JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
Some times Charlie was in the trees.
User ID: 4009
Is that actually a thing, where 'gentle parenting' results in kids who are stealing iPhones or doing more or less organized crime? I genuinely have no idea.
Anecdotally yes, in fact I have seen this precise dynamic in play out in my own community and even family. If you don't discipline your children, your children are likely to become undisciplined adults.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
You are free to feel that way. Clausewitz's On War is widely viewed as a seminal work but then so to is Marx's Das Kapital.
In the meantime Secretary Hegseth is echoing a view that has been shared by military thinkers as diverse as Musashi Miyamoto and Tecumseh Sherman. The ultimate purpose of any soldier (or army) is to kill the enemy.
The vessels were not displaying an ensign, visible from a distance, while making the crossing from Venezuela to Trinidad - they don't have to.
Pretty much every report I've read has placed the boat in international waters which means that they would have been well north of Trinidad and Tobago.
The drone strike was carried out from a distance where the drone operator wouldn't have known whether the boats in question where displaying their name and port of registry
The drone strike was allegedly carried out with a hellfire missile which is a laser guided (IE line of sight) weapon. If they were close enough to score a hit, they were close enough to tell whether the boat was displaying a name and a flag even if they couldn't necessarily read it.
In any case, one of the core differences between "Admiralty Law" and conventional Anglo judicial tradition is that there is no presumption of innocence. Anyone in international waters is presumed to be operating outside the law unless they take explicit steps to remain within the law.
If the boat was in international waters, and I will concede that this is a big "IF", it was by default a legitimate target unless evidence is provided to the contrary.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
Who's bombing lifeboats?
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
The third and fourth worlds moved up a slot when the "second world" disappeared.
Social change has nothing to do with it.
Secretary Hegseth would disagree. As @gog and @YE_GUILTY observe above, there has been a societal shift towards the idea that discipline should be done away with. Hegseth argues that this attitude is fundamentally incompatible with the "warrior ethos" and by extension winning wars, and I feel like he makes a reasonable case for this position.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
That was over 30 years ago now
"drumhead trials" weren't just common, they were the norm for non-state actors from the Peace of Westphalia through the invention of the telegraph in the mid 19th century.
This why having a proper flag for your vessel and appropriate documentation certifying that you were acting under the aegis of a shore-based government was such a big deal during the age of sail. It could literally be a matter of life and death.
It's also origin of the term "false flag".
There is no requirement for merchant seamen to wear uniforms, or for merchant ships to fly their flags in international waters
The latter part is not strictly true.
Per both the Comité Maritime International's Lex Meritima (of which the US is a signatory), and the UN Convention on Laws of the Sea (of which the US is not a signatory), vessels operating in international waters are required to display their name and home port/nation of origin at all times if they wish to claim protection under said conventions.
I'm not sure that it is an error. I think it might be battlespace prep.
Trump strikes me as the kind of guy who is very concerned with his legacy, and handing the GOP over to the Groypers who' rather vote for Zohran Mamdani than Andrew Cuomo or Curtis Sliwa does not strike me as the sort of legacy he wants. Furthermore, if the GOP wants to maintain the in-roads it has made amongst minorities and the working-class the Groypers will need to be either marginalized or crushed, ideally before the 2028 election season.
The purpose of a military isn’t actually to kill people. It’s a tool for asserting the national interest.
Our current Secretary of War has written a whole book (The War on Warriors) about how treating the US military as an instrument of policy and social change, rather than an instrument of violence, is the root cause of much dysfunction from the Vietnam-era to the present day.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
One of the defining features of populism is revolt against cognitive elites.
Only in so far as the "cognitive elite" have aligned themselves against interests of the population. The "cognitive elite" have not only stopped pretending to care about "red-meat issues" like safe streets, they've actively worked against them.
Because in subsequent interviews Comey has constructively admitted to submitting false testimony on multiple occasions. He frames it as working within the system, a "we knew where the evidence was we just needed a Judge's blessing to go get it" sort of situation. But what it boils down to is that he knowingly submitted false statements and/or fruit-of-the-poisonous-tree to secure warrants.
Specifically, we now know that wire-tapping of Trump associates on suspicion of Russian Collusion was secured under false pretenses, and that Comey knew this to be the case when he testified otherwise in September of 2020.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
Eh, it wasn't liberal in the slightest
You are wrong. He supported abortion, he supported gay marriage, he supported allowing biological males to compete in women's sports, he not only supported the Clinton's foreign and domestic policy but greatly expanded it's scope. Cheney's influence is a large part of why the establishment wing of the Republican party came to be seen as little more than an outgrowth of the Democrats. "Republicans in Name Only"
It's a bit worse than that. but to Slotkin's credit, the appeal has been artfully constructed to be maximally provocative to the target audience (military members, and to a lesser extant Trump voters) while appearing innocuous to anyone who is unfamiliar with the context of that specific phrase and it's place in early US history.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
Did he fail?
That is very good question, that depends on how you define "success". Cheney was successful in the sense that he was able to ensure that his preferred policies were implemented and would become the default policies of the United States Government for close to 30 years. At the same time, the outcome of this success was the destruction of Cheney's faction within the Republican party.
They lied about WMD
They didn't lie. The Saddam Hussein's government was in fact producing chemical and biological weapons. They even tried to use them in the opening phases of the invasion, but the casualties were almost entirely on the Iraqi side as coalition forces were universally vaccinated against Anthrax and issued protective equipment while the Iraqis were not. Meanwhile, the Iraqis had been working very hard to convince everyone else in the region that they had some sort of nuclear capability mostly as a means of keeping up with their chief rival Iran. While we now know those claims were false, I do not think it is fair to fault anyone for taking those claims seriously at the time.
