For a generation that inherited a post-war golden age of utopian Americana and made it their life’s work to usher in the end-stage capitalist hellscape that is the modern United States, Boomers are awfully keen to ridicule those who came after them.
Enjoyed this article Keaton... but, it’s interesting how many of these pieces overlook the role of Gen X. Granted we are the smallest generation, but we are the bridge between the Boomer “greed is good” generation and Millennials & Zoomers. In general we are a cynical bunch who mostly had to raise ourselves. A lot of our heroes died of overdoes for a reason. Some of us older Gen X were already young adults when the internet first became available, and as such we had to “red pill” ourselves through random message boards and hints of ideas which sounded like crazy conspiracies. Many of the people I worked in the Bernie “movement”, for that is what we thought of it at the time, we’re older Gen X women with kids (not the proverbial “Bros”). I see the true possibility of revolution now as the government blatantly commits genocide in Gaza while hollowing out the US in service of corporations, but what hope do we give to our kids? Our young Gen Z’s are becoming adults and right now we cannot offer anything but the idea that the American Project was all a scam...
We are the generation that stopped going to church while pinching our noses being force fed all this shit. No strange thing to forget GenX but we are the Stockholm Syndrome generation actually raised by these assholes.
So what’s BS? That Gen X wasn’t full of PTS, drug addiction, mental illness and suicide? That Gen X wasn’t largely the product of divorce from the children of the greatest generation? It’s interesting that you bring up that “greatest” generation because I remember them. I grew up with them talking about the depression & WWII. There were soldiers in my family. There were concentration camp survivors in my family. These survivors had PTS which was definitely imparted to us as kids. And these adults *didn’t* really know the half of what was going on. Nothing like what we know about our 21st c. Genocide in Gaza, in real time. I’m trying to understand how I help the Gen Z’s process the horrific and hopeless information coming at them. AND the whole point of my comment was, as Gen X, to NOT be erased from the conversation!
I remember the greatest generation being openly, casually racist - almost all the time. I loved my grandfather but damn he had a “nigger joke” for everything.
BINGO my granny wouldn't go an hour and complain about fags or blacks for fucking up the world, and that was in the 1970's
She would talk daily about the 1950's & earlier LA 'sunset laws' where blacks weren't allowed out after dark and how a woman could safely go anywhere in the city;
What I was trying to say is it’s easy to cast blame at those before you.. but all previous generations had drug addicts, suicides, mental illness etc .. it just wasn’t discussed in “open” ... imagine dealing with all that & a
DEPESSION & World War... we’ve never experienced anything like that in our lifetimes &
This borderline boomer agrees with you. Born in 1962, raised in the Vietnam war era, I rejected the anti-war sentiment in the 90's, with much success. Raised a family, started a successful business, embraced the propaganda of the times. The last 4 years (or longer) has me realizing we don't really have a capitalistic system in the free world. You aren't rejecting capitalism, you are rejecting the lies that built and maintain the war machine. Kudos to you.
So because the political elite have lied and manipulated responses to geopolitical events, your solution is just tossing the whole damn baby out with the bath water? Just shitcan capitalism because selfish people exist? And how would that change in a Democratic Socialist society, exactly? In a Marxist utopia?
The essay is a mess of oversimplification. You sound like you haven’t really lived long or in many places. I highly recommend some travel. Go to rural areas, VFW halls, mining towns, all over America and have some serious conversations with the people. Ask them questions. Listen to their answers. Heck, talk seriously with your grandparents.
You might find you have a lot in common about what’s ailing this country, but I suspect the causes and solutions might be where you differ.
Go somewhere and get some real historical perspective- not the manufactured bs offered on college campuses.
Then take a trip overseas. Ask what it would take to become a citizen.
Have you really compared the tenets of the world’s religions?
For starters, it has nothing to do with the topic of the article. The article is about Osama Bin Laden's letter to America and the censorship surrounding it. You then went off on a rant about how great Capitalism and how people should go talk to other people, which has nothing to do with the topic of the article.
