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Joined 11 months ago
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Cake day: December 24th, 2023

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  • I agree with so many folks on this thread- your friend is pushing one set of social queues that they abide by, but that isn’t everyone.

    I think this has more to do with communication over text, as there are NO physical cues to help gauge tone. I’m not autistic, however when texting I’ve learned to practice mirroring for each person I chat with. If I notice they end their sentences without punctuation, I’ll adopt that. If I notice more emojis, I’ll have fun with that, or hold off if it seems that they don’t use them.

    A big one for me is using “!”. I usually will use “!” to signal excitement/ friendly tone, however I’ve learned some people see it as an angry tone and thought I was freaking out about what they said.

    When I talked to my therapist, he noted with his clients that 90% of disputes start over social media/ texting. I almost lost a friend when they sent me a lecture from a professor talking about the Israeli/ Palestine conflict. A few days later I saw a funny music composition video titled “old MacDonald had a lobotomy”. I thought I was just sending a funny video, but she thought it was in response to her video, and I got a stern text that I had to clear up.


  • Right? Like we all saw that Iran was going to for tat, and their attack was pretty much neutralized. At this point Israel is just accelerating the conflict.

    I don’t want to believe our media is biased either, but like let’s take a moment and remember that we’ve been told the reason Iran and the Taliban hate us is because we have and love freedom. Like seriously, take a moment if you were alive and conscious in 2003 and what messaging we got then. It’s so stupid.


  • Israel is defeated like the US was defeated in Afghanistan. It’s not that the Taliban managed to get tanks rolling through DC, but they killed our international image and took away prescious time, money, energy, and lives. They suffered magnitudes more than us, so just like in any war, there were no winners.

    We keep saying “we don’t negotiate with terrorists”, but I’m starting to think that we should consider negotiating with terrorists*.

    '*Understanding the definition of terrorist is very subjective




  • Am I the only one who has been hearing the frustrations coming from democrats and Biden about Netanyahu? Reading these comments you’d think Biden has been best buddy’s with Netanyahu and all is squeaky clean in their relationship, which is very, VERY much not the case. You’d also think that democratic leadership didn’t just call out Netanyahu and suggest Israeli’s vote him out over Gaza.

    It’s so weird that Biden is simultaneously Genocide Joe and Pro Hamas Biden.

    I know talk is cheap and we are still sending military aid to Israel, but it all comes down to Biden facing daily trolley problems and balancing keeping friendly relationships with our one (nuclear capable) middle eastern country, taking the US seriously as a country that can stop a genocide by saying no to this (nuclear capable) middle eastern country, a reelection, and sending a message to the United States allies and adversaries of if we will or will not support who we say we will support.

    The answer to stop sending arms to Israel is clear to us, but let’s not pretend it’s that easy. The rules for rulers are not that straightforward.



  • Joe is both “Genocide Joe” and “Pro Hamas Joe” depending on who you ask. The way I see it, he’s an unpopular president of a deeply fractured country with fascism knocking on the door while a geopolitical ally is commiting atrocities and another is is being attacked by our historic adversary. He is being faced with a million prisoner’s trolley problemmas. This won’t obsolve him of his role in the conflict, but we should recognize that he is in a precarious position with some very real reasons to have pause.

    Take note: Biden has been able to pass a shit ton of legislation and so did LBJ, but to think either of them got a free lunch is deeply misguided. LBJ had to make Vietnam happen to get the welfare state. “I gave you your damn war, now give me my programs”.

    With the election coming up, he can’t just consider Palestine as the only priority. Medicare funding. Voting rights. Abortion rights. Gun control. Debt forgiveness. Inflation. Climate change. If he loses the moderate vote, which is not as pro-palestine as the progressive left, he loses everything. (Side note: this is why you absolutely should vote for Biden. If he and the DNC sees that the progressive left cary a large portion of their votes, they will act accordingly. People who don’t vote are politically useless)

    If you follow a multitude of news outlets, you might pick up on how Joe and Netanyahu have had strained relations (you can imagine how those calls are going). Joe continues the US stance of a two state solution (remember that Trump favors full Israeli control of Palestine).

    I mean, yes we need to continue to push for Joe to call for a cease fire, but immediately pulling the plug on Israel funding will have negative consequences domestically and abroad.

    Remember that Iran is set to have nuclear capabilities by the end of the year. While there needs to be freedom for Palestine, let’s not pretend an anti Zionist solution won’t result in millions of dead Jews. If “well one side needs to agree to be annihilated” is your solution, you won’t find peace anytime soon as people won’t just agree to die, especially people with a well equipped Army (and an undisclosed amount of nukes).

    The other possibility is that Israel wouldn’t just take losing funding from the US. If we cut ties with Israel completely, they would look to their older ally, Russia (people forget Israel once was cozy with Moscow). We need Israel to stop their genocide, but we certainly don’t want them, nor their nukes, as an enemy.

    That said there are good reasons to cut funding. Cutting funding could be the push to get Israelis to oust Bibi in favor of a more liberal government. Cutting funding could boost the US in popularity with our NATO allies and also woo India, Brazil, and South Africa away from China and Russia. We have to ask if the risk is worth it, and what are the odds of each outcome.

    If you’re interested in why leaders don’t come to the same obvious conclusions that you do, I would recommend CGP Grey’s 20 minute video, Rules for Rulers

    If this shit was easy there wouldn’t be a degree in Political Science.