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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.
So, there was some talk in this thread (or the previous one) about why the Israel/Palestine issue is such a big one in progressive circles, as opposed to country x, y, or z. Well, there were some decent historical and cultural explanations, I think one reason that really didn't get brought up is because there's actual disagreement within the wider left-leaning coalition is why there's more fire, on both sides.
So, as an actual progressive Democratic partisan, let me explain a bit.
Putting aside actual tankies or the 11 Lieberman Democrats left, if you put the median Bernie & the median Biden primary voter in 2020, and had them talk foreign policy, there would be wide agreement - Iraq was a mistake, we were in Afghanistan too long, Russia is bad and Ukraine needs our defense, but American foreign policy has been too hawkish in general, and so on. So, there's no spice, outside of the occasional Twitter dunk of somebody who had a bad take on Iraq in 2004, but even that's kind of hackish and old news to most Democratic voters at this point.
But, there would be actual disagreement on Israel & Palestine, especially if both sides were intelligent median voters because it's an actual complicated issue. At the moment, polling shows the median Democratic voter view is along the lines of, "the Israeli government are a-holes, Hamas is terrible, and the hostages need to be released, but Jesus, the IDF seems to be going overboard on this, and oh yeah, the surrounding governments are full of instigators."
Now, the more progressive voter would be more harsh on the Israeli government, more friendly to the Palestinian population, and so on, but the polling that showed 50/50 support for Israel vs Hamas among younger voters, was likely bad polling. The reason why Democratic views used to be more pro-Israel, is because the Israeli population used to reflect a more liberal view of the conflict, and now it really doesn't, plus wider changes in the makeup of the Democratic coalition.
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government. Only letting people with the right views (or the right amount of land ownership) is the reactionary view. Now, if said Palestinian government passes anti-LGBT laws or whatever, then we'll treat them like we do other countries with no leverage on us - sanctions and such until they embrace the loving arms of deviancy, or whatever.
In the long run, if this is all old news by Election Day 2024, it'll likely be forgotten, and more importantly, the vast majority of even young SJW left-wing Democratic voters are self-centered voters, like 95% of all voters, and will be reminded that Trump wants to put more reactionaries on the court, cut taxes for rich people, limit trans right, etc, make student loan payments higher, et al, and vote accordingly. I'd make a $1 bet w/ anybody here, that as long as the Israeli situation is basically back to some form of status quo, there will be no real movement of the youth vote, or a lack of turnout, beyond the lack of turnout there always is.
After all, Gretchen Whitmer actually lost ground among Muslim voters in 2022 in her re-election campaign (probably due to LGBT issues), but won by wider margin. Which is the only real trouble spot for the Biden team in 2024, since they literally do not care if some college-educated 2nd gen Muslim immigrant in Los Angeles doesn't vote.
Standard Disclaimer: Yes, lots of people are dumb, and will have simple reasons, and weird views.
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government. Only letting people with the right views (or the right amount of land ownership) is the reactionary view. Now, if said Palestinian government passes anti-LGBT laws or whatever, then we'll treat them like we do other countries with no leverage on us - sanctions and such until they embrace the loving arms of deviancy, or whatever.
The facts on the ground and the way the culture war is wages doesn't show that this beliefs extend to the us red tribe.
If there are prominent progressive voices that have told "restriction on abortion is terrible and yet the states have a right to organize as they seem fit" I have yet to hear it.
I also don't see sanctions on Saudi Arabia related to women issues, LGBT issues and the likes while the US is lead by the probably government that has the strongest progressive voices ever.
