mightyostanes

[mightyostanes]

I don’t know what we’re supposed to do with any of this anymore.

[mightyostanes]

I could go on forever but my point is that a lot of leftists hold this cognitively dissonant belief system that requires them to believe that no one would ever act selfishly or out of irrational hatred for others if only all their needs were met, while simultaneously blaming all the world's problems on a class of people who have all their needs met and yet continue to perpetuate harm. And in order to make these two discordant sets of beliefs work together, it requires believing that "The Rich" are fundamentally, genetically different than Normal Working People, and behave differently and more selfishly than Normal Working People do or would when given that same power. And when one starts believing that The Elites are fundamentally, secretly inhuman and different than Normal Working People, it always, always circles around to blaming The Jews.

[mightyostanes]

Being Better

CW:Sexual Violence

I want to preface this. It is absolutely true that

UN Trucks were being intercepted at an insane rate and they didn't divulge whether it was by armed militants or peaceful civillians

Gaza had higher living standards than Egypt before the war so desperation played no part in this

Hamas and their followers have consistently lied out their asses about famine and casualties for two years

The Media has eaten up those lies

Hamas was voted in

All of these are true, they are verifiably true if you want to check the data, but... That doesn't change the fact that large amounts of people including israelis involved in the GHF say it isn't a feasible good faith organization. It doesn't matter if the alternative is also a bad faith organization that doesn't really help civilians that doesn't mean we are excused to sink to their level and not try to be better. We can't just use 'well they did it first' as an excuse otherwise the mass rape of german women by the soviets after WWII would be justified.

The way we beat our enemies isn't just militarily but by being better than them, if they weren't worse than us they wouldn't be our enemies. I understand how easy it is to fall into iron age revenge fantasies but there is a spiritual cost for repaying barbarism onto barbarism. And no, this is not me asking for the IDF to be gentle lambs who beatificly trot to their slaughter to atone for the sins of gentiles. What I'm asking is for the Israeli government to remember that our enemies are human, and that just because they refuse to act like they are human doesn't change the fact that they're humans who live among humans.

[mightyostanes]

i've said it before and i'll say it again: calling someone an "israel supporter" or "palestine supporter" or anything of the like has always seemed weird to me. i don't support the entirety of the country of israel nor do i support the entirety of the palestinian territories; i support safety, security, and peace for all innocent people and oppose all unnecessary death caused by both governments and militaries.

framing this as team israel vs team palestine just proves that you guys view this like a sports rivalry instead of a real conflict that affects the lives of real people.

[mightyostanes]

this is untenable and indefensible. it can’t continue like this, something has to change.

the following piece is from two months ago, the fact that the situation has worsened since is devastating.

(the headline is a poor reflection of a nuanced and empathetic article.)

before anyone says, “but Hamas,” yes, they are also culpable. this doesn’t excuse the culpability of the Israeli government and GHF’s obvious failures following their initial efforts.

Hamas profited “especially off the aid that had cost them nothing but whose prices they hike up,” said a Gazan contractor who has worked at Gaza’s border crossings during the war.

Over nearly two years, he said, he saw Hamas routinely collect 20,000 shekels (about $6,000) from local merchants, threatening to confiscate their trucks if they did not pay. He recalled that civil servants for the Hamas-led government said several times that they would kill him or call him a collaborator with Israel if he did not cooperate with their demands to divert aid. He said he refused. But he added that he knew at least two aid truck drivers who he said were killed by Hamas for refusing to pay.

[…] But Hamas has profited off commercial trade and humanitarian aid, netting hundreds of millions of dollars, according to two Israeli military officials and an Israeli intelligence official, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive findings. For instance, the officials said, Hamas seized at least 15 percent of some goods, like flour, and aid vouchers that international agencies had intended to provide to hungry Gazans. These officials said some of that was given to Hamas personnel and supporters while the rest was sold to make money.

Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, a Palestinian American who leads the advocacy group Realign for Palestine, said that Hamas repeatedly modified its strategy for profiting off aid and commerce while counting on the humanitarian crisis to bring the war to an end. “Hamas’s strategy relied on the suffering of Gazans,” said Alkhatib. “But when this strategy failed, it foolishly doubled down on this approach, in large part because it had nothing else in its toolbox to deal with Israel’s ferocious reaction to Oct. 7 and the world’s inability to stop it.”

