Dean
Flairless
Variously accused of being an insufferable reactionary post-modernist fascist neo-conservative neo-liberal conservative classical liberal critical theorist Nazi Zionist imperialist hypernationalist warmongering isolationist Jewish-Polish-Slavic-Anglo race-traitor masculine-feminine bitch-man Fox News boomer. No one yet has guessed a scholar, or multiple people. Add to our list of pejoratives today!
User ID: 430
At the risk of self-reference...
Points made at the time, with a supporting premise from each section-
Point one, it's not necessarily as time sensitive as it is being presented, as opposed to being part of a possible multi-week push for a truce.
This creates a risk that even if all parties wanted to end the war, they could miss the opportunity if some (Russia) attempt to draw out negotiations in the name of trying to get more.
We're at 2 weeks after that post. We'll see what else, if anything, progresses, but VP Vance and Secretary of State Rubio are both signalling an expectation of a longer war, without threatening to cut off Ukraine aid.
Point two is option two- the (unlikely) prospect that Russia reigns in its demands to accept a cease-fire deal is likely sooner than later.
But the more unlikely it is, the more likely any window-of-opportunity with the Trump administration is to close. And re-opening a window can be much, much harder the second time than the first.
Russia did not accept a Trump proposed cease-fire. Russia announced its own micro/unilateral cease-fires, such as the easter cease fire, but maintained many of its maximalist demands throughout the rest of the month, including
- Ukraine must commit to not joining NATO
- Ukraine must confirm neutral and non-bloc status
- Ukraine must address “neo-Nazi regime in Kyiv” formed after the “coup in February 2014,” particularly regarding policies affecting Russian language, media, and culture
- International recognition of Russian control over Crimea, Sevastopol, Donetsk, Luhansk, Kherson, and Zaporizhzhia oblasts
- Legally binding agreements with enforcement mechanisms
- “Demilitarization and denazification” of Ukraine
- Lifting of sanctions against Russia
- Return of frozen Russian assets
Demands 2, 3, 6, and 8 in particular are the sort of lower-cost demands that Russia would likely drop in a non-grasping proposal.
Point three is what Trump 'passing' on the peace process means for Ukraine if it does occur.
My position is that a collapse of US-Russia negotiations means sustained, not diminished, US aid for Ukraine.
1 May: Newsweek: Donald Trump Opens Ukraine Military Sales Tap After Minerals Deal
The Trump administration has told Congress that it intends to give the go-ahead for roughly $50 million of defense-related products to be exported to Ukraine through American industry sales direct to Kyiv, according to a new report.
Note that this sale is after the signing, but before the ratification of the mineral deal by the Ukrainian legislature. 50 million is not 'a lot' in the context of the war as a whole, but military sales as opposed to military aid is a notable distinction.
Point four- parallel negotiations as a means of leverage on each other.
As noted above, if the Ukraine-US mineral deal goes through, that undercuts the US leverage against the Russia position. And if the leverage against Russia fails, then the war goes on.
1 May: AP: Ukraine and the US have finally signed a minerals deal. What does it include?
The agreement — which the Ukrainian parliament must ratify — would establish a reconstruction fund for Ukraine that Ukrainian officials hope will be a vehicle to ensure future American military assistance.
This structure of military sales / assistance rather than aid matters because-
Point five - the importance of having tried and failed, over having never tried at all, and covering the costs with a skeptical-but-not-hostile electoral base.
I'm not here to argue which you should believe is right. My point is that both of these readings suggest that the potential news of the coming weeks- the Ukraine mineral deal and Russia peace deal- may shift the Republican coalition towards a greater 'right amount or more' coalition balance for further Ukraine aid.
We'll see when future polling comes out, but I suspect that any increase in disapprovals for Trump over the next month will be far more about trade policy than Ukraine arms sale policies.
Point six - how the deals (and Trump walkway from a ceasefire) may shape Trump's base into a more pro-Ukraine-aid direction.
This is where the Ukraine mineral deal can start prying apart the 'too-much' coalition, because expected future gains can offset costs. And the more Democratic / international media criticizes the deal as 'extortionate,' the more credible it can be to an otherwise unfamiliar base that, hey, aiding Ukraine is not just [cost].
