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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 1, 2023

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Imagine if the white house was full of staffers from Saudi arabia and they were all staunch pro Saudi, had a clear pro Saudi agenda and continuously talked about Saudi Arabia. Many openly called themselves Saudi firsters. That would be considered weird. We are supposed to forget about the extreme overrepresentation of a small minority of jews whose interests and views differ from the rest of the population.

Except nothing like that is actually is happening - nobody calls themselves "Israel firsters", nobody "continuously talks about Israel" (in fact, the current administration is pretty hostile to Israel though thankfully most of the time ignores it by now), and White House is not "full of staffers from Israel" (unless you consider anybody with Jewish blood to be "from Israel", which makes as much sense as considering anybody with Arabic blood be "from Saudi Arabia"). There are, indeed, a number of Muslim staffers, and the number of ethnically Jewish ones (most of them are not even practicing Jews, in fact, I am not sure there's one practicing Jew among top current officials). It is not "weird" in any way.

I think you've accidentally stumbled onto a generalization; any group that holds an important resource will get preference in how our policies are shaped to please others. Arabs have oil, Israelis have Jerusalem, Iowans have swing votes.