So I'm going to take the scenic route here, but stick with me. While there is likely more going on than this, one of the things to recognize is that we're being marched to war (whether we get there or not, I don't know, but we are being "herded" there). I don't know really how old you are or how old your readership is, but to those of us who were old enough to remember the lead-up to the Iraq war, so much is familiar here with this sort of tightening of the narrative.
Because so many of us in our middle age remember the Iraq war and how it was sold and how badly its all ended (that and Afghanistan), to sell the Iran war as a neutralizing a threat to the US is just not going to work. We've been there and done that and we don't believe it. Even so many on the right don't believe it.
So you have to sell it as a threat to Israel, and you have to convince Americans that it is worth running up our debt higher, ruining our fragile economy, and potentially getting our children killed to neutralize this threat because Israel is just that precious.
Norm Finkelstein was on Jimmy Dore the other day, and they were talking about how more than half the US population (according to a Pew poll) has an *unfavorable* view of Israel. The reason, Finkelstein said, is that Israel has been normalized. It's no longer the country of the people who suffered in the Holocaust that deserves to be given special leeway in how it treats the Palestinians and its neighbors. It is a country judged as any other country. That's not to say we're ready to intervene and bomb it for bombing the Palestinians, but most people are not ready to go to war to save it because of the way it has acted.
Part of this change in attitude is that we are a long way out from the Holocaust and a lot of Jewish people are anti-Israel themselves, which gives non-Jewish people the "permission" to act on their humanity. But to try to combat that, those who are sympathetic (or one might even say sycophantic) to Israel are desperately trying to re-center the Holocaust in the American consciousness. That's why you have the blow up in certain circles over the Douglas Murray/Dave Smith "debate." That's why you have Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan and Sean Hannity suggesting that people like Dave Smith (and Candace Owens) are political psychopaths. That's why this huge group tries to twist Darryl Cooper's work. They can't stand that someone might de-centralize the Holocaust, especially of the Jewish population, from the study of World War II. That's why you hardly ever have anyone remember that the Jews were hardly alone in being targeted by the Nazis. And that is why you absolutely cannot remind people that genocide is quite a common practice throughout history, and virtually any group can find themselves victims and any group can find themselves perpetrators. So the Armenian genocide gets disappeared. Poof, gone.
This is a long way to saying this isn't personal to the Armenians. It's all a propaganda game, which is actually worse in the long run, because it's coldly calculating.
You are overreacting. That's actually a pretty strong statement. It clearly blames the Ottoman Empire for exiling and marching 1.5 million Armenians to their deaths. All that's missing is the g-word.
But the g-word has been so profligately over-used in recent years that it has been bled dry of meaning, like "racism." You have trans people claiming "genocide" daily because the State won't compel the public to use these folks' preferred pronouns, which is delusional and silly.
I get it: For you anything Trump does is wrong, period, no exceptions. The man could cure cancer and you'd complain. While this might endear you to your fellow TDS sufferers, it diminishes your credibility with others not so inclined, who might otherwise be persuaded by your arguments.
So I'm going to take the scenic route here, but stick with me. While there is likely more going on than this, one of the things to recognize is that we're being marched to war (whether we get there or not, I don't know, but we are being "herded" there). I don't know really how old you are or how old your readership is, but to those of us who were old enough to remember the lead-up to the Iraq war, so much is familiar here with this sort of tightening of the narrative.
Because so many of us in our middle age remember the Iraq war and how it was sold and how badly its all ended (that and Afghanistan), to sell the Iran war as a neutralizing a threat to the US is just not going to work. We've been there and done that and we don't believe it. Even so many on the right don't believe it.
So you have to sell it as a threat to Israel, and you have to convince Americans that it is worth running up our debt higher, ruining our fragile economy, and potentially getting our children killed to neutralize this threat because Israel is just that precious.
Norm Finkelstein was on Jimmy Dore the other day, and they were talking about how more than half the US population (according to a Pew poll) has an *unfavorable* view of Israel. The reason, Finkelstein said, is that Israel has been normalized. It's no longer the country of the people who suffered in the Holocaust that deserves to be given special leeway in how it treats the Palestinians and its neighbors. It is a country judged as any other country. That's not to say we're ready to intervene and bomb it for bombing the Palestinians, but most people are not ready to go to war to save it because of the way it has acted.
Part of this change in attitude is that we are a long way out from the Holocaust and a lot of Jewish people are anti-Israel themselves, which gives non-Jewish people the "permission" to act on their humanity. But to try to combat that, those who are sympathetic (or one might even say sycophantic) to Israel are desperately trying to re-center the Holocaust in the American consciousness. That's why you have the blow up in certain circles over the Douglas Murray/Dave Smith "debate." That's why you have Jordan Peterson on Joe Rogan and Sean Hannity suggesting that people like Dave Smith (and Candace Owens) are political psychopaths. That's why this huge group tries to twist Darryl Cooper's work. They can't stand that someone might de-centralize the Holocaust, especially of the Jewish population, from the study of World War II. That's why you hardly ever have anyone remember that the Jews were hardly alone in being targeted by the Nazis. And that is why you absolutely cannot remind people that genocide is quite a common practice throughout history, and virtually any group can find themselves victims and any group can find themselves perpetrators. So the Armenian genocide gets disappeared. Poof, gone.
This is a long way to saying this isn't personal to the Armenians. It's all a propaganda game, which is actually worse in the long run, because it's coldly calculating.
You are overreacting. That's actually a pretty strong statement. It clearly blames the Ottoman Empire for exiling and marching 1.5 million Armenians to their deaths. All that's missing is the g-word.
But the g-word has been so profligately over-used in recent years that it has been bled dry of meaning, like "racism." You have trans people claiming "genocide" daily because the State won't compel the public to use these folks' preferred pronouns, which is delusional and silly.
I get it: For you anything Trump does is wrong, period, no exceptions. The man could cure cancer and you'd complain. While this might endear you to your fellow TDS sufferers, it diminishes your credibility with others not so inclined, who might otherwise be persuaded by your arguments.
No, actually, he's not, and I've given Jilani plenty of pushback.