You asked me for an explanation and a pointer and you can’t even summarize the nature of your disagreement? Typical.
So how come you’re such ab asshole here? Are you just trolling? Because I can’t believe anyone would put up with your unctuous misinterpretations in real life.
I hope it doesn’t seriously upset your world view to know that your judgments are not shared by everyone.
Maybe the people I know in real life are not the types to categorize people they have met, let alone people they have never met, with epithets such as asshole instead of working with ideas and collaborating towards a goal or solution.
Maybe you hang out with folks who are, or are yourself a different type than that?
I’m sure you have many exciting friends. That doesn’t change the fact that you’re a loathsome, festering anus.
Most all of my friends fall into the “different” category. But then, I’ve always relied on the kindness of the strange.
You are such a delight to be around.
Rock and roll. You keep on keeping on. I’m not going to be interacting anymore with you because your online persona is insufferable. However, if I’m ever in Bakersfield or Oildale or wherever you hang your hat I’d love to grab a beer with you, because I have to admit I’m really curious as to what you’re like IRL.
Not even close; this position, which is so far removed from what I said as to be pretty much a total strawman, illustrates how you’ve consistently misinterpreted my remarks in many of your posts here.
To repeat: I don’t think Jewishness per se should be a factor at all in considering qualifications for a government post or trustworthiness as a US citizen.
I do think, however, that explicitly professed adherence to a specific hard-line approach to pursuing another country’s policy objectives is a legitimate issue in such considerations, irrespective of the religion of the professed adherent.
Certainly, it’s not surprising and it’s very understandable. However, when respondents to such a topic insist on repeatedly and exclusively confining their response to the negative commentary on threadbare bigotry, and never addressing any substantive issues in the topic, it does give the impression that they’re just trying to keep the well poisoned.
Very true. Which is why I’m trying to be patient with the reactions of knee-jerk outrage and sweeping accusations of bigotry here (none coming from you, I hasten to add). I understand that a lot of people feel very defensive about this issue, and with good cause considering the history of malicious allegations related to it.
You make good points, and I’m sympathetic to that sensitivity. However, it may tend to cut out a lot of gray area that’s kind of crucial to this discussion.
Is there really no middle ground between the unexceptionable concept of American Jewish pro-Israel-right-hawks as individual citizens with unrelated individual political views, and the ridiculous and slanderous notion of American Jewish pro-Israel-right-hawks as sinister treasonous conspirators acting in concert to betray their country?
It seems to me that it should be acceptable, and not automatically labeled anti-Semitic, to consider the political impact of American Jewish pro-Israel-right-hawks in a role somewhere between those two categories: namely, as an interest group, like many other interest groups in American politics, that combines shared political goals with a shared self-identification that transcends politics. (AFAICT, such an interest group is more or less what the commentators John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt mean by the term “the Israel lobby”.)
There is nothing specifically or intrinsically Jewish about such a category, either. A similar example would be the interest group of anticommunist Cuban-Americans who strongly pressure US policymakers to maintain a hard-line stance towards Communist Cuba. Of course, it would be ridiculous to characterize this phenomenon as any kind of subversive conspiracy, or to argue that the mere fact of being of Cuban descent should call somebody’s patriotism into question.
But I can’t see how it’s ridiculous or in any way inappropriate to permit discussion on the concept and impact of an anticommunist Cuban-American interest group. Does it seem inappropriate to you? Does it raise any spectre of conspiracies? (Even if it doesn’t, of course, that might be just because no malign “anti-Cubanism” counterpart of anti-Semitism exists in our history.)
And if it isn’t inappropriate, then isn’t there some way we can also discuss the same concept of an “interest group” in the context of American Jewish pro-Israel-right-hawks without its automatically being anti-Semitic?
I’m not. But watching your line of reasoning in this thread is like watching you punch out a cop who pulled you over for speeding because he asked for your license and Jews in Nazi Germany had to give the authorities their papers and look how that all turned out?
You are determined to take righteous offense at everything, and it is not helping you at all.
I’m saying that things change. The Israeli zionists have the upper hand now and they use that advantage to oppress Palestinians. One day the Palestinians may have the upper hand. Why would the Palestinians treat the Israelis any better than they have been treated?
Or perhaps they will simply outbreed Jews in Israel, then what will the Zionists do?
What is the third kind of Poster? You and Finn?
That would be the 50% beef/50% pork burger.
With 2 slices of muenster on top.
