It's fucking exhausting. Doubly exhausting when you have to do it twice. Your cat was probably trying to do you a favor.

I think the BLM analogy fits and doesn't fit in a number of ways, so I question the utility in modeling everyone's turmoil around October 7 on BLM. I'll address it as far as it's useful, though. For example: Defund the police.

This is an opinion, but I believe slogans should be immediately obvious. This is, in my opinion, the problem wypepo have with the phrase "defund the police." It requires explanation. "Disarm the police?" That one's obvious. "Demilitarize the police?" equally obvious. Black Lives Matter chose language that spoke to those who already have affinity for them, not those who were on the fence.

Your argument is that "defund the police" means to stop "Increasing the police budgets to solve brutality." I agree with this position. I get it. But "defund the police" when shouted from a crowd does not mean "stop increasing police budgets to solve brutality" it means ACAB. it means "we can get along without police at all." It means "dissolve the carceral state." It's a step away from "storm the Bastille" not "let's de-escalate police violence through selective reductions in spending." And when shouted at people with "blue lives matter" stickers on their car, it means "fuck you."

There has been an appalling amount of antisemitism in response to October 7. Not anti-Zionism, good ol'fashioned Jew-hating bigotry. There has been a lot of triangulation around how any atrocity committed by Hamas is justifiable, about how any death in Gaza by anyone under any circumstances is a war crime. And while I believe the answer to the correct amount of reprisal for October 7 is zero (0) bombs, I also knew - Hamas also knew - Iran also knew - Russia also knew - that the number would be higher than that. And I also knew - as did Hamas, Iran and Russia - that whenever Israel opens a can of whoopass international hate crimes against Jews skyrocket. that's the point.

Black Lives Matter had a very simple cause - stop killing black people. It's a really easy one to agree with on the face of it and the reason it didn't get nearly enough done is the entrenched power of police unions and the political makeup of policing in the United States. And the fact that BLM's position was "defund the police" ie ACAB.

Shouting "defund the police" at a bunch of indemnified, entrenched police unions was never going to fucking accomplish a thing. De-escalation training? A drawing down of military hardware? SWAT rotation rather than dedicated squads? All of these things would make a difference. But to the people shouting "defund the police" they were a bunch of ineffectual, quisling half-measures. Nobody wanted to think about it, they wanted to shout slogans.

You've got this idea that the government of the United States is all-powerful and that Biden could somehow bring Israel to heel. It's worth pointing out that Netanyahu has never said a single polite thing about Democrats and that the only thing keeping him out of jail right now is his coalition. There's a path forward here - a tricky, game-playing, polticking path - but shouting "defund Israel" is not dissimilar from shouting "defund the police."

And I don't think anybody shouting it cares.

I think BLM was a spontaneous, loosely-organized movement that - and I hope I'm wrong about this - lacked the vision to push for lasting change and as a consequence, faded out of existence. I think the Left's position on October 7 is a spontaneous, loosely-organized movement that doesn't want the complications of geopolitics to interfere with its anger.

And I do - honestly and truly - feel that the butts-in-seats at State and above know more about this than I do, have more experience with this than I do, and feel the violence in Gaza as much or more than anyone else. I was wrong about Garland. I could be wrong about this. But I've done a fair amount of reading on Israel, Palestine and how we got here over the past 20 years and I don't see the slogans as helpful.