Rick Wilson writing about Piker several weeks ago. This struck me as spot on:
He has also said America deserved 9/11, said he’d pick Hamas over Israel every time, and produces roughly six hours of unedited content a day, which is six hours a day of raw material for a hundred 30-second spots.
Here’s the professional read: the general election voter in Grand Rapids or Waukesha has no idea who this man is and will never watch a minute of Twitch. The average voter is 65, not 25.
That older, average voter will absolutely see the clip of him defending the 9/11 attack because the line is a perfect ad clip.
The clip requires no context and brooks no argument. It is an easy ad play for the MAGA GOP right now, and every Republican media firm in the country has the reel cut already. Piker won’t have to answer for it, but every Democratic candidate will.
I don't agree that it's pointless to debate who is worse. Piker is in a separate class from Cheney and the vast majority of politicians and public figures, or normies for that matter.
Piker crosses our universal moral taboos by openly expressing overt, hateful, eliminationist bigotry. The best comp is David Duke, and Piker and anybody who sanitizes his hate should be treated the same way we did with Duke and his associates, ostracized out of polite society and our mainstream politics. This is the only way we can defeat hate movements, marginalize them to the fringes, make their hate taboo and socially radioactive to touch.
By rational standards, Piker is worse than David Duke. Piker dressed up as Mao, a man responsible for 50-100 million deaths. Duke might have wanted to bring back Jim Crow, but he didn’t support actual mass murder by the million.
That's a totally fair argument. While I don't like binaries and dividing anything in the world into two, there's one I do support. People who cross this uncrossable line vs people who don't. Piker, Duke, Fuentes, etc. all fall on the wrong side of that line. If one wants to argue that others like Mamdani, AES, Carlson, etc. haven't explicitly and egregiously crossed that line to the same degree, that's fine, but their open and uncritical association with these hateful bigots should make them persona non grata too.
George W Bush established the DHS/ICE, legitimized torture and lied us into a war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Trumpism would not be possible if not for what Bush started. I won’t even comment on Piker because I don’t like much of what he says either but I think it’s kind of disgusting that anybody associated with his administration would be legitimized and that even though he has far more blood on his hands than Piker would ever be capable of you think that people associated with his administration are somehow less beyond the pale. Shows you’re indifferent to the suffering of anybody who isn’t American.
The actual number is probably closer to a half a million, or at least most academic estimates gravitated toward that range. And these are not people ideologically inclined to undercount.
I disagree with Liz Cheney about the Iraq War, but it wasn’t intentional genocide along Maoist lines.
It was to appeal to moderate Republicans. It didn’t work, but I’d argue that was absolutely Harris’s fault for taking loony positions in 2020, not Cheney’s fault.
I understood what Harris & co. were going for with the Liz Cheney endorsement, but tactically speaking I would argue that it was an own goal--American voters are not generally fond of percieved "Washington insiders," and the Cheney family certainly qualifies.
"American voters are not generally fond of percieved "Washington insiders," and the Cheney family certainly qualifies."
Oh, yes. "In Cheney’s case, if even a Republican considers Trump beyond the pale, maybe some of what is being screeched about on MSNBC is true."
Can't Jeff see this was *precisely* Trump's appeal back in 2016? The establishment Republicans hated him, and you can't get much more establishment than the Cheneys. For the ordinary working class/blue collar/lower middle class voter, the fact that the champagne-swilling country club Republican insiders were losing their goddamn minds about Trump was a very, very big plus. Maybe he wouldn't actually drain the swamp, but at least he was the first guy talking openly about the swamp and promising to do something about it.
Liz Cheney is the daughter of Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney with the Halliburton connections, the Vietnam War deferments (while sending your sons to Iraq to fight for his oil interests), all the rest of it. And they are party insiders, who lost a lot of their influence and power thanks to Trump. So now they are going to the aid of the rivals of their party for no higher motive than revenge, all dressed up in language of "country before party".
The stench of hypocrisy was not a good perfume for Harris to douse herself in.
