would the SLIDE into the hippies, and women and gay rights movements, and freedom of expression (more violence and sex in movies and media), have went down the way it would have? Would there not have been a more gradual change perhaps with a Jack Kennedy in power in 1967? — schopenhauer1

Hey! it wasn't a slide -- it was an ascent.

So I don't know how it would have turned out if JFK had remained president for 2 terms. Johnson was able to accomplish major new programs as president because he was a political "insider" par excellence. Kennedy may have been an insider in New England\, but not in Washington, seems to me. Jack's history is a lot more interesting if combined with the history of his father, Joe Kennedy. And less glorious.

It was Cohn, if I read this right, who most influenced Trump's unique talent to be able to lie, attack, and never admit fault — schopenhauer1

One of the benefits of reading only slightly ancient history (which I think you do) is that we find junior men interacting say... 40 years ago, influencing one another, and learning how to get and use power and money, and going on to become important senior men in various fields--like DT.

What role did JFK play in the cultural bloom of the 1960s? He arrive too late to start it. I have to remind myself of precedents whenever I think about Stonewall in 1969. Women's lib, gay lib, civil rights--all sorts of social changes that became visible--had been percolating upwards for a couple of decades, and longer.

During WWII, the Army/Navy discharged quite a few (don't have a number, maybe 10-15k) gay men and women. The witch hunters weren't entirely wrong -- there were queers in the armed forces and government. They tended to discharge the perverts in one of three ports -- NYC, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. Rather than go back to Omaha or Atlanta in disgrace, they stayed on, and greatly enlarged the local gay population. These three cities were the places Gay Lib took off first and fastest. The Mattachine Society was founded in 1950 in LA by a commie pinko fag (Harry Hay). The Beat Movement which started in the 1940s was the vanguard for the 1960s. Their poetry, for instance, was far out -- as the hippies would say.

"Beat" is allegedly derived from "beatitude".

You knew I'd take the bait!

Of course, the Kennedy Assassination was hugely important in that decade. It was like Pearl Harbor or 9/11 in that people remembered the context of hearing the news. The Kennedy Administration was culturally important too, especially compared to the 1950s / Eisenhower Administration. But then there is the larger governing context:

• The post-WWII economic expansion (which lasted until 1973)
• accelerated white suburbanization
• the Civil Rights Movement
• the 'Warren Court' 1953-1969 (the far-right wing deeply hated Chief Justice Earl Warren)
• greater access to college
• urban riots
• the Vietnam war and its opposition
• subsequent assassinations (Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, et al
• NASA's rocket science
• women's liberation
• black power
• gay liberation
• farm worker organizing
• and more.

Kennedy himself seems less important as time goes on. It's impossible (of course) to say how history would have unfolded had he completed two terms.

Some recent articles raise the question as to whether Kennedy's assassination, the subsequent investigations, and the enduring conspiracy thinking about it cracked public trust in the political system / government.

The assassination itself blew up presidential inviolability in our time, even though 3 previous presidents had been killed in office -- Lincoln, Garfield, and McKinley -- and attempts have been made on others. It is significant that the assassination was very public. Shortly afterwards, Jack Ruby assassinated Lee Harvey Oswald on live television. All that was bad enough, but then there were the doubts that the whole story had come out.

I don't know whether the whole story came out or not. There might be more to the story that has not been heard, and if the conspirators were competent in their conspiracy, we never will. At any rate, I think the enduring conspiracy has been more damaging than the assassination itself. People moved on after his death, as people do. Conspiracy fans don't move on.

There is a parallel with Trump. I loath Trump, his presidency was incompetent, and his influence on the the Supreme Court is enduring. His voting fraud conspiracy is malignant. It has been proven baseless again and again, but it endures as a Republican brain rot. The regularly watered conspiracy is subversive. So are most conspiracy obsessions.

Another conspiracy, predating both Kennedy's election and assassination was a far-right conspiracy that communists and homosexuals had infiltrated critical departments in the government. (That's what the Army - McCarthy hearings were about.) The commie/queer infestation conspiracy lasted well into the 1960s. There was also the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, and a similar one in the Senate, another subversive operation, in that it tended to equate dissent with treason.

"Who knows what this technology will evolve into in the next 30 years" the narrator wonders. Yes, what indeed?

I read not long ago that there is more computing power in a singing christmas card than existed in the world in 1946. — Wayfarer

The 1946 computers couldn't sing and the chips in singing Christmas cards can't calculate the best trajectory for a heavy shell fired at a target 3 miles away with a 10 mph headwind, etc. Different machines, different functions,

Mark Zuckerberg must be hooked up to these machines to extract whatever he has in mind for our brains.

There are too many superlatives being batted around about AI, mind reading, etc. Clearly the Tech Bros have fallen in love. (See "Sorcerer's Apprentice"; the Fantasia version will do if nothing else is available.).

