After the October 7 attack I was very pro isreal. Of course it’s totally unacceptable for a neighbor to enter one’s territory and kill hundreds of innocent civilians. You can’t commit such an act of terrorism without consequences. However I have seen that the Israeli invasion has been all but moral and the use of the word genocide feels more and more justified. It has gone way over board and I have staunchly become anti isreal. The war was supposed to be a war on Hamas but the innocent civilians in Gaza have had to bear with unbelievable suffering which I no longer believe justifies the war.
What made you not realize the decades of Israeli aggression that caused October 7?
as someone who went through the same, it was mostly lack of attention. i had a vague idea that israel and palestine hated each other, and it was easy to understand from a perspective of israel taking palestinian land, but when you don’t think about it too much it’s easy to both sides it or feel like the supposedly western, supposedly democratic one has a point. i think a lot of people in the west had that vague, unrefined view when oct 7 happened, and it’s easy to stand with someone who just suffered a terror attack.
but it just kept being a focus in media, and the more you look into it, the clearer israel’s crimes against humanity become. and the crazy part is that the vague perspective of israel taking the land for themselves is absolutely correct, but when you see it for the real atrocity it is, rather than an abstract curiosity, it’s impossible to side with the occupiers if you’re not a bigot.
Marriage.
I was firmly opposed. I had a few girlfriends and each time I thought “I don’t need my relationship to be recognised by the state. What a waste of resources.”
Then I met my wife and it was like having pocket aces. I was all in before the flop.
22 years later and I’d give her both of my lungs if she needed them.
Noisemakers in electric cars. I thought it was a conspiracy of the incumbent manufacturers to make EVs as shitty as ICE cars. But I’ve had plenty of situations where people were unaware that I was driving up to them and that’s not a good thing. Just to be clear, I don’t expect pedestrians to jump out of the way when I come along with my car but situational awareness is an important factor for avoiding accidents.
same tbh. the correct answer is no cars. i still think evs are better to have around than ice cars, but an oversized murder machine shouldn’t be the primary mode of transport, and it will always need to announce its presence.
road noise along major roads is mostly tire noise anyway, and evs still have tires
That noise is awful. We’re in the fucking future, I want my car to sound like the Jetsons’
Trans athletes in student sports - now I believe there should be no student sports. It’s a waste of educational resources to have a team run by the school system. I went to the football stadium in Allen, TX and I realized how messed up schools have become
Personal story: Ages ago I was in marching band in TX, so we had to visit multiple other schools to play against them.
Some of those stadiums, even 20ish years ago, were ridiculous. So much money that could have gone to much better programs, or even a publicly available stadium that aren’t locked to a specific school district. I left band before graduating.
Not quite a major belief, but most recent:
I didn’t really care about GTA6 and saw no content about it. But the TLDR Business news channel I follow got me interested with the perspective that this is going to be the biggest (and most resource invested) art/culture phenomenon in history.
Still not going to buy or play it, but I won’t skip the gaming podcasts that discuss GTA6 as I previously had been.
Critics of mass immigration have a point, and should not be discarded as ignorant bigots. Even if they often are.
What changed my mind: seeing neighborhoods inhabited almost exclusively by poor immigrants. And rich immigrants. Both in their own exclusive enclaves. The only ones that don’t form enclaves are middle class immigrants.
honestly this is mostly a result of disenfranchisement, not immigration itself. the middle class has a reason to fight through that, while lower classes are protected by their own against a hostile society. make society less hostile and the problem solves itself.
but if you wanna solve mass immigration, you should strive for global equality. even when given unrestricted immigration prospects, people tend to stay put when they don’t have a strong reason to move, and if you knock out economic and military reasons, most immigration tends to happen due to relationships and it’s fairly balanced.
insisting to prevent mass immigration in ways other than trying to solve the root reasons is just insistence on a privileged place in global hierarchy. i don’t think that’s morally sound in any situation.
Why did the enclaves change your mind?
For a functional society, it’s members must share the same physical and mental space. Even if individuals radically disagree with the status-quo, they are still a part of the same in-group. I call it a “rebel vs invader” dilemma. Rebels can succeed in changing a society, invaders will be resisted.
i used to think the us was an incredible place to live, and that most people saying otherwise were just amplifying its faults from a sheltered perspective. one single trip to nyc of all places changed that. it’s impressive how broken the us is, the decay isn’t just an abstract concept, it’s literally everywhere in a physical sense. even places that were supposed to be nice were rough around the edges in so many ways.
(edit: just to clarify, i’m a european)