I hope we've learned that maybe the establishment isn't actually all that bad, considering the likely alternatives. Because it's never well-read, intelligent, rational, good-hearted people who put that much energy into their tirades about "the establishment."
Yeah, much like with the establishment's reaction to Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, you're only supposed to say "please don't throw me in the briar patch" if you actually WANT to end up in the briar patch.
I you look at it from the perspective of the 33% of Americans that are self described moderates, it did more to damage the reputation of liberals than it did Harris (who was already known to be inconsistent).
Concerning Yoko Ono and der Führer: back in the day, Village Voice writers Pete Hamill and Jack Newfield challenged one another to list the three biggest monsters of the twentieth century in order of monstrosity. They both came up with Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers who moved the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
And yeah, lefty hyperventilating about the Harris - Cheney events is a giant exercise in bad faith.
They should have instead been angry with Robert Moses, who blocked the construction of a privately funded field at a location convenient to transportation.
I am sure that Messrs. Hamill and Newfield knew all about Moses’s misdeeds. But for two sons of Brooklyn (with a sense of humor), the Dodgers moving to California was an incurable trauma.
Wouldn't say it hurt, but you're right it didn't help. She wasn't going to be able to court Republicans to vote for her, especially with the perception of being too far to the left. Moderates and undecideds either don't like the Cheney name or don't care. No real upside to it.
Still, the fact that the best argument leftists have is "aha, you did this thing that was ALSO stupid," well...
Liz Cheney is the only politician that I have witnessed putting country above self. I've seen politicians say and do the right thing, but it's always when the right thing is in their interest. Cheney did the right thing when the right thing was inconvenient, when the right thing carried serious negative consequences. I'd vote for her in a heartbeat, wouldn't even care what her platform was. Character matters.
I think what the pairing showed was the answer to the question "could there possibly be a candidate with worse political instincts and platform presence than Liz Cheney?" To which the obvious answer was, "why, yes, yes, there could be" and was on stage with her (but only two times).
Liz Cheney does not have bad political instincts. What she has is principles, which led her to stand up to Trump. If she had followed her political instincts, she would have caved to him like all the other craven elected Republicans.
Yes, and those principles are "the families who have been running things should always keep running things, forever and ever, world without end, amen."
I’d say it was more to court disaffected republicans by propping Harris up as a “just not-liberal enough to hold your nose and vote for her” candidate for the Legacy repubs who arent fully unboard with the Crazy Train, rather than just that Liz Cheney is a liberal. Because at that point you could have gotten anyone to go up on that stage with Harris if you JUST wanted a liberal or even a liberal convert. I think you are underrating the whole permission structure thing
I agree with your point that Liz Cheney with Harris is a nod to bipartisanship and “country over party”.
But there is a more fundamental difference. Liz Cheney is daughter of an ass-hat, but is not herself an asshat. Piker is himself an asshat, dipshit, and moron, all rolled into one.
Repudiating the Cheney legacy allowed the MAGA faction to re-brand the GOP as a party that was not going to drag us into pointless quagmires in the Middle East, not going to instrumentalize American foreign policy to enrich the administration's cronies, not going to continue the trend of corrupt and myopic governance by nepotism, and above all not going to jack up the deficit while deregulating the economy right into a sinkhole.
Results of this re-brand have been, at best, mixed.
I understand you're not playing the "Who is less bad" game, but I will: it is objectively insane that palling around with Cheney could be more controversial than palling around with Piker. The extremely online people haven't moved the Overton window--they've nuked it.
"Harris appearing with Cheney represented Cheney adopting Democratic views, not Harris adopting Republican views."
No, Jeff, it was "Harris has no views of her own, only what her focus groups tell her will get votes so she can get elected". Plus Liz Cheney being "I'll do anything" but Cheney is a problem for the Republicans to deal with.