The reason why Democratic views used to be more pro-Israel, is because the Israeli population used to reflect a more liberal view of the conflict, and now it really doesn't
Erm, what? What timeframe are you talking about? Israel has been moving towards more conciliatory and liberal view of the conflict for decades now. It evacuated Gaza in 2005 (forcibly uprooting many Jewish communities) and tolerates Hamas shelling the southern cities for 18 years since, with only sporadic limited response carefully calculated to punish Hamas, but not endanger their rule. One of the main reason of the current catastrophe is that Israel got so immersed in the liberal concept of "peace is inevitable, Hamas is just representing the last throes of retrogrades that can not tolerate the inevitable coming of peace, but they are weak and dying off" - that's why such thing as "peace festival" on the border with Gaza with virtually no protection beyond token security guards meant to handle people who got over their norm of mind-altering substances - became possible. That's why most of the smaller towns and villages had no armed guards and had weapons locked up - something one couldn't imagine in the vicinity of Gaza some years ago, before "peace process". Israel has been moving to the liberal side since early 90s, at least, and the more they moved there, the more the Left hated them. It's just American Jews and Israeli Left made titanic effort not to notice it, but now it became a bit hard not to notice.
we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government
Do you really? The left never seems to have any problem with leftist dictatorships (too long to list here). Sure, they may recognize Kim is taking it too far, and maybe Pol Pot made a goofie or two, but otherwise dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't seem to represent any serious problem. If there are some staged "elections" where the ruling junta always wins, then everything is completely perfect. The treatment of the Islamic dictatorships seems to be very situational - while some Islamic dictatorship get some critique, most of them are silently ignored (especially the rich ones donating amply to Left's Places of Power) and surely absolutely none of them gets as much hate as Israel does.
Now, if said Palestinian government passes anti-LGBT laws or whatever
If??? If??? Are we talking about real Palestinians under Hamas (or Fatah) rule or some Celestial Palestinians existing only in Harvard classrooms?
Of course, since most Palestinians that are discernibly gay are either dead or fled to Israel years ago, this is more of a theoretical question. Hamas does not "pass laws" - it just throws you off a building.
then we'll treat them like we do other countries with no leverage on us - sanctions and such until they embrace the loving arms of deviancy, or whatever
Not only this is a lie, you know this is a lie. Many Muslim countries have such laws, and there are no sanctions.
In the long run, if this is all old news by Election Day 2024, it'll likely be forgotten
I'm not sure how it matters if it isn't. I see no group on the Left that even theoretically could switch their vote or stay home (in significant numbers) except one - American Jews. For some of them, it has been really shocking how much their parteigenossen hate them. But, unfortunately, I do not see any way that would move them to vote for Trump. It's just not something decent people do. Maybe some of them will stay home, but given that most of them live in deep blue areas anyway, it won't change anything. So, some Democrat will be elected with 70% of votes instead of the usual 89% - who cares. So, my prediction - absolutely nothing will change in 2024.
Do you really? The left never seems to have any problem with leftist dictatorships (too long to list here). Sure, they may recognize Kim is taking it too far, and maybe Pol Pot made a goofie or two, but otherwise dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't seem to represent any serious problem.
OP described himself as a progressive democrat, not a marxist-leninist.
I'm probably too far away to see minor differences, but I don't think I have seen/heard/read a lot of "progressive democrats" criticizing leftist dictators and their approach to elections. I mean, when did I have the last opportunity to see a leftist protest demanding to hold free elections in Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea? China? Anywhere where a leftist or islamist dictator holds power? I mean, a lot of Americans have opinions, as we recently found out, about how Israel's democracy must be managed, but none have any opinions on any of those? Doesn't it look a little bit weird?
When was the last time you saw ordinary Republicans protesting for those things? You can see protests for elections in Cuba, Iran, wherever, all the time, but they're pretty much always driven by diaspora from those countries.
But that's a weird way to assess the Democrat position on democracy in communist dictatorships, which has always been very public. Biden has issued statements calling for democracy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc, against their Marxist-Leninist regimes, and maintains sanctions against all of these countries explicitly because of their lack of democracy. You might have noticed the Biden Administration this past month has been undergoing a major negotiation with Venezuela precisely for them to hold free elections.
You mentioned Islamists as well, but Obama of course lost credibility with Islamist dictators precisely because of his support for the democratic protests during Arab Spring. The think tanks and NGOs that catalogue the human rights crimes of these various countries and demand democracy are also pretty much always staffed by progressive democrats.
Of course, if you take the longer view you will Democrat Presidents taking military action against Marxist-Leninist movements quite regularly throughout the past century.
When was the last time you saw ordinary Republicans protesting for those things?
