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
Dean
Flairless
19hr ago
And I see you're still inclined to ignore the Yanukovych administrations actual actions in the final days, as well as @The_Golem101's points on the broader events of that morning, as well as all the other previous exchanges and your own court case documents you used to link to so proudly.
As such I look forward to your next attempt to claim that perfidy was obvious at play but that it couldn't possibly have been at the behest of the sitting government.
They aren't presenting the other side because the other side isn't saying anything.
On what grounds do you believe this to be true?
- Did the presenters claim this?
- Did the presenters claim this with evidence?
- Did the presenters ask the other side to say anything?
- Did the presenters acknowledge anything the other side said?
- Did you do your due diligence to see if the presenter claiming this was lying?
- Did you look for other sources other than your chosen presenters?
- Did you ask for other sources that you were unable to find?
- Did you ignore or dismiss other sources that have been provided, maintaining a totality by categorical exclusion of contrary evidence and speakers?
For example, the Rittenhouse affair had Red Tribe internet sleuths piecing together video evidence of Rittenhouse's activities and movements for the hours leading up to the shootings. Within 48 hours they knew more than the prosecution's attorneys knew over a year later.
Why do you believe the internet sleuths knew more than the prosecution's attorneys, as opposed to the prosecution's attorneys feigning ignorance in order to conduct a politically hostile prosecution despite the available and mutually-known facts?
Dean
Flairless
2d ago
I see you're back to ignoring the Yanukovych administrations actual actions in the final days, the external state (Russian) pressures and incentives that were used to drive his changes towards those actions, and claiming as novel the mechanical form in which the Maidan Revolution succeeded, which was that there was a critical lack of elite and and party support for the lethal force crackdown that Yanukovych and the Russian-aligned interior ministry had attempted to initiate.
Unsurprising, and I look forward to your next attempt to claim that perfidy was obvious at play but that it couldn't possibly have been at the behest of the sitting government.
Dean
Flairless
3d ago
None, but that's because my view of what a Stalingrad is implies something distinct and I wouldn't view any of the fortress city battles to qualify.
The shorter version is that Russia's manpower limits are clear enough now that the Russian military isn't going to do the sort of Bakhmut storm/siege that they did in '22/'23 where Russia prioritized high-casualty urban operations to move the urban gains map forward. Instead, the model is more likely to be the Pokrovsk, where the strategy was to try and isolate the city by advancing around the edges, interdict the supply lines, and force the Ukrainians to withdraw or risk a closed pocket.
The advantage of the Pokrovsk approach is that it's a lot less casualty-intensive in the way that Bakhmut was. The downside of the Pokrovsk method is that it takes a long time as the ability to effectively push flanks to isolate a city, which means it's still a very bloody process it's just extended over a longer time, which is more sustainable in a force-generation perspective.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
If these trends hold up not a good sign for Republicans!
That three blue states voted blue no matter who in an off-presidential election in an era of tribal polarization and increasing base radicalism?
I suppose not, in the sense that a forecast of showers is always a bad sign for staying dry, but you're not exactly laying out what is supposed to be a surprise. The only somewhat eyebrow raising one there is Jay Jones, and it was already pretty clear that the party machine was closing ranks about him. Same with the California gerrymandering passing- the one-party state party machine is performing as a party-state machine does.
As for the rest, again, what is the baseline expectation to be deviated from? Just on historical norms alone you'd expect Trump to lose the house and possibly the senate next year.
If you distrust of he event is solely based on that you first started noticing / hearing about the topic 80+ years after it happened, that may be a starting point for skepticism, but the point of noting that historical fiction was covering the events even amongst the perpetrating state when it was still living memory for people who were young at the time it occurred is a point of evidence that the topic did not get invented 20-25 years later when you first noticed it, but was a subject of academic, historical, and popular culture coverage decades before you started paying attention.
Now, if you're happy to be shown more substantial evidence, and are willing to do your own sifting for whatever standard you feel makes things qualify, here is a link to the Holodomor wikipedia page, of which the point of interest for you is the several hundred citations not just from books after the Maidan Revolution period of the 2010s, but from the 2000s, 1990s, and 1980s, well before Euromaidan tensions. These books, in turn, have their own, earlier, references within. Among these reports includes the findings of the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine from 1988, which was not a particularly high political tension period unless you want to arbitrarily disqualify any US source not from the post-Soviet period / pre-Maidan period (for which there are multiple in the wiki above, even if you ignore the nature of various evidential sources linked in the Congressional report.).