I was highly amused by the Democratic candidate going for the endorsement of Dick "The Devil" Cheney. "It was only two appearances with Liz"? Yes, and McGregor only fucked that goat *one* time but still everyone calls him "McGregor the Goat Fucker" 🤣
Did Liz disavow Dad and his works and all his empty promises? Not that I heard of. Did the Harris campaign publicise that The Devil was endorsing their gal? Yes, they did:
So we are left with two conclusions to draw from all this, as regards the Democratic Party candidate:
(1) She was an empty suit, veering from position to position according to what her staff told her to say in order to appeal to [insert vocally online interest group of your choice]. Her core and sole policy position was "I should be in power, and I'll do whatever it takes to get there"
and
(2) All the rhetoric of yore from the Democrats about Cheney's time in office - the warmongering, the over-reach, expansion of presidential power past its proper limits, the corporate and oil industry shill urging war in order to steal national resources for profit for him and his cronies, the war criminal, all the rest of it - well shucks, we didn't mean a word of it, it's just business baby!
I know you don't speak ill of the dead, and I certainly would not expect her to dance on his grave, but this statement? About Darth Cheney?
“Vice President Cheney was a devoted public servant, from the halls of Congress to many positions of leadership in multiple presidential administrations,” she added. “His passing marks the loss of a figure who, with a strong sense of dedication, gave so much of his life to the country he loved.”
Piker's audience is El-Sayed's base; they believe the same things. There was only one thing Harris and Cheney were aligned on: Trump was unfit for office.
When El-Sayed was on "The Breakfast Club" he and Charlamagne had this exchange:
"CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: As a Muslim man, you know what it feels like to have an entire community judging you through the actions of some - a few extremists, right? Do you have a special responsibility to recognize when Jewish Americans feel that same collective judgment happening to them?
ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah. I mean, this is the thing: Judaism and the Jewish people are not the same as Israel and AIPAC. They're not the same.
CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: I wish more people would say that.
ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah, and I think it needs to be said.
And, you know, I always use the example of Egypt. My family immigrated from Egypt. When I'm elected, I'm probably going to be the loudest critic of the Egyptian government in the whole U.S. Senate.
And I would hate if somebody were to say, "Well, you're now accountable for what the government of Egypt did because you happen to share the same ethnicity of the people who live there."
And so I think we have to take great care not to allow what are righteous criticisms of the Israeli government to then cast upon Judaism or the Jewish people anywhere. And holding that line is really critical.
And you asked me earlier about Hasan. That's the point at which, when you look at the clip that was circulated, that's the point at which you're like, "Hey, you have the right to your advocacy, even if it's something I disagree with, and nobody should ever feel justified to do harm to you."
And whether it was intended to be said, or that's how it came out, it's really important for us, whatever platform we have, that we're constantly operating in that, like, first-do-no-harm principle that I learned in med school, which is you cannot put communities in harm's way as they advocate or you advocate.
You just advocate for the thing that you believe in and why, and make the argument with the passion you need to make it, but recognize that because you disagree in an argument does not ever justify anybody doing physical harm to the folks with whom you disagree."
Setting aside the pablum, this is a good answer from El-Sayed, because it's true, but what is alarming is that he won't apply the logic to American citizens, and he wants to be an American senator who would be responsible for the lives, liberties and properties of other Americans. When he's asked about 9/11 he always ties it to American imperialism and the War on Terror. But office workers in the Twin Towers and passengers on commercial aircraft and all the emergency rescue workers who died were not setting any policy that Bin Laden could claim were oppressing anyone.
There is a reason why Muslim's generally get viewed more suspiciously than Jews from the middle in the US. El-Sayid's point is the correct perspective, but man do you see a lot more Jews be much more willing to disagree and be vocally outspoken against the excesses of Israel in the US than you see of Muslims in the US be vocal and outspoken against the excesses of Hamas and Iran and things like that. Not only that, but the Muslims who are outspoken against Hamas and Iran also have to deal with death threats and safety issues from other Muslims in a way that Jews have never had to worry about from Israel.
Yet somehow Mossad is the bogeyman. There have been actual attempts on people's lives in the US from IRGC and things like that, there have not been any cases discovered of Mossad doing the same.
