Blogging Origin Story

 I was asked at Eschaton about why I was so shrill about Gaza and Biden, and I think my answer there was pretty complete. So, here's the background for why I call him Genocide Joe:

The quick and easy answer is "it's genocide" - and that should be more than enough. But that's not the entire truth to it. Surely you can accept that people can honestly have sympathy for the people of Gaza, right? Surely you can accept that when someone says they are fucking pissed off with the slaughter of an oppressed people, they aren't lying or making shit up? Being aghast at the US position on Israel-Palestine is not a mysterious position.

I could point to my avatar, one that I have had for over a decade and a half - and just say that I am reflexively opposed to war. What is it good for? Absolutely nothing. And this is true too, but also not the whole story. Would you really like to know why I have such an obsession with this?

The questioning of the death toll was when I was broken, and it just gets more broken the longer it goes on. The denial of the deaths was disgusting enough on its own - but the reasoning for it was just so fucking gross. Over 55,000 wounded - this is like an additional 700-800 people being admitted to Gaza hospitals every day for three months straight. Half of whom were children. With full thickness burns and injuries requiring amputation. While being denied reliable electricity or medical supplies and while those facilities were being used by thousands of displaced people seeking sanctuary.

I remember during the early days of the pandemic when we used to bang pots to show support for health care professionals. Working ridiculous overtime. tending sometimes aggressively horrible patients, dealing with an unknown disease that was killing many people. They deserved our support. But what they went through is nothing compared to the medical staff in Gaza. Doctors and nurses and other hospital workers - knowing that Israel had some sort of obsession with destroying hospitals - chose to stay at their posts out of loyalty to their patients and community. Fucking goddamned heroes. And the ONLY thing Biden has said about them is that they are not worthy of trust.

This is what pushed me over. The obvious and blatant dehumanizing of a population being starved and tortured and slaughtered by some asshole wrapping himself up in moral superiority. The way the administration is just outright treating everybody as fucking idiots - sure, "no evidence of Israel breaking international law". It's gross and wrong. All bad - but after a pandemic's long campaign of justifiably being grateful to health care professionals while they were under attack by anti-vaxx nutjobs, to see the medical staff of the Gaza Health Ministry treated like fucking terrorist gunmen was too much for me to let slide. That's the thing which radicalized me most.