Worth considering that Neely was merely behaving in an erratic way that made people on the train feel unsafe, while Thompson is a man who made decisions that literally killed people. I guess I don’t feel good about murder, but all of these situations are such gray areas. In the case of Mangioni/Thompson, Mangioni saw a trolley problem where people were already getting run over, and he could get run over himself and let the same rate of death continue, or get run over while pulling the lever to put the trolley on a track that might have fewer people tied to it. I certainly can’t see my way to the conclusion that what he did was clearly wrong.

All the policy goals are the same as what’s been in the Republican platform for decades. The only thing Project 2025 adds is how to get there. Is Trump a useful idiot? Maybe, although it would be silly to operate under that assumption rather than believing he’s just as committed as the rest of them. Either way, the idea having seeped into the popular consciousness of the American voter that Project 2025 is something other than a serious plan for a Republican administration is an astonishing bit of doublethink. Orwell spins like a turbine in his grave.

Look, I left something unsaid, certainly. I can’t say that this particular incident would have happened or not if Israel were not currently engaged in genocidal acts on a daily basis. What I can say is that Israel clearly uses antisemitism as a shield and a pretense for those genocidal acts, and in less dire times, for the decades of lower level but equally unjust and horrific oppression that has characterized the occupation of Palestine from the beginning.

The ONLY time I experienced targeted antisemitism (graffiti & threats at my synagogue) as an American Jew growing up in a liberal area, was in the lead up to the second intifada as the Camp David Accords fell apart. So yes, antisemites are responsible for their own antisemitism, and antisemitism like any kind of prejudice is fundamentally unjustifiable - of course. And no, by that token, of course nothing Israel could do would justify antisemitism. What a moralistic statement like that misses, however, is the reality that antisemitism ebbs and flows with the state of the conflict in the holy land, and that Israel uses it as a self-reinforcing narrative to justify their ongoing crimes against humanity, paradoxically reinforcing the very thing they claim to be fighting against, and making the world less safe for the people they claim to fight for.

And to make it all very clear. I am blaming antisemites for antisemitism. Conflating Jewish identity with the state of Israel is antisemitic. Zionists are antisemitic.

Israel is not only less safe for Jews than anywhere else in the world they live, but it also makes Jews in those other places less safe as a result of its belligerence. As a born, raised, bar mitzvah’d and confirmed Jew, fuck Israel.

Hey, it’s my god given right to take it up the ass from corporations. I’m voting for Trump so he can reverse this radical marxist fascist rule on day one.