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Let's hope so. One of the most baffling political allegiances has always been Jewish Americans aligning with the democrat party. Hopefully now that's starting to change:

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/artic...

Hamas Killed My Wokeness
I've found a home on the progressive left for years'even after I noticed a common blind spot around Jewish issues. But the reaction to the murderous attacks on Israeli civilians was the final straw.

...
I've struggled to find my political footing while maintaining a commitment to the pursuit of truth and justice. I started noticing the sinister shadow of postmodern progressivism everywhere: a seeming insistence on 'pluralism' that, in practice, often lacks genuine embodiment and quickly devolves into its own form of dogmatic and reductive tribalism.

I began to feel as though I had been baited into an a priori virtuous worldview that, in a twisted way, sows more division than it does healing; more concerned, as it is, with retribution than reconciliation. That my Judaism was utterly swept away (even shadow-demonized) in the context of this conversation only left me more disillusioned.

Indeed. Virtue signaling for things that are deemed to be "right" is the calling card of modern progressivism; it's a means to replace debate with subjugation and provide a mass opiate at the same time. This guy is getting it.

Yet my affiliation with progressivism persisted. Say what one will about the oversimplifications and occasional insincerities of the progressive left, I told myself, their hearts were in the right place.

Then, two weeks ago, Hamas grotesquely murdered 1,400 Israeli citizens, including 270 at a pro-peace music festival, a gathering my friends and I would have joyously attended if we were in the Holy Land. While these events were deeply disturbing to me, and all fellow members of the diaspora, what was even more shocking was the response from segments of the online left back home. These are progressive groups that, ostensibly, should cherish all human life and abhor all wanton violence.

Instead, many celebrated'yes, celebrated'these attacks as a form of 'anti-colonialist resistance.' Memes circulated, like the now infamous Chicago #BLM paratrooper, that quite literally glorified an unimaginable slaughtering.

Sorry to tell the author this, but Hamas is just yet another 1970's-offshoot proto-Marxist terrorist group that just has as a special feature a genocidal charter to go along with it.

And here's the crux that explains the proto-Marxist part:
Over the past two weeks, I have heard no American Jew wish violence upon Gazans; I've witnessed many American so-called progressives who wish violence upon Jews. In response to raped teenagers and headless babies, a common leftist online refrain has been: 'What did you think decolonization looked like?'

That's not progressivism. That's bloodthirst.

At the root of every single Communist or commie adjacent revolution throughout history has been a notion of getting to pay somebody back, often in deadly ways. Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, the Sandanistas, you name it - the common denominator of their "worldwide revolution" was the elimination of less-preferred groups and elevation of the oppressed masses. In the Middle East it's the Israelis that in the minds of the woke play the role of disgusting colonial oppressors and the noble Palestinians who represent the worldwide proletariat.

leftism isn't very difficult to figure out...you just need to know a little history.

And along these lines: Wokeness messed up as a movement when the proclivities of its practitioners went too far.

It wasn't enough to just elevate some groups, no. You as a nonbeliever would be made to care and as a part of the process of gaining acceptance you needed to renounce your own identity and adopt a more...subservient...posture to the folks you want acceptance of. That's how the struggle sessions of antiracism all worked and it's straight out of the Maoist playbook:

https://themessenger.com/opinion/woke-culture-wars...

What was initially presented as a movement to accept transgender individuals transformed into allowing men into women's locker rooms and permitting gender-affirming surgery on minors. In some cities, as proactive policing diminished, thousands of murders have occurred since 2014. Wokeness has resulted in the policing of everyday language, from a convoluted redefining of what a 'lesbian' is by Johns Hopkins, lest transgender people might be offended, to phrases such as 'you guys' and 'American' being considered unacceptable by Stanford.

The explosion of the Great Awokening and what may come next is, in some ways, reminiscent of the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. What began as a legitimate gripe became an all-encompassing orgy of grievance that canceled people at will. However, many people don't remember that the Terror was followed by a reaction: disillusionment with the Revolution.