These findings include, with some bolded for emphasis-
///
There is no doubt that large numbers of inhabitants of the Ukrainian SSR and the North Caucasus Territory starved to death in a man-made famine in 1932-1933, caused by the seizure of the 1932 crop by Soviet authorities.
The victims of the Ukrainian Famine numbered in the millions.
Official Soviet allegations of "kulak sabotage," upon which all "difficulties" were blamed during the Famine, are false.
The Famine was not, as is often alleged, related to drought.
In 1931-1932, the official Soviet response to a drought-induced grain shortage outside Ukraine was to send aid to the areas affected and to make a series of concessions to the peasantry.
In mid-1932, following complaints by officials in the Ukrainian SSR that excessive grain procurements had led to localized outbreaks of famine, Moscow reversed course and took an increasingly hard line toward the peasantry.
The inability of Soviet authorities in Ukraine to meet the grain procurements quota forced them to introduce increasingly severe measures to extract the maximum quantity of grain from the peasants.
In the Fall of 1932 Stalin used the resulting "procurements crisis" in Ukraine as an excuse to tighten his control in Ukraine and to intensify grain seizures further.
The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 was caused by the maximum extraction of agricultural produce from the rural population.
Officials in charge of grain seizures also lived in fear of punishment.
Stalin knew that people were starving to death in Ukraine by late 1932.
In January 1933, Stalin used the "laxity" of the Ukrainian authorities in seizing grain to strengthen further his control over the Communist Party of Ukraine and mandated actions which worsened the situation and maximized the loss of life.
Postyshev had a dual mandate from Moscow: to intensify the grain seizures (and therefore the Famine) in Ukraine and to eliminate such modest national self-assertion as Ukrainians had hitherto been allowed by the USSR.
While famine also took place during the 1932-1933 agricultural year in the Volga Basin and the North Caucasus Territory as a whole, the invasiveness of Stalin's interventions of both the Fall of 1932 and January 1933 in Ukraine are parallelled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus.
Attempts were made to prevent the starving from travelling to areas where food was more available.
Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933.
The American government had ample and timely information about the Famine but failed to take any steps which might have ameliorated the situation. Instead, the Administration extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet government in November 1933, immediately after the Famine.
During the Famine certain members of the American press corps cooperated with the Soviet government to deny the existence of the Ukrainian Famine.
Recently, scholarship in both the West and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union has made substantial progress in dealing with the Famine. Although official Soviet historians and spokesmen have never given a fully accurate or adequate account, significant progress has been made in recent months.
///
So by the evidence available to academics and legislators in the 1980s, the Holdomor was a famine in which the Soviet Union deviated from its then-contemporary practices for how it responded to natural famines, went out of its way to make things worse after the problem of famine was already known, took active efforts to prevent refugees from fleeing the starvation zone, and the political policy leaders who implemented these policies did so with a mandate that, beyond just selfish profit seeking of stealing more food, was to 'eliminate such modest national self-assertion.' The level of national leader policy intervention, in turn, was only paralleled by interventions in a separate ethnic Ukrainian region.
I am not going to say 'but Americans report that, so it can't be trusted.' You have access to the resources, and sources, the Congressional report writers had access. If you want to discredit long-pre-Maidan sources, feel free, but I would like to think we can agree they were not motivated by US/EU foreign policy dynamics of the mid-2010s. If you want to deny all western sources from the Cold War, that certainly would be another level of categorical dismissal of potential evidence, but at that point I would just point you back to the Ukrainian sources from the Holodomor article, some of which go back to Soviet documentation.
To be clear, I have no particular interest if you have general skepticism of new claims of past atrocities. Some level of skepticism is healthy. But when you say this-
My complaint is more that in the West it seemed to me we switched over from ‘the famines in the USSR were a semi-deliberate result of Soviet malice and mismanagement’ to ‘the Holodomor was a deliberate attempt by the Russians to destroy Ukraine and now they’re at it again’ and this shift seems to be based on political needs and vibes rather than the production of new evidence.
My inclination is to wonder what new claims you think were being 'switched over from,' as opposed to you previously being ignorant of old conclusions from even older evidence that motivated parties ignored for motivated reasons.