The NYT is not calling it extortionate- leaving that to the 'early' versions. The anti-Trump right National Review does call it sordid but logical. The WSJ is approving. Newsmax reported a Russian position that the deal forces Ukraine to pay for weapons with minerals.
Final Point - The Trump Effect: If Trump Supports Aid It Can't Be Wrong
This means that once (if) Trump takes a position that negotiations are no longer something he's going to pay political capital for, but that mineral deal/etc. make continued Ukrainian aid acceptable, then the political influence of the [any aid is too much] factions is going to wither. They will still exist, but they will not have the platform or the following if they try to critique Trump-support for Ukraine like Trump signal-boosted their condemnations of Biden-support for Ukraine.
We'll see what it turns to, but initial media responses don't suggest any sort of 'Trump's base is about to revolt over selling weapons to Ukraine.'
There is likely to be a Republican base... maybe not revolt, but internal struggle, over next year's Fiscal Budget. Trump avoided a dispute over the recent budget for the rest of the fiscal year by promising steeper cuts in the coming budget fight.
Which led to...
Summary / Conclusion - What Does This Mean?
In the next few weeks we may seeing the start of a political transition to a more stable US/Republican support for Ukraine aid for the next year(s).
This won't be immediately apparent, but will be observable over the months to follow, particularly by the fall when the 2026 US budget negotiations culminate. How Ukraine aid factors into that will indicate a lot about the new state of the Republican party and Ukrainian aid politics.
And coincidentally, the FY 2026 budget proposal was presented... today.
Which supports the 'Trump is serious about walking away from the Ukraine Peace Talks,' because the Washington budget war for the next year, including a $163 billion in proposed cuts, is just getting started. And this includes the formal cuts to programs he's already ordered dismantled, including some actions frozen by courts, which would get around judicial freezes if passed by Congress.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Unfortunately you edited your comment though
The edit was for grammatical clarity. You remain free to assign to me any positions I have not taken as part of your goalpost moving.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Can I extend this to your view on the OP being that it doesn't matter at all that the article that Adam Silver reposted is AI slop, versus your definition of "slop" in general? It doesn't move your priors on Adam Silver (the reposter), X (the platform), or Yahoo Entertainment (the media institution) even an iota?
You can strawman me in whatever way you prefer.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Well, I might have misunderstood the association. Still, and regardless, please keep posting the counter-arguments against 'the Democrat law would totally have reformed immigration, and Republican opposition to it is proof of bad faith' in the future. I find your take more convincing, but couldn't recreate it myself from memory, and I doubt they are going to stop invoking the argument in the future.
Though I hope your boilerplate response doesn't get any wags of the fingers from mods, since I'd appreciate you to keep posting longer than not.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Building in stakes for the sake of urgency and invoking emotional rather than deliberate reasoning is a cornerstone of many fraud and propaganda techniques, i.e. human gullibility exploits.
Surely articles written by an actual human, no matter their political bias, are universally better than AI slop of any particular bias? Can't we all agree on that across the political spectrum?
Obviously not, or you wouldn't be making an appeal to elitism as opposed to popular consumption, i.e. the numerically broader basis where 'we all' consensus derives.
The NPC (non-player character) meme arose during the first Trump administration precisely noting the formulaic and non-introspective nature of a good deal of partisan discourse. The belief that AI outputs would be equivalent or even higher quality than human writers at election propaganda has been the basis of AI election interference concerns. The market impacts of generative AI has weakened the bargaining position of creative types ranging from holywood writer guilds to patreon porn makers. is all slop. Non-slop is the exception, regardless of source.
Huh. I knew he was a old-forum poster, but I'd forgot/never noticed he was an alt of unitofcaring. Why did unitofcaring have to change personas again?
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Not the OP, but the framing (social sciences) page on wikipedia isn't the worst place to start. The page has a fair amount of info, but additional related topics, like spin (propaganda).
