I swear, every James Woods post I’ve ever read is the text equivalent of watching a seasoned philosopher very carefully, and methodically shit their pants.

So clever my first suspicion was that the source had been photoshopped.

Yeah, at least the kid didn’t shell out hundreds of dollars for gold shoes with the structural integrity of cardboard.

You raise a good point. The bias towards action, real or perceived, and the catharsis of self-righteous anger are both strong motivators at work in the political realm. We’d all do well to guard ourselves against those wishing to exploit them.

You’d think so,but education and experience doesn’t really get rid of the underlying tendency so much as it inoculates you to it in specific areas of experience/expertise. Plenty of experts in their own field will look at a screw-up in another field they’re not familiar with and exclaim “just do/don’t do x, y,or z.” That’s why it’s such an insidious tendency, insight really only let’s you see how complicated certain things are while leaving the shroud of your own ignorance around everything else.

Think of a clerk having trouble with the register when you’re in a hurry to get home. You’re likely to think to yourself "come on! It’s your one job and it’s not that hard. But if you’re made to stop and think about it you realize there’s a whole litany of functions to remember for the different scenarios that come up, an encyclopedia of produce numbers to remember, company policies to be observed,and all sorts of smaller jobs to be done.

This isn’t to say that people willing to hurt others for an easy solution to their problems have an excuse. This is just to say that we would do well to remember that everyone is susceptible to the urge to oversimplify.

Edit: spelling

His appeal is the same appeal that takes each of us in at some point; he offers easy answers to complicated problems. It’s tempting to believe that only the profoundly stupid will fall for this, but when a problem is outside your knowledge or experience and someone confidently announces they have a solution its pretty easy to let yourself stop thinking any further.

Also, there are a ton of racists and xenophobes out there who already believe they have the easy answers and like the confirmation of having them parroted back at them.

That may be so, but it doesn’t stop it from being a complicated situation. What happens to US international relations when the rest of their allies come to the conclusion that they’ll be met with bombs and threats when they don’t respond to requests the way the US wants? If the US does far, far less, how much less is enough and how much is too much? What happens when Iran, its proxies, and other adversaries of Israel realize that its biggest ally no longer has its back?

I’m not telling you that calling for an end to the bloodshed is wrong, it’s not. I’m not telling you that the United States and the international community are doing enough to pressure Israel to respect human rights. I don’t think anyone knows enough of what’s going on behind the scenes to say for certain that enough is being done and what’s going on in front of our eyes says that more is required. What I am saying is that complex, world issues are complex and we cannot have a full understanding of them, nor a productive discussion about them unless we acknowledge their complexities.

Edit: I do appreciate the breakdown of how a threat works though.

You mean in an electoral democracy prospective leaders have to go out and sell the populace on their vision for the country’s path forward? Color me shocked. Who knew leaders would have to communicate with the people?

I don’t think many people are saying that the morality of a genocide is complicated, but I think plenty of people ARE saying that classifying a genocide when no two look alike and both sides of the current conflict obfuscate and lie about the facts is complicated. A lot of people are saying that responding to a genocide occurring within an entrenched conflict in one of the most volatile regions on the globe where nearly every major world power has involvement and interests IS complicated. Many of those saying that international diplomacy is complicated understand that when the most important allies of a nation violating human rights pull their support too hard or too fast that that nation is likely to accelerate its plans to try and accomplish its goals before further repercussions prevent it.

We certainly shouldn’t let these complexities prevent us from speaking out regarding what we feel is right, but pretending they don’t exist only serves the most cynical and self-serving of political interests. Resolving human rights abuses is always more complicated than slapping a genocide or not genocide label on the situation and saying “genocide bad” or “not genocide okay.”

Surprisingly, no. They counted deaths from exposure, drowning, etc as fatalities in this study: https://www.aviationsafetymagazine.com/features/the-myths-of-ditching/

This is just a review of NTSB data and some ditchings may have gone unreported. The main point is that ditching, even in the open ocean is very survivable.

Remember kids, according to an FAA review of accidents, no type of water ditching has lower than an eighty percent survivability rating. So putting it in the drink is always an option.