It’s a Linky Friday: Some politics, some policy, some links to cheap sweaters on Amazon

~ Laura

I like learning new things. I’m endlessly curious. This fall, I dove into the deep end of local politics and political campaigning. Such a major learning curve! I’ll write about this roller coaster experience in the future. In the meantime, I have to ask my reader for some patience for the spotty writing output, as I have almost no time to write until November 8th. 

Like the rest of the country, I have been transfixed by events in Israel by Hamas and the ongoing conflict. I’m a domestic policy writer and scholar, so I think I will stay in my lane and point you to excellent substack writers with more expertise on this topic. But I will say that I will probably never be able to unsee those videos of the butchery of young people at a music festival. 

What do you think about the reports about college students on some campuses showing support for Hamas?

Read more at Apt. 11D, the newsletter

Published by Laura

20 thoughts on “It’s a Linky Friday: Some politics, some policy, some links to cheap sweaters on Amazon”

  1. Agree with the article about college students being stupid in their comments about Hamas and Gaza. That’s what being a college student is. Learning when your mouth (or typing fingers) take you down a stupid path – and recovering.
    Sadly, the Internet means that these comments may well come back to bit them, years later – especially if they are contemplating a job with any level of public exposure.

    In our most recent election campaign, we’ve had aspiring politicians asked about off-the-cuff Facebook comments from more than a decade ago. Really? Unless there’s a repeated pattern, indicating that someone’s private beliefs are at odds with a major plank of their policy platform – who cares! It’s pure Gotcha journalism – all about increasing clicks. And results in increasingly airbrushed and anodyne politicians – salesmen rather than believers.

    However, I have no time for the adults in the room – professors, and, here, our Green political party – long-time supporters of the PLO and Hamas – failing to condemn, unreservedly, a deliberate terror assault on Israeli civilians.

    That’s not to say that I think that Israel is ‘right’ – there are no ‘right’ sides in this internecine conflict – but that failure to condemn terrorist attacks– by a side you politically agree with – aligns you with terrorists.

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    1. Sorry, that’s Ann from NZ – comments still defaulting to anonymous for some reason – and I forget to click on the little mail icon to add the details….

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  2. Like you, I think long complex mess in Israel and Palestine is too difficult to talk about without much nuance and knowledge and that it’s better to let the knowledgeable inform and opine. I liked Drezner’s description and also see only bad endings and an unsafer world.

    After the invasion, one of my first thoughts was “I hope someone is keeping an eye on China”. Seems like autocratic powers taking a chance on seizing something they want should be a real scare.

    Also, am flabbergasted at the Republicans and their speaker chaos. I have reached the point when I want a speaker who can move bills forward more than I care who he is. I might not feel that way without Democratic control of the Senate & White House, but now I want to avoid government shutdowns, our army not getting paid, air traffic controllers working without pay.

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  3. Good luck with the campaign. We’re in the middle of college visiting still. It’s been fun, but I’ve done enough driving for a while.

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      1. Virginia is electing its whole state Senate and House of Delegates, and Arlington will elect two of our five Board members, a School Board member, Sheriff, Clerk of Courts etc etc. So a big year for local politics weenies. General view of local historians is that our form of government was set up with the important races happening when Congress/President NOT being elected was to keep the rubes from paying effective attention to local.

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      2. I was just across the border from your state visiting a college. Lots of remarkably preppy New Jersey and Long Island kids looking at Pennsylvania schools.

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  4. I have no sympathy for someone who is a graduating law student. Freshmen yes. Law students, no.

    Tulip

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    1. Tulip wrote, “I have no sympathy for someone who is a graduating law student. Freshmen yes. Law students, no.”

      Ditto grown up medical providers who express enthusiasm for genocide.

