definitelynot3hippos

[definitelynot3hippos]

[definitelynot3hippos]

Comic about rizz and bob

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Muppets pt. 3

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I've been thinking about this for weeks so I had to draw it

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haymitch is the little kid that’ll sit next you on a bench and overshare about everything going on in his life and then leave you bewildered,

while katniss is the type of little kid that sits down next to you on a bench and you feel vaguely unsettled by her presence there because she’s so quiet.

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"If I were orpheus I wouldn't look back"

But we look back everyday- rechecking emails, making sure a friend is still behind you, checking to see if you remebered to pick up your keys. It's second nature, a habit of care.

It was second nature for him too. He looked back, not out of weakness, but love. For what is love, if not to look back?

[definitelynot3hippos]

This is grim, but...where's the lie?

They could’ve chosen not to massacre the Jews of Hebron in 1929. They could’ve stayed in Jordan and Egypt instead of migrating to the Land of Israel in the 1920s in search of work. They could’ve accepted the Peel Commission recommendations in 1936. They could’ve accepted the UN Partition Plan in 1947. They could’ve chosen not to launch a war in 1948. They could’ve demanded “liberation” from Jordan and Egypt, who ruled over them until 1967. They could’ve followed through on the Oslo Accords. They could’ve made peace at Camp David. They could’ve accepted Olmert’s offer. They could’ve built up Gaza after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005. They could’ve chosen not to fire tens of thousands of rockets at Israeli civilians. They could’ve chosen not to carry out October 7th. But they didn’t. Every single time, they chose war. Choices come with a price. It is all on them.

Oren Barsky

[definitelynot3hippos]

okay so sometime in the future post Langdon’s return and inevitable divorce, ER Ken is hovering by the desk, not because Mel is in proximity typing up her notes with that insanely endearing focused look on her face. Definitely not. Santos plops in the chair next to Mel bored between cases and suddenly asks “Melatonin, what’s your sign?” Langdon’s ears perk up not because he’s super curious about her sign and the relationship compatibility between his and hers or anything but just because he’s super interested in anything that has to do with his best friend Mel :) and Mel just smiles at Trinity “Oh, my astrological sign? I’m a Libra!” Langdon discreetly pulls out his cellphone and googles Aries and Libra compatibility while Santos is like “We’re in Libra season when’s your birthday??” And Mel casually informs her “oh, it’s today” and Frank who has been inwardly screaming like a husky at the fact that Libras and Aries are a high compatibility match snaps his neck around to Mel so hard Dana winces at the crack she hears. Santos just gapes at Mel “today? Your birthday is today?” Frank’s head is spinning a mile a minute and santos asks Mel why she didn’t tell anyone and Mel just shrugs saying because its not a big deal Becca just get a tiny cake and she sings her happy birthday and that’s all she needs and Mel gets up to check on a patient leaving a bewildered Santos and Langdon, whose ADHD brain is running wild because it’s Mel’s birthday!So trinity and Langdon make eye contact and she nods and he nods back feud on hold because they now have a common goal - celebrate the fuck out of Mel’s birthday. So trinity starts making the rounds to let everyone know and Langdon sends off a text to his ex wife (who has met Dr. Mel, Langdon’s super best friend :) when Langdon drops off the kids and thinks she’s wonderful) and asks her to have the kids (who also absolutely love Dr. Mel and her sister Becca) to make Mel a birthday card. Abby (who is now dating her divorce lawyer who bought her a Birkin thank u very much) ends their text exchange telling him to pull his head out of his ass and ask his super wonderful best friend Mel :) out on a date and Langdon pointedly ignores that but is incredibly happy he has the approval of Abby. Langdon then texts Becca who is so excited at the idea of finally celebrating Mel’s birthday! when he asks what he should get her for a present Becca who is a D1 instigator says that he should kiss her :) which makes Langdon walk into a wall in front of a baffled Robby. So anyway Trinity texts Samira who’s enjoying her day off with a certain night attending and Samira says she’ll grab decorations and some of Mel’s favorite food which she knows because Mel, Samira, and Trinity have formed a great friendship - the fucking powerpuff girls of the Pitt. Trinity runs around to get the word out about party at Langdon’s sad bachelor pad divorce apartment for Mel’s birthday, checks in with her patients, delegates who’s bringing what, makes out with Garcia in a supply closet, and circles back to inform Langdon that they’re having the party at his apartment which whatever he’s fine with he’d do anything for Mel. Day ends and everyone scatters to make it to Langdon’s sad divorce bachelor pad before Mel who is carpooling with her best friend Frank :) and Langdon gently scolds her that she should have said it’s her birthday and she just shrugs because celebrating hasn’t been the same since her mom died and with school and taking care of Becca there just wasn’t a need, and Langdon hugs her and kisses her forehead in a best friend way of course :) and gently whispers that there’s a party at his apartment because Mel wouldn’t do well with a surprise and he wants her to be prepared and Mel just melts and they get to his sad divorce apartment where everyone is waiting and they sing to her and have cake and have a wonderful time and Frank listens to Becca and finally finally finally kisses Mel when everyone leaves…

