Dean
2mo ago
Edit: I forgot I should've mentioned this, but it would be really helpful if responses avoided motte-and-bailey diversions. This post is about TTV and their efforts specifically, and though I believe stolen election claims are very poor quality in general, I'm not making the argument that "TTV is lying, ergo other stolen election claims are also bullshit". I think there are some related questions worth contemplating (namely why TTV got so much attention and credulity from broader conservative movement if TTV were indeed lying) but changing the subject isn't responsive to a topic about TTV. If anyone insists on wanting to talk about something else, it would be helpful if there's an acknowledgement about TTV's claims specifically. For example, it can take the format of "Yes, it does appear that TTV is indeed lying but..."
Boring night before the long weekend? Fair enough, I suppose
In that case, I decline to defer your attempted gerrymander on grounds of being a motte and bailey diversion by a repeated-iteration commentator.
To say this is not the first time you have posted on the subject of the 2020 election would be an understatement, and in those times you have regularly sought to use specific cases as a broader disproof to concerns or condemnations or malbehavior of the 2020 elections as unfounded/unjustified/'very poor quality in general', while not ignoring and or acknowledging (unless when forced, to the bare minimum as forced) said issues. You likewise have a pattern of then later referring to those selectively narrow motte-arguments in serve of more expansive baileys, such as claiming no substantive or well-founded issues were raised in previous iterations, or otherwise minimizing the existence or legitimacy of counter-positions, generally expressed by claimed befuddlement on how people could believe a broader topic despite numerous presentations to you.
Then there's the point that someone claiming they are not making an argument is not the same as not making the argument. Arguments do not have to be explicitly made to be made- this is the purpose of metaphor, as well as allusion, or comparison, and especially insinuation, which are techniques you have used in previous iterations of your reoccurring hobby horse pasting and examples can be found here. It's also the defining characteristic of a motte and bailey argument- a denial that the argument is the expansive claim, but really only the narrower one.
As your utilization of narrative techniques is retained, and your practice of referring to previous arguments is appropriate meta-knowledge for how you present arguments, your previous positions are a legitimate basis for understanding and interpreting your raising of a familiar topic. Said topic, the hobby horse you yourself acknowledge indulging in, is not TTP specifically, but 2020 election doubt more broadly. While asking people to refrain from acknowledging the bailey is indeed a form of motte defense, it still remains a motte and bailey argument of familiar form and purpose.
As such, it remains appropriately helpful for anyone wishing to contest the background argument to ignore the bailey, which is raised to defend the motte.
Dean
1yr ago
This mistakes my contention. The contention is not that a position doesn't change and this should be banned- the contention is that the position is re-raised regularly without regard or even accurate reflection of previous engagements, and with poor conduct towards other in the process.
Ways to avoid this include not misrepresenting people's current positions, not mis-representing previous engagements, and not making one's hobby-horse a top level post with regular slights towards other posters.
I think if there's a bunch of specific cases that turn out to be unfounded, then it's justified to presumptively downgrade the broader claim only as a heuristic.
Fortunately this is simple hueristic to meet for the position you oppose. There are a lot of specific claims that electoral corruption does not happen in American electoral politics, and there are plenty of historical findings to the contrary.
I don't believe I've ever used a specific election fraud case to disprove the broader election fraud claim, but if I did then I disavow it now because that's not a valid argument. This would be akin to saying "Michael Richards never killed someone" as a way to establish that no Seinfeld cast member has ever killed someone.
It would be a terrible argument, and yet relying on weakmen arguments is something you have done repeatedly in the past, are charged with doing in the present, and are fully expected to do in the future. As such, your offer of refutation is not accepted, or believed.
It is a very characteristic part of your hobby horse, and is not expected to change.
Can you cite a specific example of my evasion/obstinance?
Yes.
This thread is one of them.
Can you cite a specific example of an allusion or insinuation that you believe I've made in a surreptitious manner?
Yes, assuming you are using surreptitious is the common vernacular (as a synonym of sly, as in cunning), rather than an attempt at adding a qualifier for a different definition (as in 'secretely') that can never be met by virtue of being an openly visible word, and thus not a secret, while smuggling the connotation of the other without committing to either.
If explicitly disavowing an argument is insufficient for you, is there anything I can say that could possibly militate against the mind-reading?
This would be another example an insinuation, as the argument presents the accusation as based on mind-reading, rather than observation of iterative behavior. The insinuation furthers a further implication to the audience, as opposed to the other party, that no reasonable defense could be made against such and thus the accusation is unreasonable.
The reasonable defense against reoccuring bad behavior is to not conduct the bad behavior, though by its nature this requires controlling one's conduct before, rather than after, the bad habits re-occur. However, you enjoy your snipes too much to not, as you have with your post-posting edit here.
I'm often accused of holding positions I either never made or explicitly disavowed, and at some point I have to conclude that the reason people fabricate and refute arguments I've never made is borne out of frustration at apparently being unable to respond what I actually said. This post from @HlynkaCG remains the best example of this bizarre trend, where he's either lying about or hallucinating something I've never come close to saying.
While it is certainly flattering to conclude your doubters are hallucinating liars who make up their basis for distrusting you, you are not forced into that conclusion.
Sure, I have an admitted interest in the overall 2020 election claims.
I believe the British would characterize this as a modest understatement.
Edit: I'm mindful that we've discussed many of these same issues a year ago almost to the day. I appreciate that you've tempered your accusations somewhat, and I nevertheless would be eager for specifics to support your claims.
Specifics have been provided, as they have been provided in the past, as you have denied being provided them in the past, and as you will continue to not link to as part of the denial.
And with that, have a good night.
Dean
11mo ago
In the Small-Scale Question threat, user @sickamore raised a question about Sudan. Given that it's more global news, but also tangential to culture war narratives, I figured I might raise it here. sickamore did ask for a good low down. Sadly, please accept a bad one because bad news is the easiest to quibble over, and sharing my newest reason to be depressed is supposed to be helpful or something.
Also, forgive the inconsistent citations, these are intended to be handy, not authoritative.
To start with sickamore's question:
The new conflict that broke out in Sudan - anyone have a good low down on what is happening there, and why? Is this truly a proxy-war between the US and Russia (Rapid Support Forces being Russian proxy, I guess? And Sudan Armed Forces would be US allies..?), or is there something else to this?
To start- this is not a bad question, but it is the wrong question, for a pretty basic reason: this is not about you. Or the US. Or Russia.
What is going in Sudan is a practical demonstration that being a global power does not mean that everything going on in the world is secretly about you. When I've raised in the past in other contexts that a certain sort of American cultural chauvenism that sees everything as an extension of American politics, this is what I refer to. The Sudan crisis has foreign actors and influences, yes, but it is fundamentally an internal political crisis driven by internal actors, with their own interests, their own agency... and their own lack of self-control, because you tend not to shoot at the French diplomatic convoy you already said you were willing to help leave if you have actually good control of your forces.
