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
If you wanted to isolate China, you wouldn't immediately tariff their neighbors, you'd try to woo their regional neighbors to join your own aligned bloc. Ideally you'd do it in a group fashion to present a unified bloc and get more leverage -- a kind of organization of countries in the area.
Interesting proposal, except the obvious counter-point that the parties involved would have obvious incentives to expect bribes in various forms in the name of being wooed, but then defect against a common tariff front against China in exchange for Chinese bribes. 'Play both parties off eachother for personal gain' is not exactly a hidden policy preference.
Breaking this defection option is why the EU makes surrendering trade sovereignty a precondition of the unified block, uses coercive instruments regularly against less powerful constituent members to punish/deter cheating, and is generally understood to be dominated by the more powerful members and regularly advances reforms to further centralize power to the net benefit of those central leaders.
Perhaps your read is different than mine, but I see no particular reason to believe the asian countries in mind are inclined to be bribed into a trade conflict with China, or into a EU-style trade block.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
I'm not clear what context you're thinking of. For example, my perspective on the context of the Republican's reaction to the Clinton affairs is that the Democrats largely won the social argument on sexual impropriety even before Trump showed up. Marriage was not that important as a special/sacred thing, and it was so not-important that it was subject to redefinition a decade and so later. The Republicans lost that, and so 20, let alone 30, years after Clinton, the Republican party is not exactly campaigning on marriage issues.
That makes him a statistically uncommon person. Statistically uncommon people come up in random person pulls all the time.
It certainly isn't a counter-argument to him being a partisan hack. Being a hack would go a long way to explaining why a notoriously dry, convoluted, and highly technical subject matter is keeping enough non-expert attention to justify a claim of fame. Another famed economist and partisan hack was Paul Krugman from the NYT. Krugman wasn't the NYT's go-to economist because of his economic insight and objectivity- he was the go-to economist because he would reliably tell the readers why [current democrat thing] was good and smart and why [current republican thing] was dumb and evil.
Krugman was certainly an uncommon partisan hack, but he was indeed both a partisan and a through that partisanship a hack. What separates Scott Sumner in nature, if not scale of popularity?
Is this a sign that the religious right is meaningfully dead
Has been for approaching decades. The religious right was a dying force during the Bush 2 administration, and was regularly losing culture war fights during and before that.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
There's also a broader points of rejecting axioms of expectations and substituting their own.
The Abrahamic theological promise is that genuine faith promises safety and comfort in the next life, not the current. The nature of discomfort in this life varies- the old testament has more than a few example of God allowing collective punishments / humblings of worshippers for collective failures- but even New Testament Jesus was more 'give up your worldly wealth (and by extension the comforts it brings) for the time before you die.' The reward of heaven after death is premised on death after a virtuous- but not ideally comfortable- life.
By contrast, nearly each and every scenario in anon's comic ends and begins... at the worldly death. This rests on an implicit understanding / expectation that 'reason' / God's Plan should result in good things / not-having bad things in life, including not dying.
It doesn't address the requirement to live a good life before death. It doesn't address the premise of judgement after death. It doesn't address the rewards (or lack of rewards) afterwards. In a four-stage process- live a good life, die, judgement, afterlife- the comic treats stage 2 as some sort of ironic commentary or disproof.
A structural parallel would be a comic mocking advice that overweight people should work out - lose weight - feel better by depicting fat people struggling and being uncomfortable at the gym.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
'Science funding' isn't what is cancelled. Existing contracts allocating science funding to specific organizations gets cancelled.
The distinction is that- with the bureaucratic cycles- the funding that previously went to organization A can now go to organizations B, or C, instead.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Claas Relotius did the Atlanticist media no favors.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Creating fake sources is generally out of style, but using fake sources- which is to say, giving attention, focus, and treating suspect sources as credible is on-brand.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
There's reporting that Colombia basically internally started messaging that nothing would change despite the deal. IE, that they weren't actually conceding to the Trump demands, and that business would continue as before.
