There is a lot about this that is nuts, but one thing that really jumps out at me.
It seems like Netanyahu is planning an October surprise to shank Harris. And it seems like he is doing it in broad daylight. It certainly seems like a massive offensive strike on Iran one or two weeks before the election is a straightforward way to throw a close election to Trump.
But with this I have to ask: are Biden and Harris assisting with a plan that is clearly intended to cost Harris the election?
I want to say that they surely must've told Israel not to launch anything before election day. But based in their actions so far, it doesn't seem like they're imposing a "no election interference against us personally" requirement as a condition of their assistance.
I guess we'll see.
Their messaging so far to Israel has been "do whatever the fuck you want, đź’°đź’°"
"You give me money, I give you weapons of war. You give me money, I ignore the screams of children."
[the sound of children screaming has been removed]
Oof. Horrific.
I would much rather see a Harris administration handle this than chaos Trump.
This is a weird thing to say, but I actually don't think that there's any indication that Harris or Trump would do anything substantially different with regard to Israel, but the biggest change is that if Trump wins, I suspect that coverage of this will disappear behind all the coverage of his domestic chaos. At least if Harris is president I think there is a chance we see the press maintain a modicrum of interest in covering this.
Either way, words can't describe my anger that Harris appears to be prepared to throw the election over her support for genocide. It is an unreal situation to watch.
Fuckface 45 literally said that Israel should "finish the job":
I'm not voting for that Fuckface. Neither should any intelligent person.
So the one says it out loud, the other just keeps the intention quiet.
Both are equally sending weapons.
However with Trump we saw that he pulled American soldiers out of the region and he is much more unstable. So when American soldiers die, he could just decide to fold the whole thing again.
So when American soldiers die, he could just decide to fold the whole thing again.
That would require him to give a shit about the soldiers dying to make a change. His history says the exact opposite of that. Soldiers dying would do absolutely nothing towards whether he changes anything.
Trump pulled most troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Sure he doesnt care about the soldiers life, but he isnt committed to being a war hawk. He just does random stuff.
The troop withdrawal was already being worked before Trump even started campaigning. He just decided to speed it up dramatically so he could say he achieved something, and promised a deadline that was unattainable while doing it well. It's not random, it's narcissism at the expense of everything else, including the country.
The troop withdrawal was already being worked before Trump even started campaigning.
Yeah it was in the works for like 20 years lol.
No intelligent person should vote for a party supporting a genocide either. Israel government is finishing the job already.
Ok. But either Harris or Trump WILL be our next president with how fucked up our election system is.
Who would you rather fight on this? A run of the mill democrat, or a literal nazi? We’re choosing our opponent, it’s the only choice we get.
Don't support any of them and use your energies somewhere else, you said yourself that the system is fucked up
Okay black pill bro. When you grow up and understand how things actually work, let us know.
Maybe those of us who are actively trying (while also understanding how our choices work) will acquire Ranked Choice voting before you become mature enough to join in on this non-black-or-white conversation.
Maybe those of us who are actively trying
Advocating for the government and ruling parties is actively trying to empower them even more.
You some champion of missing the point?
Sure. And then trump wins and i completely lose my reproductive rights and my trans wife loses her healthcare.
There’s more at stake here.
There’s more at stake here.
There's indeed more at stake, there's an ongoing genocide in gaza where kids are being murdered daily. If you care about human rights that's even more reason for you to stop supporting the parties that for decades have fuck over these rights.
It’ll disappear by him shutting down all news organizations and outlawing any dissenting opinions. He’s straight up said it. There is no functional difference on this issues between them. It’s the ancillary consequences trump will impose on everyone that is why he should be fired into the sun as an example.
Its also weird that Trump rallies are full of Nazi flags but Israel still sends them similar bribes anyway.
Zionism is an anti-semitic ideology. It was concocted by atheist colonizers, not religious leaders. The goals are colonial, not religious. Most importantly zios commit these crimes while claiming to be the only true jews. This is extremely anti-semitic.