They don't, because this is Sudan, and Sudan is experiencing the sort of 'the government is the internationally recognized warlords, and the warlords are fighting again' conflict that bedevils foreign policy.
First, to set the context...
For the Americans and others who couldn't find Sudan on a map if they didn't know where to look: Sudan is in Northeast the country between Egypt and Ethiopia at the Horn of Africa, across the Red Sea from Saudi Arabia. It's part of the not-great part of Africa.
Sudan has basically been a military junta in one form or another since the 90s, and not the western-backed sort, though over the last few years there's been a detente of sort since a new military junta came to power and more or less offered to help normalize relations.
Here's a wiki summary, but the super high level feel free to quibble is-
In 1989, the political system of Sudan was "rigorously restructured" following a military coup when Omar al-Bashir, then a brigadier in the Sudanese Army, led a group of officers and ousted the government of Prime Minister Sadiq al-Mahdi. Under al-Bashir's leadership, the new military government suspended political parties and introduced an Islamic legal code on the national level.
In the 2000s and 2010s, there was a war in Darfur you might have heard about due to the various crimes against humanity and horrific humanitarian crisis and stuff. The militia that fought on the Sudanese government side are broadly grouped/affiliated with the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), and are accused of war crimes. 'Crimes against Humanity' war crimes.
What you might not have known is that there is gold in those killing fields, and naturally the side with the militia to control the gold gets to profit. The RSF starts to take off as a political force, and an economic force, due to control of the gold. It also branches off to other profitable ventures, like mercenary work. Anyone familiar with the international overlap of gold interests and mercenary work may recognize some similarities with certain Russian interest groups. Yes, there is a Russian connection. But back to history.
On April 11, 2019, al-Bashir and his government were overthrown in a military coup led by his first vice president and defense minister, who then established the now ruling military junta, led by Lt. General Abdel Fattah Abdelrahman Burhan. The RSF under Mohamed Hamdan Dagalo, often known as Hemetti, supported Burhan in the coup and suppressing post-coup protests, including the Khartoum massacre.
After the 2019 coup, Sudan’s government was led by the Sovereign Council, a military-civilian body that is the highest power in the transitional government. Prime Minister Abdalla Hamdok is the civilian leader of the cabinet. This means he is not actually the leader. The Chairman of the Sovereignty Council is General Abdel Fattah Burhan of the SAF, who is backed by Hemetti, leader of the RSF.
In October 2020, Sudan made an agreement to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel, as part of the agreement the United States removed Sudan from the U.S. list of State Sponsors of Terrorism.
On 25 October 2021, the Sovereignty Council and the Sudanese government were immensely dissolved after being overthrown in the 2021 Sudan coup.
Surprise surprise, the leader to come out on top again is... General Burhan of the SAF, backed by Hemetti and the RSF.
Which brings us closer to present. As part of broader western normalization and diplomatic rehabilitation, the premise of Sudan politics is that it isn't an indefinite permanent military junta, but a transition government that will, eventually, place the military under civilian rule.
This will naturally be a long and arduous process, but western support actually does demand the military itself to be consolidated, so that things like the Darfure crisis and the humanitarian castrophe that supports mass migration not happen. Which means that the Sudan Armed Forces would need to reign in and control the paramilitary militia of the Rapid Support Forces, who have a nasty history of suppressing. Which means that the RSF, rather than being an autonomous power broker with great autonomy, would be controlled by the Sudanese military, and General Burhan. Who- if he controls the RSF- would also control what the RSF controls. Like, say, gold mines.
Naturally, RSF Commander Hemetti is a patriot and a self-admitted supporter of civilian government rule, which is why earlier this month he allegedly* attempted to coup General Burhan.
I say allegedly here, because Hemetti claimed it was really Burhan and the SAF who did dirty first, but I will note that the RSF took a couple hundred Egyptian soldiers prisoner in the first day(s) of the war, which tends not to be the sort of thing that you do on accident if you're just responding.
(It does, however, make quite a sense if you have pre-meditated intent to coup the close ally/partner of the regional military partner, and thus throw one of the few military powers capable of intervening against you into a decision paralysis that keeps them from intervening against you.).
Note that this is all very western centric, and doesn't include things like how Egypt and Sudan are oriented against the Ethiopian Grand Renaissance Dam, only mentioned the gold and russian connection when I went off script, and doesn't even touch the various arab world implications. This is just a really, really ugly history.
Here's the Dean Summary:
In 1989, there was a coup. The military junta styled itself in islamic theocracy.
In the 2000s/2010s, Sudan was a pariah state that made itself infamous in the Darfur conflict, where the RSF was a tool of suppression and humanitarian atrocities using paramilitary militia.
In the 2010s, the RSF got rich and powerful off of using its paramilitary militia to seize control of gold and other economic interests in Darfur.
In 2019, there was a new military coup led by General Burhan of the SAF, who was supported by Dagalo, leader of the paramilitary RSF. The new government ingratiates itself with the west by relaxing from the pariah policies.
In 2021, General Burhan of the SAF launches another coup, again with the support of Dagalo and the RSF. The new new government sustains western toleration/acceptance by going through negotiations of a transition to civilian government.
In 2022, western attention / negotiations for negotiation focus on consolidating the military under future civilian control. This includes consolidating the RSF under SAF control, which in turn means control of the gold and economic interests Hemetti had built up.
In April 2023, a week and a half ago, Hemetti and the RSF attempted a coup against General Burhan and the SAF with an attempted takeover of the capital of Khartoum. It failed to oust him, and the conflict looks ready to go into a sustained civil war with massive humanitarian implications.
That was an ugly history. I'll give an even worse response to the original question next.
Dean
8mo ago
In reference to Trump, they argued that the events on and surrounding January 6th intending to overturn the election would constitute "insurrection or rebellion" as understood at the time of the passing of the amendment.
Why?
The 14th amendment was, after all, passed after the Civil War, a conventional war in which field armies were marshalled to fight against the uncontestedly lawfully elected government. (The Confederates did not deny that Lincoln won the election, which is why they cited other casus belli.) The contemporary acts of insurrection included federal garrisons being overrun, cities sacked, massive civil destruction the likes had never been seen in North America since maybe the fall of the Aztecs, and millions dead directly or indirectly. In the drafters' own lifetime, non-insurrectionary violence in the capital included beating Congressional representatives with canes and honor-duels.
January 6, by contrast, wasn't even in the top 5 violent acts of political violence within a year of it happening.
I can't see this not being important,
Why not?
Trying to frame January 6 as an insurrection or rebellion has been an attempted narrative line since January 6, 2021, with generally only partisan effectiveness. It has been approximately 945 days and American public polling has consistently held viewing this along partisan lines. What, besides the appeal to Federalist society credentialism, is supposed to make it more significantly more persuasive after day 950?
