FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
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User ID: 675
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I have not seen any particular evidence or compelling reason to believe that Ukraine was/is a forever war, given how the Russian sustainment has been by the very much finite depletion of Cold War stockpiles and generally observable quality issues.
To me, one of the most reliable indicators of a Forever War is attempts to engage in "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal. Ukraine certainly seems to be an example of "limited" warfare in pursuit of a nebulous goal, so it trips my Forever War sense.
The expected rejoinder is that the Ukraine conflict has concrete goals: defeat Russia, restore Ukraine's pre-war borders, prevent Russia from trying anything like this again.
Restoring Ukraine's pre-war borders is the most concrete of these, but it's dependent for it's meaning on defeating Russia and preventing Russia from trying anything like this again. As people frequently point out, rolling the borders back does no good if Russia just re-invades next year.
Preventing Russia from trying anything like this again is pretty nebulous. Russia has a lot more leverage on its immediate neighbors than we do, simply due to distance. A functional Russia is a Russia that can do stuff like this again. Maybe if Russia is defeated, though, it might lose sufficient capability to prevent further extraterritorial ambitions?
So that brings us to defeating Russia. What does that look like, concretely? Can you give some recent examples of what "defeating" an enemy looks like? We "defeated" the Taliban, drove them from power, had them hiding in caves and living like hunted men for two decades, we directly killed a large percentage of their leadership and many, many of their rank-and-file. And yet, twenty years later, the Taliban rule Afghanistan. Okay, maybe we didn't use enough firepower. How about Ghaddafi? Ghaddafi was overthrown and sodomized to death with a bayonet on live TV; I think it's fair to say that we "defeated" him. What was gained by that victory? How did the world improve? How about Saddam? We smashed his army, occupied his nation, dragged him out of a rat-hole and hung him. We purged his party from the Iraqi government, hunted those who resisted relentlessly, and took absolute control of their territory. We pretty clearly defeated Saddam. What was gained by that victory? How did the world improve?
If we kill off the whole Russian army, what happens next? If we successfully sneak a missile into one of Putin's cabinet meetings and wipe out his entire inner circle, what happens next? If we humiliate him badly enough that the Russians rise up and overthrow him, what happens next? How do things shake out? How is the world improved? My guess is that the likely outcome is something like Libya, only significantly worse: all the ambitious bastards whose names we've never heard of because Putin has been sitting on them get to make their play, and we get large-scale chaos, quite possibly with a fun stir-in of loose nukes.
Suppose, for a moment, that Russia collapsing into significant chaos might actually have some bad consequences for the rest of the world. Now you don't just want to defeat Russia, you want to sort of defeat Russia, but without actually compromising its stability too badly. How does that work? I have no idea, but maybe you or someone else can lay it out in a straightforward manner.
In one of our recent conversations, you linked this document as an example of the consensus thinking on our recent wars. One of the first lines:
Ultimate success in COIN is gained by protecting the populace, not the COIN force.
...Why should I believe that this is true? I mean, I don't particularly disagree, the theory seems sound, but why are we entering this conversation with the assumption that "Ultimate success in COIN" is a thing that we have any understanding of at all? Where would that understanding come from? Which COIN successes are providing the grounds for anyone to speak with any authority at all? And this question seemed directly relevant to every sentence of the entire document. It's pure B-type thinking, outside-looking-in, illusion-of-control.
And so it is here. I do not believe that killing Russian soldiers makes the world a better place in any sort of linear fashion. Certainly the amount we have assisted in killing to date does not seem to have improved things, and I am deeply skeptical that killing more will suddenly begin making a difference. I do not think "defeating" Russia in some weak sense will make the world a better place. I do not think defeating Russia in a strong sense will make the world a better place either. I used to believe that stomping on villains was a straightforward way to improve the world. Then I watched that belief be implemented in a succession of examples, and I watched the results, and I updated my beliefs based on the new evidence.