And your rant was just you whining about criticism of Capitalism.
I’m sorry, but my interpretation is different from yours in that it’s about far more than just the letter. In my view, it’s about what has been unleashed - a generation loosed from the bonds that have held them back and ready now to change the world from the evil of capitalism.
Because I have listened and heeded the experience of others who’ve lived the lies of socialism and communism first hand.
Because my grandfathers escaped oppression and had to start fresh with sweat and hard labor and his brain. They didn’t land here in a tech boom.
Because I wasn’t born into wealth and understand that a happy, contented life is dependent on gratitude and sacrifice for others.
Because I know that human beings are flawed, and therefore the ages of humanity have very clear patterns. Greed and jealousy will never go away, my friends, no matter what economic system you choose.
What are all of you grateful for in your lives? What have you freely sacrificed in your life for others? What have you shared of yourselves for the benefit of others? Your parents? Grandparents? Siblings? Children?
Have you considered seen what life is like in Cuba? Venezuela? China?
Are you prepared to have every single thing you enjoy today- food, clothing, housing, money, speech, education, association, religion - dependent on saying and doing the things deemed acceptable by your government?
Are you prepared to give up all your personal property?
Are you prepared to have leaders a half a world away who have no idea what you’re life is like making decisions that directly impact you, while you have absolutely no way to make changes?
Living in freedom requires taking a lot of responsibility. Are you willing to give up absolutely everything so that government can care for your every need? Because that’s exactly what lies ahead in such a revolution.
There really is nothing new under the sun. All human endeavors are subject to the flaws if the human beings who participate in them.
Zoomers are or were as ignorant of any reason behind 9/11 as Boomers were of what came before Pearl Harbor. To this day, WWII is called the Good War, even by those who were anti-war, (or anti-draft). Try googling “Why did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor?” for how many pages it takes to find any source that will illuminate same old old old story: “U.S. government engaged in a series of increasingly stringent economic warfare measures that pushed the Japanese into a predicament that U.S. authorities well understood would probably provoke them to attack U.S. territories and forces in the Pacific region in a quest to secure essential raw materials that the Americans, British, and Dutch (government in exile) had embargoed. . .”
Yeah it seems the newer generation is not as locked into the propaganda because their times are different than when we only had radio and TV and newspapers which the past generation grew up and believed. Funny cause the people in the USSR knew it was bullshit.
Keaton, I like y'all show but your microphone sounds muffled. I think you have it turned up too high or some auto volume thing is making it sound shitty....
The UN created Israel out of European guilt and the horrid dilemma of where to dump those powerful Jews who had managed to survive The Holocaust. If an Israel had to be created it should have been created out of German land. So yes a terrible injustice was done to the Palestinians and yes after WWII the US became a monster of worldwide imperial oppression. But wealthy warlord Bin Laden is not exactly the truth teller we all need to learn from. What kind of monster state do you believe his ilk would usher in? As a working class lesbian woman I am way better off living here, fighting as I have my whole life against US imperialism, than I would be in any Islamic state or the Russian state or the Chinese state. There are no states with clean hands. Men like Bin Laden are not very different from the men who ran western imperialism for the last 3 or 4 centuries. The main difference is how much power they are able to wield. I don’t think Bin Laden did any better than Bush with the power he had.
And you’re quite arrogant. I’m not about to go into the whole history of that tiny sliver of land in response to a brief substack note. Why don’t you do that though since you’re so well informed!
I apologize if I came off as arrogant. It wasn’t my intention.
However, when the mistaken perception out there is that Israel came into existence because the victors “needed a place to dump” the victims, it needs to be addressed.
These people were and are human beings whose presence on that “tiny sliver of land” predates WWII by many millennia. Secondly, those who were liberated from concentration camps really wanted to return to the countries from which they came.