I would get it if you are talking about other countries that are not really allies with Israel, Israel has no qualms about using Mossad in those places (neither does the IRGC, but Mossad is more competent at getting results), but in the US Mossad being this boogeyman makes no sense based on actions, only reason why it does to people is that they are in a jew blaming default mode for life.
After Mossad did that beeper operation against Hezbollah, I spoke into my personal cassette recorder, "Uh, note to self: don't ever get on Mossad's bad side." Those guys could kill someone using a paper cut from a fax machine.
true, but at least you know that they are not influencing your thoughts with propaganda campaigns, they and the Israelis suck at those, the IRGC will try to use propaganda to influence you and those around you.
Except that El-Sayed is deliberately implying American Jews who support Israel's existence as the one and only Jewish state (which El-Sayed does not) *do* deserve the hatred, harassment, exclusion, violence and murder inflicted on them. He's peddling a bullshit assertion that most Jews hate the country that protects more than half of the world's Jews as much as he does, and THAT is the reason they (supposedly) shouldn't be physically attacked. (I highly doubt he believes antizionist Jews shouldn't be murdered either). But that's what he is selling.
The vast majority of Jews, American and otherwise, support Israel as a Jewish homeland and don't need a radical Muslim who is vocally endorsed by the worst Jewhaters on both sides of the political divide and who defended a Hezbollah-linked terrorist who tried to blow up 140 Jewish kids in a synagogue, pontificating to them what Judaism or Israel is or isn't. Yeah it's a "good answer" ... politically, because it's targeted at the ignorant, naive and those seeking cover for their desire to see the Jewish people destroyed. And those are the people who buy it.
El-Sayed and his followers are the reasons Jews have to spend $1 billion annually on armed security at their temples. Just to keep from being slaughtered by the scum whipped up by the hatred El-Sayed pimps with a smirk on his face. If he is elected, he will do nothing--zero--while in office other than use his power to maximize the slaughter of Israeli civilians by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. and continue to incite violence against American Jews.
Abdul El-Sayed is a jihadist. His goal is to destroy Israel and the Jews first, and America next. That's it. That is the entire reason he exists.
I think people misunderstand the Liz Cheney strategy. I think it was a high-concept play to placate/flatter her most engaged supporters.
If you had asked me in October 2024 what my top issue was, I would have said “rule of law/democracy” because I believed (and still do) that almost every other issue I care about needs that foundation and Trump would have severely weakened it (easiest prediction ever!) I think campaigning with Cheney was a way to address this: “look how much I care about rule of law/democracy- I’m campaigning with someone who ALSO cares about those things, even though we have SEVERE policy disagreements.” It’s a great way to reach someone like me, who cares a lot about that issue.
The problem is- I already believed it. I believed then- and now- that both Harris and Cheney are honorable people who believe in the rule of law. She already had my vote, so what was the point in pandering to me in this way? That was just wasted time that could have been spent more directly appealing to swing voters who prioritized other issues.
This country needs badly to move beyond our tribal and partisan "us vs. them" orientation. We are already amid trying times and headed for worse, and the best thing that could happen is to create a unified spirit aimed at understanding everyone's viewpoint and choosing compromises that allow us to go forward. If people acknowledged each others' thoughts and treated each other respectfully, people would stop being so hardened in their positions and be more willing to work together. Though barring some external threat I don't think that's going to happen.
Rick Wilson writing about Piker several weeks ago. This struck me as spot on:
He has also said America deserved 9/11, said he’d pick Hamas over Israel every time, and produces roughly six hours of unedited content a day, which is six hours a day of raw material for a hundred 30-second spots.
Here’s the professional read: the general election voter in Grand Rapids or Waukesha has no idea who this man is and will never watch a minute of Twitch. The average voter is 65, not 25.
That older, average voter will absolutely see the clip of him defending the 9/11 attack because the line is a perfect ad clip.
The clip requires no context and brooks no argument. It is an easy ad play for the MAGA GOP right now, and every Republican media firm in the country has the reel cut already. Piker won’t have to answer for it, but every Democratic candidate will.
