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Goodguy  3d ago (text post)   Edited 3d ago   9755 thread views

Midterms Megathread

Cause otherwise midterms discussion will be scattered around a bunch of separate Culture War thread posts. And it's nice to have more off-the-cuff rapid reactions in a dedicated megathread.

The first thing I've noticed so far: if the exit polls are correct, Americans are very pessimistic about AI.

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I wonder if, long term, the U.S. just leaves Iran and says to hell with it. Iran can charge tolls if they want. Europe and China will pay the bill. And then things are sort of forgotten. Maybe every 5 years Israel mows the grass enough so Iran doesn't get a nuke. The world has plenty of oil and the Hormuz will becoming irrelevant as countries route around the damage.

I think you're right about a wedge being driven between Israel and the United States. I was hopeful that Jews would realign to the Republican Party given everything that's happened. But apparently, 60% of Jews (not sure how this number was arrived at) voted for El-Sayed in Michigan. So Jews are politically homeless, shunned by the left because of anti-semitism, and completely ungrateful to their only allies (the right).

My own personal stance has definitely changed. We should cut Israel off at this point. As much as I like Israel and don't want them to suffer, they are not worth defending if it causes America to become a socialist state – and we definitely are headed that way. The election results changed my mind.

Voters lean older, thus on average more set in their ways. In the last few decades, American Jews have tended to be liberals in the American sense of the word. That takes time to change. The fact that the radical wing of the Democratic Party hates Israel (and a subset of them hates Jews) may frighten some Jews, but keep in mind that a large fraction of the radical wing of the Republican Party hates Jews. The radical wing of the Democratic Party probably has more political power in its party than Jew-haters have in the Republican party, but the Democratic Party mainstream is not antisemitic, so there is still limited reason for Democratic-voting Jews to flip to the Republicans. Israel is not enough for many, since many Democratic-voting Jews dislike Israel in its current form, they just don't think it should stop existing.

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