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You’ve pretty much got the gist of it right there. Americans are largely pro-Israel because of their strong Judeo-Christian heritage and the pro-Israel, pro-Jewish lobbies. I suspect there is also a large amount of Holocaust guilt due to America’s refusal to permit Jewish refugees. Many see the Jews as the natural inhabitants of the Israel/Palestine area because of their ancient claim. But the Arabs also have a claim. They lived there for centuries, just like the Jews. Again, most Americans probably just support Israel because they believe the Jews have the best claim to the area.

You’re also spot on with your counterclaim. The United States gives billions of dollars of aid to Israel and its debatable whether or not they even need it. They have the strongest military in the region and a proven history of capable self defense. They are a “functioning” democracy as well. They don’t fit the bill of a typical recipient of American foreign aid. Specifically, I want to agree with you on the issue of Israeli guilt. Israel routinely violates the human rights of Palestinians and other Arabs, but they essentially get a free pass due to American support. While Palestine isn’t squeaky clean either, a good argument could be made that Israel needs to set the example because it has a functioning state with a rule of law.

If anyone is interested in the conflict and wants more details, this book does a superb job of breaking it down into manageable pieces. It also does a good job of explaining American involvement and support for Israel.

So this won't be brief, as I am adapting my own work from this comment I've made elsewhere. Parts I and II are explainers, and in part III attempts to come at this form both sides per this spirit of this sub. For background, I've listened to most of Peterson's three prominent lecture series, read is second book (1st one is on my reading list), and have generally followed him since he blew Joe Rogan's mind. Additionally, I'll vouch for his wikipedia as not being particularly misleading. The only thing that is really important is that he is an eccentric Canadian psychology professor and practicing clinician at the University of Toronto (previously Harvard).

I. Elements of his work you may run into.

Jordan Peterson's work can be best broken down into two spheres. The first sphere consists some fairly mainstream clinical psychology research focused mostly on the big five personality model. From what I am able to gather, his work here is fairly well respected and uncontroversial among his peers: he isn't what one would call a rock star but he's had a successful career. Additional products of this domain you may come across are a series of lectures available on youtube from a class he teaches on personality and the Self authoring program, a self-help program he developed with 3 other psychologists prior to his notoriety. Additionally, he recently released a book entitled 12 Rules for Life describing some general advice for leading a fulfilling life based on his experience as a clinical psychologist. This book should be rather uncontroversial. From what I've read doesn't really say anything that Moloch, Kek, or any other dark gods could grab onto. Furthermore, his work in this area writ large is only controversial in that he asserts that median man and the median woman are not equivalent, though "they are more alike than they are different." Also, lobsters and dominance hierarchies.

His other body of work is decidedly less mainstream. Beginning in the 1980s, Dr. Peterson became obsessed (his words) by threat of Nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United States. The question Dr. Peterson wanted to examine was, how can two opposing ideologies become so convinced that they are right that they would risk total annihilation of human life in opposition to one another? What resulted was an examination of mythologies and ideologies (which he refers to as fragmented mythologies) from the psychological perspective (heavily influenced by Carl Jung). If your interested, it detailed in his first book, Maps of Meaning available for free on his website or, alternatively, the more approachable lecture series of the same name. See also: his lecture series on Genesis. All in all, I'd describe this body of work as quirky yet incredibly interesting. As to whether its "true" or not, well, it would (as Peterson says) depend on what you mean by "true." I would say that I'm decidedly on the fence about it. Un-falsifiable comes to mind (which does not necessarily equal untrue, but is worth noting before internalizing it as gospel).

