Sounds like you're hearing his hype voters to activate before elections tone, not his pro all Americans content. I agree with your final thoughts (hence my above comment about seeing our neighbors as humans again) but I think you're pinning it on the wrong dude. He's a fat guy from Michigan in a shitty hat. You're thinking of the postdoc white suburbanites on Twitter that use words nobody ever uses IRL only alienating people that agree with them.
Please take the time to read this, because you sound intelligent and like you give a shit about other people. I hope you can understand my perspective whether you agree. But I spent too long writing this, and nobody is clicking this deep, so this is all for you, Internet stranger (and hopefully new friend). So take the time to really think about this and not about how you're going to respond. At the end you'll even find an example of what taught me to listen to people even if I know I vehemently disagree but accept I'll never change their minds.
That's the point of the below.. Not to persuade you of an opinion (I haven't even shared my opinions in here)
Occupied West Bank and Gaza, and further settlement anywhere, are a different conversation than the existence of Israel, as well as whether it be in the Levant.
You're equivocating and intermingling what are two completely different concepts. And then intermingling your feelings and response.
When I asked all my progressive friends and colleagues what we can do (this was like..3 yrs ago?), they just got downtrodden and didn't have hopeful answers. (Sounds like what you've described as weird or I extrapolated as you suggesting "shifty". I think they're just shutdown by an emotional trigger (you said they hate the war.. Good guys, right?) combined with not having anything helpful to say)
They explain the conservative argument against Arab citizenship and voting rights is the resulting immediate "overthrow" of status quo bc of demographics, the subsequent changes to law, and the virtual destruction of Israel. They don't like that hence preference to multi state.
Perhaps you can challenge your intellectual biases and ask your friends directly about why they believe in the existence of "an" Israel or any Jewish state. That's a completely different conversation for them that perhaps you haven't seen that way.
Are you pro choice? Have you argued with an anti choice person? It's a fundamental belief to them that an embryo is a life. So your arguments don't matter to them the way they do to you. If your friends fundamentally believe they need a home and they're in one they have had and defended for nearly a century at this point, some Sephardim even longer, they can agree with a parallel of "the US stop invading Mexico" but not "the US should pack up and leave it's land behind to the indigenous that have survived" (and even that gives grace bc not all Palestinians are generational like native Americans)
Sorry, dude at work. Mentioned title to point out he's running a company (and employing other people, and paying US wages in less industrialized places), so stakes are high in his life in general, exacerbating the challenges of processing one's feelings about this all.
Yeah... Christianity is us vs them most of the time bc it's weaponized. So I make sure he knows the dude is no different than us. Not us vs them. I love how in all those words, this is your focus. Touch grass baby
Lmao I feel you but you never know what the other person's day is like. We order from them while coming on here and cheering for their fair wages. We gotta have empathy that their lives suck in the micro, if we can see the socioeconomic component in the macro.
(Also, do it after your next order if you really want to withhold)
I've angrily thought "I want my ten dollar fucking tip back from this piece of shit" than shutup, ate my cold or incorrect meal, thought over it without being hangry and realized the evening is still worse for them.
... Jfc.. you're right. I've lamented it for years nonetheless. I guess I'm actually thinking "are people really saying this about the team that will actually use Prism (remember that whole govt access to internet thing?) to hunt down threats to their agenda? "
Yeah we're probably on the same page generally. The unibomber comment resonates. I've had the same thought in recent years. But it's better to think about Timothy McVeigh. The before image of that childcare center has been burned into my mind since back then. Those are the outcomes I'm thinking about. Especially as a parent. I hoped for this day my whole youth but as I got older I dreaded seeing the world around me proving me right about our inevitable path. Now we're here and I don't like it. I really believed in voting, even after 2000. I underestimated Cambridge Analytica, and Putin, and don't understand how Zuck hasn't had his skull pushed in harder than his asshole in a penitentiary for treason.
They're not Christians. They don't follow the beliefs accredited to Jesus. But it sounds like you do. Don't let them tarnish your name and your beliefs. Good people are inadvertently lumping you together and you sound like a decent person. As a Jew, I teach my kid "he was a Jew like us, a great person if he was real, who cared about other people, worked an honest day's work with his hands, was humble, upstanded against tyranny and capitalists, and someone who shares our family's values, dirty hippie hard working Jewish 99%er with an open heart. We just don't believe he was the Messiah and we're still waiting"
Ugh fuck.. if we see the same demographic shift, and those numbers finally stopping, are we supposed to celebrate this? Wtf are y'all teaching your kids about this? I teach mine that in spite of daddy's successful career in capitalism, the wealthy are a whole other thing who want to take our shit, beat us down, and virtually enslave us, and one day the masses may get angry and eat the rich. I also teach violence is absolutely never okay except to survive or protect, and we never start fights but we always make sure to end them. So now it's happening... Wtf do I say to him? I'm honestly asking for advice.. clearly from my comment history today, I'm finally reading the social media here and processing...
That's fair man. My founder is on a green card. He has said his (asian) color brown isn't the same problem as the folks to our south have, and he selfishly knows it's better for him, so he's keeping his nose down, not upstanding. I get it. He's got a lot to lose. You gotta do you and get the oxygen mask on.
I mean... The education disparity is already a states' right issue at this point. I just wish my self sufficient powerhouse of an economy state would stop paying taxes if they're withholding emergency and education funding
Every Israeli I've ever known born after 1980 has always supported multi state (typically a third for the Orthodox bc they're tired of doing military service for religious scholars' "safety") and hates all of this. I worked in intelligence with hundreds of ex-IDF primarily special forces and cyber. They had me in tears pointing out and sharing their disgust with settlements lurking over every Arab or bedouin shack in the middle of nowhere. Netanyahu was hanging on by a thread to avoid the popular opinion that he should be in prison. This was his 9/11, WMD, moment.
I'm scared of his supporters becoming disenfranchised by and turning on him. They're already so volatile that their violence isn't always going to be as precise as a single bullet. There's going to be civilian collateral damage. It's hard celebrating all this, knowing the motherfucker had it coming, but considering the reality of violence, vigilantism and the kinds of people that do this (and the state they're in when pushed enough).. yay dead rich murderous fuck.. but shit, I'm scared for all of us. That dude could have missed.. a stray could have killed someone. Couldn't have gone through his head, shattered on his skull and shrapnel ricochets through a kid walking to school. Everyone wants street justice but forgets that living by the sword means living by the sword.
Well put in every regard.