Israel is How Europe Can Stick It To Trump

Over the past few days, we've seen a spate of hitherto solid Israel allies in Europe announce they'll be recognizing the state of Palestine. France kicked things off, and it was swiftly followed by the UK and Canada. (There also has been an interesting wave of Arab states calling on Hamas to demilitarize and relinquish power).

I'm not going to comment here on the substance of the decision. Briefly, it is obvious that Palestinians deserve self-determination in a recognized state, and I'm unpersuaded by those who are arguing the move will backfire against the Palestinians. As for those who claim that recognition "rewards Hamas", I say that, if we are to think of this decision in those terms, it's better to see this as not as rewarding Hamas for 10/7, but as punishing Israel for its conduct after 10/7.

But that's not what I want to focus on here. Rather, I want to explore a different question: Why now? What made these countries take this step now?

Obviously, there is not one single answer to that. But in addition to some of the obvious factors -- increased sympathy for the Palestinian cause and increased frustration with Israeli intransigence chief among them -- I suggest an additional cause is that stepping out on Israel is a comparatively cheap and insulated way to symbolically repudiate Trump and Trumpism.

The Trump administration's pivot away from our traditional allies and alliances has been met with a justified mixture of alarm of fury from those we've abandoned. From escalating trade wars to threats of annexation, Trump has done unprecedented damage to America's global standing. People want to see their leaders punch back. But many of the most obvious avenues for retaliation come with substantial risks of their own. As idiotic and self-destructive as tariffs are for the United States, it remains the case that European countries must be careful and adroit in their own trade negotiations. Symbolism has its place there, but it can't be the whole story; missteps can exact real and serious tangible damage on one's own people.

But sticking it to Israel offers much of that same symbolic flouting of Trump, at a much lower risk. Most of the "damage" there, if there is any, will be externalized, not internalized. To the extent some countries might have been reluctant to step out against Israel for fear of alienating the United States, that ship has sailed; today these countries are looking for opportunities to signal they're standing up to the American madman. And while the Trump administration might make noises about retaliation, I think they're fighting on too many fronts for protecting Israel diplomatically to be a serious priority -- and that's even if one believes that Trump's Israel policy is based on sincere ideological commitment, which I don't. If one thinks Trump is just using "Israel" as an excuse to enact various forms of domestic repression, the ultimate disinterest can be doubled. In essence, Europe recognizing Palestine (a) looks increasingly justified and sensible given recent Israeli conduct and (b) offers an opportunity to be seen as standing up to Trump, in a context where tangible blowback is likely to be minimal. No wonder it's looking more attractive!

None of this should be seen as warranting any sympathy for Israel of course. They've chosen their course -- lashing themselves to the most extreme and vicious iteration of global rightwing ultranationalism -- and they have to live with the consequences. That's the risk of hitching your wagon entirely to a single powerful but widely loathed patron -- if daddy gets distracted, you're on your own and you've made yourself an awfully tempting target. Once again, when the right is done finding Israel useful, it will leave it in the wreckage.

A Cracking Good Word, Part II

A few years ago, I wrote about how much I liked crack (the word). The basic reason why was that it has a wide range of definitions that cover a lot of seemingly unrelated territory, without many clear indicators of how the different definitions might be connected to one another.

In that post, I listed off many such definitions, from "crack" as in "fissure" to "crack" as in "a joke". But one slangier usage I didn't talk about is "cracked" in gamer-speak, where it means something like "awesome" or "unbeatable" ("That strategy is totally cracked!").

In fairness, I did talk about "crack" is in "elite" -- "crack troops guarded the valley" -- which is pretty close to the slang usage.

But I would bet significant money that, despite their similarity, "cracked" in gamer lingo doesn't derive from this adjacent "crack" dictionary definition.

Rather, my guess is that the gamer meaning comes from "cracked" as in "unlocked", possibly as in saying that the awesome player "solved the puzzle of the game", but more likely from an older hacker usage: a game is "cracked" when a pirate successfully removes the DRM and distributes it. Doing this successfully was considered quite a praiseworthy achievement in some gaming circles, and it seems likely that it migrated from there to the slang usage today.

But isn't that interesting? A contemporary slang usage of a word, that is at least adjacent if not identical to a "regular" dictionary definition of that same word, but whose entrance into the lexicon probably has nothing to do with this parallel definition.

That's cracked!

How Do You Watch Sad Kids' Movies With Your Kid?

When I was a kid, I didn't watch violent movies (violent defined broadly -- I'm not talking about gore, I mean even a PG-13 action movie). It wasn't really a "rule" -- I just wasn't interested. I remember being reticent to watch Renaissance Man because it had army men on the box cover and I thought it'd be a war movie (turns out, it was a silly comedy, which was exactly my speed).

Once I became a teenager, I was a little shocked when I saw young kids being allowed to watch violent movies -- again not gory ones, but just your standard PG-13 action flick. Is that okay? Are they going to be okay, seeing all that?

But now that I have a kid, and I think about kids' movies ... yeesh. They're so sad! They're all about watching your parents brutally die (Bambi, The Lion King), or desperately trying to find your missing child (Finding Nemo--after said child watches the other parent brutally die), or being abandoned by the one who you thought was your forever friend (Toy Story). Honestly, I'd rather see some baddies get popped in Mission Impossible.

Now, to be clear, I'm not saying these movies are inappropriate for children. I read research saying that these sorts of movies teach important lessons to young kids (about empathy, for instance), Nor am I saying I don't want or won't let me kid watch them (said lessons are important to learn, and in any event one of my parenting rules is that I don't want to pass on my neurosis to my child).

But boy howdy, I don't want to watch them myself, because I will be inconsolable and I can't imagine that's going to do Nathaniel any favors. We might have to create a household rule that mom is the one who takes Nathaniel to movies like that. She's made of sterner stuff than me.

Pictured: A movie I never have and never will see, no matter what