The US Lacks a Serious, Functional Political Party

UPI Photos via The Hill

Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself. Between someone who tells the truth; who knows right from wrong and will give it to the…

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) June 28, 2024

The tweet above was obviously meant to rally support behind Biden after his performance in June’s debate (“dismal” is maybe the adjective I’ve seen used to describe it most often). But for me, it has a different effect. Obama’s reference to his own underwhelming performance in his first debate with Mitt Romney launches me into a sort of Proustian reverie. The year is 2012, Breaking Bad is still in its original run, dubstep is the big musical trend, and we have two remarkably normal choices in the presidential election.

Obama vs. Romney was such a normal, Serious presidential election it’s hard to believe it was that recent. There were plenty of antics in the GOP primary, from Rick Perry forgetting which agencies he wanted to abolish to pizza magnate Herman Cain’s brief stint as frontrunner. But ultimately the Republicans ended up with Romney, the strait-laced, Mormon former governor. He had been sort of a centrist during his governorship in Massachusetts, but had tacked more to the right and chosen arch-fiscal conservative Paul Ryan as his running mate. But there was nothing bizarre or outlandish about the ticket. You could hate Romney and Ryan’s politics, or even hate them as people — and I did both — but on paper they were perfectly reasonable candidates for a serious conservative party to pick.

On the other hand, you had Obama, the incumbent. His presidency had hardly lived up to the hype Candidate Obama generated in 2008, as the banks got bailouts and Bush’s War on Terror rolled on. But it was easy to overlook some of that as Obama shifted back into campaign mode, singing the right notes when it came to economic issues. His gaffe-prone vice president Joe Biden was not much of a factor, except when he managed to mop the floor with Ryan in the vice presidential debate. 

None of this is to say that things were good back then, or even better, really. There’s an accelerationist sort of case to be made that it’s better to have candidates as unappealing and outrageous as the system they represent. But the point is, once you got past the circus that was the GOP primary, both parties did a pretty good job of appearing Serious and Functional. That was the last presidential election, to date, where that was the case.

At first, it looked like the unseriousness and fundamental dysfunction would be a Republican problem. While the party was successfully hijacked in 2016 by Trump and his supporters (who were, in reality, the Republican base all along), the Democrats stuck with a candidate who was far from outlandish. Hillary Clinton was unpopular precisely because she was everything bad that people associate with politicians: an insider, close with Big Business and Wall Street, willing to say one thing in private and another in public. She lost for the same reasons that Mitt Romney lost four years before: both were so “normal,” politician-wise, they were uninspiring and even alienating.

But four years later, the Democrats took a big step toward their own form of unseriousness. In the face of Bernie Sanders’ surge of support and the failure of every other centrist in the race to gain real traction, the establishment lined up behind Biden — despite the fact he had looked to be dead in the water after Iowa and New Hampshire, and had doddered and rambled his way through pretty much every debate performance he’d had. He would have almost certainly lost (in the Electoral College if not the popular vote) had it not been for COVID.

And now, here we are. One candidate is a twice-impeached ex-president and convicted fraudster. The other is an octogenarian with an approval rating in the thirties and obvious signs of cognitive decline. Why the Democrats didn’t ditch Biden matters little. Whether it was because no one could convince him to step aside or because they really felt there was no better alternative, it does not speak well of the Democratic Party’s competence. Even if, after bombing at the first debate, Biden does step aside, that hardly shows that the Democrats have got it together. And, until proven otherwise, I expect our choice in November to be between the white collar criminal reality TV host and the unpopular, frequently incoherent geriatric. And, of course, RFK, Jr. — an antivaxxer with the voice of a goblin and a literally worm-eaten brain.

Again, this isn’t about policy. It’s about the fact that even before you get into questions of policy it should be obvious these are two terrible candidates. Even if you love Biden’s policies, his age and obvious cognitive limits at this point should clearly disqualify him from another term in the White House. Trump was an absurd candidate even in 2016, but at this point the only reason it isn’t flabbergasting that he’ll be the GOP nominee again is that this is the third consecutive time it’s happened. I cannot emphasize enough that, before you even get into The Issues, it should be overwhelmingly clear that neither of these people is a remotely reasonable pick for Leader of the World’s Sole Superpower.