So it's no surprise that they've collaborated with literal nazis before WW2. And it's no surprise that they continue to collaborate with racists and fascists all over the planet. In the usa the vast majority of zionists are christians that are generally very anti-semitic. They want jews to take over palestine so doomsday will come and kill the jews! These are the allies of zionism smh.
Zionism is an anti-semitic ideology.
A significant number of jews across the globe say otherwise. The very foundation of your argument is self serving propoganda. And I didnt read past that.
Trump in charge tends to highlight problems not burry them. Like how immigration and the border camps were a huge story, then Biden got elected, kept all the same staff and same facilities and suddenly the border camps weren't a problem and we went further rightward on immigration. People stop paying attention when Democrats win, that's how they burry stories, and that's why the media loves Trump, because hes the one who generates the clicks and engagement they track.
There is a lot a gray out there.
Trump would tell Netanyahu to nuke the place and he'd fucking do it. It would be a catastrophe the likes of which we haven't seen since WWII.
She most likely was in the room when Biden authorized the troops you know. She is very much on the same page as Biden on this.
Sucks you guys don’t have any other option.
You have no way of knowing that.
She did say she supports Bidens stance on Israel and that israel has the right to murder innocent children protect itself.
To be fair I think most people think it (and other countries) should be able to defend itself… it’s just that they went from defense to all out genocide like a year ago.
The current party doesn’t know where that line is while the other party wants them to “finish the job”.
The president is supposed to be smarter than "most people" not more genocidal.
There was never any "defense" in zionism. It's always been theft, apartheid, and genocide.
Of the two she's the one whose had statements about Israel needing to respect international law. So there's no evidence she believes Israel should be allowed to conduct a genocide.
Didn't she just say the other week there's nothing she wouldn't do differently from Biden?
Which to this point has been attempts at a cease fire and offshore missile defense help. Putting troops under Iranian missiles is a massive departure from the past year.
No, up to this point it has been billions of dollars and weapons to Israel with the occasional finger wag to them. Troops on the ground is the natural next step of his policy up to now, and congruent with Kamala's statements that "Iran is the number one enemy".
Absolutely not. She has never endorsed that.
Oh I'm sure she'll speak against it any minute now, but I wouldn't hold my breath...
You should check out her speeches and interviews sometime.
I have. She generally tries to walk a line between fully pro Israel and neutrality.
The insanity is not that it is Republicans or Democrats
The insane part is that America is just sleep walking straight into a war that will probably escalate into something much bigger and no one wants to do anything about it.
God help us all
Make me homelander and I’d shut this shit down in a heartbeat. Until such time best I got is a pencil check in a box on paper.
you can still john wick with that tho
Maybe you can.
All the money I’d earmarked for kung fu lessons and a collection of random lethal weapons wound up going into pet care and hobbies. Besides, I definitely don’t have plot armor. I’d get popped by some junior security mail cop. They probably wouldn’t even have to shoot me. They’d run me over with their Segway, I’d fall, crack my head open, and they’d put a little skull and crossbones sticker on their scooter, like a WWII fighter pilot.
"Never underestimate Joe Bidens ability to fuck everything up". --Barrack Obama
I know this is a dumb question, but is that based on anything? Like a paraphrase of something? Or just headcanon?
As every other time the billions the government spend in propaganda are paying off.
Nobody snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat.
It seems like Netanyahu is planning an October surprise to shank Harris. And it seems like he is doing it in broad daylight. It certainly seems like a massive offensive strike on Iran one or two weeks before the election is a straightforward way to throw a close election to Trump.
Do you realize that israel government is waging war only because they are backed by USA?
I understand that this is in a real sense the US's war, and that Biden is not being dragged into it, he's fully committed to it. I'm not sure what that changes about my observation that it's weird that Harris appears to be facilitating an electoral hit job on herself.
Yes, and zios will be even more backed by Trump (supposedly).
It's not even a hidden thing. Yahoo wants Trump. Grift recognize grift.
if they money you get from AIPAC is more than the money you get as US presidency and without the headache of being president, I wounder if Kamala care enough to be a president.
