https://youtu.be/EJ55q9K9TVE?feature=shared

Starlink is only the beginning.

Ceasefire in Lebanon! After fourteen months of fighting, something like 3,800 people in Lebanon have been killed, inclusive of Hizbollah’s casualties.

AverageBob, you anticipated Lebanese casualties would be in the “millions.” Now that the war has proved to be literally one thousand times less lethal than you expected, do you find yourself reassessing any other exaggerated ideas you may have about war in the Middle East? 😉

"Hamas says it wants an agreement to stop the war, free Israeli hostages in Gaza, and free Palestinians from Israeli jails."

Bit of a simplification, that.

The agreement in Lebanon is a 60-day ceasefire that hopefully leads to a permanent cessation of hostilities. In Gaza, Hamas has consistently refused to agree to a temporary ceasefire and insists on a permanent Israeli withdrawal (that leaves them in power).

@2 Liar. The article that I linked to mentioned that millions of lives were at risk as shown by the fact that 1.5 million people had to flee for their lives. Reading comprehension is key but you have already abundantly shown that you are blinded by your anti-Arab ideology.

@3 Netanyahu and his extremist governmental coalition want to annex Northern Gaza so a ceasefire is very unlikely.

bibi goes to Jail
on Day One when
bibi's War on Palestine
ends. wanna End his 'War'?

either
Depose
bibi or pardon
his War Criminal ass.

If Jesus existed (an idea that I'm willing to entertain, although in a non-divine sense - i.e., he was just another SJW), I think he would be mystified by 1) Modern bathrooms and 2) The pearl-clutching about trans people using them. Trans people have been around as long as humanity has been around and in Jesus' time - as in our time - there's a lot more to worry about than where they relieve themselves. But Johnson is a bible-addled nitwit with a porn "addiction" and is also something of a reluctant onanist who depends on his son to control his urges, according to the man himself. God know what's really going on there.

Why insult the new treasury secretary just because he's gay? On thing for sure, Donald is not homophobic.

"warrantless aerial surveillance," is something The Stranger should support based on their desire for less cops.

Vivian, it has always been the law of the land that you have no expectation of privacy in public. It has always been the case that you can be surveilled by anyone, including the government, for any reason, or no reason at all.

If you want less police staffing, isn't automating as much police work as we can, to reduce the need for police labor, a good thing?

@4, Judging by the low number of actual deaths, it would appear that the millions of lives were never at risk, so as to create the need to flee.

@5, Spot on. The horror for Gaza will end when the IDF, Gazans, or both depose Hamas.

Someone losing, not international court rulings, is what ends the slaughter of non-combatants in a war zone.

@7 -- it's a distraction
from their burning
down of the USA
but it helps keep
The Base at bay

Armageddon's been burning a hole
in 'christian' nationalists' wish list
for 2,000 years. they'll happily
Fry the rest of Humanity for
a shot at Holy Glory ~ for
the lucky 20,000 and
Speaker Johnson
likely feels he's
On The List.

(isn't there a nearby Comet
they might visit instead of
Nukular Conflagration or
Whatever the fuck for
the Rest of Us?)

“International aid groups worry about the aftershocks of the war in Lebanon, which displaced 1.2 million and destroyed 100,000 homes. Half of the population now lives below the poverty line.”

So, this means Hezbollah should obey UN Security Council Resolution 1701, by withdrawing from southern Lebanon? That would be a start to allowing the Lebanese to have their own working government, rather than the failed state Hezbollah and Iran now nonconsensually impose upon Lebanon (and have for a long time).

@5: that may be a goal of the fanatical Israeli right, but that hasn't been the sticking point in Gaza negotiations for the last year.

it's consistently been temporary (ceasefire) versus permanent (armistice). at least when there were negotiations; I don't think there have been any since Sinwar was killed.

The entire conservative movement that Donald Trump represents is aggressively homophobic but I hear he has gay friends so who cares about our civil rights or personal safety

10 adding risk to the endless list of basic concepts you do not understand

@14: Donald is not and was never a conservative. He's a deranged populist of some sort, but never acted on conservative principles. William F. Buckley would be appalled.