As noted, one could argue this is all for the better, in some sense. Obama spent his eight years in office helping Wall Street reap record profits and blowing brown people to bits with remote-controlled death machines. Romney thought all that was good but wished taxes on the rich were even lower and that we could escalate tensions with Russia and China (one wish he would certainly get, in time). Both were horrible, and the real difference now is that our candidates are more obviously bad choices. Transparency is a virtue of sorts.

But, speaking subjectively, this does not feel good. The debate had some surreally funny moments, such as the golf argument the two got into. But most of it gave me the same feeling I might get watching No Country for Old Men in a room slowly filling up with carbon monoxide — a sort of existential despair mixed with disorientation and nausea. This election is a sight that’s impossible to look away from. But I’d certainly like to.

If Trump and the GOP Are Fascist, This Election Probably Doesn’t Matter Much

 

(CNN)

The debate over whether Donald Trump is a literal fascist has been going on for close to a decade now. It’s one I’ve weighed in on a few times, at first (back in 2015) to argue that he is, then in greater length about half a decade ago, concluding that he’s not a fascist in the academic sense but is in a more casual sense (but that it still may be wise to avoid using that label). I don’t really have any new arguments to make on that front: I still largely agree with what I wrote in 2019.

What I want to discuss here is a particular argument that’s been made with seemingly greater vigor in every election where Trump is on the ballot: that he is, indeed, a fascist, and therefore it’s absolutely crucial to defeat him in this election. If we grant the premise of this argument, it does seem superficially convincing. Fascism is, in fact, very bad — certainly worse than the squishy centrist liberalism the Democrats represent — and it is accordingly very important to keep it from ascending to power. So you should vote for the Democrat, given that they’re the only candidate with a realistic shot of beating the fascist. QED.

The thing is, I think that even if you grant the premise of this argument, the conclusion doesn’t actually follow. In fact, I would argue for the exact opposite conclusion: the outcome of this presidential election (and the last two) probably matters little in the long term and voting Democrat is largely futile if Trump is, indeed, at the head of a genuine fascist movement. 

Calling Trump a fascist is almost by definition to analogize him and his supporters to the major fascist movements of interwar Europe: Mussolini in Italy, Hitler in Germany, and (debatably) Franco in Spain. So it makes sense to look back the history of these fascist movements and try to take some lessons there. But here’s the thing: people in each of those countries did elect non-fascist (or even anti-fascist) political parties, and it didn’t prevent fascism’s rise to power! 

In the last election before Mussolini marched on Rome, his coalition came in third place and got less than a fifth of the votes cast. When Hitler ran for president of Germany in 1932, he lost soundly, and in Germany’s last free election before World War II the Nazis actually lost seats and ended up with a smaller presence in the Bundestag than the two leading left-wing parties. And in the Spanish election preceding Franco’s coup and the civil war, the left-wing Popular Front came out on top. In each case, the fascists still ended up coming to power. Not shockingly, losing elections didn’t stop the fascists! Franco and Mussolini staged coups and Hitler managed to worm his way into power through political maneuvering that exploited the rivalry between previous chancellors Franz von Papen and Kurt von Schleicher. 

One of the centerpieces in the argument that a second Trump term will be worse and more destructive than the first is that he’s assembled a core of operatives who are both competent and loyal enough to put all of his worst plans into effect. But if that’s true, why wouldn’t he use that same cabal to find a non-electoral path to power, like the fascist leaders of old? We’ve spent years hearing about how close we came to… something (I’m never quite sure what) on January 6, 2021. If that “coup attempt” (as it’s been branded) was nearly successful and Trump is now bigger and badder than ever, why would an election loss stop him? 

You could criticize this argument for being defeatist, which is fair enough. So let me qualify it a bit. If you’re voting for Biden just as a dilatory measure, hoping it will buy us some time to implement a long-term plan to keep the fascists at bay, ok. But then what’s the long-term plan? The people most likely to be using this “Trump-is-fascist-so-vote-blue-no-matter-who” argument are (not surprisingly) also pretty likely to argue that Biden’s actually doing an ok job and the Democrats are good already. So what’s your plan, then? If three and a half years of Biden has somehow left us with an even more dangerous, fascist Trump who’s neck and neck with him in national polling, why will four more years of Biden prevent the fascists from coming to power? Sorry to break this one to you, but a broadly unpopular centrist president whose own supporters mostly don’t like him that much sounds like exactly the sort of leader a fascist coup would overthrow. 