If we are worried about an aggressive Russia, the proper way to handle that is to pick a line and declare that whatever Russia crosses it with, we will destroy with the full power of our entire empire. Crucially, this line should probably not be on Russia's immediate border, nor should it steadily move closer to Russia's border year after year. Then if Russia wants to cross the line, we drive them straight back, and if they are crazy enough to escalate to tactical nukes, we tactical-nuke them back, and if they decide to initiate doomsday, well, you can't win 'em all. But the key here is predictability and stability: we want things to settle into a static position, and then stay there.
This is not the strategy we've been pursuing; in fact, we have been doing the exact opposite for some decades now. I think this is very foolish, and to the extent that you disagree, I'm curious as to why.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
We often disagree, but this is a thesis I will absolutely endorse. We are, at this moment, standing under a vast overhang of technological potential in warfighting. The Civil War and World War I are examples of the collapse of this sort of overhang. That is not the sort of situation we would be well-advised to enter in anything approaching a cavalier fashion.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Doctors are humans too, I don't blame them if they thought that lockdowns were justified and vaccine mandates good.
Humans are responsible for their actions. Doctors cooperated with the silencing of those who tried to oppose lockdowns and vaccine mandates, and they helped those directly responsible for the pandemic cover their tracks. As a class, they directly cooperated with and enthusiastically supported the violations of human rights. We needed them to stand up and speak the truth. They categorically failed to do so, and that failure lasted years.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Or, to cut the crap, the US goal is a quick Ukrainian surrender and Russian victory.
...In the same way that at the end, the US goal in Afghanistan changed to being a quick Afghan government surrender and Taliban victory, yes?
I am willing to endorse an end to the war under any description you impose. I understand that people like yourself will frame my desire as cowardice, sedition, treason, evidence that I am a Russian/Chinese/Islamist/Nazi shill, that I want people to die. I understand that you believe that these next six months are critical, and that if we only stay the course victory is just around the corner, as the evil people who are Hitler Reborn will finally crumble and be routed in a glorious liberation, and then peace and justice will reign forever. I have been participating in this particular game live and in person for twenty five years, and have read a fair amount of the history of the preceding century. The moves are pretty well established at this point. People like yourself are always in favor of other people's money and lives being spent in unlimited quantities, while taking zero responsibility for the results. My vote is for no more.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Some are a bit shaky, but pretty sure I've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
no, you're getting hit by the "new user filter". We have to go in and manually approve the posts, but they aren't marked very well so it's easy to miss them in the new comment feed. It's a leftover artifact from the Drama codebase, and the code guys haven't found a way to disable it yet, so it hits people until they get over some threshold of cumulative upvotes. I used to have to fish self-made-human out of it all day. I've just approved all your recent posts and those of two or three other people as well.
@ABigGuy4U, see above.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I see no reason to believe that this is, in fact, the future. That being said, it's a better future by far than some of the alternatives.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
If you find no constructive avenue for conversation with your opposites here, leaving is indeed the correct choice. May you fair well wherever your travels take you.
Those allies have offered you a mostly free global market.
Whether this was a good deal or not is the debate, and the status quo has been losing that debate, worse and worse, for quite some time now in my estimation. Americans do not generally seem to believe that our economic system is working, and the mounting frustration is spilling over into extremism on both the right and the left. You seem aware of this as well with your reference to the fall of Trumpism coming from capitalism.
On that point, my disagreement would be that Trumpism is itself a response to the model of "Capitalism" that we've all been living under for the last several decades. Maybe it will succeed, and maybe it won't; if it fails, further escalation seems inevitable.
When Scott Alexander explained this concept, it was meant as something to fight against, not as a political compass.
Indeed. And in my estimation, Scott Alexander and his supporters, of which I used to be one, lost that fight decisively. Zunger and Ozy were correct, Scott was wrong, as he himself seems to have recognized over time. Tribalism won because humans require values-coherence for cooperation to function, because the range of possible values allows for values-incoherence, and because liberal norms foster unlimited values drift until the norms themselves become unsustainable. Tolerance is not a moral precept, and will never be a moral precept. It is only ever a peace treaty, and under conditions of sufficient values-diversity the treaty stops making sense.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Until Trump arrived on the scene, my plan in 2016 was either to vote for Hillary or to stay home. In no circumstance would I ever have voted for a Bush, nor any Republican running on the Bush consensus.
