MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
No bio...
User ID: 1678
The Big Serge has a good overview of the RU-UA war. The TL;DR is that Ukraine has burned through multiple iterations of armaments and is now reduced to begging for active NATO matériel, hence Germany's reticence to send Leopards. One should understand that Europe's and even America's production capacities have atrophied badly over the decades. Losing hundreds of tanks - the number that Ukraine is asking for - isn't something you replenish within a year.
Serge's prediction that Ukraine will lose the war "gradually, then suddenly" seems plausible given Russia's attrition strategy. If we assume that Russia will win this war, then the question needs to be asked.. how much will actually change? Ukraine as a country isn't particularly important and the population is likely to be hostile to Russia, meaning that to integrate it into Russia proper will be difficult if not impossible.
I keep hearing hysterical rhetoric that the West must win this war or... something something bad. It reminds me of the flawed 'domino theory' that was used to justify the Vietnam intervention. While I don't think NATO will ever proceed towards direct intervention á la Vietnam, I can't help but think that too many of the West's elites have trapped themselves rhetorically where Ukraine's importance is overblown for political reasons (so as to overcome domestic opposition towards sending arms) and it has now become established canon in a way that is difficult to dislodge.
The last gasp of the europoor
For years, I've been treated to a steady diet of smug elitism coming from effete liberal Europeans laughing at obese, gun-toting and bible-thumpin' Americans. This reached its crescendo during the George W. Bush administration, took a lull during the Obama years and was resurrected after Trump took office.
The American was an ignoramus, a loud-mouth, a religious fundamentalist and irreversibly stupid. Hopelessly inferior to us sophisticated and cosmopolitan Europeans. Did you know half of Americans don't even own a passport? Most don't even know a second language!? Ha! And don't get me started on their healthcare, their gun crime and all other sorts of social pathologies. America, you see, is a third world nation masquerading as a first world one.
But as the years went by, these smirks felt increasingly hollow. The economic distance - and with it, standard of living - between the two major partners is growing wider by the day. A young French econ professor at Wharton lays out the bad news over just how deluded his fellow Europeans are on this question. Prominent FT columnists have noted the same.
Yet, perhaps there is still time to save the last shreds of honor for us poor Europeans. For one, the gap in PPP terms doesn't seem to be changing much. Europe has been behind for a long time. In terms of total GDP, the situation is much the same. Another aspect is that Europeans tend to work fewer hours.
While some of these arguments may have some validity, they all feel like desperate excuses. I for one am very much happy to see the insufferable elitism of Europeans slowly being wiped off our collective smug faces. The uncouth and primitive barbarian across the ocean turned out to be smarter and harder-working all along.
Perhaps this can also lead to a more pro-capitalist liberalism in the US. For much of my upbringing, liberal Americans were typified by folks such as Michael Moore and his obsessive admiration of the European welfare state. Colbert's snark about the embarrassing Red State American always felt like an underhanded way to gain favor with declassé elites across the ocean. Ann Coulter's observation that liberal elites in the US loved soccer because it is European surely hit closer to home than many in the media were willing to admit.
Of course, there is still some amount of liberal American simping left in the bag. This is perhaps most obvious whenever there are discussions on urban policy and the words "walkable city" invariably comes up. (To be clear, I actually think Europe gets this part better than the US).
Outside of an increasingly narrowing set of areas where Europe still outperforms, we are slowly witnessing a reshuffling of the deck. The old illusions are slowly coming undone and reddit-tier arguments about the US being a third world hellhole are convincing fewer by the day. At long last, after years of insufferable and unjustified smug elitism, the europoor is finally unmasked as the sham living on a lie that he always was. And I couldn't be happier.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
8mo ago
God isn't real, of course, and I doubt Vivek thinks so either. Hinduism is remarkably tolerant of atheism.
As a sidenote, I've been impressed by him. I think his willingness to be ruthlessly realistic about limits to America's commitments to Taiwan is a breath of fresh air. Reminds me of 2016 Trump. I still think Ye Olde Orange Man is a clear favorite, but if he gets barred from running due to legal issues, I think Vivek is a top contender. I wouldn't call him very charismatic, but he at least isn't robotic like DeSantis and unlike DeSantis, his campaign feels less controlled by donors and GOPe activists.
I think Trump's secret was that he intuitively understood that GOP conventional wisdom isn't actually that popular among the grassroots and so breaking with it hardly carries punishment with the voters - quite the contrary, in fact. If Vivek grasps the same fundamental truth then he has a very good shot.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
6mo ago
Is the left-right distinction really the relevant political metric we should look at the in US?
The president of NYU's student bar association lost their job offer after expressing support for Hamas. I say they, because it's a trans person who also happens to be black. Can you hit higher on the diversity bingo? Well, take the wrong side where Israel is involved and apparently that does not help you. And it's not like NYU is a conservative campus.
I'm sure this person has a history of anti-White statements (that is usually the case with black progressives). But what got them into trouble was taking the wrong side on Zionism. So, this isn't a case of being a leftist or a rightist. It's a case of being against perceived Jewish interests. Sometimes people talk about the progressive stack and we have once again found out that being black and trans is no defence if you go against Jews. No such punishment against being anti-White. This seems to imply two things:
-
The highest position on the progressive totem pole is being Jewish, not black or trans.