And then they bang nasty for her birthday :)

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like what if you were a dark cesspool of self-hatred and shame but also a really fucking incredible doctor. you’re on edge all the time and your marriage is falling apart and nothing you’re trying is working so you throw yourself into work even more. and you know you shouldn’t have taken the pills, but it was just hurting so bad and—you’ll stop you’ll stop you’ll stop. just one more time and then you’ll stop. and you hate yourself so much. your soul is black and you know it but you can’t even admit it to yourself. but if you can save just one more person it’s worth it. right? it’s worth it, right? and then in walks—sunshine.

and on the other side of it…you’re lonely and talented and oh so capable and there’s so much pain and hardship and death in the world. but someone has to help. someone has to help and so it might as well be you. even though it’s loud and overwhelming. even though you have to grapple with people’s emotions on the worst days of their lives…every single day of yours. you don’t know how you bear it every day. you don’t know if you can. but you keep trying because someone has to. and you walk in to work just wanting to make a difference, maybe even to make a friend. and there’s this doctor—this brilliant, sharp, handsome confident doctor—and he’s kind sometimes. he says you’re sensitive. and he says we need people like you. badly.

like!!!

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Okay fine. You (rabbot hole) convinced me to do this. But it's not going to be like a school essay, it'll be a word-vomit. A ramble, if you will.

Let's talk. Michael Robinavitch and Judaism.

Robby does not have a good relationship with god. His faith is a struggle. When asked about talking to god, Robby says he doesn't, because god doesn't answer. Which meant that at one point, Robby did believe in god. He most likely was raised that way, by his grandmother. We don't know what was the catalyst for him to stop believing. Was it Adamson's death? Probably not, lbh. He's an ER doctor, and sees horrible shit day in and day out. Which, that alone, is enough to make someone question their faith. Make them question why a god who lets this kind of stuff happen to people exists. Or maybe he's prayed enough times with no answer that he just. Gave up. And yet. When he's sitting on the floor of the makeshift morgue and sobbing, he's clutching his pendant and praying.

Robby on some level, still believes in a god. Or that there's someone out there listening. Because of two things. 1: he still wears a star of David necklace. 2: he prays when he has a breakdown. He turns to a prayer for solace.

The star of David: in Judaism, we call it a Magen David. A Magen means a shield. Now why would he wear that if he fully didn't believe in a higher power? What's a star pendant shielding him from?

The star is also a symbol of Judaism, yes, but there are many things a Jewish man can wear to show he is Jewish. It did not have to be the star of David.

There's also the comforting factor. Of it tethering him to his culture. To his religion. It's grounding. It reminds him on some level that there's something to believe in. And that's why he's holding it when he's breaking down.

The rest of the time it's tucked under his shirt. So even if it was there as a sign of his Judaism, no one knows, because it's hidden.

The prayer. Robby is reciting Shema.

#1: it is the most powerful prayer

#2: he doesn't just say the first line that you may sometimes see in an extreme situation (in filmography) when a Jewish character is about to die. He starts saying the whole of the first paragraph but is interrupted by Whitaker.

#3: Shema is partly said for protection. Partly said to reach out immediately to god.

Robby doesn't believe in god, so why is he praying? Why is he saying Shema?

Prayer is a comfort, at some level. But here, in this instance, when things have gone to shit and people are injured and dying, because of a mass shooting, Robby is breaking down and turning to prayer. It's most likely not the first time he's done that. (Re: Anderson's death, the child in his residency in New Orleans.)

