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Notes -
Can someone give me an analysis on who Abdul El-Sayed actually is as a person? He gave a weird interview where he said trans is a made up issue because your daughter has an I-Phone in her pocket so she will see dicks all the time anyway.
The first impression is he’s some sort of Muslim Brotherhood type. My second impression is pegging him as similar to brown friends I know whose parents do something science (medicine/engineering), are fairly wealthy, follow zero Muslim codes, hate white girls but probably slept with a few dozen in their twenties. All of these types are/can be fully assimilated into America. Half seem like they really do assimilate. The other half to me seem like they have a chip remaining on their shoulder that their people couldn’t build America.
My guess is he’s that type that still has a big chip on his shoulder to fully white people. So thinking things like sexualizing normies is perfectly fine for him in the same way a westerner might go to Thailand for a holiday and not view Thai’s as his people.
I'm sympathetic to Jonah Goldberg's argument in this podcast, that is, that El-Sayed wants the Democrats to be a straightforward anti-Israel party.
I don't think El-Sayed supports the full Muslim Brotherhood agenda. The social democrat positions that he holds are honest. He is not, I think, secretly an MB supporter in the sense of everything they stand for. But he is, I think, basically a middle-class western Muslim who attributes a disproportionate level of importance of Israel, and it has become organising for his thoughts in a way that it is not for other people.
To be honest I don’t think you can be Muslim and a Democrat in the same way that you can’t be Catholic and a Democrat. You can be a skinsuit globally homogenous Democrat who by virtue of ancestry are Muslim but follow Muslim beliefs. An ethnic Muslim but not a religious Muslim.
Trans is one example where a real Muslim’s response could be nothing less than trans mental people have a mental illness and should be locked up. And there really is no way to sugar coat that while maintaining spiritual connection to god.
I can’t see “anti-Israel” being a core belief that drives all of your beliefs but a symptom of a broader world view. For a typical progressive I think their mental model flows primarily thru an “oppressor-oppressed” framework which makes a progressive good person because they fight for the weak. Israel therefore is the bad side of this framework because they are rich.
The best mental model I can come up with Sayed is to model him on wealthy brown friends who are non-religious but tend dislike Israel for a vague tribal connection feeling similar to how an American with an Irish name supports Ireland. Basically the same reason I hate a few sports teams.
Agreed. Male homosexuality is a bigger sticking point than trans - all three Abrahamic religions unequivocally prohibit it, and to be a leftist in good standing requires you to take Pride in it.
If the Abrahamic God, heaven, and hell exist, then there are no unrepentant Sodomites in heaven, and this is a hatefact by conventional left-wing standards. Tim Farron was forced out as leader of the UK Liberal Democrats over this point - he was unwilling to say that male homosexuality is not a sin, and the party was not willing to be led by someone who believed that it was.
I think "Israel is the permanent hereditary enemy of my tribe" can sensibly be a core belief if Palestinians, or Arabs or Muslims more generally, are your tribe.
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