“To make this question accessible, we lied to our poll subjects about the actual reality of the conflict, about a fundamental political aspect we thought was too complicated”
As someone who's done social science research work (as an undergrad) and asked his professor (who designed the questionnaire) specifically about overly simple questions, the answer to this is "based on previous questionnnaires asking people about the individual governments would not provide statistically meaningful data, or would overwhelmingly return 'don't know,' so on the basis that some data is better than none we consolidated the questions and made sure to note we did that. It ain't great but it's what we have."
That said I think if you're expecting a random sample of Americans to draw a distinction between the PLA and Hamas you're going to be disappointed.
'don't know' responses are still data though. It actually seems like very valuable information to have for politicians that want to evolve their foreign policy. It lets them know which portion of their population and voting base can be further educated and potentially swayed.
Trying to frame foreign policy survey questions to a 'yes' or 'no' despite the level of knowledge of the individual seems like a really easy way to get really bad data
"Any decision impinging on Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory," Pompeo said in a statement Friday.
The controversial national security law, which is expected to ban sedition, secession and subversion of the central government in Beijing, is set to be introduced at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber stamp parliament.
Vincent Lee is Reuters' China Breaking News Editor:
If only the Chinese government feared this President. But they don't. They might accept that Trump will possibly engage in military action (because he's a petulant child), but I think they might actually welcome that.
But concerns that he might be able to use economic or diplomatic pressure, gaining the coalition needed for that to actually have an impact? Yeah, Trump spent three years pissing that away.
And that's assuming they don't have substantial kompromat on Trump (not directly, like Putin, but gathered by MSS, or possibly given by North Korea), which would be almost a given by now, that'll curtail any significant threat from the President. Because looking weak is Trump's greatest fear.
Pompeo's just bleating out threats because what else is he going to do? It's clear he's only barely more qualified to be SecState than Trump is to be President.
I'm conflicted about this. I think it's right for the current administration to attack China over this (and many other things really), but because they're a bunch of child sycophants it's hard to believe they would move forward on it. Given Biden's current campaigning strategy of attacking Trump for bowing down to China on a lot of things, it seems like a Biden administration might actually take the Chinese to task, which I would welcome because they deserve it. BUT, it also heightens the risk of a military fuck-up, which I don't want.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I think western governments (including my own) have been far too lenient on China for decades, and it may be past the point that anything can be done to them from an external influence perspective.
I'm also prepared to pay the economic costs that'll likely come to cracking down on China (imports costing more, with cheaper goods not being as readily accessible), which the people I know locally don't appear to understand. That the electronics, clothing and plastics that they're currently enjoying will likely increase in price, perhaps substantially.
I just know that trying to do so, as you mentioned, is fraught with risk, and it'll take someone skilled to navigate that safely, if it's even possible. I doubt Biden could do it himself, but depending on who he picks for SecState and AmbChina, if he gives them enough latitude to negotiate, maybe.
I just know the person currently in charge is NOT that person, and the current status quo, capitulation or war seem like the only outcomes he's capable of getting. The same or worse, is the best that Trump can get.
I think it's not so much "lose their shit when bad Democratic policies or actors are called out" but some combination of:
the hyperbole used to exaggerate the policies (lines like the "Biden thinks Palestinians deserve to die, etc."). The actual policies are bad enough that we don't need to lie or exaggerate.
the regularity that these issues are used to paint the current Democratic candidates of the time as the same as Republicans, when there is a vast gulf between "not great" and "actively trying to destroy people." This is why the exaggeration is so infuriating to a bunch of people. Trump literally has taken steps to help Israel kill Palestinians, Biden's platform just doesn't reverse it as fast as we would like and doesn't hold Israel to account for past actions. That's still bad! But it's not the same thing and painting it as such confuses the actual issues.
the repetition of this topic in this, or other, threads ad nauesum with no real outcome except for Lanz, Styrofoam, and the other folks who are focused on things ought to be in a proper, decent world getting into arguments with Shryke and the folks more focused on what is actually possible with the regemes and political systems we have agency over. Both sides of this discussion end up in the exact same places each time, never agree, but end up arguing until someone gets banned or the mods tell folks to change topic.
I'm gonna add something to this. People can take it or leave it, of course.
One frustration I have in these conversations is how my and others' responses in here are treated as malicious or as a moral failing rather than as a genuine skepticism and people just trying their best to grapple with the vast complexities of social/economic/foreign policy. Things are complicated, policy is hard, there are rarely correct or wrong answers to these things. Immediately after the above post the next two are:
Or the United States is a massively dysfunctional and violent superpower 100 percent of the time, but the Democrats know how to make educated professionals comfortable with that while the GOP just goes and says the quiet part aloud. Some of us just find the Democratic fanboys to be tiresome in their constant attempts to minimize this.
You don’t have to “support” either of them to realize that one is better than the other but still massively shitty compared to most centrist parties in other developed nations.
Biden's platform doesn't reverse it at all, and any assertion that it does, or that he's even interested in doing so, is a faith-based statement with no evidence.
Rationalizing why bad foreign policy is okay (but only in the case of certain people) because that's 'what is possible right now' has literally never led to better foreign policy.
EDIT: I’m also not sympathetic to the argument that Biden is simply reading the political tea leaves and is only taking his racist position because not doing so would lose him too many votes. Customarily on this forum, when one poses skepticism of a politician adopting a popular policy just to garner support, it’s met with the argument of ‘studies show that politicians are actually honest about their platforms and statements’ so I’m not sure why we shouldn’t take that same lesson here. The sad (and I mean that sincerely) truth is that, acknowledging that politics falls on a spectrum and not a binary scale, more Democrats need to have a 'are we the baddies?' moment, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Framing these conversations, or the people opposite of you in the conversation, as some kind of moral failing is legitimately exhausting to argue against and rarely even fruitful or worth arguing against. Once you reach the point where "they're just evil" you've lost any hope of actually having a decent conversation about a topic without facetious shitposting or just unhelpful comments.
I agree with Javen's post there: rationalizing bad foreign policy is not good to do, but trying to understand why people have their policy positions can be instructive and even helpful. And in my mind it's neither instructive nor helpful to say "Biden just wants Palestinians to die" as explanation for his policy position.
And this phenomenon is not just in this thread, but in pretty much every other thread talking about policy or anything remotely controversial. I agree with most of the things people argue for in this and other threads, but I'm not going to post my agreement because if I wanted an opinion circle-jerk I would go on twitter.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
"Any decision impinging on Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory," Pompeo said in a statement Friday.
The controversial national security law, which is expected to ban sedition, secession and subversion of the central government in Beijing, is set to be introduced at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber stamp parliament.
Vincent Lee is Reuters' China Breaking News Editor:
If only the Chinese government feared this President. But they don't. They might accept that Trump will possibly engage in military action (because he's a petulant child), but I think they might actually welcome that.
But concerns that he might be able to use economic or diplomatic pressure, gaining the coalition needed for that to actually have an impact? Yeah, Trump spent three years pissing that away.
And that's assuming they don't have substantial kompromat on Trump (not directly, like Putin, but gathered by MSS, or possibly given by North Korea), which would be almost a given by now, that'll curtail any significant threat from the President. Because looking weak is Trump's greatest fear.
Pompeo's just bleating out threats because what else is he going to do? It's clear he's only barely more qualified to be SecState than Trump is to be President.
I'm conflicted about this. I think it's right for the current administration to attack China over this (and many other things really), but because they're a bunch of child sycophants it's hard to believe they would move forward on it. Given Biden's current campaigning strategy of attacking Trump for bowing down to China on a lot of things, it seems like a Biden administration might actually take the Chinese to task, which I would welcome because they deserve it. BUT, it also heightens the risk of a military fuck-up, which I don't want.
Oh, don't get me wrong. I think western governments (including my own) have been far too lenient on China for decades, and it may be past the point that anything can be done to them from an external influence perspective.
I'm also prepared to pay the economic costs that'll likely come to cracking down on China (imports costing more, with cheaper goods not being as readily accessible), which the people I know locally don't appear to understand. That the electronics, clothing and plastics that they're currently enjoying will likely increase in price, perhaps substantially.
I just know that trying to do so, as you mentioned, is fraught with risk, and it'll take someone skilled to navigate that safely, if it's even possible. I doubt Biden could do it himself, but depending on who he picks for SecState and AmbChina, if he gives them enough latitude to negotiate, maybe.
I just know the person currently in charge is NOT that person, and the current status quo, capitulation or war seem like the only outcomes he's capable of getting. The same or worse, is the best that Trump can get.
There is probably something to be said that the Trump administration, and Trump himself (a man who has repeatedly tried to buddy buddy up to Xi and praised his moves in becoming a dictator for life), is only feigning to care because it ultimately serves to drive the "China bad! They give us bad disease! We would be great if not for Bad China Disease!"* bullshit Trump and his people are trying to spin to divert from their utter failure in containing the COVID-19 outbreak.
*A spin marked as a hard turn away from "China's doing great in containing this! We have nothing to worry about!" as the Pandemic started
A UN probe on Thursday said there is evidence Israel committed crimes against humanity in responding to last year's protests in Gaza, as snipers targeted people clearly identifiable as children, health workers and journalists.
Israel immediately rejected the findings as "hostile, deceitful and biased."
The UN Independent Commission of Inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory investigated violations committed during demonstrations in the Gaza strip between March 30 and December 31 of 2018.
"Israeli soldiers committed violations of international human rights and humanitarian law," committee chair Santiago Canton said in a statement.
"Some of those violations may constitute war crimes or crimes against humanity," he added.
The commission, set up by the UN Human Rights Council in May, said that "more than 6,000 unarmed demonstrators were shot by military snipers" during weeks of protest.
But Biden thinks that we are trying to let Palestine off the hook for its choices, you see. What do folks honestly think a foreign policy regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict is going to look like with that kind of ideological foundation?
The more people repeat one line the more it looks like said people have not actually read the page on Biden's website it is from and are basing their position here on a cropped screencap from a tweet. There's no context to the actual issue, just repetition of a talking point.
If your question is "What is Biden gonna do?", go read his website. It's right there as I mentioned before. And it's a lot more then what the outrage take from twitter shows, shockingly.
The main issue is that politicians in the states can generally not even bring themselves to say such as ‘shooting protestors is unacceptable’
Biden opposes annexation; okay, great. What’s he willing to do about it? Fucking nothing, that’s what
"Willing to do" and "Can actually do" are two different things here. With what Netanyahu has been up to for over a decade now, we've seen the limits of what even the President can accomplish wrt the US-Israeli relationship.