These technologies are likely to generate a lot of power and money for those who can wield them. In saying that, I am estimating that it has real potential.

It was a very juicy post but now it's gone.

"Some people's children!" If only we knew how to distinguish those who will competently raise children for 18 years from those who will not.

We know there are conditions under which children tend to do better, and conditions under which they tend not to do well. The level of the parents' education is a factor. The economic stability of the parents is a factor. The parents' age (not too young, not too old) is a factor. A healthy environment for the family is a factor. Effective schools for the children is a factor. Access to at least basic health care is a factor.

Those are all social factors. Society falling apart? Good luck to any parents who can't insulate themselves and their children from the chaos of things falling apart and the center not holding,

What personal characteristics would you look for in approving or disapproving parenthood?

About what percent of prospective parents do you think are deficient in skills, such that they should not parent children?

Do you think you are a competent prospective (or actual) parent? Why?

Was it Mrs. Trump's fault that her son turned out to be such an exceedingly unpleasant person? Or did he he develop into an asshole all on his own?

how a path can be created for future generations.

I meant in something like 50-100 years at least! — I like sushi

No problem! In 100 years the world will be in the midst of a 3ºC - 5ºC overheating crisis; the stormy chaotic weather will be hot; the oceans will be rising rapidly; food production will be disrupted; coastal cities will be regularly or chronically inundated; many millions of climate refugees will be on the move if thy have not died already... We are living in the "good old days"! Israel who?

The folk-singer Billy Bragg used the phrase "the vanity of nations" in his version of the International. Nationalism, religion, ethnocentrism (whether it's black, white, Palestinian, Jewish, Han Chinese. English, Mestizos, etc.). All the specificities that occlude our common, unitary species-relatedness are a piece of the problem. Unfortunately, BOMFOG (the Brotherhood Of Man under the Fatherhood Of God) went out of style years ago. and I don't see anything similar on the horizon.

Maybe a global heat crisis will help us drop our focus on specificities, but I would be surprised if that helps.

I do not look for a cessation of conflict on earth, no matter how good the climate is or how bad, because "whatever it is that people want or need" won't be distributed equally. and therein lies an insoluble problem.

Does there have to be a resolution to ethnic conflict? There does if the relevant ethnics want a decent future, but...

What could peace look like for future generations? — I like sushi

If wishes were horses, the peasants would ride. I wish for a general, mutual peace. That would be good.

What I hope Israel DOES NOT do is create peace by removing the Palestinians from Gaza. I don't know where they would go. It seems like Gaza is being rendered uninhabitable. Of course it can be cleared and rebuilt; will it be cleared and rebuilt? I don't know.

Netanyahu said it will be a long war. Indeed. At least a year? Clearing the tunnels has scarcely begun, other than trying to blow them up with bombs. Destroying the tunnels (I assume that is on the agenda, whatever else happens) will also take time.

"Ethnic Cleansing" has been carried out successfully by any number of respectable countries. Spain kicked the Jews out several hundred years ago. The US severely reduced its indigenous population. After WWII, about 10,000,000 Germans were kicked out of countries their ancestors had been living in for a long time. The Potato Famine wasn't ethnic cleansing, supposedly, but Ireland's population decreased in size every census between the famine (1845) and 1990. My maternal ancestors fled Ireland around 1845. Turkey rid itself of about 1,000,000 Armenians in 1915 -- they died, they didn't move. A lot of Greek Christians were cleared out as well. There are quite a few others.

How much one cares about Israel, Gaza, the West Bank, et al is a distinction that doesn't make a difference. "Caring" sounds a lot like "our thoughts and prayers" offered for the families of mass-shooting victims. Pffft. There is stuff I care about, and Israel is among that stuff. But my caring, as such, doesn't help Israel. Your caring doesn't help either. Perhaps our discussions in the public space matter a little. Each individual's effect is minuscule, but multiplied by a billion or two, it adds up, and perhaps, possibly, maybe it might affect national policy. Just don't hold your breath waiting.

To be honest, we are sidewalk superintendents, by-standers, kibitzers at a long distance from the war. For us, our caring and concern is low-cost.

Go stuff yourself with all the brownies you are withholding from everyone you think doesn't care enough.

People do seem a little too obsessed in the horror in far away lands. — I like sushi

Ever since Daguerre invented photography, we've served up pictures of horrors. The gory details of the American Civil War were captured on film (so to speak; they were using glass plates) and displayed in cities far away from the battlegrounds. People were shocked. Now the transmissions from Gaza City or Kiev are live. Obsessing has become easier.

I cannot say I actually care much about this whole nonsense. — I like sushi

What! Your haven't made arrangements to leave your home and fight on the side of Justice? @Baden hasn't either; you both must be trolling. Maybe we are all trolling.