Once you get a handle of connotation usage as a practice, honestly TV Tropes isn't a bad place to deep-dive as well. A lot of the trop pages describing a trope will have a smaller section of related / adjacent tropes. For propaganda purposes, these distinctions can make a difference, since a trope that is associated with more heroic connotations can be subverted by a related trope with more nefarious nuances, and so on.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Yes. And then the mandate of 'intervene to stop the advance to prevent a massacre' was reasoned into 'and then reverse the advance in the other direction.'
And so one of the only people in history to actively give up a WMD program under external threat ended up ensuring that they would be one of the only people in history to give up a WMD program under external threat. WMD non-proliferation had a terrible setback that year, but at least Hillary got a quippy one-liner and bolstered her tough-on-national-security reputation.
Republicans have a failure mode of cult of personality; Democrats have a failure mode of cult of not personality or ideology but of whatever bureaucrats and various cultural elites organically land on as the Important Signifier of the day.
Failure mode implies a repeated failure in this mode. Which other Republican cults of personality beyond Trump are you thinking of? Reagan?
What makes Democrats distinct from this? Obama actually did have an adoring media, and to this day there are people that unironically argue that he had no scandals. Clinton and his charisma was so central to the Democratic party's adoption of neoliberalism that he almost made Hillary electable. If we want to go back to the cold war, JFK was subject of so much mythologizing that the term 'camelot' only refers to him in a US political context.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
If that's the case then I will apologize once more and bow out of this discussion.
I will accept the sentiment with a 'no apologies are needed, misunderstandings happen' and happily part ways.
I still find it problematic that a person can't criticize any fundamental pillars of a society while "benefiting" from them. Like, how can we expect the OP to not "take advantage" of personal property ownership by your standard and still be able to function in a capitalistic society?
Who says they have to operate by my standard?
The point of using someone's own standard against them is precisely because it isn't your own standard. You are co-opting provider's credibility and stake in the standard as a less questionable source of legitimacy. You are also forcing the person to defend, or to not defend as they chose here, the implications of their own definition.
If they inevitably fail by their own standard, that can mean anything from that they are unfit to pass judgement, to that it's a bad standard. Some bad standards are bad precisely because they are non-falsifiable.
If someone raises a non-falsifiable standard, then the claimed judgement of the standard loses all meaning. That's not a problematic basis of disregarding a criticism- falsifiability is a prerequisite for a complaint to have any onus.
Are we supposed to disregard any criticism they have because they themselves are forced to participate in the society as it is currently structured?
What do you think social structuring has to do with the fact that only one person can use a computer at a time?
But then you just have one illegitimate government invading another illegitimate government. Probably every war at that time was like that. If every government is illegitimate, how is it even meaningful to say that some particular side is a valid target because they're illegitimate?
By treating legitimacy as a matter of degrees, rather than as a binary state. Same as with most justification categories.
It is very rare for any party to be purely in the right or wrong by any given judgement criteria. That does not mean judgement is impossible. Nor does it mean moral equivalence is necessary.
Well, I didn't expect you to bite this bullet.
If it makes your expectations feel better, I didn't. I did say 'If you define...'
I don't restrict myself to your definition. I am just nodding and agreeing that, yes, if you set a condition in which IF X THEN Y, then when X then Y.
But it wasn't "retroactively gerrymandered", that's my point! It was accepted at the time, and by the north, before secession, that slaves weren't citizens and couldn't vote. Nothing changed retroactively.
And the point that people who were denied representation don't get to have the legitimacy of their implicit support invoked remains. As does the point that they are, in fact, part of regional population majorities.
Franchisement and representation of non-voters was a significant aspect of the foundational american political disputes. The 3/5ths compromise resulted from the slavers wanting slaves to count as much as a citizen for legitimate representation in the political system.
Ah, so the north's government wasn't legitimate either?
Sure, why not? It's not like Union (il)legitimacy affects whether the Confederacy was or was not legitimate. Independent variables.
We could question whether legitimacy is a binary state (legitimate or not legitimate), or a status of degrees (more or less legitimate), but if you don't want to stake a position I won't force you.
Is the current US government illegitimate because illegal aliens can't vote,
If you define the scope of legitimacy to include illegal aliens, certainly. Hence why various pro-migration coalitions support things like giving Congressional representation based on non-citizen (and thus including illegal) residents, and why other parts of their coalitions are very uninterested in proof-of-citizenship requirements in elections that are routinely popular with the electorate that opponents claim to be defending against disenfranchisement.
and if they could we probably wouldn't have elected Trump?