Republicans are usually much less supportive of intervening into other countries - even tyrannical ones - when they don't mess with us.
Biden has issued statements calling for democracy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc, against their Marxist-Leninist regimes
If you look from proclamations to actual actions, though, you see that the policy towards tyrannical regimes is always softened - that happened with Obama, and that is also happening with whoever pulls Biden's strings, which some say is the same Obama. Be it Iran, be it Cuba, be it China - beyond some perfunctory words, it's never any serious action. In fact, it's plenty of the actions in the opposite directions.
The think tanks and NGOs that catalogue the human rights crimes of these various countries and demand democracy are also pretty much always staffed by progressive democrats.
I don't know what these NGOs have in their files, deep in their computer drives, but if you look on their public stance, the impression one gets is that there's about two countries that ever commit human rights crimes worth discussing - one of them is the US, and you can easily guess the second one.
Of course, if you take the longer view you will Democrat Presidents taking military action against Marxist-Leninist movements quite regularly throughout the past century.
Well, if we talk about the whole century, the Democrat party wasn't as thoroughly infiltrated by the Marxists as they are now. Marxists were mostly on the fringe, and they are full mainstream now, with wide representation in all institutions of the society. Thus, of course, what has been then and what is happening now is rather different.
Republicans are usually much less supportive of intervening into other countries - even tyrannical ones - when they don't mess with us.
This is a highly dubious claim to begin with, and largely belies your broader point about Democrats being the ones soft on foreign tyrants.
If you look from proclamations to actual actions, though, you see that the policy towards tyrannical regimes is always softened - that happened with Obama, and that is also happening with whoever pulls Biden's strings, which some say is the same Obama. Be it Iran, be it Cuba, be it China - beyond some perfunctory words, it's never any serious action. In fact, it's plenty of the actions in the opposite directions.
This is not true. Both parties have launched waves of targeted sanctions on ML countries, overseen covert and cyop warfare agaimst them, and found ways to support their opposition (Obama backed Capriles against Chavez before anyone had heard of Guaidó). Likewise, both parties have considered softening their stance for progress on things we care about: Obama considered rapproachment with a neutered, non-threat Cuba; Trump considered rapproachment with a nuclear armed North Korea regularly threatening us and our allies.
I don't know what these NGOs have in their files, deep in their computer drives, but if you look on their public stance, the impression one gets is that there's about two countries that ever commit human rights crimes worth discussing - one of them is the US, and you can easily guess the second one.
Human Rights Watch, Amnsety International, etc, write about human rights abuses in Marxist countries regularly on their public websites.
Well, if we talk about the whole century, the Democrat party wasn't as thoroughly infiltrated by the Marxists as they are now.
I was talking about the partisan structures specifically, not the government structures, and about open and openly practicing Marxists who do not hide their ideology and openly come to elections with it, not Soviet spies pretending to be regular Americans to get to governmental secrets. Maybe "infiltrated" in the hindsight wasn't the best word to use as indeed it also can be used for clandestine activities, but that's not what I meant. I meant if you are an open and genuine Marxist, and do not hide it, you would be much more at home at Dem party now than back then, and conversely, there are many more such people in the party now than there was back then. I would imagine back in Stalin's era there were much more hidden Soviet spies (who we can assume being Marxists by default) in partisan and governmental structures, and even if Russian spies are there now, they aren't probably Marxists anymore. But that's not the part I was talking about.
I'll address the other points later, hopefully, a bit busy now.
How many Marxists do you think are in the Democrat party? This is an extremely tiny group of people who consider the Democrats just as right wing as Republicans.
The demand for credible and competent moderate Republicans who can steal all the disaffected Democrats continues to grossly exceed the supply, which is why I'm grudgingly tolerant of a grifter like Vivek.
I'm not sure how the second part follows from the first. It's like saying "we desperately need the cure for common cold, so I am using charmed bracelets and pyramid power". The proposition that something is sorely lacking does not imply logically acceptance of something that is clearly inadequate for that purpose.
I mean, one can hope "he's clearly a grifter but may be he will fool some of the most stupid of Dems" but one can't rely on this as a plan for anything?