Now, to be fair to you and casual observers, that old evidence was stuff that non-trivial parts of the American cultural left had a historic interest in downplaying [due to the willingness of past political heroes](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Franklin_D.Roosevelt(1933%E2%80%931941) and institutional political allies of the era to cover up and ignore the atrocities that were recognizable at the time. Democrats and Blue Tribe cultural actors aren't exactly going to implicitly condemn Franklin Delanor Roosevelt for turning a blind eye to genocide, particularly when doing so was sold to the American public by Communist-aligned agents in media. That's like red meat for the red tribe anti-communist/anti-socialist sentiments.
Additionally, the Obama administration in the years pre-Eurmaidan did not call the Holodomor a genocide in its first remarks on Holodomor remembrance in 2009. This might have had something to do with how part of Obama's anything-but-bush policy was trying to distinguish itself from the Bush administration's Russian-skepticism with the so-called Russian reset of the same 2009-2013 era. Which is to say, the Obama administration did not call the Russians historical genociders at a time when they were attempting to diplomatically make nice with the Russians, particularly a strongman leader who has well known feelings about that sort of historical revisionism accuracy.
This did not, however, prevent Republican president Bush himself, even further away from the Maidan geopolitical tensions you allude to, from signing Public Law 109-340 on October 13, 2006, which states / permits-
SECTION 1. AUTHORITY TO ESTABLISH MEMORIAL. (a) IN GENERAL.—The Government of Ukraine is authorized to establish a memorial on Federal land in the District of Columbia to honor the victims of the Ukrainian famine-genocide of 1932-1933.
Bill Clinton, the Democratic president preceeding Bush 2, did not have his own Holdomor recognition. To be fair to him, he was at the time trying to convince Ukraine to give up nuclear weapons, which is as valid a reason as any not to highlight past genocidal issues even if one does believe in them.
Whereas the Republican Presidency period of Reagan-Bush 1 before Clinton is when the Holodomor commission previously cited initiated, and which included the sort of Soviet archival information that had not been available much earlier due to, well, Soviet secrecy that was starting to loosen in the late Cold War.
So we have a Democratic president who knew about the Holodomor but ignored it at the time in order to normalize relations with the Soviet Union while his political-media allies lied about it to American public, about 50-60 years later you have the US government under opposing party Presidents investigate it and acknowledge it as a genocide, you have the next Democratic president ignore it while seeking to convince the genocide victims they don't need nuclear weapons, you have the next Republican president support and pass a law acknowledging it as a genocide (again), and then you have the next and last Democratic president downplay it while trying to reset diplomatic dynamics with Russia, at least until that effort broke down circa maidan.
Now, this could suggest differing interpretations.
On one hand, maybe the Obama administration switched its tone because of Euromaidan, embraced animosity with Russia as a new policy, and was willing to invent a new genre of academic literature to fuel a charge it didn't believe by generating new evidence to justify a policy shift.
On the other hand, perhaps the Obama administration switched its tone because of Euromaidan, writing off reproachment with Russia as failed old policy, and was willing to accept and leverage an established genre of literature to acknowledge a charge it long acknowledge but generally didn't feel it was polite to mention to the people it previously wanted stuff from.
I can understand, to a degree, why someone with less historical awareness of the subject matter and its emergence may make one of those judgements if their frame of referenced started by accepting the last two Democratic presidents before Euromaidan as the historical baseline.
But, well, they weren't the academic baseline.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
I'd probably do it as a motte-level post, since it has no real culture war application, but you can put yours here if you'd like.
Let's go with... how about some mix of history and fantasy?
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
Odd. By my recollection, Famine-33 was published in 1991, during the tail-end of the Soviet Union itself. It wasn't exactly subtle that the nature of the famine was artificial or tied to the collectivisation. It's not exactly hard to find academic literature from the cold war either, albeit more from the glastnost period and the de-classification of various historical documents.
I believe that others have called you out on this completely insane narrative around Maidan that is needed to make it into an original sin for Ukraine rather than Russia and Yanukovych fucking up (on the 21st of Jan they sent US$2 billion on condition he cracked down - which he did),
Last iteration was about two months ago.
The "obviously not very neutral Ukrainian court" records you mention but not cite
Possibly because a previous case cited brought awkward citations on who might have been responsible.