Dean
9mo ago
It is far away from the argument, but it's also far more correct. Note that your framing is selectively allocating agency to the Poles and the Brits/Germans to choose in response to the German demands, just as Flynn's framing attributes agency to the American influence driving others decisions, but neither address that the Germans themselves had the agency in not only making unreasonable demands, but also the agency to not make those demands. The dictator is not an immovable fact of nature, for which there is no reasoning and agency only exists with the responder. The dictator is an agent, and has used their agency to posit the demand in the first place.
Avoiding this point- that people are resisting unreasonable German demands- is required to credibly claim that the Poles were unreasonable in not compromising to them, because there is no failure in reason or competence to resist the unreasonable. But the German Nazis were being unreasonable, and the other actors were being reasonable in resisting the unreasonable, and so re-establing the actual originating context- that the Germans were the originating actors and making unreasonable demands- is the more correct point for conveying not the argument, but the actual context the argument is trying to ignore.
Dean
4d ago
I've noticed that sci-fi games are far more likely to qualify as "quality writing" for me. Even my contemporary examples (such as Prey) are sci-fi as well. That's not to say I can't enjoy other types, but I'm wondering if I either have a bias; if sci-fi lends itself to deeper writing, or attracts writers who can do so; or both. Note that I can give some very bad sci-fi examples of games (I am outspoken in how much I find Mass Effect completely awful in almost every way).
Whoah. I was just about to bring up Mass Effect as an example of popular bad sci-fi. Not simply for its ending, but from structural design perspective (a terribly managed/planned trilogy structure that led to the ending), an inability to stick to character arcs (many reoccuring characters flip from their initial story arcs to fit into the narrative / character appeal niches as needed), it's heavy power fantasy dynamic verging into sycophantism, the tendency to emotionally heal traumatized women by boning them, and so on. A good enough contrarian could even write an amusing spiel on it's fascistic themes and narrative style (though admittedly most who do aren't good enough to pull it off).
Dean
1yr ago
Indeed, "more dehumanisation please" is an ESPECIALLY dumb argument to make when it's Russia occupying Ukrainian land and not the other way around, lol. This is surely the time to ask for more clemency, not less?
This presumes the Russians are willing to provide clemency if plead to, and is countered by point that Russia invaded Ukraine with the premeditated intention to set up filtration camps and start kidnapping, killing, and otherwise abusing pro-Western Ukrainians as a matter of policy and part of a broader cultural genocide effort in a war to destroy the Ukrainian nation.
To appeal for Russian clemency is to appeal for the Russians to reverse the policy objective which was a goal of the invasion itself.
Dean
1yr ago
Well, (a) this isn't very charitable, given that Russia's stated aim is denazification and prevention of crimes against humanity against Russo-Ukrainians,
Russia's stated aim is irrelevant to charity. Russia's revealed aim and policies have included multiple crimes against humanity that do amount to international standards of genocide, and in line with Russian narratives justifying such on the rejection of the legitimacy of Ukrainian nationhood.
and (b) even if all Ukrainian-US propaganda is true and Russia really is capping any Ukrainian who ever looked fondly at an EU / NATO flag... there is always more brutality to be had.
The Russians will be brutal regardless, and will continue to be brutal over any Ukrainian territory they control both now and potentially in the future.
Daring Russia to sink even lower by engaging in anti-Russian dehumanisation will not, I think, have the long-term salutary effect Halla thinks it will: any Ukrainian lives saved from acceleration in victory are likely to be more than counterbalanced by Ukrainian lives lost from the incrementally more brutal Russian counterreaction.
That's an interesting claim, considering Russia retains maximalist war goals that are not limited to 'just' the 4 claimed sub-regions, let alone the occupied areas.
In a contaminated media environment filled not only with not only bad-faith actors, but poor-capability ones? Heavens no.
To pick one recent example of how sub-par framing distorts discussion-
To the extent that I think that the picture ymeskhout is presenting is false, the proper response is to put together a detailed argument, backed by the best supporting evidence I can dig up, on exactly how and why he's unambiguously wrong.
I am no stranger to arguing with bad-faith bullshit. This is not what bad-faith bullshit looks like. This is, near as I can tell, what being wrong looks like. The proper response to that is to admit it and take your lumps like a grownup. The proper response to that is to admit it and take your lumps like a grownup. If you can't do that, if you don't actually value seeing misconceptions corrected, you're acting like a jackass, and ymeskhout is doing this place a tremendous service to make that fact as obvious as possible, with bonus points for style.
Here's what I've seen so far in the recent Jan 6th threads:
The single word in the third section that undermines all the rest is the qualifier 'recent.' Recent does not negate the iterative game-nature of people's engagement of a topic, and basing an argument only on the most recent action is less an isolated demand for rigor, as much as a demand for isolated rigor.
Just as any analysis of the Jan 6th legitimacy is fatally flawed if separated from the nature of election-law changes and documented coordination between partisan activists, government officials, and media groups to support that party before the election (and admitted afterwards- you can find the link yourself, thank you kindly, and if you can't then this goes back to competence rather than faith), a discussion on motte posting dynamics in the present is missing something very significant if it doesn't address that this isn't just a 'recent' exchange, it's someone who brought their pet hobby horse into the themotte.org after an established history, and pattern, of the same. A pattern that- as you say- did increasingly little to change minds, and the number of people who maintained engagement with said individual gradually declined. They did not stop doing so because exhaustive links to specific incidents or contexts of concern were disproven and overturned by the power of logic, they did so because over time they realized there was no point in engaging in such a way. The people whose minds could be shifted were already shifted; the people who could not were not going to be.
This is not what being wrong looks like. This is what evaporative cooling looks like, when the only people remaining to make effort-posts are the most-motivated. You may as well ask why Julius's Motte opposing arguments decreased in quality, when by the end he was probably the source of more warnings and kickings than meaningful counter-arguments.
Which, actually, is a better substitute-person for your argument, since it's clear where your sympathies are on this context but your broader point- if it's to be valid- needs to be valid for not just the people you think are in the right, but also wrong. Just as a justice system isn't for the people we sympathize for, a critique of the quality of engagement on the motte needs to address what engagement expectations realistically are.
One of the issues Julius B-something, or highschool-is-slavery McGee, or whatever his various alts were- wasn't simply that he was a bad faith actor, it was that he was just bad, as in incompetent, in both communication and scholarly skills, but he was only ever open to changing one of those. (The writing part, to be clear- so that he could be a better sophist in selling his point.) The people who were more familiar with the scholarship did not, in fact, respond to every Julius post with yet another immaculate sourced response decisively proving he was wrong... after the first few times. They gradually stopped replying at all, leaving him unchallenged except for the likes of less-scholared (and more prone to banning) people, for the sheer fact that he just kept posting. Once people knew what he was posting, and what he was going to continue posting regardless of what was said, and that saying so would make no difference...
