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PaperclipPerfector  8d ago (text post)   23463 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 15, 2026

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The MOU Homesick Blues

Over the last two days, Donald Trump and JD Vance have been selling their embryonic Iran Deal to the American public and to the world. Trump has said, among other things:

  • Hamas is behaving very well these days.
  • Iran should have missiles. Why not?
  • We're going to unfreeze Iran's money. It's their money. Why should we steal their money?
  • If the war kept going there would have been an economic catastrophe. So we had to end it.
  • Some of the guys in the Islamic regime are really nice.
  • If Iran didn't open the Strait of Hormuz our oil reserves would have run out in 4 weeks. We had to make a deal.
  • Netanyahu is crazy. They keep killing innocent civilians. He needs to be more responsible.
  • Without me and America, Israel wouldn't exist.

Directly he states:

“The alternative to this deal was a global recession. There are stupid people who want to see a global recession. They are just stupid people. The Strait of Hormuz would never have been opened."

Along with this banger

“I think [Israel] could do better … I'm not saying they shouldn't protect themselves. I'm saying when two drones are shot into the desert and drop harmlessly, you don't have to knock down buildings in Beirut. They could behave better…”

JD has said:

“If I was in the cabinet of the Israeli government, I might not be attacking the only powerful ally that I have left. 2/3 of the defensive weapons that have protected your homeland have been built by American hands and paid for by American tax dollars. The problem for Israel is not Donald J. Trump, and anybody in Israel who thinks their biggest problem is the President of the United States needs to wake up and smell the reality of the situation that country is in”

"Do I think there are people within Israeli society who would like to turn Iran into Libya, basically a failed state with 90 million people? Probably."

"What is your exact proposal? You’re a country of 9 million people. You can’t just kill your way out of solving every single national security problem that you have."

Israeli ministers have been striking out against the deal

For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn! With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit. All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers of the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration. I told the Prime Minister, even in our private meetings: For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. Enough with the ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don’t win with measured responses and restraint—you need to go berserk. To obliterate. To crush the terror.

The entire first line of Lebanese villages has been destroyed. We are destroying all the houses. The residents will never see them standing before their eyes again.

Now reports are coming in that Israel does not consider itself bound by the MOU, and intends to keep bombing Lebanon without reference to it.

The IRGC has stated today:

“Since Israel’s withdrawal from Lebanon, the complete lifting of the naval blockade, and the withdrawal of American terrorist forces from the Persian Gulf and the region are among the main conditions of the agreement between Iran and the United States. The Strait of Hormuz will remain closed until these conditions are met. All ships are requested, for the sake of their security and safety, not to approach the Strait of Hormuz. Any vessel that defies this directive will be targeted.”

With the United States executive committed to the MOU, and Israel committed to the opposite policy, Yeshiva World News reports:

Israeli officials told Maariv that Trump’s demands are not merely theoretical and that issues concerning Lebanon, Syria, and the Syrian Hermon were raised in recent discussions with Netanyahu, adding that the prime minister made it clear that Israel will not agree to withdrawing from its security positions in the north. A senior Israeli official told Reuters that Israel is carrying out “stubborn negotiations” with the US on maintaining its military presence in southern Lebanon and has no intention of backing down. The officials warned that the messages coming from Washington are no longer limited to difficult discussions. The US is signaling that if Israel continues to insist on its position, it will consider practical measures, ranging from delays in weapons shipments to restrictions on operational assistance, and even more severe steps that could potentially amount to a de facto arms embargo.

So, what now?

How does the USA navigate this problem with its erstwhile ally?

Part of me feels very strongly, the patriotic Toby Keith, regardless of your feelings about US policy or about this administration, that we can't have our president get cucked like that on the world stage. Trump has publicly signed, endorsed, justified, sold the MOU. He's stated clearly that it is necessary to the interests of the United States in maintaining the global economy. If Israel is our ally, our greatest ally, then they can't be allowed to do this to us. They can't insult and undermine the clear foreign policy of the POTUS and be allowed to do so. From the beginning I've said that Israeli forces, inasmuch as they are allied to the USA, should be under the command of an American general, Spartan style. They can't be allowed to go against us and continue to suck off the teat of the American taxpayer.