Zionism was fading before the Holocaust. The modern movement only caught fire in the late 19th century because of Russian pogroms. The Jews of early 20th century Germany had little interest in becoming farmers in a land ruled by the Ottoman Turks. And ordinary non political Russian Jews preferred to immigrate to the US. Of course Mizrahi Jews had lived along side the Druze and other Arabs for millennia. The creation of Israel by the UN totally disrupted their lives as well as the lives of the Palestinians. No one gave the indigenous peoples - Arab, Jew or Druze a vote on this partition. I have always thought it was a terrible mistake. A people who had spent centuries as pariahs in Europe now gifted a state destined to be seen by all its neighbors as a pariah state.
I don’t think a ten-fold increase in the Jewish population of Israel happened from the late 1930’s to the 2010’s because Jews didn’t want to be there but were forced. Antisemitism was a very real threat and the idea of returning to a homeland where they could enjoy a national identity instead of suffering discrimination was extremely attractive. Also, this is a place with deep religious roots not only for Muslims, but Jews and Christians too.
It seems to me the current conversation about Israel/Gaza is completely ignoring the religious aspects, both current and historically. What’s happening to the tiny Christian population of Israel right now?
Have you been there, by chance? It’s quite a sobering experience.
During the 1930s & 1940s Jews were being threatened with genocide and no country would take them in. I don’t know how many Jews were able to enter Palestine during those years. I think the Brits did a pretty good job of keeping them out. After WWII and the Holocaust Zionism had a very understandable renaissance and Jews were in need of and clamoring for a homeland of their own. I understand what you’re saying about the religious significance too. But Herzl the father of modern Zionism would have been happy to settle for some land anywhere. For him it was a political solution not a religious attachment. Most Jews were then and even are now pretty secular. It would have been just to carve out a homeland for what was left of European Jewry from Germany. Golda Meir was wrong when she claimed Palestine was a country without a people. Clearly Palestinians had in 1948 and still have now just as strong a tie to the holy land as do the Jews. The current law of return is rubbing salt in the wounds, when any Jew from Brooklyn can find a home in Israel while no Palestinian has been allowed to return to the homes that were theirs until the Nakba. I have no idea how to resolve this ongoing calamity and the longer it goes on the harder people’s hearts become. How will these battling cousins ever manage to live together after all this bloodshed. The whole thing just makes me despair. I haven’t ever been to Israel but I did lose one quarter of my family in the Holocaust.
The letter pretty clearly states they hate us for our freedoms (in particular the freedoms women and gay people enjoy in the West).
There’s certainly a valid critique of America’s terrible foreign policy in there, but it’s undermined a bit when it’s mixed in with calls to convert to Islam and blaming every problem in the Muslim world on “The Jooooooos!”
"The letter pretty clearly states they hate us for our freedoms..."
Did you read the letter? Bin Laden explained the reasons for attacking us: US support for Israel and what they're doing to the Palestinians, US support for atrocities against the Muslim people, the sanctions against Iraq, US support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, and exploitation of Middle Eastern oil.
"There’s certainly a valid critique of America’s terrible foreign policy in there, but it’s undermined a bit when it’s mixed in with calls to convert to Islam and blaming every problem in the Muslim world on “The Jooooooos!”"
So what? Ignore what the letter said because it was written by an Islamic fundamentalist who was radicalized by Western powers intervening in the Middle East?
Great piece on how the Zoomers discovered the actual narrative behind 9/11 and the nefarious doings of the US in the Middle East.
In contrast, my generation, the Boomers, of late confine the limits of their political consciousness to Trump Derangement Syndrome and voting Blue-no-matter-Who. Red pills are anathema to their settled and cushy way of life. Hope rests with the young.