By your framework, the point that after a year or so Julius B-whatever ended up with opponents like BestIrishGirl Ame who got in more trouble for opposing him rudely and who weren't able to really engage on a evidence level was a failure point of the community. With only a modicrum of twsting, Julius was providing a community service even, for exposing the jackasses, and overcoming them with style. (And endurance.)
I must dissent. And not simply because who is the asshole, or who has the style, is a subjectivity that does more to reflect the evaluator's preferences than the subject. Or that low-quality responses still serve a valid role in challenging motte-and-bailey arguments that would otherwise go uncontested for lack of engagement of at all, but be expected to continue indefinitely and shape the expectations of the forum as a whole if completely unchallenged.
I must dissent because recognizing when [insert actor here] has [pet topic x] for which they are sufficiently fixed in their views to negate the value of engagement, not engaging with their argument is the appropriate way to deal with [insert actor here]. Engagement on their preferred passion project really is a waste of time for all involved, it is an invitation for angry rebuttals and accusations of bad faith more likely to draw censor themselves than the actual person of bad-faith-but-is-polite-about-it, and it's not apparently changing the minds of anyone involved. By not engaging [pet topic x] directly, you can instead address other topics of possible mutual engagement (Julius's poor writing skills), or provide general signalling to the broader audience of what, and why, the risk of engaging the person is so that they are aware of the dynamics and risks at play.
I don't think I'm alone in this either- you're doing a similar dynamic, in this particular post, whether you intended to or not. You're speaking broadly, generally, and non-specifically about unnamed posters, and without source citations or evidence to boot. You're not calling out individuals, or confronting them in long exchanges. You're doing a relatively limited, relatively polite, dismissal of their arguments without engaging them directly, and doing so with a broader intent to shape the broader discourse, but no real expectation of affecting the individual(s) in question.
(And how could they? Many may not even realize you're referring to them.)
Per any model where conclusively proving your opponents are wrong every time is the right way, this is the wrong way. But as a model for engaging- or rather, not-engaging- with individuals for whom not-engaging is not only the path chosen, but attempting to marginalize through rhetoric rather than counter-evidence is the way, this is fine. You can call people jackasses or losers without being in violation of the Motte's rules if you're sufficiently vague, and that's fine. (It'd be pretty unenforcable otherwise.) Far be it for me to tell you otherwise.
But to do this, you had to make a decision on whether the person or group of persons was a good-enough actor (faith, competence, whatever) to pursue engagement going forward, or so bad that you instead began a general effort of isolating the sort of individuals in the community, so that they do not remain as unchallenged in their bailey as in an otherwise pleasant motte. Yes, this accelerates the process of evaporative cooling, where eventually only the assholes or the obsessives engage. But evaporative cooling around a poster is not the problem, it is product of the mitigation process, and more importantly the mitigation process is itself the consequence of prior patterns and past history.
Which comes back to not just what is recent, but what previous trends established the pattern of treating people like infohazards, or possibly Julius B-somethings.
It's not technically culture war, but Hamas has just attacked Israel en-masse, overwhelming the Iron Dome with 5000 rockets and even sending raiding parties into Israel. It looks like Haman and/or Shabak haven't done their job at all, and Israel has been caught with its pants down.
That's probably how this will be remembered / talked about going forward, but discussion/forecasting regarding a third infatada has been increasing over the last year. It's just been overshadowed in the western media due to the war in Ukraine / focus on Israeli politics.
This is more operational surprise than strategic surprise. Iranian arms shipments to groups across the region hasn't exactly been a secret.
The tactical surprise is the relishing in brutality against civilians that's been part of the operation, including the raid shelter killings that have already been publicized. That sort of thing isn't intended to communicate valorous resistance to garner international solidarity, that's the sort of thing intended to provoke reactions expected to overshadow the initial atrocities in public memory.
For the culture war angle, I think the biggest question is of retribution. On one hand, Israeli public will now demand a reaction that makes the ongoing Hamas attack pale in comparison. On the other hand, what can Israel do to a very densely populated Gaza strip that won't be branded as a war crime or ethnic cleansing?
Given that anything they do would be accused of being a war crime or ethnic cleansing regardless, that's probably not the deterring question it would have been a day ago. Especially given multiple examples of large-scale ethnic cleansing in the last year, and even in the last month, that so far have not exactly manifested any coordinated international response.
That's not to say Israel could get away with it- the gaza strip has an estimated 2 million people, which is almost as many as Armenia the country proper (2.7 million) and the middle east is not the global commons at all- nor is it to say Israel should even try, but it's not exactly the taboo guaranteed a universal response.
As for what Israel will do... I suspect that's going to depend on what Hezbollah does, and more importantly what Iran wants to happen. Hamas isn't quite the proxy that Hezbollah is, but I would be amazed if Hamas conducted this without significant pre-launch coordination with Iran.
Dean
6mo ago
Why did support for Ukraine split along the left/right the way it did (at least in the U.S.), when typically one would expect it to go the other way.
Did it? How does what we see now differ from bog-standard American political polarization?
I'd be the first to note that the Republicans have a more vocal wing that's openly Ukraine-skeptic, but that wing notably isn't even charge of the Republican party, let alone 'the right' as a whole. It's also incredibly typical of American political party tradition of the party out of power flirting with more radical peace movements right up to the point they come back into power. Cindy Sheehan was a darling of the Democratic party up to the point the Democrats were in charge of Iraq and Cindy kept protesting the war. Republicans are an isolation party until they're in charge of foreign policy.
From my perspective, the American right is much more skeptical about how the US goes about supporting Ukraine, than about whether to. When things get tied to, say, anti-corruption measures, people who aren't just using corruption as an argument-soldier tend to be more accepting. When actually challenged to explain how, say, conventional arms delivery meaningfully risk nuclear war despite an entire cold war to the contrary, that doesn't seem to be a particular close-held belief when put into context by even casual inquiry. The closest thing is a consistent concern is cost... which is both a framing narrative but also one that the government can easily undercut at will by simply explaining how it chooses to frame costs.
These are far more indicative of 'I don't trust how the other party handles things' skepticism than actual opposition. If a Republican had been at the helm at the start, we'd have Republicans being the pro-support party and the Democrats warning how Trump was recklessly going towards nuclear war, etc. etc. etc.
Factions of the American right far more organized, far more coherent, and far larger lack the ability to meaningfully dominate the American right's perspective on policies far closer to the party base, let alone Trump's likely coalition. I hear far more from the opponents of the American right about how the right is against Ukraine than I hear any sort of chorus from the right against it.
I dislike percentages as a means of numeric false certainty, but I'll make a few predictions.
I expect the war to continue into 2024, barring a Putin death scenario leading to a Russian withdrawal. As long as Putin lives and the Russian army is not comprehensively destroyed in the field, I do not see him withdrawing from Ukraine before a fall of Crimea, which I do not see in 2024 barring major Russian conventional defeats in eastern Ukraine.
