Throwaway05
12m ago
I mean if an investigation was never done why would evidence miraculously appear later?
Standing issues, the mainstream right hating Trump (especially after Jan events) and other factors left much of this not addressed.
Even with all that that didn't one of the Georgia cases result in something? I've never seen it posted in the MSM ("because ancient news!!") but people have mentioned it.
Everyone moving on is part of why we don't follow-up. When you add on the Trump teaming being incompetent...
That's just for the traditional malfeasance. Personally I believe that the election was stolen in the following way - if you restrict access to the public sphere (COVID restrictions) and censor the private replacements (all the tech companies uniting to oppose Trump) then you don't have a "free" election. I know lots of people feel this way and lots of people don't, but much evidence has come out after the factor about how a variety of organizations that shouldn't have been involved tried to impact the election results without touching ballots.
Throwaway05
8hr ago
I remember a lot of exchanges like this.
"None of the complaints had any merit." "Well this example had merit, but it was dropped by the judge because of standing." "Well if it didn't have standing it didn't have merit."
Many of the complaints were not investigated because of legal mumbo jumbo. Now that legal mumbo jumbo exists for a reason, but appealing to it instead of on the grounds of merit is not especially convincing.
Throwaway05
17hr ago
Hold on, I remember leaving the discussion from a few years ago with the "knowledge" that USAID was just a sneaky sketchy activity slush fund with some legitimate charity on top for optics purposes.
Was that a conspiracy theory or did not enough people hear about this?
Throwaway05
17hr ago
Elon isn't Elon anymore.
By all accounts the combination of family drama, widespread social censure, and depression with unconventional treatments have all rotted his brain. It's not clear if he could come back but he 100% isn't the same guy he was before unfortunately.
Throwaway05
19hr ago
I feel like that might be overstating it, though I have no real strong argument for anything else being a more important thing other than maybe AI being the one most important thing behind the future death of [all nations].
My pitch here is that the worst about Trump is and always has been the way that people respond to him. The response concerns about elections created an cavalcade of disasters - selling out objectivity and professionalism to oppose Trump, BLM Riots and the inequality in response to Jan 6, accepting the way that tech and public health put fingers on scales (and that includes governmental agencies messing with the election), media collusion, the tremendous failure that was the Biden administration (and the way that the administration should be the biggest scandal in the history of American politics and just isn't). All of these things are about Trump, but second run is the place that most generated some of them.
America in the mind of many isn't really a democracy anymore after that election and I think it's going to be a long time before the loser accepts the results again.
Throwaway05
20hr ago
In a democracy the response needs to be "sure let's calmly and carefully audit the election results to prove things to you." The response was anything but, and in some ways was catastrophically not that. The Democrats acted in a way that was indistinguishable from how you would act if you did do something wrong.
None of what you wrote changes that fact, and much of the negative state of America in the ensuing years was caused by refusing to act as a basic transparent democracy, presumably because orange man bad.
Secondarily, if your penetration tester reveals flaws, you don't refuse to fix the flaws just because nobody has taken advantage of them yet. That's asinine. Meanwhile we still have California trying to act as shadily as possible.
We've had numerous examples of people acting shadily in elections in America that resulted in jail time, and some major instances of people acting in a way that most people agree was sus.
The refusal of Dems to say "okay we won but let's change things so everyone is more comfortable next time" may be the single most important thing behind the future death of America.
Throwaway05
22hr ago
I think ymeskhout made quite a few good points in his crusade against MAGA election rhetoric, and think he provided an extremely valuable service about it
I disagree with this in the strongest possible terms.
Personally, I found his approach to discussing the election to be one of the biggest factors in transitioning me from a "I'll be back when woke calms down" Democrat to an actual Republican.
He was a good poster but on the topic of the election he went full Darwin+Lawyer fusion. I watched him to willfully misrepresent people, ignore good points and ignore and reframe to where he had more, he refused to accept the possibility that concerns were in any way valid and so on. He acted like a trial lawyer in court. That can be convincing but it's hollow.*
It was also tremendously inappropriate.
One of the major points I (and others) was making is that this not a situation where you can rules lawyer your way out of it. Democracy requires consensus, you need to be persuasive and to make everyone feel like the elections are free and fair.
You needed to allow audits without complaint and go "see, this was fine" you needed to patch some of the common sense problems with the way the election was run so it doesn't happen again. He refused to engage with these ideas and the Dems refused to do these things and now we have a situation where both side barely accept when they lose and the fabric of our country was hanging on by a thread.