The more people repeat one line the more it looks like said people have not actually read the page on Biden's website it is from and are basing their position here on a cropped screencap from a tweet. There's no context to the actual issue, just repetition of a talking point.
If your question is "What is Biden gonna do?", go read his website. It's right there as I mentioned before. And it's a lot more then what the outrage take from twitter shows, shockingly.
Or maybe we actually feel like the "one line" says a great deal about Biden's ideology regarding the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, particularly when taken in the context of voting history, previous commitments made to future policy, etc.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
There's also the fact that politics doesn't end with electoralism. While he is notoriously onerous about taking criticism, pressuring a nominee or even president Biden on the topic is still a potential avenue for changing policy on the issue.
Whether it is likely is another question, but the avenue does exist.
I think it's not so much "lose their shit when bad Democratic policies or actors are called out" but some combination of:
the hyperbole used to exaggerate the policies (lines like the "Biden thinks Palestinians deserve to die, etc."). The actual policies are bad enough that we don't need to lie or exaggerate.
the regularity that these issues are used to paint the current Democratic candidates of the time as the same as Republicans, when there is a vast gulf between "not great" and "actively trying to destroy people." This is why the exaggeration is so infuriating to a bunch of people. Trump literally has taken steps to help Israel kill Palestinians, Biden's platform just doesn't reverse it as fast as we would like and doesn't hold Israel to account for past actions. That's still bad! But it's not the same thing and painting it as such confuses the actual issues.
the repetition of this topic in this, or other, threads ad nauesum with no real outcome except for Lanz, Styrofoam, and the other folks who are focused on things ought to be in a proper, decent world getting into arguments with Shryke and the folks more focused on what is actually possible with the regemes and political systems we have agency over. Both sides of this discussion end up in the exact same places each time, never agree, but end up arguing until someone gets banned or the mods tell folks to change topic.
I'm gonna add something to this. People can take it or leave it, of course.
One frustration I have in these conversations is how my and others' responses in here are treated as malicious or as a moral failing rather than as a genuine skepticism and people just trying their best to grapple with the vast complexities of social/economic/foreign policy. Things are complicated, policy is hard, there are rarely correct or wrong answers to these things. Immediately after the above post the next two are:
Or the United States is a massively dysfunctional and violent superpower 100 percent of the time, but the Democrats know how to make educated professionals comfortable with that while the GOP just goes and says the quiet part aloud. Some of us just find the Democratic fanboys to be tiresome in their constant attempts to minimize this.
You don’t have to “support” either of them to realize that one is better than the other but still massively shitty compared to most centrist parties in other developed nations.
Biden's platform doesn't reverse it at all, and any assertion that it does, or that he's even interested in doing so, is a faith-based statement with no evidence.
Rationalizing why bad foreign policy is okay (but only in the case of certain people) because that's 'what is possible right now' has literally never led to better foreign policy.
EDIT: I’m also not sympathetic to the argument that Biden is simply reading the political tea leaves and is only taking his racist position because not doing so would lose him too many votes. Customarily on this forum, when one poses skepticism of a politician adopting a popular policy just to garner support, it’s met with the argument of ‘studies show that politicians are actually honest about their platforms and statements’ so I’m not sure why we shouldn’t take that same lesson here. The sad (and I mean that sincerely) truth is that, acknowledging that politics falls on a spectrum and not a binary scale, more Democrats need to have a 'are we the baddies?' moment, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Framing these conversations, or the people opposite of you in the conversation, as some kind of moral failing is legitimately exhausting to argue against and rarely even fruitful or worth arguing against. Once you reach the point where "they're just evil" you've lost any hope of actually having a decent conversation about a topic without facetious shitposting or just unhelpful comments.
I agree with Javen's post there: rationalizing bad foreign policy is not good to do, but trying to understand why people have their policy positions can be instructive and even helpful. And in my mind it's neither instructive nor helpful to say "Biden just wants Palestinians to die" as explanation for his policy position.
And this phenomenon is not just in this thread, but in pretty much every other thread talking about policy or anything remotely controversial. I agree with most of the things people argue for in this and other threads, but I'm not going to post my agreement because if I wanted an opinion circle-jerk I would go on twitter.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
Do we? I have repeatedly said I'm not defending or even accepting Biden's stance on the issue. I have repeatedly said that the purpose of my posts is to try and walk through the reasons why the BDS movement has issues gaining steam. The problem here is that you are literally not reading the words that I am saying and keep "disagreeing" with me when we are not disagreeing.
I am not talking about Biden in my post. I am talking about people in this fucking thread trying to understand the complexities here. You constantly keep reading malice into my words when there is none! I have affirmed many of the critiques people have made about Biden, the democrats, and the Israel\Palestine issue.
Also the fun part of telling everyone to go read the page, and then you start reading his shit about the Iran Nuclear deal and his phrasing adopts a right wing "We have to hold Iran accountable!" as if it wasn't the Trump administration that shat the bed and bailed on the deal, thus meaning the ball for making amends is in America's court.
At some point we need to grapple with the fact that the presumptive nominee of the only viable alternative to the GOP has a right wing foreign policy on a number of issues. It may not be full bore GOP, but there's a lot of foundation there that is going to leave the ground shaky for progress in the future because of where he's planted his flag.
I mean for fuck's sake I literally made a post saying "part of the problem is people are reading malice in each other's posts" and I get responded to by someone reading malice into my words.
I think it's not so much "lose their shit when bad Democratic policies or actors are called out" but some combination of:
the hyperbole used to exaggerate the policies (lines like the "Biden thinks Palestinians deserve to die, etc."). The actual policies are bad enough that we don't need to lie or exaggerate.
the regularity that these issues are used to paint the current Democratic candidates of the time as the same as Republicans, when there is a vast gulf between "not great" and "actively trying to destroy people." This is why the exaggeration is so infuriating to a bunch of people. Trump literally has taken steps to help Israel kill Palestinians, Biden's platform just doesn't reverse it as fast as we would like and doesn't hold Israel to account for past actions. That's still bad! But it's not the same thing and painting it as such confuses the actual issues.
the repetition of this topic in this, or other, threads ad nauesum with no real outcome except for Lanz, Styrofoam, and the other folks who are focused on things ought to be in a proper, decent world getting into arguments with Shryke and the folks more focused on what is actually possible with the regemes and political systems we have agency over. Both sides of this discussion end up in the exact same places each time, never agree, but end up arguing until someone gets banned or the mods tell folks to change topic.
I'm gonna add something to this. People can take it or leave it, of course.
One frustration I have in these conversations is how my and others' responses in here are treated as malicious or as a moral failing rather than as a genuine skepticism and people just trying their best to grapple with the vast complexities of social/economic/foreign policy. Things are complicated, policy is hard, there are rarely correct or wrong answers to these things. Immediately after the above post the next two are:
Or the United States is a massively dysfunctional and violent superpower 100 percent of the time, but the Democrats know how to make educated professionals comfortable with that while the GOP just goes and says the quiet part aloud. Some of us just find the Democratic fanboys to be tiresome in their constant attempts to minimize this.
You don’t have to “support” either of them to realize that one is better than the other but still massively shitty compared to most centrist parties in other developed nations.
Biden's platform doesn't reverse it at all, and any assertion that it does, or that he's even interested in doing so, is a faith-based statement with no evidence.
Rationalizing why bad foreign policy is okay (but only in the case of certain people) because that's 'what is possible right now' has literally never led to better foreign policy.
EDIT: I’m also not sympathetic to the argument that Biden is simply reading the political tea leaves and is only taking his racist position because not doing so would lose him too many votes. Customarily on this forum, when one poses skepticism of a politician adopting a popular policy just to garner support, it’s met with the argument of ‘studies show that politicians are actually honest about their platforms and statements’ so I’m not sure why we shouldn’t take that same lesson here. The sad (and I mean that sincerely) truth is that, acknowledging that politics falls on a spectrum and not a binary scale, more Democrats need to have a 'are we the baddies?' moment, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Framing these conversations, or the people opposite of you in the conversation, as some kind of moral failing is legitimately exhausting to argue against and rarely even fruitful or worth arguing against. Once you reach the point where "they're just evil" you've lost any hope of actually having a decent conversation about a topic without facetious shitposting or just unhelpful comments.
I agree with Javen's post there: rationalizing bad foreign policy is not good to do, but trying to understand why people have their policy positions can be instructive and even helpful. And in my mind it's neither instructive nor helpful to say "Biden just wants Palestinians to die" as explanation for his policy position.
And this phenomenon is not just in this thread, but in pretty much every other thread talking about policy or anything remotely controversial. I agree with most of the things people argue for in this and other threads, but I'm not going to post my agreement because if I wanted an opinion circle-jerk I would go on twitter.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
Do we? I have repeatedly said I'm not defending or even accepting Biden's stance on the issue. I have repeatedly said that the purpose of my posts is to try and walk through the reasons why the BDS movement has issues gaining steam. The problem here is that you are literally not reading the words that I am saying and keep "disagreeing" with me when we are not disagreeing.
I am not talking about Biden in my post. I am talking about people in this fucking thread trying to understand the complexities here. You constantly keep reading malice into my words when there is none! I have affirmed many of the critiques people have made about Biden, the democrats, and the Israel\Palestine issue.
You do realize, even from the original tweet, the emphasized portion was Biden's stance on the Palestinians being "[let] off the hook for their choices" Right?
the aspect of BDS in it is that, in trying to knock the movement, he slips and reveals a deeper anti-Palestinian animus than just "BDS doesn't have popular support."
Your entire effort has been focused on the wrong goddamn part of the sentence. The part of the sentence that has us pissed was even highlighted!
