That is because there IS no solution to the conflict in the center.
One of the weaknesses of the center and of being reasonable and rational (at least in comparison to the extremes) is that it takes a lot of work to do things. It takes work to develop and implement solutions. It takes a lot of diplomacy and cajoling.
That is because there IS no solution to the conflict in the center.
One of the weaknesses of the center and of being reasonable and rational (at least in comparison to the extremes) is that it takes a lot of work to do things. It takes work to develop and implement solutions. It takes a lot of diplomacy and cajoling.
It is flat out hard. It only looks easy from a distance. What makes it hard is overcoming the negative aspects of human nature and groupthink.
And an extremist can blow ALL of that up in a second with a bomb or well placed bullet or sometimes just with some stupid words.
The current House fiasco is a pointed exemplar of this whole mechanic, in a less openly violent (for now) setting.
The extremist solutions aren't solutions, either--but they can pass for one in a very dim light amidst the anger and angst and fear and hatred of the situation. These "solutions" appeal to the inner animal.
This shit has been going on for three-quarters of a century or so. It has become a self-renewing and sustaining cycle. It has a life of its own, despite the best intentions of many and because of the worst intentions of a few.
But that is all it often takes, the worst intentions of a few.
It’s been going on a lot longer than that. And until humanity stops killing itself over which Bronze Age book and which imaginary sky daddy is real, it will continue.
Unfortunately, obviously, the MAGAs in our midst seem to have that one twisted; they seem to think they’re heroic and powerful by destroying things. That’s the danger of small minded people who feel powerless; they feel powerless because someone (eg Trump) is telling them that.
This isn’t just true for Israel, it’s true for every difficult problem, such a global warming, immigration, and the huge gap in wealth and power all around the world. We can see from the current Republican Party that following extremists, especially foolish and incompetent ones, leads to chaos and total dysfunction. Trump and Netanyahu are both frauds and narcissists who never had the ability to deliver on their promises. Netanyahu promised peace and security, but delivered weakness. I still don’t know what Trump promised, except to make himself king. That’s why the Republicans can’t decide on anything. They can’t agree about what they want to accomplish. They each have a crazy pet peeve: ban books, delete history, oppose gay people, fight for fetuses, destroy the armed forces, cut social security, take money from the poor and give to the rich. They have some idea that the vast majority of Americans are against all of those things so they respond by blowing up the government.
The more horrible your situation is (and the more powerless you see yourself as being able to change it) the more likely you are to divert (or be diverted) into cultural issues that you feel strongly about that you believe yo CAN change.
And the people currently benefitting n the power structure are glad to facilitate that as long as it doesn't look like it will hurt them.
Also, it is far easier for any given “we” to say what “we” are against than what “we”want, because it only makes sense to be against things as they are (or can be parodied that way). It is easy and profitable to specify grievances, and it requires no responsibility for imagining or articulating what “we” would do differently (see: Obamacare). It is impossible to govern if government itself is “the problem” underlying every grievance.
Powerless people are easily manipulated. In the case of Trump and his cult, he had to carefully nurture their feelings of powerlessness, because in reality their lives are pretty fine, relatively speaking.
Rush Limbaugh and Faux News working on behalf of Republican billionaires had that ball rolling decades ago. They stimulated resentments against the "others" and the "elites" so they could hoodwink citizens to vote against their own economic interests. Trump was the first to realize that their resentments could be turned against the very people who had instigated and nurtured them in the 1st place.
"It is flat out hard. It only looks easy from a distance. What makes it hard is overcoming the negative aspects of human nature and groupthink."
This implies the center isn't the preferred haven for groupthink and complacency. In the instance of 10/7 the center seems to actually be energized to provide a solution for once while the right and left are throwing bombs. More often in recent times that is not the case. If the Republicans are the party of "no" then the center is the party of "can't" or at least "I can't be bothered."
While part of me thinks it is great the center is leading the charge because a long term and sustainable push to improve the situation might materialize for once, another part of me is extremely bitter that they can't be bothered on anything else. Does it literally take decapitating infants on livestreams to move the needle? Then the final, hopeless part of me remembers that it is still recent and the bill hasn't come due yet. We'll see how much appetite this holier than thou center has to make this happen come election day next year or even when hashing out the budget next month (if there is even a functioning Congress in place to do it).