I find the Middle East an ethical can of worms--more so than some other places, and not just in the context of the current military action. "People are dying! Palestinians are being killed and driven out of their homes. They are starving! Little children and women! Etc." Yes, true. We disapprove; we don't like it; we find it unfortunate, unethical, or unbearably cruel. But that's what happens when war is waged. Hamas may be destroyed, but there won't be much left in Gaza for anybody to govern at the rate Israel is plowing up the place.

I don't know how this is going to turn out in the end; nobody else does either. The end justifies the means? What is the end, here?

If we could rewind history and do it over -- better -- how far back would we have to go? Moses? Jesus? Mohammed? The Crusades? The Ottomans? The British and French mandates? 1948? October 7?

Israel should stop illegally occupying Gaza and the West Bank — Tzeentch

Legal schmegal.

Law is a good thing within a civil society. "States" are not citizens themselves. States have interests which they pursue. The business end of "states' interests" may be very unpleasant for those who experience it. Israel is pursuing its interests in the same way that China, UK, US, Russia, Nigeria, Iran, and every other state pursues its interests. There are agreements among sovereign states to do or not do X, Y, or Z, but enforcement depends on whose ox is getting gored at the time. .

Look, I don't like what's going on in various places around the planet, but "legality" is honored in the breach whenever it is expedient or convenient.

The relationship between Jews and Palestinians has been heavily freighted since before the beginning of the Israeli state. The whole Middle East has been heavily freighted by the activities of the Ottoman Empire, Arabs, Britain, France, Iran, et al. Just ask the Kurds and Yazidis. All sorts of dissatisfactions all round.

What states can try to achieve is reduced conflict over the long run. We can't eliminate conflict, but we can perhaps (maybe, possibly) manage it. What Israel is doing is eliminating a group that has fomented conflict within Israel. Hamas isn't a little cell of committed radicals--it's a military / terrorist element that the State of Israel can not tolerate.

Could more humane management be practiced for the Palestinians who are not part of Hamas? Maybe. Maybe not. There is only so many humanitarian solutions possible in a war.

The fact is that bad things happen to people who get in the way of a state's interests, and generally other states are willing to live with it. Up to an uncertain point. How will the present situation resolve itself? I don't know, but I'm pretty sure "law" isn't going to figure large in the conclusion.

People entertain all sorts of wrong ideas, like the mind and body being two separate things. Blame Descartes for that.

Many people 'privilege' rational thought and denigrate emotion, overlooking the fact that fast emotional responses are a critical part of human survival. Fear get's you moving fast on short notice. Lust keeps the world populated and most of us find it quite fun. Etc.

Thinking is critical too, of course, and one of the things that encourages thinking is the pleasure we experience when we solve a problem.

It SEEMS like our hearts and heads (so to speak) are opposed to each other. But generally our hearts and heads are on the same page.

It's folk wisdom (more like folk bullshit) that mind and emotion are separate.

Emotion and reason are intimately connected in the brain, and they are not in perpetual opposition.

Humans whose emotions and reason are disconnected in varying degrees) aren't robots, they're psychopaths or sociopaths. Guilt, a powerful emotion, does not operate in their brains to curb decisions which are anti-social.

The best bet for people is to accept that they have emotions (some of which are very strong and may be easily provoked) and learn how to manage them. Most of us learn how to live with the emotional machinery we have--sometime; maybe not till 50 or 60, but eventually.

"emotionalism" isn't a philosophical approach to life. Some people make it a practice to display a lot of their emotions openly. Others of us, like us white protestant males, keep our emotions to ourselves -- not a particularly healthy practice, either.

You often link to your relevant past posts, any one out of 13.2k+. How do you keep track of your past posts? do you store them in a text file? Index them? Have an exceptionally good memory?

I tend to forget posts as soon as I post them. Stupid, I suppose. It's like when you see a run of the mill movie at a theater, one sometime forgets what it was about by the time your get on the bus. Or the section of a cartoon bookstore: "Books you have forgotten that you read."

Welcome.

What's your ideal trajectory for learning about philosophy? — dani

A very slow arc, I'd say. Just my personal opinion, but formal, academic philosophy is about as tedious a subject as there can be. Consider that philosophy is a 2500 year-old project. It ran out of new ideas pretty quickly, Around 50 BC a Roman said, "There is nothing so absurd that some philosopher has not already said it." That was Marcus Tullius Cicero. That's even more true today, 2000 years after Cicero. Now,don't rush off to read Cicero.

Thinking is a friendly activity, generally; a lot of very useful thinking goes on in many fields: Literature, Biology, Sociology, Geology, Religion, History, Art, and so on. You are young; do your school work; read widely; talk with people; engage with the world; enjoy life.

