Eh, I also greatly prefer the comments to be open, but it is Freddie’s Substack and moderating is emotionally taxing work. I can’t blame him for sometimes being like “screw this, I can’t deal with this now” and turning the comments off.
They were there at the pleasure of the Roman Empire?
I'd not be too bothered if Israel's borders were confined solely to the portions of Middle Eastern land they unequivocally controlled for a significant enough time. Being that the Bible is not a reliable historical document, we'll have to rely on archaeology which means the state will be downsized substantially.
Jews had a historical presence in the land of Greater Israel. Before the middle/latter half of the 20th century their dominion did not extend to anything close to the current borders of Israel.
If the Israeli claim to the land is based on their historical presence then they're entitled to much less of the land than they presently control. That's all.
Dude..... Wait until you find out what eventual borders of Israel are going to be.... It will blow your fucking mind.... It certainly blew mine when I learned about for the first time.
Your territory shall extend from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great River Euphrates—all the land of the Hittites—and west as far as the Great Sea.
What's meant by wilderness is unclear. Probably some parts of East Africa east of the Nile. Like I said, unclear. But from Euphrates to Mediterranean seems to be pretty clear. As you can see, my territory will be YUUUUUGE! Even if it is quiet likely that I personally won't live to see it come to pass. The timetable is unknowable, but the result is inevitable.
Companies have agency just like readers. If a commenter's position gets them blacklisted from employment or in some other way, that's just how it goes. But that won't dissuade some and shouldn't from expressing their viewpoint, no matter how reprehensible it is. I'm retired so have earned the right to be obnoxious but try to invoke it as infrequently as possible.
One difference is that society has had a chance to reach a much broader concensus over thet first claim than how to think about an attack that just happened in the context of a very messy broader conflict. I'm pretty much down with condemning the attack, and think that those defending it got it very wrong, but I also think that they should be given more leeway to be wrong on a new and unsettled issue than someone making thst first claim
You're still talking about making excuses for the deliberate targeting of civilians. I can understand why private employers might look at that and say "No way".
What's the difference here compared to the conspiracy nuts who thought Sandy Hook was a false flag operation?
A) I think think that there is a much broader concensus that Sandy Hook was not a false flag operation.
B) Without more, I wouldn't advocate firing or excommunicating someone for making that claim (Alex Jones has done a lot "more", including given reason to beleive he knows hes full of shit).
To be clear my personal preference is to hire the KKK guy, as long as he can be civil and professional to any black employees you might have. But I can understand if that's not acceptable to employers and at the end of the day employment in the US is at will.
I disagree. The killing of civilians, even when unintentional -- and in this case, civilian death was the goal -- should never be celebrated. It is grotesque and ghoulish to do so. I consider that to be sufficiently settled moral ground that any adult can be held accountable for violating it, just as they can be held accountable for open and explicit racial hatred of the kind Slaw mentioned. One doesn't need time to figure out that metaphorically dancing on the extremely fresh graves of civilians is beyond the pale.
I agree that nobody is obliged to hire such an individual, and I support the law firm that rescinded their offer to NYU student Ryna Workman (for example). But publicizing their views in order to render them unemployable is another matter.
To repeat what I wrote about this on SlowBoring, it's really easy to make someone sound like literal Hitler by quoting them out of context or merely highlighting the worst thing they've ever said. A particular utterance does not fairly represent someone's views, and responses are rarely proportionate. If those statements are a fair representation of Workman's views, they will screw up their own prospects without anyone's help. But maybe the statement was just a bit of temporary insanity, or maybe their views change. Then what?
The social costs of further publicizing someone like Workman's remarks are high. It pushes them into a corner and further radicalizes them. Their friends and allies hate you forever, and may even dedicate their lives to revenge. Some fraction of regular people would see what happened and be a little less likely to say what they think or stand up for something, even when it's justified. You're not changing the person's views, but hardening them. Furthermore, they'll be more circumspect, so you might start to think the problem they represents doesn't exist anymore which could set you up for a truly nasty surprise in a few years.
