FearandLoathingintheMotte

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 14hr ago

That makes a lot of sense, because it was a pretty resounding failure of diplomacy at a time where China was starting to look a little less scary and a lot more stable when compared to Trump 1

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 14hr ago

I don't know what evidence they reject, hence the question

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 20hr ago

but it’s entirely possible to hold to the belief in a (short tbh) Stone Age while taking the first 11 chapters of genesis 100% literally- this is just sneering.

Genuinely asking, how?

If you accept the stone age happened, you accept all the stone tools and such that have been found as evidence of the stone age right?

But then given we find the stone age tools with lots of evidence that they're XX,XXX years old and we find other tools that are XX,XXX - 3000 years old, etc. the same evidence showing there was a stone age also pretty clearly shows it was quite long.

How does one accept part of the evidence and not the other?

Also I assume that this rests on a bedrock of "carbon dating is fake/wrong"?

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 21hr ago

Destroy their chances of ever having a nuclear weapon

This isn't possible. Specifically the word "ever". An industrial civilization with 1940s tech can make a nuke. "Ever" is a very long time.

I'd accept "5 years", I'd accept "10 years", passed that and there's quite a lot of hopium getting involved.

But "ever" isn't possible unless you 1) essentially genocide them by quite literally bombing them back to the stone age, which isn't feasible or 2) 100% occupy the country like Germany or Japan and reshape them in a more desirable image, which is also wildly unfeasible (although more feasible than 1)

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 21hr ago

I agree with basically all of this, but I doubt they'll have nuclear weapons in 5 years. Mostly bc they can't be allowed to and these air operations are expensive but also "cheap" relative to the headache of them having nukes.

Although maybe they'll dig "Fowdow 2: now with blackjack, hookers, and 3km deeper" and pull it off. I have doubts.

I'd definitely be drooling if I was a engineering consulting firm who specializes in pipelines though. They are about to PRINT money criss crossing the middle east with pipelines.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 21hr ago

I was under the impression that occupying the Gulf islands would make it easier than it already is

The question is not "can the USA occupy the islands" or "will occupying the islands make it easier to control the Gulf"

The answer to both is "1,000% yes"

The real question is actually "will the American people support the required expenditure of blood and treasure to accomplish this" and subsequently "will they still support it after the inevitable missile gets through and hits a bulk transport, US naval asset, or US servicemembers"

The missile always gets through, so this will happen eventually.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 21hr ago · Edited 14hr ago

Sir, I am normally very in favor of your takes but my autism compells me to say that there is a less than 0% chance that Hawaii or Alaska are on the table here.

This war isn't existential to the USA, and even in some hypothetical WW3 the USA would rather nuclear apocalypse the world than give up any of their soil (not blaming the USA here, Russia/China have the same stance, it's how you make MAD credible).

I’m curious what Russia and China will do behind the scenes, and what they’re currently doing without our knowledge

I am curious too. I think "not much" right now. I have a pretty high level of confidence in the USA security/spying apparatus in their ability to find stuff out. Less for China, but large weapon shipments are very hard to find (especially once exploded drone/missile components start raining down on GCC).

I think Russia was shipping some treats to Iran via the Caspian, but Israel hit the boat (I assume it was Iranian flagged).

The problem is, and credit to Trump here, there is a very credible threat of American reprisals for arming Iran.

Russia is having a great time with Iran being the center of attention. Every patriot missile that blows up over Tel-Aviv can't be used in Kiyv. And the massive deficiency means they'll be fighting a lot of other countries for them.

China has less to lose (although they don't want another trade war). But they also have been loving the "do nothing, win" strategy against Trump, which is quite effective. They look stable and trustworthy (they aren't) in contrast to the USA geopolitics shitshow. Put another way "Never wrestle with pigs. You both get dirty and the pig likes it.'"

As an aside, I'm still deeply confused what they thought they were doing with "wolf warrior" diplomacy, but they seem to have smartened up.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 22hr ago

46% of Americans said, "The EU is a power that can deal on equal terms with global powers, such as the US or China."

polling Americans on geography or geopolitics is such a pointless exercise

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

I'm not a Marxist

Neither am I, but holy shit that man ate. He had some phenomenal diagnostic (solutions ? Less so) abilities about society, my god.

-2

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

involuntary commitments

The second you said this I basically filled in the rest of the story.

You know what they say about grippy socks

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

Not a big Trump fan, although you have to respect his phenomenal instincts. I think his brain is kind of stupid, but my god his gut is smart.

Something that's been amusing, and impressive, is the speed at which Trump2 has operated at. They've really struggled to turn that speed into long term wins, but that's besides the point here.

