The ultimate battle of cringe

 So, there is an interesting rivalry going on lately. In one corner, standing at 5'4-5" is none other than Hillary Clinton! And in the other corner, we got hordes of pro Palestine protesters! Who wins the cringe contest?! 

Well, it was the pro palestine people who launched the first punch, protesting clinton at a speech she gave recently. And UGH, that is major cringe. I mean, brutally honest, i cant stand these people. When people start screaming like that, there's a visceral instinct in me that just wants to scream at them to shut the F up and to F whatever point they're trying to make. I've discussed this before. I cant stand these people. They behave like children throwing a temper tantrum. And I cheer whenever they're unceremoniously escorted out by security. MAN is that a lot of cringe. 

But, clinton recently fired back, calling these people "anti semites" in what comes off as a dishonest smear attack. UGH! *cringe*, that is the typical hacky self righteous argument that Clinton WOULD make. She can't honestly engage with a point to save her life. "Oh, you are pro palestine? So you must hate the jews." Oh my god, screw off, Hillary.

I mean, really, first, I was like "okay, how badly to these pro palestine protesters have to mess up to make me wanna defend Hillary?" I even considered making a blog post about this earlier, but I never did, and here we are now. But now I'm like "how badly does Clinton have to screw up to make me wanna defend the protesters?" So I guess, like everything Clinton touches, it doesn't matter who wins, because everyone loses. And I have to declare this battle a tie.

I guess let me start with the anti semite comment. I hate this trend of "if you dare criticize something you must just hate X group." Clinton is masterful in using this language, and that's one of the reasons I despise her so much. Rather than fricking address the point, she has to smear people.

At the same time, even I have to admit she KINDA has a point. Because the amount of hatred I'm seeing of Israel as a concept and Judaism is cringe. I honestly do think that people are going psycho over this issue. We covered stories. First someone starts killing palestinian kids and then people shoot up synagogues, and it's like, wtf is wrong with you people, where is YOUR humanity to take your crap out on innocent victims without good reason. 

And of course a pro palestine protester might ask the same of israel and netanyahu, where I have to say "good point." Because even I have to admit that Netanyahu is going overboard here. I understand that ANY conflict in gaza is going to be a messy slog littered with civilian bodies, but Netanyahu doesnt seem to care in the slightest how high the palestinian body count is. It's like he's speed running this crap. He's killed more civilians in 4 months than Russia has in 2 years, and you all know my stance on Russia (hint, it's not positive). 

And to some extent, to address "anti semitism" head on, I do think that at the very least, Zionism is responsible for this tragedy. Zionism isn't all of Judiasm, mind you, but it is a specific version of Judaism that is inherently nationalistic and believes that the land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. And it has been a driving force behind Israel's indiscretions in the area over the past 76 years, and appears to be a driving force behind Netanyahu's policies in this region. And before people think it's "antisemitic" to point that out, I'm criticizing ideas, not race. You dont get to hide your ideas behind some sort of "class" protection and act like they're above criticism. Religion absolutely can and should be criticized, including Judaism.

As a matter of fact, let me discuss one of the reasons I left Christianity. In the old testament (which jews also follow), there is this book named Joshua. It is the 6th book of the bible, the one directly after the pentateuch which discussed everything from the dawn of humanity to right before the establishment of the state of Israel. Joshua is the book in which the Israelites engage in conquest for the land of Israel, and this involved slaughtering all of its current inhabitants. But it's okay because in the eyes of Yahweh, they were "evil" and God apparently commanded it. And I had to ask, as a struggling, questioning Christian, why an all powerful, all knowing, and perfectly moral god, would command such a thing. Classic problem of evil problem. After all, couldnt God just transport the israelites to their own little pocket dimension? Or the canaanites? Couldn't God come up with some other solution that didnt just involve genociding an entire race of people? And I struggled with this, and ultimately, I concluded that it made more sense that this was just the ideas of a bunch of primitive people with limited means and limited knowledge, not the work of a perfect divine creator. Because a perfect divine creator would not act like that. The decision reeks of the authoritarianism and brutish methods of the strong man leaders of the times, rather than a perfect god. heck, Yahweh himself acts more like such a leader, than a modern leader worth following. And thus, genocide happened, and we got the state of Israel emerging from that. 

And this same religion, evolved by around 3000 years, now once again occupies and is the dominant force in the region, and they're being cavalier toward the lives of the modern Palestinians, who are treated like the modern Canaanites. And honestly, this specific strain of Judaism, zionism, is kind of responsible for these actions. Again, it's a Jewish nationalist movement. And to be fair, the netanyahu government is pushing a form of religious extremism to push the narrative that they deserve the land, and that it's therefore okay to treat the palestinians as...less than human. Which is one of the reasons we got to this point, and why I end up becoming neutral on the matter.

Now, given my relative neutrality, I dont think the palestinians are any better. They have their own form of genocidal, nationalist extremism, and they're just as, if not more rigid than the Israeli government. Heck, historically, the Israeli government has typically been the less extreme and more reasonable of the parties, and the reason they initially got sympathy from me after October 7th is because I ultimately do believe that Hamas are the aggressors here, and that Israel has existed for long enough to rightfully exist in some form. I dont think they should necessarily control the whole area (although I could be convinced based on the fact that back in the first few decades of Israel's existence, they've won enough wars to justify such a claim), but let's be real, I'm NOT gonna argue against Israel's existence at this late date as doing so is impractical and would lead to an even worse genocide. Ultimately, I support an uneasy status quo with the tensions being reduced as much as possible, and typically am gonna side against the aggressor, which in this case is Palestine. They broke the peace, they keep screwing around and finding out, and I can't really be bothered to care about them facing the consequences of that.

I certainly understand that the pro palestine protesters are radicals. They dont just want peace, they dont just wanna live and let live. They want Israel to be abolished, because their leftist theory demands it. As part of their conflict theory based approach, they automatically side with the less powerful faction, especially one that has several characteristics that fit their "oppression" criteria (like race, religion, etc.), and they believe Israel is bad and should go.

Are they necessarily anti semites? Do they hate all jews? Probably not. Does the effect if their position have a negative effect on the established jewish state and could it lead to genocide on its own? Perhaps. I dont side with those guys in part because of that very reason. Is hillary clinton wrong for invoking such an argument? IMO, absolutely. She could've just done a relatively nuanced take of the situation like I just did, but in typical hillary fashion, she ended up just going down the "anti semitism" route. There's much better ways to address this issue than just playing that card. But it IS hillary, and she HAS to be cringe, even after she's essentially handed an easy win, and she did mess it up, so yeah, she's cringe.

As far as the pro palestine protesters, do they have a point? Yes. What is going on in gaza is horrible. Do they take their point WAY too far? YES! Are their demands and actions quite frankly unreasonable and impractical? ABSOLUTELY! Does their self righteous attitude and willingness to just scream anyone down who disagrees with endear me to them at all? OH GOD NO! 

As I said, this is the ultimate battle of cringe. An unstoppable force meets immovable object type of situation. And like one would expect from the situation, the unstoppable force ended up bouncing off of the immovable object. The unstoppable force cant stop, the immovable option cant move, so both ended up doing what they do and both end up going about their daily lives. The pro palestine protesters learned nothing and will continue their insane calls for a cease fire no one in the region wants, as well as stopping us from giving aid to israel, even though doing so is of geopolitical importance to us. And hillary clinton is still....the same hillary clinton i absolutely despise.