@4: Ha ha ha, that’s our Average Bob! Even when he’s wrong, he’s never wrong! 😂

You and your article absolutely anticipated “a million dead brown people” (verbatim quote) from a ground invasion of Lebanon and scoffed at everyone who was saying, as wise Professor Thumpus was, that the actual lethality of the fighting would be a tiny fraction of that. 😉 At one point, you got pissy and sarcastically downgraded your estimate to “hundreds of thousands” of lives, which is still an error of two orders of magnitude. 🤪 Now, please sit and enjoy the sight of my victory lap. 😆

It seems like they're putting somewhat "normal" republicans in the financial positions (evil and greedy, like all Republicans, but not crazy).

Phoebe dear, trump is now the Standard Bearer for American Conservatism. Buckley is dead and there's no one with the moral courage to take his place.

16, That’s a nice story you’re telling yourself but the movement that is commonly referred to as “conservative” is aggressively reactionary and hostile to the rights of women, immigrants and minorities, and it is currently headed by a populist who is very well-liked by people who self-identify as conservative. You can make the case that it’s not technically conservative but that doesn’t change the nature of the movement that bears its name or the values of people who consider themselves conservative.

@18: Buckley would have made his peace with Donald Trump, just like 99.9 percent of Republicans. Principle always took a back seat to power with Buckley. He’d have tried to salvage his honor by hiding behind some kind of anti-anti-Trump fig leaf, but it would only have been an excuse.

@18: Not really. Typically we associate Republicans with conservatism and Democrats with liberalism but that's a shallow view of America's current politics.

@17 Clown thumpus wants others to join him in the mud pit where he wallows while laughing at his own, not funny posturing

@10 The main purpose of international law and its institutions is to end your 'might is right' world. It'll succeed for we have no alternatives.

We associate republicans with deregulation, regressive taxation, and policies that scapegoat women, immigrants, and lgbtq people. Focusing on the technical definition of the adjectives we use to describe those values are immaterial to our politics. It’s just a shell game for people who are experiencing cognitive dissonance about their support for this movement to compartmentalize their regret without having to own up to it.

@19: There's the MAGA movement, but there's no conservative movement. The word conservative is only an adjective to describe those who happen to right of center on any given issue. It's too malleable to describe a movement.

For example, how would you describe the New Yorkers who voted for AOC but also for Trump? Are they conservatives?

@13 There is rhetoric for public consumption and there are the objectives of the Israeli government that are best understood by noting its actions on the ground: ethnic cleansing by any means available.

Don't try to wriggle out of it, Phoebe Dear. I'm old enough to remember when we had liberal Republicans, but that ended in 1980, and whatever was left was destroyed by Gingrich. They hitched their wagon to the baby fetishists, scamvangelists, and lowest-common-denominator social garbage, and never looked back.

Trump's convictions, such as they are, extend mainly to raiding the treasury, bilking his stupid supporters, and staying out of jail. But, as the undisputed leader of the GOP, he is the leader of what passes for conservatism these days, at least in the US.

Thumpus dear, I confess to not knowing much about Buckley, but my impression of him was that he wouldn't be able to tolerate the whole hee-haw aspect of the GOP.

@23: Shell game, cognitive dissonance, and compartmentalize all in just one sentence. I'm impressed.

“While police say drones allow them to monitor dangerous situations without risking human life, there are immense privacy implications to expanding unchecked, warrantless aerial surveillance.”

how long till
Drones replace
our $200K Po-pos?

Israel’s already
got ‘em shooting
at Anything that Moves
LOOK -- HAMAS! Boom yur Dead.

and when A I*
replaces drone pilots
in their comfy easy chairs
and human beings declared
Superfluous we can All rest easy:

in Peace.

@14
first they'll come
for the Trade Unionists

*like wormmy’s
lil’ Sockpuppet

Would you call Reagan conservative? GWB? President Donald Trump would not exist if they had not paved his way. The only thing that’s different about Trump is that his bigotry is explicit and not couched in concern for “welfare queens” or “the sanctity of marriage.” Now it’s just “queer people are pedophiles” and “immigrants are rapists who eat dogs” and conservative voters could not be happier. Same hateful garbage covering for the same destructive economic policies, slightly more offensive language.