What is your position on HBD in general, and the genetic basis of IQ in particular?
I take it as evident that IQ is pretty clearly heritable. I strongly disagree with what I understand of the rest of the HBD complex, starting with the idea that human value clearly scales with intelligence.
I'm always surprised at the number of people who take a staunchly "realist" position on the biological reality of sex and race differences, but who stubbornly refuse to believe that homosexuality is anything but a matter of political propaganda and personal choice.
Let's leave homosexuality aside, and look at something else. Let's try alcoholism.
It's pretty clear to me that alcoholism is at least partially genetic: there seem to be people who are predisposed to addictive behavior in general, and to alcoholism in particular. I'm given to understand that the body's reaction to alcohol consumption likewise varies widely, and it seems logical that on a purely physiological level, alcohol would hit some people harder than others, and that this variance in the experience would lead to variance in the formation of addiction.
Do people choose to be alcoholic? In some sense, yes; if you don't ever drink you'll never get addicted, and in most cases some other person is not tying them down and pouring vodka down their neck against their will. The one alcoholic I've known personally told me straight-up when they started drinking that they were looking for a new addiction. On the other hand, it's pretty clear that many, probably most, maybe all, understand on some level that the alcohol is bad for them and wish they could escape it, and likewise it seems probable that if they really understood the visceral reality of where it would lead, they would not have started drinking.
Can people choose not to be alcoholic? Again, in some sense, yes: each subsequent drink is chosen, and they can choose not to. Can we "treat" them such that they are cured of alcoholism? Yet again, in some sense yes: we can strap them down until they detox, and then keep them strapped down until the low levels of habit are broken. We could even keep them confined away from alcohol forever. We can give them drugs that make them violently ill if they imbibe, and so on, and so on. But the deeper reality is that no, we can't cure alcoholism the way we cure bacterial infections, because the defect is in the person's own will. "Choosing" not to be alcoholic appears to be very, very hard, and "cures" for alcoholism appear to be limited in efficacy, and stand or fall on the subsequent choices and circumstances of the alcoholic themselves.
It would probably not be good for alcoholics if we created and enforced a broad social meme-plex that alcoholism was a valid identity, generated large amounts of propaganda about how drunk driving was cool and totally safe, and about how being drunk all the time was a totally valid lifestyle, and anyone who disagreed was just a bigot, and any harmful behaviors by the drunks were really the fault of the people who refused to love and accept and support their true drunken nature, or of society for not accommodating them sufficiently.
I don't like alcohol. I've personally watched it destroy someone I loved very deeply. I don't drink. I don't encourage others to drink, and while I tolerate others drinking around me in moderation, I would not participate in serious alcohol culture in any form. I don't campaign for prohibition because we've tried it and there seem to have been significant downsides, and despite some skepticism over the nature and accuracy of the assessment of those downsides, I generally come down on "it isn't worth it." And yet if prohibition were on the ballot tomorrow, I would probably vote for it, because I think our current system is far too tolerant of a serious danger.
Does this seem to be an unreasonable position to take toward alcohol? If prohibition were on the ballot, would you say that I am "hoping to eradicate drunkenness", as though an act of congress could undo the laws of chemistry governing fermentation and the features of human nature that cause us to be naturally drawn to getting fucked up on giggle-water? I don't know how to fix drunkenness. I do know that it is, in and of itself, a problem, and that its problematic nature is part of reality, not simply a perspective that can be mediated away by sufficient social engineering.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I'm no neocon, but successful interventions are easily forgotten, botched ones never area.
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria are the four major interventions prior to Ukraine. All four were complete disasters, and the two we committed hardest to did meaningful long-term damage to America in the form of trillions in additional debt and eroded social cohesion.
I can see why maybe you felt that previous years were like the cultural revolution, you probably felt censored and I can get that.
Suppose senior members of the Academy violated federal law by using taxpayer money to develop a novel pathogen, leaked that pathogen out into the world, caused a pandemic killing somewhere around seven million people and uncounted trillions in economic damage, conspired to cover this fact up, and then coordinated the largest, most widespread and most egregious violation of human rights in at least the last fifty years, based on fraudulent scientific claims that their colleagues refused to oppose them on. In this crazy hypothetical scenario, what would the impact of these events be on your cost/benefit analysis of what's currently happening?