II. Why does anyone actually care what some kooky old academic has to say?

Jordan Peterson's first bit of notoriety came upon the introduction of Bill C-16 which, in Ontario, makes it a crime to to refer to someone by their non-preferred pronoun. Dr. Peterson took issue with this on the basis that the state should not compel someone to speak in a certain way. He contrasted this with previous hate speech legislation, that merely banned (prohibited?) the use of certain speech the state deemed unacceptable, and never compelled a person to speak in a way it felt acceptable. Additionally, based on his work studying the Soviet Union while writing the Maps of Meaning (and heavily inspired by the book The Gulag Archipeligo) he compared it to similar "Marxist" practices during Stalin's rein. His claim is, in a nutshell, that Soviet citizens were compelled by the state to say things they believed to be untrue on constant basis, neutering their ability to organize and communicate effectively. Additionally, he said giving into the demand would cede linguist territory to the "post-modern" leftists in the humanity departments, particularly Xxxx Studies departments, which were doing irreparable harm to the academy. The justification for the leftist part of this claim actually better explained by Jonathon Haidt.** In short, the social sciences overwhelmingly liberal (ranging 1:7 to 1:17, conservative: liberal in many department) which colors their perceptions of the world, and makes it difficult for them to act objectively and in good faith when conducting certain studies. Furthermore, their scholarship is overwhelmingly informed by critical theory, a school of thought that is rather difficult for me to be objective about, but I will say isn't thought highly of by those working in "hard" sciences (I hold a PhD in Microbiology, for your reference so adjust your epistemic status accordingly. I'm less than unbiased on the matter).

III. And explainer on both sides of this conflict.

Pro-Peterson: Most visibly, many see Jordan Peterson as standing up to politically correct, left wing bullies who are attempting to impose their viewpoints on them as discussed in part II. However, I can say personally that a lot of his hardcore supporters are actually drawn to what I discussed in part I. His second book (which just past a million copies sold) actually discusses pronouns and the culture war very little, for instance.***

Anti-Peterson: These individuals view Peterson as a reactionary: attempting to undo the in roads progressive values have made in society. They view his opposition to Bill C-16 is evidence of this, and his claims regarding compelled speech are overblown. Likewise, even if he himself is not a bigot many of those who follow him are, and supporting him is giving power to people who don't want what they view as best for society as a whole, especially its most vulnerable members.

TL:DR?* Kermit the Frog is a good psychologist but occasionally goes off into Jungian Crazy town. Strangely, this is actually pretty interesting (though of questionable "truthiness"). Kermit get's mad at bloody neo-marxist pansexuals and Kek and Cthulhu have a field day. Moloch praises the sun. The United Emirates of Kekistan come for the talk about traps, stay because he tells them to clean their rooms and stand up straight. NEETs try and become Chads, or at least less NEET-y than yesterday. Also...as told by 4chan
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personality research is quite far outside my domain, so adjust your epistemic status accordingly

indeed, I've heard him comment that his general success in conventional research has given him slack to pursue his work in this domain


*His justification here is that speaking and thinking are inextricably linked, and that being prevented from talking about something also neuters their ability to think about it. In other words, banning some one from calling a trans person by their non-prefered pronoun prevents them from clearly thinking about what gender a trans person actually is. Compelling someone to use a pronoun is writing the conclusion into the language you are allowed to use to discuss the matter. Personally, of all the arguments he makes, this is the one I'll go as far as to endorse personally. I'm about 1/3 through the Gulag Archipelago, and while no one in Canada is being sent to prison for thought crimes, there is a resemblance in the the prosecutor's conduct the Wilfred Laurier University incident that occurred last year in Canada and the Soviet trials of 1920-1940s.

*Hopefully this is the proper lecture where Dr. Haidt talk about the 1:17 (1:7?) conservative to liberal slant in the humanities/social sciences. I remember it being an hour long, yet this one is only 20 minutes. If someone else has a better link, let me know and I'll change it. I'm not a fan of TED talks.

If at all. I don't actually remember any specific references to anything Culture War related, but its been a couple months since I've read the book so I'm couching my language to avoid being misleading (Rule 8: Tell the truth, or at least don't lie).
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Additional explainers for EBS:

What's with the ancient gods? In several online circles, different aspects of American culture are often personified as ancient uncaring Gods, inspired by Scott Alexander's essay Meditations on Moloch, which uses a caanite God of child sacrifice as a metaphor for coordination problems in society. Similarly, Kek is a stand in for the right's worst tendencies, while Cthulhu (inspired by an essay by the infamous Curtis Yarvin) is used for the left's worst tendencies. I've also seen Tiamat used for feminism. Its a weird internet thing, don't worry about it.

thank you for this! that's interesting. the documents you showed me do sound concerning but on the other hand https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Will-Georges-St-Martin/dp/B000OREMI0

https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Will-Be-Celebrating-Adventurous/product-reviews/0736913122/ref=cm_cr_dp_d_show_all_btm?ie=UTF8&reviewerType=all_reviews I haven't seen the book but reviews have said it's just a normal photography book of childhood. I dunno.