I find it hard, in the extreme, to believe that you honestly don’t understand why it’s an accusation of treachery to say that Jews who you don’t agree with politically aren’t actual patriots and are just faking it, despite serving in the US government, and have a dual loyalty to a foreign nation such that they put its interests above their own home’s. Do you, perhaps, not know what treachery means? Your position is either motivated by ignorance or something worse, as that is, indeed, an accusation of flat out treachery and being traitors to the nation. Your denial is more than a little odd, since violation of allegiance or of faith and confidence is the very denotation of treachery.
Of course it was. How do you think all those Jewish names ‘just happened’ to end up on the list? You haven’t provided a valid reason. Red, to excuse his racism, has only claimed that it was ‘hyperbole’ in the Pit. :rolleyes: And you’re deliberately ignoring that while all those Jewish names ‘just happened’ to end up on the list of traitors, the one non-Jew on the list was removed by Red when he learned he wasn’t Jewish. That wouldn’t have happened if the issue was politics, but would (and did) since the issue was Red’s racist objections to Jews who have the wrong politics.
And please, none of this bullshit about how, gee, a few of the people on the list are accused of partisanship so then a bunch of random Jews ending up on the list isn’t indicative of a racist casting around and naming every Jew they could think of in the US government. Also none of this bullshit about how accusing people of being non-patriots with dual loyalty is not an accusation of treachery. We wouldn’t be having this discussion if, instead of Jewish treachery, the issue was black watermelon-thievery. If someone named two or three black men who had stolen a watermelon at some point, and then half a dozen who were simply black and accused them all of being watermelon thieves, the (justified) reaction wouldn’t be “ah well, hyperbole”. Nor would it be “Well, ya know, we really should have a discussion on just how prone to watermelon thievery blacks are.”
Not only is “dual loyalty” an accusation of treachery, it’s an anti-Semitic trope that goes back to ancient Roman civilization. But folks are in good company with the whole Just Asking Questions schtick.
No, there isn’t. A valid topic might be “politician X has position Y, is this what I would argue is the best position to hold?” An invalid topic is “politician X has position Y, is this because his ethnicity somehow makes him a traitor to his own nation?” Absent actual evidence of Rosenbergesque treachery, what’s actually happening is some racist muttering that attempts to slime those who dare to have different politics than someone does.
It’s an attempt to set up Good Negroes and Bad Negroes, or Jews if you prefer. The Good ones are those who have the ‘proper’ politics. The Bad ones are those who hold politics that you disagree with, and are slandered (or libeled, as the case would be) based on ethnic/religious grounds. And of course that’s what’s going on. We hear about dual loyalty, now re-branded “conflict of interest” because dual loyalty is a centuries old anti-Semitic trope, only about Jews. Funny how when a Jew has politics that we don’t like, it’s because they’re a traitor to the nation due to placing another country’s interests above their own home’s (whether consciously or, even worse, through being some sort of ethnic Manchurian Candidate). When a gentile has politics that we don’t like, it’s because the “Israel Lobby” made them do it. :dubious: When the same exact politics are evidence of “dual loyalty” in a Jew and “influence by the Israel Lobby” in a gentile, it’s clear what’s going on. Unless you squeeze your eyes shut.
There were people who actually made the policy to invade Iraq, for instance. Men like Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush. How often are they accused of dual loyalty? How often were the Jews who advised them? Even Red’s “retraction” has a, merely muted, level of dishonesty in it. The PNAC is often pointed to as some sort of smoking gun, but what the PNAC actually argued for was for Israel to stand on its own, without US military aid, and achieve its own objectives. They, in fact, specifically say that “Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs.”
Someone describing that stance as evidence of Jewish dual loyalty and getting America to act, to its own detriment, in Israel’s interest? They’re either shockingly ignorant and unintelligent. Or… (this is the part where you freak out)
That’s the reason that racists like Red would take Tenet off the list because he isn’t Jewish, even though finding out he was Jewish should have absolutely zero effect on whatever his politics were. And again, remember that there’s no reason to think that someone like Tenet was Jewish as he’s a well known Greek Orthodox man… unless Red was reading racist sites discussing the ‘Jewish Problem’ in America.
This shows that you simply don’t understand what’s happening, at all. If you show that the very supporting facts of an argument are in error, then the argument falls apart. Naturally, rather than understanding that the person who holds such a flawed argument needs to retract it, you babble about “hysterical screaming” on my part. The real issue is that most anti-Israel partisans just know that they’re right, and they won’t let the facts get in the way of that knowledge.
