pietillidie wrote:^You're not being clear-eyed about this. Look at how many ideologues, how much political control, and how many grifters and parasites it took for the Iraq invasion to be set in motion following an event of enormous magnitude (9/11) in a context of mass Islamophobia targeting a distant peasant land via layers of propaganda.
Do you think creepy Cheney organised it late one night over a beer and a hand of poker?
There was nothing anyone could do to stop it because it was locked in by everything that preceded it, or it was 'over-determined' in poststructuralist parlance. Biden has very limited political control, hemmed in by the weight of bad ideas, assumptions, fragile political power, decades of history on this matter, Nutteryahoo's political control, the menace of Trump and still more general Islamophobia overriding the horror people should have.
If you think he could stop arms sales tomorrow, you're inventing a new reality. He wouldn't have even got elected if he was likely to do that, and would never have lasted this long in mainstream politics. You're creating an imaginary person with imaginary power in a political and power system in a culture that doesn't exist. Swap him out and you only swap in someone the same or worse. If half the population and business thought like us, it might be possible, but they don't. Your 'can' is someone having Putin's level of control making a decision in that kind of country.
It's very silly to see Biden being hemmed in by the whole as 'circular', showing you too have bought the simpleton control model.The ability to push against the tide is a rare and occasional event that requires all the stars to align. There is no 'establishment' that captures the complexities here; that's another imaginary lever that assumes there is some group of people who could sit at a table tomorrow and make it so. Sometimes, it might be true-ish, but you haven't shown it exists in any form right now, if you ever even want it to be so given what else they might dream up. As I say, no one can fix a whole host of things because the political system is so riven and fractured. Biden had one shot to do something after the pandemic and he did it, with the Inflation Reduction Act about the best bit of policy on the planet implemented post-pandemic. But again, that's the stars aligning at a very peculiar moment in economic history, and at a very particular political moment with Trump still lying low and the Dems doing better than expected in the 2022 House of Rep elections. But that moment has sine long gone, and he has no leverage now.
I clearly think the US is horribly wrong on Israel and its lukewarm support for Ukraine, and have warned about Nutteryahoo and the misery of Gaza for years, but I don't think they can do anything about it regardless of what I think. The Great Satan can't tie its own shoelaces up at the moment as a country, so being realistic on what it can do as a divided polity driven by that lunatic Trump is a start.
Or do you think stamping your feet and dreaming up imaginary levers of control and Biden going it alone against Israel will change something? None of this is your doing or my doing, but sadly or otherwise we don't control the world.
We are doing all we can by opposing the pogrom in our circles, and influencing where we can. But inventing imaginary control of imaginary political systems and cultures helps no one at all because it merely clouds the issue, namely that not enough people care enough about Palestinians and fairness in general. It's depressing and hard to know what's even worth trying to do beyond limited contributions, but I'd rather face the world as it is.
One thing we do know, however, is that weirdo leftists isolated from the economy and world will never help Palestinians in a game-changing way because they will never ever be in a position of influence.
David is being very clear eyed about it. It is you who is obfuscating the nature of the reality that we confront, and attempting to shield the Biden administration and the entire US ruling elite from their total complicity in the genocide in Gaza.
You claim that you are doing all you can in your circles to oppose this barbarism. But it is impossible to genuinely oppose it if you do not call out the US for its role of total complicity and facilitation in this genocide.
I think you have mentioned in your contributions that you live in the UK. It is likewise extraoridinary that you have made no mention of Rishi Sunak's complicity in the genocide. He is threatening to ban pro-Palestine protests and arrest protesters for "anti-Semitism". He is hardly some "poor politician, hemmed in by bad ideas and assumptions, and fragile political power". He is an imperialist politician who is in charge of the British state apparatus, and is openly threatening to unleash police violence against literally millions of people in Britain who are opposed to genocide.
Likewise, Biden is not "hemmed in by bad ideas and assumptions", paralysed by "fragile political power". He is an open supporter of genocide. It is the US that vetoes systematically all UN resolutions calling for a peacefire. The US continues to supply weaponry and money to the Israeli government while it perpetrates mass murder. Morevoer, most elements in the Republican party also support the genocide in Gaza. Support for Israel is a bipartisan policy of the US ruling elite, in the same way that the criminal war based on lies against Iraq was a bipartisan policy (Biden also voted for war agaisnt Iraq).
To put forward the notion that Biden is "doing everything he can within the limits of the US political reality" to stop the genocide would be laughable if it were not so nauseating.
Finally, David is absolutely correct in pointing out that Biden himself plays a major role in shaping the US political conditions it. Ever since he was elected, Biden has gone out of his way to avoid openly going after Trump for the attempted coup. He has repeated endlessly that he wants a "strong Republican party". His policiies on the covid pandemic are indistinguishable from those of Trump. Far more people in the US have died or become incapacitated from covid under Biden than Trump. Just recently, Biden called on Trump to "join me" in adopting a new cascade of policies aimed at the persecution of desperate immigrants and asylum seekers on the US southern border. How is this not "shaping the US political reality" ???
Anyone who claims to oppose the barbarism that the Israeli government is unleashing in Gaza without also mentioning the crucial role played by all the imperialist governments, and most importantly by the US, is not capable of providing any meaningful opposition because they are not acknowledging and taking into account fundamental aspects of objective reality - in other words, as David phrased it, "fence sitting".
And finally, you are completely wrong in suggesting that "not enough people care about the Palestinians". Are you not aware of the global protests of the last 3 months, where millions have marched in support of the Palestinians, and in opposition to genocide? In fact, the majority of the population opposes the pro-Zionist policies of all the NATO governments, and of Australia, but these governments are ignoring the protests, and riding totally roughshod over the will of the majority of the population.