Concerning your closing remarks "However, be forewarned: this has left me very disillusioned…I have entered into another timeline.” I have to say: What the hell took you so long to figure that out, I mean to say, "never look at this country the same'? I'm simply amazed at your laziness in NOT studying your own history, it's all there and you simply have to do the work, the research to uncover what this nation, the one and only USofA, has been doing in your name. For a start, read these four works (Howard Zinn's 'A Peoples History of The United States' David Vine's 'The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to The Islamic State' and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's two excellent works 'An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States' and certainly of great importance 'Not A Nation of Immigrants': Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and A History of Erasure and Exclusion') which will give you a great start on what your country has been capable of ever since its beginnings! For me, my education of this Nation began when an Army sergeant came to our door to announce that my oldest brother had died for his Nation (he was drafted) in Vietnam. Believe me when I say, my education began then and there, and it continues to this day as I read some 20-40 books a year as well as reading independent media (stay the hell away from corporate media) daily. And hey, it's a lot of work and it never stops. So please, stop your whining (and I do realize that someone your age never really received an adequate public education, especially the humanities of which history, our history, a true history was never taught to anyone's satisfaction), get busy, continue to educate yourself and share that education, our history, with anyone who will listen.
One last thing, read General Smedley D. Butler's very short (35 pages), getting to the point quickly 'WAR IS A RACKER' A quote from pg1 "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes" as in "The War on Terror" You don't have to be an insider to find out what the "Few" know, you need to do the work, diligently! Now get to it!
The people of Israel are beautiful. I love them and always treasure my interactions. I almost married one and should have - what a warm sensual being she was. Man.
But.... they were sold a bag of lies and have no claim to that land. Hell, I could lose my house in California to squatters!
The 'letter' itself is just an Anti West screed of the sort you'd find in any grievance studies department.
The key accusation is that Israel was created by the United States and therefore the latter has declared war on the Muslim world.
This just isn't factual, the Jews created Israel themselves over many decades preceding the Holocaust.
Which just leaves the rest of the 'letter' which is just a whinge about other aspects of western culture - so yeah, they do hate us because of who we are rather than what we've done.
This whole tiktok phenomenon is just a bunch of kids reveling in confirmation bias of a terrorist manifesto as a result of the indoctrination they've received at University.
1. "The 'letter' itself is just an Anti West screed of the sort you'd find in any grievance studies department."
So, ignore what it says because other people are also saying the same thing? If other people are saying it, wouldn't that be more reason to talk about it?
2. "The key accusation is that Israel was created by the United States and therefore the latter has declared war on the Muslim world."
Except, the letter doesn't say that. It condemns the West for supporting Israel, but it doesn't say that the US created Israel.
3. "This just isn't factual, the Jews created Israel themselves over many decades preceding the Holocaust."
Which the letter doesn't deny. Did you actually read it?
4. "Which just leaves the rest of the 'letter' which is just a whinge about other aspects of western culture -"
Which would be expected of an Islamic Fundamentalist who was radicalized by what Western powers were doing in the Middle East.
5. "so yeah, they do hate us because of who we are rather than what we've done."
Did you actually read the letter? In addition to US support for Israel, they also cited US support for other atrocities against the Muslim people, the sanctions against Iraq, US support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and US/Western exploitation of Middle Eastern oil.
6. "This whole tiktok phenomenon is just a bunch of kids reveling in confirmation bias of a terrorist manifesto as a result of the indoctrination they've received at University."
This is just you complaining that people like me (Gen Z) aren't buying the propaganda of American Exceptionalism anymore. Cry me a river snowflake.
Enjoyed this article Keaton... but, it’s interesting how many of these pieces overlook the role of Gen X. Granted we are the smallest generation, but we are the bridge between the Boomer “greed is good” generation and Millennials & Zoomers. In general we are a cynical bunch who mostly had to raise ourselves. A lot of our heroes died of overdoes for a reason. Some of us older Gen X were already young adults when the internet first became available, and as such we had to “red pill” ourselves through random message boards and hints of ideas which sounded like crazy conspiracies. Many of the people I worked in the Bernie “movement”, for that is what we thought of it at the time, we’re older Gen X women with kids (not the proverbial “Bros”). I see the true possibility of revolution now as the government blatantly commits genocide in Gaza while hollowing out the US in service of corporations, but what hope do we give to our kids? Our young Gen Z’s are becoming adults and right now we cannot offer anything but the idea that the American Project was all a scam...
We are the generation that stopped going to church while pinching our noses being force fed all this shit. No strange thing to forget GenX but we are the Stockholm Syndrome generation actually raised by these assholes.