Ben: Yes, and Sayid is behind in the polls and will lose Dems a safe seat because of it.....
I completely agree. Piker is the anchor around el-sayed’s proverbial neck. An obvious own-goal that I hope others will learn from.
I don't agree that it's pointless to debate who is worse. Piker is in a separate class from Cheney and the vast majority of politicians and public figures, or normies for that matter.
Piker crosses our universal moral taboos by openly expressing overt, hateful, eliminationist bigotry. The best comp is David Duke, and Piker and anybody who sanitizes his hate should be treated the same way we did with Duke and his associates, ostracized out of polite society and our mainstream politics. This is the only way we can defeat hate movements, marginalize them to the fringes, make their hate taboo and socially radioactive to touch.
https://elevin11.substack.com/p/differences-of-degrees-and-kind
By rational standards, Piker is worse than David Duke. Piker dressed up as Mao, a man responsible for 50-100 million deaths. Duke might have wanted to bring back Jim Crow, but he didn’t support actual mass murder by the million.
That's a totally fair argument. While I don't like binaries and dividing anything in the world into two, there's one I do support. People who cross this uncrossable line vs people who don't. Piker, Duke, Fuentes, etc. all fall on the wrong side of that line. If one wants to argue that others like Mamdani, AES, Carlson, etc. haven't explicitly and egregiously crossed that line to the same degree, that's fine, but their open and uncritical association with these hateful bigots should make them persona non grata too.
Uhhh David Duke literally denies the holocaust, what the fuck?
And Hassan Piker denies communist genocides, which are more numerous and widespread. Worse, he seeks to do it again.
George W Bush established the DHS/ICE, legitimized torture and lied us into a war that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths. Trumpism would not be possible if not for what Bush started. I won’t even comment on Piker because I don’t like much of what he says either but I think it’s kind of disgusting that anybody associated with his administration would be legitimized and that even though he has far more blood on his hands than Piker would ever be capable of you think that people associated with his administration are somehow less beyond the pale. Shows you’re indifferent to the suffering of anybody who isn’t American.
Why is supporting a war that led to the deaths of over a million Iraqis not a red line?
The actual number is probably closer to a half a million, or at least most academic estimates gravitated toward that range. And these are not people ideologically inclined to undercount.
I disagree with Liz Cheney about the Iraq War, but it wasn’t intentional genocide along Maoist lines.
It was to appeal to moderate Republicans. It didn’t work, but I’d argue that was absolutely Harris’s fault for taking loony positions in 2020, not Cheney’s fault.
I understood what Harris & co. were going for with the Liz Cheney endorsement, but tactically speaking I would argue that it was an own goal--American voters are not generally fond of percieved "Washington insiders," and the Cheney family certainly qualifies.
"American voters are not generally fond of percieved "Washington insiders," and the Cheney family certainly qualifies."
Oh, yes. "In Cheney’s case, if even a Republican considers Trump beyond the pale, maybe some of what is being screeched about on MSNBC is true."
Can't Jeff see this was *precisely* Trump's appeal back in 2016? The establishment Republicans hated him, and you can't get much more establishment than the Cheneys. For the ordinary working class/blue collar/lower middle class voter, the fact that the champagne-swilling country club Republican insiders were losing their goddamn minds about Trump was a very, very big plus. Maybe he wouldn't actually drain the swamp, but at least he was the first guy talking openly about the swamp and promising to do something about it.
Liz Cheney is the daughter of Dick Cheney, Dick Cheney with the Halliburton connections, the Vietnam War deferments (while sending your sons to Iraq to fight for his oil interests), all the rest of it. And they are party insiders, who lost a lot of their influence and power thanks to Trump. So now they are going to the aid of the rivals of their party for no higher motive than revenge, all dressed up in language of "country before party".
The stench of hypocrisy was not a good perfume for Harris to douse herself in.
I hope we've learned that maybe the establishment isn't actually all that bad, considering the likely alternatives. Because it's never well-read, intelligent, rational, good-hearted people who put that much energy into their tirades about "the establishment."