If Harris is in on a plan to strike Iran it wouldn't cost her the election in the US. All they have to do is say, "We received credible intelligence that Iran had decided to sprint for a nuclear warhead. We had to act in a timely manner."
What would cost her the election is if an American soldier dies to an Iranian missile and Biden/Harris doesn't immediately go hard on Iran. Which makes this a ridiculously irresponsible move by Biden.
It feels like they are totally beholden to Israel.
If they push back hard, they alienate swing voters who like Israel from the old days, aka apocalypse.
This is actually a persistent myth: there is no evidence that they are beholden to a constituency that would punish them for any actions that curtail Israel.
Israel's actions are wildly unpopular across the electorate. They are unpopular with nearly all Democrats as well as most independents and a very large plurally of Republicans. I have seen numerous polls that show that there is a very significant number of voters that Harris is losing over this, and I have seen absolutely nothing to indicate that there is any measurable cost to her speaking out against Israel at all. Which is really sad. Because it means that this is absolutely a moral choice on her part. This is not an electoral choice at all.
I am not religious so I don’t know the details but I have a friend who is very religious and refuses to vote for Trump again. He hates Harris but won’t give me a reason. When I have brought up the Israel stuff he immediately jumps to a very, holy land, must support and defend at any cost mentality. He would never vote Democrat but it makes me wonder how pervasive this weird fairy tale attachment exists throughout the voting base.
That's a good question. Is your friend an evangelical Christian? A lot of people don't know this, but the actual biggest plurality of political Zionists in the US are not Jews, but Evangelical Christians who support Israel because they believe it is a chess piece in bringing about the end of the world (which is a good thing in their dogma).
They also happen to often like the idea of ethnofascism, which is a very sad state of affairs.
He is evangelical Christian yes. I don’t have much exposure to religion. I have gone to his church a couple times when he has asked me to in the decade or so we’ve been friends. I’m in my forties. I’ve never felt pressured but I also keep my religion or lack of to myself. I just never really understood the position on Israel and it really stuck out to me. Even though he will freely admit how crazy and hateful things are out of the MAGA crowd, I get the feeling anytime the topic gets close to coming up with me he fends it off by essentially communicating to me that he has unwavering and unquestioned support of Israel and I haven’t been willing to push it since he is otherwise a great person in my life that has helped me through a number of difficulties.
That's a shame. For what it's worth, his position isn't a mystery to me. I believe that he's been convinced by his church that unquestioningly supporting Israel's expansionary goals, regardless of any other moral question is an absolute necessity for anyone who truly loves Jesus and believes strongly in his rebirth and in the promise of everlasting life in heaven.
It is -- with all due respect -- as crazy as anything you'd hear in a Texas cult bunker. But I'm guessing that it's real as a wildfire to your friend. It makes me sad to think about.
I appreciate the insight and time you have taken to respond. Also your understanding. I have a really difficult time processing the situation. It does feel very cult like and matter of fact. I don’t understand how someone that seems so good can know something so bad is going on, who is so obviously able to recognize the bad in other related areas, and blindly vehemently support them unquestionably. He’s intelligent and successful…yet so lost, the most caring and compassionate person I know; it can’t be ok.
If it makes you feel any better, I remind myself that I myself am subject to the same irrationalities and motivated reasoning as anyone else. We're all just people, and people aren't logic machines. We're bundles of impulses and habits that live within whatever stories our minds have to create to make sense of all of this.
In this context, if you're looking for some kind of remedy, the best I can offer is that instead of trying to bother disputing with myths and superstitions, recognize that anyone who grows out of them usually does so because they find some other way to the same fundamental bedrock notions. Your friend wants to adhere to the rules laid out by the creator. They want to be worthy of Christ's love.
I think if you were inclined to change their mind -- which I'm not recommending -- it would be when this comes up to remind him how many people have been seduced into supporting ungodly things thinking they were following God's will. That's Satan's number one tactic. So all we can do is stay humble and listen to our hearts. If seeing kids living in Bethlehem struggling to survive under an oppressive king just as Jesus and his parents did seems wrong, it's okay to not have a confident stance. Maybe your pastor says it's God's plan, but no one -- not even the disciples -- could ever no God's plan for sure. You don't have to have a stance. You can say "God's will will be done. He does not require my involvement."