Traditional monogamy is very advantageous for average men, who might not be able to get a partner in a polygamous society where the richest/highest status men have multiple wives.
Why have wives at all? Prostitution is the oldest profession, after all, and is another example of pursuing male sexuality "without having to deal with women". And yet, monogamy.
...My point is that large portions of the male population have, for a long time and across a wide area, not optimized for maximizing sexual expression "without having to deal with women." This makes them notably distinct from male homosexual behavior, at least in our present context.
I’m bisexual and if your love for your partner is founded on monogamy and raising children, then fair, it’s not the same as mine.
My love for my partner does not begin and end with monogamy and raising children. Rather, monogamy and raising children are two emergent properties of our love. I likewise feel "deep affection" for my partner, am "committed to them through thick and thin", and "feel comfortable revealing our most intimate parts to each other". But these are just words, and I did not use them because I am not confident that they convey the essence. Caring for them if they become ill is more concrete. Continuing the relationship even if we never have children would likewise be more concrete, but my wife's desire for children is considerable, and I went into the marriage with the full understanding that if we could not have them ourselves that we would adopt or foster. But then:
even if we agree to have an open relationship (although I’m personally more monogamous, it might change say, 5y+ into a relationship).
We are committed to not changing in this way. We are committed to working, daily, to ensure that this does not happen, to binding our future selves to our present decisions. And again, it seems to me that there is a fundamental difference here. I think we would each agree that sex is not a small part of a relationship, but it is obvious that we do not agree about what sex is, how it works, or what consequences flow from it. I intend to be married to my wife for as long as we both shall live, to cleave to her and to no other. My community has an abundance of couples who have been married 30, 40, 50 years, and more whose marriages were ended only by death. Is that the sort of relationship you believe you have? Is it the sort of marriage common within your dunbar number?
According to this survey, 53% of gay men were in a relationship, and 14% of gay men were in a strictly monogamous relationship. I don’t see why the numbers matter, even if there was only a single homosexual couple out there we should still accept them.
The numbers matter because we are, necessarily, speaking in generalities. The gay community is not typified by two men in a committed long-term relationship. It is typified by, to put it mildly, extreme promiscuity and a degree of sexual license that would horrify the average American if they were aware of it. That is why so much effort was expended to ensure that the average American would instead form the belief that Homosexual relationships were functionally identical to straight ones, when this is in fact not true.
I would agree that to the extent that homosexual relationships conform to my understanding of what a good relationship is, my objections to them decrease.
That’s not what I personally heard, the messaging I got was that it’s fine for gay men to have relationships and to raise children together.
Yes, in a context where "relationship" is assumed to be, at worst, serial monogamy. The large majority of gay men are not participating in this sort of relationship, and likewise (mercifully) are not raising children.
Gay men have been having anonymous promiscuous sex even in the most repressive societies.
And Christians have continued practicing Christianity in even the most repressive societies. It is becoming increasingly clear which of these is preferred, and by who.
What would you gain by removing the social acceptance of homosexual relationships and gay marriage?
What do they and their supporters gain by removing the social acceptance of Christianity? I was all for tolerance, when I still believed that tolerance was a moral precept. Now that I understand that it is not, and now that I understand that many of them very clearly believe that coexistence is neither desirable nor possible, it seems proper that I and people like me should organize to better preserve our values and interests. Part of that is acquiring and communicating a clear understanding of who is across the table from us. To bring this back to the comment that brought me into this discussion:
Love wins.
"Love" is underdefined.
People are born that way.
Queer people just want to be tolerated.
This may be true for specific individual queer people. It is certainly not true of the ideological movement claiming to speak for them. That ideology has moved past toleration to approval, and past approval to attempting to force participation.
They don't want to shove it in our face.
Again, the ideological movement very clearly prioritizes "shoving it in our faces" at every possible opportunity.
They just want to love their partners the same way that straight people do.
Speaking in generalities, no, "they" do not. Gay sexuality bears little to no resemblance to straight sexuality, in practices or in consequences.
