If You (like Me) Want 3rd Party Candidates To Be An Actual Viable Option In USA Elections So You No Longer

the yiga clan have notoriously murdered hundreds of people, are willing to lure innocent people into danger to get their way, know how to build zonai constructs without ultrahand, can mimic anyone including the princess herself, have learned how to mimic objects, have copied the exact elements of a legendary heirloom to the point that it operates in the exact same fashion, have taught themselves how to traverse the depths, and pinpointed ganondorf’s nearly exact location beneath hyrule castle, and yet they’re still portrayed as comic relief, and this isn’t a complaint that’s the exact reason why I love them so fucking much

I’m still educating myself on the history of Israel and Palestine, but it seems to me that the main reason that people on the left are so in favor of a Palestinian state and not an Israeli state is because of the widely accepted narrative of Israelis being “the white colonizers” in this situation. If this assessment is correct, I think it exposes part of the problem with how willfully the left has accepted the idea of white people being colonizing bad guys. I don’t want to minimize white European’s legacy of imperialism of course, I believe dismantling that legacy should be done with care and a strong foundation in factual reality, because leftists have learned to hate the white settler, and that seems to be all fine and good until suddenly all it takes to dupe those leftists into anti-Jewish behavior is to convince them that Jewish people are white settlers. It seems that, in a movement aiming to combat hate, prejudice towards ANY group, even if it would appear to be punching up, acts as a blind spot through which they can find themselves acting prejudiced towards a historically down-trodden people.

The problem with antisemitism and anti-Zionism

Someone recently reblogged this post I shared that called out antisemitism in pro-Palestinian rallies. An action I was initially happy about, until I went into this person's blog, and saw a lot of posts that I, as an Israeli-Jewish person, find incredibly antisemitic. I found myself utterly baffled by that. Because this person clearly recognized the things said in these rallies were extremely antisemitic, and yet, they posted a lot of things that were rooted in the same antisemitic worldview. Can't they see it? And I think the main problem with the current pro-Palestinian movement is that they honestly can't see the line between being on the side of compassion and humanity and being critical of Israel's actions, to spreading horrible lies and dehumanizing Israelis and Jewish people. And the ugly truth these people refuse to face is that the reason they can't see when they cross this line is probably unconscious antisemitism.

You don't need to hate Jewish people to be antisemitic

Antisemitism, like many other forms of racism, often works on an unconscious level. Maybe you have Jewish friends. Maybe you fought for better Jewish representation in media. Maybe you are even Jewish yourself. But over the years you have been exposed to a lot of antisemitic ideas and stereotypes that altered your worldview and made you more vulnerable to believing Jewish people are the bad guys.

If your gut reaction to this is- "but Israel is actually doing bad things, so I'm actually right about hating them." Please keep reading.

Your idea of Israel and what it stands for is based on the worldview of the most radical right-wing Israeli activists at best, and blatant lies at worst.

Imagine if we took the words of the most radical Republicans out there, the ones that go after trans kids and believe women should have no right over their own bodies, and believe all Americans are supporting this idea. That wouldn't have been very fair of us, right? Because there are a lot of people in America who are fighting for a better future. A lot of people who are standing up for human rights.

Just like the United States isn't a homogeneous entity, filled with only trump supporters, Israel is also an incredibly diverse place, with people who have radically different ideas about how Israel should look. Even the current Israeli government, which is extremely right-wing, and has people in it I personally believe should have never been in a position of power, is probably a lot less evil than you were led to believe by ill-intent strangers on the internet. Mainly because this is still a democratic government, in a democratic country, which has a lot of checks and balances that (for the most part) manage to prevent people with radical ideas from making them into official policies.

I don't blame you for believing the reports you see from Gaza. As a pacifist, and as someone who voted for left-wing parties ever since I was eligible to vote, someone who truly believes the Palestinians has a right to self-determination and sees how problematic the occupation is, I struggle a lot when I see posts about the suffering of the people in Gaza. Wars are horrible. I never want to see other people suffer. Let alone children. I wish I could go there right now and take all of them somewhere safe. I wish none of this was happening.