I can’t accept that the extreme anti-Israel contingent, complete with hang gliders on a poster, is the voice of the anything to do with “the left”. I think it’s the voice of the void between the ends of the horseshoe. Certainly, it could be where the anti-Semitism of the right overlaps the anti-Israeli views of what is being called the “extreme left”. I have never felt sympathetic to what some regard as the “classic” extreme left of the Marxist-Leninists.
I’ve always thought of myself as championing the left as generally defined as compassion and basic human kindness, of income distribution to achieve a more just society. How does social democracy devolve into cheering on the baby killers? If you take a horseshoe and extend the lines you get half of an infinity sign.
It takes the situation getting so bad that something has to be done. Otherwise people will just suck it up, complain, and grind through their days.
Autocrats and oligarchs count on that. You can let things get bad and corrupt and oppressive so long as they don't get TOO bad, corrupt or oppressive... and if you turn the screws slowly enough, it can get pretty bad before the break point comes.
One of the realities is that the people will often turn on each other before they turn on the shitheads that are actually the problem.
Actually, the “shitheads” are the symptoms of the problem in D.C. The problem is a voter base untethered from reality who vote the shitheads into office. Our MAGA neighbors are responsible.
People do vote this shitheads into office, but there are a lot of things going on that facilitate the shitheads being in position to get elected (and having the money and media support to get noticed and elected)... and who the particular shitheads are.
What most of these politicians don't realize is that they are easily replaceable. There are hundreds or thousands of people JUST LIKE THEM out there that would be able to fill their shoes, provided they get the necessary visibility and support.
This used to be provided by the GoP as an institution. Now a lot of it comes from the media and PACs.
I agree with all this, but I'll add a caveat from personal experience:
A harsh Sunni-Shia civil war broke out during the years I got sent to Iraq (the civil war lasted from approximately early '06 until early '08). The sectarian violence that ensued was far worse for Iraqi civilians than what AQI was doing to the Iraqi government forces and US forces combined. The Sunni/Shia militias went after the other side's civilians almost exclusively (they also went after US troops and the Iraqi army/police, but they primarily went after their domestic opponents). There were something like 160,000+ civilians that died during the Iraq war, and the bulk of them were during this sectarian violence that occurred between Sunni and Shia for about 2 years--a prelude to what would happen later under ISIS after the Syrian civil war gave it room to grow and spill over the border in 2013. The thing is, sometime around late '07/early '08, the Sunni populace of Iraq turned on AQI. They had enough of their people dying at the hands of Shia militias and Iraqi/US forces (sometimes the Shia militias *were* the Iraqi police btw), and they turned on AQI and stopped supporting them. I sometimes wonder if something like this could happen between the Palestinian populace and Hamas, and if it could, perhaps this is the kind of thing that would turn the conflict and give way to something like a foreseeable end state where it's not Palestinian militants being in charge of the populace and allow real negotiations on a 2-state solution taking place. I just don't know how easy it would be for us to get there considering how much popular support Hamas (and Fatah in the WB) enjoy from the Palestinian populace. That said, I would have thought the same in 2006 regarding Sunni public support for AQI, so who knows what is possible in the future.
I have read recently that West Bank Palestinians have grown increasingly disenchanted with feckless Fatah and its blatant corruption. Hamas is making inroads there with its extremist appeals, but they are just as corrupt, stealing humanitarian aid meant for civilians and using it for terrorism.
Fuck both Hamas and Fatah. Things will change for the Palestinians when the Palestinian men get tired of bootlicking these grifters and decide to start killing them or diming them out to the IDF instead. Doesn't even have to be most Palestinian men willing to do this, just enough of them.
Historical experience tells me that this is possible. That historical experience also tells me that it doesn't happen until things break down to a certain point. The actual locus of that point is a contingent factor (how much is the normal population willing and able to put up with before it acts).