@24: lol, precisely no one has been or will be “ethnically cleansed” from Gaza. This is just more of your “MILLIONS OF LIVES” wrongness. 😄

@24: again, the aspirations of Smotrich and Ben Gvir are not relevant to ceasefire negotiations.

if the IDF is using "any means necessary" to ethnically cleanse Gaza, they're doing a shit job of it. 98% of the population is still alive and in place, albeit maimed, traumatized, and homeless.

Israel has means they haven't used, but maybe now, without the Genocide Joe admin constantly nagging them, they'll step it up.

Vivian, why do you continue to support the cesspool that was Twitter - literally your post from Hannah and the AP could have been source elsewhere (example, asssociatedpress.bsky.social). For a group of writers that claim you’re con most things Musk, I would think you would stop putting money into his Billionaire pockets. And if you need inspiration, look no further than your brethren at the Mercury - they have successfully made the leap (give them a ring if you need help). Fuck X

@14, The movement you refer to got him elected, and now he doesn't need them anymore. He throws everyone and anyone under the bus once he doesn't need them anymore.

He has no principles. He just wants to be affirmed a winner.

@22, And international justice institutions can't end "might is right" in the world, without their own "might" to enforce their edicts. Ironic.

@28: You said "You can make the case that it’s not technically conservative" (@19) but that's the only route for a sensible discussion.

No political party can practically implement an ideologically pure governance at either side of the spectrum as all the sociological disruptions come into play. Nevertheless, Donald Trump is clearly not a conservative given any attempt of a classical definition of the word - despite his rhetoric or his power. Rather, as well all know, he's only a sociopathic narcissist only interested in transactional politics to service his greed and rage.

Giving him any political classification is rather moot. But I choose "populist" rather than "conservative". I accept that you and Catalina disagree.

"[the donold]
throws everyone
and anyone under
the bus once he does-
n't need them anymore."

--@32

pity them
poor Drivers
bereft of sight

'bump, bump' goes
The Bus out In-
to the nite

Debating the technical definitions of words is a distraction from what matters. It’s a way for people who support policies they can’t defend on their merits to avoid engaging with their consequences.

If you want to say the modern republican party is not conservative but a populist reactionary movement that demagogues minorities to consolidate power and wealth I don’t disagree. But this didn’t start with Trump, it’s been true of every republican president in my lifetime, including your “conservative” idol Ronald Reagan. The only difference is that Trump has dispensed with the dog whistle, but the policies are all the same. Deregulation, militarism, lower taxes for rich people, weakening the social safety net, and blaming poor people and minorities for society’s problems.

However you define conservative, this has always been the word we’ve used to describe the mainstream right wing, and right now the standard bearer for that movement is Donald Trump. He may not be a literal conservative but that’s how most Americans describe him and his politics.

32 i’m sure trans people and women of childbearing age will rest well knowing he threw their rights out the window just to get elected even though he doesn’t actually believe in any of it

@36: Okay, I accept that you accept that we disagree.

@37: Yes, Donald is consistent in being unprincipled on multiple populations he's leaving high and dry - which is neither conservative nor liberal.

@22: "The main purpose of international law and its institutions is to end your 'might is right' world."

After you blew right past mention (@12) of Hezbollah's illegal occupation of southern Lebanon.

Priceless.

@32:

And stay out of jail for as long as possible. I seriously believe that was his primary objective in running; everything else took second place.

38, That may be true but the overwhelming majority of americans will continue to call him and his policies “conservative” because he is the head of the republican party, just as they did with every republican president who preceded him on the same regressive platform, only with more folksy and agreeable personalities. Leaving women and minorities high and dry has been the mainstay of republican politics for the last 4-5 decades if not longer.

@41, Now leaving women and minorities high and dry has become the mainstay of Democrats as well. Bi-partisanship at last.

https://www.reuters.com/world/us/new-mexico-democratic-stronghold-battling-poverty-fentanyl-backs-trump-2024-11-21/

You’re telling me when republicans lie to voters who have nothing left to lose some of them will actually believe it

@8 Are you nuts? Look how he is attacking transgender people.

