The Freaky Friday hypothesis

I see that Ross and Megan are revisiting Stephen Walt’s counterfactual history of the Israel-Palestine situation — the one Brose put paid to already. For those who thought such “What If?” approaches were the stuff of Marvel Comics special issues — what if Captain America ran for President? What if Iron Man were a traitor? etc. — you’re wrong: it can be a totally useless area of geopolitical speculation as well.

I suppose it needs to be said that such a question is almost entirely rhetorical — designed to make people like Yglesias sit up and say, “why of course!” It has almost zero validity as a thought experiment. You would literally need to write a book in order to enumerate all of the historical, cultural, religious, political, etc. factors that would need to be correspondingly switched in order to make this case even remotely relevant.

Instead, Walt lazily provided us with the geopolitical equivalent of “hey, what if a teenager and her mom switched places? Wouldn’t that be crazy?” Well, I already saw that movie. And it was shitty.

Not to pick on Ross or Megan or anything, but I hate to see them wasting their time when they could be watching the Wire rap or something.