Tis why I'm neutral.

I hate some of the heinous things Hamas did -

But, it's time the Left pays a price.

And - I love seeing Muslims within Western Countries starting to flex their political muscles.

Countries within countries are sprouting of.

The Multicultural Tribal Polyglot someone used to talk about on TMF....is underway.

BTW Muslims in America - are not thrilled with Trans-Taliban and they are starting to voice their concerns. Look at California school board politics.....

And in Europe, I hope they tell Europe to shove its European identities up their colonizing asses. It's time the Left gets paid back, and Western Europe is one of their proxies.

One of the most baffling political allegiances has always been Jewish Americans aligning with the democrat party.

Why is that baffling to you? There's two main reasons.

First, American Jews are a religious minority. It is bad for us when government gets intertwined with the majority religion. For the past five or six decades, the GOP been the party aligned with reducing the separation between Church and State, and promoting a distinctly Christian vision of the US government and culture. We do really poorly when a government starts to concern itself with the religious, moral, or cultural "purity" of the Volk - getting really focused on whether the right "values" are being inculcated by government, rather than having a secular and pluralistic approach to religion and values. The GOP is very much a Christian party these days, which is why of all the Jews in Congress, only two are Republicans.

Second, GOP positions tend to target the demographic categories that American Jews fall into. Jews are largely an immigrant population. We were once the poor peasants that nativists and anti-immigrant Know-Nothings wanted to keep out. We have international roots. We are "cosmopolitans," to borrow the Soviet anti-semitic formulation - intellectuals, internationalists, globalists, advocates that a national culture should include minorities that remain distinct instead of assimilating.

Add in the contingencies of history (Democrats have long been the party of urban areas, and immigrating Jews landed in and mostly remained in urban areas), and you've got a potent mix of reasons why American Jews are Democrats.

Add in the contingencies of history (Democrats have long been the party of urban areas, and immigrating Jews landed in and mostly remained in urban areas), and you've got a potent mix of reasons why American Jews are Democrats.

Also,

1) Post WWII fascism and anti-semitism was a sentiment primarily expressed by Republicans. The newly formed John Birch Society group in my childhood neighborhood invited my Catholic father to attend their meetings, not knowing his Jewish father died on Krytsallnacht while my father and uncle were out in the streets defending their neighborhood from marauding fascists. My Dad and surviving relatives smelled the JBS "from a mile away."

https://www.jta.org/archive/john-birch-society-cha...

2) The vast majority of brutal attacks on Jews in the US are perpetrated by right wing extremists, AKA those 'fine people' Trump lauded on the Nazi side of the line in Charleston.

Add in the contingencies of history (Democrats have long been the party of urban areas, and immigrating Jews landed in and mostly remained in urban areas), and you've got a potent mix of reasons why American Jews are Democrats.

And how's that working out for them lately?

And how's that working out for them lately?

Still really well. The Democratic party is a vastly better fit - ideologically and demographically - for American Jews than the Republican party. The GOP coalition today contains most of the rural, Christian, nativist, and anti-intellectual strains of the electorate. That's a hard coalition for a religious minority immigrant group to fit in well with.

To the extent that there's a schism over recent events in Israel and Gaza, it's not really between Jews and Democrats writ large. It's within the hardcore progressive left. You have a bunch of very progressive (and mostly younger) leftist Jews that had made common cause with the broader progressive left on a host of issues - including fighting Israeli settlements in the West Bank, agitating for better conditions in Gaza, and pushing for a two-state solution. Those Jews generally assumed that while the settlers and the Netanyahu supporters were bad guys, their non-settler Labor-supporting Jewish Israeli friends would be considered part of the solution. They were in for a bit of a nasty shock to find that support for a one-state solution - just Palestine - runs deep in hardcore progressive circles.

