Americans are finally taking a critical approach to Israel. We can do that without sliding into antisemitism | Joel Swanson

Mar 5, 2026Center Left

Israel’s role in drawing the US into a war on Iran is attracting healthy scrutiny. It’s also creating a permission structure for antisemitismThe joint US-Israel military strikes on Iran have forced a reckoning that American political culture has been approaching for years, but has perhaps never had to face as head-on as it does right now. It is a reckoning that contains two urgent, legitimate, and partially contradictory imperatives – and neither should be abandoned.Let us start with one simple truth. Israel’s role in drawing the United States into military action against Iran warrants serious scrutiny. Whatever one believes about the strategic logic of the strikes, the process by which the United States came to participate in them raises profound questions about the relationship between the two countries. The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has claimed that the US struck Iran partly because it knew Israel was going to act unilaterally and feared the blowback. In other words, Israeli strategic priorities shaped American military timing, and by extension, American casualties. Continue reading...

Critics mangle MAGA’s crusade to make the nation 'sad and pathetic' like itself

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2 hours ago

Critics mangle MAGA’s crusade to make the nation 'sad and pathetic' like itself

Racism is an act of self-destruction, warns podcaster Wajahat Ali and independent reporter Joy Ann-Reid. But that destruction extends to everything around them when they manage to grab the levers of power.“I mean there's a big hole in the White House. The lawn where they built that ugly UFC ring is now brown. They've destroyed the Jackie Kennedy garden. [President] Donald Trump is supposed to be a builder but he physically destroyed D.C.,” said Reid. “And then that the poor pathetic little fair that he had, his little world's fair with the fake arch made of plastic. And they painted it. America right now is a laughingstock. I think we created 57,000 jobs last month. That is sad. It's a sad birthday.”But this is the mess that comes of a nation that “refused to acknowledge and uproot its dark sin of white supremacy,” said Ali. “We whitewashed our history books, made heroes of racist traitors, and decided to elect the most incompetent, corrupt vulgarian after electing the first Black president.”“Refusing to learn our lesson, we re-elected Trump, even though we could have had a competent Black woman as President. Now? America is turning into a s——hole,” Ali lamented. “Just look at the Reflecting Pool as a tragic example of our downfall. Take a trip to Washington, D.C., and see the absolute mess that is the White House. Our infrastructure is collapsing, our economy is ailing, and our public health is deteriorating. Measles, death, gun violence, and suicide are on the rise. But it doesn’t matter. White supremacy will destroy everything, including itself, instead of sharing power. It will burn everything down.”“The right wing is not satisfied with just having physically destroyed the country,” said Reid. “[They] destroyed the morale of the country on our birthday where we're sad and pathetic and can't even pull off a world's fair.”The Supreme Court, meanwhile, barely protected birthright citizenship with a six-to-three vote when all the justices had to do was read the Constitution and see that if you're born here, you're a citizen, said Ali.With the war on birthright citizenship and MAGA cries to sterilize brown immigrants, Reid said MAGA and Trump are laboring for a very specific kind of America.“If they were successful at removing everyone who looks like you and me — all the Blacks, all the browns, all the Muslims all the AAPI, all the Latinos — if they got their way, you know what America would look like? It would look like Trump’s pathetic American state fair,” said Reid. “That was a place where there were no Blacks. There were no gays. There were no brown people. It was just MAGA white folks. The one’s who weren’t broken by [Trump’s] economy, who could afford to get on a plane or drive to DC with these gas prices. It was an estimate that the first day was like a 1,000 people — only tens of MAGA could even afford to go there. … [because] they are the poor. They are broke. They're bored. And they're boring.”“There was no musical entertainment,” Reid raged. “That cultural anti-phenomenon that we saw at that pathetic Trump celebration supposedly of America’s birthday and Donald Trump — that is what's left when you get rid of all of us. If you really get rid of people of color then American culture is like sad Europe.”“Like a crusty, crusty mayo sandwich that has been left in the sun for two days,” added Ali.“One-hundred percent,” confirmed Reid. “You'd get no Janet Jackson, no Michael Jackson, no Prince, no Whitney Houston, no Aretha Franklin, no jazz, no gospel, no hip-hop. What do you actually have? What is your culture? What is this white culture that you're trying to preserve at all costs, at the cost of your own economy?”Ali added that even MAGA doesn’t like MAGA America.“When they move to the Southern states where do they move to when they move to Texas? Austin! When they move to Tennessee, they move to Nashville,” said Ali. “Even MAGA influencer] Nick Fuentes was like ‘yeah, I don't want to really move to a red state. So, they know that their mayo sandwich is s——. They know their potato salad sucks. They know their chicken is dry and has no spice. They know that they're bland and pasty and that they have no culture and no rhythm.”

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Americans are finally taking a critical approach to Israel. We can do that without sliding into antisemitism | Joel Swanson

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Americans are finally taking a critical approach to Israel. We can do that without sliding into antisemitism | Joel Swanson

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Americans are finally taking a critical approach to Israel. We can do that without sliding into antisemitism | Joel Swanson

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