Echoes

Me when I write for 2 hours: 500 words

Oldest human footprint discovered, made 153,000 years ago in South Africa.

Oldest human footprint in North America, made 21,000 years ago in New Mexico, USA.

The only people I've seen bring up his religion has been Republicans, while Abdul is currently sucking the hairy cloven hooves of actual Christian Nationalist MTG.

"Well, after 75 years of how the Palestinians have been treated, can you blame them for the 7/10 attack?"

And the response that I've been itching to give to that...

"So, you're saying that the Nakba was acceptable back in 1948? Because after 1000+ years of mistreatment by Muslim Arabs, including multiple massacres and ethnic cleansing in living memory, that means that the Jews were justified with the Nakba--indeed, they were restrained, because they could have easily done so much worse, and the Palestinians Arabs hadn't had any mistreatment yet at the hands of the Jews. There was a clear side who had been the victims (the Jews) and a clear side who had been the victimizers for over a thousand years, as the Muslims been the ones doing the mistreatment to the Jews. If you're saying that 75 years of marginalization justifies mass rape and murder, then the Israelis in 1948 would have been justified in killing every single proto-Palestinian Arab by that same metric.

"No? That's different? How? How is it different? Explain to me how it's different without using the word 'colonizer', because a vast number of the Jews who lived there were unquestionably native and had never been living elsewhere. Sure, they were just a portion of the Jewish population as a whole, but so are the Palestinian militants. Would someone whose family had been butchered in the 1929 Hebron Massacre not be justified in taking out their hate on other Arabs? Because that's the standard you're promoting now. How is it different?

"On what ethical grounds is it okay to say that the Palestinians deserve to get to rape and murder for 75 years of marginalization, and yet that the Jews simply displacing them but allowing them to continue living, sparing their lives after 1200+ years of brutal suppression... that act is somehow the most horrendous and monstrous act in the entire history of mankind, as some Pro-Palestinian activists have explicitly said?"

Specifically, the response to pogroms in the Pale.

Just to be clear for anyone who doesn't know: the Pale was the area in the Russian empire where Jews were legally allowed to live. It was, in the terminology of today's Hamasniks, an open-air concentration camp, and we were locked up with our murderers.

The policy of the Russian government was genocidal. I'm not kidding; their official goal was to convert a third of us to Christianity, force a third of us to leave, and kill the remaining third. Children were forced into army service to try to convert them, often literally snatched from their parents. Jews were expelled at various times and places, taxed additionally (all of these vanished if we converted), forbidden to wear traditional clothing.

And the general public by and large supported this, as evidenced by their antisemitism after any real excuse had disappeared – look up the Kielce pogrom, for instance.

In response to these pogroms, Jews organized self-defense groups. We did not retaliate further. We did not kill those who were not actively engaged in killing us. We did not commit mass rape. We did not take hostages.

In conditions every bit as bad and in fact significantly worse than Gaza pre-2023, Ashkenazi Jews managed to not do anything remotely like October 7.

So, what's the explanation?

Are Ashkenazim somehow better? Is that your conclusion?

Is that extra death and destruction good? Is that your conclusion, that it's okay to go well beyond what you need to in order to cause more death, more destruction? (Why do you condemn Israel, then? Isn't that precisely what you accuse them of doing?)

Or is the conclusion that Palestinians are not responsible for their own actions? That they cannot be grown adults and take responsibility for their actions?

So Taylor Farms is claiming that the FDA apologized to them over a false positive test result on their shredded lettuce, but...

But it is also racist to say something like "coloniser teams need African players to win!" Which is a sentiment I have seen regarding France and Belgium in particular. Yes, both teams have many Black players on them, yes this is due to colonisation and the often forced movement of people, plus the historical links between coloniser and colonised countries mean that citizens of the latter are more inclined to move to the former than a different country. If you were gonna move from say, Algeria to a European country, it's a smart move to go to France, where they speak the same language as you do.

That doesn't mean Black players on European teams aren't European! Many of them are the children of immigrants, and have lived their whole lives in the country they're representing. Kylian Mbappé is French. He has spoken about it before, saying (this is a direct quote about representing France internationally)

"It’s because I was born in France, I’m French. I did everything in France, I had French culture, with origins that are Cameroonian and Algerian. But I grew up with French culture. It comes from the heart.”

When you say something like colonising countries need African players to win matches, you are firstly perpetuating the idea that Black people cannot be European. This is ridiculously false.

Secondly, you are perpetuating the idea that Black bodies are somehow built for labour and athleticism in a way that white bodies aren't. This is a racist idea that comes from slavery, when Black people were enslaved and dehumanised, with white enslavers saying that they were uniquely suited to hard labour, bc Black people are stronger than white people and don't feel pain etc etc. The idea of European teams somehow "importing" African players for their teams is racist!

The Black players on European teams are European. They are immensely talented players, that have put in just as much, if not more work, than their White teammates. Many Black players already face horrific racism from fans, especially when teams lose, and we do not need to be racist in a "liberal" way!

There was a single, little known event last year that has completely changed my mind on single payer:

Federal employee health plans stopped covering gender affirming care.

Few people know about this. It didn't make the news. But in response to trump's executive orders in 2025, all healthcare plans offered to federal employees stopped providing certain healthcare coverage to trans folks at the start of 2026.

The federal government is the largest employer in the country. This affected millions of people overnight.

There is very little legal basis to challenge this. The Supreme Court ruled years ago in Hobby Lobby that employers can choose what coverage to offer their employees. So at the stroke of the pen, the president took away access to certain care for millions of people. And there's really nothing anyone can do about it.

Yes, only a fraction needed that care. But this is the foot in the door. First trans healthcare, then it'll be contraception, then vaccines, then routine care. First federal employees, then medicare and medicaid.