So plan trusters, antisemities, pro-Palestinians, shitlibs, anyone. Where do we go from here with Israel? What happens next? How can you, as the American President, allow your ally to undermine your own clearly stated foreign policy goals and, in your own opinion, wreck the world economy? At this point in the process what pressure can even be put on Iran?

This feels bad.

What's to be said? The Israelis had a ton of international support after 10/7, but they overplayed their hand and reacted in a way that engendered more antagonism against them then they would have had otherwise. It was very difficult to be pro-Palestinian in the immediate wake of the initial attacks, but turning Gaza into rubble at the expense of tens of thousands of civilian deaths was not seen as a proportionate response. This was especially true after they had to be bargained with to allow the importation of food and medical supplies for the civilian population. If a Democrat had been elected in 2024, we would have continued to see the same perfunctory public support for Israel combined with behind the scenes action to bring the war to a close, which may or may not have been successful. If a normal, competent Republican had been elected, we would have seen public support for Israel and continued weapons commitments, but nothing beyond that. But Bibi got Donald Trump, the one president who could be convinced to do anything provided he was personally impressed by the last person who talked to him, and the two men already had a good relationship.

Then you add the fact that he's always believed that the US should take military action in Iran, and that he deliberately chose advisors who wouldn't prevent him from doing what he wanted. The problem is that he didn't have the geopolitical wisdom to understand that prior presidents hadn't taken action because they were weak men, but because it wasn't clear that such a war could be won, at least without the kind of commitment that they were willing to make. When Trump loses the war, he's forced to make commitments to Iran that Israel doesn't like, and now Bibi has a decision to make. He managed to alienate the last person willing to give Israel the benefit of the doubt, and he has no good options at this point. It's not like Democrats are going to be more pro-Israel after the midterms. This is the legacy of Netanyahu, the complete obliteration of Israel's international standing.

The Israelis had a ton of international support after 10/7,

But they didn't. There were pro-palestine protests two weeks after 10/7, before Israel had even started to really move on Gaza. I think that was actually the wake up call for Israel, the reason they are acting like they are, they realized that europe is rapidly islamizing and they need to go now.

This is a recurring argument I see across the political spectrum; because your most intense opponents continue to do/say outlandish things there's no sense in attempting to moderate in an appeal to public opinion and so you should just do whatever you want cause you have no control over how you're perceived. This seems to me a pretty obviously self serving attempt by extremists to rationalize extreme courses of action. You don't win when the entrenched opposition sits down and shuts up and admits you were right, you win when the general public stops finding their criticisms of you persuasive.

If you look at this YouGov tracker there was a real spike in public support for Israel after 10/7 that declined pretty rapidly as the Gaza situation got worse and worse. I don't think the American Public found the arguments of campus radicals very persuasive on 10/14, but over time Israeli actions alienated the public.

You can see this basically everywhere in politics. Biden and Trump both came in with positive approval ratings! Biden left with one of the most negative approval ratings in history, and Trump is on track to possibly do even worse.

The deepest haters are always going to hate you no matter how cool or winning you are, but most people are not your deepest haters. The numbers can differ a bit on topic but generally in our polarized society there's essentially 30% who will always hate you, 30% who will always love you, and 40% who can be persuaded in some form/don't really care that heavily to begin with. (Like swing voters/nonvoters).

The reason why leaders like Biden and Trump keep dropping in approval after isn't because citizens are being haters, it's because the leaders are failing the standards they hold. They all come in with positive expectations, and if you can't match that then you get judged appropriately. When Trump promises an end to war, less focus on culture war topics and a greater focus on consumer economics and lower prices and we get more war + endless culture war + higher prices, he failed and of course his approval goes down. They aren't just the haters, they're people who were really willing to give him a chance and he failed them.

Same thing here. Israel had a lot of support behind them! Yes there was that 30% of haters or such who wouldn't care no matter what, but the US population was largely sympathetic and behind them. But Israel took that as carte blanche to do whatever they wanted, and they starved the Gazan population and they expanded the settlements and they spoke openly of their genocidal plans. Of course people turned against Israel! They're not all the haters, they are earnestly reacting to Israel's actions.

Part of it is because they're all drinking their own Kool aid. They surround themselves with sycophants and yes men and the other 30% suckup cultists and don't realize that the support of the 40 really is conditional.

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