Lauren Boebert has a smart thing to say.

"You claim to care about X but you don't participate in X, curious..."

Once again showing how empathy is a completely foreign concept to them

Anti-war people wouldn’t jump at the opportunity to live in a war zone?

What’s even the argument here

The point is to strawman their argument because she can't actually argue against it.
I bet she wouldn't jump at the opportunity to get raped and carry the baby to term! How hypocritical! /s
- But this isn't even a strawman this is just dumb
It is actually worse than that.
E.g. if you want to help starving children, does that mean you want to live in e.g. north Korea?
To me, it seems wanting to help e.g. starving north Korean children, without wanting/planning to get any reward like seeing less starving children on your way to the supermarket, makes you a better person.
Probably that they wouldn't want a life under Hamas which, yeah they probably won't but I don't think they're arguing that it's the best place to live to begin with.
This is an incredibly common thought among the reactionary right and I think it literally boils down to them thinking about everything like this like its a game or a sport, so when you support a side like palestine they can only comprehend that you think Palestine is a great country and you love everything about it and fully support all the people there and everything they do. Because they literally dont have the mental capacity to view things in anything other than the most binary black and white as possible.
My initial thought was “huh? Of course they wouldn’t want to go to school in Gaza…”
The most generous interpretation of her remark that I can come up with is that she’s saying all these kids want a free Palestine but wouldn’t be brave enough to do the freeing themselves.
Or she’s implying these kids wouldn’t want to go to school there even if it were free because, let’s face it, <something racist/classist/both>
But there are much clearer ways of expressing either thought, so it’s anyone’s guess.

I really don't understand what point she even thought she was making?? Of course they wouldn't, it's an active conflict area, and that conflict is what has people worked up....

She is being racist
She has a very poor understanding of what's happening in Gaza, and replaces the yawning chasm that is her factual understanding with a dim stereotype view that it's a bad place because the Palestinians are terrible people who don't pull themselves up by their bootstraps
- I think it's that it's run by Hamas and that most Western/liberal minded university students wouldn't like to live in under Islamic rule. Which yeah probably, but also misses the point of the protests.
I think her point is that people would probably get hurt if they went there for a college semester even if it wasn't a conflict zone, maybe due to religious or gender discrimination.
Which might be right, as a society they still can improve, but it doesn't mean they deserve to be victims of a genocide. I think we're past religion here, we're just humans concerned for other humans.
- Hell, it's not like college campuses in the US are some beacon of safety
what point she even thought
I'm going to stop you right there to tell you she's incapable of doing something like that.
Let’s say she meant “before conflict”. It still does not make sense. Yes, US universities are better. Therefore, what?
- There are brown people in Gaza and obviously no one wants to be around brown people.
The point she is trying to make, is that Hamas doesn’t grant the same freedoms to protest and accept criticism of the government that we claim to allow in the US.
Which is true.
But what she doesn’t get, is that religion, extremism and lack of education is the problem both in the Middle East and in her constituency in the US.

It's almost like normal human beings can sympathize with people being genocided and oppose genocide even when the cultural norms are fucked.

Tribalism is such a core component of the political Right that they can't really fathom how people on the rest of the spectrum can prefer nuance to orthodoxy.
- Sadly it's not just the rightwing.
  I say this as a member of a leftwing party in my own country which could use a little more thinking and building politics up from principles and a lot less blind parroting of what the tribe's chiefs say.
  (We also have a Communist Party around here and those are even worse).
  There is quite a large overlap between leftwing and the highly educated (maybe even intellectuals) so leftwingers are thinkers rather than flag waving parrots much more often than rightwingers. However, humans being humans, even many of those can get a strong emotional bond with a party, by which point they become unchallenging and unskeptical tribalists.
"lmao look at these LGBT idiots protesting for Palestine. Don't they know they'll be lynched or stoned in Palestine?"
Republicunts and Putin-shills
- "Perhaps genocide is bad? Perhaps starving children to death is wrong?"
  "Ohoho why do you love Hamas? You think Hamas would accept you? You are a fool. A clown."
- The comment of @edgemaster72 just dovetails perfectly with this: "Once again showing how empathy is a completely foreign concept to them"
  Only somebody who thinks other people (including LGBT) are unable to feel bad for human suffering other than of the kind that affects or might affect them, would think that's a valid argument.
  The whole idea that people might simply be against such extreme human suffering even amongst those one who would not see as friendly, completelly flies over their heads.
- I've actually heard that one.
and yet you didn't even go to genocide university smh

Damn. So I can't care about the well-being of a region or people without actively pursuing living there / with them? Bummer.