A majority of Americans are against the action in Gaza. It is a popular opinion not to support it, unless you're a major donor.
So in the last few weeks, Biden can pull support as much as possible basically giving Bibi the finger. Any funding that dries up is unlikely to have more of an effect than pulling support. This helps Harris win. Then she can re-woo them over the next 4 years.
A majority of those who actually turn out to vote are pro Israel (and no, people under 35 don't vote in other countries where they have more options, so cut the "they don't vote because of the support for Israel" bullshit, they don't vote because they're young and don't care)
Okay, well the Harris campaign can continue claiming that the reason she's down in the polls in Michigan has nothing to do with Gaza.
Perhaps if he does that, then Joe and Harris will be forced to materially change their tune and take some real action in an attempt to save the elction.
It wouldnt even need to be much of a shanking for her to lose. A simple paper cut might be enough.
This is one of those times we should remind ourselves that if we as Redditors can plainly see something so out in the open and obvious, then almost certainly the executive branch can see it too. The odds of them knowing something we don’t know are overwhelmingly greater than the reverse.
I see this often, and it's frequently, consistently not the case.
I understand the sense in this belief, but if you review history over just the last five years you can consistently see this not being true over and over. Going all the way back to the Iraq War: it was obvious at the time that the Bush administration was lying about their claimed evidence that there was an active program creating weapons of mass destruction. And at the time, there was a deafening movement of regular voters who loudly protested that we were absolutely convinced that it was complete and obvious bullshit.
And people like JOE BIDEN loudly expressed exactly what you're saying: they know things we don't know. They know what they're doing.
And they didn't! They did not have any meaningful information we didn't have!
Sadly, it's debatable whether they knew what they were doing. Did they expect it would be such a historic clusterfuck? That it would create decades of worsening outcomes for us? Probably not. But did they know they were making up a fake case for war because they wanted to let off some anger over 9/11 by killing hundreds and hundreds of THOUSANDS uninvolved Muslims, and build some new military bases near oil in the process? Yes. Obviously yes.
And after the fact, the people who claimed that they knew things that we didn't became president and Secretary of State.
They do not know something we don't know. They are doing exactly what this looks like. Biden would absolutely go to war with Iran just to serve the cause of Zionism even though he knows that Benjamin Netanyahu is a fascist. That is exactly what this is. There's not chess logic behind this, you can absolutely know everything you need to if you read newspapers regularly.
The WMD were always a false pretext.
And anyway, you can’t cherry pick any one episode or even several from history where the heads of state were wrong or stupid and say that they don’t know more than we do. They literally have everything we have in the public media and enormous intelligence operations working for them. This doesn’t make them honest or infallible, but anyone who sits in their armchair tut tutting about how “gee I hope this president can see it’s an obvious trap” is, in a word, a fool.
I think you're arguing a strawman version of my point. I'm not claiming that it's impossible for them to know something we don't. I'm just saying that the assumption that there is secret information that makes his actions sensible is not well founded.
There are numerous examples of leaders claiming expertise that wasn't borne out. And if this were the case, I think it would be reasonable to expect them to at least claim this to be the case.
As it stands, this behavior can be fully explained with the information available to us and Biden's foreign policy stance. So there is no reason when you see him doing something that can be easily explained by the observation that he has poor judgement and priorities that are wildly different than most Americans to believe that there is a reason outside of the public facts and our existing knowledge of his poor judgement and unpopular priorities.
If you want to narrow your point that’s fine but I never said that there must be some reason their actions make sense. I said they can be wrong or duplicitous but they necessarily have more access to information than we do and that’s a plain fact you can’t talk your way past with all the hindsight in the world.
There is a lot about this that is nuts, but one thing that really jumps out at me.