-
People who claim Jews are White must explain why making anti-White statements rarely carry punishments but going against Jewish interests does. In other words, Jews have relative privilege in America in a way that is not available to Whites.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
I know about the source of the term. I'm just ridiculing its use here (in fact, I think it is misleading in general).
The ADL has been the organising force in pushing for an advertiser boycott here, which started the revenue collapse. This is simply the latest salvo in the war that they started.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
7mo ago
Hard to feel sympathy for a man forcing himself on a woman who did not consent being kissed. What's shameful here is that it took FIFA externally intervening to get him suspended, as the Spanish federation clearly failed to do so before they did.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Sorry that's just a poor excuse. There are plenty of bikes in Europe which have cargo space.
https://electrek.co/2020/11/21/bunch-the-coupe-cargo-e-bike-dutch-design/
The fundamental problem is that the US is a car-centric society and too many Americans try to find ways to keep it that way.
There's a good intro/overview of these bikes, which are quite common in the Netherlands, here:
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
9mo ago
Men are vastly more likely to be victims of the worst kind of violent crime: murder.
Men are also vastly more likely to be the murderers. You can't have one without the other. The overwhelming majority of violent crime is committed by men. People on the edgy right like to talk about race and crime but refuse to talk about the link between gender and crime. Very curious.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Hoel is 100% wrong when he tried to debunk Aaronson's claim that more intelligent people are more moral (on average). That's in fact entirely true. See here and here. It is also why lower intelligence is associated with religious fanaticism or extremism of any kind.
As for whether AI is dangerous or not. I take the view of Kurzweil. Intelligent life has continually evolved and replaced lower orders that came before it. Seen in this light, if AI replaces human intelligence it would just be another step on the evolutionary ladder. Whether we think it is right or wrong is irrelevant. It will happen. Technological progress is the single most unyielding force in history.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
9mo ago
I personally never understood the reverence for the Southern Cause/Dixie Pride among the right. It was largely thanks to the slave states that the US got such a big black population, which in turn is responsible for turning formerly great cities like Detroit into basket cases and making downtowns of cities like Baltimore, St Louis, Memphis and many others very dangerous. Don't forget that some of these Southern plantation oligarchs even talked about incorporating parts of the Carribean directly to aid the plantation economy.
The argument that "what ruined Detroit was letting black settle there" is unconvincing because once you have such a large population, they will have to go somewhere. And Jim Crow could never have been kept forever. Really, the plantation owners were just greedy capitalists putting profits over their own people, not unlike their contemporary equivalents. Why glorify the generals who fought for such a system?
From what I understand, most of these statues were put up after the civil war as a way to placate Southerners at a time when Southern identity was still a live issue. So basically a form of pragmatism. As the years have gone by, and as whites in the US have become more monolithic, the need that necessitated these statues has faded. I suspect that's why you see these muted reactions. It may have been a big issue 100 years ago or perhaps even 50 years ago. But not now.
Hopefully the US right can come to understand two things. First, the south in the civil war deserved to lose. Second, they should have been stopped way earlier.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
I think this topic is sensitive to Americans, since it basically means they aren't the Good Guys that they were led to believe. People in general want to think the best of their country, and understandably so. So I am not surprised by the pushback. (We should also make a distinction between the US Govt and the American people. I have a high opinion of the latter but a low of the former).
The question that needs to be asked in these situations is always the same: cui bono? It clearly isn't Russia. Having Europe more dependent on its energy and not less is clearly in their interest. It isn't Germany either, which resisted pressure to end it for years before the invasion. Why would China or France blow it up? India? Doesn't have the capability. Obviously there's only one country big enough and powerful enough left standing to have done it and which has been voicing very loud denunciations and outrage over its existence for years. The US of A. Biden even blatantly threatened that NS2 would be "put to an end one way or another". You can't get more clear than that.
Instead of grappling with this issue from a structural basis, folks have been trying to personally smear Hersh. It's the old "shoot the messenger" tactic. Will it work? Maybe for some, but I suspect for most of the non-Americans, the US was already a prime suspect and so his reporting doesn't really shock anyone.
The US will continue to officially deny it and Americans will want to believe any story that absolves their country of blame (understandably) whereas much of the rest of the world will just go on, seeing America in a more cynical light than before.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
6mo ago
Yeah, the ghoulish commentary from what are mostly chickenshit individuals can be a bit grating. But this is how it is in all wars. People from a distance pick sides and then cheer on them as if it were a sports team from afar.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
6mo ago
The Israelis are a paper tiger without daddy America. As this conflict showed (8 billion dollars needed from Uncle Sam within the first day of rocket attacks). If the Israelis had the capability to attack Iran, then they'd have done it years ago. They don't and ultimately depend on the US to do it. Successive American administrations have turned down every request from Jerusalem.