Sure, why not?
This is a relevant point not only for Trump, individually, but the Trump coalition backing him on tariffs. A critical-mass policy coalition doesn't need everyone to want the same thing from an action, only enough people to believe their priority concern is addressed enough to be worth the cost.
The [reshoring industry is worth a high price] people and the [we need to break supply chain dependence on China even if it costs a high price] are not necessarily the same people, even if they are both willing to endure [high price]. They want different things, and would likely not be as willing to accept [high price] were they not getting something they feel was worth the price.
This is a reason why people who go 'if they wanted X, why didn't they do Y?' have been confused. There is no single desire of [X]. There is [X1], [X2], [X3], and so on, and the policy coalition is- as most policy coalitions do- cluster against various interests of [X[#]].
LOL, Strawman City here, looks like -- and in Strawman City, everything you say is true by definition. Great! The only problem is that nothing that happens in Strawman City affects anyone but you, cuz you're the only one there. Sorry, just too many baseless assumptions and leaps of illogic for me to engage much. No, physical possession is not theft. No, physical possession does not entail deprivation. No, "paranoid", "not sharing", and "psychopathy" have zip-all to do with morality. No, I'm not engaging in a hobby. Before trying to construct a polemical trap, make sure you've got facts to work with. But speaking of ironies and hypocrisies, what about the fact that you know squat about me but pretend to know?
Thank you for your illustrative response. It provides the audience more to know you by.
This response is a useful demonstration of how you respond when the moral implications of your claimed standards reflect poorly on yourself. Rather than clarify or refine an argument, you invoke the fallacy of fallacies to try and dismiss implicit criticism as irrelevant. Rather than engage any particular part, you dismiss all elements of pushback. This is a useful way to tease out someone's inclination for using arguments as soldiers, as opposed to genuine positions worth holding and defending despite implicit disrepute.
It is also enlightening to consider not only your use of highly pejorative language, but then your denial that there are any moral connotations with your choice of words. This is not only an excellent example of a particularly blatant motte-and-bailey. It is also enlightening for the speed you withdrew from the bailey, and on what strength of argument you gave to its defense.
It is very useful to know when someone is both the sort of person to deny their words have commonly understood connotations, but also opens with them while inviting others to come up with new definitions of old concepts.
You have also provided additional insights into your mindset and character. Assuming you are honest and that posting here is not a hobby, then posting here is indicative of some kind of cause or other less-trivial, more serious purpose. This supports a bias towards motivated reasoning and engagement. Your counter-argument by counter-attack to an ad-hominem, rather than over your position, suggests a motive focused on the inter-personal engagement than on advancing an ideological premise. This is consistent with your response to other people, suggesting a combative personality. Combined with the [serious purpose] position, this provides insight into potential motives, and your conduct in pursuit of [serious purposes].
Of course, if you are lying, the above could all be wrong. But lying, or even an inclination to loose and fast exaggerations, is another useful thing to know about a new poster.
But the slaves weren't citizens. Non-citizens don't get to be part of a ruling majority.
And women couldn't vote either. That doesn't mean they are not part of the whole population, or the voting minorities were not preventing self-governance by numerical majorities.
You are arguing by a different standard. I can appreciate why, but it is a different standard. The political legitimacy of the Confederacy derived from claiming to represent the legitimate will of 'the people' is certainly up for dispute when 'the people' is retroactively gerrymandered to exclude people who might disagree after making a claim to represent them.
We had a former lawyer who went on the podcast route as well, IIRC
It doesn't even benefit Trump himself. Who would benefit is China. That is self-destructive.
Only in a compositional fallacy sense of the term.
Self-destruction is part of the broader category of things considered [bad]. It is not synonymous with the entire category of [bad]. Things can be both [bad], and not self-destructive.
The rest of the dispute comes to the nature of the [bad], which in turn depends on whose standards of 'benefit' apply. This leans into the typical 'they are acting against their own interests' critique that regularly dismisses differences in preferences by supposing one's own preferences are the agreed upon standard.