There are gray areas for sure, situations where it's important to know what a person has said, and publicizing their past statements is a valuable service (politicians are probably the simplest example). But I'm not interested in lawyering the exact boundaries: I just think our society could do with way more charity.
Edit: reduce ambiguity in the first sentence. I support the law firm's decision to rescind their offer.
If you read my other comments I make clear that I would hire the guy in the KKK. He's free to march around in his little white sheets every weekend as long as he doesn't cause trouble in the workplace.
That said, that's just me. I can understand why somebody else would be completely unwilling to employ this individual and at the end of the day employment in the US is at will.
I admittedly may not have all the facts straight, but wasn't she one of the higher-ups in an student organization that drafted and released a public statement (I'm leaving aside the arrogance of a bunch of 25 year olds thinking that the world was waiting on baited breath for their opinions on world events)? This wasn't a case of someone publicizing private information. She (and her organization) screamed it from the rooftops. And it was pretty clear no one was taken out of context.
But your point about being more charitable is a good one and I don't think people should have their lives ruined over political beliefs. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's possible until all sides of the political spectrum agree to it.
"I agree that nobody is obliged to hire such an individual and support the law firm that rescinded their offer to NYU student Ryna Workman (for example)."
Law firm work is highly competitive. The most important thing to have are clients willing to overpay you. Without those clients, your firm will cease to exist. Those clients have a shit ton of options as to whom to overpay. The last thing you need to woo clients is an overt Jew-hater on your team (unless your client is Hamas or Iran, in which case it is a huge plus).
No apology needed. My point was only that a job at Winston is not like a job at Taco Bell. You may be, as Slaw uses the example, a KKK or Hamas lover, but if you can competently make a shitty taco or burrito, it does not matter. Although maybe don't wear the T-shirt with the mass murders descending in their paragliders. But at a law firm. Image means a lot.
Maybe it's not as bad as, say, claiming that women don't have penises, but cheering for the slaughter of civilians because they were "colonizers" is still a bad look. News flash for these fucks. They are all colonizers. Perhaps they should kill themselves for justice instead of performing stolen land acknowledgements.
What a terribly boring world it would be if everyone agreed with you. You would never be surprised, for one thing, unless it was something like a raccoon lunging at you from a trash can.
People who cancel a subscription because a writer produces a piece they disagree with are looking for affirmation, not intellectual stimulation. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
What fun is it to only hear from those with whom you agree? I enjoy pushing back in comments when I disagree and hope the expressions of opposition maybe change a mind or two. Alternatively they provide a largely unfiltered sounding board and maybe my mind gets changed. When did debate and argument change from a celebration of articulate to getting you branded a hater?
Twenty, thirty years ago? What do you think? When did the age of reasoned debate move over in favor of emotional appeals. My communications studies teacher in the late 80s talked about the changing discourse. She was right.
For some, whether support for Israel vs. Palestine is establishment or not is less tied to actual power (e.g. American support, Wall Street support, Hollywood support) and more to what feels ascendant in the cultural spheres they truly care about. It directly parallels conservative grievances about feeling marginalized and disrespected despite holding a commanding win-loss record vs. their opponents when it comes to actual policies, litigation, funding, etc. Yeah, but who gets more likes on IG and TikTok?
The risk is being reflexively contrarian. And/or the leftist resistance to the idea that any minority group can be the primary author of their own misfortune.
Freddie, I subscribe to you precisely because I don't always agree with you. What's the point in only reading people who agree with me? What would I learn from that?
I disagree with you on Israel and particularly on some of your posts regarding private vs.public school and wealthy New Yorkers where I think you don't have the necessary domain experience. But when it comes to perfect symmetry of belief between me and another, I always think of the Ed Koch quote below.
"If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist."
I think this intervention and your earlier statement were useful interventions into a fraught and toxic discourse produced by intolerable and dehumanizing events. I hope you stay the course and stay afloat, however incomprehensible I find some of your political commitments.
