A nostalgia for the year 2014:

I disagree. It isn't effective propaganda but a quick slogan to dismiss criticism. If its not Russian disinformation, it'd be "conservative propaganda" or performative and ceremonial politics like it was during the Obama administration. The heart of the sentiment is indifference and annoyance.

In other words, "don't make me think about politics". Brace Belden mentioned this in a True anon episode a month ago, and a recent post on the_dredge_tank linked a redditor who echoed the same sentiment (despite working in politics and having a PhD thereof).

A sentiment articulated in that Red Sails article about propaganda, or how Morris Berman - an academic who describes the US - says that the "wool isn't over American eyes, but they are the eyes"; which means American culture makes Americans inherently delusional and prone to refute any challenge to it. Americans have been under such cultural hypnosis likely as long as the post-independence period from Britain.

These generations of Americans want to believe in their idealized version of it to the detriment of everyone else, including themselves, because they themselves have it pretty good. Their material conditions do not prompt them to question the American civic religion.

I understand your posts on this thread seem to underlie the assertion that the existence of a Palestinian people and their aspirations of agency, self-determination, and aegis of defense against oppression, apartheid, and genocide are an existential threat to the Jewish people.

A lie meant to dehumanize Palestinians and enable and encourage Israeli Jews to pursue genocide, which itself is a deformation of what Judaism itself stands for.

Your account is obviously a troll account, but I just wanted to point out not only your depravity but to the extent Zionism is so inherently heretical and deforming of Judaism. When people say Zionism is anti-Semitic, here it is.

I just strongly dislike the man-children aspect of their dynamic, especially Felix who seems to be stuck emotionally as a burnout turned 27 year old gamer. Just everything about his speech mannerisms, his vocal fry, the limited vocabulary and adolescent presentation, the revelations of his habits, hygiene, and "hobbies" (i.e, gaming & internet addiction).

All this is of course excluding Chris Wade who seems to be the only professional, and Matt Christman who seems to be the only one moving forward with building a life and family.

It's probably, most definitely if I was forced to make a decision and commitment, that I - perhaps you too - am just growing out of news podcasts as entertainment. Even long since 10/7, I kind of find these podcasts - Chapo, Trueanon, Trillbilllies, etc - to be a mix of "finding catharsis in the darkness via public broadcasting" and grifting the disintegration and decline of empire for affluence and notoriety.

What is the Hannibal Directive anyway? I read the Wiki but the article quoted that the Israeli's don't target their own troops in order to civilians, but it was employed as policy during 10/7.

Woke up this morning, all the ducks are gone.

That is a fair point, but Israel is trying to get the US military officially involved, far beyond the current capacity that it is now, to overwhelm and intimidate their enemies in West Asia into compliance and submission. Israel's gambit of making the outcome of their existential crisis synonymous with US hegemonic influence is a viable strategy to ensure Israel survives the outcome of this crisis, even if it has to be on US life support.

(I guess my parent post is a plea to be "counter-Finkelstein-pilled" regarding his analysis on Gaza. )

They're white supremacists. There is no nuance mongering on their part there. It's just indifference. Voting, a ritual, is their only tool they can and are willing to use as political agency. They're comfortable leading their lives of privilege and safety because they will not be bothered by Trump's policies or Biden's genocide.

You should take comfort in the fact that most Americans do perceive this as genocide and want an arms embargo on Israel. What rhetoric you are getting upset at is just the politically impotent bargaining their impotence by berating you for not imbuing voting with godlike importance.

I was looking for a serious answer and posted that USDA factoid as a frame of reference, not an attempt at levity that in any other situation might be considered amusing.

I do however, appreciate your attempt.

It did give me a sad smirk, because your intent was not to downplay my inquiry but to provide relief from the stress and pain of having to witness these horrors for the past 361 days.

Your deranged and angry rant tells me we struck a nerve with you. And that you're likely, and charitably, a college freshman.

You can not vote for Kamala Harris, Joe Biden, Hilary Clinton, Gavin Newsom, or the next figurehead and call it a day. Voting is not a civic duty or fulfilling civic action in a state where your vote is a mere permission slip of state legitimacy than an envoy of political agenda. The state will do what it must to maintain its hegemony but thank you for paying your taxes and giving the state the "right" to exist. Through your vote. Through your petty ritual.

We can't just leave our homes, lives, and jobs; indeed millions across the world can't just crusade into Israel just to stop this. But millions are marching, protesting, resisting, and urging their governments to place pressure on Israel and the United States to stop the genocide. It just so happens that there is no Spirit Bomb mechanism to stop the IDF and the US from doing so but through collective civil action, disobedience, protest, and resistance.

These discussions, real and digital, about Palestine and Israel's genocidal terror is not a game of moral exchange where we use the dead as trophies to sanitize our complicity or seek absolution for our guilt. They are public and private declarations and exasperations of our political impotence and frustration with a political machine and configuration that has normalized, sanitized, and bargained away genocidal fervor and action. They are declarations, in the power of posting, that life has meaning and what we are all witnessing is the annihilation of the intrinsic value of human justice, of human existence and meaning within our world.

In this particular moment, in the midst of active genocide, being a canvasser, poll worker, and campaign staffer for the Democrats (and Republicans) and believing that a fulfillment of civic and patriotic duty, progressing towards a more just and equitable society, is a farce. It is meaningless. Genocide is a crime among crimes and evil among evils. It is the negation of life in the most very literal and direct way; the ultimate desecration of humanity.

Your conclusion, the embodiment of the emote: , is one that tries to serve as a way for you to banish your conscience and guilt because the actual act of engaging in politics as an activist instead of passive consumer that validates the "I'm a good person" box is just as empty and hollow as your idolatrous faith in the Democratic party.

I do in fact expect you, us, and everyone else to do something else than just wait in line for a few hours (if you aren't just a mail-in voter!) to vote for the Democrat who winces and sheds crocodile tears for the crimes they are compelled to do on behalf of political and economic hegemony.

Don't be lazy.

Weddings held abroad are ways for couples to deter relatives and friends from joining; cutting costs and giving an out to people who don't want to go.

Your former friends were in search of an excuse to ostracize you

That Chapo episode about the West Wing saying that what liberals worship isn't policy or virtues per se but power and the appearance of virtue.

Which is why Trump being President and being the kind of man that he is was more traumatic for liberals than any US foreign or domestic policy failure or success.