The concept of naturally caring for others is alien to most Republicans.
So by that logic, fuck the Bible Belt?
- I mean... not not?

and thus she reveals how the conservative mind thinks: when recognizing that a place is being bombed to shit and she wouldn't want to go there, her reaction isn't to want that place to stop being bombed, but to avoid it entirely.

They just have no empathy whatsoever. The rest of us are normal and can understand the basics of the Golden Rule. Like I want sex pest pedophiles to stop jerking men off at musicals with children present. Even in a Repub area and even if I don't personally feel like watching Beetlejuice.
But they can't get on a plane fast enough for an official government visit to Israel. They love hanging out with Israeli government officials at Mediterranean resorts...

It doesn’t even make sense.

You wouldn’t want to go to a war zone to go to school.

No shit.

Makes about as much sense as me suggesting Boebert go to university in Afghanistan.

You wouldn’t want to go to a war zone to go to school.
Ummm, this is America. Our schools ARE a war zone.

She's right that I don't want to go to Gaza. But the question is WHY don't I want to go to Gaza? Hint: it's something that's been in the news recently.

I'll take the downvotes.
I wouldn't have wanted to go in the first place, before the October attacks, which I think is the point this airhead is trying to make. As a bisexual genderfluid bottom that presents femme, the Palestinian regime would be hostile towards me. Realistically, I will never have any interest in traveling to any theocratic country.
What Boebert actually doesn't understand is that I don't fucking care. I don't care if Palestinians would accept me, or if I'd get stoned to death if I made the mistake of going. What Israel is doing is wrong, and I am morally opposed to it. The fact that I don't really care about the tenets of the group that is being slaughtered, that I don't have a ton of respect for the communities being forced from their homes, none of it is going to prevent me from supporting Palestine through this and demanding Israel stop their senseless violence. Genocide is wrong, end of story. That Boebert thinks you need any more reason to protest is the real story here.
But the question is WHY don’t I want to go to Gaza? Hint: it’s something that’s been in the news recently.
Scary Brown People. Also, crime. Also, non-Christian Religions. Also, plus, too, poverty which should be bombed off the face of the earth.
I am a conservative and I am very smart.
But do you condemn Hamas?

U.S. citizens could learn a lot by spending the equivalent of a semester in Gaza. For instance, Lauren, you could learn that they are people and not savage monsters.

U.S. citizens could learn a lot by spending the equivalent of a semester in Gaza
Less than before the fascist apartheid regime deliberately destroyed all of the universities, though.
- Different - not less. Universities are nice and they often are their own ecosystem. More people need emersion into the actual cultures that differ from their own.

Conservatives are profoundly unintelligent.

Deeply unserious people.

"Help starving children!"

"But you wouldn't want to be there! Gotten!!!"

Coherent. Very coherent.

These Republicans are so insufferable, seems like it's only freedom of speech and to protest when it suits them.

That is the essence of conservatism goals. Rules for thee, but not for me.

What's even the point she's trying to make? I'm somewhat certain that I wouldn't have a great opinion of the average citizen of Saudi Arabia if I were to meet them all one by one, but if they were being the victims of a genocide, I'd still be against the aggressors. Does she understand that someone might be opposed to crimes even when they don't like their victims, or has the brain of the fascist not reached that developmental stage yet?