I call BS .. sorry...
who were your idols who overdosed by self inflicted wounds
My young idols were MURDERED insane individuals, who we are now learning worked for our Govt. ..
Every generation has had their unique issues ... but nothing like our parents & grandparents who remember WW 2 & depression..
So what’s BS? That Gen X wasn’t full of PTS, drug addiction, mental illness and suicide? That Gen X wasn’t largely the product of divorce from the children of the greatest generation? It’s interesting that you bring up that “greatest” generation because I remember them. I grew up with them talking about the depression & WWII. There were soldiers in my family. There were concentration camp survivors in my family. These survivors had PTS which was definitely imparted to us as kids. And these adults *didn’t* really know the half of what was going on. Nothing like what we know about our 21st c. Genocide in Gaza, in real time. I’m trying to understand how I help the Gen Z’s process the horrific and hopeless information coming at them. AND the whole point of my comment was, as Gen X, to NOT be erased from the conversation!
I remember the greatest generation being openly, casually racist - almost all the time. I loved my grandfather but damn he had a “nigger joke” for everything.
BINGO my granny wouldn't go an hour and complain about fags or blacks for fucking up the world, and that was in the 1970's
She would talk daily about the 1950's & earlier LA 'sunset laws' where blacks weren't allowed out after dark and how a woman could safely go anywhere in the city;
What I was trying to say is it’s easy to cast blame at those before you.. but all previous generations had drug addicts, suicides, mental illness etc .. it just wasn’t discussed in “open” ... imagine dealing with all that & a
DEPESSION & World War... we’ve never experienced anything like that in our lifetimes &
Should be extremely grateful that we have NOT 🙏
This borderline boomer agrees with you. Born in 1962, raised in the Vietnam war era, I rejected the anti-war sentiment in the 90's, with much success. Raised a family, started a successful business, embraced the propaganda of the times. The last 4 years (or longer) has me realizing we don't really have a capitalistic system in the free world. You aren't rejecting capitalism, you are rejecting the lies that built and maintain the war machine. Kudos to you.
Thank you - a good analysis. You are now obviously a candidate for coordinated attacks and censorship...
So because the political elite have lied and manipulated responses to geopolitical events, your solution is just tossing the whole damn baby out with the bath water? Just shitcan capitalism because selfish people exist? And how would that change in a Democratic Socialist society, exactly? In a Marxist utopia?
The essay is a mess of oversimplification. You sound like you haven’t really lived long or in many places. I highly recommend some travel. Go to rural areas, VFW halls, mining towns, all over America and have some serious conversations with the people. Ask them questions. Listen to their answers. Heck, talk seriously with your grandparents.
You might find you have a lot in common about what’s ailing this country, but I suspect the causes and solutions might be where you differ.
Go somewhere and get some real historical perspective- not the manufactured bs offered on college campuses.
Then take a trip overseas. Ask what it would take to become a citizen.
Have you really compared the tenets of the world’s religions?
Be very, VERY careful of what you wish for.
This is just an unhinged comment
What exactly is deranged or mentally unbalanced about my comments specifically?
For starters, it has nothing to do with the topic of the article. The article is about Osama Bin Laden's letter to America and the censorship surrounding it. You then went off on a rant about how great Capitalism and how people should go talk to other people, which has nothing to do with the topic of the article.
And your rant was just you whining about criticism of Capitalism.
Here is the letter for those who can't find it, nor want too
https://bilbobitch.substack.com/p/israel-shits-its-pants-as-bin-laden
I’m sorry, but my interpretation is different from yours in that it’s about far more than just the letter. In my view, it’s about what has been unleashed - a generation loosed from the bonds that have held them back and ready now to change the world from the evil of capitalism.
And this sounds bad to yooooou because Why again?
Because I have listened and heeded the experience of others who’ve lived the lies of socialism and communism first hand.
Because my grandfathers escaped oppression and had to start fresh with sweat and hard labor and his brain. They didn’t land here in a tech boom.
