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Hey cats & kittens,
I owe you an explanation for why I haven’t posted in a week.
I’m just incredibly upset and angry about what’s going on in Israel and Gaza and how the discourse is going in the United States,
My main belief in life is that being upset about stuff like global affairs, which are beyond your control, is really unhealthy. That belief is something that was forged in the smithy of a suicide ward at Beth Israel in September of 2016.
I recognized then that I had cared too much about politics and the discourse surrounding i,t and over the next two months, my entire view of the world changed in treatment even as Trump won.
And it’s just been so tested the last few weeks.
I am mad. I am upset about what happened and I am mad about how people I have spent years happy to make jokes with despite our political differences genuinely seem to be proving that they’re antisemites.
I feel like a fucking idiot for not seeing it before. But that doesn’t even matter because the thing that really upsets me is that I just am so hurt. I can’t talk my way out of the hurt.
I have felt myself being so mad at the left that I have felt myself forgetting all the things that make me a liberal. Hahahaha. what a fucking dumb thing to say or feel. How hilariously stupid brains are!
It’s just tough.
Anyways this is all stupid, and I am a shmuck and I promise I actually have an organizing principle around which I will discuss this topic over the weekend in essay form, but I felt like I owed you a check-in.
Love,
Ben
Check-in
I’m not sure if it helps, but as someone who was raised very conservative I’ve seen nearly all my family and friends from that time adopt beliefs that are not only completely insane, but are completely different than any beliefs you’d expect these folks to have based completely on tribalism and the desire to disagree with liberals. (Anti-vaccines and 9/11 trutherism are two examples that come to mind).
I think you’re seeing the same thing here, where people are so intent on being anti-colonial and “anti-racist” they end up with hang glider banners which are literally endorsing mass murder and rape.
I do think anti-Semitism plays a role too though because both the crazy left and crazy right converge on the same weird anti-Semitic ideas. Although I’m surprised how overt it is on the Left right now, especially considering most Democratic politicians are actually pretty pro-Israel.
I said a few bland things that amounted to a polite "maybe don't carry water for Hamas, guys" in my hyperprogressive social circles and promptly got massive thanks from my Jewish friends for saying anything at all. So then the next thing I said was way more pointed and less polite. Might as well use my gentile privilege.
I am not looking forward to family gatherings next month. Too many DSA bleeding hearts with binary thinking that I will want to shout at.