As for the rest, time will tell.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
As @Rov_Scam states, the term had been knocking around for a while but Bush and Cheney were the first to adopt it as their own. Policy-wise it was it was supposed to be the sort of respectability-based centrism espoused by commentators like Bill Kristol and David French and publications like the Atlantic and the Bulwark. Essentially liberal, but with some lip-service paid to Christian social norms. This was presented to the public as break from the aggressive culture warring that had defined Clinton's first term, and as an opportunity for both sides to deescalate.
But as I said, that plan would go up in smoke with the two towers.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
I do not know. I am only familiar with her as the junior senator from Michigan.
The former Vice President, Secretary of Defense, and Representative for the state of Wyoming, Richard B. "Dick" Cheney (1941 - 2025) was laid to rest today and I have thoughts.
On one hand I have a lot of genuine respect for the man. He had principles and he stuck to them. He didn't try to hedge, or weasel out, he bit the bullet. I don't think that anyone can reasonably claim that they never new where they stood with Dick Cheney. As Ed Morrissey says "RIP to an American Original". On the other hand his legacy is complicated.
For those too young to remember the 2000 election, Cheney was viewed one of the elder statesmen of the Republican party and what we might call today an "enlightened centrist". He and George Bush Jr. (son of Former president George HW Bush) were presented as a return to the norms of civility and collegiality after the chaos, acrimony, and culture-warring that had defined much the Clinton administration. The idea was that by embracing "Compassionate Conservativism" the conflict between traditional conservatives and what we would recognize today as the proto-woke could be resolved. It was a nice idea that did not survive first contact with the enemy. The 2000 election was decided by the supreme court which put both sides on edge, and then 8 months later everything would go up in smoke with the two towers.
This brings us Cheney's legacy. Cheney sought to change the world through democratic reforms imposed by American arms. He was the chief Architect of global war on terror and an ardent supporter of the wider trend of "globalization", give the Communists or the Jihadis a taste of McDonalds and they'll come around to our way of thinking. Again, It was a nice idea that did not survive first contact with the enemy. And because Cheney had been all in, because he hadn't tried to hedge, or weasel out, because the establishment/centrist wings of both parties had adopted his model and backed his every play, there was nowhere to deflect to when everything went to shit both at home and abroad.
He could not claim that "Real Neoliberalism/Compassionate Conservativism has never been tried" or that he only got to implement half of his intended foreign policy because the "enlightened centrists" had been given everything they wanted. The plan was tried, and it failed. Not only did it fail, it failed so spectacularly that many prior supporters including myself turned away in revulsion asking ourselves "what have we done?". Cheney's Legacy is ultimately one of failure. One that would set the conditions for the rise of both the Tea Party and Trump as well as the accelerationist woke at the expense of the of the sort of norms-based centrism espoused by publications like The Bulwark and The Atlantic and Cheney himself.
At the same time, I can not help but see his passing as the passing of an era, and I am not going to wish ill upon the dead.
Much hay is currently being made in certain circles about whether Trump and Vance were snubbing him by not attending the funeral or if they were specifically not invited, but I feel like it's a bullshit distraction, I don't think anyone can reasonably claim that they never knew where they stood with Dick Cheney
Rest In Peace Dick.
The video posted by Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) did not say "Right the ship", it said "Don't give up the ship!". The latter is a very specific phrase with a very specific context and connotations within the cultural mythos of the United States Military.
That connotation is that this is the war of 1812 and the enemy is not at the gate, the enemy is already inside the walls and they need to be killed or democracy will die.
Imagine a French politician making allusions to Madame' Guillotine and "the final argument of kings" during an inter-party squabble. That is essentially what this is here.
That Polydoros of all people would sue for "defamation" feels absurd. The character of Squints arguably gets one of the better outcomes of all the characters in the story. He ends up as a successful business owner who marries his childhood crush and sires 9 kids. Compared to Tommy who dies in Vietnam or Bertram who "got really into the 60s and nobody ever heard from him again" that is good outcome. Ok you never made it to the big leagues like Benny and Smalls did, but dude, take the win.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
What do you think this is?
Democrats laughed and applauded when Barak Obama "joked" on late nite TV about sicing the FBI and IRS on his critics, and dismissed the scandal as a "nothingburger" when it was revealed that he wasn't joking.
While a lot of Trump's supporters wanted to see Clinton, Comey and a lot of other senior Democrats prosecuted, Trump notably did not do this in his first term.
Democrats subsequently elected Letitia James, in part, on the premise that politically motivated prosecutions are a good thing that America needs more of.
Letitia James and her defenders are like an adult dog that was never house broken. They are never going to learn that what they have done is wrong if you don't grab them by the scruff of the neck and shove their face in it.
The Democrats as a people need to be taught that politically motivated prosecutions are going to blow-back on them in 4-8-12 years when the political pendulum swings, and that is what the Republicans are currently doing.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
As a bonus, vets are a lot less squeamish about MAID.
That's not a "bonus" that's fucked up.
JeSuisCharlie
Sumner, Hebdo, Kirk
3mo ago
I share @gattsuru's opinion on that one.
https://www.themotte.org/post/3359/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/381521?context=8#context
Something I don't think a lot Democrats or Foreigners have really grasped is that Trump and the core of the MAGA crowd are playing Teddy Roosevelt's bit about "Hyphenated Americans" absolutely straight.
Despite being a meme @ChickenOverlord's Rawhide Kobayashi is recognizably and quintessentially "American" in a way that people like Ilhan Omar Nur, and Zohran Mamdani are not. The MAGA crowd is not failing to "make up their minds" so much as they are treating this sort of recognition is part and parcel of "Making America Great".
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