That one member of the party who always took the empire’s side

I watched Louis Theroux in Israel recently and it amazed me that like 10 minutes into the mini documentary he hadn’t talked to a Palestinian at all yet, only Israelis, but it didn’t seem at all like it was biased TOWARD the Israelis because they did SUCH A GOOD JOB acting like evil religious zealots all on their own. They were so mask-off it was nuts.

So he added enough detail for them to want to solide with Palestine without realizing

Normally I would call bullshit, but I just played first dnd session of my life few days ago and already met 2 hardcore zionists there (one of which apparently makes pro-israel tiktoks as a side-hobby)

The Israel-Palistinian affair reflects the larger dichotomy of principle vs. loyalty.

The enlightenment values behind the US and French revolts and transformations are propped up by the principles that everyone is entitled to equal regard by the society, are endowed with the same rights, are treated equally by the justice system in so on.

(Mind you, both of these nations failed to embrace these principles fully, still don’t, and progress towards this ideal is slow and meandering — to say the least.)

Of course the challenge, then, is extending that degree of citizenship to the worst wrongdoers, even after they’ve profiteered on war and drug addiction, wrecked the economy through financialization and turned entire government institutions against the people they were supposed to protect sexually assaulted kids or killed with intention.

We don’t like giving our criminal suspects their day in court. When convicted, we don’t like to consider that they were, wrongfully, and in either case, we want them to suffer not just incarceration, but to languish in squalor, abuse and neglect. We want them afraid to reach for the soap. We don’t like extending rights to those we regard as outcast.

But if we don’t, we dip into the other side of the coin, in which criminal is not defined by what you did, but who you are. Feudal society is structured based on contracts of loyalty. If you are born of the better blood (monied, ethnically pure, faithful to the orthodox) then you deserve all the benefits of the doubt. Whereas if you are alien or other, you deserve to be outlawed.

And this applies when the good guys fuck children, murder with intent, profiteer on war and drugs, wreck the economy though financialization and capture government institutions so they don’t protect the people. And yeah, at it’s worst, we see things like genocide and torture become controversial because the heroes are doing it and the goblins are on the receiving end of it.

So not just the US and Israel, but the entire world needs to reflect on what kind of society they want to be. Unlike economic structures that can be blended, guiding ideology tend to be a slippery slope. Once it is established that some people can be denied rights and regard by fiat because they’re of the wrong faith or the wrong blood, or aren’t rich enough, then that refusal of access can extend to anyone else, and eventually everyone else.

And we’re seeing this develop in the US, as MAGA circles talk about liberals in blood libels and calls to hunt and execute them. In this case liberals includes anyone who isn’t MAGA.

I think sometimes about politics in games. Especially the unexamined kind. Like a guy one time ran a game predicated on literal patriarchy - the story was about how a baby boy was due the throne instead of his elder sister. I’m like … You could have written anything. I don’t want fantasy patriarchy.

Meanwhile, my game right before that was about helping an anarchist collective stop a counter revolution from restoring the despotic monarchy. And my current game the players just shot a surveillance CEO on the street and donated all of the wealth they could get out of his unlocked phone to charity.