> I have been struck increasingly, over the course of this discussion,
> by the somewhat frantic fideistic fervor with with the Pawn Theory is
> being asserted in the teeth of some pretty well-known historical and
> contemporary facts.
They are only "facts" because they meet up with the a priori interpretive framework of the anti-lobby viewpoint. Yes, AIPAC hires 1,000 lobbyists, but only a paranoid (and racist, duh) Weltanschauung turns that into anything more than a data point.
> Defense of the True Faith
It doesn't make you uncomfortable to capitalize those letters? I read it as sneering. Is that your intent?
> has led rapidly, or rather
> instantly, to shrill accusations of anti-Semitism and mental illness
> among those who disagree.
>
> (By the Pawn Theory I mean the view that Israel and its actions are
> simply emanations and entailments of American imperial necessity;
> vulgar Chomskyism, you might call it.)
Yeah, except I've been arguing against vulgar Chomskyism as much as against vulgar Blankfortism. That's why I called them mirrors of each other: They both take an overdetermined and complex situation and reduce it to a singularly evil cause. But don't let that disturb your binary.