Yeah, much like with the establishment's reaction to Jeremy Corbyn in the UK, you're only supposed to say "please don't throw me in the briar patch" if you actually WANT to end up in the briar patch.
I you look at it from the perspective of the 33% of Americans that are self described moderates, it did more to damage the reputation of liberals than it did Harris (who was already known to be inconsistent).
The Iraq war would have had at least some rationality if it had secured oil interests.
Concerning Yoko Ono and der Führer: back in the day, Village Voice writers Pete Hamill and Jack Newfield challenged one another to list the three biggest monsters of the twentieth century in order of monstrosity. They both came up with Hitler, Stalin, and Walter O’Malley, the owner of the Dodgers who moved the team from Brooklyn to Los Angeles.
And yeah, lefty hyperventilating about the Harris - Cheney events is a giant exercise in bad faith.
They should have instead been angry with Robert Moses, who blocked the construction of a privately funded field at a location convenient to transportation.
I am sure that Messrs. Hamill and Newfield knew all about Moses’s misdeeds. But for two sons of Brooklyn (with a sense of humor), the Dodgers moving to California was an incurable trauma.
Anybody who thinks her events with Cheney actually hurt Harris is at least as dumb as the people on her campaign staff who thought it would help.
Wouldn't say it hurt, but you're right it didn't help. She wasn't going to be able to court Republicans to vote for her, especially with the perception of being too far to the left. Moderates and undecideds either don't like the Cheney name or don't care. No real upside to it.
Still, the fact that the best argument leftists have is "aha, you did this thing that was ALSO stupid," well...
Liz Cheney is the only politician that I have witnessed putting country above self. I've seen politicians say and do the right thing, but it's always when the right thing is in their interest. Cheney did the right thing when the right thing was inconvenient, when the right thing carried serious negative consequences. I'd vote for her in a heartbeat, wouldn't even care what her platform was. Character matters.
I think what the pairing showed was the answer to the question "could there possibly be a candidate with worse political instincts and platform presence than Liz Cheney?" To which the obvious answer was, "why, yes, yes, there could be" and was on stage with her (but only two times).
Liz Cheney does not have bad political instincts. What she has is principles, which led her to stand up to Trump. If she had followed her political instincts, she would have caved to him like all the other craven elected Republicans.
Cheney didn't have to cave to Trump to keep her job. All she had to do was shut up about him once in a while.
Yes, and those principles are "the families who have been running things should always keep running things, forever and ever, world without end, amen."
She was supporting Harris, whose family had never held office.
And had done absolutely nothing to indicate that she would upset the apple cart in any meaningful way.
So then why did she tank her political career to repudiate Trump? Thanks to her, the Cheney family has lost all its former political might.
Wouldn't be the first time a politico made a bad call.
I’d say it was more to court disaffected republicans by propping Harris up as a “just not-liberal enough to hold your nose and vote for her” candidate for the Legacy repubs who arent fully unboard with the Crazy Train, rather than just that Liz Cheney is a liberal. Because at that point you could have gotten anyone to go up on that stage with Harris if you JUST wanted a liberal or even a liberal convert. I think you are underrating the whole permission structure thing
I agree with your point that Liz Cheney with Harris is a nod to bipartisanship and “country over party”.
But there is a more fundamental difference. Liz Cheney is daughter of an ass-hat, but is not herself an asshat. Piker is himself an asshat, dipshit, and moron, all rolled into one.
Repudiating the Cheney legacy allowed the MAGA faction to re-brand the GOP as a party that was not going to drag us into pointless quagmires in the Middle East, not going to instrumentalize American foreign policy to enrich the administration's cronies, not going to continue the trend of corrupt and myopic governance by nepotism, and above all not going to jack up the deficit while deregulating the economy right into a sinkhole.
Results of this re-brand have been, at best, mixed.
I understand you're not playing the "Who is less bad" game, but I will: it is objectively insane that palling around with Cheney could be more controversial than palling around with Piker. The extremely online people haven't moved the Overton window--they've nuked it.
"Harris appearing with Cheney represented Cheney adopting Democratic views, not Harris adopting Republican views."
No, Jeff, it was "Harris has no views of her own, only what her focus groups tell her will get votes so she can get elected". Plus Liz Cheney being "I'll do anything" but Cheney is a problem for the Republicans to deal with.
I was highly amused by the Democratic candidate going for the endorsement of Dick "The Devil" Cheney. "It was only two appearances with Liz"? Yes, and McGregor only fucked that goat *one* time but still everyone calls him "McGregor the Goat Fucker" 🤣
Did Liz disavow Dad and his works and all his empty promises? Not that I heard of. Did the Harris campaign publicise that The Devil was endorsing their gal? Yes, they did:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz07zlr58vvo
So we are left with two conclusions to draw from all this, as regards the Democratic Party candidate:
(1) She was an empty suit, veering from position to position according to what her staff told her to say in order to appeal to [insert vocally online interest group of your choice]. Her core and sole policy position was "I should be in power, and I'll do whatever it takes to get there"
and
(2) All the rhetoric of yore from the Democrats about Cheney's time in office - the warmongering, the over-reach, expansion of presidential power past its proper limits, the corporate and oil industry shill urging war in order to steal national resources for profit for him and his cronies, the war criminal, all the rest of it - well shucks, we didn't mean a word of it, it's just business baby!
I know you don't speak ill of the dead, and I certainly would not expect her to dance on his grave, but this statement? About Darth Cheney?
“Vice President Cheney was a devoted public servant, from the halls of Congress to many positions of leadership in multiple presidential administrations,” she added. “His passing marks the loss of a figure who, with a strong sense of dedication, gave so much of his life to the country he loved.”
Well, that's politics, I guess!
Piker's audience is El-Sayed's base; they believe the same things. There was only one thing Harris and Cheney were aligned on: Trump was unfit for office.
When El-Sayed was on "The Breakfast Club" he and Charlamagne had this exchange:
"CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: As a Muslim man, you know what it feels like to have an entire community judging you through the actions of some - a few extremists, right? Do you have a special responsibility to recognize when Jewish Americans feel that same collective judgment happening to them?
ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah. I mean, this is the thing: Judaism and the Jewish people are not the same as Israel and AIPAC. They're not the same.
CHARLAMAGNE THA GOD: I wish more people would say that.
ABDUL EL-SAYED: Yeah, and I think it needs to be said.
And, you know, I always use the example of Egypt. My family immigrated from Egypt. When I'm elected, I'm probably going to be the loudest critic of the Egyptian government in the whole U.S. Senate.
And I would hate if somebody were to say, "Well, you're now accountable for what the government of Egypt did because you happen to share the same ethnicity of the people who live there."
And so I think we have to take great care not to allow what are righteous criticisms of the Israeli government to then cast upon Judaism or the Jewish people anywhere. And holding that line is really critical.
And you asked me earlier about Hasan. That's the point at which, when you look at the clip that was circulated, that's the point at which you're like, "Hey, you have the right to your advocacy, even if it's something I disagree with, and nobody should ever feel justified to do harm to you."
And whether it was intended to be said, or that's how it came out, it's really important for us, whatever platform we have, that we're constantly operating in that, like, first-do-no-harm principle that I learned in med school, which is you cannot put communities in harm's way as they advocate or you advocate.
You just advocate for the thing that you believe in and why, and make the argument with the passion you need to make it, but recognize that because you disagree in an argument does not ever justify anybody doing physical harm to the folks with whom you disagree."
Setting aside the pablum, this is a good answer from El-Sayed, because it's true, but what is alarming is that he won't apply the logic to American citizens, and he wants to be an American senator who would be responsible for the lives, liberties and properties of other Americans. When he's asked about 9/11 he always ties it to American imperialism and the War on Terror. But office workers in the Twin Towers and passengers on commercial aircraft and all the emergency rescue workers who died were not setting any policy that Bin Laden could claim were oppressing anyone.