They definitely won't try to convert kids.
This one is the real kicker, and where much of the debate centers. Let us say, at least, that they are very, very interested in securing and exercising as much control over children's education and understanding of sexuality as possible, and that the more kids begin identifying and acting in LGBT ways, the happier the movement is, without apparent limit or restraint.
I have seen claims that America would escalate to nukes if China succeeded in sinking a CBG with conventional ordinance. I am not highly confident that those claims are inaccurate; I can easily imagine many Americans, including Americans in positions of leadership, reacting to a serious naval disaster with an instinctive desire for a reset button.
It is entirely plausible to me that Russia would use nuclear arms in a tactical role as a response to loss against enemy conventional forces on their borders. It is my understanding that Russia has straight-up stated that this is their plan in such an eventuality. Your assessment, as I understand it, is that this is a bluff.
If a nuke wipes out an American division, is it your position that we should nuke Russian forces in reply, presumably in a similar tactical fashion?
If they continue to escalate, at what point do we cut our losses, short of full MAD?
I'm on the record as considering the nuclear annihilation of America's coasts as not quite the worst-case scenario imaginable, but I still consider it a very bad case. I do not want to play global thermonuclear war today. The impression I get from most Ukraine-boosters is that there is no appreciable risk of global thermonuclear war no matter how far this escalates, but I notice that they have been steadily pushing for escalations for years now, those escalations have not actually delivered the results they promised, and that they don't actually seem to have a plan other than "escalate until we win".
If you are wrong about Russian capabilities and commitment, it is distinctly possible that a lot of people are going to die, and the world that comes out the other end is not going to have much resemblance to the one you have known to date. I think you should take a moment and consider that maybe the juice is not actually worth the squeeze, particularly given that the country you're counting on to prosecute this war is itself coming apart at the seams.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Are they going to nuke over that? Seems unlikely.
And if they nuke ukraine over that, are we going to go full-MAD? Also seems unlikely.
That has more to do with the fact that they’re men than the fact that they’re gay.
How do we reconcile the concept of the Patriarchy with evident longstanding social norms of enforced monogamy?
Male homosexuality is simply male sexuality that doesn’t have to deal with women. How many straight men would practice monogamy if they could have unlimited sex on demand simply by going on an app?
I'm also a man. My "love for my partner" is founded on monogamy and raising children. I agree that "male sexuality that doesn't have to deal with women" is probably a pretty good explanation for many of the features of male homosexual norms that we can observe. But the fact remains that my relationship with my partner is in fact built around "dealing with women", and one woman in particular, and that as a consequence their "love for their partner" and mine do not appear to be the same sort of thing at all.
Despite that, there’s still a sizeable proportion of gay men that choose monogamy and raising children, hence the demand for gay marriage and surrogacy.
What proportion? 51%? 25%? 10%? 5%? less?
I would contend that the previous effort was to try to create the impression that monogamy and raising children, among other signifiers of "normality", were in fact 50%+. That this was only achievable by lying shamelessly is my point.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
I mean, guess in my view, the American Red Tribe vs The American Blue Tribe + The entire rest of the world is not a winnable fight.
Whether it's winnable is questionable, but more questionable is the basic polarity of the situation.
The American Red Tribe vs Blue Tribe + the entire rest of the world was the situation we were previously converging on. Red tribe cooperated with and funded the creation of an international ideological alliance controlled and directed almost entirely by Blue Tribe, which directed American tax money in vast amounts to Blue Tribe projects designed more or less explicitly to increase Blue Tribe power both at home and abroad.
We are now attempting to dismantle that system. If we succeed, the result will not be "Red Tribe vs Blue Tribe + the entire rest of the world", because the international ideological alliance will break up and die. Then it will simply be Red Tribe vs Blue Tribe. You've already stated your personal view of the stakes of that conflict; we'll see how it goes in practice.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Those wars don't count.
Ok.
Nobody in the world will ever think the US are a reliable ally unless the enemy is Iraq and Afghanistan, and even in the later case the US did not win...