But that doesn't mean that the Democratic party as a whole isn't generally far better for American Jews than the GOP. Being distressed by progressive attitudes towards Israel doesn't make the base GOP project of a Christian Nation any more appealing to us. And generally speaking, on a host of other issues Jews generally fall more within the Democratic coalition than the GOP coalition - of major religious groups, Jews are least likely (less than Buddhists!) to own a gun, most likely to support abortion, most likely to live in an urban area, third-most likely to have graduated from college, etc.

Righties on this thread....how many years before you stop shouting "Israel!"......

Seriously, start thinking about it just a bit.

And sorry if God or the Savior really needs help securing his favorite City, he'll hire Wade the Security guard for 20 bucks an hour, he doesn't need you nor America to do it.

If he does, maybe Atheism is truly the right way to go you know?

One of the most baffling political allegiances has always been Jewish Americans aligning with the democrat party.

Ok Dope, this shouldn't be baffling at all. Take a good look at the assumptions you have made that makes this baffling,and reassess. The Jews are not known to be dumb - take that as a given.

but Hamas is just yet another 1970's-offshoot proto-Marxist terrorist group

This is factually incorrect, it's an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

a common leftist online refrain has been: 'What did you think decolonization looked like?'

Sigh. Just because someone seemingly supportive of the Hamas action uses the term "decolonization" does not make Hamas Marxist. Hamas has a stated goal of destroying Israel by jihad (Islamic Holy War) - this is not Marxist - you should be able to easily see it isn't Marxist by yourself.

Still really well. The Democratic party is a vastly better fit - ideologically and demographically - for American Jews than the Republican party. T

Sure. Just take a look at all the nascent support for Israel on American's college campuses and from illustrious democrats such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Good luck!

This is factually incorrect, it's an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Yes. And who were they? Who influenced them?

https://theweek.com/articles/614207/marxist-roots-...
Radical Islam, for example, is a highly potent mixture of motifs drawn from the Muslim past and Marxist-Leninist ideas imported through the writings of such polemicists as Sayyid Qutb and Abul Ala Maududi. The two most ambitious and powerful Islamist groups ' the Islamic State and al Qaeda ' do not seriously believe that their acts of terrorism against the West will lead the EU or the United States to surrender.

The guy to focus on here is Sayyid Qutb, who would go on to found the Muslim Brotherhood itself and is considered one of the founders of modern Islamism.

What were his influences? Karl Marx, of course:

http://www.themadkhalis.com/md/articles/dsppw-read....

And it is necessary for Islaam to judge, since it is a unique, constructive and positivist aqidah which has been moulded and shaped from Christianity and Communism together, [with a] blending in the most perfect of ways and which comprises all of their (i.e Christianity and Communism's) objectives and adds in addition to them harmony, balance and justice.

(Translated from Qutb's text Ma'rakat ul-Islam war-Ra'samaaliyyah.

History.

Still really well. The Democratic party is a vastly better fit - ideologically and demographically - for American Jews than the Republican party. T

Sure. Just take a look at all the nascent support for Israel on American's college campuses and from illustrious democrats such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Good luck!
***

Yes, but Israel has enough influence to get around or stop on - Omar etc. Just look at AOC who is recently learning to shine Israel's shoes because she wants to increase her power.

And of course, the supporters of the Democratic Party you speak of - - who have EVERY right to support who they like, mostly support Dems - and politically don't give a shit about you or me.

Yet our side holds up bibles and shouts "Israel!".

Once again, our side - is the dumb one.

But there's smart ones too. You are a better researcher than me if it tickles your fancy, look how Muslims in Chino school districts - California - are pissed off about Liberal Taliban intellectually and sexually abducting their children. Us and them - together - are making small strides in California on parental rights.

We have to get away from seeking 100% agreements.

I feel it can do nothing but *add* to our ranks, to work with Muslims where we can and need to.

I have serious reservations about some of their beliefs and ways of living (as does that whole region, even the cab driver will tell you)....but certain alliances can be a plus for us.

