Congressional staff say the mood inside the Capitol is tense, stifling and bewildering as members brush off their constituents’ outrage.
I’m not sure how my idea will come across but here goes.
This Gaza conflict is complicated as F. I think most people agree with that.
Pretty much everyone that’s touched it has blood on their hands by this point. And everyone in the fallout has been hurt in some immeasurably painful way.
The US involvement multiples the complexity because there is evidently a proxy between Hamas and Iran, and the US is already in opposition to Iran in other ways.
The US is also in the position of throwing its weight around in many other conflicts at the moment.
Diplomatically, this US is walking a thin line all over the place between needing to show strength vs compassion. Using negotiating finesse vs being strong fisted.
Inside the US, our representatives ideally can think for themselves, but as a party they hopefully work as a team to represent the American best interests, vis a vis “the people.” Specifically, I mean the people don’t always know what they want or how to get there, nor do they educate themselves as a whole about every issue at play. Not to mention that international diplomacy issues are very often not shared with the public.
So, yes, the average human with a functioning soul wants to see a ceasefire yesterday. But what if there is something else at play that we don’t know about, which justifies not pressuring Israel to stop?
Just as in any schoolyard fight when you remove the power imbalance and or the bully the problem goes away.
The solution here is to move one of the “kids in the fight” somewhere else. One of them is saying I was here first. The other kid has a rich dad.
We all know what the correct moral decision is here when you take away the political labels.
The big fuckup here was by daddy England back in 1947 and he’s got massive egg and on his face right now.
In a fair world, I would agree with you. But in every conflict since the beginning of time, at least on this faulty rock careening through space, the wealthy are the winners. Every king became king because he controlled the most resources and squashed his opposers.
If the rest of the world hadn’t gotten involved I don’t think Gaza would have even made it this far.
I think most people agree with that.
Only the ones filled to the brim with pro-Israeli and pro-colonialist propaganda agrees with you. You are either against white supremacist settler-colonialism or you’re not.
I think this response is why there’s so little productive dialogue out there. Everybody is too deeply entrenched.
No, this is very productive… more and more people in the world are seeing the monstrosity the west has created in Israel - even USians are waking up to it.
You’re not bemoaning a lack of “productivity” - you are bemoaning the fact that the propaganda shielding Israel which has been preventing “productivity” for the last seventy years is starting to implode.
I’ve never found this sort of argument compelling. Yes, it’s possible there’s things going on we don’t know about; and sometimes tactical and strategic necessities may require hidden actions.
Those actions still need brought to light as soon as it’s feasible to do so; and I struggle to imagine what sort of strategic necessity would require this sort of stance for more than a few months, let alone the years these stances have been in effect. Not to mention the difficulty of keeping something on this scale quiet for this long. At best, things are more or less as they appear - the alternative is there’s things they don’t want their electors to find out.
What, in your mind, justifies helping genocide?
No joke, you clearly think its a possible concept. What thing could you theorize justifies this?
Genocide is unacceptable. It’s unjustified in every case. Does this conflict meet the definition of genocide? And if so, who is the perpetrator here?
https://youtu.be/62I61kBahNY?si=EPFMpGYNM1gCK2iT
Michael Brooks on the complexity of Gaza.
Leadership of Hamas is in Qatar, money from Qatar was released through Israel by Bibi. So additional to this video showing how not complex it is, the Israeli leader wants Hamas in charge to make sure nothing peaceful happens in a joined Westbank and Gaza.
Is it because the Biden admin already got Israel to agree to daily humanitarian pauses?
Is this a joke? If the IDF had any desire to even pretend that they were interested in protecting civilian life, they would obviously refrain from bombing civilian exit routes 24 hours a day, not 4. And even then, the actual point of this burning olive branch is obvious - the only option Israel offers to Palestinian civilians that isn’t certain death is the barely less certain death of fleeing, and after they flee, Israel will settle what remains, as they have done in Palestine for over 70 years.
We now have predator drones there as well. Our military is monitoring the situation and providing strategy research.
I believe the bombing damage has been done. Its leveled. Now its important to force the IDF to focus on Hamas rather than genocide, and that’s a decent pivot.
Why don’t they just let the average uninformed and outraged voter set international policy, or answer the phone and calmly explain to them why they’re wrong and go over the realpolitik intricacies of this conflict?
If discussing this matter on Lemmy has taught me anything. It’s that some people are outraged, partisan, and cannot be reasoned with. It’s no wonder they’re letting it go to voicemail.
Yeah, what are you supposed to do when someone yells down the phone ‘i saw a meme and now I’m basically an expert on this so you have to do what I say or you’re evil!’ or ‘the joooos control the world bank and eat babies, we should be helping kill them!’
It’s a painfully complex situation with no clear solution and a lot of hard choices, pretending you have some clairvoyant power or simple answer just means you don’t even begin to understand the situation.
Why should they be expected to have the manpower to answer every single one? A voicemail gets the message across perfectly fine.
Why should they be expected to have the manpower to answer every single one?
Because they are expected to consider the opinions of their constituents, and as an elected representative and they are supposed to represent our interests, not theirs.
To be able to functionally listen to your constituents, yes, you need the staff to be able to do it.
You think that listening to and transcribing voicemails somehow takes less time than taking a call? Pro-tip, they take about the same amount of time.
I mean, with that attitude, why have any staff at all? Just let it all go to voicemail and never read any of those thousands of emails from constituents! Fuck 'em! Fuck representative democracy, amirite?
computers can transcribe the voice mail messages much faster and more efficiently than an intern can answer the calls and deal with each one individually.
that is, of course, with the assumption that they actually do that… and don’t just hit DELETE ALL or let the voice mailbox ‘fill up’.
Jesus that would be scary, I know here in the left echochambers it feels like we’re the only people that exist but the reality is there’s millions of people who have strong opinions about wacky things and they’re incredibly easy to manipulate through a few social media posts.
Look at how many people know basically nothing about this situation but are completely sure it’s a very simple matter - A dozen bad memes and we’d be at war with Cony 2012 or banning funding NASA or some bullshit.
Agreed. Elected officials need to be reduced to figureheads who craft legislation and whose voting power on legislation is removed and given to the people.
When legislation is introduced, it should be in a Wiki format and with logins tied to your voter registration so only registered voters can comment and edit the Wiki.
All final edits will be attributable directly to who wrote them and version control would be the standard for the documents.
The final text and vote should be with individual voters here in the 21st century.
A guy can dream.
You know how many people actually complained about Janet Jackson’s boob reveal at the Superbowl?
25
It’s just that they each called 1,000 times.
I don’t understand why it’s not considered harassment of an elected official when they are doing that.
Calling a few times, sure no big deal, but a thousand times for each person? That’s fully in the territory of harassment and abuse.
You shouldn’t be rewarded for that behavior by fucking giving in to it.
Especially when rewarding them is saying “Okay, because you harassed us so much we’ve decided your opinion matters and we’ll actually do something about this issue.”