The reason we're all going "holy shit" isn't "Biden doesn't support BDS!" it's "Biden blames the Palestinians for making the wrong choice in how they respond to violent apartheid and thinks anyone complaining is giving them a free pass on those bad choices"
I think it's not so much "lose their shit when bad Democratic policies or actors are called out" but some combination of:
the hyperbole used to exaggerate the policies (lines like the "Biden thinks Palestinians deserve to die, etc."). The actual policies are bad enough that we don't need to lie or exaggerate.
the regularity that these issues are used to paint the current Democratic candidates of the time as the same as Republicans, when there is a vast gulf between "not great" and "actively trying to destroy people." This is why the exaggeration is so infuriating to a bunch of people. Trump literally has taken steps to help Israel kill Palestinians, Biden's platform just doesn't reverse it as fast as we would like and doesn't hold Israel to account for past actions. That's still bad! But it's not the same thing and painting it as such confuses the actual issues.
the repetition of this topic in this, or other, threads ad nauesum with no real outcome except for Lanz, Styrofoam, and the other folks who are focused on things ought to be in a proper, decent world getting into arguments with Shryke and the folks more focused on what is actually possible with the regemes and political systems we have agency over. Both sides of this discussion end up in the exact same places each time, never agree, but end up arguing until someone gets banned or the mods tell folks to change topic.
I'm gonna add something to this. People can take it or leave it, of course.
One frustration I have in these conversations is how my and others' responses in here are treated as malicious or as a moral failing rather than as a genuine skepticism and people just trying their best to grapple with the vast complexities of social/economic/foreign policy. Things are complicated, policy is hard, there are rarely correct or wrong answers to these things. Immediately after the above post the next two are:
Or the United States is a massively dysfunctional and violent superpower 100 percent of the time, but the Democrats know how to make educated professionals comfortable with that while the GOP just goes and says the quiet part aloud. Some of us just find the Democratic fanboys to be tiresome in their constant attempts to minimize this.
You don’t have to “support” either of them to realize that one is better than the other but still massively shitty compared to most centrist parties in other developed nations.
Biden's platform doesn't reverse it at all, and any assertion that it does, or that he's even interested in doing so, is a faith-based statement with no evidence.
Rationalizing why bad foreign policy is okay (but only in the case of certain people) because that's 'what is possible right now' has literally never led to better foreign policy.
EDIT: I’m also not sympathetic to the argument that Biden is simply reading the political tea leaves and is only taking his racist position because not doing so would lose him too many votes. Customarily on this forum, when one poses skepticism of a politician adopting a popular policy just to garner support, it’s met with the argument of ‘studies show that politicians are actually honest about their platforms and statements’ so I’m not sure why we shouldn’t take that same lesson here. The sad (and I mean that sincerely) truth is that, acknowledging that politics falls on a spectrum and not a binary scale, more Democrats need to have a 'are we the baddies?' moment, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Framing these conversations, or the people opposite of you in the conversation, as some kind of moral failing is legitimately exhausting to argue against and rarely even fruitful or worth arguing against. Once you reach the point where "they're just evil" you've lost any hope of actually having a decent conversation about a topic without facetious shitposting or just unhelpful comments.
I agree with Javen's post there: rationalizing bad foreign policy is not good to do, but trying to understand why people have their policy positions can be instructive and even helpful. And in my mind it's neither instructive nor helpful to say "Biden just wants Palestinians to die" as explanation for his policy position.
And this phenomenon is not just in this thread, but in pretty much every other thread talking about policy or anything remotely controversial. I agree with most of the things people argue for in this and other threads, but I'm not going to post my agreement because if I wanted an opinion circle-jerk I would go on twitter.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
Do we? I have repeatedly said I'm not defending or even accepting Biden's stance on the issue. I have repeatedly said that the purpose of my posts is to try and walk through the reasons why the BDS movement has issues gaining steam. The problem here is that you are literally not reading the words that I am saying and keep "disagreeing" with me when we are not disagreeing.
I am not talking about Biden in my post. I am talking about people in this fucking thread trying to understand the complexities here. You constantly keep reading malice into my words when there is none! I have affirmed many of the critiques people have made about Biden, the democrats, and the Israel\Palestine issue.
You do realize, even from the original tweet, the emphasized portion was Biden's stance on the Palestinians being "[let] off the hook for their choices" Right?
the aspect of BDS in it is that, in trying to knock the movement, he slips and reveals a deeper anti-Palestinian animus than just "BDS doesn't have popular support."
Your entire effort has been focused on the wrong goddamn part of the sentence. The part of the sentence that has us pissed was even highlighted!
I didn't realize we had to have the same exact fucking takeaway from something you posted. I thought we could talk about US foreign policy in this thread not "what Lanz is angry about from twitter". Yeah dude, I realized a while back we weren't talking about the same thing which is why I keep repeating the thing I'm talking about because for some reason you keep getting increasingly angry with my posts and reading malice/disagreement where there literally is none because we are not talking about the same thing.
Maybe, Oghulk, if you want someone to take a more charitable view of your position in a conversation you shouldn't at multiple points respond to it going
Also it’s hard to sell people on a thing when you’re not actually interesting in selling it as a literal major political figure
It is utterly demoralizing the extent to which critiques of Democrats and their foreign policy positions is met with this fatalistic attitude that sums up as “what can you do, the populace will never go for it/don’t care,” when part of the goddamn point of being a lower case r republican politician is to BE a political leader instead of just this sort of vague political weathervane tied to the whims of a disinterest and mercurial public that just magically happens to point in the direction of established power structures that are hurting the oppressed and marginalized, devoid of any internally motivating ideology or history of external praxis.
I mean, it's not necessarily fatalistic to recognize that people broadly don't care as much as you or I do. I met shit, I don't really care that much about the issue. Israel/Palestine is one of those thorny things that doesn't seem solvable to me as it currently stands.
Because of those two statements, I haven't assumed you're being malicious. I just took you at face value that you don't care.
Maybe, Oghulk, if you want someone to take a more charitable view of your position in a conversation you shouldn't at multiple points respond to it going
Also it’s hard to sell people on a thing when you’re not actually interesting in selling it as a literal major political figure
It is utterly demoralizing the extent to which critiques of Democrats and their foreign policy positions is met with this fatalistic attitude that sums up as “what can you do, the populace will never go for it/don’t care,” when part of the goddamn point of being a lower case r republican politician is to BE a political leader instead of just this sort of vague political weathervane tied to the whims of a disinterest and mercurial public that just magically happens to point in the direction of established power structures that are hurting the oppressed and marginalized, devoid of any internally motivating ideology or history of external praxis.
I mean, it's not necessarily fatalistic to recognize that people broadly don't care as much as you or I do. I met shit, I don't really care that much about the issue. Israel/Palestine is one of those thorny things that doesn't seem solvable to me as it currently stands.
Because of those two statements, I haven't assumed you're being malicious. I just took you at face value that you don't care.
Nice of you to completely ignore the post between those two where I actually started to engage in the conversation. Maybe actually go read what you quote you complete fucking goose.
I think it's not so much "lose their shit when bad Democratic policies or actors are called out" but some combination of:
the hyperbole used to exaggerate the policies (lines like the "Biden thinks Palestinians deserve to die, etc."). The actual policies are bad enough that we don't need to lie or exaggerate.
the regularity that these issues are used to paint the current Democratic candidates of the time as the same as Republicans, when there is a vast gulf between "not great" and "actively trying to destroy people." This is why the exaggeration is so infuriating to a bunch of people. Trump literally has taken steps to help Israel kill Palestinians, Biden's platform just doesn't reverse it as fast as we would like and doesn't hold Israel to account for past actions. That's still bad! But it's not the same thing and painting it as such confuses the actual issues.
the repetition of this topic in this, or other, threads ad nauesum with no real outcome except for Lanz, Styrofoam, and the other folks who are focused on things ought to be in a proper, decent world getting into arguments with Shryke and the folks more focused on what is actually possible with the regemes and political systems we have agency over. Both sides of this discussion end up in the exact same places each time, never agree, but end up arguing until someone gets banned or the mods tell folks to change topic.
I'm gonna add something to this. People can take it or leave it, of course.
One frustration I have in these conversations is how my and others' responses in here are treated as malicious or as a moral failing rather than as a genuine skepticism and people just trying their best to grapple with the vast complexities of social/economic/foreign policy. Things are complicated, policy is hard, there are rarely correct or wrong answers to these things. Immediately after the above post the next two are:
Or the United States is a massively dysfunctional and violent superpower 100 percent of the time, but the Democrats know how to make educated professionals comfortable with that while the GOP just goes and says the quiet part aloud. Some of us just find the Democratic fanboys to be tiresome in their constant attempts to minimize this.
You don’t have to “support” either of them to realize that one is better than the other but still massively shitty compared to most centrist parties in other developed nations.
Biden's platform doesn't reverse it at all, and any assertion that it does, or that he's even interested in doing so, is a faith-based statement with no evidence.
Rationalizing why bad foreign policy is okay (but only in the case of certain people) because that's 'what is possible right now' has literally never led to better foreign policy.
EDIT: I’m also not sympathetic to the argument that Biden is simply reading the political tea leaves and is only taking his racist position because not doing so would lose him too many votes. Customarily on this forum, when one poses skepticism of a politician adopting a popular policy just to garner support, it’s met with the argument of ‘studies show that politicians are actually honest about their platforms and statements’ so I’m not sure why we shouldn’t take that same lesson here. The sad (and I mean that sincerely) truth is that, acknowledging that politics falls on a spectrum and not a binary scale, more Democrats need to have a 'are we the baddies?' moment, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Framing these conversations, or the people opposite of you in the conversation, as some kind of moral failing is legitimately exhausting to argue against and rarely even fruitful or worth arguing against. Once you reach the point where "they're just evil" you've lost any hope of actually having a decent conversation about a topic without facetious shitposting or just unhelpful comments.
I agree with Javen's post there: rationalizing bad foreign policy is not good to do, but trying to understand why people have their policy positions can be instructive and even helpful. And in my mind it's neither instructive nor helpful to say "Biden just wants Palestinians to die" as explanation for his policy position.
And this phenomenon is not just in this thread, but in pretty much every other thread talking about policy or anything remotely controversial. I agree with most of the things people argue for in this and other threads, but I'm not going to post my agreement because if I wanted an opinion circle-jerk I would go on twitter.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
Do we? I have repeatedly said I'm not defending or even accepting Biden's stance on the issue. I have repeatedly said that the purpose of my posts is to try and walk through the reasons why the BDS movement has issues gaining steam. The problem here is that you are literally not reading the words that I am saying and keep "disagreeing" with me when we are not disagreeing.
I am not talking about Biden in my post. I am talking about people in this fucking thread trying to understand the complexities here. You constantly keep reading malice into my words when there is none! I have affirmed many of the critiques people have made about Biden, the democrats, and the Israel\Palestine issue.
