I used to have a bit I would do. Whenever someone would do that thing, known to all denizens of our local melting pot, where they perform a quick scan of your features and ask, "What are you?" I would say, by way of explaining my face and my last name, "I’m like…Jewish." If they happened to be Jewish too, which, in the circles I’ve hung out in most of my life, they often are, I would get a big smile, "Jewish!" to which I would quickly clarify...

"I mean, like, bagels and musicals...and that's it. I wasn't raised with religion or anything."

"Bagels and musicals," they'd reply. "You ARE Jewish."

"I am, I am."

Which, in fact, I am. So Jewish in fact, that both times I set foot in Idaho, I felt distinctly nervous. So Jewish that when I toured Auschwitz I was stunned at the resemblance of the gaunt faces in the black and white photos to my own reflection. So Jewish that if I wanted to move to Israel, claim citizenship, enjoy all the rights promised to all citizens of the free world, along with some I don’t even get at home, like attending higher education and receiving healthcare for free, legally speaking, I could.

I’m a little ashamed at my own naiveté. It came as a shock to me over the last year and half to learn how many of my fellow Jewish Americans believe in a continuous thread, connecting us all, that leads us directly from bagels and musicals to comedy and intellectualism to anxiety and psychotherapy to trauma, all of which I gladly follow right along with, right up to the point where I break off…at a state where Jews enjoy political supremacy over another indigenous ethnic group.

Over the past year and a half, I’ve read and I’ve listened to podcasts, I’ve attended lectures and a few protests, I’ve posted in all caps on Instagram, and I’ve had tough conversations with family members, and beautiful conversations with people who want to know, too. And in all my reflecting I've learned something else: it isn’t just Jews who do this.

We all take huge, head-spinning leaps from shared culture to shared values without thinking about the contradictions, or questioning the shared rules, all the time.

I think this is why I’ve come to see Israel and Palestine as a metaphor and microcosm for so much wrong in the world. At least it explains, (for those who have perhaps been wondering), why I’ve become almost singularly obsessed with “this particular conflict” as it is euphemistically referred to by some who’ve questioned my interest.

I think of the Jews and their relationship to Israel as eerily analogous to the only other social group I’ve ever been able to claim membership of: the liberals, and their relationship to the military industrial complex. It is a road paved by cultural affinities that leads directly to everything we claim to stand against.

There’s a joke I’ve heard told a million ways in every liberal circle I’ve ever sat in, usually in election years when attempting to make sense of how liberals, in spite of our moral high ground, in spite of our better policies, in spite of our generally more attractive and objectively appealing candidates, are never as successful as conservatives. It’s our infighting. It’s our innate fear of confrontation. It’s our inability to organize effectively.

Let me posit, it’s none of these things. It’s actually that our position doesn’t make sense.

Our stated ideal world order conflicts directly with our stated ideal national order.

The stated ideal world order is neoliberalism. Any liberal who denied this fact would immediately disqualify themselves from serious consideration in politics. Neoliberalism is the system which says trade and markets take priority over states and people. On the one hand, it ensures that the market remains free even amid political upheaval overseas. On the other hand, it means we trade with abusers of human rights, and our lifestyles depend on these abuses. We couldn’t lead our liberal lives without them. As long as they’re profitable, we insist that the abuses continue.

Our liberal lifestyles demand so much daily moral compromise it is hard to draw a line anywhere. I know my clothes were made in sweat shops. I know my phone was mined by children. I already know every fiber of my culture—my wide leg pants, my avocados, my meditation app—is inextricably tied to a system that relies on pain and suffering overseas.

The only way my world view makes sense is if I think the world begins and ends at the boundary of my walkable neighborhood. (And we liberals are the first to remind ourselves that it doesn’t).

Of course it’s better to do some good, knowing we can never do enough, than loudly proclaim we don’t care about doing good, like Republicans do. For liberals, though, it’s not so much a compromise as it is a self-cancelling contradiction.

We want good liberal policies, but any good liberal politician we’d elect to advance them must first vow to defend our position of global dominance. The first part we vote on and debate; the other part is taken for granted. One is always negotiable, the other always given. The fun, thriving liberal culture is ‘what’ we want, but global domination —and a robust military apparatus, vast beyond comprehension— is both the ‘why’ and the ‘how.’

Cruel Republican policies, and the weird and unsettling Republican culture that goes along with them, have one and only one advantage. But unfortunately for us, it’s a big one: their position actually adds up. Ours doesn’t.

Below, is a picture of Obama having dinner with one of the great intellects of all time, in my opinion, Edward Said. I loved him before I ever gave a shit about Palestine, because of his literary criticism, and honestly, because of his look. Like Obama himself, he’s… hot, he’s sophisticated, and he’s a fantastic writer.

Now today, of course, I love him in a different, deeper way. I see him as not just sophisticated and literary but courageous and heroic. I know he was an exile, and I’ve seen the pictures of the library in his name that was decimated because it stood for the best of what Palestinians could be if they were given the chance.

This photo devastates me, honestly. Barack Obama looks, as ever, thoughtful and engaged. And that’s the worst part about it. He knew what Israel meant for Palestinians. He knew, and he knows. But he chooses to leave his knowledge at dinner parties, not on the world stage. There, his job is insisting we need an even stronger military, and many more billions for Israel. And we liberals will fool ourselves to think that was the theater. “He has to say that,” I used to think. The real Obama has dined with Edward Said. Well, one he is willing to kill for. The other, is just dinner. Which one, then, should we believe?

Culturally, this photo attracts me strongly. Morally, it repels me.

I can’t reconcile those two, opposite feelings anymore. I hate an exercise in futility. And I don’t think it can be done.

There is a similar thread to the one I once held that (loosely) connected me to the Jewish identity group. This one belongs to the liberal group (they overlap in places). This one, too, tries to string me along, to lead me down the path directly from liberal culture to liberal geo-political ideology. Public radio and the arts (check, I’m with you), mass transit and social services (check, check)…higher education and healthcare, for a price, of course, these things aren’t cheap (check?)…free trade and around 750 military bases globally required to sustain it…(Um, no!)…

I used to think liberalism’s contradictions could be resolved. That it was a simple gap between what we valued and what we had accomplished so far. Now I see that these contradictions aren’t accidental—they are the mechanism it requires to sustain itself. Now that I’ve seen—with devastating, unforgettable clarity—where this thread leads, I think I’ll cut myself loose.

Though never from bagels or musicals, mind you.