The previous english-language translation copy link provided no longer works, but Katchavonoski excerpts are here, though I can't promise they are the same translation previously reviewed.
From two months ago on a case, which was a summary for FCfromSSC-
///
This is one of the cases which Ivan Katchanovski likes to cite as proving his Euromaidan-culpability false-flag thesis that he's spend his last decade publishing on. His inclination to refer to parts of it is directly correlated to how the contents support his thesis that the government was falsely accused for shooting protestors. For example, Katchanovski likes to gloss over section seven, and particularly the Court's scope exclusions that begin on page 13 noting-
- all instructions about the alleged commission of criminal acts by other persons named in both indictments, who were not charged and whose guilt was not proven in a legal manner and was not established by a guilty verdict of the court, in particular, aimed at the commission of a terrorist attack combined with mass murders, to stop and violent dispersal of protest actions, planning, preparation, giving and execution of criminal orders, instructions and commissions for this purpose;
Aka, any action not found guilty in a Ukrainian court of law is excluded from the verdict.
Which, in a steelman, is defensible in the judicial process, but not necessarily in a truth-seeking process where whether something happened as opposed to whether it was proven in a court of law. Particularly when the court of law approach might be complicated by things such as known evidence destruction or defection of key witnesses / perpetrators to a country outside of the court's jurisdiction, like Russia.
As such, Ivan Katchanovski is inclined to ignore, not comment on, or push past the court record's acknowledgement of an unproven-but-not-disproven, but highly relevant claim, of-
- as an unproven reference to receiving in the period from February 18 to 20, 2014 PERSON_376 a task from the leadership of the Ministry of Internal Affairs to prepare for the commission of a terrorist attack and mass intentional murders, giving his consent to perform such a task personally and by organizing its execution by RSP fighters;
- as an unproven reference to receipt in the period from 08 h. 30 min. until 9 a.m. 00 min. On February 20, 2014, PERSON_376 was charged with a criminal order by the RSP forces, who were on the street. Instytutska, to carry out intentional murders in a generally dangerous way of the maximum possible unspecified circle of activists with the aim of intimidating them in order to completely stop the protests, as well as the fact of prior coordination with the commander of the PMOP of the tactics of actions of the RSP fighters for this purpose, a reference to the execution by PERSON_31 of the specified order when he , started on February 20, 2014 at approximately 8:00 a.m. 50 min. coordinate the withdrawal of units and special vehicles;
- as an unproven indication that all the accused in the period of February 18, 19 and until 08:00 a.m. 30 min. On February 20, 2014, in fulfillment of a clearly criminal order, they exceeded their authority and official powers, participated in the commission of a terrorist attack, committed the intentional murders of two or more persons, attempted such murders, or prepared for such actions;
- as an unproven reference to the purpose of giving PERSON_376 a clearly criminal order on the morning of February 20, 2014 to the subordinate fighters of the RSP specifically to commit a terrorist act.
I.e., an alleged- but never proven and thus disregarded for this court's purposes- core thesis of the 'government false flag' theory.
Now, Person_376 is not one of the person-descriptors identified in no_one's document. But, in short, the RSP were one of the armed elements in the Maidan Protestors, who were generally in the back / the deterrence for the police to charge and clear the square by force. Their existence / presence is about as old as Euromaidan itself. One of the sniper attacks on the morning of 20 Feb came from a building they had a heavy presence in, which is what this court case is about, which is also old news.
The anti-Euromaidan propaganda narrative is that these RSP key actors were Euromaidan provocateurs / foreign agents (of western powers) who staged in waiting for orders to conduct a false flag attack against Euromaidan protestors to blame the Yanukovych government and escalate the situation, with the intent to bring about the consequence the collapse of Ukrainian government as ended up happening.
The pro-Euromaidan propaganda narrative is that these RSP key actors were Ministry of Interior provacateurs / agents who were staged in waiting for orders to conduct a false flag attack against Euromaidan protestors to blame the protestors and escalate the situation, with the intent of suppressing the protests as part of the broader Ministry of Interior crackdown buildup, but which had the unintended consequence of collapsing the Ukrainian government as ended up happening.
Both pro- and anti-Euromaidan narratives are largely in agreement that the RSP key actors at the center of this case were staged false flag elements waiting for orders to conduct a false flag attack against Euromaidan protestors to escalate the situation, with the consequence of collapsing the Ukrainian government as ended up happening.