You do realize, even from the original tweet, the emphasized portion was Biden's stance on the Palestinians being "[let] off the hook for their choices" Right?
the aspect of BDS in it is that, in trying to knock the movement, he slips and reveals a deeper anti-Palestinian animus than just "BDS doesn't have popular support."
Your entire effort has been focused on the wrong goddamn part of the sentence. The part of the sentence that has us pissed was even highlighted!
I didn't realize we had to have the same exact fucking takeaway from something you posted. I thought we could talk about US foreign policy in this thread not "what Lanz is angry about from twitter". Yeah dude, I realized a while back we weren't talking about the same thing which is why I keep repeating the thing I'm talking about because for some reason you keep getting increasingly angry with my posts and reading malice/disagreement where there literally is none because we are not talking about the same thing.
Maybe don't try to boil this down to "Twitter rage" when what I'm pissed about is one of our most prominent political figures blaming the Palestinian people for making "bad choices" under an apartheid state that is killing them.
It's easy to ignore my points when all you do is keep trying to fall back to blaming a culture of futile twitter anger instead of actually meaningfully engaging with the thing that is actually the shit I care about.
I think it's not so much "lose their shit when bad Democratic policies or actors are called out" but some combination of:
the hyperbole used to exaggerate the policies (lines like the "Biden thinks Palestinians deserve to die, etc."). The actual policies are bad enough that we don't need to lie or exaggerate.
the regularity that these issues are used to paint the current Democratic candidates of the time as the same as Republicans, when there is a vast gulf between "not great" and "actively trying to destroy people." This is why the exaggeration is so infuriating to a bunch of people. Trump literally has taken steps to help Israel kill Palestinians, Biden's platform just doesn't reverse it as fast as we would like and doesn't hold Israel to account for past actions. That's still bad! But it's not the same thing and painting it as such confuses the actual issues.
the repetition of this topic in this, or other, threads ad nauesum with no real outcome except for Lanz, Styrofoam, and the other folks who are focused on things ought to be in a proper, decent world getting into arguments with Shryke and the folks more focused on what is actually possible with the regemes and political systems we have agency over. Both sides of this discussion end up in the exact same places each time, never agree, but end up arguing until someone gets banned or the mods tell folks to change topic.
I'm gonna add something to this. People can take it or leave it, of course.
One frustration I have in these conversations is how my and others' responses in here are treated as malicious or as a moral failing rather than as a genuine skepticism and people just trying their best to grapple with the vast complexities of social/economic/foreign policy. Things are complicated, policy is hard, there are rarely correct or wrong answers to these things. Immediately after the above post the next two are:
Or the United States is a massively dysfunctional and violent superpower 100 percent of the time, but the Democrats know how to make educated professionals comfortable with that while the GOP just goes and says the quiet part aloud. Some of us just find the Democratic fanboys to be tiresome in their constant attempts to minimize this.
You don’t have to “support” either of them to realize that one is better than the other but still massively shitty compared to most centrist parties in other developed nations.
Biden's platform doesn't reverse it at all, and any assertion that it does, or that he's even interested in doing so, is a faith-based statement with no evidence.
Rationalizing why bad foreign policy is okay (but only in the case of certain people) because that's 'what is possible right now' has literally never led to better foreign policy.
EDIT: I’m also not sympathetic to the argument that Biden is simply reading the political tea leaves and is only taking his racist position because not doing so would lose him too many votes. Customarily on this forum, when one poses skepticism of a politician adopting a popular policy just to garner support, it’s met with the argument of ‘studies show that politicians are actually honest about their platforms and statements’ so I’m not sure why we shouldn’t take that same lesson here. The sad (and I mean that sincerely) truth is that, acknowledging that politics falls on a spectrum and not a binary scale, more Democrats need to have a 'are we the baddies?' moment, especially when it comes to foreign policy.
Framing these conversations, or the people opposite of you in the conversation, as some kind of moral failing is legitimately exhausting to argue against and rarely even fruitful or worth arguing against. Once you reach the point where "they're just evil" you've lost any hope of actually having a decent conversation about a topic without facetious shitposting or just unhelpful comments.
I agree with Javen's post there: rationalizing bad foreign policy is not good to do, but trying to understand why people have their policy positions can be instructive and even helpful. And in my mind it's neither instructive nor helpful to say "Biden just wants Palestinians to die" as explanation for his policy position.
And this phenomenon is not just in this thread, but in pretty much every other thread talking about policy or anything remotely controversial. I agree with most of the things people argue for in this and other threads, but I'm not going to post my agreement because if I wanted an opinion circle-jerk I would go on twitter.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
Do we? I have repeatedly said I'm not defending or even accepting Biden's stance on the issue. I have repeatedly said that the purpose of my posts is to try and walk through the reasons why the BDS movement has issues gaining steam. The problem here is that you are literally not reading the words that I am saying and keep "disagreeing" with me when we are not disagreeing.
I am not talking about Biden in my post. I am talking about people in this fucking thread trying to understand the complexities here. You constantly keep reading malice into my words when there is none! I have affirmed many of the critiques people have made about Biden, the democrats, and the Israel\Palestine issue.
You do realize, even from the original tweet, the emphasized portion was Biden's stance on the Palestinians being "[let] off the hook for their choices" Right?
the aspect of BDS in it is that, in trying to knock the movement, he slips and reveals a deeper anti-Palestinian animus than just "BDS doesn't have popular support."
Your entire effort has been focused on the wrong goddamn part of the sentence. The part of the sentence that has us pissed was even highlighted!
I didn't realize we had to have the same exact fucking takeaway from something you posted. I thought we could talk about US foreign policy in this thread not "what Lanz is angry about from twitter". Yeah dude, I realized a while back we weren't talking about the same thing which is why I keep repeating the thing I'm talking about because for some reason you keep getting increasingly angry with my posts and reading malice/disagreement where there literally is none because we are not talking about the same thing.
Maybe don't try to boil this down to "Twitter rage" when what I'm pissed about is one of our most prominent political figures blaming the Palestinian people for making "bad choices" under an apartheid state that is killing them.
It's easy to ignore my points when all you do is keep trying to fall back to blaming a culture of futile twitter anger instead of actually meaningfully engaging with the thing that is actually the shit I care about.
Here I'll quote the part of the conversation I was actively engaged in
It continues to be the common consensus because the liberal party chooses to engage in rampant islamophobia and its supporters choose to ignore it.
The liberal party engages in rampant Islamophobia by...electing the first two muslim women to ever serve in the house?
I think things are changing, but the BDS movement just doesn't have the political power yet to actually make a significant change. Maybe it will in a few more years, maybe it won't, but it needs to generate more political power to accomplish anything.
I think part of the problem with anything foreign policy, especially activists changing foreign policy, is that its a thing that happens in far away places to other people. And that's hard to sell people on.
I remember. I was there. I pointed out their local house constituency voted them in and not the party apparatus, which was more than happy to throw Ilan Omar under the bus when she critiqued AIPAC's lobbying efforts and their effect on the policy of said party apparatus. I also advocated we divorce the apparatus from the constituency in our understanding of "The Party" in situations like these because the two are not the same and the conflation of the two elides systemic issues of islamophobia still present in the party apparatus that does not transfer to constituents electing muslim women, but still has the power to harm those elected women when they try to advocate for policies that affect Muslims, Palestinians and other groups who suffer under Islamophobia around the world in part because of US foreign policy.
And again we're goddamn back to this stupid godforsaken meta argument about how the argument flowed because it seems actually talking about the actual issue at hand (Biden's repeated animus towards the Palestinian people suffering under and apartheid state) is seemingly too uncomfortable to actually confront for the thread.
The more people repeat one line the more it looks like said people have not actually read the page on Biden's website it is from and are basing their position here on a cropped screencap from a tweet. There's no context to the actual issue, just repetition of a talking point.
If your question is "What is Biden gonna do?", go read his website. It's right there as I mentioned before. And it's a lot more then what the outrage take from twitter shows, shockingly.
Or maybe we actually feel like the "one line" says a great deal about Biden's ideology regarding the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, particularly when taken in the context of voting history, previous commitments made to future policy, etc.
Or you could read the whole page (pages technically) and note that there's a bunch of other stuff there specifically about this issue.
Like:
As President, Joe will actively engage Israelis and Palestinians alike to help them find ways to live together in peace, freedom, security, and prosperity and to champion a two-state solution. He will continue to oppose Israeli settlement expansion and has spoken out against annexation in the West Bank. He will reopen the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, and restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.
-Work with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, and support peacebuilding efforts in the region. Biden will urge Israel and the Palestinian Authority to take steps to keep the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive and take no actions to undercut future direct negotiations between the parties.
-Reverse the Trump Administration’s destructive cutoff of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and cancellation of assistance programs that support Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, economic development, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with the requirements of the Taylor Force Act to withhold certain assistance to the PA unless it is taking measures to end acts of violence against Israeli and U.S. citizens, including terminating payments to individuals engaged in acts of terrorism.
But that doesn't fit in with the narrative the tweet that started this all wants to generate.
Also the fun part of telling everyone to go read the page, and then you start reading his shit about the Iran Nuclear deal and his phrasing adopts a right wing "We have to hold Iran accountable!" as if it wasn't the Trump administration that shat the bed and bailed on the deal, thus meaning the ball for making amends is in America's court.
At some point we need to grapple with the fact that the presumptive nominee of the only viable alternative to the GOP has a right wing foreign policy on a number of issues. It may not be full bore GOP, but there's a lot of foundation there that is going to leave the ground shaky for progress in the future because of where he's planted his flag.
"We need to hold Iran accountable" is not right wing. That's literally the point of the Iran deal. At it's most basic it's a deal to stop the crippling sanctions in return for Iran allowing observers access to their facilities in order to verify they are complying with the terms of the deal (ie - hold them accountable for their end of the bargain). This is in fact one of the frequently pointed out problems with Trump and the Republicans' stance on the deal: that their alternative actually makes Iran less accountable to the international community wrt their nuclear program.
On top of which this is again selective quoting used to make it sound worse.
Hold Iran accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement to prevent a nuclear armed Iran, if Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA, using renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal, and push back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions.
"rejoin a diplomatic agreement"? "renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies"? That kind of language is straight out of the right-wing playbook I'm sure.
Regarding Biden it is no surprise that he supports Israel. He has an election to win and it is VERY easy to paint someone with a pro-Palestine position as being anti-Israel and then a short media leap to being antisemitic. Which will cost you votes.
