bh11235

Back in high school we played a game of this on the occasional Thursday night, as well as one long term game that took months and had its own dedicated wiki. It got pretty surreal pretty quick. The one set day a month you got penalized for each time you used a foreign loanword was brutal.

Why did you say that name?!

the more things change, the more they stay the same

What a disingenuous comparison. This woman didn't start an insurrection. This is like if Putin had prevented Prigozhin from running, which he would have been completely in his rights to.

The write up Ethnic Tension and Meaningless Arguments explains the underlying dynamics pretty well: by saying "I like this one thing Peterson said", you assign him karma points and now everything else about him will be viewed more positively. That's just how people work, and people will assume you know that and are exploiting it.

For example: by linking that post, I effectively supported the effective altruism movement -- even though I'm really not a big fan of it -- whether I like it or not, because the author is heavily associated with them. That's how it works, sadly.

the peak of your civilization

I really hoped we would get a PS6 with a built-in stern cartoon Xi blocking the buy button in the PS store, pointing his finger and shouting "No! Finish your backlog first!" but I guess you can't have everything in life

Bringing up the USS Liberty incident, like bringing up crime statistics in the US, is less the great argument you think it is and more of an ideological calling card. Anyone who actually cares about morals, decency, and the best interests of the civilized world wouldn't honestly decide that the discussion would be best guided forward by going back in history to cherry pick this one incident that occurred nearly 60 years ago.

EDIT: The upvote / downvote ratio on this comment should tell you everything you need to know about the population breakdown here. People who criticize Israel because of the actual things that Israel does will bring up the '67 expansion, or the high blood price paid in Gaza, or the blockade, or the current extremist government, or whatever else. The USS Liberty is a cynical rhetorical instrument, not a building block of any sane person's actually, honestly held opinion. Anyone who posts or upvotes this 60 year old incident that Israel has apologized and paid reparations for "because oh isn't it worrying, isn't it telling how bad of an ally Israel was to the US that time" is concern trolling and hiding their power level. Simple as.

I understand your anger, but I feel compelled to make some remarks.

The IDF did personally pull the trigger to shoot and kill three of the hostages who were, at the time, waving white flags made from their shirts. This event is surely very telling, and was also immediately considered a catastrophe, with Israeli responses on all ends of the spectrum. On the more sane end you have the official statement by the IDF chief of staff, who didn't mince words about this:

“You see two people, they have their hands up and no shirts — take two seconds,” IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi told soldiers in Gaza on Sunday. Halevi said a day earlier that the soldiers who shot the three had opened fire in breach of IDF protocols.

“And I want to tell you something no less important,” Halevi continued. “What if it is two Gazans with a white flag who come out to surrender? Do we shoot at them? Absolutely not. Absolutely not.

“Even those who fought and now put down their weapons and raise their hands — we capture them, we don’t shoot them. We extract a lot of intelligence from the prisoners we have; we have over 1,000 already,” he told the soldiers.

Halevi added: “We don’t shoot them because the IDF doesn’t shoot a person who raises his hands. This is a strength, not a weakness.”

Now, given the actual event which speaks for itself, there is obviously a very deep disconnect between what the chief of the IDF touts as policy here and what the soldiers end up doing in practice. You could posit that the chief is speaking out of his ass, but the more probable theory is that higher up on the hierarchy some officers are sincerely convinced that they are leading the charge of the Most Moral Army in the World(tm), and meanwhile some hefty portion of the boots on the ground have decided to, like you've phrased it, kill everything that moves and fuck the rules of engagement. I don't know if I would go so far as to say this proves such a grand statement such as "genocide is the goal of the Zionists". Do the events of Oct 7 prove that "genocide is the goal of the Palestinians"? What are we supposed to do with this conclusion? Does it lead anywhere productive?

The hostages are not political pawns for Netanyahu, they are a huge headache for him. Netanyahu could very well easily continue the military campaign just on the promise of dealing with Hamas alone; he would in fact much prefer this, and would like nothing more than to be rid of the constant shouting about the hostages. It's an open secret that the hostage families have effectively thrown in their lot with Netanyahu's most fierce opposition; they're constantly shouting for "a deal NOW" and "negotiate with Hamas NOW", to the degree that this has become somewhat of a wedge issue in Israel, you're expected to be a "bring back the hostages, stop the war, reach a deal now, kick out Netanyahu, left winger" or a "push on, let the chips fall where they may, destroy Hamas, keep Netanyahu, right winger". I am exaggerating but really not by much, and some paper op-eds have written on this topic extensively. The state, for what it's worth, evidently cares about this issue a lot more than Netanyahu himself does, or you wouldn't have had the first ceasefire in the first place.

I encourage anyone to read the Wikipedia page on this issue, it provides a lot of sources and goes over whatever evidence the Israelis did claim to have, and how several pieces of it were dismissed as insufficient. I am not arguing with your conclusion here, it's just that "HA! THIS HEADLINE SETTLES IT" makes for a lousy mental habit.

The only outcome I can imagine is the brigade closing this write-up as a duplicate and dragging off the author kicking and screaming, never to be seen again, like what happens to the vtuber protagonist in The Waldo Moment. The idea has grown too powerful for even him to contain it anymore.

Israel says it has two goals: destroy Hamas and rescue the 129 hostages still held by militants [..] but some families of hostages worry that the bombing endangers their loved ones. Hostages released during a weeklong cease-fire last month recounted that their captors moved them from place to place to avoid Israeli bombardment. Hamas has claimed that several hostages died from Israeli bombs, though the claims could not be verified.

I have to believe that everyone in Israel knows that "continue this balls to the wall military campaign to destroy Hamas AND free all the hostages! These go hand in hand" is cakeism lip service. Every minimally rational person should be able to understand that when facing a foe who is holding hostages, if you commit to destroying that foe by military means then you have effectively forfeited the lives of the hostages, barring an outstanding stroke of tactical genius or a lucky break (so far Israeli soldiers have been able to rescue one hostage by force). Conversely, if you decide to sit down with that foe and say "all right, score one for you, let us cut a deal and get all our hostages back", then your foe will make sure to negotiate terms such that you will not be destroying anything or anyone (Hamas mistakenly thought they had this sorted out with the first ceasefire, which is why now they demand total cessation of all hostilities as a precondition for any further deal). But speaking this truth out loud in Israel these days is just not palatable; instead the public demands to hear these "do this and that" fairy tales.