Because I wasn’t born into wealth and understand that a happy, contented life is dependent on gratitude and sacrifice for others.
Because I know that human beings are flawed, and therefore the ages of humanity have very clear patterns. Greed and jealousy will never go away, my friends, no matter what economic system you choose.
What are all of you grateful for in your lives? What have you freely sacrificed in your life for others? What have you shared of yourselves for the benefit of others? Your parents? Grandparents? Siblings? Children?
Have you considered seen what life is like in Cuba? Venezuela? China?
Are you prepared to have every single thing you enjoy today- food, clothing, housing, money, speech, education, association, religion - dependent on saying and doing the things deemed acceptable by your government?
Are you prepared to give up all your personal property?
Are you prepared to have leaders a half a world away who have no idea what you’re life is like making decisions that directly impact you, while you have absolutely no way to make changes?
Living in freedom requires taking a lot of responsibility. Are you willing to give up absolutely everything so that government can care for your every need? Because that’s exactly what lies ahead in such a revolution.
There really is nothing new under the sun. All human endeavors are subject to the flaws if the human beings who participate in them.
Zoomers are or were as ignorant of any reason behind 9/11 as Boomers were of what came before Pearl Harbor. To this day, WWII is called the Good War, even by those who were anti-war, (or anti-draft). Try googling “Why did Japan bomb Pearl Harbor?” for how many pages it takes to find any source that will illuminate same old old old story: “U.S. government engaged in a series of increasingly stringent economic warfare measures that pushed the Japanese into a predicament that U.S. authorities well understood would probably provoke them to attack U.S. territories and forces in the Pacific region in a quest to secure essential raw materials that the Americans, British, and Dutch (government in exile) had embargoed. . .”
Yeah it seems the newer generation is not as locked into the propaganda because their times are different than when we only had radio and TV and newspapers which the past generation grew up and believed. Funny cause the people in the USSR knew it was bullshit.
Keaton, I like y'all show but your microphone sounds muffled. I think you have it turned up too high or some auto volume thing is making it sound shitty....
The UN created Israel out of European guilt and the horrid dilemma of where to dump those powerful Jews who had managed to survive The Holocaust. If an Israel had to be created it should have been created out of German land. So yes a terrible injustice was done to the Palestinians and yes after WWII the US became a monster of worldwide imperial oppression. But wealthy warlord Bin Laden is not exactly the truth teller we all need to learn from. What kind of monster state do you believe his ilk would usher in? As a working class lesbian woman I am way better off living here, fighting as I have my whole life against US imperialism, than I would be in any Islamic state or the Russian state or the Chinese state. There are no states with clean hands. Men like Bin Laden are not very different from the men who ran western imperialism for the last 3 or 4 centuries. The main difference is how much power they are able to wield. I don’t think Bin Laden did any better than Bush with the power he had.
You’re quite misinformed. Just as in almost every other piece of land on the earth, story of that land goes back thousands of years.
And you’re quite arrogant. I’m not about to go into the whole history of that tiny sliver of land in response to a brief substack note. Why don’t you do that though since you’re so well informed!
I apologize if I came off as arrogant. It wasn’t my intention.
However, when the mistaken perception out there is that Israel came into existence because the victors “needed a place to dump” the victims, it needs to be addressed.
These people were and are human beings whose presence on that “tiny sliver of land” predates WWII by many millennia. Secondly, those who were liberated from concentration camps really wanted to return to the countries from which they came.
Zionism was fading before the Holocaust. The modern movement only caught fire in the late 19th century because of Russian pogroms. The Jews of early 20th century Germany had little interest in becoming farmers in a land ruled by the Ottoman Turks. And ordinary non political Russian Jews preferred to immigrate to the US. Of course Mizrahi Jews had lived along side the Druze and other Arabs for millennia. The creation of Israel by the UN totally disrupted their lives as well as the lives of the Palestinians. No one gave the indigenous peoples - Arab, Jew or Druze a vote on this partition. I have always thought it was a terrible mistake. A people who had spent centuries as pariahs in Europe now gifted a state destined to be seen by all its neighbors as a pariah state.