One of our big problems is that the system (whatever that system is) tends to work hard to project/create a sense of normalcy. The media with its both-siderism and pursuit of profit (and its increased atomization). The political parties playing at business as usual. The sullen acceptance of the "regular" people because that is what they )think) they are stuck with--and things aren't So bad after all, right?
It is less, I think, complacency than it is a fear of making things worse. The fear of making things worse (or of change per se) holds things in place until things get bad enough that people are willing to take the chance.
People can only affect change through either through cultural change over time or by spasms of activity (usually in th4e form of violence).
It is going to require the mass of Palestinians to repudiate what is currently their "leadership" structure (both HAMAs and the Palestinian Authority).
“ It is less, I think, complacency than it is a fear of making things worse. The fear of making things worse (or of change per se) holds things in place until things get bad enough that people are willing to take the chance.”
This is a moment among many when I feel that international examples of violence recapitulates domestic violence in families. (I probably have that inverted; domestic violence recapitulates international violence). The same psychological forces are in play.
You're right that that "breaking point" has to happen before a population turns on their militant overlords, and maybe that will or won't happen in our lifetimes. But it IS possible. A counter-point to what I said is that the Sunni-Shia civil war was young when the Sunnis turned their back on AQI, whereas the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has gone on for a very long time and has become embedded in the culture on both sides. That's a whole lot of generational momentum to overcome that wasn't present in Iraq necessarily--albeit, the Shia had suffered under Sunni autocratic rule since 1963--so this isn't necessarily apples to oranges.
It's kind of like William T Sherman's outlook on protracted warfare: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” I think he was talking about the necessity for a "breaking point" to end warfare, and that cruelty and overwhelming suffering is what is often necessary to bring that "breaking point" about. That's why he burned down the South. The story of Imperial Japan tells a similar story when it came to defeating their own religious martyrdom culture after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sometimes a peoples need to look cultural and societal extinction in the eye before collectively throwing in the towel.
When I use the phrases: there is no solution or a solution is not possible; it doesn't mean that there aren't solutions.
Indeed, solutions can usually be identified or are actually know/recognized.
A solution is not possible because there isn't sufficient motivation for the necessary CHANGE. The existing cultural/political inertia cannot be overcome.
It cannot be overcome because existing conditions are not bad enough to drive change. People are getting by. There is not a strong enough perception (because it is often a matter of perception) to drive change.
This is why we are continually kicking the can down the road. People are unwilling to change the existing state, so issues are ignored or short term "solutions" are applied. Reference the various "compromises" that occurred in the lead up to the Civil War.
Things actually have to get pretty bad to drive change. That badness has to be immediate and clear. But (again) realize that this is a function of PERCEPTION.
The perception of threat to the institution of slavery by the Southern master class (and the essential nature of that institution) were enough to precipitate a crisis.
Except their action led to the swift demise of what they sought to preserve.
By the same token, the efforts to preserve racism and sexism in the US may well precipitate the crisis that effectively ends them as they currently exist.
A substantive number of people are absolutely resistant to change. Change is dangerous--and better the danger and discomfort that you know, than the unknown danger and discomfort that might arise. Even people who will ultimately benefit from change will tend to resist it.
Better the devil you know.
This makes it VERY difficult to proactively change things to stop the bad. The bad must, in essence, happen for the change to happen.
An autocratic system can force/coerce change (but not always successfully and not always in a functional direction). A democratic system usually cannot until the crisis point is reached.
One can see history as a series of crises that drive change. Think of it as evolutionary pressure, shifts in environment that are either adapted to or that cause extinction.
And, because we often do not change until a crisis hits, the change is not managed well. It turns into something akin to a crapshoot. You never know where you will end up (which only contributes further to a fear and avoidance of change).
That is because there IS no solution to the conflict in the center.
One of the weaknesses of the center and of being reasonable and rational (at least in comparison to the extremes) is that it takes a lot of work to do things. It takes work to develop and implement solutions. It takes a lot of diplomacy and cajoling.
It is flat out hard. It only looks easy from a distance. What makes it hard is overcoming the negative aspects of human nature and groupthink.
And an extremist can blow ALL of that up in a second with a bomb or well placed bullet or sometimes just with some stupid words.