And really, how pathetic is your objection here? If I was focusing on an irrelevant detail and leaving out the meat of someone’s argument (as you claim but has never actually happened), it would be trivially easy to show how very wrong I was. Just like those who whine about how “ineffective” or “insane” my posts are are admitting utter impotence if they’re not able to eviscerate them with a flick of the wrist. It’s just ad hominem whining from people who can’t actually argue on the facts, so they’re arguing on the person. But surely, you can provide an example where someone made a valid point and rather than attacking its support, I attacked a totally unconnected issue. Right? You’ve got several such examples?
Right?
Just like Red accusing all the Jews in American government he could think of off the top of his head of not really being patriots and having dual loyalty isn’t really an accusation of treachery, no sir bob ma’am. You do have the standard Apologist dodge down, however. It usually runs along the lines of “Sure I said that he was guilty of killing someone with malice aforethought, but you have no basis to claim that I’ve accused anybody of murder in the first degree!”
The dodge you’re using is typical. People say exactly what I state, but they try to sugarcoat it or spin it. Like a recent thread on Jews in Hollywood where it was claimed that there is a (possibly spontaneous) conspiracy of Jews who control Hollywood and secretly act to keep gentiles out of positions of power, but good lord nobody ever alleged a cabal. :smack:
“I’ve just said that blacks are inherently less intelligent, lazier, and prone to drug use. I never said they were inferior!”
We don’t let that sort of shit fly, but all of a sudden when Jews are the targets, we’re expected to make it part of the national dialogue. And gee, why can’t we Just Ask Questions about it?
Again, your denial rings hollow. Red has, still, offered absolutely no metric that he used to label all of those Jews are traitors other than the fact that they were Jews in politics who he could remember. The metric was, obviously, they were Jews, in politics, who he could remember. Nobody, least of all the asshole himself, has offered any more convincing rationale. “Oops, I named all those black guys are watermelon thieves due to hyperbole” doesn’t fly, sorry.
And again, you are deliberately ignoring the fact that when Tenet was shown to not be Jewish, Red immediately retracted his accusation of Jewish treachery. This should be obvious, even to you. If the issue at stake was Tenet’s politics, then he’d be treacherous whether or not he was Jewish. That his name was removed from the list simply because he was shown not to be Jewish shows the exact nature of the list.
“Oh, that guy I named as a watermelon thief was Indian, not a light skinned black man? Okay then, I’m not accusing him of being a watermelon thief anymore.”
What is clear is that some people want to make classical anti-semitic tropes the substance of political dialogue. While some others, due to stupidity, ignorance or malice, demonize those who stand against such filth. Surely you can understand the difference between “I don’t think that Politician X’s politics are best/right for us to persue, although it’s clear that he does” and “Politician X has obviously let himself be influenced by his ethnicity, which is why he’s betrayed his own nation and is consciously or subconsciously placing the good for a foreign power above his own home.”
Going on a fishing expedition and Just Asking Questions about Jewish treachery is a hell of a lot different from finding a Rosenbergesque situation. That’s how it’s supposed to work. *First *you find some sort of evidence and then you make an accusation. You don’t first find someone whose politics you don’t agree with, notice they’re Jewish, and then look for evidence of treachery. And no, demonizing Jews whose politics happen to be the ‘wrong’ ones isn’t okay, either. If you can’t argue against the politics and have to invoke ethnic-based betrayal, it should be a pretty clarion call that you’re wandering into good ol’ racist territory.
“I am saying that the leaders of…the Jewish (race), for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war. We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.”
Charles Lindbergh, “America First” rally, Des Moines, Iowa, 9/11/1941.
These types of accusations have been around a long time. U.S. policy on Israel provides the latest excuse to vent them.
I think the problem is that you seem to be reading everything through a lens that assumes anti-semitism when someone expresses anti-zionism.
The post you quoted doesn’t say “all Jews are dual loyalists” The post you quote says that “there are Dual Loyalists among the US Jewish population”
I think Redfury’s identification of the Pro-Israel folks with dual loyalties as jewish was unnecessary and irrelevant. If he meant to say that Jews are suspect because they are Jews then I think everyone would (or should) agree that is racist.
Clearly, anti-Semitism exists. Now, you ony need to demonstrate that such an “excuse” is the only plausible explanation for such criticisms as Red, I, and others have to offer.
Oh hi Finn. Welcome back.
Again, without defending the form of RedFury’s statement as he originally made it (a form which I also objected to in an earlier post), I can’t fully go along with your hostile and extreme interpretation of that statement.