I said grudgingly tolerate, not endorse. Most successful politicians are lying to you out of their teeth, and at least in his case I agreed with many of the policy statements laid out by the one guy who was single-handedly running a PR campaign for him.
That's more an indictment of establishment candidates than it is full throated approval for him.
but the polling that showed 50/50 support for Israel vs Hamas among younger voters, was likely bad polling
This poll, asking people to choose between Israel and Hamas, with no option of "neither" og "dont know" had major "you're with us or you're against us" vibe. I imagine a big chunk of the people who chose Hamas, were just annoyed at the options and decided to say "f*ck it, I guess I support Hamas then".
because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government
Unless it's state right of fellow Americans in conservative states. Want to keep a right enshrined in the Bill of Rights? We've got nukes, fascists! Don't want teachers telling kids they should cut their genitals off? Genocide! Arabs literally murder gays... well that's just their culture, self governance and all.
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government.
This would require that the leftists acknowledge the bad views, and treat bad views by Palestinians like they do bad views by other people who are on their shitlist. You see Queers for Palestine. You don't see calls for Gaza to stop executing gays, or stop censorship, or to embrace religious plurality.
It would also require that the leftists do the reverse--treating bad views by other people by the same standards they do Palestinians. See the abortion example someone else mentioned. Or ask whether they support Republicans who have bad views much less bad than Palestinians.
This also isn't a good standard if "bad views on X" is something that is strongly associated with violence, such as widespread antisemitic beliefs, or support of terrorism.
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government.
No they don't. They explicitly opposed making abortion a state issue on the grounds that wanting to ban it is a terrible view, and that the correct view should be imposed top-down.
I'm fine w/ abortion being a "state issue," if by state issue, you mean one determined by referendums on various abortion laws.
But, red state governments don't like that very much, because it turns out even the most right-wing states don't agree with the extremists in charge of state governments on abortion law.
I'm fine w/ abortion being a "state issue," if by state issue, you mean one determined by referendums on various abortion laws.
Not sure why it has to be a referendum, but whatever, all I meant that states get to decide it without the involvement of the federal government. If you're fine with it, that's great, but that's not a majority opinion among the progressives.
Yes, because the majority of people in the country want abortion enshrined as a right. The fact that the system as it is enforces minority rule is not a dunk on progressives; it's a condemnation of the system.
If it's a straight majority that wants it, then they'll vote accordingly in their state elections. If you're saying that they want it to be a right even in states they do not reside in, that's a straight-forward contradiction with "as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government."
They do have the right to vote: They can rock up to their polling place, place their vote, and then loose because their policies are unpopular (or win on merits, but given the polls on that particular issue it sure seems unlikely).
The right to compete doesn't mean the right to win.
Are you saying they will lose on the state level in every state, or that changing the law in a specific state and not anywhere else somehow constitutes "minority rule"?
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government. Only letting people with the right views (or the right amount of land ownership) is the reactionary view.
How do you square this with massive support by democrats for government censorship.
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Notes -
So, there was some talk in this thread (or the previous one) about why the Israel/Palestine issue is such a big one in progressive circles, as opposed to country x, y, or z. Well, there were some decent historical and cultural explanations, I think one reason that really didn't get brought up is because there's actual disagreement within the wider left-leaning coalition is why there's more fire, on both sides.
So, as an actual progressive Democratic partisan, let me explain a bit.
Putting aside actual tankies or the 11 Lieberman Democrats left, if you put the median Bernie & the median Biden primary voter in 2020, and had them talk foreign policy, there would be wide agreement - Iraq was a mistake, we were in Afghanistan too long, Russia is bad and Ukraine needs our defense, but American foreign policy has been too hawkish in general, and so on. So, there's no spice, outside of the occasional Twitter dunk of somebody who had a bad take on Iraq in 2004, but even that's kind of hackish and old news to most Democratic voters at this point.
