Wow, this was a great piece. I feel like I need to read more of your work first and then come back and re-read this, though it makes good sense to me on the first pass. Prior to my corporate career, I did a literature & linguistics Ph.D. in German, and much of advanced interpretation of literature is stuff like this: apply X framework to…
Wow, this was a great piece. I feel like I need to read more of your work first and then come back and re-read this, though it makes good sense to me on the first pass. Prior to my corporate career, I did a literature & linguistics Ph.D. in German, and much of advanced interpretation of literature is stuff like this: apply X framework to Y text or Y situation. (In the grad school context, it would be more like "Interpret this Brecht play with Freud's framework" and things like that.).
I also think you are spot-on with the content. A little bit of story-time here, but back in April 2024 some pro-Palestine activists actually tried to get the city council in my small outlying suburb of Chicago to pass a ceasefire resolution that included a denunciation of Israel as an apartheid state that is committing genocide. I actually attended the city council meeting at which this came up and a procession of 20 people walked up to the microphone to yell and scream and cry and I'm sure many other things you can imagine. More than one of them was a mental health worker, one of which cried about how upset her clients are about this issue.
I was the sole and only person who spoke in Israel's defense, and I think what I got into my 5 minutes at the mic was pretty good. I referenced the fact that I have a PhD in German and that in grad school I was repeatedly a TA for a course called "The Holocaust in Context", and that this absolutely does not meet the definition of genocide when 0.7% of the population has died when they could have killed everyone in 3 days, etc., compared to the purpose-built death camps the Nazis ran in which people were forced into rooms and gassed by the hundreds like an assembly line. I ran circles around these kids. After the meeting as I left, they cleared a path for me and seemed afraid of me. I received several emails from aldermen afterward commending my bravery in being the only person to speak differently from the assembled crowd. End of story time.
Great read though, I will come back to it later again!
I could have probably produced two pieces but I got carried away.
Kudos to you for speaking truthfully and factually to counter ideologically captured narratives. You commanded respect, which is tough to get with the unhinged.
Well, I do think it helped me that you laid out the framework you were applying in great detail because I otherwise would not have followed it as well. It made sense to me. Whereas a better known framework like id-ego-superego requires less explanation.
Exactly, the first part of my remarks before the council were that I hope I don’t have to remind anyone here that the city council of our town has no jurisdiction over United States federal government foreign policy, and that furthermore I will never ask the city council to endorse my personal policy preferences on other topics outside its jurisdiction such as interest rate policy or the Outer Space Treaty of 1965. First and foremost it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
One final comment: I think one could fairly ask why I care to go out of my way to support Israel vocally when I am not Jewish and have no ties to that area. I think in this case it was because these activists, nearly none of whom lived in my town, had brought this issue to MY town, asking the elected officials of MY suburb to endorse these statements with the imprimatur of city government. As an actual resident of the town, and suspecting literally no one else would speak up, I felt this was an appropriate venue in which to act. It’s a real problem that so many governments will allow themselves to be swayed by the numerous but highly vocal legions of leftist activists and often literally no moderate or conservative person speaks up.
I even separately argued with the city council that the town is almost exactly 50-50 Democrats and Republicans, and that only maybe half of Democrats even support Palestine (maybe it’s a little more than half now, but not by a lot last I checked), so if they pass this they’d be endorsing a position likely held by not more than 25-30% of the town’s residents.
Sure enough, they did pass a resolution, but I was credited by an alderman with getting language about apartheid and genocide stricken from the final resolution.
It's the not-so-subtle art of bullying that the loudmouth progressives use to make something irrelevant to most people, matter.
I wonder what actual, meaningful, and measurable impact that 'resolution' will have on actual Gazans beyond signalling their allegiance to a group funded by Big Activism.
As a Jewish person who stays out of the political conversations, I appreciate your stance.
Wow, this was a great piece. I feel like I need to read more of your work first and then come back and re-read this, though it makes good sense to me on the first pass. Prior to my corporate career, I did a literature & linguistics Ph.D. in German, and much of advanced interpretation of literature is stuff like this: apply X framework to Y text or Y situation. (In the grad school context, it would be more like "Interpret this Brecht play with Freud's framework" and things like that.).
I also think you are spot-on with the content. A little bit of story-time here, but back in April 2024 some pro-Palestine activists actually tried to get the city council in my small outlying suburb of Chicago to pass a ceasefire resolution that included a denunciation of Israel as an apartheid state that is committing genocide. I actually attended the city council meeting at which this came up and a procession of 20 people walked up to the microphone to yell and scream and cry and I'm sure many other things you can imagine. More than one of them was a mental health worker, one of which cried about how upset her clients are about this issue.
I was the sole and only person who spoke in Israel's defense, and I think what I got into my 5 minutes at the mic was pretty good. I referenced the fact that I have a PhD in German and that in grad school I was repeatedly a TA for a course called "The Holocaust in Context", and that this absolutely does not meet the definition of genocide when 0.7% of the population has died when they could have killed everyone in 3 days, etc., compared to the purpose-built death camps the Nazis ran in which people were forced into rooms and gassed by the hundreds like an assembly line. I ran circles around these kids. After the meeting as I left, they cleared a path for me and seemed afraid of me. I received several emails from aldermen afterward commending my bravery in being the only person to speak differently from the assembled crowd. End of story time.
Great read though, I will come back to it later again!
I could have probably produced two pieces but I got carried away.
Kudos to you for speaking truthfully and factually to counter ideologically captured narratives. You commanded respect, which is tough to get with the unhinged.
Thank you for getting through it!
Well, I do think it helped me that you laid out the framework you were applying in great detail because I otherwise would not have followed it as well. It made sense to me. Whereas a better known framework like id-ego-superego requires less explanation.
Exactly, the first part of my remarks before the council were that I hope I don’t have to remind anyone here that the city council of our town has no jurisdiction over United States federal government foreign policy, and that furthermore I will never ask the city council to endorse my personal policy preferences on other topics outside its jurisdiction such as interest rate policy or the Outer Space Treaty of 1965. First and foremost it’s a waste of everyone’s time.
One final comment: I think one could fairly ask why I care to go out of my way to support Israel vocally when I am not Jewish and have no ties to that area. I think in this case it was because these activists, nearly none of whom lived in my town, had brought this issue to MY town, asking the elected officials of MY suburb to endorse these statements with the imprimatur of city government. As an actual resident of the town, and suspecting literally no one else would speak up, I felt this was an appropriate venue in which to act. It’s a real problem that so many governments will allow themselves to be swayed by the numerous but highly vocal legions of leftist activists and often literally no moderate or conservative person speaks up.
I even separately argued with the city council that the town is almost exactly 50-50 Democrats and Republicans, and that only maybe half of Democrats even support Palestine (maybe it’s a little more than half now, but not by a lot last I checked), so if they pass this they’d be endorsing a position likely held by not more than 25-30% of the town’s residents.
Sure enough, they did pass a resolution, but I was credited by an alderman with getting language about apartheid and genocide stricken from the final resolution.
It's the not-so-subtle art of bullying that the loudmouth progressives use to make something irrelevant to most people, matter.
I wonder what actual, meaningful, and measurable impact that 'resolution' will have on actual Gazans beyond signalling their allegiance to a group funded by Big Activism.
As a Jewish person who stays out of the political conversations, I appreciate your stance.