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PaperclipPerfector  3d ago (text post)   14105 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 14, 2026

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Sure, but they demonstrably did a quite a bit to Be'eri.

So did the IDF tank that responded to the ongoing hostage situation by opening fire on the hostages

And Dresden was largely carried out by American forces: no American cities were even modestly impacted by enemy violence during WWII. The total number of civilian casualties in the 48 states during the war is countable on a single hand. Even London with the Blitz wasn't hit anywhere near as hard as Dresden or other German cities.

The antizionists who will be destroying Israel aren't Palestinians but Americans and Europeans. I wasn't saying that Palestinians were going to somehow amass the power to obliterate Tel Aviv in a decade but that the political changes in developed Western countries caused by Israel's campaign in Gaza and the subsequent mess the Middle East has devolved into will ultimately lead to Israel's destruction.

At any rate, the original example I gave was of the Red Army in East Prussia where none of these differences apply. The point is that even a bloodthirsty, vengeful horde led by a brutal tyrant committing the worst atrocities imaginable can still be viewed as the lesser evil when they're up against a genocidaire. "Armed resistance" is far, far short of what Stalin's troops did to the German civilians who fell into their clutches.

Does "the Germans were a decade away from possessing the power to demolish Washington" (roughly true) mean that FDR was the baddie there? I personally don't think so, but YMMV.

Was Stalin "the baddie" in WW2? I personally don't think "the baddie" is a meaningful term; in the vast majority of wars you don't have a choice between the "good guy" and the "bad guy", you have a choice between the "bad guy" and the "worse guy". Stalin and FDR were bad guys (obviously FDR less than Stalin) and Hitler was the worse guy. If Israel is guilty of genocide then it follows that armed resistance is justified; that doesn't make Hamas the "good guy", it makes them the "bad" to Israel's "worse".

I think we're ultimately going to have to agree to disagree here: I think the moral valence of the two parties here is less clear. If pressed, I'd probably weakly lean towards Israel (that Golda Meir quote on loving children doesn't seem completely wrong), but they're hardly blameless victims.

I appreciate the forthright discussion, though.

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