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Culture War Roundup for the week of October 26, 2026

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I mean, is he campaigning on "Israel should not exist"? You can play the game where you replace the outgroup's policy position with what you think they actually believe/what you think will be an inevitable consequence if they get their way/what you think gets listeners to take the threat of it as seriously as you do, but then the correct comparison is not to the mere motte of the reference position ("transing children under any circumstances") but the result of playing exactly the same game with it. Many leftists have in fact already done that very thing, down to the exact substitution you used!

So, how do you figure the number of Americans who are categorically against Israel existing compares to the number of Americans who are categorically against trans children existing (in the classic culture-warry "denying our right to exist" sense)?

I mean, is he campaigning on "Israel should not exist"?

There was essentially no campaigning at all. Kamala Harris chose other issues to use against Trump.

You can play the game where you replace the outgroup's policy position with what you think they actually believe/what you think will be an inevitable consequence if they get their way/what you think gets listeners to take the threat of it as seriously as you do, but then the correct comparison is not to the mere motte of the reference position ("transing children under any circumstances") but the result of playing exactly the same game with it.

I'm not sure I understand your point here. What questions would you ask in a poll to determine if there was genuine, widespread, and long-lasting anti Israel sentiment in the United States to the same extent that there is genuine, widespread, and long-lasting sentiment in the United States against transing of children?

Here's a excerpt from a post from a couple weeks back here:

Coincidentally, the latest Pew Polls show Favorable/Unfavorable for Israel (the state) at 37% favorable and 60% unfavorable. Slightly higher for "the Israeli people" and much lower for "the Israeli Government." So Israel is slightly less popular than "transing kids."

I don't know if this is true, and if it is, I don't know the exact questions that were asked. But it seems to me that if it's true, it's almost certainly not an apples-to-apples comparison.

So, how do you figure the number of Americans who are categorically against Israel existing compares to the number of Americans who are categorically against trans children existing (in the classic culture-warry "denying our right to exist" sense)?

Sorry, I don't understand what you mean by "against trans children existing." Does it mean that no child would be allowed to get sex change surgery/sex-change hormones etc?

You are the one who called the parent poster's comparison "misleading", after he posted a video that drew conclusions about support for El Sayed based on polling for "reduce or eliminate military aid to Israel" and "favorability of AIPAC", and suggested that the more appropriate criterion (to determine who would be willing to vote for him) is "categorically against Israel existing". I don't know the post from "a couple of weeks ago" you are referencing, and maybe in your eyes all the anti-Israel opinions you have seen form one homogeneous blob, but I could only evaluate your post in the context of the one you were directly responding to.

El Sayed seems to be (implicitly or explicitly) campaigning on reducing support for Israel. Per the video, this is a popular position. As I understood you, you were trying to argue that (1) stopping Israel from existing is on the other hand not a popular position and (2) this implies a majority will not vote for him. But for this reasoning to work, you need a significant number of potential voters to believe that supporting him actually amounts to "against Israel existing". You have not proven this, and seemingly not seen the need to prove this. This is highly reminiscent of the leftist strategy to equivocate "remove subsidies for gender transition"/"reduce positive media depictions of transsexualism" with "deny trans people's right to exist".