I expect both a Russian and Ukrainian this spring after the mud-season, with Russia's prioritizing the Donbas. Ukraine's will be aimed at advancing a southern corridor to cut the land-bridge to Crimea, though it may be also/instead intended to cut at the Russian southern supply lines for the Donbas offensive.
I expect this year's Russian strategic goal to secure the administrative boundaries of the Donbas and other eastern regions, with some additional buffer as possible, before transitioning to a posture of strategic defense and trying to present fully-occupied province annexations as fait accompli and basis for armistice lines while trying to exhaust European support. I do not expect the Russians to seriously press for all the claimed annex territories, ie. reclaim Kherson, and I expect that the Russians will be unable to sustain broad-front operations despite mobilization due to attrition of precision fires and modern maneuver equipment.
I expect this year's Ukrainian strategy to cut the land-bridge to Crimea, and as possible start of a logistical siege of Crimea by the end of the year while forcing Russia to relocate forces from mid-eastern Ukraine to south-eastern. The Ukrainian goal will be to continue to attrit Russian maneuver warfare capabilities, especially in modernized mechanized and precision fires, while developing their own maneuver warfare capability.
I expect the Russians will at least temporarily cancel the agriculture shipping deal, and attempt to use the disruption to agricultural exports to pressure Europeans to reduce support for Ukraine / end Russian sanctions. I do not expect this to succeed, even as I do expect middle eastern instability as a result. The russian disruption will likely be most relevant in the context of preventing Ukrainian agriculture from being planted, even if it allows a resumption of the deal.
I expect Russian economic resiliance to sharply deteriorate by mid-year as European energy and insurance sanctions take sharper bites and the short-term Russian economic controls are extended indefinitely. I think it is possible, but not necessarily likely, that China starts subsidizing the Russian economy to allow it to sustain a long-term war footing, including monetary loans and sale of ammunition. I expect Putin to continue the war regardless of economic deterioration, or Chinese (and other) terms of sale.
I expect European willingness to continue to support Ukraine economically to continue. Opportunistic actors like Orban will leverage vetos on Ukrainian aid to enable their position, but current political dynamics continue to make it easier for European states to leverage that for moderating sanctions for compromises than to simply block Ukrainian support. In key European nations (Germany, Italy, and France), pro-Russian political interests will remain easy political targets for domestic political rivals, meaning that pro-Russian coalition politics will continue to be undermined or sold out on case-by-case benefits.
I expect NATO countries to consider expanding aircraft support in earnest this summer, based on the results of the Spring offensives. I expect pressures and war economics will support drones over manned air-superiority fighters. If a fighter is sent, it will likely be in the role of a missile-bus for long-range fires.
I expect that Zelensky will continue to remain in power in Ukraine, barring an assassination. I expect Zelensky to use the context of the war, western pressures, and European Union ascession criteria to justify counter-corruption purges of the Ukrainian government. These will likely catch genuinely corrupt officials, but also have secondary effects of functionally purging suspected pro-Russian oligarchs, and undermine the formation of a counter-Zelensky oligarch coalition party. Opposition parties in the 2024 election will most likely form behind other war leaders/heroes on an anti-Russian axis, not in a pro-Russian fifth columnist, and direct criticism of Zelensky (barring personal scandal) will be muted.
I expect Zelensky to run for re-election, and to be the leading candidate bar personal involvement in corruption scandals. I expect end-of-year strategic priorities (during the next winter/mud season) to be the increased defense of, or attempt to liberate, a 'major' urban area in order to include it in the March 2024 election process.
I expect NATO weapon shipments to hit a qualitative and quantitative critical mass by late 2023 that makes Ukraine favored/expected to launch an offensive, in the early 2024, barring escalating Chinese support for Russia in the form of material.
I do not expect any nuclear weapon use.
To anyone who has discussed the issue with pro-Ukraine people.
Why do people support Ukraine fighting against Russia, with a strange militaristic fervor, instead of supporting surrendering / negotiating peace?
There's nothing strange about nations resisting invasion to anyone with a passing familiarity with history, and nothing odd about people supporting a victim of unjust aggression to anyone with a familiarity of social dynamics.
Anglin makes the points that:
-the war is severely impoverishing Europe due to high energy costs
Anglin is anticipating, not describing. Europe is not impoverished, and the past year has demonstrated that the energy doomers on both sides were significantly over-estimating the near-terms impacts of energy disruptions.
Germany is not going to have a great time, but that's because Germany's economic model relied on a number of assumptions of below-norm energy prices and globalism dynamics that increasingly no longer apply. However, Germany was also on the course for a major economic fundamentals shift this decade anyway due to German demographic shifts resulting from their top-heavy age distributed work force exiting the work force.
-the war is destroying Ukraine ( population + territory / infrastructures / institutions)
Anglin is failing to attribute agency. 'The war' is a consequence, not the actor. The Russians are destroying Ukraine, and have demonstrated they will continue to do so even even in areas not part of the front in ways that do qualify as genocide under post-WW2 international law. Since a lot of people don't view the cultural genocide clauses and mass abduction of children to destroy ethnic groups as 'really' genocide, we can just go for 'crimes against humanity.'
-continuing the war increases the chances of a world war
Anglin is being amusing, and does not make a credible argument for who else in the world would be a meaningful participant on Russia's side, considering how limited (and mercurial) the support of even Russia's closest international allies has been.
Is it cheering for the possible destruction of Russia?
It probably would be cheered, but that's generally because of the recent invasion and crimes against humanity.
Something to do with the current leadership of Russia, anti-LGBTQ, pro-family policies?
The invasion and crimes against humanity are problems with the current leadership, yes, but not particularly pro-family.
Is it about the 1991 borders of Ukraine, issues with post-Soviet Union border disputes?
The invasion and crimes against humanity are problems since 1991, yes.
Notion that 'if we don't stop Putin now he will never stop no matter what'? Is it something about broadly standing up against aggression of one state vs another, supporting the 'underdog'?
The invasion and crimes against humanity have been self-justified by the Russians by historical revaunchism ideology in terms that applies to several other regional states, meaning no relevant ideological self-limiting factor to just Ukraine, yes.
The issue with that one which seems to be central to Alexander's March 22 post is that there isn't much that seems capable of stopping Russia.
This seems curious to raise now, since one of the obvious trends of the conflict has been the Russians were quite literally stopped in multiple respects in multiple axis, including an infamous 40-mile traffic jam that preceeded a total retreat from the most important front of the war's opening in under a month. Not only did the Russians strategically culminate in most fronts by the summer, but the consistent trend of the last 6 months has been the Russians not only being stopped, but actively reversed and losing territory.
Sending another 100k Ukrainians to the meatgrinder for that end seems a little bit harsh coming from people with very little skin in the game.
The West has sent 0 Ukrainians to the meat-grinder, and has no ability to send any more, because the West does not control the Ukrainian state, both of whose constituency maintains extremely high support to resist to the state whose maximalist goals would result in even more rampant crimes against humanity against the Ukrainian nation.