This isn't even getting started on how hospitals and doctors aren't covering any gender affirming care for minors anymore based on threats from the trump admin alone.

And I reiterate: employees can choose what to cover, and there's really nothing you can do about it, except pay out of pocket, buy your own insurance, or go to a different employer.

If the federal government becomes the sole source of healthcare coverage under a single payer system, the federal government can also take it away, and there will be nothing you can do.

Under a single payer system, an insane president or HHS secretary can take away whatever care you depend on at the stroke of a pen. I don't care how strong the enacting laws are. They can just stop paying.

So I can't support single payer anymore. This was the longest and most enduring progressive position I've held, and I can't abide it anymore. Like. This position hurts me to abandon. It was quite possibly my first and strongest political opinion from when I was young and my mother, a single mother and a nurse, taught me about the iniquities of the healthcare system before Obama was even elected and passed the Affordable Care Act. As an economics major, under a rational system, it should make sense and be the most efficient and cost effective. I built my goddamn political identity around single payer when I was in high school before Bernie was even elected to the Senate.

"Argentina is racist" there are racists, yes, like everywhere. They are loud, like everywhere else. Right now there is a US backed right-wing government that Is fucking us over, like in half the world.

"Argentina is white" we had a huge wave of european migration, yes, as well as jewish, arab, chinese, african and from the rest of latam. We also have multiple indigenous peoples and cultures that first lived here. The afroargentinians had a huge impact on the independence and foundation of our nation and culture. The myth that argentina is white is promoted by right-wing groups.

"Argentina is full of nazis" the nazis came to Latin America (not just Argentina) through the back door in secret and had to change their names, unlike the US which gave them jobs at NASA.

By the way, this is not unique? A lot of countries had similar experiences in their histories. But somehow Argentina gets all the bad rep.

Javier Milei was elected in December 2023 with the highest percentage of the vote since Argentina transitioned to democracy in the 1980s. As you may have noticed, December 2023 is before January 2025, when Trump took power. Milei was democratically elected, not "US backed," by which the use of such phrase op implies some sort of US-orchestrated intervention to bring Milei to power which literally did not happen. Deflecting onto the US seems to be particularly popular among Argentines, and we'll see more of it in just a moment.

"Argentina is white" we had a huge wave of european migration, yes, as well as jewish, arab, chinese, african and from the rest of latam. We also have multiple indigenous peoples and cultures that first lived here. The afroargentinians had a huge impact on the independence and foundation of our nation and culture. The myth that argentina is white is promoted by right-wing groups.

Argentina's 1853 Constitution famously required that the government encourage European immigration specifically over all other migrants, intended to further Argentina's colonization of Patagonia and to deliberately "whiten" (blanqueamiento) Argentina's non-white population.

This gave rise to a foundational part of Argentina national identity, that Argentina is a country descended from Europeans, or "people of the boats" ("los argentinos descendemos de los barcos"). The longer quote, embodied in a popular 1980s song and recently repeated not by rightwing Javier Milei but by his leftwing predecessor Alberto Fernández, is “The Brazilians come from the jungle, the Mexicans come from the Indians, but we Argentines come from the boats.” He said this in 2021 btw. The idea that Argentines are white Europeans is a fundamental part of Argentine national identity that reaches across the political spectrum, is not restricted to the far right, and it's not fringe.

Also it bears noting that upon independence in 1816, Afro-Argentines made up 30% of Argentina's total population. As of the last census in 2022, Afro-Argentines make up 0.7% of the population due to systemic government policies of blanqueamiento. Kind of a big thing to not mention!

"Argentina is full of nazis" the nazis came to Latin America (not just Argentina) through the back door in secret and had to change their names, unlike the US which gave them jobs at NASA.

The 'Ratlines' that the Nazis used to escape Germany led primarily to Argentina, with some to Brazil, Paraguay, and Chile. The Perón regime actively assisted at least ~5,000 Nazis to escape to Argentina, including Adolf Eichmann and Josef Mengele.

Juan Perón himself explained the Ratlines as such:

"In Nuremberg at that time something was taking place that I personally considered a disgrace and an unfortunate lesson for the future of humanity. I became certain that the Argentine people also considered the Nuremberg process a disgrace, unworthy of the victors, who behaved as if they hadn't been victorious. Now we realize that they [the Allies] deserved to lose the war."

Perón was a rather intense sympathizer of the Nazis btw.

And since op made the direct comparison to Operation Paperclip, context is that the US relocated about 1,500 German scientists, many of whom were members of the Nazi Party and later investigated, mostly for use of slave labor, though only Georg Rockey was formally tried (and acquitted). Operation Paperclip is of course highly controversial and infamous as an example of US moral hypocrisy.

In contrast, Argentines largely do not have this internal recognition about the Ratlines, where the average reaction tends to be to deny or downplay the Ratlines and deflect to Operation Paperclip like op did above. Operation Paperclip was immoral and should be condemned as such AND it is absurd for Argentines to pretend there is a moral equivalency between the US and Argentina vis a vis Operation Paperclip and the Ratlines. It's already a stupidly oversimplified and nationalist thing to do but it's also not even remotely accurate. The Ratlines actively ensured known Nazi criminals to escape justice expressly for the purpose of them escaping the Nuremberg Trials, which the US was heavily involved in conducting. Nationalist comparison to the US here condemns, not exonerates, Argentina.

Also, weird sidenote, it's actually "US backed" rightwing Javier Milei taking steps to declassify government documents on the Ratlines. Turns out antisemitism and opposition to antisemitism is not a binary leftwing-rightwing thing.

Do me a favour and either get educated about the country you're criticizing or shut the fuck up