But I also know who my people are, and the values they stand for. And what I noticed about these anti-zionist posts is that they are often written in a biased, misleading way. They often attribute malicious intentions to Israel's actions. And they often jump to conclusions, without giving Israel the benefit of the doubt. Without asking the right questions. And often, without any sort of proof. Some of these posts are outrageous lies. Others are incredibly biased and fail to mention the terrorist organization Israel is fighting against.

Only a small amount of them are coming from unbiased sources that describe the reality of the situation without giving in to personal interpretation.

But most of you can't tell the difference. You are seeing lies about how IDF soldiers are targeting children, or about how Israel is lying about their true evil intentions, and you accept them as the truth, without questioning the intention of the person who wrote that post. Without stopping to think this is incredibly dehumanizing to think Israeli people are capable of such monstrous actions. Without examining your own biases. And that's incredibly problematic, and yes, this is antisemitic. Because you would have never spread this kind of accusation about any other group of people without definitive proof.

This isn't to say our soldiers are never wrong, and that there aren't any bad apples, or even systematic problems in the IDF and every allegation should be thoroughly investigated, because any harm to innocent people is terrible, unavoidable as it may be. And ideally, even terrorists should get a fair trial.

But if you think soldiers in Israel defense forces, who are mostly 18-21-year-old Jewish men and women from all sides of the political spectrum, are inherently evil and baby killers, you are in fact antisemitic.

Even if you believe your type of anti Zionism isn't antisemitism being anti-zionist is still not a great position to take.

I never defined myself as a zionist before. But it was more to do with my own disconnection with Judaism and my ideas about the place of religion in modern society than my belief about the right of Israel to exist.

I think it would be amazing to live in a utopian world where we have one multicultural democratic state where everyone lives together in harmony. But I’m also a realistic person. And someone who wants to keep living as a free woman with full rights in my home country.

And while I never felt particularly zionist, I was never an anti-zionist, and I never believed zionist was a bad word.

I'm probably not the first person who tells you this, but Zionist isn't a synonym for "everything I hate about Israel". It doesn't mean "a person who supports the occupation", or even "a person who only cares about the life of Israelis" or "someone who fully supports the Israeli government".

So what does it actually say? Let's look at a dictionary definition.

Do you notice what the definition doesn't say? Anything about Israel's borders or about the idea of a Palestinian state. There are many types of Zionism, some more radical than others. But as I said before, is it really fair to judge an entire group of people based on the idea of the most radical of them?

The truth is, most of us just want to live in peace. We want to go to work without finding ourselves at the scene of a terror attack or running to the shelter because of rockets. We want all the hostages to come home. We want to feel safe in our own homes. This is what it means to be a zionist. This is what you are standing up against. Not the "occupation," or the "settlers" or the extremists in the government. Just regular people who want to live their lives.

Zionism isn't colonialism

Jewish people are indigenous to the land of Israel. This was the land we dreamed of in 2000 years of exile, and it's a huge part of our religion and our culture. This doesn't mean the Palestinians don't have a claim to the land as well after living on it for so many years, or that what they went through in 1948 wasn't terrible, but it doesn't magically make Israelis into white colonialists who woke up one day and decided to take over a random land.

A lot of mistakes were made. In 1948, and especially in 1967. And we are paying for them now. But the idea that Israel is a colonialist state that represents everything that's wrong with society is entirely false.

If you support the existence of a Palestinian state but don't believe Israel deserves the same right, you need to ask yourself why that is the case.

Is that because you don't believe Jewish people when they tell you about their connection to the land of Israel? Because you think there is something inherently wrong with the existence of a state that is only for Jewish people? (But have no problem with all the Muslim and Christian states out there) Because you think Palestinian deserves to live from the river to the sea and Israelis should have nothing, or whatever the Palestinians would be willing to give them? Because you are more comfortable with the idea of Jewish people as a minority in a Palestinian Muslim state than the idea of them having their own free country? Because you think you know better than us what our future should look like?

