I knew this was coming. We saw it before with 9/11, when any criticism of American policy in the Middle East caused an instant knee-jerk response: you’re siding with the terrorists! You must hate America!

You all remember the madness, which is still ongoing.

Now we have a new horrendous terrorism event that will be used to polarize people and trigger more extremism, the terror attack by Hamas in Israel several days ago. There is no doubt that this was terrorist extremism, unjustifiable and vile. Unfortunately, it’s already become a tool to excuse all of the horrors perpetrated by Israel. You know you can condemn both sides, right? Some people seem to think you’re either good or evil, with nothing in between.

Case in point: this comment on a post I made in which I condemned the violence on both sides. I guess you aren’t allowed to do that.

Any re-think of the verging on Jew-hatred comments here now?

Not that the disgusting Old Testament “eye for an eye” murdering Israel is and will do is in any way justified, not American support for it.

Hamas was never an organization worthy of any respect or trust: terrorists only interested in murder and revenge. oppressor of their own people as well, Muslim extremists of the most intolerant type and motivated by hatred,

Except for ISIL, there the worst of the worst. That’s what they’ve been and what they are.

I really do want to hear what you have to say about this now, PZ. You have more facts and have had time to cool down and evaluate it. The Gurdian certainly isn’t pro-Likud, or even pro-Israel.

Certainly, I’ll never associate with anyone who excuses this ever again.

Fingers crossed in hope.

There was no “Jew-hatred”. The political state of Israel is not synonymous with Judaism, but this is the most common criticism I see: if you dare to oppose the military actions of the Israeli state then you are anti-Semitic. It’s a disgusting tactic.

No one here has offered any “respect or trust” for Hamas. Hamas is not synonymous with the Palestinian people. Standing with the Palestinian people in their demands for autonomy is not excusing the terror attack. Opposing genocide is not making excuses for terrorists.

There certainly are people who excuse it, but not me, and not the majority of commenters here.

As a humanist, I do evaluate my choices in light of my principles, and those principles tell me that all people, Palestinian and Israeli alike, have the right to life, freedom, and the pursuit of happiness. Anyone who tries to deprive others of that right is in the wrong. At least I’m consistent in that belief, are the apologists for Israeli atrocities?

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. does not stand a chance of succeeding in his campaign for the presidency — he’s weird, he’s loony, he’s a crackpot. If he were a greedy sex-pest and liar, maybe he’d do better, but Trump has a lock on that niche. Now he’s running as an independent, which means Joe Biden is probably a bit relieved. Not that he had cause to worry, but at least the wacky anti-vaxxer isn’t tainting the Democratic ticket, and now maybe it’s Trump’s turn to be concerned.

Could Kennedy pull votes away from Trump? Trump’s campaign team certainly seems to think so, at least according to Shelby Talcott at Semafor. She reports that “internal campaign polling suggests his expected third party bid could draw more votes from Trump than President Joe Biden in a general election.” In their typical self-aggrandizing style, a Trump campaign member told Semafor they plan on “dropping napalm after napalm on his head reminding the public of his very liberal views.”

They may find that this is a more difficult task than their belligerent rhetoric suggests. Because the slice of voters Trump and Kennedy could be competing over aren’t defined by political beliefs that map neatly onto concepts like “liberal” or “conservative.” Instead, they’re fighting over the crank vote: People who are addicted to gobbling down kooky, bizarre and above all, false information. The QAnon crowd, in other words.

Splitting the crank vote and diminishing their ability to poison the election sounds like good news to me.

It’s also good to see the words of WB Yeats apply to the far right. Fracture away!

I’ve heard this sort of call to action many times before. Here’s Marco Rubio with his solution to the Israel/Palestine problem.

“Savages.” “They have to be eradicated.” What a familiar sentiment! And what a deplorable perspective.

Notice that Tapper pointed out that a million of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip are children, and Rubio just ignored that reality to call for their murder. I agree that the individuals who executed that horrific attack were evil people who need to be caught and punished, that there should be no forgiveness for their crimes, but that’s very different from pointing at an entire people, most of whom had nothing to do with the attack, and declaring that they all, women, children, the elderly, need to be eradicated. Wrong. They all deserve to live happy lives, a right they’ve been denied, and only the guilty need to be removed from civil society.

I’m just afraid that Rubio’s attitude is going to be popular among the right-wing fascists. When horrors are piling up on horrors, you don’t end the cycle by adding fresh horrors to the pile.

About 15 years ago, Minnesota was dealing with a bunch of ignorant radicals who were packing school boards, and had even captured the position of educational commissioner in the form of Cheri Yecke. It was ugly. I was attending school board meetings that featured train of young earth creationists standing up to parrot nonsense…but, fortunately, we also had genuine grass roots people standing up to oppose them. We’ve still got wretched right wingers filling school boards, but at least I think we totally crushed the creationist insurgence here, and Yecke is long gone.

Now, though, the US (not so much Minnesota) is dealing with another group of astro-turfing assholes, Moms for Liberty. There are signs that they are getting desperate. Would you believe Moms for Liberty was trying to build a claque to attend a school board meeting? They were recruiting “talented clappers” to pack the audience.