@24- let’s just agree on “fucking morons” for the AOC/Trump voters.

44 - Are not homophobia and transphobia two separate things? Although one can be both, that's not necessarily the case with people.

45 - But she needs their vote to win again.

https://youtu.be/1t2kgl6BnPI?feature=shared

Lmao

@30 I don't see any reasons to think these aren't the aspirations of the government or that this coalition government isn't hostage to its extremists.

I assume you don't have a reputable cite as to 98% of the terrorized North Gaza population being still alive and in place

The ICC is not done with these war criminals so we will see how much more of the little international goodwill left Israel is willing to throw away.

@33 the international community didn't use military might to force apartheid South Africa to cry uncle

@39 resuming a) a century of colonial conflict including a ~55 year illegal occupation of the West bank and multiple invasions of Lebanon to b) Hezbollah failure to comply to the previous international agreement is not serious but you do you, I guess

@49: Really proud of the current condition of South Africa, are we? I think the U.S. and international community should be a bit more circumspect about intervening in other countries’ internal affairs. “Liberating” people into chronic misery under a one-party (failed) state doesn’t really make a good advertisement for our brand of freedom.

“… we will see how much more of the little international goodwill left Israel is willing to throw away.”

Yeah, when fighting terrorists who want to wipe their country from the map, Israelis will spend a lot of time caring about what you think. Get over yourself.

“… Hezbollah failure to comply to the previous international agreement…”

UN Security Council Resolution 1701 remains very much in effect, and Hezbollah continues to violate it, keeping Lebanon a failed state. No amount of your whataboutism will change that. You don’t actually care about international law, and you’re not fooling anyone into believing you do.

@49: “a century of colonial conflict”

Ha ha ha, except no, because Jews aren’t “colonizers” in Israel. 😄 Not unless you erase 3,000 years of continuous Jewish national history in Israel, but what kind of person would do that? 😉

@50 You have made abundantly clear that getting rid of apartheid isn't your "brand of freedom". Not a good look but again: you do you.

@51 Knowledgeable antiracists know that a) many Palestinians have continuously occupied Palestine for 1000's of years and b) almost all Israeli Jews are issued from colonialist immigration that started ~100 years ago. What kind of person would deny that? An anti-Arab racist

“almost all Israeli Jews are issued from colonialist immigration that started ~100 years ago”

Careful, Bob, your anti-semitism is sticking out again! 🤣 Jews aren’t just a random collection of individuals who happen to like Israel, they are a nation whose indigenous land is Israel. That nation never abandoned its land, contrary to your anti-semitic fantasies! 😉 You’re not an anti-racist, Bob, you’re just a regular racist, ha ha ha!

@52: I never said we should not have opposed apartheid; I said we should look at the results of what we did. (TBF, I can understand your reflexive and complete opposition to any evaluation of any results from any course of action you’ve ever advocated, though.)

@53: averagebob occasionally stops spouting third-hand settler-colonialist theory long enough to wax poetically his deep gratitude for the positive effects millennia of explicitly anti-Jewish foreign Imperial policies had upon Palestine. :-)

@54: He is still agonizing over the “Jewish Question!” 😂

Zionists didn't use to shy away from saying they were taking land away from Palestinians (need a citation? just ask), but since that time anti-colonial revolutions have stigmatized colonialism as a racist enterprise so now Zionists claim that stating the colonial nature of Israel is anti-semitism. May be some day they'll actually demonstrate how stating historical facts amounts to "hating Jews" but don't hold your breath because they can't demonstrate it so they won't. Anyway, these continual claim about antisemitism are nothing short of authoritarian attempts at stifling freedom of expression. Once a thug, always a thug and an anti-Arab racist.

can’t wait for the Resort Hotels
erected over the buried remains
of 10,000 dead Palestinians when
They host their Thanksgiving Holidays

Christmas
oughtta be
pretty Fun too.

@56: lol, it was never Palestinian land cause there was never a Palestinian state! There woulda been one, but instead the Arabs chose war in ‘48. That war worked out for the Arabs the way Arab wars always do, just ask a Gazawi! 😉

@49, One success amongst how many thousands of failures?