But, there would be actual disagreement on Israel & Palestine, especially if both sides were intelligent median voters because it's an actual complicated issue. At the moment, polling shows the median Democratic voter view is along the lines of, "the Israeli government are a-holes, Hamas is terrible, and the hostages need to be released, but Jesus, the IDF seems to be going overboard on this, and oh yeah, the surrounding governments are full of instigators."
Now, the more progressive voter would be more harsh on the Israeli government, more friendly to the Palestinian population, and so on, but the polling that showed 50/50 support for Israel vs Hamas among younger voters, was likely bad polling. The reason why Democratic views used to be more pro-Israel, is because the Israeli population used to reflect a more liberal view of the conflict, and now it really doesn't, plus wider changes in the makeup of the Democratic coalition.
Finally, the "but Palestinians have bad views on x, why do you support them," is a bad argument, because as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government. Only letting people with the right views (or the right amount of land ownership) is the reactionary view. Now, if said Palestinian government passes anti-LGBT laws or whatever, then we'll treat them like we do other countries with no leverage on us - sanctions and such until they embrace the loving arms of deviancy, or whatever.
In the long run, if this is all old news by Election Day 2024, it'll likely be forgotten, and more importantly, the vast majority of even young SJW left-wing Democratic voters are self-centered voters, like 95% of all voters, and will be reminded that Trump wants to put more reactionaries on the court, cut taxes for rich people, limit trans right, etc, make student loan payments higher, et al, and vote accordingly. I'd make a $1 bet w/ anybody here, that as long as the Israeli situation is basically back to some form of status quo, there will be no real movement of the youth vote, or a lack of turnout, beyond the lack of turnout there always is.
After all, Gretchen Whitmer actually lost ground among Muslim voters in 2022 in her re-election campaign (probably due to LGBT issues), but won by wider margin. Which is the only real trouble spot for the Biden team in 2024, since they literally do not care if some college-educated 2nd gen Muslim immigrant in Los Angeles doesn't vote.
Standard Disclaimer: Yes, lots of people are dumb, and will have simple reasons, and weird views.
The facts on the ground and the way the culture war is wages doesn't show that this beliefs extend to the us red tribe.
If there are prominent progressive voices that have told "restriction on abortion is terrible and yet the states have a right to organize as they seem fit" I have yet to hear it.
I also don't see sanctions on Saudi Arabia related to women issues, LGBT issues and the likes while the US is lead by the probably government that has the strongest progressive voices ever.
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Erm, what? What timeframe are you talking about? Israel has been moving towards more conciliatory and liberal view of the conflict for decades now. It evacuated Gaza in 2005 (forcibly uprooting many Jewish communities) and tolerates Hamas shelling the southern cities for 18 years since, with only sporadic limited response carefully calculated to punish Hamas, but not endanger their rule. One of the main reason of the current catastrophe is that Israel got so immersed in the liberal concept of "peace is inevitable, Hamas is just representing the last throes of retrogrades that can not tolerate the inevitable coming of peace, but they are weak and dying off" - that's why such thing as "peace festival" on the border with Gaza with virtually no protection beyond token security guards meant to handle people who got over their norm of mind-altering substances - became possible. That's why most of the smaller towns and villages had no armed guards and had weapons locked up - something one couldn't imagine in the vicinity of Gaza some years ago, before "peace process". Israel has been moving to the liberal side since early 90s, at least, and the more they moved there, the more the Left hated them. It's just American Jews and Israeli Left made titanic effort not to notice it, but now it became a bit hard not to notice.
Do you really? The left never seems to have any problem with leftist dictatorships (too long to list here). Sure, they may recognize Kim is taking it too far, and maybe Pol Pot made a goofie or two, but otherwise dictatorship of the proletariat doesn't seem to represent any serious problem. If there are some staged "elections" where the ruling junta always wins, then everything is completely perfect. The treatment of the Islamic dictatorships seems to be very situational - while some Islamic dictatorship get some critique, most of them are silently ignored (especially the rich ones donating amply to Left's Places of Power) and surely absolutely none of them gets as much hate as Israel does.
If??? If??? Are we talking about real Palestinians under Hamas (or Fatah) rule or some Celestial Palestinians existing only in Harvard classrooms? Of course, since most Palestinians that are discernibly gay are either dead or fled to Israel years ago, this is more of a theoretical question. Hamas does not "pass laws" - it just throws you off a building.