I don’t think a ten-fold increase in the Jewish population of Israel happened from the late 1930’s to the 2010’s because Jews didn’t want to be there but were forced. Antisemitism was a very real threat and the idea of returning to a homeland where they could enjoy a national identity instead of suffering discrimination was extremely attractive. Also, this is a place with deep religious roots not only for Muslims, but Jews and Christians too.
It seems to me the current conversation about Israel/Gaza is completely ignoring the religious aspects, both current and historically. What’s happening to the tiny Christian population of Israel right now?
Have you been there, by chance? It’s quite a sobering experience.
During the 1930s & 1940s Jews were being threatened with genocide and no country would take them in. I don’t know how many Jews were able to enter Palestine during those years. I think the Brits did a pretty good job of keeping them out. After WWII and the Holocaust Zionism had a very understandable renaissance and Jews were in need of and clamoring for a homeland of their own. I understand what you’re saying about the religious significance too. But Herzl the father of modern Zionism would have been happy to settle for some land anywhere. For him it was a political solution not a religious attachment. Most Jews were then and even are now pretty secular. It would have been just to carve out a homeland for what was left of European Jewry from Germany. Golda Meir was wrong when she claimed Palestine was a country without a people. Clearly Palestinians had in 1948 and still have now just as strong a tie to the holy land as do the Jews. The current law of return is rubbing salt in the wounds, when any Jew from Brooklyn can find a home in Israel while no Palestinian has been allowed to return to the homes that were theirs until the Nakba. I have no idea how to resolve this ongoing calamity and the longer it goes on the harder people’s hearts become. How will these battling cousins ever manage to live together after all this bloodshed. The whole thing just makes me despair. I haven’t ever been to Israel but I did lose one quarter of my family in the Holocaust.
The letter pretty clearly states they hate us for our freedoms (in particular the freedoms women and gay people enjoy in the West).
There’s certainly a valid critique of America’s terrible foreign policy in there, but it’s undermined a bit when it’s mixed in with calls to convert to Islam and blaming every problem in the Muslim world on “The Jooooooos!”
"The letter pretty clearly states they hate us for our freedoms..."
Did you read the letter? Bin Laden explained the reasons for attacking us: US support for Israel and what they're doing to the Palestinians, US support for atrocities against the Muslim people, the sanctions against Iraq, US support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East, and exploitation of Middle Eastern oil.
"There’s certainly a valid critique of America’s terrible foreign policy in there, but it’s undermined a bit when it’s mixed in with calls to convert to Islam and blaming every problem in the Muslim world on “The Jooooooos!”"
So what? Ignore what the letter said because it was written by an Islamic fundamentalist who was radicalized by Western powers intervening in the Middle East?
Great piece on how the Zoomers discovered the actual narrative behind 9/11 and the nefarious doings of the US in the Middle East.
In contrast, my generation, the Boomers, of late confine the limits of their political consciousness to Trump Derangement Syndrome and voting Blue-no-matter-Who. Red pills are anathema to their settled and cushy way of life. Hope rests with the young.
Really enjoyed this article. Generational analysis is always tricky and I think you stayed appropriately focused.
Born 1953. Been here, done this. Comments seem to be alot about Gen X vs Gen Z vs Boomers vs Godzilla.
Now we're going to add Gen division on top of Class division? Double, double..Trouble.
Z-onists, Liars and Shares, oh my!!
