My father once yelled at me because he tried to to tell me a story about a friar in the 1600’s whose faith in God granted him the power of flight and I assumed it was a joke. It was not a joke.

What’s the appropriate legal punishment for murdering 45 children? Because I think that all those responsible, including Netanyahu and Trump, should face the same punishment for this that an ordinary citizen would.

Elad Barashi, who has worked in the Israeli entertainment industry for several years, sparked outrage after posting on X: “Good morning, let there be a Shoa (Holocaust) in Gaza.”

In another post, he wrote, “I can’t understand the people here in the State of Israel who don’t want to fill Gaza with gas showers… or train cars… and finish this story! Let there be a Holocaust in Gaza.”

They have demonstrated that they are not “leftists” by defending the cruelties of Israel. There is no “infighting” here.

“Bans all criticism of Israel” is not the title. The title is that they are banning criticism of Israel, which is true. It’s also true that if someone bans oranges, then they are “banning fruits,” it would only be untrue if they said, “banning all fruits.”

The title does leave it ambiguous in a way that people might think it extends to all criticism, but that’s not actually what it says.

The best way to prevent another Holocaust is to make it illegal for anyone to ever warn that anything happening is similar to the Holocaust or to the Nazis and should be stopped before it goes further. Brilliant. Genius.

Equal rights for all, but with Jewish people being more equal than everyone else.

It’s very frustrating and the thread I linked made me feel like I was losing my mind. I try to seek out perspectives I disagree with but a lot of times I just end up concluding, “Damn, these people are even worse than I thought.”

What gets me is how wildly people in the thread blew it out of proportion. You had someone quoting “first they came for” as if lifting sanctions on a leader we installed is comparable to the Holocaust.

It’s like everyone needs everyone to agree that every time Trump sneezes, it’s the literal worst thing that has ever happened, and if you push back on anything ever you’re the enemy. These same people fantasize that they can win elections by appealing to moderates.

But the thing that really grinds my gears is how they all default to hostile intervention in foreign countries despite knowing absolutely nothing about their situation. The “null” position should be leaving everyone alone, but instead, it’s whatever the government or media tell them. Or in this case, whatever a random tweet from a crypto grifter tells them. And they will try to bring down the hammer of social condemnation and use things like this as a way to equate communists to fascists and kick us out of spaces, even when they aren’t actually at all invested in the issue.

Buncha clowns.

I have seen people waxing poetic about Imperial Japan

What? Who? Where? That’s an absolutely wild take.

Both of us won out from that exchange.

You might want to look into what happened to the French government and its leadership shortly after funding that little proxy war. Let me give you a quick rundown, because I enjoy history:

The American Revolution was incredibly expensive and put France into an extreme financial crisis. Of course, the court’s extravagent personal spending didn’t help things (and made for better revolutionary propaganda), but in reality it was about 6% of total government expenditure, while loan payments, mostly from the war, represented around 50%. Even with very high taxes, it was impossible to balance the budget. A report from March 1788 estimated a deficit of 20% of expenditures, which could only be made up by more borrowing

This financial crisis led to the king calling the Estates General, something that hadn’t been done in hundreds of years, to bring representatives of the three estates (nobility, clergy, and everyone else) together to work out a solution. When an agreement could not be reached, the representatives of the third estate left the Estates General and declared that they were creating a “National Assembly,” which claimed to represent the popular democratic will, and started work on a new constitution. The royal family ended up declared traitors and got their heads chopped off. And the rest is history. (My source for this is an old book I own called The Coming of the French Revolution by Georges Lefebvre)

So, dumping a bunch of money on a proxy war in a bid to raise their geopolitical status and undermine their rival didn’t really work out so well for France. They were so focused on playing geopolitics against Britain, but by failing to address declining conditions at home, they created a much more dangerous domestic threat which brought about the government’s downfall.

My apologies. I tried to control-F and apparently that doesn’t work on usernames.

In any case, my take is essentially just, “Hands off Syria.” I didn’t think we should arm him, I don’t think we should sanction him, etc. I don’t really think that’s a shit take, but it’s certainly drawn some criticism over the years.

Cool, so then, why did 1500 people just upvote a picture of a tweet calling him a terrorist, and criticizing the lifting of sanctions against him? Why did only like 40 people downvote it? That’s what I’m calling out.

Where were you when in that thread, by the way? Why are you criticizing my take and not that one? Don’t tell me you only saw the thread sitting at 7 upvotes and missed the one with 1500. My bad.

Yes, I’m sure that the thing that will finally get Jan 6’ers to turn on Trump is checks notes lifting sanctions on Syria.

First they came for the sanctions against a country on the opposite side of the world 😔

Props for owning up to it.

He’s appeasing the people who put him in power and who determine whether he stays in power.

Why would he bother appealing to the American people? We don’t control foreign policy, and even if we did, the public is so fickle, ignorant, and easily manipulated that all it takes to get people to turn on him is a random unsourced tweet from a cryptobro.

Their whole top comment is a non sequitor.

For real.

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