The US has conflated anti-Israely positions with antisemitism for generations.
Also keep in mind that the US has in the past done what Israel is doing and worse
We aren't reimbursing Native Americans for the suffering we caused them or their ancestors.
The more people repeat one line the more it looks like said people have not actually read the page on Biden's website it is from and are basing their position here on a cropped screencap from a tweet. There's no context to the actual issue, just repetition of a talking point.
If your question is "What is Biden gonna do?", go read his website. It's right there as I mentioned before. And it's a lot more then what the outrage take from twitter shows, shockingly.
Or maybe we actually feel like the "one line" says a great deal about Biden's ideology regarding the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, particularly when taken in the context of voting history, previous commitments made to future policy, etc.
Or you could read the whole page (pages technically) and note that there's a bunch of other stuff there specifically about this issue.
Like:
As President, Joe will actively engage Israelis and Palestinians alike to help them find ways to live together in peace, freedom, security, and prosperity and to champion a two-state solution. He will continue to oppose Israeli settlement expansion and has spoken out against annexation in the West Bank. He will reopen the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, and restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.
-Work with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, and support peacebuilding efforts in the region. Biden will urge Israel and the Palestinian Authority to take steps to keep the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive and take no actions to undercut future direct negotiations between the parties.
-Reverse the Trump Administration’s destructive cutoff of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and cancellation of assistance programs that support Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, economic development, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with the requirements of the Taylor Force Act to withhold certain assistance to the PA unless it is taking measures to end acts of violence against Israeli and U.S. citizens, including terminating payments to individuals engaged in acts of terrorism.
But that doesn't fit in with the narrative the tweet that started this all wants to generate.
Also the fun part of telling everyone to go read the page, and then you start reading his shit about the Iran Nuclear deal and his phrasing adopts a right wing "We have to hold Iran accountable!" as if it wasn't the Trump administration that shat the bed and bailed on the deal, thus meaning the ball for making amends is in America's court.
At some point we need to grapple with the fact that the presumptive nominee of the only viable alternative to the GOP has a right wing foreign policy on a number of issues. It may not be full bore GOP, but there's a lot of foundation there that is going to leave the ground shaky for progress in the future because of where he's planted his flag.
"We need to hold Iran accountable" is not right wing. That's literally the point of the Iran deal. At it's most basic it's a deal to stop the crippling sanctions in return for Iran allowing observers access to their facilities in order to verify they are complying with the terms of the deal (ie - hold them accountable for their end of the bargain). This is in fact one of the frequently pointed out problems with Trump and the Republicans' stance on the deal: that their alternative actually makes Iran less accountable to the international community wrt their nuclear program.
On top of which this is again selective quoting used to make it sound worse.
Hold Iran accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement to prevent a nuclear armed Iran, if Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA, using renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal, and push back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions.
"rejoin a diplomatic agreement"? "renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies"? That kind of language is straight out of the right-wing playbook I'm sure.
1) Why should anyone trust Biden on those claims when he positions himself as believing that the Palestinians are not being held to account by their advocates for making "bad choices" in how they respond to the Apartheid? When he votes to move our embassy to Jerusalem while in the legislature, a move that is de facto legitimizes the Israeli rights claims to sole legitimacy to Jerusalem, and then refuses to move it back to Tel Aviv, as other nations have maintained their embassies there, after Donald Trump moves the embassy to Jerusalem? What reason is there to believe any of that is anything more than ass covering and bluster to seem reasonable while the US does nothing to end the Apartheid and repeatedly enables it through defending human rights abuses on the international stage through venues like the UN or through arms sales to the Israeli military, which are ultimately turned against those suffering under apartheid?
2) So far, yeah, I would say it is. Iran was being accountable throughout the deal. We are the nation that ceased to be accountable because we refuse to behave responsibly towards Iran because of the hostage crisis, after literally enabling a monarchistic coup to depose their democratically elected government and re-empower the Shah. While Iran is not without its issues, at multiple junctures of US/Iranian foreign policy history, we are the major destabilizing force that has charted the path we're now on and subsequently refuse to acknowledge it.
Likewise, presuming it as Iran's responsibility to rejoin the deal serves ultimately to put the onus on them to make amends for America's actions.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
Gay marriage is actually a very good example of how public pressure changed the political landscape on an issue. There was a long period of steadily rising support before it finally got the Democratic party to move it's position. Conversely we can look at public views on the US-Israel issue and we don't see that same kind of change. Which is why you still get the kind of positions you do on the issue from Democratic party politicians. Opposite public reactions to attempts to change views on these issues led, as you'd expect, to opposite results by political actors.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
Gay marriage is actually a very good example of how public pressure changed the political landscape on an issue. There was a long period of steadily rising support before it finally got the Democratic party to move it's position. Conversely we can look at public views on the US-Israel issue and we don't see that same kind of change. Which is why you still get the kind of positions you do on the issue from Democratic party politicians. Opposite public reactions to attempts to change views on these issues led, as you'd expect, to opposite results by political actors.
We are well aware Shryke that the party is lower-case c conservative.
Multiple people here would argue that is a problem from the perspective of social justice that we have to drag the party kicking and screaming to support human rights, through avenues which are increasingly being cut off thanks to GOP capture of the courts which were foundational to changing these issues thanks to the abdication of the legislature in making positive social progress.
This has marked problems for global human rights causes which could be influenced by effective foreign policy positions when that attitude is carried into a field where activist work has even more singificant barriers to overcome to succeed, including in situations where the governments they have to appeal to are apartheid ethnostates (Israel and the Palestinians) or dictatorships (China and dissidents in the mainland, the Uighurs and Hong Kong).
The more people repeat one line the more it looks like said people have not actually read the page on Biden's website it is from and are basing their position here on a cropped screencap from a tweet. There's no context to the actual issue, just repetition of a talking point.
If your question is "What is Biden gonna do?", go read his website. It's right there as I mentioned before. And it's a lot more then what the outrage take from twitter shows, shockingly.
Or maybe we actually feel like the "one line" says a great deal about Biden's ideology regarding the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, particularly when taken in the context of voting history, previous commitments made to future policy, etc.
Or you could read the whole page (pages technically) and note that there's a bunch of other stuff there specifically about this issue.
Like:
As President, Joe will actively engage Israelis and Palestinians alike to help them find ways to live together in peace, freedom, security, and prosperity and to champion a two-state solution. He will continue to oppose Israeli settlement expansion and has spoken out against annexation in the West Bank. He will reopen the U.S. Consulate in East Jerusalem, and restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians.
-Work with the Israeli and Palestinian leadership, and support peacebuilding efforts in the region. Biden will urge Israel and the Palestinian Authority to take steps to keep the prospect of a negotiated two-state outcome alive and take no actions to undercut future direct negotiations between the parties.
-Reverse the Trump Administration’s destructive cutoff of diplomatic ties with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and cancellation of assistance programs that support Israeli-Palestinian security cooperation, economic development, and humanitarian aid for the Palestinian people in the West Bank and Gaza, consistent with the requirements of the Taylor Force Act to withhold certain assistance to the PA unless it is taking measures to end acts of violence against Israeli and U.S. citizens, including terminating payments to individuals engaged in acts of terrorism.
But that doesn't fit in with the narrative the tweet that started this all wants to generate.
Also the fun part of telling everyone to go read the page, and then you start reading his shit about the Iran Nuclear deal and his phrasing adopts a right wing "We have to hold Iran accountable!" as if it wasn't the Trump administration that shat the bed and bailed on the deal, thus meaning the ball for making amends is in America's court.
At some point we need to grapple with the fact that the presumptive nominee of the only viable alternative to the GOP has a right wing foreign policy on a number of issues. It may not be full bore GOP, but there's a lot of foundation there that is going to leave the ground shaky for progress in the future because of where he's planted his flag.
"We need to hold Iran accountable" is not right wing. That's literally the point of the Iran deal. At it's most basic it's a deal to stop the crippling sanctions in return for Iran allowing observers access to their facilities in order to verify they are complying with the terms of the deal (ie - hold them accountable for their end of the bargain). This is in fact one of the frequently pointed out problems with Trump and the Republicans' stance on the deal: that their alternative actually makes Iran less accountable to the international community wrt their nuclear program.
On top of which this is again selective quoting used to make it sound worse.
Hold Iran accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement to prevent a nuclear armed Iran, if Iran returns to compliance with the JCPOA, using renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies to strengthen and extend the Iran deal, and push back against Iran’s other destabilizing actions.
"rejoin a diplomatic agreement"? "renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies"? That kind of language is straight out of the right-wing playbook I'm sure.
1) Why should anyone trust Biden on those claims when he positions himself as believing that the Palestinians are not being held to account by their advocates for making "bad choices" in how they respond to the Apartheid? When he votes to move our embassy to Jerusalem while in the legislature, a move that is de facto legitimizes the Israeli rights claims to sole legitimacy to Jerusalem, and then refuses to move it back to Tel Aviv, as other nations have maintained their embassies there, after Donald Trump moves the embassy to Jerusalem? What reason is there to believe any of that is anything more than ass covering and bluster to seem reasonable while the US does nothing to end the Apartheid and repeatedly enables it through defending human rights abuses on the international stage through venues like the UN or through arms sales to the Israeli military, which are ultimately turned against those suffering under apartheid?
2) So far, yeah, I would say it is. Iran was being accountable throughout the deal. We are the nation that ceased to be accountable because we refuse to behave responsibly towards Iran because of the hostage crisis, after literally enabling a monarchistic coup to depose their democratically elected government and re-empower the Shah. While Iran is not without its issues, at multiple junctures of US/Iranian foreign policy history, we are the major destabilizing force that has charted the path we're now on and subsequently refuse to acknowledge it.
Likewise, presuming it as Iran's responsibility to rejoin the deal serves ultimately to put the onus on them to make amends for America's actions.
Your position here is literally to selectively believe Biden's own campaign material. This part is obviously an indicator of his true beliefs, this part is obviously just lies. Conveniently selected to support the narrative this began with.
But the truth is that, regardless of whether you agree with the position, there's nothing inconsistent between the positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict I posted above and the anti-BDS stuff later.
ie -
Firmly reject the BDS movement, which singles out Israel — home to millions of Jews — and too often veers into anti-Semitism, while letting Palestinians off the hook for their choices.
