I've spent the morning getting blocked on Twitter. I've now managed to get blocked by an entire subsection of the British online right:
Academic Agent
Millennial Woes
Morgoth's Review
Scrump and Evelyn
The whole set. It's funny as I literally said barely a week ago that I need to start being a bit less antagonistic on Twitter (I know, I always say this). It's just so triggering though. I read the tweets and it's painful.
What's got me this time is the Iran issue again. As I said in my last post, I fully respect people that are against the war because of the human tragedy. However, these people, they're not just against the war, they're basically on Iran's side. So we see this constant refrain of, "Trump's Crazy!", "He's an idiot!", and by extension, "MAGA (i.e. regular Americans) are stupid dupes, being fooled by the Orange Man."
It's doubly triggering as it's the British talking heads. The intellectual smartarses, who think they're so much more worldly and educated than the "MAGA-tards" with their silly red hats and American flags. Even though these MAGA-tards were often awake to the problems facing America and the Free West long before any of these talking heads were. (The pandemic alone proved how late to the party these people were. We may remember the online right pouring over graphs and begging for the borders to be closed in the opening months.)
(A similar example is Aaron Bastani, who moved a little to the right as woke was "put away" (admittedly quicker and more astutely than most on the left), but who instead of acknowledging his shift just acts like he's always been right about everything. There's never any acknowledgement that, "Yes, these working class chavs and rednecks might actually have been right about a few things when I was wrong. So perhaps I may be wrong again.")
Returning To Iran
I'm being a little personal here, but I think it's justified as the commentary coming from these ivory towers has been so unbelievably low grade. There's zero acknowledgement that Iran poses any threat whatsoever. As if the Iranian regime is wholly innocent. So it really is just an endless cacophony of, "Trump Is Crazy!"
It's a bit like if someone is constantly flicking your ear or prodding you. You ask them to stop. They say, "Sure, I'll stop." Then they start flicking your ear again. Eventually after a while you lose your temper and punch the person in the face. Of course, the wider audience only sees the punch. "That Crazy Guy Just Punched Someone For No Reason!" They don't have any awareness of the constant prodding and poking and dishonesty that preceded it.
The terrorist attacks, the repressions, the false dealings, the acts of economic warfare, etc.
Again, I'm not sure if the escalation of the war by the US and Israel is justified morally. Who am I to weigh these lives? Is such bloodshed ever justified?
I can acknowledge the growing threat though. It's not hard to imagine where Iran would be in five, ten or fifteen years given the current trajectory. With the drones and missiles, and more importantly the surveillance infrastructure, the eye in the sky, to direct and detect such things.
I hate to make the comparison, but it's like World War II. Was fighting that war worth the sheer amount of bloodshed? Some people might argue that it wasn't. That we should've simply accepted Nazi Germany as a world power. Accepted their coming dominance of the Mediterranean and Atlantic Ocean. And then just hoped they would be somewhat benevolent towards us in their use of it once we'd been eclipsed.
Again, I don't really know what the answer is. I do know that I'm grateful not to be living in that potential world though.
I think a lot of the talking heads, who daily indulge their freedom to talk, take it for granted though.