As noted, I do not think Trump’s a fascist. I think his brand of racist, socially reactionary conservatism is pretty noxious, but I’m not concerned about this being the last presidential election we ever have (we should be so lucky). However, if I were, my focus probably wouldn’t be on yelling at people online who say they’re not going to vote for Biden. You can blame purity test leftists or the New York Times or Russia for his unpopularity, but even if you’re right, whining isn’t actually a political strategy! And if you really think that the fascists are this close to power in the United States, “vote blue no matter who” really doesn’t cut it as a political strategy, either.

I personally have no intention of voting for Biden. For one thing, I live in a state that Trump carried easily in both 2016 and 2020, and which he’s quite likely to win again, therefore (because of the electoral college) making a vote for Biden totally inconsequential. But even if I lived in a more competitive state I wouldn’t be planning on voting for him. Disgust with his unflagging support of Israel as they decimate Gaza is a strong reason not to, but I also just think Biden’s brand of establishment liberalism has no ability to actually fix problems like climate change and economic inequality, and that (based on election patterns post-WWII) if Biden wins this election some Republican — maybe Trump, maybe someone worse — will win the White House in 2028. 

That being said, I do think there are reasonable arguments you can make in favor of voting for Biden even if they don’t ultimately convince me. It is true that Trump would be as bad or worse on pretty much every issue, certainly including Israel-Palestine, and that on economics Biden probably has the (unimpressive) distinction of being the best president of my lifetime. 

I also think that there’s an argument to be made that the outlook for American democracy, such as it is, is pretty bleak (this argument I happen to wholeheartedly agree with). But Trump is not a fascist who will install himself as president-for-life, and if he were, re-electing Biden would be completely insufficient to stop him. So let’s maybe just take it down a few notches. 

Time Has Proven the Critics Wrong About the Ending of "There Will Be Blood"

(Paramount Vantage via thecinemaarchives.com)

In late 2007, director Paul Thomas Anderson’s fifth feature-length film premiered: a sprawling, 158-minute epic set during the California oil boom, loosely adapting the novel Oil! by Upton Sinclair. There Will Be Blood won widespread acclaim for its direction and the performances of leads Daniel Day-Lewis and Paul Dano, with Day-Lewis ultimately garnering multiple awards for his portrayal of oil prospector Daniel Plainview. But there was one aspect of the film that earned less than universal appreciation: its finale. Pardon the blatant laziness here but I’m just going to crib a few quotes from Wikipedia’s “reception” section in its article on the movie:

“The scenes between Day-Lewis and Dano ultimately degenerate into a ridiculous burlesque.” (Mick LaSalle in The San Francisco Chronicle)

“There Will Be Blood is not perfect, and in its imperfections (its unbending characters, its lack of women or any reflection of ordinary society, its ending, its relentlessness) we may see its reach exceeding its grasp.” (Roger Ebert)

“[The final scene] marks the moment when 'There Will Be Blood' stops being a masterpiece and starts being a really good movie. What was grand becomes petty, then overwrought.” (Carla Meyer in the Sacramento Bee)

“[The ending] might not be the very worst scene in the history of recent Oscar-garlanded cinema… but it's perhaps the one most inflated with its own delusional self-importance.“ (Peter Walker in a 2014 blog post in the Guardian looking back on the film)

For those unfamiliar with the movie or just in need of a refresher, I’ll review what actually happens at the end and some necessary background leading up to it (spoilers are inevitable here but also this movie is old enough to drive a car).

Throughout the film, Daniel Plainview has an antagonistic relationship with the less-than-subtly named preacher Eli Sunday (Dano). Plainview purchases the Sunday family’s farm and the area around it (with the exception of William Bandy’s ranch) but reneges on promises to donate money to Eli’s church and let him bless the oil well before drilling began. Later, Bandy agrees to let Plainview’s oil pipeline cross his property on the condition that Plainview repents in Sunday’s church, which offers Sunday the opportunity to humiliate and publicly shame Plainview for his treatment of his deaf son. 

Years later, immediately after Plainview has a final falling out with his now-adult son, Sunday shows up at his mansion as he’s sulking, drunk, in his private bowling alley. Bandy has died, and Sunday offers up the mineral rights to his ranch — the last piece of land in that area left untapped. Before he accepts the offer, Plainview forces Sunday to loudly proclaim that God isn’t real and that he, Eli Sunday, is a false prophet. After Sunday duly completes this self-abasing ritual, Plainview reveals the kicker: he doesn’t want or need the Bandy ranch anymore.