I'm tired for carrying water for people who don't give a shit about us. And frankly, when I see the shit that comes out of pop culture HOLLYWOOD , and attacks the mindsets of the young people especially black......were they grow up dumb and dysfunctional and end up paying high interest rates and late fees to the Finance Industry, it makes me more than wonder about things. Yes, Israel is a Democracy - and amazing. But they are also manipulative users of Western powers, especially America.

Papa Bush isn't my favorite guy but after the Gulf War, after we paid cash money to Israel for "lost tourism" during the war.....James Baker spoke loudly against additional Israeli settlements.

Ask Papa Bush and James Baker - -- why didn't interest rates come down quicker leading up to that election? Why did they come down when people couldn't feel it.....yet GDP was growing by the time Billy Boy got sworn in?

Then Ask Dubya why he made a point to be so slavishly pro Israel.

Yes, certain stereotypes, certain theories - tested over centuries have some validity to them.

As I warned on TMF years ago - Anti Semitism is becoming en vogue on Leftist campuses, and in European and iNternational Halls of diplomacy like the U.N.

As of now, I can't say I don't give a shit. But I can say I give way less of a shit.

Chickens like voting for Colonel Sanders? Go right ahead, but then it's not my circus and not my monkey.

Dope: Yes. And who were they? Who influenced them?

What were his influences? Karl Marx, of course:

Yes, but understand the influence and don't color everything Marxist if the influence can be detected because:

snip The first condition is that we recognize that classical Marxism's essential contribution is a methodological approach that relates ideological facts to their material underpinning and explores the dialectical relationship between the material and the ideological. This is the indispensable condition for a resolute repudiation of all kinds of essentialism, like the one that Edward Said popularized under the label of Orientalism. Indeed, in this work Said was profoundly mistaken about Marx, characterizing him among the nineteenth-century Orientalists on the basis of a single 1853 article on India, which he actually misread.

Th method show up every from what I understand. I say "understand" because I have no read everywhere, so I take people's word for it. I could use a refresher on the method it was so long ago.

snipThe second condition for a good use of the materialist interpretation of religion is to acknowledge that it can only offer a partial explanation of religious phenomena. Of all ideological forms, religion is certainly the most complex, a fact that goes along with the exceptional longevity and adaptability of religious ideologies. Reaching a satisfactory understanding of religions requires the mobilization of the entire tool kit of social sciences, including social psychology and psychoanalysis......

.....This analytic key is to be combined with another one ' or rather, an intuition ' in Marx's and Engels's Communist Manifesto where they explained that, confronted with the steamroller of capitalist development, part of the middle layers, the petit-bourgeois and the like, 'try to roll back the wheel of history.' The idea of a 'return' to the predominance of the City of God, of the 'restoration' of the distant past of Antiquity or the Middle Ages ' a highly mythologized past, needless to say ' is indeed a crucial dimension of religious fundamentalisms. Such backward-looking and chimeric escapism is a very understandable reaction to the adversity and misfortunes of our present time, especially when it means identification with a counter-society, be it of the size of a small clan or a large tribe.

I skimmed this, and got the gist that the Marx analysis is used, but is incomplete, and to shorten everything up, the Islamist fundamentalism is an expected reactionary force - even if it does use some of the methodology. But Hamas is trying to install a religious autocracy - there is no vanguard of the proletariat marching in to take control of the production.



https://jacobin.com/2019/04/marx-prophet-proletari...

Sure. Just take a look at all the nascent support for Israel on American's college campuses and from illustrious democrats such as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Good luck!

I have taken a look at that. Unlike you, though, I've looked at things other than what the very most progressive parts of the hardcore left are saying on just that one issue. Dissatisfaction among Jews with the position of the most leftward part of the Democratic coalition isn't going to get them to move to the party that promotes the idea of the US as a Christian nation. No coalition that makes up half the country is going to be a perfect fit for any minority group like the Jews - and the Democrats are a much better fit than the Republicans. We might be very upset by what the far far left believes about Israel, but we're not going to leave the Democrats for the party of rural nativists promoting a hardcore Christian view of culture and government. Particularly not while the far far left doesn't set Democratic foreign policy.

