Lex Fridman: preference

Transcript context

…I agree with that. They don’t really help the discussion on Israel, they don’t help the discussion on anything. In fact, one of the reasons I stay away from that discussion of Israel, which I think is nuanced and really complicated in the way that we’ve been discussing, in order to have an intellectual exploration of ideas, you have to be able to misstep and try ideas for size. And if I’m going to be punished severely by these… I’m okay being criticized. But when they’re low brain takes that are just lying about me en masse, you get a huge amount of engagement just because you’re thinking out loud and reading history and it’s just annoying. And by the way, I’m really interested about World War II, probably in the way that Dan Carlin and Darryl Cooper are interested because it’s such an interesting first stage on which human nature was explored in all its forms, the geopolitics of it. Everybody on that stage was complicated. Also, there’s a lot of fascinating military tactics and strategy and military technology plus the nuclear bomb, all of that. That’s like a moment in human history. Listen, I love Genghis Khan, Roman Empire, Alexander the Great, those are all interesting studies of human history, of military tactics, of brutality, of human nature, all of that. That’s why I want to be able to discuss that. It’s fascinating that humans are able to do that kind of thing. What causes them to do it? What were the dynamics evolved, the propaganda on all sides? Could it been avoided or not? Plus Stalin is part of this picture. It’s like, what the fuck? After the nuclear bomb you’re just not going to get characters like that. You’re not going to get a global war of that kind. It might be a different one, maybe a cyber war or maybe a war in space, but we’re not going to get this kind of war ever again. That was the biggest and the last global war we’re going to get. So I want to be able to mouth off and explore and, yeah, argue with Darryl Cooper bought Churchill and say stupid in the process and Darryl says stupid in the process too, and together come up to the… So anyway, the trolls on the left and the right just make everything worse and it’s annoying. Yeah, no, I agree with that. And I’m sure I’m not without my own bias in this because from my own self-interested perspective, I’m not saying this is the main reason to be annoyed with them or anything like that, but what I personally get is all types of, “Self-hating Jew,” “Nazi apologist,” all this literally just because I criticize the way Israel’s conducting this war. So I think that’s insane. But then I also feel like, and I just want to be clear, just explain this, I’m not saying this is the worst thing about people who are Jew haters on Twitter, but just from a personal perspective, I’m like, “Guys, you are not helping me, man.” I’ll get people in my comments who I think are trying to catch my back who just don’t know I’m Jewish and they’re like, I’ll say something critical of Israel, and then someone will argue with me and they’ll be like, “Oh look, a Jew came in here to defend Israel.” And I’m like, “Dude, first of all, literally you might as well be working for Mossad. You literally make the entire movement who’s criticizing Israel look terrible, dude. You are literally the enemy that they would like to have.” And so there’s a very weird dynamic in the Israel-Palestine conflict where there’s so many of the loons on both sides who almost seem like they’re secretly working for the other side. When you see the Palestinian protests and they’re chanting, “Death to America,” and all this stuff, you’re like, what are you doing? Are you trying to make people more sympathetic to Israel? Because if Rabbi Shmuley was working for Adolf Hitler or something like that, it would all make perfect sense. You’d be like, “Oh, I get it, you sent this guy out to make everyone hate Jewish people.” And then with the Jew hating posts too, yeah, it just feeds right into the opposition side of how to caricature. It’s like, “Oh, so their game is, they’ll smear everybody who’s a critic of Israel as being a Jew hater so your answer is to just really be a Jew hater? Like, all right, I don’t think that’s helping.”…

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