Concerning your closing remarks "However, be forewarned: this has left me very disillusioned…I have entered into another timeline.” I have to say: What the hell took you so long to figure that out, I mean to say, "never look at this country the same'? I'm simply amazed at your laziness in NOT studying your own history, it's all there and you simply have to do the work, the research to uncover what this nation, the one and only USofA, has been doing in your name. For a start, read these four works (Howard Zinn's 'A Peoples History of The United States' David Vine's 'The United States of War: A Global History of America's Endless Conflicts, From Columbus to The Islamic State' and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz's two excellent works 'An Indigenous Peoples' History of The United States' and certainly of great importance 'Not A Nation of Immigrants': Settler Colonialism, White Supremacy, and A History of Erasure and Exclusion') which will give you a great start on what your country has been capable of ever since its beginnings! For me, my education of this Nation began when an Army sergeant came to our door to announce that my oldest brother had died for his Nation (he was drafted) in Vietnam. Believe me when I say, my education began then and there, and it continues to this day as I read some 20-40 books a year as well as reading independent media (stay the hell away from corporate media) daily. And hey, it's a lot of work and it never stops. So please, stop your whining (and I do realize that someone your age never really received an adequate public education, especially the humanities of which history, our history, a true history was never taught to anyone's satisfaction), get busy, continue to educate yourself and share that education, our history, with anyone who will listen.
One last thing, read General Smedley D. Butler's very short (35 pages), getting to the point quickly 'WAR IS A RACKER' A quote from pg1 "A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small 'inside' group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes" as in "The War on Terror" You don't have to be an insider to find out what the "Few" know, you need to do the work, diligently! Now get to it!
I hope you guys find the time to write more. I enjoy your podcast at work, godspeed.
Kids are right, so why were you so wrong?
U probably didn't read the unibomber manifesto either or ever hear of branch davidian WACO murders, ..
https://bilbobitch.substack.com/p/israel-shits-its-pants-as-bin-laden
The people of Israel are beautiful. I love them and always treasure my interactions. I almost married one and should have - what a warm sensual being she was. Man.
But.... they were sold a bag of lies and have no claim to that land. Hell, I could lose my house in California to squatters!
3,000 year old satanic text says that "Jews have the right to steal goyim property'
Deal with it;
https://bilbobitch.substack.com/p/land-of-legends-land-of-blood-how
Nah, I don't buy it.
The 'letter' itself is just an Anti West screed of the sort you'd find in any grievance studies department.
The key accusation is that Israel was created by the United States and therefore the latter has declared war on the Muslim world.
This just isn't factual, the Jews created Israel themselves over many decades preceding the Holocaust.
Which just leaves the rest of the 'letter' which is just a whinge about other aspects of western culture - so yeah, they do hate us because of who we are rather than what we've done.
This whole tiktok phenomenon is just a bunch of kids reveling in confirmation bias of a terrorist manifesto as a result of the indoctrination they've received at University.
Nothing to see here, move along lol
1. "The 'letter' itself is just an Anti West screed of the sort you'd find in any grievance studies department."
So, ignore what it says because other people are also saying the same thing? If other people are saying it, wouldn't that be more reason to talk about it?
2. "The key accusation is that Israel was created by the United States and therefore the latter has declared war on the Muslim world."
Except, the letter doesn't say that. It condemns the West for supporting Israel, but it doesn't say that the US created Israel.
3. "This just isn't factual, the Jews created Israel themselves over many decades preceding the Holocaust."
Which the letter doesn't deny. Did you actually read it?
4. "Which just leaves the rest of the 'letter' which is just a whinge about other aspects of western culture -"
Which would be expected of an Islamic Fundamentalist who was radicalized by what Western powers were doing in the Middle East.
5. "so yeah, they do hate us because of who we are rather than what we've done."
Did you actually read the letter? In addition to US support for Israel, they also cited US support for other atrocities against the Muslim people, the sanctions against Iraq, US support for dictatorial regimes in the Middle East and US/Western exploitation of Middle Eastern oil.
6. "This whole tiktok phenomenon is just a bunch of kids reveling in confirmation bias of a terrorist manifesto as a result of the indoctrination they've received at University."
This is just you complaining that people like me (Gen Z) aren't buying the propaganda of American Exceptionalism anymore. Cry me a river snowflake.
Israel is like the blind men & the elephant, ,everybody has his own take on 'what is Israel'
But for Netanyahu first & foremost Israel is a real-estate biz, where you steal land and sell
https://bilbobitch.substack.com/p/an-old-folks-home-called-israel-explaining