BTW how are sanctions modifying Russia's behavior, or Iran's? There is always private parties and nations that benefit by smuggling.

South Africa is the exception that proves the rule.

Every court in the world that is successful, uses coercive force to make its mandates stick. I.e. You can comply with the court voluntarily or we will send people with guns to you. You can then comply with them or resist them and be shot. Either way, the courts mandate will be accomplished.

@56: You can drop your pretense of caring about Arabs, too. Hamas and Hezbollah (the latter funded by a decidedly non-Arabic Iran) have chronically used Palestinians and Lebanese as human shields with complete impunity — and with not a peep of protest from you, either.

@57: Sawant wanted it that way. Are you suddenly going to start questioning her?

happy
thanksgiving
Wormtongue. bibi
Appreciates you. will
you be Christmassing on
all those dead Palestinians?

you've certainly
Earned it.

@61: Don’t be so pessimistic. Christmas is still a month away. That’s plenty of time for Hamas to release the hostages, disarm, and step down from government. 😉

@62

Always looking
on the Bright
Side of gen-
ocide, eh,
🛴?

@63: Keep it up, and I’m gonna tell Bernie about your abuse of the word, “genocide.”

Love,

Berntongue

@63: lol, ain’t no genocide. There are more Gazawiyn alive today than there were when they attacked Israel 14 months ago! 😆

@46 So, you are nuts. Pity. I had hoped that you were not.

Et tu, raindrop?

@66: Then tell me where I'm wrong. It's a Venn Diagram from multiple perspectives.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2024/nov/29/israel-knesset-benjamin-netanyahu-peace

@trumpus, please don't make the population argument when trying to deny the ongoing horror in Gaza. If one follows that logic, your logic, then the genocide of the jews during the Nazi years is no longer a genocide because the number of jews is greater now than it was after the holocaust. It doesn't work that way.
But now you will call me an anti-semite because I don't think you should claim population recovery is a metric that should be used to deny a genocide. And you unfortunately, will have given actual anti -emites a really dumb talking point.

@56: As you didn't provide the citations you claim to have (a real shocker, that), here's one you will like. Despite trying very, very hard to support your point about Zionists "taking" land from Palestinian Arabs, this document finally has to admit the Zionist Jews bought land in British Mandatory Palestine (from absentee Arab owners, no less!), and the major acquisition came later, during and from the 1948 war. The Ottoman Imperial policy against Jews owning land is of course not mentioned (just as you like it), the Palestinian Arabs defying the UN by choosing war is also not explicitly mentioned (again, as you like it), and the illegal invasion of Palestine by Arab countries is, of course, not mentioned (ditto). And still, throughout all of that, Jews bought land in Mandatory Palestine; they didn't take it unjustly or by force.

(https://www.un.org/unispal/document/auto-insert-208638/)

Great quote: "It has been estimated that by about June 1947, the Jewish minority in Palestine had taken over 1,850,000 dunams** out of a total of 13 million dunams, mainly as a result of transactions between the above-mentioned Jewish institutions and the big Arab landowners of Palestine." Note "... taken over ... as a result of transactions," is the closest the document can get to simply admitting, "bought." And yet, there it is: the Zionist Jews bought land in Palestine, from Arabs, who sold it freely to them.

good ole
gentrification
the ultimate tool
of vulture capitalists
in their War on the Poor

tho not nearly
as Efficient as a
little Genocide-lite
& a Fleet of Bulldozers.

@72: The Gaza Strip exists because of Egypt's illegal invasion of Palestine in 1948, and was administered by Egypt thereafter:

"The Gaza Strip was under Egyptian military rule from 1949 to 1956 and again from 1957 to 1967. From the beginning, the area’s chief economic and social problem was the presence of large numbers of Palestinian Arab refugees living in extreme poverty in squalid camps. The Egyptian government did not consider the area part of Egypt and did not allow the refugees to become Egyptian citizens or to migrate to Egypt or to other Arab countries where they might be integrated into the population." (https://www.britannica.com/place/Gaza-Strip)

The area has a great beachfront climate, and were it not for politics (neither Egypt nor Israel will allow Gaza autonomy) would likely be a quietly prosperous vacation spot for wealthy Arabs and Europeans. The temptation to make it into such a place exists now, and with incoming President Trump (thanks, Kshama!!) may become a reality.