I'll admit it: I originally signed up for your newsletter because you go after social justice yellers better than anyone.
But I stuck around because I like a lot of your other pieces too. Your writing on mental health, your thoughts on various movies and shows, your thoughts on education, etc.
Variety is the spice of life. Newsletters that write ONLY anti-woke bangers and nothing else get both unhinged and kinda boring at the same time. We've all seen it.
Anti-something positions get clicks, but don't last long-term, because they don't build anything. They just parasitize the positions they love to hate, until they run low on material and start scraping the bottom, quit, or get into conspiracy theory under the guise of what their frenemies are "really" up to. You have to stand for something; that's the only way to build authenticity.
Eh, I also greatly prefer the comments to be open, but it is Freddie’s Substack and moderating is emotionally taxing work. I can’t blame him for sometimes being like “screw this, I can’t deal with this now” and turning the comments off.
Exactly, a guy with a new mortgage should treat the paying customers better.
Correctly suspected that we'd just work ourselves into a lather.
Now now, the Roman Catholic Church decided ages ago that we didn’t kill Christ -- we just hassled Him. It was all the way back in 1965.
They were there at the pleasure of the Roman Empire?
I'd not be too bothered if Israel's borders were confined solely to the portions of Middle Eastern land they unequivocally controlled for a significant enough time. Being that the Bible is not a reliable historical document, we'll have to rely on archaeology which means the state will be downsized substantially.
Jews had a historical presence in the land of Greater Israel. Before the middle/latter half of the 20th century their dominion did not extend to anything close to the current borders of Israel.
If the Israeli claim to the land is based on their historical presence then they're entitled to much less of the land than they presently control. That's all.
Dude..... Wait until you find out what eventual borders of Israel are going to be.... It will blow your fucking mind.... It certainly blew mine when I learned about for the first time.
Ok....care to share what those borders will be, dude?
Would I ever!!! First, I'd like to refer you to the original source. Check out what Joshua 1:4 has to say about it.
https://biblehub.com/joshua/1-4.htm
Your territory shall extend from the wilderness and Lebanon to the great River Euphrates—all the land of the Hittites—and west as far as the Great Sea.
What's meant by wilderness is unclear. Probably some parts of East Africa east of the Nile. Like I said, unclear. But from Euphrates to Mediterranean seems to be pretty clear. As you can see, my territory will be YUUUUUGE! Even if it is quiet likely that I personally won't live to see it come to pass. The timetable is unknowable, but the result is inevitable.
`Freddie's recent comments on Notes essentially equating Hamas and Israel are beyond the pale'
Would you mind linking to them? I went through Notes (for the first time) and nothing really stood out.
Thank you!
There are others. I will dig them up tomorrow bc I need to sleep now.
Companies have agency just like readers. If a commenter's position gets them blacklisted from employment or in some other way, that's just how it goes. But that won't dissuade some and shouldn't from expressing their viewpoint, no matter how reprehensible it is. I'm retired so have earned the right to be obnoxious but try to invoke it as infrequently as possible.
One difference is that society has had a chance to reach a much broader concensus over thet first claim than how to think about an attack that just happened in the context of a very messy broader conflict. I'm pretty much down with condemning the attack, and think that those defending it got it very wrong, but I also think that they should be given more leeway to be wrong on a new and unsettled issue than someone making thst first claim
You're still talking about making excuses for the deliberate targeting of civilians. I can understand why private employers might look at that and say "No way".
What's the difference here compared to the conspiracy nuts who thought Sandy Hook was a false flag operation?
A) I think think that there is a much broader concensus that Sandy Hook was not a false flag operation.
B) Without more, I wouldn't advocate firing or excommunicating someone for making that claim (Alex Jones has done a lot "more", including given reason to beleive he knows hes full of shit).
To be clear my personal preference is to hire the KKK guy, as long as he can be civil and professional to any black employees you might have. But I can understand if that's not acceptable to employers and at the end of the day employment in the US is at will.
"A) I think think that there is a much broader concensus that Sandy Hook was not a false flag operation."
