i’ve got to admit, Elise Stefanik performed an unintentionally brilliant act of partisan politics when she got the Presidents of Penn and Harvard fired, encouraging their colleagues to jump straight to the kind of repressive overreaction that is a match to the kerosene mix of student idealism and narcissism.
now the Democratic coalition is bitterly divided, and the most salient issues are public disorder and student entitlement, both of which strongly favor Republicans.
does anyone have any idea what’s been going on in Gaza over the last week? i feel pretty up to date on American university campuses, thx.
@Alon @BenRossTransit (i won't comment on whether it's racist or not for them to think so, but my understanding is Egypt's elites in particular genuinely fear Gaza's populations would add to sometimes violent strands of political Islam they already find difficult to manage, even with a willingness to indulge in, um, lapses of liberalism. Sinai itself is perhaps not a fully integrated province of a modern developed state, and though most Gazans aren't habitually Bedouin, they are a complication.)
"How Movements Win" by Samantha Hancox-Li @sjshancoxli https://www.liberalcurrents.com/how-movements-win/
@Alon @BenRossTransit If we can get past this shitty war to a world in which Israel's integration with the Arab Middle East can continue, lifting old taboos on naturalization of Palestinians by Arab states is an obvious thing to pursue. Gulf allies no longer want to foment the instability those taboos were imposed to foment. Unfortunately, though there may be linguistic + cultural fit, the past half century has left all parties nervous about populations like Gaza's on security grounds, I think.
@BenRossTransit @Alon (I don't think the US is playing a meaningful military logistics role in the Sudan conflict. UAE is a US ally and allegedly supporting to some uncertain degree one party to the conflict, but even if it is, that remains very far from the direct US support than both Israel and KSA have received in their conflicts.)
if you want to make a case that antisemitism plays an unusual role in the US discourse surrounding Israel, your best point of reference is Yemen and US support of Saudi Arabia’s conflict there, which conflict (whomever you blame for it) did lead to mass famine and death, but not to mass protest on US campuses.
Fascinating “War in Gaza Public Opinion Survey” of Israelis, with across Jewish and Arab populations. https://en.idi.org.il/media/23635/war-in-gaza-15-_data_eng.pdf ht #NathanTankus
@susannah@octodon.social it’s very strange. great lover of humanity is also not my impression of Donald Trump but somehow he comes off that way to some?
@BenRossTransit @Alon @grvsmth @djc It’s an excellent piece.
@realcaseyrollins I've gotten a lot of political e-mails. None have so personally professed their love for me. I guess we'll agree to disagree, but I'll maintain, this is really, really different from the pitches I usually see.
@scott i have a gmail address (not the address i actually use) that weirdly gets a lot of e-mails not intended for me, but for people with names similar but not identical to mine (sometimes even quite different). this one was personalized for another S-beginning first name, and sent to that address.
@realcaseyrollins Many politicians try to prove they "care", they "get you".
But this is really quite different in character.
This is just a weird movement.
It's just trying to appeal along entirely different dimensions than a conventional campaign. It's parasocial rather than political.
Screenshot of a Donald Trump campaign email, subject "Is there anything you'd like to share with me?" "I've got something I've been dying to tell you: I WILL NEVER STOP LOVING YOU! PLEASE PLASE PLASE tell me you love me too!" [I LOVE TRUMP BUTTON] I don't care what the DERANGED RADICAL LEFTISTS think. I don't care what the MARXISTS AND FASCISTS think. I don't care what the AMERICA-HATING DEMOCRATS think. I only care about YOU!
@mike_kraft we're just going to disagree. i think abandoning Afghanistan in the way we did was a catastrophe. it is our role, as a matter of happenstance and history, to hold contemporary arrangements together until we can negotiate some other credible architecture. leaving and letting the chips fall where they may would be both catastrophic, on both moral and self-interested terms. it's like a bad marriage with kids. you may want to go, but you can't just walk away. arrangements must be made.
@mike_kraft the US is basically energy independent, a net exporter post the fracking revolution. but unless we prohibit exports, we are exposed to world pricing, so mayhem in the Middle East means we pay more. it's not Saudi vs not Saudi. the US provides the security architecture for the whole region from the Arabian Penninsula to Egypt through Jordan to Iraq, north through Israel up to but not including Lebanon and Syria. 1/
@mike_kraft withdrawal risks letting the whole region become like Lebanon and Syria in the worst case, or letting rival powers (one of or some combination of Iran, Russia, and China) provide the force-backed stability the US now provides. the status quo is superior in my view to either alternative. one might hope stable, genuinely independent, locally legitimate Westphalian states wld spontaneously emerge in current borders, but I don't think the weight of experience suggests that's likely. /fin
@phillmv yes. i just think it odd we're having a whole conversation about Presidential immunity in which Democrats are like "of course we'd never be for that", but the serial murder stuff never gets a mention.
@BenRossTransit @Alon @ikentcpel @djc i agree antizionism is often blurred, usually into its worst forms.
the basic antizionist position to which many not-right-wing Americans, including many American Jews, are gravitating towards concedes that "Jewish and democratic" is too great a contradiction, and so advocates a secular liberal state without religious or national favoritism.
that position may or may not be practical, but it is not advocacy of anything ethically horrid.
@BenRossTransit @Alon @ikentcpel @djc in the United States, the only mainstream zionist position is a two-state solution.
from an American perspective, Netanyahu is objectively antizionist.
he has certainly done more to discredit zionism than any other person in history.
should Obama be prosecuted for ordering hits, including of American citizens?
(drone assassinations overseas see https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/02/10/us/23awlaki-memo-reupload.html which actively discusses the question, after the long FOIA memo. "we believe the AUMF's authority to use lethal force abroad also may apply in appropriate circumstances to a United States citizen who is part of...an enemy organization". the same target's son was eventually killed too, purportedly as collateral damage to the assassination of another target.)
@Alon @ikentcpel @BenRossTransit @djc the conversation in which he said his main stupidities was in January, long before the much larger protests now. he’s a dude from one campus (these protests are now a national phenomenon), made a “leader” long before the scale of participation is what it is now. he’s nothing more than a well picked nut. you can find others too. but they are not typical.
@Alon @ikentcpel @BenRossTransit @djc many of the protesters are antizionist. that is the position from which they are protesting. if you hold dear and deeply the opposite position, exposure to any of what they are doing may be painful. that is quite distinct from racist or antisemitic, however. a growing fraction of American Jews is antizionist. a remarkable accomplishment of Israel’s leadership.