The difference is in whose false-flag agents they were, and the intended result of the orders.
The court case doesn't take a position on this distinction, but Ivan Katchanovski likes to insinuate it does, and he is one of the main Reputable Scholars (TM) for the Euromaidan Is To Blame propaganda narrative.
///
End report.
And for clarity on the difference in theory intended results. The anti-Euromaidan conspiracy is that the false flag was intended to collapse the government and usher in the pro-Western government as happened IRL, even though that included various other factors beyond the control of western conspirators such as the local party mayor withdrawing city riot police from the conflict area rather than supporting state security. The pro-Euromaidan conspiracy is that the false flag was intended to sow chaos and amongst protestors and help legitimize the otherwise planned lethal force crackdown, which included security force authorization for live fires and other shootings, which was expected to suppress the Euromaidan but instead backfired as happened IRL.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
What's a hobby-interest you have that you'd be willing to nerd/geek/fan-out over? I've been mooting something on strategy games, and if I could get you to do something similar...
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
@anti_dan and @PokerPirate, I'll backup @100ProofTollBooth's ante as well. If all three of you do effort posts...
...well, could be fun to join a research-and-spill effort.
Just do it.
It's a fair question. Asking people to stake their position is reasonable, and it's been awhile since I have on Ukraine expectations.
Short version- none of the above. I believe the war is more likely to go on for political reasonings rather than end due to a military collapse. I think the more likely consequence of the next year is a continued general grind with advances but no decisive victory for Russia over the next year, with decisive being a front-wide collapse as opposed to the natural operational advancements following the fall of Pokrovsk or similar settlements. The dynamics that didn't lead to those decisive victories happening in previous years generally still apply. Russia has continued to de-motorize/de-mechanize which has negated their operational maneuver to exploit gaps or withdrawals. The drone military revolution continues to disrupt concentration of forces to a degree few appreciate for both offense and defense. Ukraine's key means of external supply were changed rather than cancelled by the Trump administration, and in a way that supports sustained support over time as long as key European capitals support it, which they are liable to.
I broadly concur with Michael Koffman that the war has transitioned from a war of attrition to a war of exhaustion. The war is no longer about depleting critical military capabilities (artillery ammo / air defense munitions / manpower) into such a shortage that it would lead to collapse via some critical overmatch (uncontested fires / close air support / fix-and-bypass maneuver), but is transitioning to a contest of long-term systemic support constrained by both internal and external factors. This is a contest where Russia still has various advantages, but not such a wideset spread at the ratios required as to crush/break as opposed to grind/push back the Ukrainian lines forever / until the front is pushed to the western border.
This doesn't mean attrition doesn't matter / collapses can't happen, as unlikely things still happen some times, but absent one it's liable to be a long-term grind, and the dynamics for that are closer than many people realize/accept. Ukraine's manpower is not as desperate or 'last bits of the bottom of the barrel' as the more popular anti-Ukrainian propaganda portrays, nor is Russia as awash in manpower as many believe, given its self-imposed limits on conscripts that have only grown clearer over time. Both states have relatively resilient but potentially vulnerable war-industry basis as this point, with Russia's better-known advantages being tempered by the steady depletion of its less-well-known transitory advantages, while the Ukrainian vulnerability to diplomatic cut-offs from not-guaranteed European support due to election turnovers mitigated by the fact that most European and American military-economic support to Ukraine remains beyond Russian ability/willingness to directly disrupt. There's enough vulnerability for either side to feel they could shift things in their favor / the other may collapse, which leads to the bargaining tension of mismatched expectations which complicates any peace prospects.
On the political front, the war remains in a political equilibrium. Putin maintains maximalist demands that the Ukrainian government cannot as much as will not agree to, but which are also beyond Putin's ability to compel by force of arms in the near or medium term. The war is ruinous for both Ukraine and Russia on national levels, but not politically dangerous to Putin on a personal level for the relevant time frame, which allows Putin's bad habits of sunk cost fallacy and strategic procrastination to manifest. No territorial gain or harm to Ukraine is self-evidently worth the material, economic, political, social, or strategic costs Russia is paying now and incurring for the long term, but Russian zero-sum-ism will frame any Ukrainian harm/defeat as a win and so cutting losses is for losers. There are and are likely to continue to be enough Russian visible wins (cities taken over time / favorable electoral cycles in Europe) that Putin is liable to variously feel he's in a position of relative strength that will get better over time if he waits / a position of relative weakness will get better over time if he waits, with no falsification metric outside Russian economic collapse (which is unlikely in the near or medium term). The wildcard of Trump's effect on Ukrainian support has largely played out, and with it the prospect of any near-term peace (particularly via Ukrainian concession), which I thought was possible but unlikely this year and believe is far less likely next year absent major changes beyond the current discussions of Pokrovsk or even all of Donbass falling. (Which- to be clear- I don't think will force a political end to the war.)