“Hamas sees aid as its most important currency,” said a man from Deir al-Balah, in central Gaza, who helps manage the distribution of aid. He said that while most of the population had to scrape for water and food, people affiliated with Hamas had been gifted boxes of aid meant for wider distribution.

neither the oppression, violence, and theft from Hamas nor the military overreach, violence, and inability to adequately distribute aid from the IDF and GHF are acceptable as the status quo. I don’t know what the solution is, but it’s not this.

[mightyostanes]

post 1 of 2

part ii

[mightyostanes]

What do QAnon, the Woke, and the Red-pilled all have in common?

They offer the thrill of revelation without the burden of dealing with complexity.

They have different jargon and different priorities, but provide the same relief: Finally the world makes sense...and everything wrong is someone else's fault.

They're all selling the same emotional experience: A moment of awakening. That lightning bolt where everything suddenly makes sense. Whether it’s "the elites are eating babies" or "whiteness is a structural force," the rush is identical. You're not just learning, you're enlightened. The veil has been lifted.

They provide a villain who explains everything. No messy complexity, just a clear bad guy. The outgroup. The sick, immoral Them which is standing in the way of the righteous Us. Globalist elites. The Patriarchy. The Libs.

They provide a tribe that gets it. Once you're in, you're not just agreeing with ideas. You're part of a We, a totalizing in-group. Outsiders (They) are blind, brainwashed, or evil.

Why do so many people fall into this trap? Human brains love shortcuts. Thinking is hard. Wrestling with uncertainty is exhausting.

These ideologies hand you a pre-packaged reality where you don't have to weigh evidence, you just have to follow the script.

It feels good. The high from feeling that you see the truth is addictive. That's why people double down on their narrative even when facts contradict them. Admitting doubt means losing that sweet, sweet certainty fix. The prospect withdrawal is terrifying.

Blame is comforting. If everything wrong in the world is because of them, then you're not just a spectator, you're a warrior. Warriors don’t have to engage in messy, difficult, painful self-reflection. They just fight.

Jargon as a badge

Do your own research

Check your privilege

Take the red pill

The right phrase is the signal or shibboleth that you're in the club.

But no ideology or narrative explains everything.

The world is chaos, power is complicated, nobody is in charge, and most of us are just guessing and fumbling our way forward.

But that's a tough sell. Nobody wants to hear it.

Who wants to swallow the "maybe-I-need-to-keep-thinking-about-it" pill when they can have the "I-can-see-the-Matrix-glitching-and-there-is-no-spoon" fantasy?

We have to learn to hold our beliefs seriously, but lightly enough to keep re-examining them with the receipt of new information.

We have to stay curious.

We have to accept that not knowing is part of being human in a bizarre, complex, baffling world.

Good luck making that trend on TikTok.

[mightyostanes]

I hate the term "supporting palestine/israel".

"Oh so you support Israel"

"he supports palestine, I know it"

Shut the fuck up.

A bloodsoaked conflict that has taken the life of so many people, palestinian and Israeli, is not something you get to pick and choose which side you want to survive.

It's not a fandom. It's not a football match that you can pick the team you support.

This is a real war, a real war that between two very real groups of people, none less deserving of peace and security than the other.

Stop contributing to the notion that Israelis and palestinians are natural born enemies who can't coexist.

The only side you should support is the side of peace.

[mightyostanes]

please don’t stay silent!!!

[mightyostanes]

I'll say this. First, most anti-semitic people tend to be the most pathetic and least competent and two eventually goys will get caught in the crossfire. Maybe not for Gen A but the ones after this Jew hatred will be forever associated with the least charismatic terrorists on earth

[mightyostanes]

it’s the way zohran’s win is being celebrated as a great progressive moment meanwhile some of the main demographics he did worst with are black voters, jewish voters, and those who make less than $50k

[mightyostanes]

I actually love Gnostic Christian texts because of how batshit they are. Only a few of them are significantly more Anti-Semitic than mainstream Christian texts from the time and some are actually more Jewish (or at least Samaritan) like Pistis Sophia, Hypostasis of the Archons, and Apocalypse of James (probably Samaritan because it doesn't like the name Adonai or the Jerusalem Temple but quotes liberally from Leviticus). Even the Gospel lf Judas is more creepy than uniquely Anti-Semitic. The issue is that people focus on the legit super anti jewish ones like Marcion, Saturnilus, The Apocalypse of Adam because of course they do.