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  5. It wouldn’t be a bad time to have a real discussion about “cancel culture” and “consequences” because some folks have suddenly decided that people shouldn’t face the natural consequences of their stated opinions. Previously, if you remember, we were told that it wasn’t punishment, it was just “consequences.” See also this famous xkcd cartoon on the subject of free speech:

    https://xkcd.com/1357/

    I was listening to the Ambitious Crossover podcast (Noam Blum and Jen Munroe) and one of them was pointing out that classic cancel culture involves punishing people for things they did years ago (even when they were in their early teens) and punishing people harshly for debatable offenses (for example using language or stating opinions that are fairly mainstream in the contemporary US). I would add that one of the big problems with cancel culture is that it is completely unpredictable who is going to get punished. 100 or 1000 people might do exactly the same thing, and only one of them gets punished.

    Another problem with classic cancel culture is the idea that punishment needs to be eternal and there’s no way back. I personally would be fine if (after a pause and some groveling) we forgave the vocal genocide fans (and everybody else whose crimes are purely verbal!) if they demonstrate contrition and understanding of their offense. Very few people are there yet, though.

    Another facet of this is that we moved very quickly from genocide enthusiasm to genocide denial. Now that folks have had a chance to see what the general US public thinks of their paraglider fandom, they switched over to denial. I don’t know if you caught this, but there were a couple days on twitter when the hot topic was how many (if any) babies got beheaded and denial that anybody had gotten r@ped on October 7. And this despite the fact that attackers were go-proing their crimes. There was so much denial that the Israelis had to show a film (largely taken from the Hamas footage) of Hamas crimes.
    AmyP

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    1. Bonus thought:
      Some years ago, the cool lefty kids liked to talk about “punching Nazis” and how it was right and good to just physically assault anybody that they could plausibly identify as a Nazi. There are a lot of remarks to make about that (like who made you judge, jury, and executioner?), but I’d like to point out that thanks to horseshoe theory, a lot of those folks are currently in the same ideological zone as a bunch of the less savory folks on the right. They have been posting exactly the same kind of content about Israel since October 7. There’s a good graphic at the top of this post to visualize this:

      New horseshoe theory just dropped
      byu/Which-Try4666 inENLIGHTENEDCENTRISM

      You can quibble about the distribution of the flags, but the general concept is correct–far left and far right both favor Russia over Ukraine and Palestinians over Israelis.
      AmyP

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    2. “Another problem with classic cancel culture is the idea that punishment needs to be eternal and there’s no way back.”

      You also wrote: “I would add that one of the big problems with cancel culture is that it is completely unpredictable.”

      See, I don’t think it’s entirely unpredictable. I think the issue is that the people who were not canceled have already made things right in some way. People just trust them more. They believe they have changed. Therefore, there is no need to “cancel” them.

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  6. About college “kids.” They’re adults. Like many adults, they are vulnerable to peer pressure. They don’t want to stick out. Fine. Although, you know, Harvard and other leading institutions make a Big Deal about the moral fiber of their admitted students. Those students step right into positions of power after graduation. I haven’t actually noticed a trend towards responsibility from college through adulthood.

    Social media spreads information. No one praising Hamas was in doubt about the atrocities committed at the time of the statements in question. This was a military attack on civilians. They were happy about that. They were celebrating that.

    I am not willing to just write it off as “stupid college students.” They are adults. When someone takes sides with evil, you have to take them seriously. Maybe the adults on campus should worry about the lessons they are teaching the “college kids.” Maybe shrugging one’s shoulders at expressing support for terrorists, because, well, they’re “stupid kids” is not helpful.

    Cranberry

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    1. I have much more of an issue with people in actual authority – like Zareena Grewal – Associate Professor of American Studies at Yale.

      Who not only made the statements, but has made no attempt to walk them back in any way.

      Nor is Yale making any attempt to address this issue. I’d believe in ‘academic freedom’ – if there hadn’t been so many other academics censured/cancelled over ‘unpopular’ opinions. While Yale may not be able to fire her, they can certainly unequivocally condemn what she has said. And audit her courses, to ensure that she is providing a balanced perspective.

      If I were a parent, I’d be very much worried about what she was teaching my kid in “American Studies”

      I’m a little kinder about college students. I know plenty who were radical at college – and came to moderate their views, beliefs and language – as they grew up – and met the real world. College is a hot-house. And college students suffer from the same echo chamber effects that we all do, if we don’t take care to ensure we have a range of opinions and news sources in our lives.

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