Again, fair question, and it could merit a far deeper response. But I've about two months left on my self-imposed sabbatical on Ukraine War effort posting, and this already pushed it. I may allow myself one end-of-year post to follow up some predictions from late last year (on the Ukraine front) and earlier this year (on the Trump-on-Ukraine front), but it could also be early next year.
And the people who try to model Ukraine after Afghanistan are so high on copium it's adorable. Hence, favoritism.
This would be precisely where to quibble about what 'in bulk' means. McBig Number in isolation can easily be small in relative contexts.
At an industrial volume level, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were pretty small consumers of artillery. The counterinsurgency era firebases and outposts were far more for sending patrols out from rather than artillery firing out from. There absolutely were artillery points, but the usage of artillery was also highly limited in the sort of residential and urban neighborhoods that defined the conflict, whereas in the mountains of Afghanistan the terrain slope defense was a regular restriction even outside of villages.
This was one of the reasons that the pro-Ukraine coalition had such a hard time providing shells during the Ukrainian shell hunger of the early years. The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan had the US producing more artillery ammo than it otherwise would have had it followed the European example, but it was still far, far behind what the shell demand for a relatively static front line war was.
Dean
Flairless
4d ago
"And then the enemy will lose the will to fight" has got to be one of my favorite theories of victory.
It's such a refreshing evergreen classic, compared to the largely discarded 'Trump is going to force Ukraine to accept terms or else cut off all support,' theories, or the 'Ukrainian desertions will lead Russia's massive manpower to roll over the defenders like a tidal wave' predictions, or the 'Russia strike campaign will crush the Ukrainian power grid and leave them to freeze to death over the winter' variants.
Dean
Flairless
10d ago
The counterpoint to the crediting of the Pale King with sapience is that we knew even in Hollow Knight 1, but more so in Silksong, that the bug sapience not only exists outside the Pale King's influence, but predated it as well. Whatever effect he did have, there was also a fair bit of lying / exaggeration to self-legitimize and aggrandize himself.
We know bugs after the Pale King maintain sentience without the active presence of a King who no longer is, even though a claim of the era was that those bugs who the Pale King uplifted would devolve if they left Hallownest and the King's grace. Current Hallownest is such a distance from the King, who is long gone and who multiple sources like the Godseeker senses no lingering presence.
We know bugs from outside of Hallownest were capable of sapience in their own right, from the Grimm Troup to the Godseekers who traveled from far outside Hallownest. They alluded to- and Silksong's Pharloom proved- sapient bug civilizations predating and existinng in parallel to the Pale King even as his propaganda claimed Hallownest as the only civilization. Hallownest would have to be some kind of exception in the sense of 'there is no sapience here', rather than the self-sought distinction of 'the Pale King's is the last and only civilization.'
We also know that sapient bugs predated the Pale King in Hallownest itself. We know from the lore tablet in the fungal wastes that there were lore-tab-writing bugs who warily (as in- with consideration) capable of considering the merits of joining the Wyrm-better-known-as-Pale-King, and their stated reasons was preiscience, not a sapience they already had. We have the Mantis Tribe who- though tribal- have traditions and intellect predating and actively resisting the Pale King. And, of course, the unnamed ancient civilization who the Pale King was himself trying to crib from far later.
And we also know that at least some of what the Pale King propaganda derided / dismissed as beastial unthinkingness was in fact sapience of a hive mind whose existence he sought to bury. Different forms of sapience were denied, not recognized let alone celebrated.
By contrast, the specific examples of any individual, tribe, or species of bugs who were personally uplifted, as opposed to raised by a later society who told them they were uplifted and that's why they should revere the god-king, are...?
