Transcript
Good morning. It's Tuesday, June 11th at 0841 a Pacific time. I went on to Telegram for the first time in a while and I decided I would unfollow all of the terrorist channels because I just have really no interest in tracking that stuff anymore. I don't really see the point. But I did notice some interesting things on Bellingcat, which is the investigative site which I'm still following. And there were some investigative things they did on the IDF and inside the Gaza operation. And also they did some geolocating and tracking and investigating of some explosions that they did in their urban warfare.
And I was really interesting and it just like I just keep thinking about this whole ongoing narrative of you know, the most moral army and stuff almost seems like an oxymoron to me to say that you know the most moral army because like the point of an army is like it's a killing machine. The whole point of an army is to take young people and train them to be able to kill on command. I don't know how you can attach morality to that in a larger human view.
And I also just remember growing up and hearing about how certain people are heroes and hearing stories about certain people. And so like Lulu Mountbatten, who like okay, he was killed in the, you know, the IRA explosion or whatever. But like when he died, he was with some boys from that, you know, the Irish boy school. And then later it was revealed that he was really like morally depraved that, you know, people in India knew all about him and stuff. And so, you know, and then there's other examples, you know, that I could talk about.
You know, like, you know, the founder of Islam and how there's like a whole like sacred sanctity around his, you know, reputation and if you like dare to like mock it or anything like, wow, people like have, they had to go into hiding and been killed over it and stuff like that, right? And so like, I just feel like the proportionality of the outrage when you mock somebody like that or when you challenge the narrative, I think the proportionality of outrage is sort of equal to whatever is being hidden by that story. So, you know, this whole, the more like we, you know, go into time, like now it's like eight months since, you know, the October the 7th massacre.
Like the narrative just keeps, you know, like it becomes more and more unbalanced. And there's more and more like, you know, magical thinking and extraordinary stories and, you know, farming of helplessness and just, you know, the constant, you know, rehashing of the victimhood narrative and all of these things. And, you know, at this point, I don't know what's being solved.
And like I also do know that, you know, Hamas is not being helpful and they're deliberately not being helpful. And, you know, whatever hostages they still have, they are hiding them like they hid Noa, you know, in like densely populated areas and stuff. And I don't know what the answer is, but I don't really think this is the answer. Like every life is valuable.
And if you take a life or destroy it or you know, if you take a life or kidnap, you know somebody or somehow disrupt an attachment you're destroying worlds and so, you know all lives are matter and that means the ones who were taken on October the 7th this is why this is all happening and so Like I feel like this this is taking over the whole world and I don't mean to diminish anybody's anything. I I just feel like this is really like sucking all the oxygen in the room.
You know, I was like surfing YouTube last night looking for some good, you know, lessons on the this week's Torah portion, you know, being in the wilderness and stuff and you know, there were some good ones and stuff and there was like one one that looked interesting, you know, because it was a female rabbi and she seemed progressive and stuff. And then I started to listen to this … like the whole thing was a lot of her focus of her thing was about, you know, the military conflict and what's happening right now. And, you know, all of the stuff in this like, OK, I appreciate that. But like, I don't know, maybe I'm weird.
Maybe this is like, you know, a weird thing or wrong or whatever. But like I go to like listen to spiritual teachings and faith teachings of, you know, like priests or moms or like like Jewish teachers or rabbis or whatever the thing is. Now, it's usually rabbis and Jewish teachers because I like want to know about God and how like he can help me be a better person. I don't want to talk about politics.
Like, I'm sorry, I don't want to sound like an asshole, but I don't really know how, you know, listening to a rabbi talk about how she's really upset that the Israeli flag is being, you know, used for this military thing. I don't know how that's going to help me spiritually get closer to God.
I don't mean to seem selfish and like an asshole or something, but it does seem like a bit arrogant and it seems a bit entitled for spiritual leaders to stand up there and presume that that is gonna help. Maybe that does help some people, but I'm just some person trying to get closer to God and I don't think listening to somebody talk about a geopolitical thing is really helping anyone get closer to God. And I feel like this whole thing is taking over everything. People who, you know, that I previously thought were okay, these people are leading me to God and I go onto their Facebook and they're like, genocide. It's like, everyone's losing their mind. And you know, that's a generalization. There are people that are making an effort, but it's really, really hard and it's becoming harder and harder.
And I don't know what the point of this rant is.
This is just to, you know, be vulnerable and be honest and just say things that maybe other people are feeling but they don't want to express. This seems to be my purpose in the world to be an anger translator and to be a conveyor, a voice for the despairing and stuff like that. I seem to be really good at being articulating how sometimes people really feel they can resonate with my messages when I am expressing these kinds of sentiments. So maybe that's going to stick with someone. And I've been all over the map about this and I don't know how you could be, you know, in the past eight months, like I have like, breathing the spectrum and landscape of like every kind of psychological and emotional terrain because I've been aware and observing and trying to keep on top of what happened and stuff.
So it's easy to stand there and lecture people and say, the G word, you know, genocide or, you know, say this one's racist and say that, you know, whatever. It's harder to try to see how everyone's behaviour in a context, you know, is understandable. And then, you know, I have a bunch of people saying, you're justifying, you're justifying, you know, terrorism or whatever. No, I'm trying to understand why what makes people tick like, you know, I have a nursing background so I part of my nursing like Career was spent in psychiatry like I watched people devolve I watched behaviour and all being a nurse is about like addressing the patient's response to their situation. So I can't help it. I watch people and I observe how people respond to things. And I just really, really think that this is really, really getting out of hand and it's really devolving. I don't know. We need leadership to really like set some boundaries and say enough is enough.