It seems like Netanyahu is planning an October surprise to shank Harris. And it seems like he is doing it in broad daylight. It certainly seems like a massive offensive strike on Iran one or two weeks before the election is a straightforward way to throw a close election to Trump.
But with this I have to ask: are Biden and Harris assisting with a plan that is clearly intended to cost Harris the election?
I want to say that they surely must've told Israel not to launch anything before election day. But based in their actions so far, it doesn't seem like they're imposing a "no election interference against us personally" requirement as a condition of their assistance.
I guess we'll see.
Their messaging so far to Israel has been "do whatever the fuck you want, đź’°đź’°"
"You give me money, I give you weapons of war. You give me money, I ignore the screams of children."
[the sound of children screaming has been removed]
Oof. Horrific.
I would much rather see a Harris administration handle this than chaos Trump.
This is a weird thing to say, but I actually don't think that there's any indication that Harris or Trump would do anything substantially different with regard to Israel, but the biggest change is that if Trump wins, I suspect that coverage of this will disappear behind all the coverage of his domestic chaos. At least if Harris is president I think there is a chance we see the press maintain a modicrum of interest in covering this.
Either way, words can't describe my anger that Harris appears to be prepared to throw the election over her support for genocide. It is an unreal situation to watch.
Fuckface 45 literally said that Israel should "finish the job":
https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20240628-trump-let-israel-finish-the-job-in-gaza/
I'm not voting for that Fuckface. Neither should any intelligent person.
So the one says it out loud, the other just keeps the intention quiet.
Both are equally sending weapons.
However with Trump we saw that he pulled American soldiers out of the region and he is much more unstable. So when American soldiers die, he could just decide to fold the whole thing again.
That would require him to give a shit about the soldiers dying to make a change. His history says the exact opposite of that. Soldiers dying would do absolutely nothing towards whether he changes anything.
Trump pulled most troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Sure he doesnt care about the soldiers life, but he isnt committed to being a war hawk. He just does random stuff.
The troop withdrawal was already being worked before Trump even started campaigning. He just decided to speed it up dramatically so he could say he achieved something, and promised a deadline that was unattainable while doing it well. It's not random, it's narcissism at the expense of everything else, including the country.
Yeah it was in the works for like 20 years lol.
No intelligent person should vote for a party supporting a genocide either. Israel government is finishing the job already.
Ok. But either Harris or Trump WILL be our next president with how fucked up our election system is.
Who would you rather fight on this? A run of the mill democrat, or a literal nazi? We’re choosing our opponent, it’s the only choice we get.
Don't support any of them and use your energies somewhere else, you said yourself that the system is fucked up
Okay black pill bro. When you grow up and understand how things actually work, let us know.
Maybe those of us who are actively trying (while also understanding how our choices work) will acquire Ranked Choice voting before you become mature enough to join in on this non-black-or-white conversation.
Advocating for the government and ruling parties is actively trying to empower them even more.
You some champion of missing the point?
Sure. And then trump wins and i completely lose my reproductive rights and my trans wife loses her healthcare.
There’s more at stake here.
There's indeed more at stake, there's an ongoing genocide in gaza where kids are being murdered daily. If you care about human rights that's even more reason for you to stop supporting the parties that for decades have fuck over these rights.
It’ll disappear by him shutting down all news organizations and outlawing any dissenting opinions. He’s straight up said it. There is no functional difference on this issues between them. It’s the ancillary consequences trump will impose on everyone that is why he should be fired into the sun as an example.
Its also weird that Trump rallies are full of Nazi flags but Israel still sends them similar bribes anyway.
Zionism is an anti-semitic ideology. It was concocted by atheist colonizers, not religious leaders. The goals are colonial, not religious. Most importantly zios commit these crimes while claiming to be the only true jews. This is extremely anti-semitic.
So it's no surprise that they've collaborated with literal nazis before WW2. And it's no surprise that they continue to collaborate with racists and fascists all over the planet. In the usa the vast majority of zionists are christians that are generally very anti-semitic. They want jews to take over palestine so doomsday will come and kill the jews! These are the allies of zionism smh.
A significant number of jews across the globe say otherwise. The very foundation of your argument is self serving propoganda. And I didnt read past that.
Trump in charge tends to highlight problems not burry them. Like how immigration and the border camps were a huge story, then Biden got elected, kept all the same staff and same facilities and suddenly the border camps weren't a problem and we went further rightward on immigration. People stop paying attention when Democrats win, that's how they burry stories, and that's why the media loves Trump, because hes the one who generates the clicks and engagement they track.
There is a lot a gray out there.
Trump would tell Netanyahu to nuke the place and he'd fucking do it. It would be a catastrophe the likes of which we haven't seen since WWII.
She most likely was in the room when Biden authorized the troops you know. She is very much on the same page as Biden on this.
Sucks you guys don’t have any other option.
You have no way of knowing that.
She did say she supports Bidens stance on Israel and that israel has the right to
murder innocent childrenprotect itself.To be fair I think most people think it (and other countries) should be able to defend itself… it’s just that they went from defense to all out genocide like a year ago.
The current party doesn’t know where that line is while the other party wants them to “finish the job”.
The president is supposed to be smarter than "most people" not more genocidal.
There was never any "defense" in zionism. It's always been theft, apartheid, and genocide.
Lastly the vast majority of countries at the UN are strongly opposed to this aggression and they have repeatedly passed resolutions that the zionists should reverse their nonstop aggression.
Of the two she's the one whose had statements about Israel needing to respect international law. So there's no evidence she believes Israel should be allowed to conduct a genocide.
Didn't she just say the other week there's nothing she wouldn't do differently from Biden?
Which to this point has been attempts at a cease fire and offshore missile defense help. Putting troops under Iranian missiles is a massive departure from the past year.
No, up to this point it has been billions of dollars and weapons to Israel with the occasional finger wag to them. Troops on the ground is the natural next step of his policy up to now, and congruent with Kamala's statements that "Iran is the number one enemy".
Absolutely not. She has never endorsed that.
Oh I'm sure she'll speak against it any minute now, but I wouldn't hold my breath...
You should check out her speeches and interviews sometime.
I have. She generally tries to walk a line between fully pro Israel and neutrality.
The insanity is not that it is Republicans or Democrats
The insane part is that America is just sleep walking straight into a war that will probably escalate into something much bigger and no one wants to do anything about it.
God help us all
Make me homelander and I’d shut this shit down in a heartbeat. Until such time best I got is a pencil check in a box on paper.
you can still john wick with that tho
Maybe you can.
All the money I’d earmarked for kung fu lessons and a collection of random lethal weapons wound up going into pet care and hobbies. Besides, I definitely don’t have plot armor. I’d get popped by some junior security mail cop. They probably wouldn’t even have to shoot me. They’d run me over with their Segway, I’d fall, crack my head open, and they’d put a little skull and crossbones sticker on their scooter, like a WWII fighter pilot.
"Never underestimate Joe Bidens ability to fuck everything up". --Barrack Obama
I know this is a dumb question, but is that based on anything? Like a paraphrase of something? Or just headcanon?
I think it was during this series of events: https://theintercept.com/2023/05/23/biden-debt-ceiling-harry-reid-mitch-mcconnell/
Wow. Thanks for sharing that.
As every other time the billions the government spend in propaganda are paying off.
Nobody snatches defeat from the jaws of victory like a Democrat.
Do you realize that israel government is waging war only because they are backed by USA?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_support_for_Israel_in_the_Israel%E2%80%93Hamas_war
I'm not sure what your point is.
I understand that this is in a real sense the US's war, and that Biden is not being dragged into it, he's fully committed to it. I'm not sure what that changes about my observation that it's weird that Harris appears to be facilitating an electoral hit job on herself.
Yes, and zios will be even more backed by Trump (supposedly).
It's not even a hidden thing. Yahoo wants Trump. Grift recognize grift.
if they money you get from AIPAC is more than the money you get as US presidency and without the headache of being president, I wounder if Kamala care enough to be a president.