Ymeskhout chose this hill to die and crashed out over it. He was also wrong, but factually and meaningfully.
*And later we know him to be wrong about some matters of fact.
Throwaway05
1d ago
I worry about our mods sometimes. Dealing with our nonsense has to be a serious infohazard.
Throwaway05
1d ago
that my son was talking Korean did nothing to mollify them.
This is a small part of your story but encapsulates so much of what's wrong in society these days. People are looking to be and are excited to be offended (especially minority groups) and are unwilling to brush over legitimate bad action for the sake of harmony but also to accept actual accidents and confusions.
It leads to a less pleasant world.
Throwaway05
2d ago
While I have heard the same I would also have caution - Newsom from what I can tell is like Vance, lots of accusation about phoniness/empty suit/whatever and it's convincing enough that people close to them and on the same side agree.
On the other hand plenty of people disagree and think they got the stuff. This is in contrast to the classic empty suit: Hillary, who seems privately hated by everyone.
Additionally Newsom is legit charismatic, in a way that Vance, Harris, and Clinton are not.
Throwaway05
2d ago
Foreign influence ops are a thing,
These things are likely happening at the same time, I would like to learn more about how much, projected efficacy and so on.
Consider other conspiracy theories - I met a Soros lawyer a few weeks ago (now doing other work). She's wildly far to the left and I believe she didn't need any specific instructions, but she spent years being placed where her impulses could fight the propaganda war.
Nobody has forgotten.
I believe you haven't, but I've seen too many posts here (and this is a high information, skepticism, and intellect environment) that have.
It's important to remember that just because you didn't buy the misinformation doesn't mean it's not working on others.
Throwaway05
2d ago
Israel absolutely takes steps to limit civilian casualties, it's clearly part of the deal for Western support.
Remove that support? They are likely to act like non-Western nations (ex: Russia) aka most institutions throughout the history of warfare.
Put another way, you assert they have gone "full genocidal." What does that mean exactly? What makes what Israel is doing "genocidal?"
Throwaway05
2d ago
So if they know they are going to fall apart when sanctioned why wouldn't they stop being judicious and cause as much table flipping as possible before they run out of juice?
Throwaway05
3d ago
buccees
Every company in the world needs to be researching whatever the hell is the secret sauce for buccees, even my completely zero whimsy elderly father loves that place.
Throwaway05
3d ago
I think the most interesting questions are downstream of this: American adversaries don't seem to think we can be realistically defeated by force of arms, so what do they do in response?
I think this relates to other projects we talk about here like the role of foreign botnets in agenda setting in U.S. politics. It isn't really clear to me what extent that's a paranoid conspiracy theory vs. an actual thing in truth (it seems likely to be latter but I would like to know more).
You are right that the difference is practically immense between ability and will but it has felt to me in the last few months most people have forgotten those are two different things, even if the will is going to be more practically predictive.
Uhhhhhhhhh okay.
I guess if you want to go aggro over my asking you for what you were conversationally looking for then that's your prerogative.
puzzled shrug
EDIT: This user apparently blocked me for this line of inquiry. By motte standards of things this didn't really seem that heated to me so if anyone reading has a better theory of mind on the whole thing please DM me, thanks.
Throwaway05
3d ago
I have at no point hidden my position from you. I've pointed out that woke framing is unnecessary and obscures the underlying reality of trans people, I've been quite consistent in this.
If what you are seeking is for people to defend the weakest form of the argument for the existence of trans people then....why are you doing that?
If what you are looking for is for people to specifically defend woke gender ideology then why the heck are you doing that? Especially here of all places.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Apologies to the woke, but I think they are retarded. One of the reasons why they are retarded is because the woke framing has a bunch of inconsistent nonsense (which is what I think you are noticing and complaining about) that obscures underlying phenomena.
Transpeople make more sense under non-woke thinking than under woke. Woke people say all kinds of stuff about sex and gender, but a non-woke person will usually feel that men and women have some form of biological differences (say: trucks vs. dolls) in thinking and other factors that gets spat out as "gender" by society.
If someone is born with a more or less male brain and but is in a female body then you have a mismatch.
It would make sense that this is rare, it would also make sense that it happens on occasion, we get all kinds of variations in people and while this is probably evolutionary disadvantageous it doesn't seem nearly as damaging to reproductive fitness as gayness.
All of this I said before so where are you getting tripped up? If your problem is that you don't think trans people exist at all that you are likely just being disgruntled and reactive to the woke - gay people clearly exist, you see all kinds of case and news reports of bizarre shit in the population, why not this one?
