This is a bad faith interpretation of why leftists are upset. No one is saying the bill was enough. However, it would have had the effect of blocking Israel’s defense aid, and in this desperate moment where Israel is being allowed to starve a whole people to death with no repercussions, it was something we could have done to mitigate their freedom to continue to do so. In her statement, AOC didn’t just mention the offensive-vs.-defensive aid thing–she also brought up protecting innocent civilians, implying that not providing the defensive aid would result in innocent Isrealis dying. In the context of innocent Palestinians being a day or two from mass death, that is a fucking cop-out.
The bill providing funding for Israel, she voted against. Pretty sure I mentioned that.
So further if your metric for being able to support a vigorously left-wing politician who’s been voting against aid for Israel, calling it a genocide, yelling about it on the house floor, and so on and so on, including pushing for justice for working people whose voice is basically nonexistent within the US congress, is that never once do they say one dumb thing on Twitter, then I would wonder who in or out of politics you would be willing to support. This is like the people who are yelling about how Mamdani is a “fake leftist” and as a good leftist they can’t support him because he’s just a fake for the Democrats and they won’t get fooled again…
Being upset or disappointed with someone is not the same as not supporting them at all. Being in power naturally tends to pull people to the right–it’s in the nature of serving the American empire–and it’s the job of the people to remind them of why we supported them in the first place to hopefully prevent that.
Okay. I’m upset that people are using this absurdly skewed framing of this whole event and trying to blow it up into the whole of AOC’s Israel stance and ignoring the backdrop of her entire vigorous opposition to Israel in both word and deed. Since I’m upset, can I come to your house and throw a bunch of paint over your doors and windows and write slogans about you? I feel like that would be a good way to “remind” you about good principles of political progress and online discourse.
Or is that something we’re only doing to prominent successful leftists when we’re upset, and that scenario would be a completely different story?
This is a bad faith interpretation of why leftists are upset. No one is saying the bill was enough. However, it would have had the effect of blocking Israel’s defense aid, and in this desperate moment where Israel is being allowed to starve a whole people to death with no repercussions, it was something we could have done to mitigate their freedom to continue to do so. In her statement, AOC didn’t just mention the offensive-vs.-defensive aid thing–she also brought up protecting innocent civilians, implying that not providing the defensive aid would result in innocent Isrealis dying. In the context of innocent Palestinians being a day or two from mass death, that is a fucking cop-out.
The bill providing funding for Israel, she voted against. Pretty sure I mentioned that.
So further if your metric for being able to support a vigorously left-wing politician who’s been voting against aid for Israel, calling it a genocide, yelling about it on the house floor, and so on and so on, including pushing for justice for working people whose voice is basically nonexistent within the US congress, is that never once do they say one dumb thing on Twitter, then I would wonder who in or out of politics you would be willing to support. This is like the people who are yelling about how Mamdani is a “fake leftist” and as a good leftist they can’t support him because he’s just a fake for the Democrats and they won’t get fooled again…
Being upset or disappointed with someone is not the same as not supporting them at all. Being in power naturally tends to pull people to the right–it’s in the nature of serving the American empire–and it’s the job of the people to remind them of why we supported them in the first place to hopefully prevent that.
Okay. I’m upset that people are using this absurdly skewed framing of this whole event and trying to blow it up into the whole of AOC’s Israel stance and ignoring the backdrop of her entire vigorous opposition to Israel in both word and deed. Since I’m upset, can I come to your house and throw a bunch of paint over your doors and windows and write slogans about you? I feel like that would be a good way to “remind” you about good principles of political progress and online discourse.
Or is that something we’re only doing to prominent successful leftists when we’re upset, and that scenario would be a completely different story?