If Harris is in on a plan to strike Iran it wouldn't cost her the election in the US. All they have to do is say, "We received credible intelligence that Iran had decided to sprint for a nuclear warhead. We had to act in a timely manner."
What would cost her the election is if an American soldier dies to an Iranian missile and Biden/Harris doesn't immediately go hard on Iran. Which makes this a ridiculously irresponsible move by Biden.
It feels like they are totally beholden to Israel.
If they push back hard, they alienate swing voters who like Israel from the old days, aka apocalypse.
This is actually a persistent myth: there is no evidence that they are beholden to a constituency that would punish them for any actions that curtail Israel.
Israel's actions are wildly unpopular across the electorate. They are unpopular with nearly all Democrats as well as most independents and a very large plurally of Republicans. I have seen numerous polls that show that there is a very significant number of voters that Harris is losing over this, and I have seen absolutely nothing to indicate that there is any measurable cost to her speaking out against Israel at all. Which is really sad. Because it means that this is absolutely a moral choice on her part. This is not an electoral choice at all.
https://truthout.org/articles/poll-endorsing-israel-arms-embargo-would-boost-harriss-support-to-49-percent/
I am not religious so I don’t know the details but I have a friend who is very religious and refuses to vote for Trump again. He hates Harris but won’t give me a reason. When I have brought up the Israel stuff he immediately jumps to a very, holy land, must support and defend at any cost mentality. He would never vote Democrat but it makes me wonder how pervasive this weird fairy tale attachment exists throughout the voting base.
That's a good question. Is your friend an evangelical Christian? A lot of people don't know this, but the actual biggest plurality of political Zionists in the US are not Jews, but Evangelical Christians who support Israel because they believe it is a chess piece in bringing about the end of the world (which is a good thing in their dogma).
They also happen to often like the idea of ethnofascism, which is a very sad state of affairs.
He is evangelical Christian yes. I don’t have much exposure to religion. I have gone to his church a couple times when he has asked me to in the decade or so we’ve been friends. I’m in my forties. I’ve never felt pressured but I also keep my religion or lack of to myself. I just never really understood the position on Israel and it really stuck out to me. Even though he will freely admit how crazy and hateful things are out of the MAGA crowd, I get the feeling anytime the topic gets close to coming up with me he fends it off by essentially communicating to me that he has unwavering and unquestioned support of Israel and I haven’t been willing to push it since he is otherwise a great person in my life that has helped me through a number of difficulties.
That's a shame. For what it's worth, his position isn't a mystery to me. I believe that he's been convinced by his church that unquestioningly supporting Israel's expansionary goals, regardless of any other moral question is an absolute necessity for anyone who truly loves Jesus and believes strongly in his rebirth and in the promise of everlasting life in heaven.
It is -- with all due respect -- as crazy as anything you'd hear in a Texas cult bunker. But I'm guessing that it's real as a wildfire to your friend. It makes me sad to think about.
I appreciate the insight and time you have taken to respond. Also your understanding. I have a really difficult time processing the situation. It does feel very cult like and matter of fact. I don’t understand how someone that seems so good can know something so bad is going on, who is so obviously able to recognize the bad in other related areas, and blindly vehemently support them unquestionably. He’s intelligent and successful…yet so lost, the most caring and compassionate person I know; it can’t be ok.
If it makes you feel any better, I remind myself that I myself am subject to the same irrationalities and motivated reasoning as anyone else. We're all just people, and people aren't logic machines. We're bundles of impulses and habits that live within whatever stories our minds have to create to make sense of all of this.
In this context, if you're looking for some kind of remedy, the best I can offer is that instead of trying to bother disputing with myths and superstitions, recognize that anyone who grows out of them usually does so because they find some other way to the same fundamental bedrock notions. Your friend wants to adhere to the rules laid out by the creator. They want to be worthy of Christ's love.