Not only this is a lie, you know this is a lie. Many Muslim countries have such laws, and there are no sanctions.
I'm not sure how it matters if it isn't. I see no group on the Left that even theoretically could switch their vote or stay home (in significant numbers) except one - American Jews. For some of them, it has been really shocking how much their parteigenossen hate them. But, unfortunately, I do not see any way that would move them to vote for Trump. It's just not something decent people do. Maybe some of them will stay home, but given that most of them live in deep blue areas anyway, it won't change anything. So, some Democrat will be elected with 70% of votes instead of the usual 89% - who cares. So, my prediction - absolutely nothing will change in 2024.
OP described himself as a progressive democrat, not a marxist-leninist.
I'm probably too far away to see minor differences, but I don't think I have seen/heard/read a lot of "progressive democrats" criticizing leftist dictators and their approach to elections. I mean, when did I have the last opportunity to see a leftist protest demanding to hold free elections in Cuba? Venezuela? North Korea? China? Anywhere where a leftist or islamist dictator holds power? I mean, a lot of Americans have opinions, as we recently found out, about how Israel's democracy must be managed, but none have any opinions on any of those? Doesn't it look a little bit weird?
When was the last time you saw ordinary Republicans protesting for those things? You can see protests for elections in Cuba, Iran, wherever, all the time, but they're pretty much always driven by diaspora from those countries.
But that's a weird way to assess the Democrat position on democracy in communist dictatorships, which has always been very public. Biden has issued statements calling for democracy in Cuba, Nicaragua, Venezuela, etc, against their Marxist-Leninist regimes, and maintains sanctions against all of these countries explicitly because of their lack of democracy. You might have noticed the Biden Administration this past month has been undergoing a major negotiation with Venezuela precisely for them to hold free elections.
You mentioned Islamists as well, but Obama of course lost credibility with Islamist dictators precisely because of his support for the democratic protests during Arab Spring. The think tanks and NGOs that catalogue the human rights crimes of these various countries and demand democracy are also pretty much always staffed by progressive democrats.
Of course, if you take the longer view you will Democrat Presidents taking military action against Marxist-Leninist movements quite regularly throughout the past century.
Republicans are usually much less supportive of intervening into other countries - even tyrannical ones - when they don't mess with us.
If you look from proclamations to actual actions, though, you see that the policy towards tyrannical regimes is always softened - that happened with Obama, and that is also happening with whoever pulls Biden's strings, which some say is the same Obama. Be it Iran, be it Cuba, be it China - beyond some perfunctory words, it's never any serious action. In fact, it's plenty of the actions in the opposite directions.
I don't know what these NGOs have in their files, deep in their computer drives, but if you look on their public stance, the impression one gets is that there's about two countries that ever commit human rights crimes worth discussing - one of them is the US, and you can easily guess the second one.
Well, if we talk about the whole century, the Democrat party wasn't as thoroughly infiltrated by the Marxists as they are now. Marxists were mostly on the fringe, and they are full mainstream now, with wide representation in all institutions of the society. Thus, of course, what has been then and what is happening now is rather different.
This is a highly dubious claim to begin with, and largely belies your broader point about Democrats being the ones soft on foreign tyrants.
This is not true. Both parties have launched waves of targeted sanctions on ML countries, overseen covert and cyop warfare agaimst them, and found ways to support their opposition (Obama backed Capriles against Chavez before anyone had heard of Guaidó). Likewise, both parties have considered softening their stance for progress on things we care about: Obama considered rapproachment with a neutered, non-threat Cuba; Trump considered rapproachment with a nuclear armed North Korea regularly threatening us and our allies.
Human Rights Watch, Amnsety International, etc, write about human rights abuses in Marxist countries regularly on their public websites.
Nonsense.