Ummm, is there anyone who thinks the October 7th slaughter was a "false flag"?
Oh yeah.
Go on Twitter.
I'm not doing that. But ideology is a hell of a drug.
I disagree. The killing of civilians, even when unintentional -- and in this case, civilian death was the goal -- should never be celebrated. It is grotesque and ghoulish to do so. I consider that to be sufficiently settled moral ground that any adult can be held accountable for violating it, just as they can be held accountable for open and explicit racial hatred of the kind Slaw mentioned. One doesn't need time to figure out that metaphorically dancing on the extremely fresh graves of civilians is beyond the pale.
I agree that nobody is obliged to hire such an individual, and I support the law firm that rescinded their offer to NYU student Ryna Workman (for example). But publicizing their views in order to render them unemployable is another matter.
To repeat what I wrote about this on SlowBoring, it's really easy to make someone sound like literal Hitler by quoting them out of context or merely highlighting the worst thing they've ever said. A particular utterance does not fairly represent someone's views, and responses are rarely proportionate. If those statements are a fair representation of Workman's views, they will screw up their own prospects without anyone's help. But maybe the statement was just a bit of temporary insanity, or maybe their views change. Then what?
The social costs of further publicizing someone like Workman's remarks are high. It pushes them into a corner and further radicalizes them. Their friends and allies hate you forever, and may even dedicate their lives to revenge. Some fraction of regular people would see what happened and be a little less likely to say what they think or stand up for something, even when it's justified. You're not changing the person's views, but hardening them. Furthermore, they'll be more circumspect, so you might start to think the problem they represents doesn't exist anymore which could set you up for a truly nasty surprise in a few years.
There are gray areas for sure, situations where it's important to know what a person has said, and publicizing their past statements is a valuable service (politicians are probably the simplest example). But I'm not interested in lawyering the exact boundaries: I just think our society could do with way more charity.
Edit: reduce ambiguity in the first sentence. I support the law firm's decision to rescind their offer.
If you read my other comments I make clear that I would hire the guy in the KKK. He's free to march around in his little white sheets every weekend as long as he doesn't cause trouble in the workplace.
That said, that's just me. I can understand why somebody else would be completely unwilling to employ this individual and at the end of the day employment in the US is at will.
I admittedly may not have all the facts straight, but wasn't she one of the higher-ups in an student organization that drafted and released a public statement (I'm leaving aside the arrogance of a bunch of 25 year olds thinking that the world was waiting on baited breath for their opinions on world events)? This wasn't a case of someone publicizing private information. She (and her organization) screamed it from the rooftops. And it was pretty clear no one was taken out of context.
But your point about being more charitable is a good one and I don't think people should have their lives ruined over political beliefs. Unfortunately, I'm not sure that's possible until all sides of the political spectrum agree to it.
I think you're basically right (the facts are a little obscure to me too) - I'm just trying to make the case for not publicizing it further.
"I agree that nobody is obliged to hire such an individual and support the law firm that rescinded their offer to NYU student Ryna Workman (for example)."
Law firm work is highly competitive. The most important thing to have are clients willing to overpay you. Without those clients, your firm will cease to exist. Those clients have a shit ton of options as to whom to overpay. The last thing you need to woo clients is an overt Jew-hater on your team (unless your client is Hamas or Iran, in which case it is a huge plus).
Apologies, my original statement was ambiguous, but I meant to say that "I agree ... [and I] support the law firm that rescinded their offer ..."
No apology needed. My point was only that a job at Winston is not like a job at Taco Bell. You may be, as Slaw uses the example, a KKK or Hamas lover, but if you can competently make a shitty taco or burrito, it does not matter. Although maybe don't wear the T-shirt with the mass murders descending in their paragliders. But at a law firm. Image means a lot.
