Hiya Plant. There definitely is a coolness to Biden. Not sure if it's just the age thing or what, he has acted in a much more progressive way than I expected.
And pretty productive: Health Care, energy, first guns law in 30 years, CHIPS, an actual infrastructure bill and bi-partisan at that, recovery act, lots of social stuff Lefties are interested in. Compared to the soft-right Clinton "third way" globalism and Obama's ineffectiveness, he actually made some of trump's blater on protectionist trade policies and reshoring into law— not sure if that's a left thing but I approve. And he finally got us out of Afgan, might not have been pretty but he did get out.
I think there is just so much blather and projection on the right the average observer doesn't have the time to sus out the facts. I see vids of maga whacados who say "just go on the internet and do your research!" LOL, I can ony imagine their sources: Alex Jones, etc. Maybe when it gets down to actually doing some campaigning they can highlight some actual results.
I don't really have much feelings about the Israel / Palestine thing, except sympathy for everyone — I don't have a god in the fight. I would guess protests are about Palestinian babies being killed and not in support of Hamas per se, maybe not.
People on the left, especially younger people, are less likely to have been indoctrinated into the ancient hatreds, tho they do have their share of animosity. But it is the right who harbor the fascists and anti-semmites is it not? or is that the whole point, project antisemitism on the left so that it becomes a "both-sides" issue?
The whole thing is a conundrum in my mind, anti-semitism is a right-wing trope, after all the Jews killed Christ in the story didn't they? Now that I think of it, the last church service I attended forty-something years ago was an Easter service where that was the exact message, made the celebration a brightly-colored, sunny rebirth of ancient hatred. Lots of people's acquired beliefs are strange to me, probably didn't pay enough attention in vacation bible school.
I heard Chomsky propose another reason Israel is such a protectorate of the US. He called them a
settler colonial society: just like us, the Australians, the Canadians. We are a specific brand of imperialism that doesn't just rule over the colonized natives, we eliminate them. Maybe a little esoteric, the whole Armageddon bit about the promise of watching the sinners getting their just desserts is probably more likely reason for the love/hate.
Then of course there is oil.
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The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)