I think if you were inclined to change their mind -- which I'm not recommending -- it would be when this comes up to remind him how many people have been seduced into supporting ungodly things thinking they were following God's will. That's Satan's number one tactic. So all we can do is stay humble and listen to our hearts. If seeing kids living in Bethlehem struggling to survive under an oppressive king just as Jesus and his parents did seems wrong, it's okay to not have a confident stance. Maybe your pastor says it's God's plan, but no one -- not even the disciples -- could ever no God's plan for sure. You don't have to have a stance. You can say "God's will will be done. He does not require my involvement."
A majority of Americans are against the action in Gaza. It is a popular opinion not to support it, unless you're a major donor.
So in the last few weeks, Biden can pull support as much as possible basically giving Bibi the finger. Any funding that dries up is unlikely to have more of an effect than pulling support. This helps Harris win. Then she can re-woo them over the next 4 years.
A majority of those who actually turn out to vote are pro Israel (and no, people under 35 don't vote in other countries where they have more options, so cut the "they don't vote because of the support for Israel" bullshit, they don't vote because they're young and don't care)
Okay, well the Harris campaign can continue claiming that the reason she's down in the polls in Michigan has nothing to do with Gaza.
Perhaps if he does that, then Joe and Harris will be forced to materially change their tune and take some real action in an attempt to save the elction.
It wouldnt even need to be much of a shanking for her to lose. A simple paper cut might be enough.
This is one of those times we should remind ourselves that if we as Redditors can plainly see something so out in the open and obvious, then almost certainly the executive branch can see it too. The odds of them knowing something we don’t know are overwhelmingly greater than the reverse.
I see this often, and it's frequently, consistently not the case.
I understand the sense in this belief, but if you review history over just the last five years you can consistently see this not being true over and over. Going all the way back to the Iraq War: it was obvious at the time that the Bush administration was lying about their claimed evidence that there was an active program creating weapons of mass destruction. And at the time, there was a deafening movement of regular voters who loudly protested that we were absolutely convinced that it was complete and obvious bullshit.
And people like JOE BIDEN loudly expressed exactly what you're saying: they know things we don't know. They know what they're doing.
And they didn't! They did not have any meaningful information we didn't have!
Sadly, it's debatable whether they knew what they were doing. Did they expect it would be such a historic clusterfuck? That it would create decades of worsening outcomes for us? Probably not. But did they know they were making up a fake case for war because they wanted to let off some anger over 9/11 by killing hundreds and hundreds of THOUSANDS uninvolved Muslims, and build some new military bases near oil in the process? Yes. Obviously yes.
And after the fact, the people who claimed that they knew things that we didn't became president and Secretary of State.
They do not know something we don't know. They are doing exactly what this looks like. Biden would absolutely go to war with Iran just to serve the cause of Zionism even though he knows that Benjamin Netanyahu is a fascist. That is exactly what this is. There's not chess logic behind this, you can absolutely know everything you need to if you read newspapers regularly.
The WMD were always a false pretext.
And anyway, you can’t cherry pick any one episode or even several from history where the heads of state were wrong or stupid and say that they don’t know more than we do. They literally have everything we have in the public media and enormous intelligence operations working for them. This doesn’t make them honest or infallible, but anyone who sits in their armchair tut tutting about how “gee I hope this president can see it’s an obvious trap” is, in a word, a fool.
I think you're arguing a strawman version of my point. I'm not claiming that it's impossible for them to know something we don't. I'm just saying that the assumption that there is secret information that makes his actions sensible is not well founded.
There are numerous examples of leaders claiming expertise that wasn't borne out. And if this were the case, I think it would be reasonable to expect them to at least claim this to be the case.
As it stands, this behavior can be fully explained with the information available to us and Biden's foreign policy stance. So there is no reason when you see him doing something that can be easily explained by the observation that he has poor judgement and priorities that are wildly different than most Americans to believe that there is a reason outside of the public facts and our existing knowledge of his poor judgement and unpopular priorities.
If you want to narrow your point that’s fine but I never said that there must be some reason their actions make sense. I said they can be wrong or duplicitous but they necessarily have more access to information than we do and that’s a plain fact you can’t talk your way past with all the hindsight in the world.