The current House fiasco is a pointed exemplar of this whole mechanic, in a less openly violent (for now) setting.
The extremist solutions aren't solutions, either--but they can pass for one in a very dim light amidst the anger and angst and fear and hatred of the situation. These "solutions" appeal to the inner animal.
This shit has been going on for three-quarters of a century or so. It has become a self-renewing and sustaining cycle. It has a life of its own, despite the best intentions of many and because of the worst intentions of a few.
But that is all it often takes, the worst intentions of a few.
It’s been going on a lot longer than that. And until humanity stops killing itself over which Bronze Age book and which imaginary sky daddy is real, it will continue.
“Any jackass can knock down a barn, but it takes a skilled carpenter to build one” - quoted by Steven Pinker
Unfortunately, obviously, the MAGAs in our midst seem to have that one twisted; they seem to think they’re heroic and powerful by destroying things. That’s the danger of small minded people who feel powerless; they feel powerless because someone (eg Trump) is telling them that.
Destroying gives immediate satisfaction. It’s a quick high.
Good point. As a culture, we are notably deficient in delayed gratification.
Exactly
This isn’t just true for Israel, it’s true for every difficult problem, such a global warming, immigration, and the huge gap in wealth and power all around the world. We can see from the current Republican Party that following extremists, especially foolish and incompetent ones, leads to chaos and total dysfunction. Trump and Netanyahu are both frauds and narcissists who never had the ability to deliver on their promises. Netanyahu promised peace and security, but delivered weakness. I still don’t know what Trump promised, except to make himself king. That’s why the Republicans can’t decide on anything. They can’t agree about what they want to accomplish. They each have a crazy pet peeve: ban books, delete history, oppose gay people, fight for fetuses, destroy the armed forces, cut social security, take money from the poor and give to the rich. They have some idea that the vast majority of Americans are against all of those things so they respond by blowing up the government.
As income inequality rises, so too does white grievance. It seems relevant to the various points of societal turmoil you describe.
The more horrible your situation is (and the more powerless you see yourself as being able to change it) the more likely you are to divert (or be diverted) into cultural issues that you feel strongly about that you believe yo CAN change.
And the people currently benefitting n the power structure are glad to facilitate that as long as it doesn't look like it will hurt them.
Also, it is far easier for any given “we” to say what “we” are against than what “we”want, because it only makes sense to be against things as they are (or can be parodied that way). It is easy and profitable to specify grievances, and it requires no responsibility for imagining or articulating what “we” would do differently (see: Obamacare). It is impossible to govern if government itself is “the problem” underlying every grievance.
Powerless people are easily manipulated. In the case of Trump and his cult, he had to carefully nurture their feelings of powerlessness, because in reality their lives are pretty fine, relatively speaking.
Rush Limbaugh and Faux News working on behalf of Republican billionaires had that ball rolling decades ago. They stimulated resentments against the "others" and the "elites" so they could hoodwink citizens to vote against their own economic interests. Trump was the first to realize that their resentments could be turned against the very people who had instigated and nurtured them in the 1st place.
"Trump was the first to realize that their resentments could be turned against the very people who had instigated and nurtured them in the 1st place."
Bingo!
"It is flat out hard. It only looks easy from a distance. What makes it hard is overcoming the negative aspects of human nature and groupthink."
This implies the center isn't the preferred haven for groupthink and complacency. In the instance of 10/7 the center seems to actually be energized to provide a solution for once while the right and left are throwing bombs. More often in recent times that is not the case. If the Republicans are the party of "no" then the center is the party of "can't" or at least "I can't be bothered."
While part of me thinks it is great the center is leading the charge because a long term and sustainable push to improve the situation might materialize for once, another part of me is extremely bitter that they can't be bothered on anything else. Does it literally take decapitating infants on livestreams to move the needle? Then the final, hopeless part of me remembers that it is still recent and the bill hasn't come due yet. We'll see how much appetite this holier than thou center has to make this happen come election day next year or even when hashing out the budget next month (if there is even a functioning Congress in place to do it).