I was talking about the partisan structures specifically, not the government structures, and about open and openly practicing Marxists who do not hide their ideology and openly come to elections with it, not Soviet spies pretending to be regular Americans to get to governmental secrets. Maybe "infiltrated" in the hindsight wasn't the best word to use as indeed it also can be used for clandestine activities, but that's not what I meant. I meant if you are an open and genuine Marxist, and do not hide it, you would be much more at home at Dem party now than back then, and conversely, there are many more such people in the party now than there was back then. I would imagine back in Stalin's era there were much more hidden Soviet spies (who we can assume being Marxists by default) in partisan and governmental structures, and even if Russian spies are there now, they aren't probably Marxists anymore. But that's not the part I was talking about.
I'll address the other points later, hopefully, a bit busy now.
How many Marxists do you think are in the Democrat party? This is an extremely tiny group of people who consider the Democrats just as right wing as Republicans.
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The demand for credible and competent moderate Republicans who can steal all the disaffected Democrats continues to grossly exceed the supply, which is why I'm grudgingly tolerant of a grifter like Vivek.
I'm not sure how the second part follows from the first. It's like saying "we desperately need the cure for common cold, so I am using charmed bracelets and pyramid power". The proposition that something is sorely lacking does not imply logically acceptance of something that is clearly inadequate for that purpose.
I mean, one can hope "he's clearly a grifter but may be he will fool some of the most stupid of Dems" but one can't rely on this as a plan for anything?
I said grudgingly tolerate, not endorse. Most successful politicians are lying to you out of their teeth, and at least in his case I agreed with many of the policy statements laid out by the one guy who was single-handedly running a PR campaign for him.
That's more an indictment of establishment candidates than it is full throated approval for him.
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This poll, asking people to choose between Israel and Hamas, with no option of "neither" og "dont know" had major "you're with us or you're against us" vibe. I imagine a big chunk of the people who chose Hamas, were just annoyed at the options and decided to say "f*ck it, I guess I support Hamas then".
Yeah, any poll without a none of the above/no opinion option I throw out as junk, even if it agrees w/ my views.
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Unless it's state right of fellow Americans in conservative states. Want to keep a right enshrined in the Bill of Rights? We've got nukes, fascists! Don't want teachers telling kids they should cut their genitals off? Genocide! Arabs literally murder gays... well that's just their culture, self governance and all.
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This would require that the leftists acknowledge the bad views, and treat bad views by Palestinians like they do bad views by other people who are on their shitlist. You see Queers for Palestine. You don't see calls for Gaza to stop executing gays, or stop censorship, or to embrace religious plurality.
It would also require that the leftists do the reverse--treating bad views by other people by the same standards they do Palestinians. See the abortion example someone else mentioned. Or ask whether they support Republicans who have bad views much less bad than Palestinians.
This also isn't a good standard if "bad views on X" is something that is strongly associated with violence, such as widespread antisemitic beliefs, or support of terrorism.
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No they don't. They explicitly opposed making abortion a state issue on the grounds that wanting to ban it is a terrible view, and that the correct view should be imposed top-down.
I'm fine w/ abortion being a "state issue," if by state issue, you mean one determined by referendums on various abortion laws.
But, red state governments don't like that very much, because it turns out even the most right-wing states don't agree with the extremists in charge of state governments on abortion law.
Not sure why it has to be a referendum, but whatever, all I meant that states get to decide it without the involvement of the federal government. If you're fine with it, that's great, but that's not a majority opinion among the progressives.
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Yes, because the majority of people in the country want abortion enshrined as a right. The fact that the system as it is enforces minority rule is not a dunk on progressives; it's a condemnation of the system.
If it's a straight majority that wants it, then they'll vote accordingly in their state elections. If you're saying that they want it to be a right even in states they do not reside in, that's a straight-forward contradiction with "as progressives, we believe even terrible have the right to vote, and self-government."
They do have the right to vote: They can rock up to their polling place, place their vote, and then loose because their policies are unpopular (or win on merits, but given the polls on that particular issue it sure seems unlikely).
The right to compete doesn't mean the right to win.
Are you saying they will lose on the state level in every state, or that changing the law in a specific state and not anywhere else somehow constitutes "minority rule"?
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How do you square this with massive support by democrats for government censorship.
I'd say you'd need to be more specific. What claim are you making here?
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