Right, and also, actions and policies of which would have no awareness without someone paying attention and pointing it out. Furthermore, people lie all the time about politics, so you have to watch what they do, not just listen to what they say.
I mean, doesn't half of Libertarian advocacy of state-power-skepticism orbit the point that, …
Right, and also, actions and policies of which would have no awareness without someone paying attention and pointing it out. Furthermore, people lie all the time about politics, so you have to watch what they do, not just listen to what they say.
I mean, doesn't half of Libertarian advocacy of state-power-skepticism orbit the point that, "You absolutely can't trust what people say about how they intend to use state power."
That being said, you -can- pay attention to what they don't say, i.e., the dogs that don't bark, by listening to their answer - if they have one, if they're ever even asked - to the question, "You say that only some extremists on your side support position X and you don't, well, why not, what's wrong with X, what error are those who support it making?"
People who are just pretending not to support X for politically expedient reasons are usually unprepared to also pass the intellectual Turing test and give the other side's best arguments, and relatedly, they can avoid drawing a lot of fire from their own side if they are vague and evasive on the matter, but not when they have to explicitly articulate reasons for opposition. About 90% of the purportedly right-leaning commentariat gets hungry for "strange new respect" and feels the need to do this, voluntarily, about every other post. But it's very rare on the left, due to the "no enemies to the left" incentive structure.
Can you imagine anyone getting the chance to ask Harris, "Ok, what's wrong with what the anti-Israel protesters believe?" Can you imagine her having a good answer to it? Lol, no. Instead, at the convention, it was, "Those protesters out in the street, they have a point, a lot of innocent people are being killed, both sides." "Hey, protester in the street, are you, like, just generically anti-war and pro peace and also protest against Hamas when they commit violent acts which kidnap, torture, rape, and kill innocent civilians?" - "Um, no, that's not actually the point of my protest, which, duh, Biden and the rest know quite well."
But more to the specific point, for several generations, pretty much everywhere else on earth, the left has been vehemently and consistently anti-Israel. That leads one to guess that the anti-Israel position is not some whim or fad but an extension of the underlying logic and principles of leftist ideology. As such it makes perfect sense to presume that American leftists have the same position and harbor similar attitudes and are just trying not to say the quiet part out loud for reasons of political expediency, up until the first minute the cost has fallen below the threshold where no one has to pretend anymore, and then boom, immediate mass shift in consensus to the new position.
Gay marriage provides a good example. Back in the 90's, everybody knew that everybody on the left supported gay marriage, even though many pretended it was an """extreme""" position, and that democrat politicians who were saying otherwise were just lying to win elections, hoping to "wait it out" with regards to efforts to influence the culture in that direction, and also for the courts to just dictate and impose those chances. You can always tell what leftists believe and are going to do soon by looking at what is going on in very blue areas that are always ahead of the curve and assuming that what the left is doing in those places is what they really want to do everywhere, and what they will do, as soon as they enough support and power to get it done. So when Obama ran in blue Illinois, he was for gay marriage, but for national office in 2008, his viewed has 'evolved' against it, but then a few years later, evolved back to be for it, again. Anyone who was fooled by any of that was a chump. Axelrod was very explicit about all this pretense in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics".
So, the question is "Why is anti-Israel in 2024 different from gay-marriage in 2008?" Answer: it's not. In due time, it will be the official position of the American left, just like it is everywhere else.
The other day I went to see a friend in DC. Didn't really want to go all the way down there or care about the event, but needed to talk to him about something else more important.
The event was a Douglas Murray essentially lecture/interview on why Israel is good and Hamas is bad.
What was interesting about the event to me is that it was clearly ENTERTAINMENT. I don't think it was different then any other political rally I've seen, even though he's not a politician. I already believe his message and he presented no new information. There were lots of jokes and zingers and one liners that were clearly practiced and delivered to get the audience howling and use at a cocktail party later to impress.
There wasn't much substance. There was no obvious call to action if you wanted to do something. No discussion of how you might change someones mind. No new insight anyone who's spent like 30 minutes thinking about this could come up with. Why did all of these people in blazers want to come to this event and spend their time and money? Couldn't they watch it on YouTube and send a donation to Israel or something. It was really unclear to me what the people in the audience were supposed to DO about all this.
