Substack Notes

A Minor Complaint

Something about Substack is a tiny bit annoying: when someone blocks you, what you wrote to them disappears.

I had an exchange with one Frances Coppola (unsolicited advice: don’t) who subsequently blocked me, so I had to look our exchange up on another browser, where I’m not signed in as me.

To be clear, blocking and muting are prerequisites to maintaining sanity when you have an engagement-oriented online presence. It’s not cowardice to cut off communication with people who waste your energy. I rarely take it personally when someone blocks me. Their choice, life’s too short to care. They did you a favor.

I normally avoid engaging with leftists like the plague, but I saw something from one of my mutuals (Francisco J. Bernal) in his chat section. He had tried constructive engagement and failed.

He wrote¹:

I engaged in good faith. I offered clarity, proportion, and moral seriousness.

What I received in return was evasion, misrepresentation, and insult.

I did not come to this exchange seeking victory. I came seeking truth.

The truth is that Frances Coppola wrote a piece that erased context, invoked dangerous imagery, and responded to criticism not with reflection but with contempt.

I see clearly now. No clarification was ever possible because no clarification was ever wanted.

Her writing was not an accident. Her omissions were not oversights.

They were structural, intentional, and necessary for the narrative she had already chosen.

There is no shame in withdrawing from a barren field.

The record stands. Not hers, not hers curated behind subscription walls, but the record of what was said, what was omitted, and how she responded when asked to account for it.

I owe her nothing further. I owe truth everything.

This conversation is over because I say so.

Given this, and my own life experience, I knew that communication with her was hopeless — but I had something to say, so I said it. Here is what I wrote:

“Israel dropped bombs on the west of Rafah. On a tent city, where people who had nowhere else to go clung desperately to life.” [quoting her]

OK.

“The firebombing of Tokyo on March 9–10, 1945, known as Operation Meetinghouse, was one of the most devastating air raids in history. Conducted by the United States Army Air Forces during World War II, the attack involved 279 B-29 bombers dropping incendiary bombs on the Japanese capital. The resulting firestorm destroyed 16 square miles of the city, killed an estimated 100,000 civilians, and left over one million homeless. This raid marked a shift from precision bombing to area bombing tactics, targeting civilian infrastructure to cripple Japan's war effort.”

About Rafah, I admit that I cannot tell you whether there was a specific military target and what that was. What if there wasn’t? Hamas is, in my estimation, comparable to the monstrous Japanese High Command, which brushed off civilian casualties as a necessary sacrifice. In fact, Hamas is worse: they actively welcome it. My point is, non-combatant deaths are a part of the picture but let’s face it, unless you’re a pacifist, they aren’t the deciding factor.²

Her response:

Your comparison is wholly invidious. The framework of international law and international humanitarian law established after World War 2 renders illegal not only genocides such as those suffered by Jews, Poles and Roma, but holocausts such as the firebombing of Dresden and Tokyo and the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Holocausts like these are now war crimes and crimes against humanity. It is utterly disgraceful that you seek to excuse the perpetrators of the Gaza holocaust by reference to these.

If there was no specific military target in Tel al-Sultan, then there was no justification whatsoever for the bombing. You cannot excuse mass murder of civilians by appealing to some generalised enemy.

Whether Hamas thinks the deaths of thousands of civilians is an acceptable price to pay is neither here nor there. It is Israel that is committing mass slaughter without any clear military justification.

My response:

You’re invoking post-WWII international law as if it could retroactively judge the realities of a war fought before those laws existed.

After WWII, the victors said: 'We had to go through hell to survive and win. Now, let’s set up rules to ensure this never happens again.'

But the survival of the free world required actions those new rules would forbid. The Allies, fighting against existential threats like Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, did things that would later be considered war crimes under the standards established after the war.

Had those standards been in place at the time, it’s likely the Axis would have won or prolonged the war at an even greater cost. Those laws were created in the safety won by those 'uncivilized' victories — with the hope that future wars might be fought with more restraint. But that doesn't mean the grim realities of total war can be judged by rules invented after the fact.

But above all else, that haughty 'Your comparison is wholly invidious' followed by a bunch of your own comparisons is hilarious. Who gets to say what comparison is invidious? Oh, you. Of course.

Hint: using highfalutin’ words like 'invidious' followed by fallacious arguments isn’t impressive, it’s cringeworthy.

And if I cared, I’d hammer you for your logical flaws, but since I don’t, I’ll just list them:

• Category error: using postwar law that came out of specific circumstances as the moral baseline for all wartime actions.

• Red herrings: your rant about 'holocausts' distracts from the real issue — the moral and legal complexity of wartime decisions.

• Begging the question: you assume the bombing in Gaza is unjustified without addressing the strategic realities that might inform military decisions.

• Emotionally laden special pleading: your entire argument hinges on emotional appeals to current standards, not the brutal logic of wartime survival.

A stew of fallacies isn’t an argument.

Bye, Felicia!

Her response:

I could spend a great deal of time addressing your ignorance, your hypocrisy, your special pleading and your logical flaws. But as you are damned rude, I’m not going to bother. I’m simply going to block you.

---

Again: Coppola has every right to block me and I don’t give a damn.

I just wish there was a way of seeing my notes (and responses to it) even while being blocked. I can see the beginning of them in my alerts but not the entirety.

And I don’t think I said anything hypocritical, ignorant, illogical, or did any special pleading. Nor was I rude. I was blunt and unsparing. That, I own.

OK, the “Bye, Felicia!” was rather catty.

Me on a good day, although not as gray.

I earned my block.

But here’s my suggestion about the left:

They are a waste of time, a dead loss. Every time you engage with them you learn how stupid they are. At a certain point, there’s nothing left to learn.

---

One final point:

“Whether Hamas thinks the deaths of thousands of civilians is an acceptable price to pay is neither here nor there.”

Actually, it’s the crux of the matter. It’s the heart of what makes Hamas, Hamas, and it’s the basis of an actual exchange of ideas: is it possible to fight such an organization with conventional warfare? Coppola is not capable of such an exchange, but theoretically, it is possible, and it’s the only way forward out of this mess.

1. I asked for permission to quote him and haven’t received an answer, so I’ll interpret that as assent. If he asks me to delete it, I will.

2. Please note that I do not actually justify bombing Rafah. That’s not my point. My point is that the fact that non-combatants were killed isn’t the deciding factor and using it as such is not arguing in good faith when arguing about war, unless you’re an absolute pacifist.