politics

His immigration stance is bipartisan. Bernie himself wants to limit immigration. I'm a radical immigration proponent (wanna be a citizen and land in USA soil, I'd make you a citizen), but the reality is my opinion is deeply unpopular.

Sadly, protectionism is rampant in the Democratic party.

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/2/25/21143931/bernie-sanders-immigration-record-explained

Israel is similarly bipartisan and not hard-right at all. 61% of Democrat voters support Biden's Israel stance, even if they think Israel is being too aggressive

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2023/11/17/democrats-israel-polls/

I absolutely guarantee you his constituents are higher than national average in favor of the policies he is stating.

I hope you're right, because that hasn't been my experience.

Those of us who feel like both are to blame tend to be outshouted by the "I ALWAYS STAND WITH ISRAEL NO MATTER WHAT THEY DO" and the "HAMAS ARE JUST FREEDOM FIGHTERS SO ANYTHING THEY DO IS JUSTIFIED" groups. And if we speak up to point out that both groups have issues, we get attacked by both groups for not being on a side and especially for not being on their side.

One of the big problems with the Middle East is that it's a messy situation and people like simple narratives. They don't want to hear a hundred plus years of attacks, revenge attacks, generational trauma, etc. That's not easy to resolve. Instead, people want to know that A is always good and B is always bad. That's nice and simple and easy to fix. You just eliminate the bad people and all is well.

Sadly, the real world is rarely so black and white.

It’s just super fucking annoying that all of our politicians are stuck in zero-sum tribal thinking, and cannot comprehend that most rational people think Hamas AND the Israeli government are complete psychos, and that the vast majority of Palestinian and Israeli civilians (specifically excluding “settlers”, who are violent, racist, theocratic, nationalist pieces of shit) are simply caught in the middle.

I get what you're saying, but I think that analogy doesn't really capture the gravity of what happened. Both of them have committed egregious war crimes, which means people aren't just beat up, they're dead. Israel has certainly committed an order of magnitude more, but I don't think it does the victims justice to imply Israel is the big, strong adult who merely got kicked in the shins by Hamas.

I think your analogy could be improved if you changed the 9yo vs Mike Tyson to the 9yo's adult cousin who fights Mike Tyson for the family honor but also abuses the 9yo for fun. Still doesn't capture the gravity of the number of innocent people who have died, but it at least represents the parties involved a bit better.

I agree. I don't see other people (other than a relative few on the Fediverse) who see it that way, because they want a clear villain to defeat.

This feels quite familiar as a European. Political unrest seems to have increased drastically.