And your Iran comments don't even make sense. The specific language used is "Hold Iran accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement". He's literally saying the US needs to rejoin the agreement. He's talking about what the US should do.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
Please correct me if this is wrong, but my understanding from discussions and perspectives offered in previous threads, is that shryke is of the belief that politics is a team sport and that supporting your team takes precedence over ideologies, morals, ethics, or any other beliefs so long as your team is incrementally better than the other team. When you put the arguments being put forth in this context, it helps understand where shryke is coming from on this and other matters. This also seems to be a large part as to why the argument tends to fall back to supporting the status quo and not taking political risks that might go against public opinion.
"Any decision impinging on Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory," Pompeo said in a statement Friday.
The controversial national security law, which is expected to ban sedition, secession and subversion of the central government in Beijing, is set to be introduced at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber stamp parliament.
Vincent Lee is Reuters' China Breaking News Editor:
If only the Chinese government feared this President. But they don't. They might accept that Trump will possibly engage in military action (because he's a petulant child), but I think they might actually welcome that.
But concerns that he might be able to use economic or diplomatic pressure, gaining the coalition needed for that to actually have an impact? Yeah, Trump spent three years pissing that away.
And that's assuming they don't have substantial kompromat on Trump (not directly, like Putin, but gathered by MSS, or possibly given by North Korea), which would be almost a given by now, that'll curtail any significant threat from the President. Because looking weak is Trump's greatest fear.
Pompeo's just bleating out threats because what else is he going to do? It's clear he's only barely more qualified to be SecState than Trump is to be President.
I'm conflicted about this. I think it's right for the current administration to attack China over this (and many other things really), but because they're a bunch of child sycophants it's hard to believe they would move forward on it. Given Biden's current campaigning strategy of attacking Trump for bowing down to China on a lot of things, it seems like a Biden administration might actually take the Chinese to task, which I would welcome because they deserve it. BUT, it also heightens the risk of a military fuck-up, which I don't want.
My real concern is whether or not trump is doing this out of actual concern for the well being of hong kong or simply because he needs a boogey man to rally the country against.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
Please correct me if this is wrong, but my understanding from discussions and perspectives offered in previous threads, is that shryke is of the belief that politics is a team sport and that supporting your team takes precedence over ideologies, morals, ethics, or any other beliefs so long as your team is incrementally better than the other team. When you put the arguments being put forth in this context, it helps understand where shryke is coming from on this and other matters. This also seems to be a large part as to why the argument tends to fall back to supporting the status quo and not taking political risks that might go against public opinion.
whereas, in my case (in short), my understanding is that Politics is the execution of material interests by its actors and that often times the dominant political wisdom is a cover for obfuscating those interests by said actors, using a sleight of hand of the complexity of these issues to disguise the lack of interest or opposing motivation to remedying the problems these issues may have.
Thus, that ideologies, ethics, beliefs, etc.are foundational to understanding and solving the problems at hand, as is understanding the material interests that give rise to these philosophies.
At it's core, Shryke and I (as our interactions have demonstrated over and over) tend to be diametrically opposed regarding how we read a situation and what our thoughts on how to handle them will be.
"Any decision impinging on Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory," Pompeo said in a statement Friday.
The controversial national security law, which is expected to ban sedition, secession and subversion of the central government in Beijing, is set to be introduced at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber stamp parliament.
Vincent Lee is Reuters' China Breaking News Editor:
If only the Chinese government feared this President. But they don't. They might accept that Trump will possibly engage in military action (because he's a petulant child), but I think they might actually welcome that.
But concerns that he might be able to use economic or diplomatic pressure, gaining the coalition needed for that to actually have an impact? Yeah, Trump spent three years pissing that away.
And that's assuming they don't have substantial kompromat on Trump (not directly, like Putin, but gathered by MSS, or possibly given by North Korea), which would be almost a given by now, that'll curtail any significant threat from the President. Because looking weak is Trump's greatest fear.
Pompeo's just bleating out threats because what else is he going to do? It's clear he's only barely more qualified to be SecState than Trump is to be President.
I'm conflicted about this. I think it's right for the current administration to attack China over this (and many other things really), but because they're a bunch of child sycophants it's hard to believe they would move forward on it. Given Biden's current campaigning strategy of attacking Trump for bowing down to China on a lot of things, it seems like a Biden administration might actually take the Chinese to task, which I would welcome because they deserve it. BUT, it also heightens the risk of a military fuck-up, which I don't want.
My real concern is whether or not trump is doing this out of actual concern for the well being of hong kong or simply because he needs a boogey man to rally the country against.
Given his history of praising Xi for his various strongman tactics, including assuming the office for life, as well as Trump's generally demonstrated disregard for anyone's well being other than his own, I'm gonna say.... Boogeyman.
I have to say I'm pretty bewildered by your position here, shryke. It seems to stem from popular->good, and against Biden policy->do not vote for Biden, both of which seem pretty flawed.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
Gay marriage is actually a very good example of how public pressure changed the political landscape on an issue. There was a long period of steadily rising support before it finally got the Democratic party to move it's position. Conversely we can look at public views on the US-Israel issue and we don't see that same kind of change. Which is why you still get the kind of positions you do on the issue from Democratic party politicians. Opposite public reactions to attempts to change views on these issues led, as you'd expect, to opposite results by political actors.
We are well aware Shryke that the party is lower-case c conservative.
Multiple people here would argue that is a problem from the perspective of social justice that we have to drag the party kicking and screaming to support human rights, through avenues which are increasingly being cut off thanks to GOP capture of the courts which were foundational to changing these issues thanks to the abdication of the legislature in making positive social progress.
This has marked problems for global human rights causes which could be influenced by effective foreign policy positions when that attitude is carried into a field where activist work has even more singificant barriers to overcome to succeed, including in situations where the governments they have to appeal to are apartheid ethnostates (Israel and the Palestinians) or dictatorships (China and dissidents in the mainland, the Uighurs and Hong Kong).
It's nice to hope for but the inability to garner public support for a fundamental shift in the US-Israel relationship is going to continually hamper the ability to change that position. The US is still a democracy and public support is still a large influence on the political process.
Like, as another example that I think is illustrative of the forces at work here, you think Obama liked taking Netenyahu's shit? Do you really think a lot of Democratic politicians and political operatives weren't pissed about that? And yet, there's not much they can do about it because there isn't backing public pressure for it. So they just had to take it.
"Any decision impinging on Hong Kong's autonomy and freedoms as guaranteed under the Sino-British Joint Declaration and the Basic Law would inevitably impact our assessment of One Country, Two Systems and the status of the territory," Pompeo said in a statement Friday.
The controversial national security law, which is expected to ban sedition, secession and subversion of the central government in Beijing, is set to be introduced at the annual meeting of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's rubber stamp parliament.
Vincent Lee is Reuters' China Breaking News Editor:
If only the Chinese government feared this President. But they don't. They might accept that Trump will possibly engage in military action (because he's a petulant child), but I think they might actually welcome that.
But concerns that he might be able to use economic or diplomatic pressure, gaining the coalition needed for that to actually have an impact? Yeah, Trump spent three years pissing that away.
And that's assuming they don't have substantial kompromat on Trump (not directly, like Putin, but gathered by MSS, or possibly given by North Korea), which would be almost a given by now, that'll curtail any significant threat from the President. Because looking weak is Trump's greatest fear.
Pompeo's just bleating out threats because what else is he going to do? It's clear he's only barely more qualified to be SecState than Trump is to be President.
I'm conflicted about this. I think it's right for the current administration to attack China over this (and many other things really), but because they're a bunch of child sycophants it's hard to believe they would move forward on it. Given Biden's current campaigning strategy of attacking Trump for bowing down to China on a lot of things, it seems like a Biden administration might actually take the Chinese to task, which I would welcome because they deserve it. BUT, it also heightens the risk of a military fuck-up, which I don't want.
My real concern is whether or not trump is doing this out of actual concern for the well being of hong kong or simply because he needs a boogey man to rally the country against.
Given his history of praising Xi for his various strongman tactics, including assuming the office for life, as well as Trump's generally demonstrated disregard for anyone's well being other than his own, I'm gonna say.... Boogeyman.
It's always amazing to me how trump simultaneously adores Xi but hates China since one is naturally an extension of the other.
The main issue is that politicians in the states can generally not even bring themselves to say such as ‘shooting protestors is unacceptable’
Biden opposes annexation; okay, great. What’s he willing to do about it? Fucking nothing, that’s what
"Willing to do" and "Can actually do" are two different things here. With what Netanyahu has been up to for over a decade now, we've seen the limits of what even the President can accomplish wrt the US-Israeli relationship.
a presidential candidate could say (for example) that future military aid will require a cessation of israeli expansion; they are our ally and we will defend them, but that commitment does not extend to seizing additional contested territory.
but instead what he'll do is oppose annexation, then in practically in the same breath say that he won't put any preconditions on military aid. The same guy who four years ago was saying we had an obligation to do whatever we can to push israel to stop its expansion is now tacitly endorsing it.
I mean shit, Joe, Netanyahu came to congress and practically took a dump on the floor; what's it gonna take to stiffen you up on this?
...
I don't think we will get better policy on this topic until we start demanding that politicians actually take better positions; democratic candidates love to do this thing where they signal to their base that they want to restrain israel, then get into office and ehhhh status quo (I give some credit to obama for being the only one in recent memory to take an honest stab at it.)
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
The main issue is that politicians in the states can generally not even bring themselves to say such as ‘shooting protestors is unacceptable’
Biden opposes annexation; okay, great. What’s he willing to do about it? Fucking nothing, that’s what
"Willing to do" and "Can actually do" are two different things here. With what Netanyahu has been up to for over a decade now, we've seen the limits of what even the President can accomplish wrt the US-Israeli relationship.
a presidential candidate could say (for example) that future military aid will require a cessation of israeli expansion; they are our ally and we will defend them, but that commitment does not extend to seizing additional contested territory.
but instead what he'll do is oppose annexation, then in practically in the same breath say that he won't put any preconditions on military aid. The same guy who four years ago was saying we had an obligation to do whatever we can to push israel to stop its expansion is now tacitly endorsing it.
I mean shit, Joe, Netanyahu came to congress and practically took a dump on the floor; what's it gonna take to stiffen you up on this?
...
I don't think we will get better policy on this topic until we start demanding that politicians actually take better positions; democratic candidates love to do this thing where they signal to their base that they want to restrain israel, then get into office and ehhhh status quo (I give some credit to obama for being the only one in recent memory to take an honest stab at it.)