I can’t accept that the extreme anti-Israel contingent, complete with hang gliders on a poster, is the voice of the anything to do with “the left”. I think it’s the voice of the void between the ends of the horseshoe. Certainly, it could be where the anti-Semitism of the right overlaps the anti-Israeli views of what is being called the “extreme left”. I have never felt sympathetic to what some regard as the “classic” extreme left of the Marxist-Leninists.
I’ve always thought of myself as championing the left as generally defined as compassion and basic human kindness, of income distribution to achieve a more just society. How does social democracy devolve into cheering on the baby killers? If you take a horseshoe and extend the lines you get half of an infinity sign.
It takes the situation getting so bad that something has to be done. Otherwise people will just suck it up, complain, and grind through their days.
Autocrats and oligarchs count on that. You can let things get bad and corrupt and oppressive so long as they don't get TOO bad, corrupt or oppressive... and if you turn the screws slowly enough, it can get pretty bad before the break point comes.
One of the realities is that the people will often turn on each other before they turn on the shitheads that are actually the problem.
Actually, the “shitheads” are the symptoms of the problem in D.C. The problem is a voter base untethered from reality who vote the shitheads into office. Our MAGA neighbors are responsible.
There is a shared responsibility here.
People do vote this shitheads into office, but there are a lot of things going on that facilitate the shitheads being in position to get elected (and having the money and media support to get noticed and elected)... and who the particular shitheads are.
What most of these politicians don't realize is that they are easily replaceable. There are hundreds or thousands of people JUST LIKE THEM out there that would be able to fill their shoes, provided they get the necessary visibility and support.
This used to be provided by the GoP as an institution. Now a lot of it comes from the media and PACs.
Mostly agree. The media that makes MAGA voters possible is the large and profitable dis-information industry.
It is this weird, almost incestuous cycle that just spins around and around and gets worse. It is kind of like dealing/using drugs.
It escalates because the dose that used to get you high no longer does.
I agree with all this, but I'll add a caveat from personal experience:
A harsh Sunni-Shia civil war broke out during the years I got sent to Iraq (the civil war lasted from approximately early '06 until early '08). The sectarian violence that ensued was far worse for Iraqi civilians than what AQI was doing to the Iraqi government forces and US forces combined. The Sunni/Shia militias went after the other side's civilians almost exclusively (they also went after US troops and the Iraqi army/police, but they primarily went after their domestic opponents). There were something like 160,000+ civilians that died during the Iraq war, and the bulk of them were during this sectarian violence that occurred between Sunni and Shia for about 2 years--a prelude to what would happen later under ISIS after the Syrian civil war gave it room to grow and spill over the border in 2013. The thing is, sometime around late '07/early '08, the Sunni populace of Iraq turned on AQI. They had enough of their people dying at the hands of Shia militias and Iraqi/US forces (sometimes the Shia militias *were* the Iraqi police btw), and they turned on AQI and stopped supporting them. I sometimes wonder if something like this could happen between the Palestinian populace and Hamas, and if it could, perhaps this is the kind of thing that would turn the conflict and give way to something like a foreseeable end state where it's not Palestinian militants being in charge of the populace and allow real negotiations on a 2-state solution taking place. I just don't know how easy it would be for us to get there considering how much popular support Hamas (and Fatah in the WB) enjoy from the Palestinian populace. That said, I would have thought the same in 2006 regarding Sunni public support for AQI, so who knows what is possible in the future.
I have read recently that West Bank Palestinians have grown increasingly disenchanted with feckless Fatah and its blatant corruption. Hamas is making inroads there with its extremist appeals, but they are just as corrupt, stealing humanitarian aid meant for civilians and using it for terrorism.
Fuck both Hamas and Fatah. Things will change for the Palestinians when the Palestinian men get tired of bootlicking these grifters and decide to start killing them or diming them out to the IDF instead. Doesn't even have to be most Palestinian men willing to do this, just enough of them.
Historical experience tells me that this is possible. That historical experience also tells me that it doesn't happen until things break down to a certain point. The actual locus of that point is a contingent factor (how much is the normal population willing and able to put up with before it acts).