Separately, I've noticed that the longer politicians are in power, the worse and worse their cabinet/advisors get. It's kind of an evaporative cooling effect where only sycophants remain.

A great example of this is Justin Trudeau. From what I could tell, that man was profoundly out of touch by the end. I think he thought he was doing the "right" thing, and he was clearly concerned with public image, so I assume he also did not think his dumbass ideas were as unpopular as they were. But given he was in power for quite some time, by the end I assume he was surrounded by people who just agreed with all his ideas and didn't go "Justin, they'll fucking hate that, no one wants more peasants imported"

It seems from this though, Trump2 has sped run that step too.

The president’s demand for absolute loyalty among the department’s rank and file resulted in a profound loss of institutional expertise and a sharply reduced talent pool

lol

Multiple prominent Republican attorneys told us that they considered joining the second Trump DOJ. But the requirement to take what they viewed as an oath of loyalty to the president—not the Constitution—was a step too far.

lmao even

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

The Iranian dissidents are utterly defanged and can be kept down by the Basij and their small arms alone.

The hope would be that the decapitation of Iranian leadership would happen during/before the ~7,000 protestors got killed, so they could keep inspiring protests and go break stuff under the cover of US airstrikes and ideally with lots of CIA help ("a mysterious box of drones has washed up shore at these coordinates, they have pre-programmed targets if you release them at this intersection ")

But once the protestors got whacked yeah, the energy of the Iranians really died. And if they were that easy to suppress they may never have had a chance. But the current reality was clearly not helpful at all for them lol.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

It's a rail/prerailroad distinction.

Excellent point

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

I did enjoy deep fried crickets but realistically they were probably 60%+ fried batter by volume so it wasn't hard to like them lol

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago · Edited 1d ago

Belligerent and water is pretty fungible and I doubt military bases have dedicated desalination plants so it's just a normal one near a city but we can assume some goes to service members.

Although to pre-empt something I'll probably say later, one problem with "we'll cut off their service members water by hitting the desalination plants" is that in most countries that use desalination, they have other sources of water too, just not enough for everyone. So the military, having guns, will always get 100% of their water needs. It's the civilians who end up short.

Idk why I'm beating around the bush. I'm asking if you think hitting Iranian desalination plants is a war crime (or adjacent , I have no interest in splitting legal hairs). Especially given it will likely not reduce military effectiveness and will inflict a lot of suffering on the civilian population that Trump/the USA is claiming to be fighting to free from their (absolutely awful) government.

Edit: To continue not beating around the bush, I will state my opinion.

I do not think striking a desalination or power plant or other dual use but largely civilian infrastructure is a "War Crime" by the legal definition (however, I have not googled it so could be wrong). However I do think it is the kind of move that should be reserved for a total war against an existential threat. I think blowing shit up that hurts 99 civilians for every 1 service member who is inconvenienced is wildly disproportionate is a dick move, and is quite shitty from an ethical front when the war is not an existential threat for societal survival.

I don't really blame Ukraine for trying to hit Russian power infrastructure, as they're fighting for the survival of the nation of "Ukraine". I think the Russian government/military are monsters for doing that to Ukraine, as they're fighting for.... who fucking knows. Sunk cost basically at this point lol.b

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

I don't really subscribe to the word "right" in this case.

Realpolitik and all that, "right" isn't really a factor here.

I don't condone Iran's actions. But I think they're pretty logical given the cards they have, and the constraint that "just roll over and take it" is off the table. Hard to blame them for that at least.

Same with the neutrals, yes, ideally they should go pressure Iran to stop shitting up the place. But they can't, they have 0 leverage/sway/pull with Iran. They do have a tiny, tiny amount of sway with the USA, so that's where they turn.

Personally, I think the USA should have anticipated this, and either ensured it had a mitigation strategy or hold off until it could come up with one. While they're not shitting up the Hormuz, they did start this localized round of fighting, and are kind of looking like they didn't think any of the consequences through, which is annoying and a bad look. They unfortunately take some responsibility because "you break it you bought it"

I actually think that when the protests were happening the American military should have scrambled whatever it had or could to get cooking immediately to help the protests with a decapitation strike. Especially because Isreal showed last year it can basically solo Iran, so there were sufficient allied military assets in-theater when the protests were cooking.

That was by far the best shot for a genuine regime change.

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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026

FearandLoathingintheMotte 1d ago

I heard her on a podcast (now blanking when/where) and she was actually surprisingly articulate and almost... sensible?

I don't agree with her methods, and she was coping hard by basically saying "the deep state blocked me but if not it totally would have worked" but she was refreshingly frank about the economic problems the UK faces and their root causes, in a way only a person who no longer needs to care about the median voter thinks can be.