You are the one declaring that the mere designation “dual-loyalist” always and intrinsically, in and of itself, unambiguously implies that the designees “aren’t actual patriots and are just faking it” and are in fact outright “traitors to the nation”.
If that’s how you choose to interpret the term in a very extreme and absolutist way, that’s up to you. But I don’t think it’s up to you to decide that your interpretation is the only possible or accepted one. Indeed, Mearsheimer and Walt themselves pointed out that the term “dual loyalty” is by no means always used or interpreted in the sense you attach to it:
Again, I think the trouble you have with almost everybody around here is rooted in this tendency of yours to interpret the statements of people you’re arguing with in the absolutely worst way possible, and to deny passionately that any other interpretation could possibly be admissible or intended. According to you, you are the one who gets to decide what any term must mean and what sort of statements are permissible for discussion. You high-handedly expect other people always to understand and conform to the way you define the terms of the debate.
If I’m not doing you justice here in this assessment, then I hope you will be willing to show that by helping to clarify the issue of “middle ground” that I raised in my earlier questions to not_alice and Malthus.
I.e.: are you in fact maintaining that there’s no acceptable way to frame the concept of a so-called “Israel lobby” or a “political interest group” in American politics composed mostly of American Jewish pro-Israel-right-hawks?
Does any allusion whatsoever to political influence or policy goals associated with pro-Israel-right-hawk Jews as an interest group—i.e., a category that is neither an imaginary sinister treasonous conspiracy, nor restricted to considering only a specific individual political actor—automatically qualify as an expression of anti-Semitic bigotry, as far as you’re concerned?
A simple “yes” or “no” will be adequate.
If the answer’s “no”, then can you tell me what you consider is an acceptable and non-anti-Semitic way to frame and discuss the concept of an “Israel lobby” or “pro-Israel interest group” in American politics?
If the answer’s “yes”, then I’ll know better than to attempt to discuss such a concept with you in future.
You’ve now rather obviously tried to shift the discussion from what Red’s obvious metrics could have been (remember, Tenet excluded from the list not because of political considerations, but because he realized he’s not Jewish) to this nonsense. Likewise, you’ve dodged the fact that “violation of allegiance or of faith and confidence” is the very denotation of treachery. And the fact a violation of allegiance to one’s home nation and a breach of faith and confidence for politicians to work against the good of their own nation is exactly what’s being alleged. All while pretending that what the word “treachery” means, and what the concept “dual loyalty” means, are actually extreme.
Are you honestly confused, or engaging in some rough and ready dishonesty that you know will be backed up by the pileon in this thread?
Red’s own comment was that they weren’t actual patriots and were traitors to the nation. You’re honestly confused on this point? Really?
And again, that’s what dual loyalty means, that people place the interests of somewhere other than their home at the same level as, if not higher than, the interests of their own home.
Seriously though, what is your game here?
Dual loyalty has been an accusation used since Roman times. It is an accusation that Jews cannot be trusted because their full loyalty does not lie with the state of which they are citizens. You responding with “lalala I can’t hear youuuuu!” is not a rebuttal.
And yet again, what exactly do you think Red’s metric was for his “hyperbole” other than that they were Jews in government, and/or that he didn’t like their politics? If it was about political problems, why was Tenet removed from the list because he was found to not be a Jew, and not because of any revelation that his politics were different than understood?
Are you for real? M&W, the purveyors of some of the most factually incorrect, amorphous idiocy to pass for ‘scholarship’ in recent memory? One of whom has tried to coin the phrase “conflict of interest” precisely because dual loyalty is an anti-Semitic slur?
And even the quote you provide is pure double talk. “Sure, Jews were slandered as having only loyalty to each other during the Middle Ages. But this is a much more modern slander. Now we say that they may have some degree of loyalty to their homes, kinda, but you can’t trust them to put the safety, prosperity and security of their home foremost if their loyalty to the Jewish state is at issue. See, totally different.”
You know full well that’s a blatant fallacy of bifurcation.
I already pointed out that, provided you have a Rosenbergesque set of facts, that impugning loyalty is not at all beyond the pale. But slandering people simply for having different politics (and reliably slandering the Jewish ones only, even when gentiles have the same exact politics) is not acceptable. No, there is no “middle ground” between racism and no racism. You do not get to champion “just a bit of racism.”