(NB: It’s going to be a little hard to do justice to this final scene in text, but here goes. Or you can just watch it and skip ahead in this blog post a bit). With obvious Schadenfreude, Plainview explains to Sunday that the oil reservoir under the Bandy property has been drained by all the drilling he’s already done on the surrounding land. He then mocks Eli as being just the “afterbirth” to his financially successful twin brother Paul. Sunday, candidly admitting his own desperation, pleads for Plainview to take the lease. Then, in a moment that predictably spawned a million memes and cultural references, a gleeful Daniel Plainview tauntingly compares the situation to if Eli Sunday had a milkshake while Plainview had a straw long enough to reach across the room, summarizing the result thusly: “I… drink… your… milkshake! SRRRRP! I drink it up!”

Like a cat with a mouse, Plainview chases Sunday around the bowling alley, throwing balls that he narrowly dodges. Mockingly (or maybe in a moment of sincere mania), Plainview declares that he is “the Third Revelation… who the Lord has chosen!” Realizing the danger he’s in, Sunday pleads with Plainview to recognize that the two of them are “brothers.” Plainview is unmoved. In a final coup de grace, he clobbers his nemesis to death with a bowling pin. When his butler arrives, Plainview — sitting next to Sunday’s body — tells him simply, “I’m finished.” 

It’s not hard to see why Serious Critics weren’t overly fond of all of this. It is, undoubtedly, over-the-top to the point of being comedic — slapsticky, even. The film’s strange sense of humor (if that’s indeed what it is) makes a few earlier appearances, but Daniel Day-Lewis bellowing about milkshakes and engaging in Tom and Jerry-style antics with Paul Dano is certainly more starkly absurd than anything else in the movie. 

But let’s review what just happened here. Plainview forces Eli Sunday to recant everything he believes in (even if only in front of an empty room), taunts him like a schoolyard bully, toys with him like a predator with its prey, then brutally murders him. This all comes after Plainview has spitefully destroyed his relationship with his only son. It’s an explosive fit of jouissance, to be Lacanian about it: by the end, Sunday may be dead, but Plainview — disheveled, drunk, and caught literally red-handed in the act of murder — seems to have destroyed himself and his own life as well in this act of libidinal violence.  

At first blush, the moral of the story might seem to be the old cliche about how money isn’t everything or something along those lines: if only Daniel Plainview had recognized his relationship with his son was more important and appreciated the spiritual values Eli Sunday preached, he wouldn’t have ended up bitter, alone, and covered in blood in the bowling alley of his cavernous mansion. But this doesn’t really work. Plainview goes out of his way to break off his relationship with his son, even when the latter seems to want them to reconcile. And bashing Eli Sunday’s brains in had nothing to do with money or profit. Plainview could have easily had his cake and eaten it too: patched up his relationship with his now-grown kid and sent Sunday away to deal with his own financial problems, all without losing a cent. Money didn’t drive him to this. So what did?

The answer to that becomes clearer when we understand the system Plainview represents — not simply in an allegorical sense but also the system that he acts as an agent of throughout the story. Daniel Plainview is the archetypal American Capitalist — literally sucking value (in the form of crude oil) out of the world itself and turning it into his own personal fortune through the magic of the marketplace. That in itself is not some groundbreaking insight on my part, of course. The RottenTomatoes consensus for There Will Be Blood describes it as a “sparse and sprawling epic about the underhanded ‘heroes’ of capitalism”.

On the surface, this line of thought might even make it tempting to agree with Carla Meyer, that “the story was so much richer before [the final scenes] – back when it wasn't personal, just business.” But, of course, the idea that there’s some clear line of demarcation between “business” and “personal” is one of those fictions of the capitalist system — a rule that it sets and then constantly violates. 

Daniel Plainview, in fact, consistently violates ostensible tenets of the capitalist order: he attempts to deceive the Sundays by claiming he wants their property for quail hunting, and then fails to pay money that he owes Eli. So much for the sanctity of contract and the prohibition on fraud — two supposed cornerstones of the free market. And, of course, he manages to get the oil out from under the Bandy tract without even bothering to acquire mineral rights for it — legally, perhaps, but in a way that seems to clearly violate the spirit of property ownership if not the letter of it (after all, he himself notoriously analogizes it to stealing Eli Sunday’s milkshake from across the room).