One of our big problems is that the system (whatever that system is) tends to work hard to project/create a sense of normalcy. The media with its both-siderism and pursuit of profit (and its increased atomization). The political parties playing at business as usual. The sullen acceptance of the "regular" people because that is what they )think) they are stuck with--and things aren't So bad after all, right?
It is less, I think, complacency than it is a fear of making things worse. The fear of making things worse (or of change per se) holds things in place until things get bad enough that people are willing to take the chance.
People can only affect change through either through cultural change over time or by spasms of activity (usually in th4e form of violence).
It seems clear that there is no hope for improvement until Hamas is replaced by a leadership that is serious about wanting a diplomatic settlement.
Don't hold your breath, everyone.
It is going to require the mass of Palestinians to repudiate what is currently their "leadership" structure (both HAMAs and the Palestinian Authority).
Yup. That's what I was thinking. I'm inclined to think I will never see that day. But maybe I'm just a pessimist.
“ It is less, I think, complacency than it is a fear of making things worse. The fear of making things worse (or of change per se) holds things in place until things get bad enough that people are willing to take the chance.”
This is a moment among many when I feel that international examples of violence recapitulates domestic violence in families. (I probably have that inverted; domestic violence recapitulates international violence). The same psychological forces are in play.
You're right that that "breaking point" has to happen before a population turns on their militant overlords, and maybe that will or won't happen in our lifetimes. But it IS possible. A counter-point to what I said is that the Sunni-Shia civil war was young when the Sunnis turned their back on AQI, whereas the Palestinian-Israeli conflict has gone on for a very long time and has become embedded in the culture on both sides. That's a whole lot of generational momentum to overcome that wasn't present in Iraq necessarily--albeit, the Shia had suffered under Sunni autocratic rule since 1963--so this isn't necessarily apples to oranges.
It's kind of like William T Sherman's outlook on protracted warfare: “War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over.” I think he was talking about the necessity for a "breaking point" to end warfare, and that cruelty and overwhelming suffering is what is often necessary to bring that "breaking point" about. That's why he burned down the South. The story of Imperial Japan tells a similar story when it came to defeating their own religious martyrdom culture after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Sometimes a peoples need to look cultural and societal extinction in the eye before collectively throwing in the towel.
Some key things that need to be understood:
When I use the phrases: there is no solution or a solution is not possible; it doesn't mean that there aren't solutions.
Indeed, solutions can usually be identified or are actually know/recognized.
A solution is not possible because there isn't sufficient motivation for the necessary CHANGE. The existing cultural/political inertia cannot be overcome.
It cannot be overcome because existing conditions are not bad enough to drive change. People are getting by. There is not a strong enough perception (because it is often a matter of perception) to drive change.
This is why we are continually kicking the can down the road. People are unwilling to change the existing state, so issues are ignored or short term "solutions" are applied. Reference the various "compromises" that occurred in the lead up to the Civil War.
Things actually have to get pretty bad to drive change. That badness has to be immediate and clear. But (again) realize that this is a function of PERCEPTION.
The perception of threat to the institution of slavery by the Southern master class (and the essential nature of that institution) were enough to precipitate a crisis.
Except their action led to the swift demise of what they sought to preserve.
By the same token, the efforts to preserve racism and sexism in the US may well precipitate the crisis that effectively ends them as they currently exist.
A substantive number of people are absolutely resistant to change. Change is dangerous--and better the danger and discomfort that you know, than the unknown danger and discomfort that might arise. Even people who will ultimately benefit from change will tend to resist it.
Better the devil you know.
This makes it VERY difficult to proactively change things to stop the bad. The bad must, in essence, happen for the change to happen.
An autocratic system can force/coerce change (but not always successfully and not always in a functional direction). A democratic system usually cannot until the crisis point is reached.
One can see history as a series of crises that drive change. Think of it as evolutionary pressure, shifts in environment that are either adapted to or that cause extinction.
And, because we often do not change until a crisis hits, the change is not managed well. It turns into something akin to a crapshoot. You never know where you will end up (which only contributes further to a fear and avoidance of change).
This is another really well put thread. You have been on fire lately. Well done
Fair point