(That would certainly put all of your whining about "Genocide Joe" nicely into perspective, now wouldn't it?)

@70: lol, Holocaust comparison!

@52, "b) almost all Israeli Jews are issued from colonialist immigration that started ~100 years ago."

You mean RETURN (not immigration) from when Jews were previously deported by Syrians, Babylonian, Persians, and among others. You mean RETURNED after being displaced and disbursed by Arabs, Ottomans, and so many others in the thousands of years prior to 100 years ago.

So Averagebob,

Please explain how the U.N. achieving its will in South Africa, without imposing it by military force, is normative, and not an exception that proves a rule.

Your silence is deafening.

Please name all the courts, in all the societies across the planet that implement their orders without a police force.

We will wait.

@75: Averagebob rejects the idea of Jewish nationhood. He is willing to tolerate Jews as individuals (so long as they keep their mouths shut about Israel, lol), but the idea of Jews as a nation is abhorrent to him.

For this reason, Averagebob repeatedly returns to the European ancestry of some Jews. He mainly conceives of Jews as confused European individuals, not a nation with an indigenous homeland in Israel. If only all those white people had stayed home in Europe where they belong! 😆

Averagebob has no such qualms about Arab nationhood in general or Palestinian nationhood in particular. Unlike Jews, who deserve no state at all in Averagebob’s conception, the Arabs deserve dozens of states, in fact more states every day! 😄 In Averagebob’s conception, a Jewish state in the Middle East is an intolerable European colonialist ethno-state, while the dozens of Arab states in the Middle East are simply the natural and proper order of things. Averagebob’s anti-Zionism, of which he is so proud, is anti-semitism for which he ought to be ashamed. 😃

@73: The Palestine Riviera would at least be a peaceful aftermath.

@78

sure.
long as
Palestinians
don't harbor ill
Feelings towards
their Genociders. or
is That too Much to ask?

68, The venn diagram for transphobia and homophobia is a near perfect circle, with the only exception being a tiny fraction of the dumbest gays on earth who think they’ll be spared if they throw trans people under the bus. But to everyone else in their circle, gay and trans people are the exact same problem.

@80: No, people are complex and don't fit into political narratives as easily as you postulate. You are amusing, I'll give you that.

@81, Everything I said is completely accurate. The rights of gay and trans people are some of the most important political issues to me and I have been paying close attention to how they travel together and the kinds of people who push harmful narratives about queer people.

There is a massive movement of far-right, mostly Christian, mostly white people who think society has gone too far on social issues re queer people. Along side them are a small number of gay people who are anti-trans and seem to believe they are in company with people who will spare the gays because the focus is currently on trans people. Like I said, the dumbest gays on earth.

It’s abundantly clear you fit somewhere in the transphobic circle because you’ve already had at least one profile banned for transphobia and can’t help yourself from concern-trolling trans people with your “nice lady” persona. So you have zero credibility on this issue and your defense of anti-lgbt bigots rings hollow.

@70: I agree intent (and identity of the victims) makes the genocide, not the numbers. But if you want to complain about genocide as a numbers game, please take that to the Stranger (and supportive commenters here). Thumpus arrived very, very late to that party.

@75: As I mentioned @54, averagebob has absolutely no problem with anti-Jewish policies imposed upon territories by foreign empires. Hilariously, he also sees no contradiction between his loving support of (long-dead) imperiums, and his accusations of settler-colonialist victimizations of Arabs by modern Jews.

@81, etc.: Expanding on @82, these bigots now focus on trans' persons, and especially trans' youth, because of all the prior "culture wars" these bigots have declared, fought, and lost. There's something especially vile about attacking a small, misunderstood, and traditionally-powerless group, and especially the minors within that group, who cannot legally defend themselves. Anyone who has ever attended an American high school knows what a horrible place it could be for anyone who didn't conform to the norms of the day. I've always identified as the cis-het male I was identified as at birth, and I was repeatedly called hateful names in school, because I refused to join in the bullies' bigoted expressions of hatred against what we now call LGBTQ+ persons. I can't even imagine what might have happened had I questioned my own sexuality, but I doubt any of the current anti-trans bigots would have helped me, to put it mildly.