I suppose a True Free Markets™ type libertarian might argue this means Plainview doesn’t really represent capitalism, or rather only represents a corrupted version of it. But if we understand capitalism as a system that is constantly breaking its own rules (wage theft, for instance, dwarfs other forms of robbery), we can see that the corruption is embedded in the system itself. Plainview represents capitalism (particularly in its unvarnished, American form) precisely because he breaks the rules. 

Which brings us back to jouissance. A psychoanalytic term, Encyclopedia Britannica explains it as “an excessive and simultaneously painful kind of enjoyment derived from transgressing the superego’s own prohibitions” — in other words, from breaking your own rules. Capitalism is engaged in a constant game of jouissance then, of transgressing its own prohibitions to extract that extra bit of value — even if it comes with a cost. 

Capitalism is often conceived as a sort of profit-driven machine, devoid of heart or soul. Supporters might call that efficiency, while critics might call it bloodlessness. But Anderson’s film shows us, to the contrary, that There Will Be Blood — not just blood spilt, but all sorts of blood: bad blood, hot blood, cold blood, and in every case, red blood. Which is to say that capitalism is not (only) cold, calculated, and profit-focused. It is also inherently libidinal, driven forward by countless Daniel Plainviews, each with their own god complexes, ambitions, manias, and revenge fantasies.

Eli Sunday, religious charlatan that he may be, does not fit into this capitalist system. His focus on community and heavenly bliss beyond this material world doesn’t jive with the ethic of capitalism (there’s a reason why arch-capitalist Ayn Rand was so hard on religion). His last words, pleading with Plainview to see that the two of them are brothers, show that up to the end he has failed to internalize the worldview of the emerging industrial order. There is no use for a Brotherhood of Man in the marketplace, anymore than the bond between father and son means anything (as we’ve just seen in the previous scene). So Sunday must go, but not before he’s forced to admit that the only god is Mammon. All that is solid melts to air, all that is holy is profaned.

Sunday seals his fate by revealing both weakness and an inability to adapt. Whatever sins he thinks he is confessing to in the exchange that ends with his death, these are the ones that matter. Daniel Plainview, meanwhile, has amassed as great a fortune as he could have dreamt of and drained the Sundays’ property of every drop of crude oil it once stored. The only thing left for him is to engage in an another, final act of destruction, even after it has ceased to be creative. The Daniel Plainview that murders Eli Sunday is the capitalist id, finally untethered completely from its superego: both terrifyingly egomaniacal and cartoonishly over the top, breathtakingly amoral and comedically absurd. Not that we’d ever see anything like this in real life.

(nbcnews.com)

(Side note: this is also why the liberal critiques of Trump fall so flat. You can’t disown the personification of American capitalism while still defending the system itself.)

Did Paul Thomas Anderson have all of this in mind when he made There Will Be Blood? I don’t know. Probably not, but that’s not the point. You don’t need a Lacanian analysis of capitalism to realize there’s something animalistic at its core, no matter how nicely it may be dressed up on the outside.

The same (ultimately self-)destructive tendencies of capitalism are at work all around us. The threat of climate change (both for business and for humanity) hasn’t kept oil from being pumped out of the ground, nor has runaway inequality been stopped in spite of the long-term problems it poses for an economy based on consumer spending. Marx predicted that it would become harder to make money the further capitalism progressed, and history has borne that out. But the appetite of the capitalist beast shows no signs of ebbing. Eventually, destruction — libidinal, gratuitous, and spectacular — will be the only thing left. If you want a vision of the future, imagine a bowling pin smashing a human head — forever.

(via Pinterest)

 

Stop Calling Issues "Complicated" As If That Label Means Anything

Take a look at this:

 

It's very doubtful that just by glancing at this calculus problem you're going to know the answer to it. In fact, if you never learned calculus (or, like me, your last calc class was long enough ago that this stuff once again looks like a foreign language to you), you might not even know where to start with it. I think it would be fair enough to describe a problem like this as "complicated." Nonetheless, it does have a right answer (I know because the book I copied it from lists one). 

I'm sure by now you can see where I'm going with this. While the analogy between calculus and social/political issues isn't a perfect one, I think the basic principle still stands: an issue's being "complicated" does not mean it has no right or wrong answer. This might seem obvious, but I think it's worth saying explicitly because "this issue is so complicated" is one of the most popular dodges that I hear (generally from liberals or centrist types) when one wants to avoid coming down clearly on one side or the other. But that's all it is — a dodge.