The difference between the meme and hoisting someone by their own petard is that a petard must be provided by the owner and initial user.
The nature of the meme is that the counter-argument strawman figure is claiming 'gotcha' moments, despite not actually addressing any position presented. The person on the iphone criticizing Apple's pay of employees is arguing from a position that Apple could be paying the employees more with what has been provided, not that Apple should be boycotted for not paying people more. The car seatbelt person is not a hypocrite for saying there should be seatbelts, because they have not made a standard that such an expression would be hypocritical by. Society-peasant's panel isn't even about a choice of action, which is the punchline against the strawman's degeneration. The strawman is not actually using anyone else's standards, not least because they provided no standard of 'right' by which they violated. The strawman has to invent a standard they did not claim in order to condemn them.
Arguments made from a position of morality can be challenged on their own terms because they provided a standard that the arguer can be judged by. They present an argument of right or wrong that applicable examples can be compared to. The use of moral connotation language indicates what the arguer views as correct / incorrect behaviors. Pejorative language is a framing device- no one calls a reasonable decision 'paranoid' because paranoia is by its nature unjustified/unwarranted/irrational. When personal actions are subject to condemnation under a paradigm, the paradigm-provider can be judged under the same.
The OP chose to offer a definition to judge others by. They used emotive and condemnatory language to indicate their own judgement. Having established the standard and a moralist framing, they can be judged by it in turn.
Anyone want to brainstorm a viable alternative to "ownership"?
Only if you've stopped stealing from other people.
If ownership is deprivation of others, then that deprivation is theft. After all, to deprive is to deny someone the possession or use of something. If this is supposed to be an immoral characteristic ('paranoid,' 'not sharing,' 'psychopathy), then the moral state is for it to not be deprived. The immoral deprivation of personal or even public goods is understood to be theft.
However, you are posting here. On the internet. A medium that requires a computer of some sort that could be not-deprived to someone else. Moreover, you repeatedly responded to others. This entails further use of time depriving the device to others. It also implies a surplus of time, and thus material resources you are depriving others of, that enable the hobby rather than sharing like a non-paranoid should. These resources are deprived from benefiting other possible beneficiaries and potential users by virtue (or sin) of your use. Your use and expected ability to use is demonstrating a de facto, even if not de jure, ownership.
It's generally understood that it is fair to judge people by their own standards, even if it's not fair to do so by your own. So be it. A priest who declares any who disagrees with their message is damned to hell will be a damned priest by their own hypocrisies. A revolutionary who declares it an act of cowardliness to not participate in a protest is a coward for not participating. You are someone who deprives others by exercising ownership and mutually exclusive use of limited resources.
Why should anyone brainstorm alternative ownership with a thief in the middle of a robbery?
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
If the delay of bombardment for the claims of process had allowed other events to occur first, sure.
The mid-19th century was a period where the telegraph was changing the political evolution/initiation of conflicts. 'How' a conflict started becomes more and more important the more people can know about it before and during the fact, rather than have it summarized for them afterwards.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
The US Civil War might have also gone very differently had the Confederacy not initiated various engagements, giving Lincoln a stronger basis to send in the troops. Had the civil war started not with the South bombarding Fort Sumter, but with the Battle of Bull Run in Virginia, Lincoln would have been in a very different political position.
In some respects, the opening of the civil war was a boundary dispute, and the South had no shortage of reasons to try and set / maximize expected gains, but those proactive efforts placed a greater political onus on them as instigating the violence that followed.
My read is that Ukraine has politically-limited a significant part of its drone campaign since Trump came in due to the cease-fire process. The Ukraine drone strikes on Russian refineries earlier this year sharply curtailed after the Zelensky-Trump-Vance summit blow-up and subsequent Ukrainian alignment to the US for ceasefire talks. The capabilities almost certainly exist, but the peace process- or rather the US demands to support the peace process- were prioritized.
We don't / probably won't know what the new restrictions are, but I wouldn't be surprised if the post-talks status quo shifts to 'the US will not help, but will not prohibit, Ukraine using Ukrainian arms deeper into Russia.' That just needs to come after the US formally ends the cease fire process.
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