When I was going through Hollow Knight, the Pale King claims came across with the red flags of unfalsifiable mythology origin of someone who was very keen to write the only findable history, and bury the rest.
Several of the effort-posts I don't have time to write any more are simple surveys of old discussions with links to the evidence answering the questions since. I have a pretty strong impression of how this has gone on balance, but it'd be better to have hard data to make the case.
A 'revisiting old questions' series would be an interesting contribution to the Motte, as long as it was done with an eye to parts of previous arguments that were wrong as well as right. It is often worthwhile to re-test old arguments, and if it can't be done without denials or dismissals that too is worth drawing attention to.
Trump has, on numerous occasions, refused to spend money appropriated by Congress. Congressional Republicans have not complained.
In other words, the majority of Congress has sided with the President against a minority of Congress in a common dispute between the Executive and Legislative branches that depends on the Legislative branch to enforce its preferences.
As well as using his partisan majorities in both houses of Congress to pass recissions under the Impoundment Control Act (which can't be filibustered), Trump has used a dubiously-legal pocket recission to cut spending without a Congressional vote.
In other words, the President has lawfully acted with the ascent of Congress via an act of Congress wherein Congress gave the President pre-emptive permission to do so.
SCOTUS has helped this along by setting up procedural barriers to anyone suing over this.
In other words, the Supreme Court of the United States has maintained pre-existing procedural barriers to attempts to stop lawful acts of a President complying with Congressional law.
Despite the Republican trifecta, Congress did not pass a budget in FY 2025, and does not appear to be trying to pass a budget in FY 2026.
In other words, the Biden administration did not pass the FY 2025 budget during a non-trifecta, the Democrats did and are exercising their Senate filibuster rights to block a budget that would easily pass absent their filibuster, and Trump and the Republicans are choosing to respect the budget filibuster rather than dismantle it as Democrats previously did the judicial filibuster during one of their trifectas.
Rather than moving a mini-CR to pay the troops (Enough Democrats have said they support this that it would pass both houses of Congress), Trump has paid the troops with a combination of private donations and funds illegally transferred from the military R&D budget.
In other words, the Democrats have declined to pay the troops via a number of what would be mutually acceptable ways, such as the sort of clean continuing resolution they have previously and repeatedly insisted on when denouncing the very sort of government shutdown they are pursuing, but have also declined to actually try and stop the R&D transfer or private donations to troops they refuse to allow to be paid by current majorities in Congress.
The White House ballroom is another example of using private donations to pay for what should be Congressionally-approved government spending.
In other words, the Executive is following the law in not spending funds not approved by Congress, by using funds not forbidden by Congress.
On the revenue side, Trump has raised a helluvalot of revenue with dubiously-legal tariffs. He also did a deal with Nvidia and AMD where they pay what is in effect a 15% export tax in exchange for Trump waiving controls on advanced chip exports to China. Export taxes are unconstitutional. There has been no attempt to incorporate any of this revenue into a budget passed by Congress.
In other words, the President applied a legal tariff, did not do an export tax, using trade authorities granted by Congress. Congress, in turn, has not passed a budget to incorporate this revenue, in part due to the President's party respecting the blocking action of the minority party who refuses to permit a budget to pass.
An obvious combination of this type of "deal" and funding specific programs with private donations is to set up a parallel budget where money is raised and spent outside the official Congressional budget process, all backed by more or less soft threats of government coercion. Trump hasn't done this yet, but it is a logical continuation of things he has done.
In other words, Congress established processes outside of its discretionary budget cycle to raise and spend money, which falls into its purview of power of the purse to permit discretionary actions within Congressionally-approved scopes, or even non-discretionary expenditures (such as entitlement spending).
Trump has also claimed in social media posts that he can spend the tariff revenue without Congressional approval.
In other words, even you are not claiming Trump is wrong on this, or attempting to point towards a law of Congress that specifies how tariff revenues are to be spent.
Dean
Flairless
14d ago
Indeed. Inflation is the final tax for all variations of modern monetary theory.
Dean
Flairless
14d ago
Not just hours of work, but the intensity of work and the conditions of the work during the hours that are worked. Modern blue collar is still a lot sweatier than white collar, but a modern furnace worker is still working a lot more comfortably than a furnace worker a century ago, let alone a millennia.
Dean
Flairless
16d ago
Ah, but is Ibram X Kendi also a tsundere like Hanania-chan?