"The grooming isn't in dispute" you still haven't shown me sources for this. you are just saying it. a lot of things can be called grooming. I'm talking about evidence for sexual grooming. if you say that everything is based on what the kids say instead of evidence, then it becomes a matter of simply believing them or not which is pointless to debate. given that one of the men used to date Jackson's niece and yet claims that Jackson made him hate women, and another of the men claims that he was molested at a time when the supposed molestation setting hadn't even been built, I'm more inclined to not believe everything they say, because what's the alternative?

There are a lot of unjustified claims made, so it can be difficult to separate out well-established facts from the extrapolations and fiction presented as fact. Some even claim that the wilder theories are posted by the government to delegitimize the truth. My point is that there's no single, unified "pro" argument to be made, it's a huge olio of varying sanity.

There are some well-established occurrences that might be called mistakes or malfeasance, and which serve as the basis for most of the broader theories, for example:

> The 9/11 Commission determined that on the morning of September 11, the FAA deliberately did not adequately notify NORAD of the hijackings ... An erroneous FAA report of a hijacked plane heading towards Washington ... due to "poor communications" ... significantly delaying their arrival on the scene.

> ...

> "Some staff members and commissioners of the Sept. 11 panel concluded that the Pentagon's initial story of how it reacted to the 2001 terrorist attacks may have been part of a deliberate effort to mislead the commission and the public...

> Suspicion of wrongdoing ran so deep that the 10-member commission, in a secret meeting at the end of its tenure in summer 2004, debated referring the matter to the Justice Department for criminal investigation, according to several commission sources. [1]

The FEMA study provides only relatively weak backing for the official story, further fueling the conspiracy theory:

> With the information and time available, the sequence of events leading to the collapse of each tower could not be definitively determined.

And it also contains passages easily taken out of context. You may have heard only part of this paragraph reproduced, for example:

> "...the heat produced by this burning jet fuel does not by itself appear to have been sufficient to initiate the structural collapses."

> ...

> however, it ignited much of the buildings' contents... Over a period of many minutes, this heat induced additional stresses, ... simultaneously softening and weakening these frames. The additional loading and resulting damage were sufficient to induce collapse....

The owner of the WTC complex is quoted as saying, in regards to WTC 7, "... maybe the smartest thing to do is pull it. And they made that decision to pull and we watched the building collapse", and "pull" is of course is taken to mean "intentionally demolish." [BBC]

When questioned, he insisted that he meant "pull out the firefighters" but, according to the FEMA reports (5.6.1) there were no firefighting operations in WTC7 at the time, and this contradiction is taken as clear evidence of the former claim. As a result of the attacks, WTC7 was entirely re-built at essentially no cost to the owner (retaining ~500M in debt before and after) [3].

There are entire books attempting to cover every detail and extensive articles with literally hundreds of references and dozens of primary sources so I can't even scratch the surface here, but that should give you some idea of the kinds of things that lead people to imagine seeing glimpses of a larger, hidden truth.

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The opposing view is, of course, that the towers' collapse is fully explained by the strikes and fires, and that a few shady acts by individuals or individual organizations making mistakes and/or covering up their mistakes do not make for a grand conspiracy. In addition, many thousands of people would have had to be in on a conspiracy spanning the FAA, DoD, FEMA, NIST, NORAD, etc., and could not possibly have orchestrated without documentation or have been kept from leaking.

Then again, a proponent might say, Operation Northwoods (1962) was only declassified in 1997. What might we find out in 2036? But if the government controlled all that, why did they let the the 9/11 Commission reveal potential wrongdoing? You can go back and forth like that forever.

Long story short, the hard evidence is totally insufficient and concluding that "9/11 was an inside job" requires relying on supposition and implication, and giving a lot of credit to organizations that are generally considered to be inept and inefficient. It can't be proved "beyond a reasonable doubt" at this time, and it also can't be conclusively disproved, only ruled out as not even remotely likely, which leaves plenty of room for some to believe it.

It’s incredibly easy to add citations to the “Pro-Colin” side of my argument.

I’ll go ahead and do so for the first line now, where I said:

>“African-Americans are shot by police at rates above 13%. But they’re 13% of the U.S. population. This implies discrimination.”