We Talk About Christianity like we talk about Judaism

"Idk I don't really feel the New Testament and the Talmud talk about the same G-d. The God of the NT seems really self righteous, narcissistic, hypocritical, and subtly sinister, like some kind of David Lynch villain. I prefer the more humble, compassionate and Self Aware G-d of the Mishnah and Talmud."

[mightyostanes]

We Talk About Christianity like we talk about Judaism

"Idk I don't really feel the New Testament and the Talmud talk about the same G-d. The God of the NT seems really self righteous, narcissistic, hypocritical, and subtly sinister, like some kind of David Lynch villain. I prefer the more humble, compassionate and Self Aware G-d of the Mishnah and Talmud."

[mightyostanes]

To LA Jews

So first off what is happening in Los Angeles isn't the holocaust, there are no gas chambers or medical experiments. But it is 100% a Pogrom sponsored by the federal government. I think its important that LA's non latam Jews do the right thing and make an effort to help in whatever way they can. And yes I know there are hamasniks paying lip service but I dont think you should let rich college kids in balaclavas dominate a movement by burning things when there are innocent lives on the line.

[mightyostanes]

Had a discussion about the Golden Calf incident with my Rabbi (conservative w/renewal tendencies) about how the women of Israel didn't give their jewelry to the golden calf and about the nature of idolatry. Specifically that only humans are in the image of G-d and the divine presence can only rest on humans who have replaced idols as icons of the divine. Making a molten idol theoretically requires no female initiative and can be seen as an attempt by men to hijack the power of birth and make women irrelevant by transferring access from the Shekinah/Angel of the L-rd/Active Intellect from interactions with living humans into inanimate objects and corpses. Things whose mothers were one off exceptions to the "women suck" rule or were made by male artisans.

This applies to the uses of strong ai, which is veering way too close to idolatry for me.

Throughout Jewish history, were men responsible for every single exile and sin? It seems like it….in terms of corruption and idolatry

cough Chava cough.

[mightyostanes]

“We can do it in America, why can’t we do it here?”

That has got to be one of the most unintentionally hilarious things I’ve ever heard. A mockumentary about left-wing activists could not have scripted that better.

I’m trying to imagine the level of delusional self-confidence a person would need to say that out loud and sincerely.

These righteous activists keep using the term “anti-colonialism”. I don’t think it means what they think it means. (Unless they think, because they believe themselves to be the “good guys”, it doesn’t apply to them? “No, you don’t understand, mr Egyptian man. *I* can come here and lecture you (in English) and tell you how you should run your country and how you should behave and what I (as an American) should be allowed to do in your country and it’s NOT colonialism or missionary work or white saviourism because I’m right and you’re wrong.”

💯

No notes.

(Re: March for Gaza activists)

[mightyostanes]

If taken literally it is rather silly but it does have some merit if taken metaphorically. Judaism especially Rabbinic Judaism has made a big deal about not sacrificing anyone in the community including the gentiles who have connections with or are adjacent to the Jewish community. Even towards slaves despite slavery being one of the main economic engines of the ancient world. This is why the Talmud made it so hard to execute someone.

In the past a lot of gentiles who refused to associate us for religious reasons saw this kind of communal structure as unnatural and sinister. As if we were acting as an army against them. Now as we become increasingly integrated among non Jews and bring those values with us they see us as destroying their societies. The fact that we make altruism towards our communities an obligation and not just a suggestion really pisses people off because they see it as taking away their freedom and their ability to congratulate themselves for doing a good deed. Because now charity is expected rather than rewarded and praised.

i think a main reason judaism is hated because there is no such thing as human sacrifice. I think society craves it for entertainment and social bonding.

Totally 100% definitely this is why Judaism is hated in 2025 and also why Molech worship is currently the world’s biggest religion.