If you insist on messing with this field, my advice is read ABOUT philosophy first. Those snakes in the box? That can of worms? Approach it gradually--say, over the next 10 years. Read a book about philosophy. If it doesn't seem all that interesting, that's OK. Try a different one. If none of them seem all that interesting, that's OK too. Think about something else.

Some people are sort of black holes, even if they don't intend to be. Your friend's atheism, by itself, isn't the problem; the problem is in the presentation.

I spent several decades as a young person trying to sort things out. After 60 years of working on the puzzle, the pieces finally all fit.

A book list... hmmm; there are lots of books out there. Too many to shake a stick at.

I don't know anything about you--how old you are, what your background is, whether you are generally happy or not, what you like to read, what you like to do, what you think about. But to me, an old man, you sound like a young person trying to sort things out.

What are you studying?

“Hey, Hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” —A protest chant that first became popular in late 1967. — FreeEmotion

Oh yes, I remember chanting that, and others like

ho ho Ho Chi Minh
the NLF is gonna win

or

US out of Viet Nam
Japan and Okinawa

and

one two three four
we don't want your fucking war

The National Liberation Front did win, as it happens, and we are out of Vietnam, at least.

What upsets me is that bombing of civilians has been going on for years all over the world, in wars, civil wars, but without the news media attention that this has got. Where were the protests? 1 million Iraqis? 3 million Vietnamese? — FreeEmotion

According to the Defense Casualty Analysis System, there were 15,000,000 military personnel killed in WWII, and 38,000,000 civilian deaths. Armies don't fight the way they did in the 19th century and earlier, where battlefields were at least somewhat isolated. Henry V's famous victory over the French at Agincourt took place on a battlefield 1000 yards wide. The French force of 20,000 greatly outnumbered the English who arrived at the battle already exhausted. Rather than engage in hand to hand battle, the English unleashed between 125,000 and 500,000 arrows from longbows and crossbows into the French troops. This was in 1415.

In the middle of the 19th century, there was the famous charge of the British light brigade during the battle of Balaclava in the Crimea. You remember (of course you do) Tennyson's lines,

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volleyed and thundered;
Stormed at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred.

Point is, civilians were not involved--just the uniformed cannon fodder.

Technology changed, of course, and by WWII armies were not necessarily making finicky distinctions between civilians and soldiers, economic forces and military forces. The allies fire-bombed a number of cities, -- Hamburg, Dresden, and Tokyo for example. Cities are where civilians live. The US nuclear bombs made no distinction in Nagasaki and Hiroshima -- indeed, the military wanted to nuke an intact city, the better to measure the effect.

At this stage of the game, we can expect civilians to be targeted in war--probably not as the explicit target (very bad PR) but as "unfortunate collateral damage". Civilians are not so respected that they even make good human shields, these days. In some military thinking, there isn't all that big a difference between a civilian and a soldier.

I don't approve military policy and practice; my disapproval and 50¢ won't buy me a cup of coffee.

It is time to pull out your moral compass and do some judging of the right and wrong here. — FreeEmotion

In these times, my moral compass spins a lot, trying to locate the moral pole.

Don't they have good PR firms in those countries, or good advisors? — FreeEmotion

Of course they do, but people who organize demonstrations generally do not employ PR firms to make sure all of their messages are 'on point' and unambiguous. If you bring 10,000, 100,000, or 1,000,000 people together for a massive demonstration, there are limits on how finely you can direct the groupthink. Small groups can control small demonstrations -- 200-300 people at most -- much better.

Today the PBS reporter on the ground in Gaza said the IDF said that about 43% of the housing in Gaza had been destroyed, so far. The IDF has quite a ways to go yet, what with the many miles of tunnels running under civilian infrastructure. By the time they are finished destroying the tunnels, it wouldn't be surprising if 60% of the housing was rubble.

There are about 2,000,000 people "living" in Gaza; if 800,000 are now homeless, over 1 million will be without housing in a few months. No house, no kitchen, no bed, no pot to piss in. Nothing, Who is going to rebuild Gaza? Who is going to buy the building materials to house 1,200,000 homeless, never mind repairing the houses that are still habitable? Who's going to rebuild the water/sewer/sanitation system? Who's going to rebuild the electrical/telecom system? Schools, mosques, hospitals, food distribution system, etc?

Gaza will be ungovernable, alright -- the was one of Israel's stated goals, right? Make it impossible for Hamas to govern.

I don't know which nations are going to take on the large job of rebuilding Gaza. If civilians shouldn't be killed, they also shouldn't be left to rot amid the rubble, either. The place will need intensive therapy -- lots of concrete, lots of reconstruction, lots of psycho-social support. If there is no physical and psychological recovery in Gaza, then there will be no peace in the area either, just a lot of very bitter, angry, revenge-minded people.