If your problem is woke word games then who cares, that ideology says all kinds of nonsense that doesn't really explain anything and doesn't usefully related to anything in the world (or at least I believe so).
Throwaway05
3d ago
Are you going anywhere with this?
Throwaway05
3d ago
All that is an argument for "should" I jumped into this to make a point about "can."
I've seen a lot of people misunderstanding the situation about "can" (in part because making this unclear is in all likelihood an organized part of our adversaries propaganda efforts).
The Iranians are smart and clever and have a good plan and are winning or losing the political war depending on who you talk to. They lost the war war so bad it's not even funny.
This isn't a bad trade for them if they get what they wanted/out unscathed, but it's still happening.
And it's important that people understand it's happening because if you don't you'll miss how the ethics of conflict are being defined and the role of propaganda in shaping policy and mood.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Unless I'm missing something isn't the whole point that the one group is the metaphorical arms of the president and the other group is supposed to be objective separate body? I feel like everything falls neatly from there...
Throwaway05
3d ago
How is that relevant?
First you have to suppose that the disruptive threats are still possible in an actual war. Iran will not be able to manage the resupply required to keep things going very long if the country falls apart. An army requires logistics which is why attacking logistics is the first job of any military. We aren't really doing that now. If the Iranians have to choose between feeding and watering their population or warfare then the war won't last long, you'd get some insurgency afterwards but the organized military response would be over very quickly.
That also presupposes we care. Most of the negative impact seems to be on the gulf states, who are enemies if you'd ask the average American for most of the last 50 years. Suddenly lots of people think Saudi Arabia is an ally and while that's true to some extent it's certainly a wild swing for both the left and the right.
Outside of the gulf states it's the Europeans who are refusing to help with the problem, that's pretty easy not to care about, and again you can shut down the gulf disruption pretty fast by just tanking the country.
Of course nobody wants to leave millions of Iranian starving and homeless, and nobody wants to turn the entire country into a misery factory or something that requires an occupation for another couple of decades.
That doesn't mean we can't.
Throwaway05
3d ago
One of America's war aims is to leave the Iranian people in a better position after the war than before. Likewise modern Western armies have an incredibly strong taboo against civilian damage, to the point where we made a missile that acts as a fucking blender so it can kill literally one guy.
This level of restraint is basically a new invention, and most non-American armies don't bother (see: Russia). It's the equivalent of besieging a city and allowing food in "so that the civilians don't starve."
It's incredibly stupid but has been at times sustainable because the U.S. is that powerful and because most of our adversaries understand that the primary move is to use propaganda pieces to perpetuate fighting warfare in this way.
Loosen restrictions and things open up immediately.
The Iranians can't do much if 16 million people in the Tehran metro area are starving to death. Now that's pretty abhorrent but this is how wars were fought throughout history and America has the ability to make it so.
Without drifting that far into awful behavior you can still force evacuation of cities, destroy critical infrastructure and all kinds of other stuff we are very very voluntarily not doing and a good chunk of which is totally valid even with this restrictive mode of warfare.
Throwaway05
3d ago
Iran succeeds because the U.S. and Israel (despite propaganda to the contrary) fight with two hands tied behind their back.
If we fought like Russia fought, or even worse like a country in WWII we'd "win" pretty quickly.
Iran does not have a peer military, it has an ineffective organized military and essentially a very well organized insurgency and excellent doctrine that takes advantage of Western militaries primary weakness (political will).
The U.S. has the ability to stab Iran in the gut and step back and wait for it to bleed out, Iran knows this and therefore made sure that their combat model is making as much trouble while they bleed out as possible. They've also given themselves a very large helmet so they can't just be shot in the head (IDK the metaphor fails).
So we don't.
Making this further complicated is the fact that we don't actually hate the Iranian's, and figure that leaving them in a good state is better for us later.
Make no mistake, Iran knows our exact strategic posture and how to take advantage of it but that doesn't mean that we can't just do something different if we want to. That's what got us into this, Trump called Iran on some of the threats and went to town, but now he has to clean up and go home before the midterms.
That's not Iran being "strong" it's masterful use of the cards they have.
A question - why hasn't Iran pushed a major terrorist attack on US soil? They could probably pull it off, but they don't because they know that if they do and they miscalculate how bad it is then America will actually come for them for real.
That only ends one way.
Thanks for the follow-up.
I've also heard the accusation that some of the "DEI" type stuff was likely used by the CIA etc to pay off assets in a way that didn't get many questions. Much harder to prove obviously.
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