By Regardless of one’s opinion on Israel and Palestine, people can agree that killing innocent civilians, wherever they’re from, is horrible, and whoever takes hostages for bargaining chips in negotiations is a horrific human being.
Such is the case of the ongoing siege of Gaza. One has to wonder why Hamas decided that the best course of action was to commit atrocities and kidnap civilians, only to elicit a response amounting to war crimes against Gaza, where most of the people didn’t approve of their actions. While Hamas is starting to realize what they did might contribute to the end of Gaza as we know it, some people disagree and argue that what happened in Southern Israel was justified.
Of course, I’m talking about the next generation of scholars, doctors, and engineers from oversubsidized universities demonstrating their solidarity with Palestine. First came the Chicago branch of the disgraced Black Lives Matter posting on Twitter (now X) an image of a Palestinian riding a paraglider and celebrating the attack as an attempt to “decolonize” Palestine. The intersectional crowd turned the matter into “solidarity” between reproductive, LGBT, black, etc. rights and “Hamas liberators,” appearing no better than an idea from the editors of the Babylon Bee.
Behold, the “working class” was even corrected by longtime democratic socialists on numerous occasions. Antiwar skeptics on both the left and right are quick to point out that Hamas was initially a project funded by Tel Aviv intended to justify annexing the Gaza Strip. Ex-reporter from The Intercept Lee Fang (and others) pointed out that the incoherence of the woke solidarity crowd showed that they neither understand how reactionary Hamas is nor realize there is not a similar precedent for blacks in the US. Pretty much everyone on the right and portions of the antiwar left had either laughed at or corrected the woke crowd.
But those were only corrections for an ever more narcissistic crowd of activists who don’t know much other than basing their worldviews on questionable ideologies. They may have received a free ticket for rioting throughout 2020 because Black Lives Matter (BLM) riots were politically correct, but attacking the golden calf of the foreign policy establishment will take them nowhere. When Ivy League activists went out justifying the attack on Israel, it didn’t take long for the benefactors of those universities to inquire about their behavior and pull funding. Then came damaging implications for many of the protestors, where well-known companies demanded names to be put on their blacklist, damaging their career choices (at least for the time being).
While I don’t back blacklisting naïve and idiotic students living in a coddled environment, there is a sense of irony for the people who supported BLM riots and justified it by talking about insurance without knowing anything about insurance or the plight of middle-class business owners and workers. It is hilarious that the people who advocated throwing milkshakes at political opponents and shutting down other perspectives in a debate are at the receiving end of tactics they utilize. No doubt, libertarians and antiwar right-wingers should take note that those corporations and billionaires had little problem with BLM riots, as evidenced by their donations to the now-disgraced organization, but are now withdrawing support over the Hamas paraglider tweet.
After all, the activists are little more than pawns for the Beltway Left. If the Occupy movement can be goaded into backing lockdowns and forced vaccinations, believing in the idea that democracy at home depends on the survival of a kleptocratic regime in Ukraine, and thinking that printing money doesn’t cause inflation but greed does, then don’t expect them to be any better. While Israel has been a favorite for the Democrats and Republicans, it doesn’t make left-wing “populism” a good choice either. Remember, while the woke Hamas supporters are being “disciplined,” it doesn’t mean they’ve fallen out yet. Taxpayer money is devoted to subsidizing their universities and their student loans, thus the creation of a generation that hates freedom.
Revolution from the Top and Bottom against the “Deplorable” Middle
After all, that’s just a single “disciplining” compared to the many vile tactics left-wing charlatans have endorsed against the populist Right that will never be “disciplined.” Remember, the pro-Israel Anti-Defamation League calls predominantly leftist Muslim, pro-Hamas, pro-Palestine demonstrations somehow “white supremacist.” Student loans and universities will remain subsidized, especially in a politically fraught situation.
It shouldn’t be surprising when taxpayer money goes to critical race theory programs and funnels into other woke programs. Ever since the Democrat and hard-line neocon meltdown over the 2016 general election, their main fear is the potential change to foreign and, to a lesser extent, domestic policy. Not only did Donald Trump pave the way for normalizing distrust of interventionism, but he opened the floodgates for openly satirizing and mocking the old establishment. While the Trump era has proven to be better than other twenty-first-century contemporaries, the bar set by his contemporaries is extraordinarily low. The once “moderate,” “bipartisan” Middle America no longer believes in its own ideas and experiments. Florida is no longer purple but red.
While Middle America might not have all the right ideas, the left and the top of the foreign policy interventionists see them as a liability. During the fighting over who should be Speaker of the House after the ousting of Kevin McCarthy, hard-line pro-Ukraine Republicans cooperated with the Democrats on who should be in the position. Meanwhile, Democrat Brad Sherman floated the idea of George W. Bush for House Speaker. In the end, pro-Ukraine and pro-Israel Mike Johnson came out on top.
It certainly wouldn’t be the last time foreign policy crosses party lines. In the aftermath of 2016, Bill Kristol heartily embraced the political Left and declared that “we [neoconservatives] are all Democrats” (clarification is mine). Likewise, Nikki Haley made an exception for antiabortion policies just to keep the military up and running, presumably for more wars in the Middle East and elsewhere.
But they already don’t have any form of relevancy other than being merely a name checklist for the increasingly leftist war machine. Hypothetically, if war-skeptic Middle America and actual antiwar right-wingers in Congress disappear, so too do “principled conservatives” Bill Kristol and Nikki Haley as they can’t be promoted in front of the war-skeptic Right as right-wingers for war. The affluent neighborhoods and suburbs are left-wing, and the university graduates are left-wing. They agree with Far-Left domestic policies and hawkish foreign policy (except for giving taxpayer money to Israel), so even if DC manages to establish a permanent Pax Americana (which is impossible), there will be no free markets, nuclear energy, or fossil fuels.
The experts too (including former Defense secretary Robert Gates) demanded Republicans, during the lead-up to a potential shutdown, compromise with the Democrats on green energy and foreign aid and not create a PR disaster in front of China (emphasis added). That alone should have questioned the consciences of Nikki Haley and Bill Kristol when many Western leftists praised China’s model until the current cold war between DC and Beijing. Remember, the average Chinese citizen is far poorer than the average American, combined with a litany of problems that will ensure the continuation of the trend.
For the time being, the motto of the antiwar Right is “The Democrats are evil, and the Republicans are stupid.” They’re 50 perfect correct, as the reality shows that “the Democrats and Republicans are stupid and evil.” There won’t be a politician who is strong enough or realizes that the government does more harm than good. Liberty can’t be delivered by the state as the state sacrifices liberty for what it deems to be the “common good,” usually to the detriment of everyone other than politicians.