Given how our alliances have worked out over the last few decades, this seems to be an acceptable outcome. I am tired of being a "reliable ally" to "allies" who offer nothing in return but ever-increasing demands, recrimination, and interference in our internal politics to my tribe's detriment.
Not at all. I do believe in religious freedom.
It would not surprise me if you did have a conceptual package of things you approve of and are willing to tolerate that you've labeled "religious freedom". I see no reason to believe that this package has sufficient overlap with the package I maintain under that label, nor to believe that you are in fact committed to this package in any durable way long-term, such that I should base my plans for the future on the assumption that it will protect people like me or work in our favor. When the new arguments about how things which were previously normal are actually weird and harmful and need to be suppressed, or why things which were previously abhorrent suddenly are the purest reflection of human liberty and must be defended, I expect the model "liberal" to update cleanly and arbitrarily in favor of withdrawing tolerance from those who disagree.
Again, the part where Progressives were absolutely in favor of mass-importing radical muslims on the assumption that, in your words, they would "be converted to secular values." "Conversion to secular values" isn't gravity. It's a socially-constructed mechanism that the Progressive tribe built and maintains at considerable expense, and it is and always will be innately hostile to people like myself. Tolerance is not a moral precept; the idea that it was was something between a delusion and a deliberate con.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
We have just come off fighting a continuous war in multiple countries for the last two decades. I am pretty confident that most serious people in the world understand that the US is, in fact, capable of prosecuting wars when we find it necessary. The question is not whether we can fight, it's if we should in this instance. And the answer is a hard no.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
4mo ago
Is it your understanding that the median male homosexual is monogamous and interested in raising children? Is it your understanding that Homosexuality is genetic and fixed? Those seem like two obvious factual questions to start off with.
Of course Europe is not a bastion against muslim extremism, but I think that's simply a failure of Europeans being too optimistic about letting in highly religious immigrants, hoping they would be converted to secular values.
I am highly religious, as are many Americans. I am not interested in helping to build a system for suppressing Muslim extremism when it is self-evident that such a system will be used against people like me first and worst. Not when countries who don't want Muslim extremists could simply choose not to import Muslim extremists, and especially not when I strongly suspect that the enthusiasm with importing them is at least partially motivated by the hope that they'll form a reliable voting block against people like me.
Russia, however, openly sides with dagestani warlords and invites them to rape and pillage Europe.
I have no idea what this refers to, but would be willing to read up on it if you had a link. Meanwhile, we allied with child-raping drug dealers for twenty years in Afghanistan.
If I had my way, Europe and the US would be completely rid of both christian and islamic oppression. That's not possible right now, but it could happen someday. Defeating Putin's barbarian orc army is a start.
Yes. And then you wonder why I, as a Christian, am not enthusiastic about facilitating this process with my nation's blood and treasure.
You hate people like me. You'll harm us if you can. You are not a friend or even an ally. You are just as bad an enemy as Russia, and much more dangerous to me that Russia ever could be.
If I am Europe and I had the option to side with China to kill and humiliate a large number of American Red Tribers during or post Trump during a conflict, I can't imagine why I wouldn't take that opportunity at this point.
Yes. We Red-Tribers understand this quite well, which is why things have gone the way they have gone. Common knowledge of the nature of the Red/Blue conflict is what has driven the Culture War escalation spiral, and is what will continue to drive it in the future until that spiral exceeds the tensile strength of our existing social arrangement.
Ukraine does in fact appear to be a "forever war": a conflict with no clear, obviously-desirable victory condition, where commitments secure no material benefit and an ever-growing sunk-cost fallacy makes disengagement ever-more difficult.
Ukraine does not have a clear, obviously-desirable victory condition, and the people who argue for (further) engagement have been engaging in a type of shady thinking that has repeatedly led to disaster in the past.
I am generally skeptical of our current consensus on what constitutes expertise regarding warfare, for similar reasons to my skepticism of our current consensus on expertise as such: people build elaborate models of reality which become unmoored from reality, leading to disaster. I think Ukraine in particular seems to have a ton of opportunity for disaster, while the pro-Ukraine faction seems to believe that securing victory is something approximating an act of will.
In short, I think I disagree with you, and am trying to lay out in some detail why. Does this summary help?
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