The big issue this excuse is applied to at the moment is, of course, Israel-Palestine (I don't want to delve too deep into that issue here and my feelings about it shouldn't be hard to guess). But I've heard it applied to plenty of other stuff over the years: NSA spying, drone strikes, even gay marriage back in the day. To some extent, I can forgive it if it's just an excuse for a personal lack of opinion: "I don't really understand this issue that well so I don't want to take a side here." But what's worse is how often it's used to imply that no one could possibly understand the issue well enough to have an unambivalent opinion, that anyone who does must ipso facto actually be the truly ignorant one, and that the way to be genuinely enlightened on said issue is to, Socrates-like, proclaim that the only thing you know is that you know nothing (aside from the fact that this issue is just so complicated). Other times, "it's complicated" is just invoked as a sort of moral fig leaf, serving to dress up one's (controversial but generally status quo-affirming) position as being the mature, sane one to arrive at once you really process all the nuances.

Not for the first time, Matt Yglesias give us an exemplary version of a typical centrist-liberal practice taken to its smuggest possible version:

Crafting a durable peace between Israel and the Palestinians seems like it would be hard. pic.twitter.com/z7WVXxz1N0

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) February 2, 2024

I've got about 3,000 words on the Palestinian Right of Return and I think the conclusion is going to be "in summary, the Israel/Palestine conflict is difficult to solve."

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) October 15, 2023

I think part of the appeal of Israel-Palestine is precisely the intractability — you don’t need to ask questions like “is throwing around ‘genocide’ rhetoric bringing us closer or further from a peaceful resolution?” because nobody thinks a peaceful resolution is possible.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) January 12, 2024

Me and the shy Biden voter fam, stuck between inflation truthers and the “genocide joe” psychos. https://t.co/VfhnLRnSCC

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) November 8, 2023

If you’re annoyed that coverage of protest tactics is crowding out coverage of the thing your protest was meant to draw attention to, that seems like a poorly organized protest.

— Matthew Yglesias (@mattyglesias) April 24, 2024

These five tweets do a great job of capturing the entire mindset I'm criticizing here: note how effortlessly we slide from "gee guys this just seems like a real conundrum to me!" to psychoanalyzing the people who refuse to accept the so-called "intractability" of the issue (actually they're so focused on this issue because it's impossible to solve) to talking about them as crazy idiots who are so stupid they can't even do a good job of fighting for their own cause (which is also stupid). While contributing literally nothing of value to the conversation and, by his own admission, getting us zero percent closer to even knowing how to resolve Israel-Palestine, Matt's still able to congratulate himself simply for seeing how dumb everyone else is (because they, unlike him, fail to grasp how complicated this issue really is).

Of course, with Israel-Palestine or any other issue involving millions of people, there are going to be genuine complexities and difficulties. Personally, I wouldn't relish the idea of being appointed to a committee tasked with devising the best practical resolution to the conflict. But the thing is, you don't actually have to have the perfect solution to anything in order to recognize that (1) it is a problem and (2) the current approach to it is not good enough. What's the perfect balance, in the digital age, between protecting individual privacy and using surveillance to prevent terrorism and other crimes? I don't know, but I don't think it's widespread warrantless spying carried out by a government with a history of persecuting "subversives" like Martin Luther King. 

It is actually totally possible to be aware of the complexities (real or imagined) of a situation without becoming totally befuddled and unable to take an unapologetic stance one way or the other. For instance, I'm aware that there was a UN partition plan in 1947 that would have created both a Jewish and an Arab state, but was rejected by Arab leaders. I'm also aware that Yasser Arafat rejected the Israeli offer (supposedly for a Palestinian state) at the 2000 Camp David summit. (I'm also aware of the reasons these events are actually far different than they've been made out to be.) Somehow, that doesn't make tens of thousands of dead Palestinians more palatable to me. 

On this issue and every other one where the "it's complicated" dodge/cover is used, what I really wish is that the people using it would just be more honest. If this isn't an important issue to you, and therefore you wish everyone would just shut up about it, admit that. If you don't want to take a side because you're afraid of offending someone, or because your real loyalty is to a specific politician or party rather than to a set of principles, admit that. Or if you are taking a position that's going to make a lot of people mad, just do it without patting yourself on the back for understanding this "complicated" issue better than your opponents do. I'd respect someone who did any of those things much more than if they used the old, worn-out "this is just so complicated" excuse to try to undermine any moral certainty that can exist about said issue. But to take things back to calculus, I do wish I'd had that response as an option in my high school Calc AB class. It would have definitely saved some time and headaches.