US and Israel attack Iran

[mickthinks]

… there is no rhetor with the skill, the focus and the articulateness of Fuentes.

I doubt you can substantiate that with an example, AJ, but I’d really like to see you try!

The example I submit, Mr Mick, is the video ‘discourse’ just above.

Okay, so against my deep inclination and better judgement, I started to listen to that speech that you hold up as an example of unsurpassed rhetorical skill, and Fuentes’s first lie drops after just 25 secs.

I think lying should disqualify Fuentes from the praise you want him to be given. Don’t you?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Okay, so against my deep inclination and better judgement, I started to listen to that speech that you hold up as an example of unsurpassed rhetorical skill, and Fuentes’s first lie drops after just 25 secs.

You make the mistake everyone who writes on this forum makes. You associate reference with advocacy. The way your bizarre mind works is that because I have made reference to Fuentes, that I am advocating for his position, and that my participation and writing here is not philosophically-based inquiry — discussion of current events and trends — but rather political activism and efforts to sway people to specific views or viewpoints.

I’ve read little of what you write possibly because the effort is never repaid, if you catch my drift. But I gather that you are likely more or less Lefty-Progressive oriented (?) What I have noticed among that crowd is just what I am pointing out here. You cannot examine ideas neutrally, you have to determine in advance if they are “politically correct” or if they come from some Devil’s Region. If you sense the merest whiff of inconformity to some base in political or ideological righteousness, the doors of your wee mind slam shut. And should you encounter on this forum an individual whose interests or concerns are anti-conventional, your brittle little mind must and can only — like Mahatma Flash of Dangerous Pantaloons — see Nazi operatives and God only knows what other evils which rise up in your overheated imagination.

This is an intellectual pathology, Don Señor Mick, and Alexis Jacobi teaches that we can free our minds from such unrewarding mental habits and practices.

Now, you fool, I clarify what I have stated all along: to understand what is going on in our present, we have to read and listen to people whom we may not agree with at all because our objective is to see and understand the public mind, or more properly the mind of the “masses” as they are molded and influenced by ideas and discourses that come to them via their phones and their computer screens.

Fuentes is a skilled rhetor but, you idiot, that does not mean his ideas are sound through-and-through. And rhetoric is really embellishment, is it not? Substantial matters and ideas generally speaking do not require rhetorical embellishment or, put another way, can be stripped of rhetoric and explained matter-of-factly.

If you desire to understand a significant faction in America, my darling intellectual cockroach, I heartly suggest that you examine with an open but not an uncritical mind the discourses that are being presented to millions via Carlson, Fuentes and numerous others. (I do recognize though that your object is not understanding, but something else entirely, and that is your issue and problem, not mine.)

[Alexis Jacobi]

If you already know why ask?

I don’t know, I suspect, and that is a shadowy perception. The question — what nationality are you? — is very relevant if only in relation to your expressed contempt for certain American political figures.

I remember that you had really extreme reactions to mere citations and some quotes by Ortega y Gasset (The Revolt of the Masses). It always baffled me since he is in no sense a “dangerous thinker”. But your reaction was visceral — hysterical in fact. (I.e. motivated by seeming unconscious currents). It caused me to wonder about your political affiliations and, naturally, your nationality and cultural matrix.

It is in my own view a sort of cowardice that you cannot be forthcoming.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Very illustrative: the comparison of this to this.

[Alexis Jacobi]

Since I believe it to be unjust to launch a surprise attack on another country, and the US did just that, am I wrong to conclude that the attack on Iran was an unjust act? Or am I wrong that it would be unjust for Iran to do the same thing to us (in effect justifying Iran to do such an attack against us)?

I think you will have to explain more of the origin of your “ethic”. How would it fit with realpolitik or theorists like von Clausewitz or Sun Zsu? In a time of war, what are the “rules”?

Israel’s political philosophy is “Rise and kill first”:

The Talmud says: “If someone comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.” This instinct to take every measure, even the most aggressive, to defend the Jewish people is hardwired into Israel’s DNA. From the very beginning of its statehood in 1948, protecting the nation from harm has been the responsibility of its intelligence community and armed services, and there is one weapon in their vast arsenal that they have relied upon to thwart the most serious threats: Targeted assassinations have been used countless times, on enemies large and small, sometimes in response to attacks against the Israeli people and sometimes preemptively.