And, you know, I'm not in any position to make any decisions or judgments or assessments about, you know, what's happening. I rely on experts and, you know, whatever, but I just feel like from my little world here in Canada, you know, I go on, you know, Twitter every day to get the news and I hear about, you know, the latest assault on the Jewish community. Now it's like, you know, what bunch of progressives wearing keffeyahs and masks, covering their faces, looking like outlaws, going and calling Jewish people baby killers. You know, last week or whenever it was like synagogues or schools being shot at every, you know, every weekend when it's Shabbat, there's, you know, people trying to cancel Israel and people, you know, like on the streets and like, it's, it's tiring. It's been eight months of this and we're tired and there's no leadership and there's nobody to stand up for, you know, for limits and for like the law.
And, you know, I don't know. I just don't know. I don't know where anybody is. Like, I just feel like, like, like rationality has been abandoned. And it's great for the, you know, Muslims, you know, the Muslim community and the progressives in that to say, you know, tolerance in this now. But it's like, I feel like that there's a lot of imbalance and those people who are screaming tolerance are the ones who are not really doing as much as they could to promote it. And so at the end of the day, God takes a backseat to people fighting over a piece of fucking land. And the other thing I want to say is like, if you are not Jewish, like if you're a Muslim, then I don't really know why you're spending any time at all thinking about Zionism.
I think that shit really should be left for the Jewish people and for people who support Jewish people. Like, it is not obvious. Like, I don't like, I think that Zionism is a lot deeper because everything in Judaism is more than what it seems. Like, this is thousands of years old people, okay? You've got to think with your whole brain. And I don't think many people do. And I'm really tired of this being the focus because let's face it, it's a dog whistle for hating Jews.
So, you know, if we are going to have that conversation, we're all gonna have to show up with our adult brains and we're all gonna have to be willing to look at things from a different point of view. You know, I don't really think this whole like you know, Zionism is racist, USSR narrative is really helping anybody. That's the thing from the USSR, by the way, in case anyone doesn't know that. That's a totally USSR thing. And I think that, you know, a lot of people in the Jewish world are realized that, you know, this is a discussion to be had, you know, maybe the whole concept of Zionism could be repurposed for the entire diaspora of Jews, not just Israelis, because you know, there's a whole Jewish world beyond Israel.
And I really think that, you know, Lee said in a past podcast, you know, that to some extent, Israel has sort of edged God out, you know, and I really like think that, that think that there's like a tension here between, you know, the power, the geopolitical power posturing of, you know, Israel and the living the Torah life of being a Jew and following the Torah. At some point, you know, like this week is the week where we're learning about how the Torah was delivered outside, like in the wilderness.
And it was deliberately delivered that way, like, like, not anchored to place and you know this kind of thing and so all of those you know lessons of that are things that we should be focusing on right now instead of like trying to project some kind of power dynamic onto a piece of land and saying that that's what God wants so I don't know this has been a bit of a big mess, but I just feel like at some point we all have to take responsibility for the fact that when you really sit down and reflect and get with yourself and be at peace and homeostasis with your own internal world, like it's pretty clear that solutions are in sight. Not saying it would be easy, but it's not like there's no solutions. It is that we don't like what the solutions are.
And so today is going to be at sundown is going to be Shavuot for until Thursday night. And I'm starting to see the benefit of having these Jewish holidays sprinkled throughout the year because all of these holidays are really good opportunity to, you know, take inventory and reflect and get with yourself and stuff. So I really appreciate that. And I just wish that we could, you know, be a bit better at navigating this tribal versus conscience, tribal versus moral compass, you know, thing that we are facing right now.
This is really, you know, the work. It's the ego work. You know, it always has been my struggle in any kind of faith, you know, endeavour. The navigating of the tribe versus, you know, individual moral compass has always, always, always been my biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest thing that really really tugs at my heart and my mind and almost breaks my brain and it takes a lot of love as in the sense of Rumi and mysticism and stuff not belief love of God because often I have been like okay I don't want to do the same more and I even I'll be honest with you I even at one point tried not believing in God I tried that I tried losing my faith and it was terrible I I just don't know how anyone could live like that. So I just I really just need I just need to keep finding God and I don't find him to a very large extent in any tribe, but I need the tribe to connect, you know, because that is part of it is to have social connections. So this is my big wrestling with the angel thing.
And it's ongoing and it's a constant, maybe that's my struggle. And I'm sure that I'm not so different from other people who see this and they just wonder what their place is and what they should be doing and what is it to worship. Sometimes it is to resist and sometimes you feel like you're the only one and everyone's calling you crazy or they're challenging you and stuff. And sometimes the challenge is good. Sometimes you need to see that.
But anyway, I don't know. I just feel like there is a lot of chaos. There's a lot of angst. And there is extremes on both sides of this conflict that are really, really stretching the centre to its limit. And I really, really feel that. And I wish that we could, those of us who have been for a while fighting for interfaith agreement, could put down all of the buzzwords and see the things we have in common. Like that's what we were doing before October the 7th. We were ignoring the disagreeable points and we were focusing on the common ground because that's how you build the relationship. So I just wanted to come on and give this little clip because I think this is part of the conversation. It's a conversation with myself too. And other people might be able to relate to that.
So it is Tuesday, June the 11th, and it is 9 am and everyone have a great Tuesday. Take the opportunity to try something new and look at something from a different point of view and you don't always have to fix your crappy feelings. Sometimes you just have to you just have to sit with them. And that's it. Have a great day.
God and Politics Don't Mix, Pick One