People's failure to understand that fascism is a fairly banal worldview reflects a refusal to understand how common and ordinary looking it is and how well it hides behind our modern high tech lifestyles.

Fascism doesn't have to have 1930s pomposity and daily military parades.

It can look like America, right now, today, depending on who and where you are. America already has military jingoism, mass incarceration, mass surveillance, unchecked paramilitaries, and theocrats denying our rights.

NO.
now is NOT the time to tell people not to criticize Biden. look at what he is doing for #Gaza after almost half a million #Uncommitted votes during these #primaries.

NOW IS THE TIME TO PUSH DEMOCRATS, TO THE LEFT AS HARD AS WE CAN.

Protests work.

Democrats need to be the #antifascist party, not the party of meeting the fascists in the middle.

now is the time for all democrats to act like members of an antifascist party and not as just the opposition.

#USpol #2024Elections #SOTU

I saw a big drama about a new AI word game.
People said it was ethical AI, that it was "harmless" and "just for fun" and didn't infringe on anyone.

You play it by combining two words to make a new word, e.g "Water" + "Fire" makes "Steam", "Shark" + "Hurricane" makes "Sharknado", etc.

I went to play it myself and sure enough, it seemed harmless and the endless combinations were fun.

Then I found that "Palestine" + "Child" makes "Terrorist".

#InfiniteCraft #AIethics

POWERFUL statement by 102 year old philosopher and WW2 Jewish resistant Edgar Morin. You have to read every word, but here how he ends:

“At least, I say: bear witness! The only thing that remains if we cannot resist concretely is to testify. Let's resist in our minds, let's not be fooled, let's not forget, let's have the courage to face things head-on." #Gaza

https://twitter.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1757971532218044827

When I was a kid, and even into adulthood, I wondered how people could live in places where, down the street (figuratively or literally), horrors were being committed. How could they get out of bed? How could they go to work? How could they go to birthday parties and social occasions, dancing and singing while thousands of innocent people were being killed not 100 kilometers away? Isn't this a horrible complicity that reflects a deep moral failure?
I was reminded of this recently, reading a review of The Zone of Interest, https://jacobin.com/2024/02/zone-of-interest-holocaust-film

And here I am, living in Jerusalem, teaching classes, sipping coffee with friends, going to see movies, while the siege on Gaza continues.

It isn't that I don't feel guilty. It isn't that I'm not in shock and grief about the images and stories I read every day. But I feel so helpless, and I am scared to speak my mind for seemingly no benefit and only great social cost, and at some point that sense of helplessness became psychological distancing.

I don't want to think this is cowardice, but I really don't know. Maybe it is. I wish I were stronger, I wish I felt like I could do something, but I don't.
I hope some day in the future I am able to articulate what this has been like to go through. For now I don't have the words, except to say that I'm sorry. I don't even know for what right now, but I'm sorry.

#israel #Palestine #gaza #alienation