#BucksCounty GOPers are desperately recruiting "Talented Clappers" to support @PennridgeSD far-right school board majority, @Vermilion_Edu & newly proposed Hillsdale 1776 curriculum b/c they're all overwhelmingly unpopular. *And no worries if you don't have to live in district🤡* pic.twitter.com/05a04aZbDO

— BucksCountyBeacon (@BucksCoBeacon) August 25, 2023

It’s not working.

What’s happening instead is that the general public is getting fired up. They hate those arrogant Karens. They’ve recently won school board elections, but like the creationists, as word gets around, the public rises up and notices and starts firing back.

Most of the attendees saw that appeal as a minor victory, or at least as evidence that they were gaining ground in the battle for control over the school district — one of hundreds of similar battles unfolding all over the country. Yes, the Pennridge school board was dominated by far-right members, one of whom had been present in Washington for Donald Trump’s “Stop the Steal” rally-turned-riot on Jan. 6, 2021. Yes, at least five of the nine board members were linked to Moms for Liberty, a right-wing “astroturf” organization that has orchestrated a national campaign to remake public education along arch-conservative and anti-intellectual lines. But Pennridge board meetings for months had been dominated by outraged parents speaking out against the Moms for Liberty incursion and the board majority’s apparent agenda. Conservative forces were sufficiently worried about the optics, it appeared, that they were eager to pull in “talented clappers” from outside the community.

A tightly packed group of Moms for Liberty supporters did indeed show up, huddled together in a few rows of seats. Their mood could best be described as “glowering.” These were not exactly the “joyful warriors” that Moms for Liberty proudly proclaims fights on their behalf. That term would better fit the majority of attendees at Pennridge High that night, who needed no coaxing to whoop and applaud as one speaker after another took the mic, defending the basic freedom to read whatever books one wants, and denouncing the ahistorical and misleading curriculum that conservative board members wanted to force upon the district’s teachers.

This is news that gives me a little optimism. I think the public at large wants to do what is right, even as a minority of hateful, motivated scumbags exploit the system to secure some degree of power. Temporarily.

And I don’t want to hear you say otherwise. We don’t celebrate greedy genocidal monsters around these here parts, we honor the people who lived on this land.

For the third year running, a U.S. president has officially recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

President Biden issued a proclamation on Friday to observe Monday, Oct. 9, as a day to honor Native Americans, their “resilience, strength, and perseverance” and “determination to preserve cultures, identities, and ways of life,” even as they have faced “violence and devastation,” he said.

The Palestinians have a tiny amount of territory, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, that has been under Israeli control since 1968. Israel controls the air space, all of the entry points, and is allowed to let its military freely enter. All utilities, water, electricity, communications, etc. in these territories is completely controlled by Israel. Israeli settlers have been colonizing the territories. The Palestinians are treated as residents of a vassal state, with limited freedoms, and occasionally Israeli soldiers bulldoze a home or shoot a citizen.

The US has given Palestine $235 million in aid, mostly dedicated to supporting refugees. The US has given Israel almost $4 billion in aid, virtually entirely dedicated to propping up their military.

The US has responded to a terrorist attack in Israel by promising to send more aid, more arms, to Israel. They’re also moving an aircraft carrier to the coast in support.

This is insane.

Israel does not need more money, arms, and encouragement to continue their oppression of the Palestinian people. It is inarguably horrible and criminal that Hamas militants murdered civilians, and I cannot excuse that; but neither can I excuse the decades of brutal oppression of Palestinians by Israel. These are criminal acts all around, and none can be forgiven.

The only reasonable answer, though, is to give Palestinians greater freedom and autonomy. They’re turning to violent assholes in Hamas because there is no alternative, and because Israel has become increasingly tyrannical. The US ought to be working to moderate the relationship, not giving Israel the tools and the encouragement to commit genocide. That’s all the current pattern of behavior can end in, in the violent, bloody destruction of an entire people.

Current US policy is enabling that genocide.

Never read the comments at Fox News. Here’s a sampling of the reaction to the news that a woman is suing Disney for injuries she received on a ride. The good folks commenting are torn; some think it’s great that “woke Disney” is getting sued, others are offended that anyone would sue a capitalist enterprise, and want to blame the woman.

I’m pretty sure this is a frivolious lawsuit. They planned it.

In the liberal world, there is no such thing as personal responsibility.

How predictable. The lawsuit doesn’t say they didn’t warn her. It’s says they didn’t tell her WHY she needed to cross her legs.

Then you read what happened to this woman.

(I’m going to put it below the fold because it’s rather horrific.)

[Read more…]

There was a time when Democrats were an anarchic mess and the Republicans seemed to be unified, often over even the most stupid issues, and it was like we were confronting a wall of stubborn ignorance. Democrats are still a mess, but it’s nice to see the Republicans crumbling, finally. And they’re doing it all to themselves! It’s not as if Democrats got their act together, it’s more that the other party has become too imbecilic to sustain themselves.

