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I understand your point, but isn't the obvious comparison much more 9/11 than George Floyd? Yeah, there's a bunch of event-induced psychosis going around, but at least the event is genuinely one of the most horrifying things to happen in a first-world country. The scale of maiming, rape, murder, and torture is indisputably large even if a few claims (the beheading babies one) will turn out to be questionable. In contrast, George Floyd was one crackhead idiot that died because he acted like a crackhead idiot and ran into the wrong cop that showed callous indifference to his apparent suffering. That triggering a nationwide outpouring of rage with dozens dead in riots and billions of damage done to cities was pretty striking. At least 9/11 and YomKippur2.0 were the kinds of things that would cause any neurotypical person to get pretty angry in response.
Also of note, mild dissidence isn't resulting in massive condemnation, it's approval of Hamas that's getting that retort. Maybe you think people that say, "by any means necessary" in support of Palestine shouldn't be on the butt end of cultural harshness either, but they would be the equivalent of someone saying, "good, we need a thousand George Floyds dead in the street", not someone mildly questioning what exactly the Minneapolis Police policy is with regard to restraint.
Some of the Squad have tried both-sidesism, and the Biden administration called them disgraceful and repugnant.
I think the US domestic politics of this is going to be totally blown up now Trump has called Hezbollah "smart". I assume it was a gaffe, but Trump being Trump he isn't going to walk it back. Absent the Trump gaffe, it would have been an obvious good partisan move for the right to keep pointing at suitable targets at the left and complaining they hadn't denounced Hamas loudly enough (whether or not it was true).
I don't think both-sidesism is mild dissidence. I vigorously object to the idea that there is symmetry between the two sides of this conflict. We can see this pretty clearly and easily by noting the use of human shields by Hamas and then imagining how effective such a strategy would be for Israelis. Talaib said:
Maybe it's not of the "we need a thousand Floyds" variety, but it's of the "well, he did have it coming though" variety. Seriously, imagine issuing a statement the day after the Floyd killing that said, "I grieve the deaths of both black people and police officers". OK, you can do that, but feeling the need to stipulate it in that moment makes it pretty clear what someone thinks about it.
Why imagine? There's documented claims of the Israelis using Palestinians as human shields for years, so they clearly think there's something to the tactic.
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9/11 is a better comparison, but the way emotions drove discourse and public policy in the post-9/11 era was... let's say, not optimal for the USA's interests. As well as pretty stultifying.
Oh, I agree, that's why I think it's such a helpful comparison.
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Yes, I agree that this was worse than the George Floyd's death. 9/11 is the more appropiate comparison, but I think it shows precisely why this "mass psychosis" is something wrong that should be checked. Sure, when we were bands of 30-50 tribesmen, the largest consequence that was going to happen was another 30-50 tribesman dead. I think the pyschosis that followed after 9/11 prevented much clear thinking and led to a series of bad decisions of enormous consequences that did not help the problem. Even if you don't care about the massive number of dead civilians in Iraq, America spent a lot of money and resources there, all for nothing (they never did end up having the WMDs). Congress passed the Patriot Act granting intelligence agencies massive powers, created the TSA, etc, and it's unclear whether any of these massive infringement of liberties and waste of resources had any benefits. My point is, this sort of stifiling of discussion, regardless of how "justified" it is, leads to incredibly bad decisions because it silences all possible critique.
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