The idea that the government is just following public sentiment on the issue is fucking wild man
What evidence do you have to the contrary? Do you have polling showing public support for a different position?
To what degree is the foreign policy thread allowed to debate the symbiotic relationship between the pressure pushed by a populace on its representative government versus the influence government leadership has on public sentiment?
A short, though off topic, example being how poorly impeachment polled until the Democrats actively pursued it, at which point it gained more support.
It shouldn’t be controversial to note foreign policy support follows a similar dynamic.
Biden's campaign until everybody folded and endorsed him is another stunning example. The Party drives public opinion to an overwhelming extent. Republicans understand this and they do it constantly.
Do those examples have anything to do with Israel though?
One is a fairly partisan question about one of the most disliked Presidents in American History. Democrats already hate Trump. They were just unsure about impeaching him. The party leadership decides to go for it and the members who already hate the fucker fall in line. Is there some kind of secret majority of Democrats who already dislike Israel? What about Democrats feeling strongly about the suffering of the Palestinians? Do we have polling numbers that support that?
The other is a choice between a fairly lackluster primary field (Joe was not my first choice, or even in my top 10 to be honest but let's be honest none of them could command a great deal of public force or charisma). And when people start folding people rally around the "inevitable" winner. That doesn't say to me "The Party leadership spoke and the people fell in line." That says to me "None of these people could actually sway the field, so when the Party leadership came down on Joe's side people went 'Fuck it' and went with Joe."
Do you have any examples of the party actually forcing public opinion on something that was actively being struggled against by a sizable proportion of society? The last example I can think of is the Civil Rights Act. And Johnson was a) a better leader of the party, b ) had more control of the party) and c) used JFK's assassination to push that through Congress.
I mean we haven't had leadership in the party for a long ass time so...
But I'd argue that support for gay marriage shifted by like 30+ points after Obama and the Party started to change course on it.
You start talking about how Israel is stealing Palestinian land, dumping sewage in their water, destroying their infrastructure, and shooting protest medics on the national stage and opinion will shift. Most people just aren't fucking aware of this shit because it doesn't get mainstream coverage. You put pictures of Rouzan al-Najjar's death on the news and people will care. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rouzan_al-Najjar
Anybody got a timeline on the bolded? Because I kind of get the feeling the moment it was 51% popular is the moment the party switched course.
I do think you are right about what needs to be published for opinion to shift on Israel. But it would also be necessary to pound that drum for years. People will make excuses. People will call it outliers. So you have to keep pounding and pounding the repeated actions into their brains.
The main issue is that politicians in the states can generally not even bring themselves to say such as ‘shooting protestors is unacceptable’
Biden opposes annexation; okay, great. What’s he willing to do about it? Fucking nothing, that’s what
"Willing to do" and "Can actually do" are two different things here. With what Netanyahu has been up to for over a decade now, we've seen the limits of what even the President can accomplish wrt the US-Israeli relationship.
a presidential candidate could say (for example) that future military aid will require a cessation of israeli expansion; they are our ally and we will defend them, but that commitment does not extend to seizing additional contested territory.
but instead what he'll do is oppose annexation, then in practically in the same breath say that he won't put any preconditions on military aid. The same guy who four years ago was saying we had an obligation to do whatever we can to push israel to stop its expansion is now tacitly endorsing it.
I mean shit, Joe, Netanyahu came to congress and practically took a dump on the floor; what's it gonna take to stiffen you up on this?
...
I don't think we will get better policy on this topic until we start demanding that politicians actually take better positions; democratic candidates love to do this thing where they signal to their base that they want to restrain israel, then get into office and ehhhh status quo (I give some credit to obama for being the only one in recent memory to take an honest stab at it.)
Thank you
And you won't be able to start demanding that politicians take better positions until you have enough public support that you are scarier to the politicians than the wrath of Evangelicals and AIPAC.
The main issue is that politicians in the states can generally not even bring themselves to say such as ‘shooting protestors is unacceptable’
Biden opposes annexation; okay, great. What’s he willing to do about it? Fucking nothing, that’s what
"Willing to do" and "Can actually do" are two different things here. With what Netanyahu has been up to for over a decade now, we've seen the limits of what even the President can accomplish wrt the US-Israeli relationship.
a presidential candidate could say (for example) that future military aid will require a cessation of israeli expansion; they are our ally and we will defend them, but that commitment does not extend to seizing additional contested territory.
but instead what he'll do is oppose annexation, then in practically in the same breath say that he won't put any preconditions on military aid. The same guy who four years ago was saying we had an obligation to do whatever we can to push israel to stop its expansion is now tacitly endorsing it.
I mean shit, Joe, Netanyahu came to congress and practically took a dump on the floor; what's it gonna take to stiffen you up on this?
...
I don't think we will get better policy on this topic until we start demanding that politicians actually take better positions; democratic candidates love to do this thing where they signal to their base that they want to restrain israel, then get into office and ehhhh status quo (I give some credit to obama for being the only one in recent memory to take an honest stab at it.)
The fact that Netanyahu came to Congress and took a dump on the Obama admin is a pretty stark demonstration of my point, as I noted above. He did it because he knows they can't do anything about it.
Biden does, btw, say that Israel should stop expansion:
He will continue to oppose Israeli settlement expansion and has spoken out against annexation in the West Bank.
but then we run straight into the issue of what can a US President actually do about that. And the obvious lesson of, to go with that example again, Netanyahu over the past decade is "not much".
Posts
'don't know' responses are still data though. It actually seems like very valuable information to have for politicians that want to evolve their foreign policy. It lets them know which portion of their population and voting base can be further educated and potentially swayed.
Trying to frame foreign policy survey questions to a 'yes' or 'no' despite the level of knowledge of the individual seems like a really easy way to get really bad data
Biden opposes annexation; okay, great. What’s he willing to do about it? Fucking nothing, that’s what
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Oh, don't get me wrong. I think western governments (including my own) have been far too lenient on China for decades, and it may be past the point that anything can be done to them from an external influence perspective.
I'm also prepared to pay the economic costs that'll likely come to cracking down on China (imports costing more, with cheaper goods not being as readily accessible), which the people I know locally don't appear to understand. That the electronics, clothing and plastics that they're currently enjoying will likely increase in price, perhaps substantially.
I just know that trying to do so, as you mentioned, is fraught with risk, and it'll take someone skilled to navigate that safely, if it's even possible. I doubt Biden could do it himself, but depending on who he picks for SecState and AmbChina, if he gives them enough latitude to negotiate, maybe.
I just know the person currently in charge is NOT that person, and the current status quo, capitulation or war seem like the only outcomes he's capable of getting. The same or worse, is the best that Trump can get.
We have fundamental disagreements on these issues.
We think that Biden is having a moral failure on this issue because of his history on Israel/Palestine and how his current framing of the conflict leans into one that the right wing uses, which frames the plight of the Palestinians as a suffering they bring on themselves by unjustly laying claims to Israeli land and striking at Israel via terrorist violence. That's what "their choices" means given the history of the conflict and the common narratives in beltway circles.
This idea that we just don't understand why Biden or others with this position hold their position is insulting, and feels like you're trying to make yourself arbiter of what constitutes a proper read of the situation and that we have no reason to hold our critiques.
Ironically, you're complaining that we're trying to enforce some kind of echo chamber because we are... repeatedly and strongly disagreeing with your position in this and various other threads. Like, the forum is Debate and/or Discourse. This would be the Debate portion of that. But this idea that we don't actually have actual reasons for our positions is ultimately going to frustrate you and cause threads to stall out because you can't seem to get past this idea that people have legitimate reasons for disagreeing with you.
We don't think Biden is "trying his best" in some morally complex world with no easy answers and is bound between a geopolitical Scylla and Charybdis. We think that he actually does have foundational ideological beliefs born out of material interests that influence his policy, and thus American policy, and that in the case of his Israel policy it is a toxic one that will ultimately further the suffering of the Palestinian people.
And on the topic of Israel and Palestine? There is a broad, correct answer: End the Apartheid. There are questions about how to effectively achieve that. But so far, none of what Biden has promised his foreign policy to be on that matter is directed towards ending the Apartheid in any real terms.
There is probably something to be said that the Trump administration, and Trump himself (a man who has repeatedly tried to buddy buddy up to Xi and praised his moves in becoming a dictator for life), is only feigning to care because it ultimately serves to drive the "China bad! They give us bad disease! We would be great if not for Bad China Disease!"* bullshit Trump and his people are trying to spin to divert from their utter failure in containing the COVID-19 outbreak.
*A spin marked as a hard turn away from "China's doing great in containing this! We have nothing to worry about!" as the Pandemic started
Further to your point: We can't even get them to acknowledge shooting the third party journalists and medics is bad, let alone the protestors.
EDIT: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/28/israeli-snipers-targeted-children-health-workers-journalists/
But Biden thinks that we are trying to let Palestine off the hook for its choices, you see. What do folks honestly think a foreign policy regarding the Israel/Palestine conflict is going to look like with that kind of ideological foundation?
If your question is "What is Biden gonna do?", go read his website. It's right there as I mentioned before. And it's a lot more then what the outrage take from twitter shows, shockingly.
"Willing to do" and "Can actually do" are two different things here. With what Netanyahu has been up to for over a decade now, we've seen the limits of what even the President can accomplish wrt the US-Israeli relationship.
Or maybe we actually feel like the "one line" says a great deal about Biden's ideology regarding the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, particularly when taken in the context of voting history, previous commitments made to future policy, etc.
Like, it's possible to hold the position that Biden's stated position here is not good, and also that yeah he's better than Trump and yeah his policy is better than Trump.
If it wasn't for people strenuously disagreeing with long-established Democratic policies which were underpinned by the popular support claim, we'd still have lots of folks running around talking about how really civil unions are basically the same as marriage equality so what's the difference, really.
There's also the fact that politics doesn't end with electoralism. While he is notoriously onerous about taking criticism, pressuring a nominee or even president Biden on the topic is still a potential avenue for changing policy on the issue.
Whether it is likely is another question, but the avenue does exist.
Do we? I have repeatedly said I'm not defending or even accepting Biden's stance on the issue. I have repeatedly said that the purpose of my posts is to try and walk through the reasons why the BDS movement has issues gaining steam. The problem here is that you are literally not reading the words that I am saying and keep "disagreeing" with me when we are not disagreeing.