He's saying a powerful prayer, a prayer in regards to protection. He could have turned to any prayer, but he went straight to Shema. For protection. For himself? Maybe maybe not. But for the victims as well. For the survivors. Praying for their safety, for them to live.

Robby's faith in god is broken, is unwhole. It's a struggle. It's difficult to maintain it with what he sees each shift. But he turned back to his faith in a time of darkness, and on some level, his faith is there with him, a constant friend who is there for you when you need them. A support beam, a safety net for when you're falling and need something to grasp.

It's broken and it's imperfect, but it's there.

PS: I write this as a Jew who was raised Chasidic and struggles with my faith. Who wears a star of David and turns to prayer for comfort and protection.

[definitelynot3hippos]

I have seen a lot of JD Vance killing the pope jokes and would like to propose my definitely more likely alternative:

The pope was already dead, but none of the cardinals wanted to have to meet with Vance themselves, so they just did a Weekend at Bernie's and then announced the death later.

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Daily fucking reminder that Luigi Mangione is innocent, completely and fully. He has been convicted of no crime. He has had no fair trial. He is a SUSPECT. Luigi Mangione is entirely innocent and everyone needs to stop parroting this insidious propaganda that he “committed” the crime he is only SUSPECTED of. He is not a murderer. He is not a criminal. He is an innocent man.

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Jangs apologist. Every time.

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The world is lucky to have Dolly Parton.

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I don’t know why that affected me so strongly, but I’m watching a youtube video on disasters on Lake Huron, and the first one involves a coal freighter that was lost in the White Hurricane of 1913 called the SS Argus. Everyone on the ship was lost. But it’s mentioned that the captain’s body washed up later, and was found without a life jacket. So they thought, based partly on testimony of another ship that thought they saw them go down, that it just happened too fast for him to have time to get his jacket. But then another body was found, that of the second cook, and she was found wearing the life jacket marked ‘captain’. And that’s …

It didn’t work. It didn’t save her. But it’s so very possible that he spent his last moments alive trying to save someone else, one of his crew, and they probably both knew that it wouldn’t work, that there wasn’t a lot of hope in a blizzard on the lakes in November, but he tried … he tried anyway. Even if it did nothing but maybe make her body easier for her family to find.

You know that Mr Rogers thing of ‘look for the helpers’? How many times has someone, facing the end, done something tiny and fragile and maybe hopeless just to try and help someone else? Whether it works or not. How many people went to their graves at least trying?

That has to say something about us. As a people. As monstrous as we sometimes (perhaps often) are, so many times we were also …

Whoever saves one life, saves the whole world.

And sometimes you can’t save one life, sometimes it doesn’t work, sometimes there’s no getting out of this for anyone, but … try anyway. Because it matters anyway.

And maybe no one will ever know. But maybe also some day more than a century down the line, maybe some idiot will be crying into her coffee because of what you died trying.

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Leftist antisemitism is a symptom - American Jews and the Illiberal Left

TLDR: I think we would be wise to stop regarding leftist antisemitism only in its own context and habitually recognize it is a part of a larger issue, the rise of the illiberal left.

Why are Jews are the most reliable supporters of Liberal policies and politicians in modern American history?

Haviv Rettig Gur seems to suggest that Jews in the US, recognizing that Liberal values resulted in their (imperfect but historic) emancipation in the US, became perhaps the most Liberal people ever. They understood that US Liberal values were what made Jews relatively safe in the US, and offered them opportunities which had been denied to them everywhere else.

When previously did a head of state speak to Jews the way George Washington did?

Gur suggests that this is why American Jews have historically been so invested in the struggle of black folks in the US. When I say invested, I'm talking about facts like these:

- Henry Moscowitz was one of the founders of the NAACP.

- Kivie Kaplan, a vice-chairman of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now called the Union for Reform Judaism), served as the national president of the NAACP from 1966 to 1975.

- From 1910 to 1940, more than 2,000 primary and secondary schools and 20 Black colleges (including Howard, Dillard and Fisk universities) were established in whole or in part by contributions from Jewish philanthropist Julius Rosenwald. At the height of the so-called "Rosenwald schools," nearly 40 percent of Black people in the south were educated at one of these institutions.