Dissatisfaction among Jews with the position of the most leftward part of the Democratic coalition isn't going to get them to move to the party that promotes the idea of the US as a Christian nation.

Exactly.

As mentioned in prior threads, it is highly likely that Americans of Jewish faith eye with GREAT suspicion the motivations of all the support right-wing so-called Christians offer for the state of Israel. They understand very well that for many far-right evangelical "Christians", their prophesies of the battle of Armageddon and the Rapture to follow state that Jewish control of the Holy Land (on both sides of the Jordan river) is a precondition for the second coming.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/politics/wp/20...

This mindset basically says to Jews worldwide, "We've TOTALLY got your back on this Israel-in-the-Holy-Land thing cuz our magic book says YOU have to be established there to satisfy a checklist so OUR Lord can return one last time, instantly dispatch all the non-believers INCLUDING YOU to Hell, then Hoover the rest of us up in a beaming shaft of light into the eternal warmth and presence of an ever-loving god."

I feel 20 IQ points more stupid even typing that but eighty percent of evangelicals believe that.


WTH

Actually, the GOP stands for restoring traditional American values, not for imposing Christianity, but you're free to believe what you want to believe. Good luck.

Actually, the GOP stands for restoring traditional American values, not for imposing Christianity,...

Uhhh...no.

One of the reasons I left the Republican party was its embrace and advocacy of Christian nationalism. That wasn't the only reason, but it was the final straw. The traditional American values, as you called them, were not the values they used to be. And that was 20+ years ago. It's worse now.

The party today makes Reagan look like a liberal bleeding heart

traditional American values

WTF are 'traditional American values?

Racism and bigotry toward each new ethnic group of immigrant as it arrives comes to mind.

Mass killings of indigenous people too.

WTH: I feel 20 IQ points more stupid even typing that but eighty percent of evangelicals believe that.

Driving across Texas as a young man, I well remember the bumper sticker on the pick up truck in from of me saying - In case of Rapture this truck will be unmanned. This was my introduction into the strange cultish Christian beliefs about End Times. Trump is King Cyrus, God is working through him. Trump is the chosen one.

It's good the traditional values are gone.

From the household to the House Senate White House - you people are dysfunctional whether it's Trump, Bush, Obama, or whatever.

Imagine for a moment......

These people will be handling Medicare, Social Security, and Environmental reforms.

HAHA

Funny how SOME Republicans wanting Christian Nationalism paints all of us.

BUT "extremes" of the Left being anti semetic shouldn't turn off Jews.

Yeah yeah, you can link this and that, so can i.


Either way, be it anti Semitism, or Christian Nationalism - I'm not zero worried -but it's at the bottom of the list.

Funny how SOME Republicans wanting Christian Nationalism paints all of us.

BUT "extremes" of the Left being anti semitic shouldn't turn off Jews.

Yup. I swore on PA that I wouldn't bother to try to change minds anymore. It seems that rule needs to apply here; you'd think that the GOP is busy passing laws mandating the forced baptism of every non-Christian in the country. Or that there were mobs of preachers singing Glory Glory Hallelujah marching down every street.

Meanwhile, in my liberal and oh-so-tolerant neighborhood of Seattle with its population of 99% democrats there's now "From the river to the sea Palestine will be free" graffiti. These guys despise Christians so much they don't understand the tiger they've put a saddle on. I liked the comment about how the far left doesn't dictate foreign policy.

Welp...not yet, they don't. But they will.

traditional American values

Still waiting for the dope's list of 'traditional American values?

drip drip drip

Still waiting for the dope's list of 'traditional American values?

drip drip drip
****

They are gone.

And *giggle* it shows in every corner of your society now.

It's gonna get worse.

Don't worry, we'll get the s and p 500 eventually.

Value?

No, they are gone.

And the fun is only starting.......

Still waiting for the dope's list of 'traditional American values?

drip drip drip - sano

----------------

Lets start the list then.