Does she understand
No.
You could ask this about anything regarding her and the answer would still be no.
She got a GED in her 30s and only because she was going to run for office. She married a guy who exposed himself to her and her friends in a bowling alley while she was a teenager and he was already an adult.
- Let's be fair...she did leave the pedo for a guy that would take her boobs out in a public theater while she gave him a handy.
- She's not dumb because she got her GED late in life, she's dumb because she's a racist fascist. I know people who have gotten their GED later in life due to various circumstances ... when you make criticisms like this you are throwing random people under the bus. Critique the things she says and does, not the GED.
Republicans will cheer any take, no matter how shit, as long that shit comes from the right mouth and lands on the right people.
- Much like Billy Madison influencing a group of First graders, shitting your pants is now cool.
All Repubs value white supremacist hierarchy more than they value truth or integrity. You are having a hard time understanding because your values are not delusional racist fascism.
These are the same people that want to wrap Mexicans in barbed wire and drown them in the Rio Grande. They love genocide when it is happening to a group they hate. Muslims are a group they hate.

For anybody looking for more info about exactly how and when Israel destroyed the universities in Gaza, here's a photo video essay: https://www.nbcnews.com/specials/gaza-universities-destroyed-israel-military-war/index.html

What kind of idiotic statement is that? I wouldn't want to spend a semester with her either, doesn't mean I want to see her abused and killed.

So here's the thing; even if Gaza wasn't under constant assault from a brutal genocidal occupation, I still wouldn't want to spend any amount of time there, because I'm a queer person and that's definitely not an environment that I'd feel safe or comfortable in.

And I still say Free Palestine.

The fact that I wouldn't want to live there doesn't change the fundamental human rights of the people who do live there. They're not any less human just because a sizable chunk of them hate me for existing.

A decent chunk of North America hates me for existing too. There are plenty of US states I wouldn't feel comfortable visiting. Doesn't mean I'd be happy to see a genocide in Texas.

Plenty of Jewish people don't like the fact that I exist either. Doesn't mean Hitler was right. He threw queers into the camps right alongside the Jews who hated us. And sometimes the Jews and the queers were the same people, because life is complicated like that. Just like there are queer people in Palestine being murdered right alongside everyone else.

Life isn't easy or simple, but some things are; genocide is bad, even when it's done to people you don't like, or people who don't like you.

This woman is as evil as she is stupid.

A bombed out warzone under Hamas (or Israeli military) control sounds like a really appealing destination.

SHE USED THE WORD "INKLING"! The bot is learning new words!

Because you should only want to help people if you can get something out of it or if you plan on visiting them.

you should only want to help people if you can get something out of it
That’s exactly what Republicans believe. It’s always “what’s in it for me?”
- It's less that it's something they believe and more that it's the only thing they can imagine. They literally can't picture doing something for someone else without gaining something themselves. There is no good in their hearts, minds and souls that make it possible for them to imagine a person helping others just because they can.
Hell, even setting aside all that. Imagine if I told you that one of the hottest tourist destination of the 1980s was Beruit.
You can be an entirely selfish prick and still not want to see the pristine beaches of Gaza and Lebanon ruthlessly carpet bombed by bloodthirsty bigots and greedy arms dealers.

The wink-wink nudge-nudge of Israeli-friendly politicians is always "Yeah sure you say you support Palestinians, but if you ever had to live next door to one you'd hate them as much as we do".

And if you apply this to how these same politicians see migrant, poc, lgbt, and any other resident who isn't sporting an American Eagle face tattoo, you begin to understand conservative politics a little better.

I have plenty of hateful religious nuts around me already. The only difference is they don't have complete control of local government yet.

This should go in the dictionary as an example of a strawman argument

Nice try, but you lost. Here's your participation trophy. Oh, wait. I forgot these make you super mad. Here's a thousand.

Snark sounds like smart if youre not listening too close

I'm amazed she has the ability to read and write.

hamas destroyed all equality.

fatah for gaza. fuck hamas.

Congratulations. You definitely understand what this is about. Good job.
- just think ishaan is an idiot.
What does "fatah" mean?
- Fatah are the party in control of west bank and who are seen as the ones that can actually be negotiated with since they aren't islamists
  They're also known for being exactly as corrupt as Hamas
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatah