they meet end up as future candidates. If they become lawyers then they end up getting phone calls to help out because people know them.

I was trying to give a framework for understanding influence and glossing over some of the details.

How could you extrapolate from what you've seen (As a lawyer? As a politician? Have you ever worked in politics? Have you ever been to a legal society meeting?) to a country with a different legal and political culture? Why not just ask these politicians why they support what they do, they will probably just tell you. You can glean from interviews that he sees Israel as a strong military ally against a number of nearby states that the USA is hostile towards. Why is that less convincing to you than a conspiracy theory?

Why is that less convincing to you than a conspiracy theory?

I don't think it's fair to call it a conspiracy theory.

I see it as more of an important life lesson. If you want people to care about what you want you'd better make yourself useful first.

Sure, there's a lot more to it. But I don't think anyone really wants to hear me recount USSR geopolitical strategies in the Middle East lead to the Palestinian activist networks in the west.

But I don't think anyone really wants to hear me recount USSR geopolitical strategies in the Middle East lead to the Palestinian activist networks in the west.

The thought of starting a top level comment with the question "where did all these pro-Palestine activists come from anyway?" did enternmy head more than once, as their level of organization is obviously inorganic to me (and somewhat scary in it's efficiency).

So yeah, I think I kinda do want to hear you recount it, as it would provide something in the way of an explanation.

  1. WWII mortally wounds the British and French Empires, meaning their holdings all over the world are now up for grabs.
  2. World War Two was (among many other things) an extremely violent six year long PowerPoint presentation about how controlling major oil fields is really really important.
  3. For this reason both the US and USSR are very interested in getting friendly proxy nations in the Middle East.
  4. For various cultural and political reasons, the US ends up backing the new state of Israel and the old British and French backed Arab monarchies. The USSR ends up backing the rising tide of Arab socialist movements. This was not set in stone, and there are plausible alternate scenarios that end up with the USSR backing Israel. It just didn’t shake out that way.
  5. Now that everyone has chosen their fighters, a forty year war of proxy battles ensues to control the Middle East. For the USSR, that includes eventually knocking out Israel.
  6. The USSR and various Arab states begin arming and training nascent Palestinian paramilitary groups as part of this strategy. Most of these groups like the PLO are pretty secular and vaguely Marxist even while they pursue goals that are basically ethnic nationalist with religious characteristics. If you want a western example for reference, look at the Provisional IRA.
  7. If you are an American Soviet fifth columnist (read: “University Professor”) the hip thing to do is to ardently support these Soviet-backed paramilitary groups and denounce Israel.
  8. The Soviet Union and the Islamic world suffer a messy break up over Afghanistan, immediately followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union. Without the Soviet backing to keep them nominally on the socialist track, the Palestinian militant groups increasingly drift in an Islamic and nationalist direction.
  9. University professors are mentally stuck in 1968 and they don’t receive the memo about anything that happened in paragraph 8.
  10. In the 2000s, George Bush’s adventures in the Middle East reawaken and inflame the dormant Islamist sympathies of the University professor set. This passes it on to a new generation and sets it in stone as a foundational left wing tenet.
  11. Fast forward to modern times and now leftists endlessly simp for various Islamic militant groups even though it really doesn’t make sense anymore given that these groups are all reactionary religious organizations with a heavy overtone of ethnic nationalism and ethnic supremacy.

I don't know if I buy that it's just "simping". Organic trends come and go, they aren't usually capable of maintaining world-spanning activist infrastructure for decades on end.

Well the Arab world maintains its own massive charity-lobbying-propaganda industrial complex that works to keep that alive, but I think the historical outline I have is the reason that sympathy is around to exploit.

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