In any case, the more information we get on this and other conflicts the more useful in preventing them. — FreeEmotion

I hope that is the case. We'll see.

I find it very irksome that demonstrators in Europe and the US have marched down the street chanting "From the ocean to the sea, Palestine will be free." What do these people--who do not send money to Isis, Al Qaeda, or Hamas and who almost certainly do not want to be in anybody's army--think that slogan means? IF the establishment of Israel involved ethnic cleansing, so would the dis-establishment of Israel.

It isn't the Israeli government's fault that Hamas launched an attack in southern Israel. It IS their fault--on numerous levels--that their substantial intelligence and military resources were not on duty, October 7. Netanyahu's all-out attack on Hamas will blunt the search for culpability in Israel.

I take the stand that civilians should not be killed as far as possible — FreeEmotion

Sure; everybody is nominally against killing innocent civilians. It's just that, unfortunately, "as far as possible" isn't much of a barrier, whether it involves blowing up people on an Israeli bus or in a restaurant in Tel Aviv, or dropping a bomb on an apartment building.

America has six times as many firearm homicides as Canada, and nearly 16 times as many as Germany — Mikie

Well, they're just not TRYING hard enough.

That is of course what Jews wanted, but that desire had been frustrated long before the late 19th / 20th century pogroms,

As an organized nationalist movement, Zionism is generally considered to have been founded by Theodor Herzl in 1897. However, the history of Zionism began earlier and is intertwined with Jewish history and Judaism. The organizations of Hovevei Zion (lit. 'Lovers of Zion'), held as the forerunners of modern Zionist ideals, were responsible for the creation of 20 Jewish towns in Palestine between 1870 and 1897.

Pacifism is the belief that all disputes can be settled without violence

This is especially true of disputes between individuals and small groups, or disputes between nations that do not involve existential issues. The EU was formed by negotiation, and the UK exited the EU through negotiation. Stupid, but it was done nonviolently. We generally negotiate over financial matters--trade, tariffs, taxation. But if it is us or them, negotiations don't work very well.

For example:

10% of excellent agricultural land which belongs to nation A is seized by nation B. Nation A sends its top negotiators to peacefully negotiate to get its land back from Nation B. Nation B says that 1000 years ago, the nomadic bandits that would later become Nation A took the land that Nation B had ALWAYS considered its own. Our answer is, "No! you cam not have it any more. It is ours now. Go away and don't come back; we have nothing to negotiate with you."

The land is important -- it provides food for many people. What did pacifistic Nation A do?

Nation A sorrowfully accepted the loss of its farmers and most productive agricultural land. No military violence was contemplated.

A year later, Nation B seizes 10% more of Nation A, this time the land that lies over rich mineral deposits. Nation A sorrowfully accepts the grievous loss if its miners and mineral resources. No military violence was contemplated.

A year after that, Nation B seizes 15% of Nation A, this time land that has excellent timber resources. Nation A even more sorrowfully and grievously accepts the loss if its lumberjacks and timber resources. No military violence was contemplated.

After these land seizures, Nation A is 35% smaller and its economy is deteriorating rapidly. It can't produce enough food. It can't produce enough metal and wood products for export to pay for imported food. It has changed from a prosperous country to an impoverished one.

All totally hypothetical, of course, except that there are real nations who have been quite willing to seize their neighbors land (by military violence, usually) and not give it back. The United States comes to mind, but also Great Britain, Germany, Russia, Japan, France, Italy, Turkey, and China -- and more.

Individuals can practice pacifism if they so choose. States can not, States that attempt to practice pacifism will either cease to exist or will become the exploited vassal provinces of another nation, and their citizens will suffer severely. (Switzerland is not a pacifist nation, just in case you were going to mention them. They are armed.) Consider Germany's war to acquire lebensraum and resources: It acquired Austria, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Greece, Belgium, Holland, Poland, much of the western Soviet Union (i.e., Ukraine, Belorussia), Latvia, Estonia Lithuania, Norway, and Denmark. It planned to acquire more -- like the UK.

Russia seized a large chunk of Ukraine, and claimed that the whole place belonged to them. Ukraine is currently attempting to reclaim the seized territory.

Jesus said, "You should turn the other cheek." He didn't say Israel should, or Rome should, or Persia should, or any other nation should.

People are lazy and stupid. — I like sushi

Well I read somewhere that people are stupid, and I have a long record of laziness, so... guess that's true.

The NY subway system is roughly 250 miles long -- all underground? I don't think so -- some of it is above ground. Isn't an above ground subway a contradiction in terms? There are roughly 310 miles of Hamas Tunnels, which like the subway lines, vary in depth quite a bit. 250 miles is not the length of trackage (since some tunnels have 4 sets of tracks -- 1 inbound all stops, 1 outbound all stops, and 1 express track in each direction).



The map doesn't include tunnels dug by smugglers from Gaza into Egypt. Those are privately built and owned, according to a YOUTUBE video, and are worth quite a bit to the owners. They are not as well built as Hamas' tunnels, and there are a lot more cave ins. But they can import cars through the tunnels -- they cut them up. Animals are brought in through the tunnels too, Well, just about everything/anything.

I have no idea how the map of the tunnels relates to the street map of Gaza. That's a problem for Israeli Intelligence to work on. Clearly though, destroying the tunnels from the air (to whatever extent that's possible) is going to be a smashing operation. Soldiers destroying the tunnels would, my guess, lead to very unacceptable losses by Israel.

ChatGPT will have to improve its game A LOT before it becomes useful. Send it back to the drawing board,

In the past I've generally accepted that the State of Israel has a right to exist but I have to say that Israeli brutality against civilians is severely testing my belief. — Wayfarer

General William T. Sherman, one of the Union's best generals, said: "It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell."

War is hell, regardless of the combatants, without respect to the goodness of one side and the wickedness of the other. Yes, Israel is deploying massive force against an intrenched enemy in a very crowded urban setting. Israel depends on advanced weaponry (no homemade missiles). Had they opted for a ground war without using their air force, their own casualties would be very high, and there would still be many civilian deaths, and maybe an unsuccessful outcome from Israel's POV.

The legitimacy of Israel isn't negated by its battle tactics, any more than the legitimacy of Palestinians need for an secure state in which to live is invalidated by Hamas' brutality.

Some demonstrators accuse Israel of ethnic cleansing. This seems to have occurred at the time of Israel's founding when many Palestinians were displaced. What the settlers are doing on the West Bank is more 'ethnic encroachment' than ethnic cleansing. Israel ought (imho) to return the settlers' seized lands. I don't think that is going to happen, but it should happen. The Gaza war is definitely not ethnic cleansing: it's an effort aimed at regime change. (Those don't always work out very well either,).

I pretty much support Israel. I'm not very enthusiastic about the Arab block. Israel's birth could have been engineered more successfully, perhaps (don't ask me how). I'm not very enthusiastic about the increasing dominance of the ultra-conservative religious factions in Israel, but I don't know what we can do about it. I dislike the American religious ultra-conservatives too, and not much I can do about them, some of them are close relatives!

Israeli demonstrators protesting.

Reading from right to left... of course war has winners, and let us not forget, losers. Israel exists because they have won their wars. Israel's Arab neighbors have, so far, not won their wars against Israel. Were the Arabs to launch a successful war on Israel, who doubts that the Jews would receive the kind of treatment that Hamas is receiving--from the river to the sea.

If massacres do not justify self-defense, what in god's name does?

11000+ Palestinian men, women, and children killed? Some people think that number is exaggerated. Given the intensity of Israeli bombing of Gaza, I would be surprised if it is not significantly higher.

Is there a manner of attacking Hamas (who are literally dug in under Gaza) which would not result in a large number of civilian casualties?

Probably not. Bombing in WWII had mixed success rate -- as did bombing in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan. "Precision targeting" has been the elusive goal since the beginning of WWII. A lot of dropped gravity-guided bombs do not come close to or hit their designated targets. Guided bombs do better, as do guided missiles and drones. Presumably Israel targets within fairly tight parameters. That's better than just opening the bomb bay doors over Gaza and letting loose.

I don't know to what extent Hamas represents the political opinions of the Gazan and wider Palestinian population. Do they deserve to be wiped out, at considerable human cost to the civilians they claim to represent?

Yes, for three reasons: #1, they are on record as favoring the destruction of Israel. #2, they demonstrated a willingness and ability to carry out effective attack on Israel -- 1200+ killed on 10/7. They launched 9,500 missiles at Israe over the previous month, most of which were shot down or were not heading toward a significant targets. #3, they are not uniquely able to govern Gaza. I have no knowledge about their administration, but I have not heard much in the way of positive reviews let alone rave reviews about how effectively they have governed Gaza.

My guess is that Hamas has diverted a large percentage of material imported (or smuggled in through tunnels) into Gaza for its own use, rather than for the benefit of average Palestinians. They have further endangered their own people by digging in under significant civilian buildings -- hospitals, schools, mosques, etc.

What good has Hamas done?

Does one get any rest from spite, despite a respite from spite? I mean, spite and then re-spite? Can we de-spite somebody, the way one de-worms a dog?

No wonder the world is getting hotter.

Burning irony is a major contributor to global warming.

Wanna go out for a few beers tonight?

Sad. Tragic. But "time makes ancient good uncouth" a poet once said. The train of militant leftist working class activism and mass demonstrations seems to have left the station quite some time ago. The departure is lamentable.

