Hit it, John!
(Yecchh.)
The “Imagine” Award will be periodically bestowed here upon the public figure, pundit , journalist or academic whose pronouncements most reflect the fatuous and infantile virtue-signaling of the late John Lennon, who also wrote “Give Peace a Chance.” This is the category where aging Sixties veterans, fact-challenged pacifists, incompetent progressive activists and the historically ignorant will cluster, advocating policies that are literally impossible and have been proven so over centuries. An Ethics Alarms principle is that advocating or promoting some ideal solution to a problem is unethical when that solution is delusional: the aspiration only wastes time and misleads the gullible. Right now, the political Left is addicted to such fantasies. No, we cannot end hate, racism, hunger, war, greed and criminal punishment, among other natural consequences of human existence.
Grow the hell up.
Ghuffar Usman has a huge presence on social media and might even qualify as an “influencer.” He appears to be an anti-Israel Marxist (his X handle is @ecomarxi), though he is a British solicitor in his day job. On Twitter/X he goes by the name “Tiberius” and this recent message has been turning up on Facebook:
Sadly, some people I care about and generally respect have shared or “liked” that garbage. I have been tempted to point out how intellectually dishonest and foolish Usman’s analysis is, but what’s the point? He’s waving the “Think of the Children!” banner. (Ethics Strike One!) He’s using the false “genocide” smear. (Ethics Strike Two!) He’s adopting the “war is murder” fallacy, legally, ethically and logically wrong. (Ethics Strike Three!) He’s using the “objectivity is evil” device, pretending that a personal conflict of interest leads to ethical clarity rather than warped priorities. (Ethics Strike Four!) And he begins with an obvious falsehood: the right choice as he defines it is not easy, since it guarantees future terror attacks against Israeli citizens. (Ethics Strike Five–Boy, this guy is really out!)
The argument made by Scott Greenfield that I applauded here rebuts all of Usman’s delusions. “So what do people…like President Biden, want Israel to do?,” Greenfield wrote. “Ride into battle on unicorns? Shoot magic bullets and drop magic bombs that only harm Hamas soldiers? Walk the streets of Gaza as Hamas fighters shoot them, then blend back into the crowd, and ask politely whether someone is innocent or guilty before taking them captive so they can be exchanged for Israelis held hostage by Hamas?”
Sure! Usman says its easy!
Ethics Alarms 
It is interesting that for ‘Tiberius’, it is an easy choice because it isn’t his children being murdered, it is the children of Jews. It is very convenient that the Israeli deaths don’t matter.
Perhaps he needs Quark to explain things for him. If you want peace, you don’t initiate terror attacks that will escalate the situation. Each attack and counterattack makes the sides more invested in the conflict and makes peace more difficult. After all that investment, each side wants more in the settlement. The time for peace is early on, before too much life is lost and too much money is spent. The time for peace is when no side has a clear advantage. In other words, October 7 doesn’t happen if the Gazans want peace.
The Third Law of Acquisition: “Never pay more for an acquisition than you have to.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hdQcGzbpN7s
The link is not embedded on purpose.
I love that scene!
Publicly proclaiming such a complex situation as “uncomplicated” is signature significance of either a simple mind, a pathological liar, or a racist (it’s uncomplicated if Israeli lives don’t matter), none of which should be listened to. What worries me more is the number of people who blindly applaud such vapid nonsense. I’m not sure which is the cart and which is the horse, but social media and twitter specifically pushes unthinking approval of shallow slogans over true discourse about issues. Or do people just want to be told what to think and not think for themselves? After all, we have always been at war with Eastasia.
I nominate this asshole…sorry, jerk:
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “has lost his way” and called for new elections aimed at choosing a new government, a sign of growing U.S. pressure on Israel over the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu is “allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel,” the New York Democrat said in a speech on the Senate floor Thursday. Schumer, the highest ranking Jewish elected official in the U.S. government, said Israel “cannot hope to succeed as a pariah opposed by the rest of the world.”
His speech is the latest in a series of high-level warnings and White House moves aimed at pressuring Israel and Netanyahu’s government to permit more humanitarian aid into Gaza and to rethink its war plans for Hamas, the U.S.-designated terror group whose bloody Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked the war. The address also marked an unusually direct criticism of the democratically elected leader of a close ally, and sparked sharp pushback from congressional Republicans and from Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.
https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/schumer-calls-for-end-of-netanyahu-led-government-in-israel-ebcb15c1?st=hr97qxjw07gv9a5&reflink=desktopwebshare_permalink
“Imagine” Ghuffar Usman is referring to abortion… It isn’t hard if you try…
Imagine all the people…. Killed in their mothers woombs…
Is that a picture of Albert Camus in his X account? Because Camus would’ve told him he’s full of shit.
For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.
H. L. Mencken
-Jut