naraburns nihil supernum
5mo ago
(text post)
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #3
This is a refreshed megathread for any posts on the conflict between (so far, and so far as I know) Hamas and the Israeli government, as well as related geopolitics. Culture War thread rules apply.
Regarding Western liberal narratives on the Gaza war, I’m noticing something I find somewhat odd. I see mainstream liberals arguing that clueless college students are indoctrinated by loony leftist propagandists to be rabid enemies of Israel, our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East etc. And they seem to be saying this without any reflection on the past, where conservatives they hate, like Ben Shapiro and others, have been warning everyone of the same trend for basically two decades, at least since the early years of Bush Jr’s presidency. Now that the true extent of anti-Zionist agitation on Western college campuses is revealed on prime TV for the first time in almost a decade (the last major Israeli military operation in Gaza was in 2014, I reckon, not counting the mass shootings at the border in 2018 or so), targeted at a nation and a people they actually care about, suddenly it’s a real problem, a real concern to be tackled.
Now I understand that one can come up with all sorts of cynical and mundane interpretations as to why this is, how it’s unsurprising and so on, and I get that. But then I remember that there were violent anti-police protests in the summer of 2020, the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, the various protests against Trump’s rallies, and in these cases the tone of the protests were, as far as I can tell, pretty much set by the same leftist college agitators who initiate the current anti-Zionist protests, the ones who call themselves anticolonialists, social justice advocates, antiracists and so on. And the big difference was that they weren’t criticized by mainstream liberals the way they are now, even though all their agitation and messaging stems from the same ideological tenets.
I think it's important to remember that while conservatives and the right have complained about college campuses for a long time, they really didn't do anything to address it until the past few years. Liberals were still in the coping stage of they'll grow up and become more reasonable once they get a job and a family that conservatives had for a very long time. Plus that kind of activism was useful to them. However, now they are in the stage where they are realizing that this is a real problem and are freaking out, but they can't admit the right was right because the Trump threat is looming. Politicians are in the habit of letting things get so bad and continually kicking them down the road until it gets so bad they can't ignore it. I think this is one of those moments for them. I don't think there's much they can do though because this has been a problem since the 1960's. Nobody has the stones to do what would actually need to be done to root this out of our institutions.
That would be to bring back loco parentis. And in turn that would entail cracking down on the idea of universities as 1-star resorts that also have classes which everyone is entitled to go to for four years.
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Notes -
Regarding Western liberal narratives on the Gaza war, I’m noticing something I find somewhat odd. I see mainstream liberals arguing that clueless college students are indoctrinated by loony leftist propagandists to be rabid enemies of Israel, our greatest ally, the only democracy in the Middle East etc. And they seem to be saying this without any reflection on the past, where conservatives they hate, like Ben Shapiro and others, have been warning everyone of the same trend for basically two decades, at least since the early years of Bush Jr’s presidency. Now that the true extent of anti-Zionist agitation on Western college campuses is revealed on prime TV for the first time in almost a decade (the last major Israeli military operation in Gaza was in 2014, I reckon, not counting the mass shootings at the border in 2018 or so), targeted at a nation and a people they actually care about, suddenly it’s a real problem, a real concern to be tackled.
Now I understand that one can come up with all sorts of cynical and mundane interpretations as to why this is, how it’s unsurprising and so on, and I get that. But then I remember that there were violent anti-police protests in the summer of 2020, the campaign to remove Confederate monuments, the various protests against Trump’s rallies, and in these cases the tone of the protests were, as far as I can tell, pretty much set by the same leftist college agitators who initiate the current anti-Zionist protests, the ones who call themselves anticolonialists, social justice advocates, antiracists and so on. And the big difference was that they weren’t criticized by mainstream liberals the way they are now, even though all their agitation and messaging stems from the same ideological tenets.
I think it's important to remember that while conservatives and the right have complained about college campuses for a long time, they really didn't do anything to address it until the past few years. Liberals were still in the coping stage of they'll grow up and become more reasonable once they get a job and a family that conservatives had for a very long time. Plus that kind of activism was useful to them. However, now they are in the stage where they are realizing that this is a real problem and are freaking out, but they can't admit the right was right because the Trump threat is looming. Politicians are in the habit of letting things get so bad and continually kicking them down the road until it gets so bad they can't ignore it. I think this is one of those moments for them. I don't think there's much they can do though because this has been a problem since the 1960's. Nobody has the stones to do what would actually need to be done to root this out of our institutions.
That would be to bring back loco parentis. And in turn that would entail cracking down on the idea of universities as 1-star resorts that also have classes which everyone is entitled to go to for four years.
Not going to happen.
What is loco parentis? Why would it help?
In loco parentis.
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