Even making a distinction between "homophobia" and "transphobia" plays to the advantage of these bigots, because the bigots themselves see absolutely no distinction between LGB Q+ and T. Anyone in the LGBQ+ community needs to understand that by making such a distinction, they are feeding the fire over which the bigots want to roast everyone -- gay, straight, trans, or whatever -- who disagree with such bigotry.

@82: Maybe if you break down aggregate terms into specifics there would be an opportunity for a meaningful discussion on this. Also avoid bloviating on race and religion.

@85: At no time in the history of the United States has any statement of the form, "There is a a massive movement of far-right, mostly Christian, mostly white people who think society has gone too far on social issues..." been false. They always exist, they always oppose social justice and change, and they always take every opportunity they get to hurt as many of their fellow Americans as possible. The identity of their preferred victims may change, from blacks to women to gays to Muslims to trans', but their hatred and bigotry always remain. Identifying this persistent reality is not "bloviating on race and religion," it's accurately describing the problem.

@85, I don’t care what a dumb bigot thinks is a “meaningful discussion” about their own bigotry. Your refusal to see the role of race and religion in not only anti-lgbtq issues but American politics in general only underscores how useless it would be.

@86: But women and gays fare much better under Islam? They don't. So there goes your Christian attack. And social justice and change has been occurring. You just refuse to see it. Americans are remarkably tolerant and accepting. LGBT acceptance has always been on an upward trajectory.
@87: That's your problem, you don't care.
@86+@87: These comments epitomize how the identity politics rage lost the 2024 election for the democrats.

@84/86, missed these comments the first time around but needless to say I agree with all of it. Every election cycle they put a different minority in the crosshairs because scapegoating vulnerable and misunderstood people is an easy way to distract voters from their own pillaging.

@88

Prophet Mohammed (pbuh) himself accepted men known as Mukhannath as companions, or feminine men who dressed differently, who we might in today's time period view as trans or gay.

88, You’re right, I don’t care what a hateful dumbass has to say, and if you believe civil rights only move in one direction you haven’t been paying attention. They’ve already dialed back women’s reproductive rights at the national level and multiple states have passed legislation curbing trans rights, banning books, and stifling teachers’ free speech. They achieve all of this by appealing to the prejudices of mostly white Christian Americans with hateful ignorance about vulnerable minorities. I don’t need to hear a word from you to know that you’re gullible enough to buy in to all of it.

88, Also this isn’t a defense of american christian nationalism, it’s a weak attempt at a distraction. It’s entirely possible for women and gays to be treated like shit by any number of retrograde theocratic movements.

@90: Interesting footnote. But that doesn't mean that Islam is accepting of women and sexual minorities in the present era.

@93. Kinda like Russia, which the far right in this country is embracing wholeheartedly in its Project 2025.

Even more like Jesus palling around with hookers and telling people to love thy neighbor when contemporary american christianity is all about hate, judgement, and discrimination.

@90: Mukhannathun are explicitly men. They have nothing in common with the trans women of today, who see themselves as women.

Also, if you want to claim the Sunnah counsels “acceptance” of mukhannathun in anything remotely resembling the acceptance that the trans women of today want for themselves, then you’re gonna need some pretty beefy ahadith or else one hell of a fatwa! 🤪

@95: That's a really wide group of people you just disparaged; hatefully in tone, made judgements against them, and would probably discriminate against them -- if it were legal to do so.

Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.

@97. Reread 97. Then reread 93.

It’s an accurate description of the religious movement behind Trump, really the last 4 decades of republican politics. There are plenty of practicing christians who are very fine people — some of my best friends, etc — but the political movement that operates in their name is an insidious, hateful blight on our country.

Also we’re not talking about “sin” (not a real thing btw) but people weaponizing the state against minorities and taking away our hard-earned rights in the name of their favorite fairy tales. If you’re not hating/judging fascists, you’re choosing their side.