So they have control of the house, and they used that power to oust Kevin McCarthy, ex-speaker of the house, because he had dared to try and compromise and court Democratic votes to prevent a government shutdown. Cool.

The Democrats just stood back and watched the party self-destruct. Awesome.

In the end, Democrats went with the most satisfying option and refused to help McCarthy. Between a united Democratic front and the handful of Republicans who opposed him, McCarthy didn’t have enough votes to keep his position. His speakership is deader than Donald and Melania’s marital relations.

“This is what MAGA has done,” former Republican Rep. Barbara Comstock of Virginia told MSNBC as the vote was happening. “Matt Gaetz and his merry band of misfits,” Comstock said, are “a destructive force” with no plan for what happens after this.

She then warned that, even if Gaetz is crowing about his victory, this would be “the demise of MAGA.”

What’s hard to believe is all of this is happening because of Matt Gaetz, party boy and accused sex trafficker and pedophile, a man even his own party hates.

By the time Gaetz (R-Fla.) finally made good on his long-standing threats to force a vote to topple McCarthy (R-Calif.), his Republican colleagues were so fed up with him that they wouldn’t let him debate from within their caucus, banishing him to the minority Democratic side of the room.

Gaetz’s successful fight to remove McCarthy from the speakership has cost him in his own conference, lawmakers say. The GOP on Tuesday was considering expelling Gaetz from its caucus. McCarthy, meanwhile, told Republicans he would not seek reelection as speaker after Gaetz pushed him out.

“I’d love to have him out of the conference,” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) told reporters Tuesday. “ … He shouldn’t be in the Republican Party.”

I, for one, am looking forward to the spectacle, although it is destructive to getting anything done. There is an end in sight, though.

The MAGA movement is simply unsustainable. It cannot help but destroy everything it touches. Right now, it’s the GOP they’re ripping apart. But eventually, this urge to ruin everything will take out their own movement. (Hopefully sooner rather than later!) Taking out McCarthy, even though he’s been an ass-kissing MAGA loyalist, illustrates this reality.

There are many flavors of fascism, and MAGA is an especially nihilistic one. The right-wing media ecosystem rewards trolling above all else — especially over intra-party unity. In a competition for attention, adoration, and donations from the MAGA base, the quickest and surest route is to become a Joker-like chaos agent. MAGA loves a bad guy because it lets them pretend they’re “rebels” who are “taking on the system.” In reality, they are locusts swarming a field until nothing is left.

When the bones have been picked clean, maybe then something constructive will emerge. Or more likely, Donald Trump will be rooting through the wreckage, scouring it all down to the ground.

Have you heard about the Roman empire meme? It was hot on TikTok recently.

It’s a simple one; women approach the men in their life and ask how often they think about the Roman Empire. Clips of boyfriends, husbands, dads, and brothers who have never stepped foot in Italy casually admitting that they think about the Roman Empire often, even multiple times per day, have gone viral on the video-sharing platform, with female creators often expressing complete bewilderment at the shared obsession.

I had to think about that — I took several history courses on Rome in college, so I have invested some time in the subject, I’ve seen several popular movies with a Roman history themes, I’ve read books by Mary Beard and Colleen McCullough. But I struggled to remember when I last “thought about the Roman empire” — it just isn’t a frequent unprompted consideration. You know it’s all just spiders in my head.

I think it’s more a matter of being primed. It’s the converse of the “try not to think of an elephant” idea — when triggered, you start retroactively reviewing all the times you thought of the subject. Those men are just playing along with something they were asked by a woman, making it a kind of mansplaining exercise.

Although there may be an alternative explanation: maybe all these men are all advocates of the authoritarian “Red Caesar” idea.

For the last three years, parts of the American right have advocated a theory called Caesarism as an authoritarian solution to the claimed collapse of the US republic in conference rooms, podcasts and the house organs of the extreme right, especially those associated with the Claremont Institute thinktank.

Though on the surface this discussion might seem esoteric, experts who track extremism in the US say that due to their influence on the Republican party, the rightwing intellectuals who espouse these ideas about the attractions of autocracy present a profound threat to American democracy.

Their calls for a “red Caesar” are now only growing louder as Donald Trump, whose supporters attempted to violently halt the election of Joe Biden in 2020, has assumed dominant frontrunner status in the 2024 Republican nomination race. Trump, who also faces multiple criminal indictments, has spoken openly of attacking the free press in the US and having little regard for American constitutional norms should he win the White House again.

These are authoritarian times, maybe that’s what has some people thinking about tyrants and empires. I don’t see how you can look at Trump and even imagine there’s a Julius Caesar in there — he’s not even a Sulla. Maybe a Vitellius.

Look, this subject got me thinking about the Roman empire. Now you’re all going to think about it, too.

I dare you to not think about the Roman empire.

She had quite a career, and if she’d retired gracefully a few years ago, I’d have nothing but good things to say about her. But she didn’t, so I don’t, and I’ll shut up there.

I’ve been planning my own retirement, so it hits close to home. I’m still fine and I think I’m doing an OK job at my profession, but I think I should make room for new blood before those things aren’t true anymore.