MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
No bio...
User ID: 896
No - I am making a specific claim about an unusual aspect of American evangelical theology, which is that some US evangelicals think there is useful advice about present-day geopolitics to be found in Biblical end-times prophecies. ISIS apparently thought the same, but most religious fundamentalists don't, including Al-Qaeda and the Iranian mullahs.
The more normal religious fundamentalist approach to geopolitics is to think that if you get the country right with God you will be rewarded with worldly power. This is fundamental to both Saudi Salafism and Pakistani Deobandism, and appears to be how the Iranian mullahs think as well - I have never researched Shia theology so I can't comment in detail. It is also the more common stream of American evangelical thinking - the "let's immanentise the escheaton with an aggressive war in the Middle East" crowd are a minority.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
10hr ago
Johannesburg is the largest city in the world not on a navigable river. It was built around a gold mine.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
10hr ago
The militant Islamic groups in Europe are Sunni. The Iranian mullahs hate them more than they hate us.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
10hr ago
Iran has behaved consistently rationally throughout the whole affair. Non-US-aligned regimes seeking to acquire a nuclear deterrent if possible is survival 101 since Libya, and arguably since Iraq.
The only players in this conflict who, as a matter of sincere religious conviction, base their foreign policy on a desire to accelerate the fulfilment of their religion's end-time prophecies, are the Christian Zionists in the US.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
11hr ago
The European response was to deploy a tripwire force to Greenland in case the apparently insane man did the insane thing he said he was thinking of doing. Taking cheap, reversible steps to manage low-probability high-impact risks is risk management 101.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
11hr ago
But Iran's wrecking your stuff. The US isn't mining the strait, Iran is. It turns out Iran thinks you're their enemy too!
As someone in Europe who wants to keep the heat on, I don't have the luxury of thinking about morality or blame - I have to focus on cause and effect. The cause of the looming energy crisis in Europe is an insane decision made in Washington in response to a borderline-insane decision made in Jerusalem - everything else since then is the natural working out of cause and effect, assuming that the Iranian regime has a normal level of self-preservation instinct.
Part of the reason why European countries are not co-operating with the US attacks on Iran is that the most likely good outcome for western Europe is that the EU or individual EU countries cut deals with Iran to get our oil through. Trump doesn't have a plan to reopen Hormuz quickly enough to defuse the energy crisis, and more enthusiastic support by European allies wouldn't change that.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
11hr ago
No, because Al-Qaeda didn't need to do it - 9/11 was insane and there is no scenario where it was a sane response to US provocation.
Iran closing the Straits of Hormuz is some combination of:
- The obviously sane self-interested act of a regime in trouble trying to play a bad hand as well as possible.
- A cornered rat biting everything in sight on the way down
- A defeated regime pressing their MAD button - the credible threat to close the Straits was a key part of Iran's security strategy and to make the threat credible you have to self-modify into the kind of regime that will press the button even if it is too late to save your arse.
Iran trying to close Hormuz is the predictable and widely predicted consequence of their being subject to a regime change war by a conventionally stronger adversary. And that isn't driven by the character of the regime - any Iranian regime that cared about its own survival, including a liberal democracy, would respond in roughly the same way to the same provocation. (Iran succeeding is arguably a result of poor planning by the Trump administration)
9-11 came as a surprise to everyone. To the extent that it was a response to US provocation, the primary provocation (according to OBL, the presence of non-Muslim US troops on holy ground in Saudi Arabia) was not something that would be provocative to a sane actor.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
11hr ago
It isn't R/D, it is Red/Blue. Reagan and Bush Sr were hated by the hard left, but not by normie Europeans. The main thing my (utterly conventional European establishment-left) mother remembers about Reagan is how great his speech was after Challenger blew up.
The Red Tribe and Europeans have limited direct contact (Reds don't travel internationally as much as Blues, the only Red media that gets exported is sports, Europeans visiting the US on business are visiting blue cities unless they work in the energy industry, and Europeans visiting the US as tourists are visiting blue cities, natural wonders and Disney). So most of what we learn about the Red Tribe is filtered through (hostile) Blue media, and most of what the Red Tribe know about Europeans is based on social media outrage porn and/or negatively polarising against positive depictions of Europe in Blue media.
The one place where non-Americans have direct visibility of how Reds think is the public behaviour of the man they have chosen to represent them on the world stage since 2016. And from the outside a culture that can enthusiastically elect Donald Trump looks like a culture that considers sadism a virtue and honesty a vice.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
12hr ago
Pezeshkian (who comes from the reformist faction in the mullahocracy and won the genuine-but-not-free Presidential election on that basis) actually taking power and cutting a deal with the US was always the most plausible Venezuela-like regime modification scenario.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
13hr ago
For the Iran situation - all of the 3 big players - US, EU and the gulf know that Iran has to be beaten into compliance once it started. Right now they are just playing a dance because everyone wants the others to pay for the solution.
Or hoping one of the others comes up with a solution - as @RandomRanger and @Goodguy pointed out, if Trump had a plausible way of pulling off a YUGE WIN he would take it, and we all know that the EU and the Gulf Arabs are too weak militarily to open the Straits (other than by cutting a deal with Iran) if the US can't. The only country that might be able to do pull out a win the Americans can't is Ukraine, because they actually understand modern drone-first warfare. I think it is possible but unlikely that the Ukraine-Saudi alliance turns out to be a Big Deal, but I have no idea what happens after that.
