When are people on both the right and left going to learn. There is no one in the middle east who’s values actually align with yours. So stop supporting a side and lets get our selves completely out of not our business.
Though genocide is our business so that’s the one time we should take a side.
But in everything else where we’ve taken a side it has been a mistake. Folk on all sides of the middle east project to the west an image they hope will garner sympathy in hopes we will fight wars for them and they can avoid fighting their own wars. “Genuineness” is a uniquely western thing to see as a positive value. Absolutely no culture in the middle east values presenting an honest image of themselves to us. The idea of that being socially positive or necessary for their own sense of ethics is literally foreign to them. I’m not trying to single out Muslim countries or Israel. What I’m saying is we in the west do in fact have values that are particular to us, and we need to stop imagining those values on others. That’s why the whole of the middle east is like that. Because they aren’t us.
Then the other thing we should understand is that all sides employ what are basically professional communicators who study our culture and use what they understand of it to manipulate us. So we get dragged into problems that aren’t ours and expose ourselves to actual security threats as a result.
Which values? I have met authoritarians, democrats, socialists, and theocrats in Missouri. Why should Yemen be different? I find this “East vs. West” cultural/values narrative to be a convenient fiction for demagogues to take advantage of.
When are people on both the right and left going to learn. There is no one in the middle east who’s values actually align with yours. So stop supporting a side and lets get our selves completely out of not our business.
Though genocide is our business so that’s the one time we should take a side.
But in everything else where we’ve taken a side it has been a mistake. Folk on all sides of the middle east project to the west an image they hope will garner sympathy in hopes we will fight wars for them and they can avoid fighting their own wars. “Genuineness” is a uniquely western thing to see as a positive value. Absolutely no culture in the middle east values presenting an honest image of themselves to us. The idea of that being socially positive or necessary for their own sense of ethics is literally foreign to them. I’m not trying to single out Muslim countries or Israel. What I’m saying is we in the west do in fact have values that are particular to us, and we need to stop imagining those values on others. That’s why the whole of the middle east is like that. Because they aren’t us.
Then the other thing we should understand is that all sides employ what are basically professional communicators who study our culture and use what they understand of it to manipulate us. So we get dragged into problems that aren’t ours and expose ourselves to actual security threats as a result.
The Kurds are pretty based, all things considered. They deserved better.
Which values? I have met authoritarians, democrats, socialists, and theocrats in Missouri. Why should Yemen be different? I find this “East vs. West” cultural/values narrative to be a convenient fiction for demagogues to take advantage of.