In this page-turning, eye-opening book, journalist and military analyst Ronen Bergman—praised by David Remnick as “arguably [Israel’s] best investigative reporter”—offers a riveting inside account of the targeted killing programs: their successes, their failures, and the moral and political price exacted on the men and women who approved and carried out the missions.

Bergman has gained the exceedingly rare cooperation of many current and former members of the Israeli government, including Prime Ministers Shimon Peres, Ehud Barak, Ariel Sharon, and Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as high-level figures in the country’s military and intelligence services: the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), the Mossad (the world’s most feared intelligence agency), Caesarea (a “Mossad within the Mossad” that carries out attacks on the highest-value targets), and the Shin Bet (an internal security service that implemented the largest targeted assassination campaign ever, in order to stop what had once appeared to be unstoppable: suicide terrorism).

Including never-before-reported, behind-the-curtain accounts of key operations, and based on hundreds of on-the-record interviews and thousands of files to which Bergman has gotten exclusive access over his decades of reporting, Rise and Kill First brings us deep into the heart of Israel’s most secret activities. Bergman traces, from statehood to the present, the gripping events and thorny ethical questions underlying Israel’s targeted killing campaign, which has shaped the Israeli nation, the Middle East, and the larger world.

Is it “wrong” for Iran to hold a military position and to use all means at its disposal to retaliate against both Israel and the US? That would be a pretty absurd fantasy, no?

You know, I have many criticisms of Zionism (the movement to establish a Jewish state) and I am aware that long long ago it was critiqued as likely creating many problems for Jewry. Those problems are now extremely manifest. And you must understand (“it must be understood”) that Israel, given its trajectory, is locked into a path that must necessarily involve preemptive assassination. For this reason the insinuation that ‘Israel killed Charlie Kirk” gains coherency in the minds of those falling away from ‘blind support of Israel”.

But that does not mean that I cannot understand Israel’s struggle, nor the operations of its military/intelligence sector.

[Alexis Jacobi]

I think lying should disqualify Fuentes from the praise you want him to be given. Don’t you?

That is an example of rhetorical corruption. I did not say Fuentes should be praised, that is your devious and rhetorical insertion. And now you ask me to argue against a position not my own.

Alexis Jacobi eschews such intellectual deviousness and recommends all do the same!

ADL lists Piker’s statements.

Fuentes gave a fair paraphrase of the following statement (direct quote):

“If Jews in America keep putting this idea out there that they are singularly invested in Israel, eventually someone’s going to come around and take action, not against the state of Israel — mind you — but against American Jews.”

Mick, you obviously cannot reason, yet you are not (likely) stupid. Your problem is of another sort.

[mickthinks]

You didn’t say “Fuentes should be praised”, it’s true, but you praised him. To the skies. Are you saying that you did that without wanting to?

I think lying* should disqualify Fuentes as a skilled rhetorician. Don’t you?

* Fuentes’s version was not a fair paraphrase. It was a misrepresentation.

[Dubious]

I think lying* should disqualify Fuentes as a skilled rhetorician. Don’t you?

It's precisely the opposite. It's the ongoing agenda of lies which requires skilled rhetoricians to convincingly turn a truth inside-out which most followers fall victim to. They are "influencers" expressing with vehemance and passion what it is they want sell and as such requires a proportionate amount of skill to convince the sheeple to follow them. This has been true througout history one way or another. There has never been a shortage of great and grand talkers whose determination is to talk you into something be it an object or a belief.

[Alexis Jacobi]

You didn’t say “Fuentes should be praised”, it’s true, but you praised him. To the skies. Are you saying that you did that without wanting to?

I think lying* should disqualify Fuentes as a skilled rhetorician. Don’t you?

* Fuentes’s version was not a fair paraphrase. It was a misrepresentation.

It was not a misrepresentation by any means. But it was a paraphrase. And paraphrases are not precise quotations. You can commit harakiri on that hill if you like, but it would be dishonest. The man is obviously extremely anti-Israel (I refrain from use of the term anti-Semite for Israel-opposed) and he insinuates that consequences may well result for American Jews who support Israel in its Gazan endeavors.