Because all of these reasons are antisemitic.

Shadow: Through the love for my sister, I am bound to spend my endless life protecting the world and everyone on it per her wish. If I am to go against this, I am betraying Maria and her legacy.

Knuckles: I have been burdened with responsibility my entire life, instructed to guard a power I know so little about. Or else the tragedies that befel my ancestors will repeat themselves in the present.

Sonic: Live fast die young bad girls do it well

this reddit thread of living your silliest life is so so good

Been doing this a lot lately too!

Brb replacing "I should" with "I have the option/opportunity to" in my internal monologue re: beating myself up over shit that needs doing. Let's see if that works.

The conversations about accountability & apologies that we've been having in social justice circles these last few years have basically trained everybody to fawn.

We've been telling people that if they are accused of any wrongdoing or of hurting anybody's feelings, it is their obligation to apologize immediately, and never to hedge, disagree, or to explain their rationale what they've done.

In their apology, we expect them to articulate every single thing that they have done that was damaging in the strongest language possible and to declare outright that they have harmed someone, often multiple groups of people, even if they are not sure of the impact (or could not even possibly be sure).

If a person's apology is anything but immediate and entirely self-excoriating, we accuse the person of downplaying the damage they have done, failing to be accountable, and manipulating others.

In this way, we've made it impossible for a person to ever take their own side lest that be taken itself as a form of wrongdoing. We have trained our fellow social-justice-minded people to believe that if they do anything but worsen the case against themselves, they are being irresponsible.

I say we, in all of this, because I have partaken in all of this rhetoric, made these kinds of criticism, given accused people this type of advice.

And I have followed it myself, often to a damaging effect.

I have taken responsibility for problems in which I truly did not believe I played a part, I've overstated the damage that I've done so as not to risk understating it, I've ascribed malice to my intentions when I knew it wasn't there, I've agreed with people's most negative, bad-faith narratives about conflicts involving me that they were not even present for, offered up information about myself that was not a third party's business in the name of transparency, apologized for things I haven't done -- and in doing all of this, I have denied my loved ones the opportunity to really hear me about what I was going through and my motivations when I was in conflict with them, things that any true friend or close associate would obviously want to hear about if they cared about me.

This aim of giving the perfect apology and taking perfect accountability has been nothing but an isolating force in my life, because it has barred me from openly entering into necessary conflict with people when our needs were incompatible or they had hurt me just as much as I'd hurt them. The fear of being a manipulative, unaccountable DARVO-er has led me to roll onto my back and expose my belly, falling over myself with panicked apologies and the most unflattering information possible cast in the least explicable light, almost outright begging for others to become angrier at me and believing that it was only way I could ever possibly be accepted back.

We've drilled into people that the way to be good and responsible is to allow people to view us as negatively as possible, to even arm others with information that will confirm that point of view, and to never insert our own perspective or needs on the matter at all.

And yeah, there are a lot of shitty people out there who dodge accountability easily because their power ensconces them from any consequences. but the primary problem with that was never that they wrote a shitty notesapp apology that used the unforgivable phrase "I am sorry if you felt XYZ." The real problem was that there was no community that held enough influence to hold them to account, and for their victims there weren't ever adequate supports or protections.

instead of addressing any of that in a remotely systematic way, we have taken to picking apart every accused person's every word and deed for evidence of inner moral failure and created a culture in which we think we can determine a person's safety by how artfully they put words together when they are under threat. and what do you know, plenty of bad faith actors and conflict avoidant cowards and people who just dont understand what they are even being accused of can do that just fine.

i know it's scary but i think sincere fans of indie stuff should try to leave thoughtful feedback on things they like more often because while you keep that kind thought locked up in your head the author IS going to be hearing from total randos accusing them of fetishizing disney characters because their oc has the same name as an aristocat

in the light of today's page...