Iran today is much more capable than it was 10 years ago. If Iran is attacked, they would almost certainly conduct a a massive attack on Saudi Arabia and other US-aligned countries. That would send the world economy into a gigantic depression if oil output suddenly crashed by 10-15 mb/d. Many Western strategic oil stocks are already depleted after the UA war so there wouldn't be much buffer space to absorb the shock.
TL;DR near zero.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
10mo ago
Yet their lives are infinitely better than if they would have remained sovereign. No offence to American Indians, but given their social problems, I find it hard to believe that their standard of living would have been better today if not for European conquest. The tall tales of mass annihilation is also mostly bunk. Many Europeans were often very sympathetic (e.g. Sam Houston).
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
11mo ago
Bari Weiss and other "anti-woke activists" have a long history suppressing critics of Israel. She herself even tried it as a student at Columbia. The same is true of the "IDW" people. Most of them were Zionist Jews and a few shabbos goyim like Jordan Peterson.
Cancel culture exists on the right too, just that it is often directed against anyone opposing Zionism. Lots of anti-BDS bills have been signed in red states in recent years and I don't see any of the "free speech activists" talking about it, thereby exposing their hypocrisy. Ben Shapiro is of course highly active here, too.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Sooner or later, the right will (hopefully) come to understand a few hard-hitting things:
-
NIMBY:ism is not only good but morally necessary to create and sustain worthwhile communities. Not just their character but also their architectural beauty and natural endowments (e.g. parks, tree-lined pathways).
-
Regulation is an unavoidable fact in order to bring all of this about. The neoliberal rage against regulation will only lead to poorly built cardboard boxes mashed together into historic neighbourhoods, crammed with people of dubious moral character (as this would be "affordable housing" that YIMBYists love to praise).
Getting rid of most cars in inner cities would also be a good start and many European cities are moving in this direction. Some faster (Oslo) and some slower (Paris) but it's slowly coming together.
That all said, if someone truly thinks that car-centric sprawl suburbia is the peak of human existence, then all the more power to you. I just don't think many on the right are actually on board with that once they take time to think. The issue is that many have neoliberal priors that prevents them from going to the logical conclusion. Housing policy is difficult because there isn't a clear-cut left vs right divide and most folks prefer to stay in tribes where thinking independently is discouraged and you can just follow the herd.
But Serge's paragraph is about America and American stockpiles--so why link to a piece about European supply issues?
Poland and other countries have ordered HIMARS already in 2018 but still haven't gotten deliveries. Why do you think America has outsourced significant parts of F-35 production to friendly countries? It no longer has the domestic capacity to fully manufacture the plane at scale. It isn't only Europe which has cut back massively on military production. Equipment has gotten more expensive and fewer units are built, along with lower investment in manufacturing more generally.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
Why is SBF still free or at least not in trouble?
Because it's all about who you are and who you know. How many people got jailed after the 2008 crash? I can only think of a single person. Financial crimes pay off because you can bribe, sorry, I meant "donate", to politicians.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
6mo ago
A great many of them will accept ethnic cleansing or genocide of Palestinians as a solution; perhaps will participate if a chance presents itself
Israel would be welcome to try and it would fail. These same "liberals" would also find themselves the targets of Islamic radicals in the West doing revenge attacks for months if not years. Given their embrace of genocidal rhetoric, I certainly wouldn't shed a tear for them.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
8mo ago
Yes, but who is leading who is the question here. The oft-repeated remark that conservatives are just liberals of 20 years ago didn't spring up from nowhere.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
If you want to analogize Russia and Ukraine to the Domino Theory historical results, it absolutely would imply that Russia keep going
Where would Russia go if Ukraine fell this year? I can only think of Moldova and maybe Georgia. Finland is part of the EU which has a common defence clause which in turn would automatically drag in NATO since most of the EU is also part of NATO. Baltics are self-explanatory. Moreover, this all assumes that UA's population would be passive which isn't at all my assumption.
If Russia were to win on the battlefield, they'd have to deal with a restive and deeply hostile population and perhaps even insurgencies. Hence my skepticism that winning the UA war is somehow a geopolitical necessity of titanic proportions, which is what the narrative coming from Western capitals and large parts of the media would have us believe.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
7mo ago
This is probably also another indication that Westerners - i.e. white people - appear to have higher openness to new experiences. I suspect it may be correlated with greater innovative capacities, which may explain why North-East Asia is not richer than the West despite having higher IQ on average. People who are less likely to try something new are also less likely to invent something new.
MelodicBerries
virtus junxit mors non separabit
1yr ago
In any serious conflict, the missiles wouldn't just be limited to the Taiwan strait. China would likely take out all major US bases on day 1 of the conflict.
Not really. Lots of well-to-do people do projects-based work with fluid locations and enjoy it. You probably just have bad work experiences.
Well, if you want Limited Government then I hear Somalia is a great place. You can even buy arms in open air markets with minimal regulations. Perhaps you can sense my dripping sarcasm, but I have little patience for these kinds of arguments. Taxes can go up and they can go down, but what - or rather, who - made Britain were the Anglo-Saxons.
This type of argument is the right-wing version of the blank slate.
More options
Context Copy link