These ratios hold pretty true with regards to competency in the workplace, too.

I think you’re way overestimating the consistency of independents in the US when it comes to Israel. See recent Gallup figures from February. It’s only in the last year that net sentiment seems to cut against support for Israel.

This is a consistent annoyance. Disaffected voters recognize that neither dominant party represents them, see that others feel the same way, and then seemingly assume that the other disaffecteds share their opinion on x or y. If only the party would align with me on this topic, they’d bring over all the independents! It’s not that simple of an equation for many issues.

This isn’t to say Democrats to a good job at triangulating public will or building a coalition. They do not.

Thank you! It’s been super disheartening to see people get excited about Harry Potter all over again, just as it was to see friends buy the video game a few years back. Many people who want to ostensibly call themselves allies are more than happy to engage in Nostalgia over Solidarity.

I read the Harry Potter books as a child. I enjoyed them a normal amount. I think I dressed up as HP for Halloween one year. But then I grew older and I “graduated” to other fantasy, as I would generally expect someone to do.

Now when I think about Harry Potter, I always think of Ursula K Le Guin’s comments:

Q: Nicholas Lezard has written ‘Rowling can type, but Le Guin can write.’ What do you make of this comment in the light of the phenomenal success of the Potter books? I’d like to hear your opinion of JK Rowling’s writing style

UKL: I have no great opinion of it. When so many adult critics were carrying on about the “incredible originality” of the first Harry Potter book, I read it to find out what the fuss was about, and remained somewhat puzzled; it seemed a lively kid’s fantasy crossed with a “school novel”, good fare for its age group, but stylistically ordinary, imaginatively derivative, and ethically rather mean-spirited.