- Jews made up half of the young people who participated in the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964.

- Leaders of the Reform Movement were arrested with Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in St. Augustine, Florida in 1964 after a challenge to racial segregation in public accommodations.

- Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched arm-in-arm with Dr. King in his 1965 March on Selma.

- The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965 were drafted in the conference room of Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, under the aegis of the Leadership Conference, which for decades was located in the RAC's building.

When I was a child and asked my mother why Jews seemed overwhelmingly to be Democrats, I was told "because of FDR and the Civil Rights movement." That's not wrong, in Gur's framing, but perhaps a more shallow response than the question deserves.

In Gur's framing, US Jews realized that the promises of Liberalism, over and over, no matter how much they delivered for other peoples, did not deliver for black Americans.

Gur suggests that US Jews worked to see that change for their black co-citizens because if American Liberalism didn't deliver for black Americans what it appeared to promise to all Americans, the sense of safety, security, and belonging which Jews felt in the US was an illusion.

US Jews believed that we had common cause with non-Jewish American Liberals. We thought non-Jewish liberals believed what we believed about universal civil rights, pluralism, enlightenment values and enlightenment reason. When Jews saw the "In this House We Believe" signs on our neighbors' lawns, We felt comforted because those beliefs are also our beliefs.

We thought, for instance, that our non-Jewish friends agreed that Liberal democracies were better for human rights than any form of government in the history of human societies. We thought they agreed that religious, racial, and ethnic intolerance were social ills which needed to be fought with information. We thought they valued data, reason, and reliable sources.

Since 10/7/23, we've been learning that we were mistaken. We've seen gentiles who we thought shared our values seem to discard those values.

We saw college educated friends share antisemitic (and alarmingly familiar) conspiracy theories about Israeli puppetry of US politics and the return of Nazi and Soviet antisemitic slogans/images.

We've seen highly educated "Liberals" preach ahistoric nonsense denying that the Jewish people are from the Levant and willfully ignoring the huge swaths of historical fact which don't support their favored narrative.

We've seen friends rage against "globalists" and "Zionists," when what they mean is 'Jews'.

We've seen people who we thought were allies against all forms of racism justify their racism towards Jews as righteous through specious reasoning like 'I don't hate Jews, just the 97% of Jews who believe that Jews should have self-determination in their homeland.'

We've been told that we cannot ask them to temper their use of antisemitic tropes, because doing so "weaponizes" concerns about antisemitism to obstruct them from their righteous crusade against the most evil nation on earth...which happens to be the only Jewish nation.

Despite this, about 80% of Jewish voters voted for Harris over Trump.

I think US Jews will continue to be Liberals, because Liberal values are dear to us and aligned with our values as Jews, as a historically oppressed minority, and as Americans who see more clearly than some others the gap between the promise of American liberalism and its long-delayed universal delivery.

The problem, I think, is in how many of our former friends simply aren't Liberals any longer.

I think Jews in the US need to spend a good deal more time scrutinizing the illiberal left.

Nine days after the attacks of 10/7/23, Jonathan Chait wrote:

Writers like Michelle Goldberg, Julia Ioffe, and my colleague Eric Levitz, all of whom rank among the writers I most admire, have written anguished columns about the alienation of Jewish progressives from the far left. I think all their points are totally correct. But I find the frame of their response too narrow. They are treating apologias for Hamas as a factually or logically flawed application of left-wing ideals. I believe, to the contrary, that Hamas defenders are applying their own principles correctly. The problem is the principles themselves.

...

Liberals believe political rights are universal. Basic principles like democracy, free speech, and human rights apply equally to all people, without regard to the content of their political values. (This of course very much includes Palestinians, who deserve the same rights as Jews or any other people, and whose humanity is habitually ignored by Israeli conservatives and their American allies.) A liberal would abhor the use of political violence or repression, however evil the targets.

...

The illiberal left believes treating everybody equally, when the power is so unequal, merely serves to maintain existing structures of power. It follows from their critique that the legitimacy of a tactic can only be assessed with reference to whether it is being used by the oppressor or the oppressed. Is it okay for, say, a mob of protesters to shout down a lecture? Liberals would say no. Illiberal leftists would need to know who was the speaker and who was the mob before they could answer.

