(no subject)

[conuly]

1. "FYI: Arabs....themselves, the descendants of invaders, occupiers, and economic migrants to a land not their own....are indigenous to the Arabian Peninsula. Anything beyond that is conquered stolen plunder."

2. "it's a 3600 year old nation, and it was ours long before anyone else's. If someone breaks into your house, and squats there for a few years….is it THEIR house then? if I steal your car and keep it for years….does it become MY CAR?"

These are certainly opinions. Yup, I think we can all agree that these sure are opinions, all right. But if I might suggest something? Either one of them would reek slightly less of hypocrisy if you two would change your signatures to indicate that you don't currently live in the United States. But it's okay. When you move to Israel or wherever, just be sure to turn your house over to the correct tribe first, I'm sure they'll be glad to get that land back.

(Also, if you let squatters reside in your house for a really long period of time, you should stop doing that before the courts side with them. I'm just saying.)

Also also, since it's come up like a bajillion times... Israel shot first in 1967. Yeah, okay, maybe they had a good reason, and maybe this was actually necessary for self-defense, but if the people who bring it up at every turn (always 1967, never any of the other wars, don't ask me why) really believed that then they'd say it instead of backtracking when you call them out on it.

(The more I think about this, the more baffled I am. Why make this false assertion about 1967 when you have so many wars where Israel was definitely, provably, non-controversially acting in self-defense? It's not like there's any shortage of conflicts to pick from here. I think these people don't know nearly as much about history as they like to proclaim. I mean, I don't know much about the history and geopolitics of the modern middle east, and I still think I know more than they do.)

Back to the quotes, the really annoying part about both of them is that I've bumped into both those commenters before and I'm 100% certain that they're the sort of folks who go "Actually, there are no *Native* Americans, humans come from Africa" and "Well, race isn't real, so you're the real racist for bringing it up" in other contexts. Garden variety trolling, but how do they deal with the dissonance?

Comments

[calimac]

Southerners keep calling it "The War of Northern Aggression" even after being asked so who was it who fired on Fort Sumter, now?

[malkingrey]

I just have to say, at this point, that I was born in, and grew up in, the south, and have some deep family roots in the south, and while I did grow up hearing the terms "Civil War" and "War Between the States" in more or less free variation, I never heard it called The War of Northern Aggression, even by the most unreconstructed of my older relatives.

Maybe somebody did say it, somewhere, once. You can find people saying just about any stupid thing if you look hard enough. But it sure as hell wasn't in the common discourse anywhere that I lived.

[calimac]

I did once have the argument I recounted with a friend born and raised in South Carolina, though for many years resident outside the South, who, though he didn't actually use the term "War of Northern Aggression" as his normal title for the conflict, did seem to consider it a fair description.

Without otherwise being able to pin down circumstances in my memory, I recall having heard the term otherwise used by Southerners in a semi-joking fashion, as if to say that, though they wouldn't seriously name it that, they did think that's what it was.

[jack]

"If someone breaks into your house, and squats there for a few years….is it THEIR house then?"

I believe it often DOES work like that, yes, if that helps.

[sabotabby]

Yeah I'm pretty sure that's how it is in much of the world.

[conuly]

Adverse possession.

[sabotabby]

Arguments about indigeneity from white people—Americans in particular as they have fetishes—are always a special kind of WTF.

[ayebydan]

this

[highlyeccentric]

I personally am getting fed up with 'no Palestinians have called for...' followed by things Palestinians have very definitely called for. It's reminding me a LOT of the 'no true Aborigine' tactic used by white Australians to invalidate indigenous people who have inconvenient political demands.

[conuly]

Along with "Israel has tried and tried to make peace" - well, I can think of one very specific thing they haven't tried, and that's to stop building in disputed territory. I'm not even suggesting retreating to the pre-1967 borders, just ceasing expansion.

Mind, I can think of a billion things the US has done that were shitty, and I'm currently the beneficiary of the biggest land grab in history (or, more accurately, a long series of land grabs) but still.

(frozen) Re: “Jewish Settlements”

[conuly]

Yeah, I'm screening this one too in the interest of not having drama on my journal. Any comparison of Jews to Nazis, even if you think your specific one is correct, is just unkosher. Have the flamewar on your own turf.

I agree that Israel's policies and actions are shitty as hell, but that's just a tacky and inappropriate way of saying it.

[ayebydan]

Agreed

[redbird]

I suspect that there is no cognitive dissonance, because the thinking goes from "we are on the side of Right (look at our hats!), and God wants us to have this land" and proceeds from there to "anything we say to convince people of the rightness of our cause is justified." Motivated reasoning on a scale of, not realizing that people outside your head don't share your emotions and axioms.