Just signaling what they are told is the correct opinion?
It's strange that the greatest Russian military catastrophe since 1941, surpassing even the Chechnya and Afghanistan embarrassments to the point that the Russians are turning to North Korea of all places for military procurement, would be confused for 'just signalling.'
Is it about saving face, sunk cost at this point?
Sunk cost implies that significant costs have been incurred for no meaningful gain, which assumes a conclusion.
Western military support for Ukraine has not been a significant cost to the states providing, and has directly resulted in clear effects on Russia's intended military-political goals in the conflict. Western economic costs have been higher than the military costs, but neither impoverishing or obviously not worth opposing an attempt to fundamentally change European security politics to re-introduce wars of conquest.
What would be the best case scenario for a Ukraine/State Department victory?
Russia immediately leaving Urkainian territory, returning the kidnapped Ukrainian children and other forcibly relocated persons, paying reparations to the victims corresponding to the costs of the war including the forced conscription in occupied territories, and begin a long series of internal accountability efforts bringing war criminals to justice in international forums, hopefully accompanied by internal political reforms dismantling the security state responsible for planning and executing the war.
To my understanding, Putin is not the most radical or dangerous politician in Russia, and an implosion into ethnicity-based sub-regions would cause similar problems to the 'Arab Spring'. Chechens for example would not appear very West-friendly once 'liberated' from Russia.
The Chechens, however, would not be capable of invading European states or attempting ethnic cleansing on the scale that the Russians are attempting to.
The problem of a Russian break out isn't that various successor states wouldn't be western friendly- this is functionally no change from the current macro state- but rather the issue of nuclear proliferation. Which is why the west isn't making efforts to destroy the Russian Federation as a polity, which would be reflected in efforts to target the internal security state aparatus.
Not only that, but economic crisis in Europe could generate additional security risks.
Security risks from economic crisis in Europe are considerably less concerning than the security risks of a revaunchist invader willing to attempt wars of national eradication when he thinks he can win it during a window of opportunity, but the poor sense to not know when that is not possible.
Dean
1yr ago
It's absence. Not liking Trump is fine. Regularly and consistently making top-level comments about it with poor conduct towards the posters you are a moderator for is not. The dead horse doesn't become less dead if there's more of it to beat, especially when the complaint is about the stench.
The Cold War isn’t even close to analogous.
In so much that the Cold War is an aggregate rather than singular thing, this would be true. In so much that the Cold War was filled with examples that serve as analogies for what does / does not trigger nuclear war, including direct conventional combat between nuclear states or conventional military support resulting in tens of thousands of deaths, this is false.
I also not that you fail to identify how conventional arms deliveries meaningful risk nuclear war, which was the subject of the risk comparison.
Now because of advanced weapons, the US can give Ukraine weapons that easily and frequently do hit Russia’s territory (including Moscow). That never happened during the Cold War as far as I know.
If you mean that the US or Russia never gave advanced weapons to allies or proxies against their superpower adversaries, this is false. Notable examples included the Soviets giving the Koreans entire armored divisions of equipment and then giving the Vietnamese state-of-the-art surface-to-air systems and various forms of rockets, and the Americans giving stinger missiles and other weapons to the Afghans, and major military packages to the Europeans and even the Iranians for use against the Russians.
If you mean that 'the US couldn't give weapons that could easily and frequently hit Russia's territory', this is also false. The entire point of many of the ballistic missile treaties in the cold war was precisely because the US could give weapons that could easily and frequently hit Russian territory, and US military aircraft and missile technology only stopped being unique in so much that it proliferated to the point that many nations had the ability. This doesn't even address dynamics of Russian/Soviet (and, most relevantly, allegedly Putin's) perspective of the power dynamic between the US and NATO countries, which diminished perceived relevant differences between the US military launching a missile from German territory and German forces launching a missile from German territory.
If you mean that weapons provided by the superpowers were never used to do so, this was because the superpowers never invaded their adjacent neighbors who were in range of their territory, not for a lack of willingness to do so. The willingness to do so was a rather significant part of NATO's architecture.
There are interpretations and angles you could have meant that would make your intended statement true, but none of them particularly validate the contested claim of how conventional weapons meaningfully risk nuclear war. Casual mechanisms are consistently lacking, or downright silly.
Dean
1yr ago
Any arguments that now the border-crossers are going to be mobilization dodgers are just going to be met with newly-minted claims that since Putin and Shoigu implied that it's West that Russia is at war with, young Russian males crossing the border might just be destabilization agents and a danger to Finland.
There's a further issue, which I didn't see mentioned here, of being a long-term casus belli by Putin or similar russian nationalists.
Putin has repeatedly used ethnic russians as pretexts to intervene, or threaten intervention, around the region. Much of the pre-February rhetoric from Moscow on multiple fronts could be leveraged against Russia's more northern neighbors, which was one of the reasons Europe reacted as strongly as it did when Putin followed through with his threats with actual invasion. Just from this angle, significantly increasing the Russian national population in the border states- who are almost certainly going to locate themselves to the ethnic russian enclaves- strengthens an ethnic-based framing of a future pre-conflict narrative.
Further, there's also a point about what sort of Russians would be coming to reside in Finland/border states. Before this week, you could at least make an argument that these people were the minority of Russians who actively opposed the war, and were signalling their sincerity by leaving at cost to themselves. But these were the exceptions for a reason- among which being that most Russians, apolitical nationalist as they were, maintained high approval polling of Russian nationalist incursions in the region without issue, ie the potential threat against Finland or others... up unto the moment it potentially involved them.
If you work from the general assessment that Putin's approval numbers are genuinely high and representative of Russian people, and that these new would-be migrants are representative, they're drawing from the same overlapping ven diagram. These are not anti-imperialists who were committing to not associating with imperialism at personal cost, these are drawing from passively supportive imperialists who are only not associating with imperialism because it risks a personal cost... and who, if safe from that cost, have no history/credibility that they won't just go right back to vaguely supporting russian imperialism, only from inside the border territories where they could serve as a casus belli.
Is it a generalization? Sure. But it nests on real security threats (Putin using Russian ethnic ties as a basis for unprovoked war), and with a presumed- and at least not disproven- demographic overlap of the very target audience who have been passively supporting such revaunchism through political support so long as the nationalist element didn't harm them.
Now, one could make an argument that this compliant and low-pain tolerance is why they should be accepted- that they wouldn't be willing to tolerate social pressure opposing their nationalism- but this is where we go back to where they would likely go (existing or new Russian enclaves), what they could do wittingly or unwittingly (be sanctuary/support for Russian destabilization efforts), and whether they'd default back to Russian nationalism if social pressure from non-Russian social pressure targetted them.
Dean
2mo ago
I'll confess to being a bit surprised, honestly. As far as being a domestic political threat, Navalny was a non-issue, and in some respects he still had value as a bargaining chip vis-a-vis his western supporters in Europe (and, to a lesser degree, the US).
