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Interesting article, but he has an obvious blind spot: a lot of liberals around the world also criticize Israeli policy.
Heck, most liberal Israelis I know absolutely abhor Netanyahu.
The criticism on Israel stems from human rights considerations and international law, not wokeism. All those 150 countries who voted for a cease fire in the UN can hardly be described as woke.
But yes, the issue is polarizing and it really wouldn’t surprise me if Trump wind in 2024.
I mostly blame it on young progressives in the states finding out that liberal means centrist in European politics and have ensuantly projected that frame onto US politics mostly just as a generational frustration with current democratic leadership on points where they either play to lower expectations of what’s possible or genuinely just disagree with the modern progressive stance for whatever reason.
Because from a policy by policy examination the Democrats shoot slightly to the left of mainstream leftist parties in Europe on fiscal issues, and significantly so on social issues.
The only group of any significance I believe are significantly to the democrat’s left are young american progressives themselves, hence why all those further to the right European parties deride even things approaching the level of social left America is at right now as “American Wokeism.”
It’s kinda hard to believe considering all the fiscally progressive policy that Europe has that America doesn’t, but consider that all that was set up out of necessity post WWII leaving the entire continent in smoldering traumatized ruins.
America doesn’t have socialized medicine because it came into the post war revitalization with a job market where having work meant you’d be making enough that the flaws in America’s system weren’t evident enough to enough people from first hand experience for a significant urgency be established in something like a socialized healthcare system.
You can also tell that it’s a very eurocentric perspective that drives this “liberal means center” projection in American politics because only a white European who thinks gender neutral language is woke nonsense would be able to reinforce in a self proclaimed progressive or leftist’s mind that it’s ok to tell me, a Palestinian American, that I can put up with the risk to my life four more years of Republican leadership could pose if it means they get to have their election year celebration over the lesson they did not at all teach the establishment Dems.
Nicely said. I feel like I have been trying to organize similar thoughts for a while now and failing every time. European politics is a bad set of tools for sorting through American factions. There are not Europeans factions that map to the social justice part of the American left. They don’t have that.
I’ve sort of lost touch with Nate in the last few years. He got way angrier about Covid than I was prepared to put up with. Kind of turned into a whining asshole to be honest. We got some things wrong in the public health response to Covid. But getting things wrong trying to save lives seems better than trying to not save lives. Get over it Nate!
This is a good article though, salty side comments about Covid notwithstanding. The left coalition is at a turning point and MAGA is the only thing holding it together. I’m not probably as much of a “moderate” as Nate but I am losing my patience with the increasingly authoritarian tendencies in parts of the left. And I’m kind of aghast at middle class white kids chanting “from the river to the sea”. Y’all know what that means right? If so… fuck! If not, maybe stop saying it.
IMHO, Silver was rattled by the 2016 election and has been slowly sliding ever since, like a kicker who missed a field goal to end his team’s season and each year gets less and less reliable now that that original seed of doubt has taken root. I remember reading his first few pieces after that night and thinking how much they sounded like the smart kid on the debate team getting proven wrong on something.
Even in this piece there’s a lot of him making an assertion, and rather than backing it up with any evidence, he follows with, essentially, “XYZ is the truth, and it’s the truth because I said so and I’m a Very Smart Person™ and I’ve been saying this long before anyone else was saying it…and I knew it was true that long ago because I’m so smart.”
Can’t believe anyone still listens to this knob.