There is a reason why Muslim's generally get viewed more suspiciously than Jews from the middle in the US. El-Sayid's point is the correct perspective, but man do you see a lot more Jews be much more willing to disagree and be vocally outspoken against the excesses of Israel in the US than you see of Muslims in the US be vocal and outspoken against the excesses of Hamas and Iran and things like that. Not only that, but the Muslims who are outspoken against Hamas and Iran also have to deal with death threats and safety issues from other Muslims in a way that Jews have never had to worry about from Israel.
Yet somehow Mossad is the bogeyman. There have been actual attempts on people's lives in the US from IRGC and things like that, there have not been any cases discovered of Mossad doing the same.
I would get it if you are talking about other countries that are not really allies with Israel, Israel has no qualms about using Mossad in those places (neither does the IRGC, but Mossad is more competent at getting results), but in the US Mossad being this boogeyman makes no sense based on actions, only reason why it does to people is that they are in a jew blaming default mode for life.
After Mossad did that beeper operation against Hezbollah, I spoke into my personal cassette recorder, "Uh, note to self: don't ever get on Mossad's bad side." Those guys could kill someone using a paper cut from a fax machine.
true, but at least you know that they are not influencing your thoughts with propaganda campaigns, they and the Israelis suck at those, the IRGC will try to use propaganda to influence you and those around you.
Except that El-Sayed is deliberately implying American Jews who support Israel's existence as the one and only Jewish state (which El-Sayed does not) *do* deserve the hatred, harassment, exclusion, violence and murder inflicted on them. He's peddling a bullshit assertion that most Jews hate the country that protects more than half of the world's Jews as much as he does, and THAT is the reason they (supposedly) shouldn't be physically attacked. (I highly doubt he believes antizionist Jews shouldn't be murdered either). But that's what he is selling.
The vast majority of Jews, American and otherwise, support Israel as a Jewish homeland and don't need a radical Muslim who is vocally endorsed by the worst Jewhaters on both sides of the political divide and who defended a Hezbollah-linked terrorist who tried to blow up 140 Jewish kids in a synagogue, pontificating to them what Judaism or Israel is or isn't. Yeah it's a "good answer" ... politically, because it's targeted at the ignorant, naive and those seeking cover for their desire to see the Jewish people destroyed. And those are the people who buy it.
El-Sayed and his followers are the reasons Jews have to spend $1 billion annually on armed security at their temples. Just to keep from being slaughtered by the scum whipped up by the hatred El-Sayed pimps with a smirk on his face. If he is elected, he will do nothing--zero--while in office other than use his power to maximize the slaughter of Israeli civilians by Iran, Hezbollah, Hamas, etc. and continue to incite violence against American Jews.
Abdul El-Sayed is a jihadist. His goal is to destroy Israel and the Jews first, and America next. That's it. That is the entire reason he exists.
Um, actually, he just wants universal healthcare.
I think people misunderstand the Liz Cheney strategy. I think it was a high-concept play to placate/flatter her most engaged supporters.
If you had asked me in October 2024 what my top issue was, I would have said “rule of law/democracy” because I believed (and still do) that almost every other issue I care about needs that foundation and Trump would have severely weakened it (easiest prediction ever!) I think campaigning with Cheney was a way to address this: “look how much I care about rule of law/democracy- I’m campaigning with someone who ALSO cares about those things, even though we have SEVERE policy disagreements.” It’s a great way to reach someone like me, who cares a lot about that issue.
The problem is- I already believed it. I believed then- and now- that both Harris and Cheney are honorable people who believe in the rule of law. She already had my vote, so what was the point in pandering to me in this way? That was just wasted time that could have been spent more directly appealing to swing voters who prioritized other issues.
This country needs badly to move beyond our tribal and partisan "us vs. them" orientation. We are already amid trying times and headed for worse, and the best thing that could happen is to create a unified spirit aimed at understanding everyone's viewpoint and choosing compromises that allow us to go forward. If people acknowledged each others' thoughts and treated each other respectfully, people would stop being so hardened in their positions and be more willing to work together. Though barring some external threat I don't think that's going to happen.