Once someone falls back on invoking what God wants, the best I can do is to borrow an argument from Asimov, "anyone's reasoning, but only my own [so far nonexistent] direct revelation": which in this case becomes is roughly that all I know here is that someone told their n-times great-grandparents that God said this, but I have no way of judging that person's accuracy, so I can't and won't assume it to be true.

[altamira16]

I have definitely noticed some political trolls here on Dreamwidth.

They also use discussion of Arabs as an excuse for the type of chattel slavery that the US had.

They also do not seem to recognize that not everyone saw land as something that belonged to people and that there were nomadic people who traveled all over the place without declaring the land theirs.

[silveradept]

Those are certainly opinions to have. They are quite convenient for justifying a particular point of view, but otherwise not very helpful ones to have.

[ayebydan]

Hard agree. But I don't want to voice more thoughts given how that tends to go around here.

[siderea]

Garden variety trolling, but how do they deal with the dissonance?

There's no cognitive dissonance if they aren't arguing in good faith. If it's trolling, it has nothing to do with what the troll actually believes. They're saying things based on their anticipated effect, not to represent accurately their personal philosophical commitments.

[conuly]

Maybe. I've bumped into these particular two enough to think that they actually do believe at least some of the crap they're spewing, they just never have bothered to see if it all works together.

[nodrog]

It took a while, but I learned never to argue politics on-line, for one simple reason:  I’ve never known it to work.  One time my own opinion on something was changed by receiving information I had not known; only thus and then did debate function as intended.  Otherwise it’s infuriating and utterly pointless.</>

[conuly]

Why do you think I left my post here instead of there?

[calimac]

Then you should be quite alarmed at the quite nonsensical comment placed by somebody using your account, in response to one of mine, though it's now disappeared. It was very badly argued, having seemed to forget that the War of 1812 was preceded by the Treaty of Paris, but whatever.

[conuly]

Yes, I locked and screened it, determining that we're in the big algebra push right now and I neither have the time nor energy to handle... people.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ayup, those sure are some opinions there. I have opinions too, such as: the founding of the State of Israel was a very bad move right from the start, and was deliberately designed to cause instability in the region.

The so-called Nation of Israel certainly did not own the land of Canaan before anyone else. The whole Book of Joshua is all about how they conquered it with fire and sword, raping and enslaving the virgins, dashing the heads of babies against stones, and otherwise displaying the values that have characterized the People of the Book ever since. The winners write the history, hence all the bullshit about the Promised Land, i.e. Manifest Destiny: "God told us to kill them all and take their fair land, so that means it's rightfully ours forever now."

Actually, it's true that there are no hominids native to this continent, and it's also true that 'race' isn't real. The way the people you mention handle the cognitive dissonance is by hanging on to the truth of those statements, and ignoring their total irrelevance. Humans spread out of Africa before the last Ice Age, and 'race' is certainly real in the minds of a great many people - just like the God of Israel, who exists nowhere else, but good luck convincing his worshippers of that fact.

[conuly]

the founding of the State of Israel was a very bad move right from the start, and was deliberately designed to cause instability in the region.

I agree with the first, and dispute the second, but at any rate Israel is there now and isn't going anywhere. Trying to change that would only harm a lot of people and destabilize everything.

...but damn, if they don't stop building new settlements in disputed territory then they'll keep having problems.

otherwise displaying the values that have characterized the People of the Book ever since.

Man, I really wish all of us non-Abrahamic religion folks could rightly claim that we're more moral, but I don't believe it. Humans just suck.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

True that, and the no-religion-at-all folk are no better.

[conuly]

Boy, you can say that again. I really resent being forced to acknowledge that fact about atheists, being one, but the facts are the facts.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Don't feel bad; quite a bit of the Pagan community makes me want to scream "Get off my team!"

[conuly]

ST fandom too. "OMG, SJWs in ST!" Um, what the hell show were you guys watching all these years?

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

LOL, really! Star Trek is what MADE me a SJW!

[conuly]

The preaching, it ain't exactly subtle on that show. And yet somehow it still managed to go right over these folks' heads. I don't know how that's even possible.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Well... a lot of the old-time SF fandom were tech-bros; the kind of geeks who love all the warp-drives and weapons and alien gadgets, but who barely notice the human elements of a story. There we had a black woman as a Bridge Officer on the flagship of the Federation, and all guys like that would see would be a hot chick with great legs in a really short skirt.

[conuly]

I weep for them, truly, I deeply sympathize.

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Me, somewhat, because several of my friends-and-proteges have been of this sort. It's astonishing to read their attempts at fantasy/SF: incredible, elaborate scenarios with no people in them, like RPG modules before any RPG players have arrived to roll up their characters.