Here’s the ACLU providing its definition of “racial profiling:” “… the New York City Police Department's Street Crimes Unit used aggressive "stop and frisk" tactics against African Americans at a rate double that group's population percentage … A community coalition, the Cincinnati Black United Front and the ACLU of Ohio filed suit against the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, citing a pattern and practice of discrimination by police, including issuing the type of traffic citations Thomas received to African Americans at twice their population percentage. … Blacks comprise 25.6 percent of the City's population, yet 50.6 percent of all persons "stopped" during the period were black. …”

Here’s Vox reporting on another ACLU report: “The ACLU report found that 63 percent of Boston stop-and-frisk encounters involved black people between 2007 and 2010, when the city's black population was 24 percent.“

WBUR on the same report: “According to the analysis, between 2007 and 2010, more than 60 percent of those encounters were with African-Americans — in a city that's only 24 percent black.”

Not once do these sources ask if the percentage of crime committed by the black population of these cities is identical to the percentage of the population they comprised.

Not once do they acknowledge that it is the amount of crime committed by a group, and not simply its raw numbers, that determine how often we rightly ought to expect police to interact with members of that group.

They stop the argument at highlighting disparities between arrests, stops, etc., and population rates as if this is all the proof one would need to show that unjust racial bias was driving the entire gap between the two.

So … it’s clear that I don’t think that this side of the argument is correct, but that doesn’t mean I’m not characterizing the argument made by its proponents accurately. Sources no less academic than the ACLU (lawyers who want this to hold up in court!) make this exact argument in their professional reports.

If you need me to find examples of this argument being used outside the ACLU and on topics other than stop & frisk, I could easily keep supplying them all day, because this argument really is ubiquitous. If I was asked to EBS on the belief that evolution isn’t true or that the Earth is flat, I could summarize arguments that proponents of those views make, but I wouldn’t be able to offer sound arguments because the position just isn’t empirically true.

By the way, with stop and frisk in particular, we actually had a perfect control group to test empirically whether crime rates or unjustified racial bias was driving stop rates. Brownsville is a borough of Brooklyn that’s 76% black and <3% white. Kensington, a borough of Buffalo, was 82% black and 11% white.

Despite having nearly identical demographics, Kensington has the lowest crime rate in New York while Brownsville has the highest. So do Kensingtonians get stopped more because their city is slightly more black?

Actually, no. The stop and frisk rate in Kensington was 2%—Brownsville? 29%. So a city that was just 3% white and over three-quarters black had one of the lowest stop and frisk rates in all of New York—because it had the lowest crime rate. When majority-black parts of New York had low crime rates, they weren’t subjected to stop and frisk. That’s huge!

While on this subject, it’s worth keeping in mind who benefits from reducing minority crime: other minorities. That’s because most violence committed by whites is against other whites, and most violence committed by blacks is against other blacks. As Heather MacDonald notes, while blacks were 78% of all shooting suspects in New York City (despite being 23% of its population), they were also 74% of all shooting victims.

Whites committed just over 2% of the city’s shootings, but were also under 3% of the victims of shootings.

Taking a broad historical view, minorities make up nearly 80% of the drop in homicide in New York’s record-breaking crime decline from insane highs in the 1960’s down to today’s historical lows. Thus the point I make in my conclusion: minorities are the ones who benefit most from an active police presence in violent minority neighborhoods.

A white person who lives in Kensington really doesn’t have any sort of meaningful selfish interest to gain from paying taxes to police Brownsville. They’re paying in limited time and resources as well as police lives to benefit the primary victims of minority violence—other minorities themselves.

One final note: I did have the “Pro-Colin” side say: “Yeah, but that [the fact that cops are more likely to pursue when a white person commits a crime than they are when a black one does] is just because most victims of black violence are other blacks and most victims of white violence are other whites and cops care more when a white person is the victim.” I didn’t provide a specific counter-argument against this point, and I would indeed suspect this is the reason why cops pursue white suspects they’re alerted to at a higher rate than black ones.

However, to remedy this police would have to pursue and therefore arrest an even larger proportion of black suspects. See the Catch 22? If cops pursue fewer blacks, it’s because they don’t care about black victims. If they pursue more blacks, it’s because of racist bias and has nothing to do with actual crime rates at all. In some sense there is no way to win this because there literally is a way to spin the scenario into racism no matter what happens.