If the US bugs out, there are a lot of people with a shared interest in cutting a deal. A return to normalcy in the Gulf is good for almost everyone, apart from Russia, the US domestic oil and gas industry, and Trump's ego, and good for Iran most of all.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
Russian nationalism is tied to politicised Orthodoxy, and therefore anti-Catholic.
Turning American politicised evangelicalism from a force which was primarily anti-Catholic to a force which is primarily anti-Left was a multi-decade project.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
1d ago
This. The only potential enemy European tanks are useful for defending ourselves against is Russia, and if we are going to defend ourselves against Russia we should be doing it in Ukraine and not in Poland.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
2d ago
Are athletes generally known for their intellectual rigor? Even politicians are supposed to be only slightly above average intellectually, nowhere near the heights of g-loaded academic fields in most cases.
Given the fraction of American politicians with JDs, I think they have to be more than slightly above average. (It takes an IQ of at least 110 to complete a JD and pass the bar, and the average lawyer is closer to 120). There was a study showing that Swedish politicians have dramatically above average IQs (based on the AQFT-type tests they did when drafted as 20-year-olds) - I can't find the paper any more but the press release gives a good idea of the results.
In general, I would assume that politicians are somewhat below average for the PMC, but well above average for the population as a whole.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
It would be bizarre to go out of you way to be polite to a dog or a horse, and the act of a despicable varlet to be deliberately cruel to one. Why should a servant be different?
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
3d ago
This is a business-to-consumer contract, so the law on unfair terms in consumer contracts applies. This is a hugely complex area of law (the official government guidance runs to 144 pages) where the statute and regulations were re-written in 2015 to bring British law in line with EU law (and not updated since Brexit) but most of the cases predate the new law.
But the key point is that Arsenham FC can enforce the term if it is "fair" and not if it is "unfair". Hidden terms are on the "greylist" of terms that will usually be unfair, but even if the rule "we can cancel your tickets without notice if you turn out not to be a fan" was clearly state, it would be invalid if substantially unfair.
The relevant section in the guidance is 5.16.3 on unequal cancellation rights
This applies particularly to terms which explicitly say that the trader can cancel at will, without having any valid reason. But it also applies to terms which permit cancellation for vaguely defined reasons, or in response to any breach of contract (however trivial) by the consumer. Such terms may be intended to allow the business to do no more than protect itself legitimately from problems beyond its control, or from serious misconduct by the consumer. But the potential effect as well as the purpose of terms is relevant to fairness, and if wording is loosely drafted and open to abuse it is liable to be seen as unbalancing the contract.
Cancelling a contract because the customer is not a fan would be a vaguely defined reason, meaning that the term is greylisted and therefore probably unfair. It might be fair under the circumstances if @Bartender_Venator had e.g. taken advantage of a discount specifically marketed at fans.
There is a separate point that the contract isn't formed until the business accepts the customer's offer. If you booked the flights and accommodation before getting a confirmation e-mail saying "your tickets are booked" and then unfortunately got a non-confirmation e-mail saying "please prove you are a fan before we will release your tickets" then you never had a contract and are SOL.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarassed liberal elite
4d ago
USA will always be on top, because of two huge oceans that are unmovable at least on human scales.
Oceans historically were, and in many ways still are, bridges, not barriers. When the Royal Navy pwned the US Navy, you were our bitch, to the point where we could casually loot and burn Washington DC as a side quest while fighting the Napoleonic Wars. The oceans give the US the option (just as the English Channel gave the UK the same option) of neglecting you land forces and being a pure sea power - as long as the US rules (or at least contests) the waves, you are indeed safe from invasion (as we were and probably still are).
The nature of late C20/early C21 air and sea power makes the oceans a barrier to attack even if the US wasn't a major naval power - sea power is carrier-based air power and land-based aircraft have a massive advantage over carrier-based aircraft with equivalent men and materiel. This means that the late C20/early C21 USA was impregnable because the USAF could defend the coasts against the navy of a somewhat superior adversary. (This is the "The Falklands War wasn't supposed to be winnable for the British" argument - the RN overperformed and the Argentinian Air Force underperformed). But that tech stack is obsolete, as Russia learned en route to the bottom of the Black Sea and the US is currently learning the hard way in the Gulf. Will the same logic apply in a world where sea power consists of drone carriers escorted by laser cruisers? I don't know.
Europe doesn't have a "native red tribe". (Some groups that fit the description exist, like Northern Irish Protestants in the UK, who are the ancestors of the American red tribe, but they aren't numerous enough to be an important political force in any European country I am familiar with). The red tribe as discussed by e.g. Scott Siskind isn't just "people with right-populist political views" - it is a distinctive culture within America with its own folkways (including religion) that became uniquely welcoming to right-populist politics because of how the civil rights era went down.
The result of this is that you can predict a white American's politics much more effectively based on tribal markers like hobbies or TV-watching habits than based on conventional demographic data like age or income. This is not the case in Europe where right-populism is the politics of the old (in the UK) or the poor and uneducated (almost everywhere else).
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