naraburns nihil supernum
1yr ago
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Israel-Gaza Megathread #1
This is a 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.
The English language really needs to deprecate phrasing that can be interpreted as either attribution of causal influence or attribution of blame. It's possible for "X's actions made Y more likely" to be obviously true in cases where "X's actions made Y morally acceptable" is obviously false. Round them both up to "true" and you may find yourself excusing atrocities; round them both down to "false" and you may find yourself ignoring ways to reduce atrocities. But how easy is it not to lump such claims together when we can barely speak about them distinguishably?
Thank you for correcting my mistaken insinuation. I was intending to point out the magazine more than the specific author, but I did just assume they'd be in sync. I should have known better than to assume that someone (relatively!) isolationist must be leftist for writing about it in a progressive magazine; unpopular politics (and standing on those principles at that time wasn't too popular) make strange bedfellows.
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Notes -
Similar institutions, even. The Nation, October 2001, "blowback".
The English language really needs to deprecate phrasing that can be interpreted as either attribution of causal influence or attribution of blame. It's possible for "X's actions made Y more likely" to be obviously true in cases where "X's actions made Y morally acceptable" is obviously false. Round them both up to "true" and you may find yourself excusing atrocities; round them both down to "false" and you may find yourself ignoring ways to reduce atrocities. But how easy is it not to lump such claims together when we can barely speak about them distinguishably?
The author of that Nation piece, Chalmers Johnson, was a former professor of mine. He was hardly a leftist.
Thank you for correcting my mistaken insinuation. I was intending to point out the magazine more than the specific author, but I did just assume they'd be in sync. I should have known better than to assume that someone (relatively!) isolationist must be leftist for writing about it in a progressive magazine; unpopular politics (and standing on those principles at that time wasn't too popular) make strange bedfellows.
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