Propaganda

Depending on your source of “news” one of two situations is happening in the Middle East

a) The noble Israelites are defending the land promised to them by God with mighty and unrelenting attacks on Iran and are smiting the infidel Persians most strenuously.

-or-

b) The Iranians are getting hit but are also throat-punching The Chosen People right back, the Iron Dome is failing and Israel is squealing for Papa Trump to come save them.

The former is what you get from Fox News and other Boomercon outlets and the latter is what I am seeing on Twitter. Boomers like to think of Israel as simultaneously militarily invincible and at the same time in mortal danger unless the U.S. comes to the rescue. It is similar to the view of normies that the U.S. military is invincible despite it being anything but invincible for a long time, arguably back to when the military was forced to become racially integrated.

For example:

If almost half (aka less than half) of people support the airstrikes, then doesn’t that mean that more than half….don’t support the airstrikes? Then there is this:

More Americans support rather than oppose Israeli airstrikes on Iran's nuclear facilities, according to a new national poll conducted before Israel's Friday attack on Iran.

What the article says is the 45% support “targeted airstrikes against Iran’s nuclear facilities”, which isn’t the same thing as assassination strikes aimed at individual Iranian leaders. 37% oppose the airstrikes and 18% of people are “unsure”. Yes, more people support than directly oppose but almost 1 in 5 aren’t sure either way. Hardly universal support. No surprise, most Republicans polled supported the strikes (the poll was taken back in May before the actual attack) but even that was not all that overwhelming.

Six in 10 Republicans said they support the airstrikes, but that backing dropped to 35% among independents and 32% among Democrats.

Twenty-seven percent of Republicans opposed the Israeli airstrikes, with a third of independents and just over half of Democrats opposed.

A lot of “Republicans”/MAGA voters are not interested in yet another Middle East war that we get dragged into and a bare majority of Republican respondents supported “targeted” strikes. As the poll was conducted by “the Ronald Reagan Institute” it is safe to assume those surveyed are skewed heavily toward older Republicans because among younger conservatives/MAGA voters etc. I don’t see a lot of support for Our Greatest Ally.

That doesn’t matter to Fox, their job is to keep up the appearances of unwavering support for Israel so they release intentionally misleading stories like that one to bolster their viewers.

I would assume there is a huge difference in opinions between Trump voters who are older and get their news from Fox, OANN and Jewsmax, er Newsmax, and younger Trump voters who mostly get their news from social media, especially Twitter. That might explain the timing of the attack as the Israelis are realizing that their unquestioning support from America is dependent on the older conservative cohort and those people are dying off meaning that the Republican party and America as a whole is shifting rapidly away from slavish devotion to Israel.

That at least is a sliver of good news. Our foreign policy for my entire life has been driven in large measure by doing the bidding of Israel and being the big bad bully that protects Them whenever They do something awful. Let’s hope that era is coming to a swift close.