1. Patriotism
2. Self Reliance
3. Respect for the rights of others
4. Rule of Law
5. Equal Justice under the law

1. Patriotism
2. Self Reliance
3. Respect for the rights of others
4. Rule of Law
5. Equal Justice under the law

Patriotism isn't a unique American value.

Self-reliance disappeared with urbanization and industrialization, cowboy, and it ain't a'comin' back.

Respect for the rights of others? - Tell it to MAGA.

Rule of Law? - Tell it to MAGA.

Equal Justice? - LOL. Tell it to Trump and MAGA. Clarence Thomas? Lock him up!

1. Patriotism
2. Self Reliance
3. Respect for the rights of others
4. Rule of Law
5. Equal Justice under the law

Yeah, this isn't that hard. Well...for some it is. Especially when your "progressive values" start with "America is hopeless racist and evil place".

Lets start the list then.

1. Patriotism
Does this mean you can't criticize anything? Or does it mean only certain criticism is allowed. It's Patriotic
to criticize the hell out of your government. Ask Patrick Henry.

2. Self Reliance
Does this mean no subsidies for farmers? No 20,000 acre exclusion? No tax break cut outs? Only tax exemptions for
the room in the building where worshipers meet on Sundays? No special tax carve outs anywhere?

3. Respect for the rights of others
Does this mean you are giving up on gerrymandering and the ever evolving voter suppression techniques of the GOP?
The GOP doesn't respect the right to vote unless it's a GOP vote. Just take a look at North Carolina and Alabama,
and the shenanigans that go on in Texas and Florida.

4. Rule of Law
Only white boy law, with special carve outs for loyal token minorities.

5. Equal Justice under the law
Are you going to try and include Republicans before the Southern Strategy? It was actually those snotty arrogant
libruls that gave rise the to 13th, 14th, and 15th amendments, not those traitors down south and the west was
still territories. Modernly, the GOP has never claimed this as on of their Traditional Murcan Values.

Lets start the list then.

1. Patriotism
2. Self Reliance
3. Respect for the rights of others
4. Rule of Law
5. Equal Justice under the law

In addition to some of the other points raised, though, I think the problem with the above is that none of these values are uniquely American values. Virtually every country aspires to them - or at least claims to. Whether Portugal, Japan, Costa Rica, Australia, Finland....you name it. These are nearly universal attributes of good government - at least at that level of generality.

Different countries and societies - and political factions within those nations - disagree about what, specifically, these general principles mean. Sometimes intensely. And political parties disagree over who has the better claim to be supporting them - whether a person who seeks to improve their country is more patriotic than someone who claims that any faults are minor, whether a system of public highways or universal health care enables people to be more self-reliant or less, whether tightly restricting gun ownership and/or abortion is respect for the rights of others or trampling them.....these are disagreements more about what those values mean and require of citizens, rather than disagreements over whether those are values we share and aspire to.

"1. Patriotism
Does this mean you can't criticize anything? Or does it mean only certain criticism is allowed. It's Patriotic
to criticize the hell out of your government. Ask Patrick Henry."

Apparently this poster doesn't agree with you


"What kind of person comes to a board just to be an asshole to the 'group?'"

Apparently this poster doesn't agree with you


Boater, you might be on to something there except for one little thing. I'm all for honest criticism. I can respect an ammosexual if they don't lie about data. I can respect an anti-abortion proponent if they don't lie about their intent to ban all abortions regardless.

Honesty in criticism is sadly missing in MAGAland.

Bannon said the quiet part out loud. He picked it up from the likes of Gingrich, Limbauhg and the rest of the amoral liars: "Flood the zone with shit."
The right wing proudly baths in it.

"What kind of person comes to a board just to be an asshole to the 'group?'"

Got an answer to that?

""What kind of person comes to a board just to be an asshole to the 'group?'"
"

Yes, you could probably best answer that

Boater: Apparently this poster doesn't agree with you


"What kind of person comes to a board just to be an asshole to the 'group?'"

No,Boater, that's spot on. All E wants is to annoy, get a reaction. It makes him feel alive.

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