I specifically said that you can criticize people’s politics on their merits. What’s beyond the pale is suggesting that people who have different politics than you, simply because their politics are different, are potentially disloyal and/or place another country’s needs above their own home. Especially when the only proof is that they disagree with you about what the best course of political action is. Even more so when only the Jews who hold a certain political view are accused of treachery and all the non-Jews who do are, likewise, accused of being corrupted by Jewish meddling.
Dual loyalty need not enter into the question, I have no doubt that, in some instances, it does, but it is not required.
The neo-con perspective sees a Mideast dominated by Israel as a positive good, it projects American power by way of its most loyal ally in the region. And it might permit us to impose our will on a backward and recalcitrant people, incapable of seeing American foreign policy as the just and perfect order. I would that my nation were so wise and righteous as to make such a belief plausible, but the only thing wrong with that is that it just ain’t so.
It is entirely possible for a neo-con of Jewish heritage and/or extraction to see the issue in an ruthlessly secular perspective, as a matter of realpolitik. In that instance, a fervent desire to see Israel become the dominant power in the Middle East is nothing more than a move in the Great Game. If Israel were a nation predominately populated by atheists, it would be a harder sell in terms of public relations, but the end result, the goal, would remain the same.
I do not judge Messrs. Wolfowitz, Perle, and others according to their religious affiliation, I judge them by their willingness to risk the lives of millions of innocent persons in order to play a game of Risk For Keeps.
But, First Amendment not withstanding, you are not exactly leaping out and saying vetting should be blind to religion either. So here is your chance to do just that. In your world, would it even be necessary or desirable to know a man or woman’s religion in order to vet him or her for a position? If so, what positions precisely would have this qualification?
There is no topic to be discussed. If you have a specific reason tyhat specific people’s specific policies make then unworthy of consideration of the President, on any matter, including foreign policy with Egypt or the price of tea in china, then out with it (probably a new thread in GD is a better place than here though).
Until then, you are cherry picking a narrow enough topic - “qualifications to advise the President on Israeli foreign policy” and conflating it with a man’s religion, Judaism, along with his actual knowledge and experience on the topic, and would consider that as a factor to prohibit the elected President of the United States form soliciting his opinion.
An alternate more narrow reading of your position is that you are really only interested in the President form soliciting the advice of people with specific advice to give, which is reprehensible and suggests that the President can’t decide for himself how to weigh the information, and that he should not hear all sides as he so chooses. Under this reading, are there any other matters besides particular views vis a vis Israel that you would prohibit the President from hearing? Please list them if there are.
Either way, please explain in detail what the new process for vetting what the president is allowed to hear would work under your plan.
So you are aware that your rhetoric is identical to abhorrent people, yet you hasten to insist on standing among them. Good to know.
You make good points, and I’m sympathetic to that sensitivity. However, it may tend to cut out a lot of gray area that’s kind of crucial to this discussion.
Not really.
Here is the definition of Treason in the Constitution.
This country has prosecuted treason what, 40 times in its history and succeeded fewer than that?
Alleging treason is a very serious matter, not to be tossed around lightly. If you have specific evidence that the people you assert are treasonous have committed any element of the crime listed above, then please present your evidence. Clearly you have given the matter lots of thought, so it should not be a difficult task.
If you want to allege a crime, then show that the elements of the crime exist. Otherwise, simply state you really are interested in changing foreign policy towards Israel, which is a fair topic for discussion, just like foreign policy for Nambibia or anywhere else, but that you let your rhetoric get away from you by tossing out charges of treason inappropriately.
So, your goal is to limit access the President has to advisors he might otherwise choose, right?
But being Jewish does call one’s patriotism into question with regard to Israel in your world? Because clearly you are tossing about charges of treason for Jewish Americans, and it appears would not do so for similarly situated Cuban Americans. What is the difference other than religion? All are American citizens, what more need you know?
A start would be to stop making lists of Jewish Americans and labeling them treasonous for holding certain political views, or alternatively lay out the evidence you have for this very serious accusation and be prepared to accept that your evidence is not sufficient to prove the crime. Either way, you end up without the charges of treason.
The next step would be , IMHO anyway, to drop the idea that the President can not choose to be advised by whom he chooses. it is one of the privileges, nay, obligations, of being President. I say this regardless of who the president is - there have been awful Presidents with awful policies and awful advisors in my lifetime, but I would never dream to prohibit him from seeking and evaluating advice from anywhere.
Stop labeling people as Jewish for one thing. The group of far right supporters of Israel is not exclusively Jewish. Huckabee has been mentioned, for example. Attack the policy, not the people, and you will be heading in the right direction.