I am not talking about Biden in my post. I am talking about people in this fucking thread trying to understand the complexities here. You constantly keep reading malice into my words when there is none! I have affirmed many of the critiques people have made about Biden, the democrats, and the Israel\Palestine issue.
At some point we need to grapple with the fact that the presumptive nominee of the only viable alternative to the GOP has a right wing foreign policy on a number of issues. It may not be full bore GOP, but there's a lot of foundation there that is going to leave the ground shaky for progress in the future because of where he's planted his flag.
You do realize, even from the original tweet, the emphasized portion was Biden's stance on the Palestinians being "[let] off the hook for their choices" Right?
the aspect of BDS in it is that, in trying to knock the movement, he slips and reveals a deeper anti-Palestinian animus than just "BDS doesn't have popular support."
Your entire effort has been focused on the wrong goddamn part of the sentence. The part of the sentence that has us pissed was even highlighted!
The reason we're all going "holy shit" isn't "Biden doesn't support BDS!" it's "Biden blames the Palestinians for making the wrong choice in how they respond to violent apartheid and thinks anyone complaining is giving them a free pass on those bad choices"
I didn't realize we had to have the same exact fucking takeaway from something you posted. I thought we could talk about US foreign policy in this thread not "what Lanz is angry about from twitter". Yeah dude, I realized a while back we weren't talking about the same thing which is why I keep repeating the thing I'm talking about because for some reason you keep getting increasingly angry with my posts and reading malice/disagreement where there literally is none because we are not talking about the same thing.
or
Because of those two statements, I haven't assumed you're being malicious. I just took you at face value that you don't care.
Nice of you to completely ignore the post between those two where I actually started to engage in the conversation. Maybe actually go read what you quote you complete fucking goose.
Maybe don't try to boil this down to "Twitter rage" when what I'm pissed about is one of our most prominent political figures blaming the Palestinian people for making "bad choices" under an apartheid state that is killing them.
It's easy to ignore my points when all you do is keep trying to fall back to blaming a culture of futile twitter anger instead of actually meaningfully engaging with the thing that is actually the shit I care about.
Here I'll quote the part of the conversation I was actively engaged in
I remember. I was there. I pointed out their local house constituency voted them in and not the party apparatus, which was more than happy to throw Ilan Omar under the bus when she critiqued AIPAC's lobbying efforts and their effect on the policy of said party apparatus. I also advocated we divorce the apparatus from the constituency in our understanding of "The Party" in situations like these because the two are not the same and the conflation of the two elides systemic issues of islamophobia still present in the party apparatus that does not transfer to constituents electing muslim women, but still has the power to harm those elected women when they try to advocate for policies that affect Muslims, Palestinians and other groups who suffer under Islamophobia around the world in part because of US foreign policy.
And again we're goddamn back to this stupid godforsaken meta argument about how the argument flowed because it seems actually talking about the actual issue at hand (Biden's repeated animus towards the Palestinian people suffering under and apartheid state) is seemingly too uncomfortable to actually confront for the thread.
Or you could read the whole page (pages technically) and note that there's a bunch of other stuff there specifically about this issue.
Like: But that doesn't fit in with the narrative the tweet that started this all wants to generate.
"We need to hold Iran accountable" is not right wing. That's literally the point of the Iran deal. At it's most basic it's a deal to stop the crippling sanctions in return for Iran allowing observers access to their facilities in order to verify they are complying with the terms of the deal (ie - hold them accountable for their end of the bargain). This is in fact one of the frequently pointed out problems with Trump and the Republicans' stance on the deal: that their alternative actually makes Iran less accountable to the international community wrt their nuclear program.
On top of which this is again selective quoting used to make it sound worse. "rejoin a diplomatic agreement"? "renewed commitment to diplomacy to work with our allies"? That kind of language is straight out of the right-wing playbook I'm sure.
The US has conflated anti-Israely positions with antisemitism for generations.
Also keep in mind that the US has in the past done what Israel is doing and worse
We aren't reimbursing Native Americans for the suffering we caused them or their ancestors.
1) Why should anyone trust Biden on those claims when he positions himself as believing that the Palestinians are not being held to account by their advocates for making "bad choices" in how they respond to the Apartheid? When he votes to move our embassy to Jerusalem while in the legislature, a move that is de facto legitimizes the Israeli rights claims to sole legitimacy to Jerusalem, and then refuses to move it back to Tel Aviv, as other nations have maintained their embassies there, after Donald Trump moves the embassy to Jerusalem? What reason is there to believe any of that is anything more than ass covering and bluster to seem reasonable while the US does nothing to end the Apartheid and repeatedly enables it through defending human rights abuses on the international stage through venues like the UN or through arms sales to the Israeli military, which are ultimately turned against those suffering under apartheid?
2) So far, yeah, I would say it is. Iran was being accountable throughout the deal. We are the nation that ceased to be accountable because we refuse to behave responsibly towards Iran because of the hostage crisis, after literally enabling a monarchistic coup to depose their democratically elected government and re-empower the Shah. While Iran is not without its issues, at multiple junctures of US/Iranian foreign policy history, we are the major destabilizing force that has charted the path we're now on and subsequently refuse to acknowledge it.
Likewise, presuming it as Iran's responsibility to rejoin the deal serves ultimately to put the onus on them to make amends for America's actions.
Gay marriage is actually a very good example of how public pressure changed the political landscape on an issue. There was a long period of steadily rising support before it finally got the Democratic party to move it's position. Conversely we can look at public views on the US-Israel issue and we don't see that same kind of change. Which is why you still get the kind of positions you do on the issue from Democratic party politicians. Opposite public reactions to attempts to change views on these issues led, as you'd expect, to opposite results by political actors.
We are well aware Shryke that the party is lower-case c conservative.
Multiple people here would argue that is a problem from the perspective of social justice that we have to drag the party kicking and screaming to support human rights, through avenues which are increasingly being cut off thanks to GOP capture of the courts which were foundational to changing these issues thanks to the abdication of the legislature in making positive social progress.
This has marked problems for global human rights causes which could be influenced by effective foreign policy positions when that attitude is carried into a field where activist work has even more singificant barriers to overcome to succeed, including in situations where the governments they have to appeal to are apartheid ethnostates (Israel and the Palestinians) or dictatorships (China and dissidents in the mainland, the Uighurs and Hong Kong).
Your position here is literally to selectively believe Biden's own campaign material. This part is obviously an indicator of his true beliefs, this part is obviously just lies. Conveniently selected to support the narrative this began with.
But the truth is that, regardless of whether you agree with the position, there's nothing inconsistent between the positions on the Israel-Palestine conflict I posted above and the anti-BDS stuff later.
ie -
And your Iran comments don't even make sense. The specific language used is "Hold Iran accountable and rejoin a diplomatic agreement". He's literally saying the US needs to rejoin the agreement. He's talking about what the US should do.
Please correct me if this is wrong, but my understanding from discussions and perspectives offered in previous threads, is that shryke is of the belief that politics is a team sport and that supporting your team takes precedence over ideologies, morals, ethics, or any other beliefs so long as your team is incrementally better than the other team. When you put the arguments being put forth in this context, it helps understand where shryke is coming from on this and other matters. This also seems to be a large part as to why the argument tends to fall back to supporting the status quo and not taking political risks that might go against public opinion.
My real concern is whether or not trump is doing this out of actual concern for the well being of hong kong or simply because he needs a boogey man to rally the country against.
whereas, in my case (in short), my understanding is that Politics is the execution of material interests by its actors and that often times the dominant political wisdom is a cover for obfuscating those interests by said actors, using a sleight of hand of the complexity of these issues to disguise the lack of interest or opposing motivation to remedying the problems these issues may have.
Thus, that ideologies, ethics, beliefs, etc.are foundational to understanding and solving the problems at hand, as is understanding the material interests that give rise to these philosophies.
At it's core, Shryke and I (as our interactions have demonstrated over and over) tend to be diametrically opposed regarding how we read a situation and what our thoughts on how to handle them will be.
Given his history of praising Xi for his various strongman tactics, including assuming the office for life, as well as Trump's generally demonstrated disregard for anyone's well being other than his own, I'm gonna say.... Boogeyman.
It's nice to hope for but the inability to garner public support for a fundamental shift in the US-Israel relationship is going to continually hamper the ability to change that position. The US is still a democracy and public support is still a large influence on the political process.
Like, as another example that I think is illustrative of the forces at work here, you think Obama liked taking Netenyahu's shit? Do you really think a lot of Democratic politicians and political operatives weren't pissed about that? And yet, there's not much they can do about it because there isn't backing public pressure for it. So they just had to take it.
It's always amazing to me how trump simultaneously adores Xi but hates China since one is naturally an extension of the other.
Pretty textbook jealousy.
a presidential candidate could say (for example) that future military aid will require a cessation of israeli expansion; they are our ally and we will defend them, but that commitment does not extend to seizing additional contested territory.
but instead what he'll do is oppose annexation, then in practically in the same breath say that he won't put any preconditions on military aid. The same guy who four years ago was saying we had an obligation to do whatever we can to push israel to stop its expansion is now tacitly endorsing it.
I mean shit, Joe, Netanyahu came to congress and practically took a dump on the floor; what's it gonna take to stiffen you up on this?
...
I don't think we will get better policy on this topic until we start demanding that politicians actually take better positions; democratic candidates love to do this thing where they signal to their base that they want to restrain israel, then get into office and ehhhh status quo (I give some credit to obama for being the only one in recent memory to take an honest stab at it.)
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Thank you
Anybody got a timeline on the bolded? Because I kind of get the feeling the moment it was 51% popular is the moment the party switched course.
I do think you are right about what needs to be published for opinion to shift on Israel. But it would also be necessary to pound that drum for years. People will make excuses. People will call it outliers. So you have to keep pounding and pounding the repeated actions into their brains.
And you won't be able to start demanding that politicians take better positions until you have enough public support that you are scarier to the politicians than the wrath of Evangelicals and AIPAC.
The fact that Netanyahu came to Congress and took a dump on the Obama admin is a pretty stark demonstration of my point, as I noted above. He did it because he knows they can't do anything about it.
Biden does, btw, say that Israel should stop expansion: but then we run straight into the issue of what can a US President actually do about that. And the obvious lesson of, to go with that example again, Netanyahu over the past decade is "not much".