...

One observation I’ve shared with many analysts well to my left is that the debate over this illiberalism and the social norms it has spawned — demands for deference in the name of allyship, describing opposing ideas as a form of harm, and so on — has tracked an older debate within the left over communism. Communism provided real-world evidence of how an ideology that denies political rights to anybody deemed to be the oppressor laid the theoretical groundwork for repression and murder.

There have been conscious echoes of this old divide in the current dispute over Hamas. The left-wing historian Gabriel Winant has a column in Dissent urging progressives not to mourn dead Israeli civilians because that sentiment will be used to advance the Zionist project. Winant sounds eerily like an old communist fellow traveler explaining that the murders of the kulaks or the Hungarian nationalists are the necessary price of defending the revolution. “The impulse, repeatedly called ‘humane’ over the past week, to find peace by acknowledging equally the losses on all sides rests on a fantasy that mourning can be depoliticized,” he argues, calling such soft-minded sentiment “a new Red Scare.” Making the perfect omelette always requires some broken eggs in the form of innocent people who made the historical error of belonging to, or perhaps being born into, an enemy class.

But more than three decades have passed since the Soviet Union existed or China’s government was recognizably Marxist. And so the liberal warning about the threat of left-wing illiberalism seemed abstract and bloodless. On October 7, it suddenly became bloody and concrete. It didn’t happen here, of course. The shock of it was that many leftists revealed just how far they would be willing to follow their principles. “People have repeated over and over again over the last few days that you ‘cannot tell Palestinians how to resist,’” notes (without contradicting the sentiment) Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of the left-wing Jewish Currents. Concepts like this, treating the self-appointed representative of any oppressed group as beyond criticism, are banal on the left. Yet for some progressive Jews, it is shocking to see it extended to the slaughter of babies, even though that is its logical endpoint. The radical rhetoric of decolonization, with its glaring absence of any limiting principles, was not just a rhetorical cover to bully some hapless school administrator into changing the curriculum. Phrases like “by any means necessary” were not just figures of speech. Any means included any means, very much including murder.

Both Julia Ioffe and Eric Levitz have pointed out that decolonization logic ignores the fact that half of Israel’s Jewish population does not have European origins and came to Israel after suffering the same ethnic cleansing as the Palestinians. This is correct. But what if it weren’t? If every Israeli Jew descended from Ashkenazi stock, would it be okay to shoot their babies?

The problem is much greater than leftist antisemitism. The illiberal left has become nearly as great a threat to Liberalism as the far right.

It is often the case that a movement’s treatment of Jews serves as a broader indicator of its health. It’s not an accident that the Republican Party has become more attractive to antisemites as it has grown more paranoid and authoritarian. What the far left revealed about its disposition toward Jews is not just a warning for the Jews but a warning for all progressives who care about democracy and humanity. The pro-Hamas left is not merely indicating an indifference toward Jews. It is revealing the illiberal left’s inherent cruelty, repression, and inhumanity.

I'm annoyed that it is has taken me so long to catch on and alarmed by the implications.

I am, however, very proud of my 14yo, who sums up her experience trying to respectfully disagree with leftists this way:

"They're allergic to nuance."

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If you see articles and tweets about how the Star of David is now a symbol of fascism and think to yourself "maybe they have a point," then whatever you define as your antizionism has absolutely crossed the line into antisemitism

The Star of David is one of the most important symbols in Judaism. The fact that it is on the flag of Israel does not make it fascist. The government of Israel is separate from the symbol. Labeling such a widely used symbol by a marginalized people as fascist is incredibly dangerous and seeks to conflate Jews as a whole with the Israeli government- something antizionists continually claim people shouldn't do. So why are some doing it?

High control groups slowly ease you into believing nonsensical things. They provide "reasoning" and "logic" which goes largely unchallenged within echo chambers. People in these echo chambers are prone to believing it because they start to see it as real logic instead of bigoted, twisted reasoning. Even otherwise intelligent people can fall for their prejudices as they begin to view it as a form of justice

It is a fantasy that high control group leaders go from 0 to 100 in five minutes or refuse to answer any questions- they are usually much more manipulative

Please confront your biases. The Jews are tired