Right, and also, actions and policies of which would have no awareness without someone paying attention and pointing it out. Furthermore, people lie all the time about politics, so you have to watch what they do, not just listen to what they say.
I mean, doesn't half of Libertarian advocacy of state-power-skepticism orbit the point that, "You absolutely can't trust what people say about how they intend to use state power."
That being said, you -can- pay attention to what they don't say, i.e., the dogs that don't bark, by listening to their answer - if they have one, if they're ever even asked - to the question, "You say that only some extremists on your side support position X and you don't, well, why not, what's wrong with X, what error are those who support it making?"
People who are just pretending not to support X for politically expedient reasons are usually unprepared to also pass the intellectual Turing test and give the other side's best arguments, and relatedly, they can avoid drawing a lot of fire from their own side if they are vague and evasive on the matter, but not when they have to explicitly articulate reasons for opposition. About 90% of the purportedly right-leaning commentariat gets hungry for "strange new respect" and feels the need to do this, voluntarily, about every other post. But it's very rare on the left, due to the "no enemies to the left" incentive structure.
Can you imagine anyone getting the chance to ask Harris, "Ok, what's wrong with what the anti-Israel protesters believe?" Can you imagine her having a good answer to it? Lol, no. Instead, at the convention, it was, "Those protesters out in the street, they have a point, a lot of innocent people are being killed, both sides." "Hey, protester in the street, are you, like, just generically anti-war and pro peace and also protest against Hamas when they commit violent acts which kidnap, torture, rape, and kill innocent civilians?" - "Um, no, that's not actually the point of my protest, which, duh, Biden and the rest know quite well."
But more to the specific point, for several generations, pretty much everywhere else on earth, the left has been vehemently and consistently anti-Israel. That leads one to guess that the anti-Israel position is not some whim or fad but an extension of the underlying logic and principles of leftist ideology. As such it makes perfect sense to presume that American leftists have the same position and harbor similar attitudes and are just trying not to say the quiet part out loud for reasons of political expediency, up until the first minute the cost has fallen below the threshold where no one has to pretend anymore, and then boom, immediate mass shift in consensus to the new position.
Gay marriage provides a good example. Back in the 90's, everybody knew that everybody on the left supported gay marriage, even though many pretended it was an """extreme""" position, and that democrat politicians who were saying otherwise were just lying to win elections, hoping to "wait it out" with regards to efforts to influence the culture in that direction, and also for the courts to just dictate and impose those chances. You can always tell what leftists believe and are going to do soon by looking at what is going on in very blue areas that are always ahead of the curve and assuming that what the left is doing in those places is what they really want to do everywhere, and what they will do, as soon as they enough support and power to get it done. So when Obama ran in blue Illinois, he was for gay marriage, but for national office in 2008, his viewed has 'evolved' against it, but then a few years later, evolved back to be for it, again. Anyone who was fooled by any of that was a chump. Axelrod was very explicit about all this pretense in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics".
So, the question is "Why is anti-Israel in 2024 different from gay-marriage in 2008?" Answer: it's not. In due time, it will be the official position of the American left, just like it is everywhere else.
The other day I went to see a friend in DC. Didn't really want to go all the way down there or care about the event, but needed to talk to him about something else more important.
The event was a Douglas Murray essentially lecture/interview on why Israel is good and Hamas is bad.
What was interesting about the event to me is that it was clearly ENTERTAINMENT. I don't think it was different then any other political rally I've seen, even though he's not a politician. I already believe his message and he presented no new information. There were lots of jokes and zingers and one liners that were clearly practiced and delivered to get the audience howling and use at a cocktail party later to impress.
There wasn't much substance. There was no obvious call to action if you wanted to do something. No discussion of how you might change someones mind. No new insight anyone who's spent like 30 minutes thinking about this could come up with. Why did all of these people in blazers want to come to this event and spend their time and money? Couldn't they watch it on YouTube and send a donation to Israel or something. It was really unclear to me what the people in the audience were supposed to DO about all this.