However... I'm of an old enough age where dying might happen. There is some comfort in that, oddly enough. When I was much younger, I felt called to act on the many injustices, and that involved a lot of sturm and drang. That's over. An order of concern on dry whole wheat toast, hold the sturm and drang.

It just seems like that would be the reason to maintain contact, not sever it. — frank

It would IF one was not a rigid ideologue. Hey, I've been rigidly ideological at times on different issues, and it is hard to escape the box of one's own construction. I can find endless embarrassment in my past--confusion, rigidity, self-righteousness, etc. etc. etc. There were good things too -- insight, smart moves, deep commitments, loyalty, flexibility, and so on woven in with the crap, as it usually is.

But this incident was mild compared to teachers in colleges who were hounded out of their jobs by a braying mob of Woke lunatics.

It was crazy, as in DSM IV diagnosis: lunatic leftism. His behavior is also a testament to the ineffectiveness of long-term psychoanalysis. Perhaps a balloon was punctured -- maybe I was of the the last comrades still standing? A lot of the old guys in the party/movement have died of old age.

Quite a few stories about people being the victims of "woke leftists" places the woke mob in the same category as 1950s McCarthy witch hunters. "Are you now, or have you ever been a member of the communist Party?" no matter what one's reasons were or what circumstances applied.

I've been a small-time victim of a woke-leftist (whom I counted as a good friend). I rejected the necessity of the working class acquiring marxist enlightenment as a necessary prerequisite to solving the environmental crisis of global warming. "If that's the way you think," he said, "I never want to talk to you again!" and he hasn't.

I thought my view was quite reasonable. Considering the extremely meager results we had achieved in 20 years as Marxist missionaries, we had best move on. Try something else. No! No! If you are not with us 100%, then you are against us.

What is a stable government? How long is a long term? — Vera Mont

I'm thinking in terms of generations--20 to 25 years. A stable government should stand across generations. So, when people think about their government, their grandparents and grand children would have the same government, (This doesn't mean the same political party over the years.) The United States government was stable for 3 generations (1781 to 1861) then experienced a rupture. Since the Civil War, 170 years ago (6-7 generations) the government has been stable with stable (if not necessarily good) political control.

Town meetings have been going on in Massachusetts since the 17th century; the English Parliament has been in business for a similarly long period. France, an entirely going concern, has had several governments, including revolutions and invasions by an occupying army. Very strong cultural continuity has kept France enduringly glued together.

What is an adequate economy? — Vera Mont

An adequate economy is able to provide the basic needs of citizens -- food, clean water, housing, clothing, transportation, cultural activities, and so on. "Adequate" doesn't mean "plenty"; a good economy provides plenty. An adequate economy is able to distribute what people need (through employment and production) somewhat evenly. I assume some people are going to get more than others. That's a political matter -- market regulation and taxation.

A stable government and an at least adequate government requires a reasonably effective political system. "Reasonably effective" means reasonably honest, reasonably fair, reasonably competent, reasonably focused on the needs of the citizens. Since, per Emmanuel Kant, "nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind", "reasonably" is as good as we are likely to get for periods longer than a bad cold. Eternal vigilance being the price of liberty and all that.

Quite a few nations qualify, but quite a few don't. I don't disagree with Donald Trump that Haiti qualifies as a "shit hole". Haiti isn't the only one. It's a graphic term, but doesn't over-state how bad things can get when everything that can go wrong has gone wrong.

That is to say, if you turn off your cable news (an ancient thing nowadays), put down your newspaper (an even more ancient thing), don't look at online media, and don't talk politics, are you really affected much as to what happens on "Capitol Hill"? Every so often it comes to you in taxes and ballots, but really, many are detached. I think of an office worker or mechanic or construction worker blissfully just doing their thing. — schopenhauer1

"The Economy" on which we all depend isn't managed from Capital Hill, 1600 Pennsylvania, or elsewhere in the District. And you are right: a lot of Americans are 'detached' from government / political affairs. Still, when I talk to people who do not listen, watch, or read the news, they often seem detached from reality to some degree.

I want to know what is going on in the world. The quality of life of many Americans has, or will be, conditioned by decisions that are made in Washington--not just taxes and elections.

I'll have to chew on Debord's Society of the Spectacle for a while.

But, really, is that all a government is supposed to do? Keep its own people down and other peoples out? — Vera Mont

Gee, Vera, that's kind of a negative way of looking at it. But yes, a functioning government should control immigration and political unrest.

I would propose that a state is successful wherever it is considered sovereign, while the people who it nominally represent remain dependent and subordinate to its whims. With this it is successful in its most basic function. — NOS4A2

So, a minimally successful state is sovereign; controls its borders; controls its own population; facilitates an adequate economy; maintain a stable government over a long period of time.