Maybe it's not as bad as, say, claiming that women don't have penises, but cheering for the slaughter of civilians because they were "colonizers" is still a bad look. News flash for these fucks. They are all colonizers. Perhaps they should kill themselves for justice instead of performing stolen land acknowledgements.
tbf Liberia does make a usable (if grim) analogy to what's happened even before 1948
your on your own in these comments, if someone violates the Substack terms of service, report it to them
LOL, bless you mate, you've done enough and devoted enough of your attention and time to this
Whatever Freddie. Doctrinaire Marxist antisemitism is hard to get rid of.
stupid.
What a terribly boring world it would be if everyone agreed with you. You would never be surprised, for one thing, unless it was something like a raccoon lunging at you from a trash can.
People who cancel a subscription because a writer produces a piece they disagree with are looking for affirmation, not intellectual stimulation. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
The world of southern Israel is terribly boring, no?
The hope is that disagreement doesn't rise to the level of picking up a rifle, or an axe.
raccoon ftw
I don't even agree with myself all the time.
My wife says I argue out loud with myself when in the shower or doing yard work. I never win the arguments.
I have this problem as well. ツ
What fun is it to only hear from those with whom you agree? I enjoy pushing back in comments when I disagree and hope the expressions of opposition maybe change a mind or two. Alternatively they provide a largely unfiltered sounding board and maybe my mind gets changed. When did debate and argument change from a celebration of articulate to getting you branded a hater?
Twenty, thirty years ago? What do you think? When did the age of reasoned debate move over in favor of emotional appeals. My communications studies teacher in the late 80s talked about the changing discourse. She was right.
For some, whether support for Israel vs. Palestine is establishment or not is less tied to actual power (e.g. American support, Wall Street support, Hollywood support) and more to what feels ascendant in the cultural spheres they truly care about. It directly parallels conservative grievances about feeling marginalized and disrespected despite holding a commanding win-loss record vs. their opponents when it comes to actual policies, litigation, funding, etc. Yeah, but who gets more likes on IG and TikTok?
> more to what feels ascendant in the cultural spheres they truly care about
Just social media tribalism all the way down.
All human activity comes down to status games, with morals applied ex pos facto.
The risk is being reflexively contrarian. And/or the leftist resistance to the idea that any minority group can be the primary author of their own misfortune.
If you can't handle Freddie at his punching right, you can't have him at his punching left
George Carlin had it; the only thing worth punching is pretentiousness, and people who take themselves and their Important Positions too seriously.
Freddie, I subscribe to you precisely because I don't always agree with you. What's the point in only reading people who agree with me? What would I learn from that?
What % of your subscribers who are complaining discovered you because of your initial appearance on Bari's podcast?
I disagree with you on Israel and particularly on some of your posts regarding private vs.public school and wealthy New Yorkers where I think you don't have the necessary domain experience. But when it comes to perfect symmetry of belief between me and another, I always think of the Ed Koch quote below.
"If you agree with me on 9 out of 12 issues, vote for me. If you agree with me on 12 out of 12 issues, see a psychiatrist."
robertsdavidn.substack.com/about (No Paywall)
I think this intervention and your earlier statement were useful interventions into a fraught and toxic discourse produced by intolerable and dehumanizing events. I hope you stay the course and stay afloat, however incomprehensible I find some of your political commitments.
I'll admit it: I originally signed up for your newsletter because you go after social justice yellers better than anyone.
But I stuck around because I like a lot of your other pieces too. Your writing on mental health, your thoughts on various movies and shows, your thoughts on education, etc.
Variety is the spice of life. Newsletters that write ONLY anti-woke bangers and nothing else get both unhinged and kinda boring at the same time. We've all seen it.
I'll second that, although the explanation of the media industry was at least as big a hook as being willing to call out the 'post-liberal' crowd.
I find Freddie's articles much more engaging and persuasive than the vast majority of writers, particularly those found on the left.
Anti-something positions get clicks, but don't last long-term, because they don't build anything. They just parasitize the positions they love to hate, until they run low on material and start scraping the bottom, quit, or get into conspiracy theory under the guise of what their frenemies are "really" up to. You have to stand for something; that's the only way to build authenticity.