As I blogged once, I came knowing that stuff costs more here. So it's not the lower standard of living per se that drives me round the bend, it's knowing that it's partly due to government policy, i.e., thus far $30 billion poured into the settlement enterprise, for which there's no justification, and that's just for starters. It's frustrating and even angering. But I too refuse to be bitter.

Lastly, riight-wingers tend to be more uncritically patriotic than us left-wingers, hence they tend not to entertain thoughts of moving. I knew that eventually someone on this comment list would call you a self-hating Jew. No one could be less self-hating than you. Moreover, often as a leftist I have to remind myself, saying the words aloud: "Hey. I love this land, and I HAVE A RIGHT to love this land." I don't believe that this is a sh_t country. I'm optimistic, perhaps naively. Good to know I'm in good company.

As I blogged once, I came knowing that stuff costs more here. So it's not the lower standard of living per se that drives me round the bend, it's knowing that it's partly due to government policy, i.e., thus far $30 billion poured into the settlement enterprise, for which there's no justification, and that's just for starters. It's frustrating and even angering. But I too refuse to be bitter.

Lastly, riight-wingers tend to be more uncritically patriotic than us left-wingers, hence they tend not to entertain thoughts of moving. I knew that eventually someone on this comment list would call you a self-hating Jew. No one could be less self-hating than you. Moreover, often as a leftist I have to remind myself, saying the words aloud: "Hey. I love this land, and I HAVE A RIGHT to love this land." I don't believe that this is a sh_t country. I'm optimistic, perhaps naively. Good to know I'm in good company.

The issues between right and left here are so fundamentally different. It's nice to imagine this rising tide of progressive strength but that's not really relevant here.

The result of the new-found energy in the US progressive movement has been health care reform, ending wars, the real possibility of immigration reform, and even progress on Internet freedom and privacy. Having won another election, there balance of the US judicial system will also be saved from what would have been a radical shift to the right on women's rights and a number of other constitutional questions. Even the assumed-dead labor movement in the US has seen a real resurgence in this climate and was a huge part of the 2012 election victory. Of course, some on the left will decry the compromises inherent in lots of what the Obama progressives have accomplished, but that's no reason for despair.

To continue the analogue to the critique you develop of the Israeli left, leftists in the US mostly didn't consider the stark choice of leaving the US outright, but did, in significant part, adopt the same sort of "I’ll-take-my-ball-and-leaveism: you cite by adopting political postures that were so far from viability that they might has well have left. Support for Nadar in 2000 (sorry to piss people off, but…) is but one example. I recognize this a genuine and honest frustration with a difficult, sometimes corrupt and often exasperatingly-diverse and divisive political environment. But it is the same sort of defeatism you write about.

I thought that there was a lot of hope from the tents movement in the summer of 2011. Perhaps I was wrong, or perhaps that still needs time to deepen. I saw an extraordinary cross-generational coalition emerge in the US progressive community over the last 5 years, bring a really powerful combination of energy, optimisms and wisdom. I truly hope there are seeds of that to be found and nurtured in Israel.

The result of the new-found energy in the US progressive movement has been health care reform, ending wars, the real possibility of immigration reform, and even progress on Internet freedom and privacy. Having won another election, there balance of the US judicial system will also be saved from what would have been a radical shift to the right on women's rights and a number of other constitutional questions. Even the assumed-dead labor movement in the US has seen a real resurgence in this climate and was a huge part of the 2012 election victory. Of course, some on the left will decry the compromises inherent in lots of what the Obama progressives have accomplished, but that's no reason for despair.

To continue the analogue to the critique you develop of the Israeli left, leftists in the US mostly didn't consider the stark choice of leaving the US outright, but did, in significant part, adopt the same sort of "I’ll-take-my-ball-and-leaveism: you cite by adopting political postures that were so far from viability that they might has well have left. Support for Nadar in 2000 (sorry to piss people off, but…) is but one example. I recognize this a genuine and honest frustration with a difficult, sometimes corrupt and often exasperatingly-diverse and divisive political environment. But it is the same sort of defeatism you write about.

I thought that there was a lot of hope from the tents movement in the summer of 2011. Perhaps I was wrong, or perhaps that still needs time to deepen. I saw an extraordinary cross-generational coalition emerge in the US progressive community over the last 5 years, bring a really powerful combination of energy, optimisms and wisdom. I truly hope there are seeds of that to be found and nurtured in Israel.

What is this Judaism of yours that you talk about? What is your true Zionism, pray tell? I ask in the frankest possible sense, with malice towards none, as Lincoln would say. Would you answer me in the same manner?