Syria was doing its own terrible tyranny until pretty recently so Israel previously felt like the country could do its own internal unmitigated violence, and now its trying to trend towards something at least slightly better and they believe an improving Syria is a potential future threat. Turkiye is further away than either Syria or Lebanon, so they need to produce a better “excuse” to start shit there, but attacking Iran with little retaliation has them thinking they can shoot their missile-shots there soon as part of their attempts at broadly-regional dominance.

*A person is smart, people are dumb. *

Everyone is stupid about some things, and some people are smart about how to grift those who are dumb about a category. And those people are heavily incentivized to do so with the things that they can gain things like money, control, ego. So voila, you have a significant percentage of the population that are dumb about things like politics because the grifter types have been manipulating more and more power while undermining systems designed to ensure people are properly educated and informed. This also improves the efficacy of things like election fraud.

It’s a social cycle that repeats all over the globe time and time again. And unfortunately the cycle rarely resets unless things just break.

Six mistakes mankind keeps making century after century: Believing that personal gain is made by crushing others; Worrying about things that cannot be changed or corrected; Insisting that a thing is impossible because we cannot accomplish it; Refusing to set aside trivial preferences; Neglecting development and refinement of the mind; Attempting to compel others to believe and live as we do.

–Marcus Tullius Cicero, ca. 50 BCE

Not necessarily, at least with regards to historical justifications of male circumcision. For example, desert cultures that had extremely limited chances for things like baths experienced high rates of infection that circumcision notably reduced. And with a high rate of phimosis, the choice between infant circumcision (with lower blood loss, faster healing times and lower rates of complications) and teenage+ circumcision (with worse healing and a higher rate of complications). If 1/3 of your boys and men have to undergo circumcision for medical reasons, is it not better to do it when its the quickest to heal?

Even now, there is significant evidence that male circumcision reduces the chances of HIV (and other STD) transfer in susceptible populations, so circumcision in at risk populations is the common medical recommendation.

I in no way support circumcision as a routine religious/cultural practice, but when there are times and places and societies where it is a genuine harm reduction technique, and throwing those babies out with that bathwater isn’t really helpful, either.

Nah, it had the purpose of doing a genocide on Palestine. It desensitizing people to Venezuela is just a highly hoped for bonus, per those pushing it.

If you pick the right currency, Musk is already the first multi-trillionaire!