That sort of messaging is a lie in at least one direction- either that the Colombia administration was lying to the Federal government, or that it was lying to the people it was telling nothing would change for. I could believe the later, but would understand why people would believe the former.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
'I did not intend for a word used routinely for things less miserable than hell-characterizations to be less pejorative than hell-characterizations' is certainly a denial of a motte-and-bailey argument.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
The rivalry with a Schism.
Who most would not realize there was ever a rivalry with.
Because we won so hard.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Is or isn't El Salvador being paid by the US government to imprison non-El Savadorians accused (never mind convicted) of crime in El Salvador?
Neither answer makes the relationship between the US government and the El Salvadorian government into an agent relationship subject to judicial or executive directions from the United States.
Garcia happens to be El Salvadorian
This is not a matter of happenstance- this is a critical attribute as to the nature of the legal issue. Were Garcia a different citizenship- particularly American citizen- the nature of both American national and international law would be substantially different.
not because El Salvador requested his extradition.
El Salvador does not have to have requested his extradition to have a sovereign right to apply sovereign jurisdiction over an El Salvadorian citizen on Salvadorian sovereign territory.
That would probably because you have wild takes on the reasonableness of justifying your own claims or knowing deportation politics in Africa (or Latin America).
Yes it was. My original claim which you disputed was "Bukele is a dictator and the prison is a human-rights-violating hellhole". "The Salvadoran prison is awful" is a shorter way of restating the same thing: "awful" is short for "a human-rights-violating hellhole" and anyone who runs human-rights-violating hellholes is, ipso facto, a dictator.
Alas, you do not get to redefine what words meant to get around your different, less pejorative, and more defensible choice of words when challenged.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
"The Salvadoran prison is awful" does not seem to be a claim exclusive to a left-wing media bubble.
Ah, but that wasn't your original claim now, was it? Nor was it even the only claim.
And thus we watch the retreat from the bailey to the motte.
To put the question another way - I mean - are you confident about your chances of seeing daylight again if you were thrown in jail by the Bukele government on vague, spurious suspicion of being connected to a gang in some way?
Is there a reason to believe vague and spurious suspicions are relevant metaphors for this case? After all, the claim of being a gang member comes from the deportee, which was both the grounds of his non-deportation order but also non-asylum.
I don't think it's reasonable to ask for a list of people who've agreed to an offer that hasn't been made.
That's odd of you. On both ends.
But I'd be surprised if Bukele was the only guy in the world willing to say yes. The US is very rich, most countries are very poor. I'm not saying "send him to Belgium", here. Send him to Nigeria or something. Bribing the relevant Nigerian authorities would probably cost less than the plane flight itself.
Truly your understanding of the global south shines. If only the Europeans had such business acumen as you in their attempts.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
I think this is my favorite riff on this yet. You should make a meme of it.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
Inasmuch as El Salvador is acting as an agent of the USA's Executive branch,
It is not. El Salvador is a sovereign country, mate, not a Yankee colony.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
If you define civilized countries as including those in Europe, they pay for other countries to lock up would-be asylum claimants before they reach said civilized countries.
If you do not include Europe amongst the civilized, I would be curious as to who you do.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
'Extensive' instead of 'significant', perhaps?
A chance to contest expulsion on grounds of citizenship isn't necessarily an extensive process (check key record databases), but it is significant.
Dean
Flairless
5mo ago
I'd argue the Gulf War 1 US army would get wrecked in modern-Ukraine as well, from either direction. Gulf War 1 depended on air superiority, but never had to deal with the degree of anti-air capability that the Soveit block had and that the c-UAS environment has built upon. The Gulf War era army would also be eaten alive by modern drone combat.
Well, okay, but, like. Bukele is a dictator and the prison is a human-rights-violating hellhole, right?
No.
Not right. Partisan hyperbole squared, even, due to how much of the American media that carries that tune gets it in turn from Bukele's own political opposition. That political opposition in turn has its own partisan interests in characterizing their defeat as illegitimate, in hopes that a sympathetic US administration will overthrow the popularly elected leader to their partisan benefit.
Given how populism has been handled in western media over the last decade, I would absolutely consider that a partisan flag, even if it's a partisanship that's willing to shoot members of a broader policy coalition. Establishment partisans are still partisans.
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