Failed states are taken over by insiders or outsides; lose control of its borders; loses control of its population; has a collapsed economy; has a series of very short, ineffective political regimes.

A successful state may not make everyone (or anyone) happy. The question is whether it's a going concern, or not.

Your Op was well drawn and has brought in solid interesting discussion. I rarely see Maher doing his shtick but I liked the clip you posted.

I am getting old and I don't have much time for the woke left. In all, it seems like there are some very non-polemical a-political trends at work.

"Everybody says" that politics is getting more extreme -- from the screwy woke left to the screwy fascist right. More extreme and more contentious, less civil, less thoughtful, less accommodating (not to very different positions, but often to only slightly different positions. Why?

Perhaps it's a result of a reasonably free society where the bar to entry into political debate has been lowered by technology. Anybody can get on one social media platform or another and babble away about anything. The Elite are still the elite and still run things, but the proles now have big megaphones to express themselves.

"Post modernism" seems to have mentally unhinged many on the the left. Up until... what? the 1950s? 60s? the now old left seemed firmly anchored in reality. They may have been dull, but they were accounting for real material forces.

The "public attention span" is only so long, and there is stiff competition to get one's views heard, to dominate the stage. This alone leads to exaggerated claims -- attention bait in the crowded market place.

A lot of what we see on the news seems to be "public performance". This isn't new, of course. Over the decades, maybe a century, people have learned how to effectively demonstrate anger, rage, grief, resentment, outrage, and so on.

People in politics have to work fairly hard to differentiate themselves. This is true for Republican Party candidates and the woke left, as well. Getting noticed can lead to absurdities (like the famous drag queen story hour).

I'm sort of a relativist. I heartily disapprove of slavery (chattel slavery or wage slavery), for instance, but it's conceivable that slave holders didn't feel guilty about owning slaves, any more than capitalists feel guilty for paying very low wages. Similarly, people leaving England to colonize New England mostly felt quite justified before God. They felt plenty of guilt, but it wasn't for being colonizers.

I don't look at "empire" -- colonialism -- as it was practiced in the 17th - 20th century as a moral evil. Certainly not very nice, certainly wouldn't want to be on the receiving end, certainly took away more than was given, certainly relied on sticks (guns) much, much more than on carrots. The Romans required a steady flow of goods from its colonies to feed everyone, England, Netherlands, France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Russia -- everybody who COULD -- wanted to tap into (for them) new resources. Finding, acquiring, holding on to, and exploiting resources is a well-established practice, everywhere on every continent, wherever it could be managed, by any group who could pull it off.

Western Civilization is not perfect, but it's the only civilization [people in the west] have got, and it is better than most. Those who are too good for this culture could emigrate to the East and to the south, to Russia, to the PRC, to Saudi Arabia, Sudan, Congo, Afghanistan, or any number of places where the "woke left" would be sent to prison, reeducation centers, mental hospitals, or end up beheaded.

“What have the Romans ever done for us?” — I like sushi

I recently read an article about the frequency of thoughts about Rome. Apparently many males think about the Roman Empire quite a bit -- at least once a day. I like thinking about various aspects of the Roman Empire.

In my opinion, the line of reasoning you are taking here is problematic.

I recently had this discussion; in a nutshell...

Conservative evangelical: "Employers can't find anyone to fill jobs. There are all these people sitting around doing nothing, People don't want to work. That's a fact!"

Me (left/liberal/pinko): "It isn't that people don't want to work -- it's that there aren't enough workers available. The unemployment rate, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is 3.1% (in this state). 3.1% unemployment is considered "full employment" -- meaning that most people who can work are working."

Conservative evangelical: "That's just your opinion."

There are facts about the world that are different than opinions. A fact may support or weaken an opinion, but an opinion does not support or weaken facts. In my opinion, there are facts about both the social and physical world which are not dependent on opinion.

Fact: Most people take available work that they can do because being able to obtain what we need to live is a better option than having nothing.

Opinion: Most people are lazy and would rather be parasites than be productive.

Would you agree that the above fact is a fact and the opinion is an opinion?

The direction earth is spinning was arbitrarily assigned. The only thing definitive is that earth is spinning in one relatively consistent way. But East, West North and South are not fundamental to space. — Benj96

The earth had been spinning in a very definite way for a few billion years before some smart ass decided that the direction of spin was "assigned" a few years ago. The galaxy had been spinning in the same direction for much longer. The term we use for the direction of spin is a trivial issue, rising from the history of whatever language we use.

We didn't make the world, we discovered the world a couple of million years ago, when we developed enough cognitive power to begin conceptualizing our environments instead of only living in them.

I thought one was entitled to ones own opinions, but not entitled to one's own facts.

The magnetic pole has nothing to do with the direction in which the earth is spinning. In order for the sun to rise in the west, the earth would have to come to a standstill, and then start spinning in the other direction.