The question that comes to mind in things like this is 'why now?', as opposed to months ago or some time in the future. I'm not particularly tracking any particular context where Navalny would have been domestically relevant to Russian politics... which doesn't mean there isn't, or that you couldn't have a differing view on what 'relevant' entails, but it could also mean there are other considerations in play.
One thing is the Russian state's medium-term view. There are a number of indications in the annual budgetting and such that Russia is more or less counting on the Ukraine war ending in the next two years or so, with a massive up-front but long-term-unsustainable surge of economic focus on trying to keep the pressure on and present a picture of strength leading up to the next US presidential term, and for some time for negotiations afterwards. In that context, removing Navalny now would let it subside by that point, while negating some potential implications if outsiders thought they could just out-wait Putin and see Navalny in the wings.
Which is another possibility. There are rumors in diplomatic/foreign affairs circles that Putin may not be as healthy as he presents, and that he has some form of old man disease where his tenure may be measured in years, not decades. If this were true, then killing Navalny could be seen as Putin 'cleaning house' so that, when he passes, there's no obvious pro-western potential successor to rise from the inevitable power struggle. It's not a matter of Navalny as a political threat now, but in the future.
Dean
6mo ago
While the PIS won the most votes of any single party, with around 36.6% of the vote, this was less than the last election's 43.6%, and there seems to be a lack of coalition partners to reach the 50%. This was a fatal slide, which while having many contributing factors followed a major scandal in which corruption in selling Visas greatly undermined one of the PIS's key policy points- immigration- while validating accusations of corruption. While there will be some pro-forma opportunities for PIS to try and form a government, in practice leaves the likely next government to be an opposition-left coalition, which will likely be led by former prime minister (and former European Council president) Donald Tusk, who leadership in Poland was what paved the road for PIS to rise to power about 8 years ago.
Such a result will likely be greeted as a relief and good news for the European Union elites, and especially for Germany and Merkel, who Tusk was a reliable partner for. Tusk is about as much a Eurocrat as one can have, and has long been a leading voice in European circles shaping anti-PIS narratives as he tried to get back into Polish politics in the name of countering democratic-backsliding.
With a EU-phile government in Warsaw, this means some policies are likely to change. However, the nature of changes are likely to fall short of a 'the opposite of anything PIS did,' due to dynamics of PIS both doing some genuinely popular things which required 50-stalins criticisms, and for the nature of changing paradigms. Some of the dynamics that led to PIS criticism- such as the nationalization of hyper-majority German-owned Polish majority- aren't as likely to be reversed and re-sold once to the same companies once a shakey three-party coalition mostly united by being anti-PIS. Some things will be reversed, some will be kept, and some things will just be paralyzed due to coalition politics. That said, the European power centers- especially Brussels and Germany- can likely expect a more compliant Polish government for the next few years while Germany and France make a major push for power centralization in exchange for EU enlargement.
Various policy changes to look for movements on might include-
EU-centralization: This is one area where EU policy changes may see or enable significant shifts. One of the PIS's claims to notoriety was its functional political partnership with Hungary to block EU-level efforts to punish/exclude/potentially even suspend voting rights of recaltrant states. While condemned as part of anti-democratic badness, this had a major functional effect of blocking attempts at EU centralization that could sideline and selectively punish bad, or just unpopular, states. Tusk, as a EUrocrat, is almost certainly to step back from watering down issues targeting Hungary, but whether this will translate into a broader centralization momentum is less clear. The Germans and French have shifted from a current-EU-model of centralization (where individual states would be able to punished and lose veto rights- something Tusk might have gone along with) to now proposing a multi-speed-Europe model in exchange for expansion, which has far more serious implications, and which Tusk has opposed in the past (for potential reasons to broad for here).
Judiciary: This will likely be the quickest / easiest reversal, to EU applomb. The Polish judiciary followed a judges-select-the-next-judges, not appointment by the elected party akin to the German or US, and attempts to change that was strongly condemned by the EU (for whom the Polish Judiciary was seen as reliably deferential, despite corrupt origins from the post-communist transition). PIS paid regular political costs, and Tusk will drop that at the first chance while likely trying to prune if not purge the influence of PIS-associated judges (which will not be subject to significant EU-level criticsm)
LGBTQ+WE: This is one where the government line will likely align with the EU consensus of embracing the rhetoric and enabling/encouraging advocacy groups to set up social networks in Poland that were previously resisted. While over action will likely be less than full-throated supported, this was a PIS culture war point that the anti-PIS coalition will likely reverse for internal and external support reasons, though it will easily be a function that plays more to elite interests and foreign legitimization from EU allies than widespread domestic support.
Ukraine: There's very likely to be little substantive change on this. The biggest change is likely to be if there's a change in the distribution of arms vs other aid, which will reflect the military-industrial and rearmament policy more than a desire to aid Ukraine itself. While PIS did have election-rheotric and some disputes with Ukraine, I wouldn't expect the new coalition to substantially different on the conflict points (no Ukraine food dumping on politically significant farmers), and some of the criticisms of PIS on the Ukraine front came as much from a 50-Stalins direction as anything else.
Rearmament: Since Ukraine started, the PIS went on a major armament buying spree to modernize and bulk up the Polish military. Part of this was to free up older platforms to pass on to Ukrainians, while others were about establishing Poland as a military leader in Europe. Pre-election criticism focused on cost, and so reigning in would be natural (which could in turn mean less direct arms transfers in the future). The real interest will be what is cancelled versus what is changed, as various EU-power centers were more opposed that Poland was buying from outside the EU- especially US and US-alllied suppliers- rather than rearming itself. This will likely be a more case-by-case basis as PIS already had the ability to start some contracts that may have clauses making it less feasible to back out and transfer. It would be a major surprise, and reversal, if new-Poland renenges on the Korea tank contracts and goes for a German option.
Military-Industrial Policy: An outset of the Ukraine and Rearmament policies, PIS was establishing relationships and efforts to make Poland an autonomous arms center who could compete with French and German armament industries both inside the EU market and without. This had a dynamic of countering the EU strategic autonomy efforts (which are largely synonymous with French and German led arms projects), so there may be EU-advocated efforts to reign in the potential competition as a part of the rearmament restraint and Ukraine aid reallocation. Look for if South Korea's tank deal is radically restructured, as that was not only a rearmament program but also a lead-in to joint R&D for Polish military production capacity.