I disagree. @Bartender_Venator was doing effective debating, which can be seen for how he maneuvered BurdensomeCount into falling into the same debate trap twice.
The debate-appropriate response to bad faith framing arguments is to note their use rather than engaged in desired debate on the terms set by the accusation. When the initial presenter is approaching with a potential motte and bailey argument when the rhetorical bailey is itself trying to insinuate and argue over a connotation, and thus assume the conclusion that the insinuation is valid basis to start discussion, the appropriate response is to challenge the argument's paradigm in the first place.
Note that Bartender_Venator's breakdownn isn't an ad hominem argument that BurdensomeCount's argument is an invalid troll argument is wrong because he is a shit-stiring troll, repeat troll troll troll. He didn't try and justify a charge of trolling based on past BurdensomeCount troll efforts to establish a pattern of history, or even linking to the rather direct mod analysis on BurdensomeCount's trolling style. Bartender_Venantor is targeting the argument, claiming that argument-level deicisions reveal bad faith, and letting the implications of that argument critique pain BurdensomCount.
Specifically, Bartender shifted the debate from any debate over the characters Count wanted attention provoked towards to a meta-structure review of how BurdensomeCount's argument was structured. He identified and contrasted both obvious and subtle methods that were used to lead the audience to a conclusion or conflict without actually committing BurdensomeCount to making certain arguments. Bartender noted various points where Burdensome could have added elements that would have earned charity/good faith credit (could explain his reasoning), but also notes the implications- and thus potential reasons- for why they are absent. These coincide with argument structure decisions that could, in isolation, have innocuous reasons, but coincidentally happen to have overlapping / reinforcing thematic effects consistent with trolling. While Bardtender does end off with the passive-aggressive accusation by very conspicuously drawing attention to the lack of a personal accusation ('I'll leave it to the gallery'), the core of the argument for why the audience should find that creidble is how a characterization of Count's argument-structure stand on its own as evidence of good or bad faith on Count's part.
Note in turn that BurdensomeCount did not actually contest Bartender's characterization of his argument in any respect.
If Bartender made had made an ad-hominem debate attack, that would have been an easy winning move. If the original original argument structure was sound, or at least defensible, it would have undercut Bartender's critique and any implicit judgement on good faith. Burdensome could have strengthened the foundations of his argument by providing additional justification for suspect design inclusions, he could have added to the foundation by taking Bartender's invitation for elaboration. Burdensome could even asked for audience forgiveness, claimed he was trying to keep his wordcount down, that it might have distracted, or so on.
Instead Count attempted a suspiciously specific deflection of a personal characterization that wasn't made ('I'm not leftoid baiting'), and then tried to change the subject via a rhetorical concession ('Instead I fully and freely acknowledge') to a topic that had nothing to do with the structural analysis of his argument or Bartender's position. This might work in troll-format motte-and-bailey where the bailey is arguing about the subject of nominal discussion, and the motte is falling back to 'well a more reasonable characterization of the topic was this.' But it was also a a transparently plebian attempt to change the topic, even as he couldn't resist not giving an actual denial that he was baiting.
Which, is why the motte-and-bailey retreat failed on its face. Count's intended motte no longer had value because both motte and bailey were now the bailey to Bartender's position- that the argument structure itself was bad faith. Count's attempted fallback still left him within this bailey that Count was more interested in not-making arguments in able to troll a conflict rather than defend a relevant position.
Count made it even easier for Bartender to draw attention to Count's penchant at rheotorical sleights of hand ('I don't think you're a leftoid baiting') and attempts to reframe the argument. Not only does it make Bartender look better at understanding Count's argument than vice versa, as Count didn't dispute Bartender's correction, it also makes Count's subsequent retreat to a persecution defense another validating example of abandoning the previous arguments. In this way, Count not only gave validity to the initial critique, but practically turned it into a prediction.
Which is how Bartender's argument works on multiple levels. He was not only able to describe Count's conduct in mechanical terms that Count didn't dispute, but do so in ways that Count's own nature led him to validate, even after they were explicitly pointed out. Add to it that Count's response also aligns to rather direct style call-outs from months ago, a style which many posters know, and Count comes across less as some sort of genius, evil or otherwise, and more like someone whose predictability is part of the charm they are clearly getting humored for.
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