And again you make a mistake. I may well have respect for his skill or his style or for his boldness in expressing views and perspectives that are intensely suppressed, but that neither is “advocacy”. My stance is that everyone should be aware of these discourses and narratives. The conversation about them, the adjudication of the content, is another matter. Fuentes could well make very reasonable points that anyone would agree with (common sense points I mean) but say completely indefensible things as well.

Are you saying that you did that without wanting to?

The intellectually corrupt will always resort to dubious rhetorical tactics won’t they? I said exactly what I meant to say, nothing more and nothing less.

Now, if you had an interest in discussing his primary assertions, and what I do or do not agree with, you worm! that could happen. But you are incapable of neutral examination because of intellectual corruption.

Any clearer, idiot?

[Alexis Jacobi]

I think lying* should disqualify Fuentes as a skilled rhetorician. Don’t you?

It's precisely the opposite. It's the ongoing agenda of lies which requires skilled rhetoricians to convincingly turn a truth inside-out which most followers fall victim to. They are "influencers" expressing with vehemance and passion what it is they want sell and as such requires a proportionate amount of skill to convince the sheeple to follow them. This has been true througout history one way or another.

Roger that. But can you make some statements please about what a true influencer should or must say (what stance is good, correct and proper) in our present? Or does it all resolve into Three Minute Hate at Donald Trump in an eternal repetition loop!

Where is your corrective discourse, Herr Dubious?

[Alexis Jacobi]

Victory lap after victory lap and I am not even winded!

When does the actual race begin?

[Dubious]

I think lying* should disqualify Fuentes as a skilled rhetorician. Don’t you?

It's precisely the opposite. It's the ongoing agenda of lies which requires skilled rhetoricians to convincingly turn a truth inside-out which most followers fall victim to. They are "influencers" expressing with vehemance and passion what it is they want sell and as such requires a proportionate amount of skill to convince the sheeple to follow them. This has been true througout history one way or another.

Roger that. But can you make some statements please about what a true influencer should or must say (what stance is good, correct and proper) in our present? Or does it all resolve into Three Minute Hate at Donald Trump in an eternal repetition loop!

Where is your corrective discourse, Herr Dubious?

My corrective discourse is for you to kindly screw off; I'm trying to be polite here! Like most of your heroes you are too prejudiced to really inform or be of service to anyone as most have already noticed. You read too much and think too little. Both Nietzsche, but especially Schopenhauer already commented of how too much of one shrinks the other.

Nevertheless, I'm certain you'd make a great rhetorician not unlike the Nick Fuentes types whose skills and status as a true influencer is there for all to behold needing no comment upon viewing. They are all a dime a dozen.

...and since I'm accused of "eternal repetition", let me add one more instance:

Your enviable president, Donald Trump, resistance to whom you equate as treason to the country, will be forever known as the most egregiously destructive President in the history of the U.S., itself treasonous with followers like you in its wake. To think that anybody so ignorant, unstable and thoroughly disgusting in every respect for the world to see could ever be president has many wondering, inside and outside the country, what the hell is going on!

Here's an example among many, from one who doesn't speak like a practiced rhetorician...You'll probably recognize the name but likely not the importance of what he's saying:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP1Smaktwhs&t=219s

Your posts lately have been unconscionably twisted, malicious and stupid turning mindless flippancy into a virtue. It would behoove thee to keep your brain-drained doltish remarks in check being so opposite to your self-invested sense of superiority.

[mickthinks]

… he insinuates that consequences may well result for Jews who support Israel in its Gazan endeavors.

But that is neither a fair and accurate representation of what Piker said, nor a fair and accurate representation of what Fuentes said Piker said!

It is actually hard to put something into different words without changing the meaning to some lesser or greater extent, and thus misrepresenting the original. (Ask any translator). Most of the time it doesn’t matter much because the words are not being used to construct a case against their original author in order to attack them and destroy their careers and lives. But here it does matter, and one really must question why Fuentes didn’t just quote Piker’s actual words. I suggest it’s because the success of Fuentes’s rhetoric depended on the deceit.

I said exactly what I meant to say, nothing more and nothing less.
Well, first you praised Fuentes’s rhetorical ability very highly, then you took issue with me for suggesting that was what you wanted. So now it seems you don’t know what you are saying.

[Alexis Jacobi]

::::::

[mickthinks]

lol