Media: One of PIS's condemned policies was its functional de-Germanification of Polish media. During the post-Cold War period and the early 2000s, part of Germany state-encouraged economic policy was the expansion of German economic interests, especially media interests, in the post-Soviet east. This led to a major centralization of Polish media by German corporations, who weren't adverse to leveraging corporate influence for political influence and themes, including shaping editorial lines on Polish politics. Tusk was a beneficiary of this as part of his German political alliances, given the nature of German government-corporate media relations which can be characterized at times as 'cozy,' but when the PIS took power they compelled foreign-owned media concentrations to sell, which is how the PIS gained outsized media influence that the opposition decried as state propaganda. Despite PIS now losing hold of that, I suspect that there will be no explicit German re-sell/reversal: rather, the Polish media landscape will likely be re-coopted by the new ruling coalition, just with different political interests in charge, or the new government will attempt to compel re-sell, but with an eye for more pro-EU rather than German-specific interests, to try and re-establish a dominant pro-EU media sphere but do so in a way a future-PIS government can't reverse as easily.
Immigration: This is likely to be one area where PIS broke the EU-phile paradigm, and Tusk and the anti-PIS quietly maintain continuity as a whole. While Tusk was a committed EU-phile and ally of Merkel, PIS made extremely good political hay from its anti-immigration stance, even getting the grudging German acquiesence when it was used in the 2021 Belarusian-instigated refugee crisis, where PIS preventing migrants from requesting asylum served as one of the only shields preventing an otherwise easy movement from Belarus-thru-Poland-to-Germany during the German government formation process. Given the EU-wide changes to immigration, and especially Germany's, while Tusk may entertain some token-level redistribution support, this will be a topic they step very gingerly around, not least because letting in immigrants corruptly was a key point of what brought PIS down, and could easily do them in again in turn.
There's more to be guessed at, of course, and I don't claim any special insight, but overall I'd expect by next year Poland-EU relationships to be on a fundamentally different tenor, but not at all what they were before PIS took control. Expect a lot of whom and who sort of 'it was really bad when PIS did it, not so much an issue now' tenor as conflicts occur, but one where Tusk and his EU allies try to make longer-term systemic efforts to prevent PIS from returning and cement a pro-EU coalition for as long as possible, but doing so knowing there's very shakey footing that could see them quickly fall and a PIS-coalition return.
Dean
7mo ago
Because Vice is an outlet associated with caring far more about party affiliation of sinners than the sins, presumably.
Dean
8mo ago
It also would have proceeded better had Obama not tried to approach foreign policy without the buy-in of the opposition party in general.
Later-term Obama basically ran foreign policy conflating executive fiat with presenting a fait accompli. This was done on the assumption that there wouldn't be an opposition party succession, let alone willing to pay the political costs of not going along with it, which was hubris.
Again, why?
I hate to consensus build, but this seems a pretty transparent 'the definition means what I want it to mean at the time, not consistently applied,' and the argument that the conclusion is self-enacting is just assuming the conclusion in a way that would drastically expand the power of the executive branch vis-a-vis the other branches by creating a precedent that the people who would make the determination can invoke magic words to make the appropriate un-appealable conclusion.
I see no reason why the members you cite would suddenly be onboard with a very expansive and novel interpretation of the executive branch's authority to arbitarily ban opposition politicians for conduct less severe than members of the ruling party that remain in good standing.
Dean
8mo ago
That is partly because Iran consistently goes out of its ways to not only be bad by generally neutral standards, but especially the standards the Obama administration claimed to care about.
Rapproachment with Iran wasn't something that could be neatly simplified as 'de-escalating American hawkishness in the Middle East.' It involved things as over-the-top as flying literal planeloads of cash to a known state-sponsor of terrorism, who was involved in killing American soldiers in Iraq and made no promises to stop, for a deal even its adherents claimed would only result in Iran reaching breakout capability, i.e. what it would reach without it. You don't need to be 'hawkish' to think that that's not a particularly good play, and that was even as Iran was one of the most extreme global examples of the institutionalized homophobia (as in, literal stoning the gays) and gender discrimination. Not only was the later a flaw on the human rights front, Iran's sins were the sort of accusations that the Obama administration and the progressive-millenials were using as political cudgels in the domestic culture war at the same time.
Obama seeking rapproachment with Iran by fiat and trying to avoid Congressional scrutiny didn't come across as 'at last, reason will give peace a chance!'- it came across as a really short-sighted stupid bit of political hypocrisy, for which the primary beneficiary on the American side was Obama himself in terms of international laurels for giving the Europeans endorsement to trade with someone who at the time was helping blow up American soldiers and was in no way required to stop doing so.
Dean
4mo ago
I do not think people's unrelated good and bad acts somehow function to cancel each other out. Maybe if the evil things were in some way necessary to do the good things we can say the things were on net good but I don't think a case could be made that Kissinger's evils were actually necessary to accomplish his good deeds. You don't get, like, one free murder for every life you save. Or every thousand. Or every million. You get no free murders!
The dissolve all government and trust in the inherent goodness of anarchy, because otherwise that's exactly what you get if you accept the legitimacy of policy at scale.
Policy is about choices, including not making choices. People will die as a consequence of not only action, but also no action, and also regardless of action. There is no world where government action at scale doesn't negatively impact many people, there are only worlds where you don't mind the losers because you like the winning more. This is why 'good' and 'evil' policies are judged on more than just the presence of deaths.
This is where individual-level morality of individuals fails to be coherent at scale, because 'acts' and 'deeds' can be individual actions independent of eachother. You can conduct one with no need to conduct the other. But this isn't true at the policy level of not just national, but international level. The good and the bad are not independent of eachother, they are often outputs of the same sort of policies. To pick a mostly benevolently-seen example, the same 'let's save the environment' policies that push for electrical vehicles also drive mass strip mining and enable the geopolitical blackmail shenanigans of the resource-controllers that not only enable, but empower, abuse of people at regional scales. You don't actually have the policy finess to go 'I want the good stuff, but none of the bad,' particularly when inconsistent strategy can deliver worse of both. This is how Responsibility to Protect legal theories that won the public argument about western intervention in Libya led to... open-air slave markets in Libya.
When it comes to Kissinger's career, the evils and the goods both came from the same overarching Cold War policies of communist containment that led to the Soviet Union's defeat in the Cold War. Despite some nostalgic revisionism, there was nothing pre-ordained about the fall of the Soviet Union, or that it would occur in the way it did. The Soviety Union was not, in fact, too poor to keep itself together by force- it lacked the will, not the means, to maintain a nuclear-deterrence repression state. In so much that Kissinger's good deeds entailed the relatively peaceful dismantling of the Soviet Union, so did his bad crimes.
It's less about general criticism, and more that this is ymeskhout's specific hobby horse that has been flayed for years at this point, and regularly comes with standards called for against Trump that were not followed or applied (in general or by ymeskhout personally) on the lawfare against Trump. As with other pet topics, it repeats old themes to the point of evaporative cooling, which then leverage's ymeskhout's bad habit of dismissing/forgetting/claiming prior engagements on points either didn't occur or have been dismissed, for lack of an engaged opposition to engage otherwise.
As far as Trump-related lawfare goes, ymeskhout's a partisan and an old one at this point. At this point I only pay attention when he starts being petty towards people calling him out, like how this time he edited-in a callout- against The_Nybbler and then edited it out after being called out for it.
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