Opt-out
10d ago
I am paying him to stand in front of that car. It’s literally his job. And to use necessary force to enforce our laws. If he’s detaining a person we give him the ability to do that detention.
Opt-out
10d ago
It’s also turned me into a fascists. If we are still a Democracy and one side wins on dealing with migration as a key election issue then I expect the other side to live with that election. If they instead attempt to obstruct the police action that was voted on with street thugs then why should I continue to back our Democracy. If it’s a street fight then I’ll back our brown shirts. It doesn’t seem like we are a nation of laws anymore.
I already think we have too many checks and balances in our system. And it’s causing a lot of voter frustration with getting things done on both sides. In a Democracy elections must have consequences. The lefts adoption of street violence when they lose is unacceptable. So yes I voted for ICE deportations. Majority of Americans did too.
If the left doesn’t want this then they can post on twitter and try to change minds. Then try to vote in a new government. I care less about the specifics of this case but the broader field of play where obstructing the police is an acceptable political tactic now.
Opt-out
10d ago
Either case is obstructing lawful government action. It’s just a question of how much obstruction they are doing. Going to an arrest or ICE detention and blasting loud music interferes with the ability of ICE agents to think and do their job. There is even a Wikipedia article about loud music torture. So we have already established that noise pollution can be torture. Being loud and protesting an arrest isn’t physically interfering but it is usually in a non-criminal sense obstructing the police action.
Opt-out
10d ago
Isn’t this just Jan 6? If you are morally outraged - you Protest and go to jail. In some cases perhaps tortured. Or you keep your mouth shut and show up to work everyday while providing for your family etc. That is your choice when you fight the regime.
In the case of Jan 6 everyone else basically decided to agree with them. The regime changed and in many cases you become a hero and often the leaders of the new regime.
Opt-out
10d ago
Agree with where I think you are going. As someone who has worked in market making if you always need to adjust the market you make for someone having insider information then it’s a toxic flow and you need to adjust your bid/asks spreads for sometimes getting completely run over so you average profit on most trades needs to be bigger.
A market that works is one with punters and smart betters. When you add in a guaranteed winner who knows the outcome everyone else’s profits go negative. So then market makers leave the market and it no longer exists. The market makers will end up getting filled on a lot of losers.
Eventually non of the benefits of prediction markets exists. The wisdom of crowd people leave because they lose a lot to people who just know the outcome. The guys traded on insider information quit trading because there is no market.
If I extrapolate. I play basketball behind the mall in Brickell. It’s a very mixed group. Probably about 30% English speaking, 40% bilingual, 30% Spanish only. 3 Venezualians. 1 Bilingual. 2 Spanish only. My Spanish is bad.
We have twice in the last year had city issues. The first was they were not turning the lights on until 7:15 which meant 6:50 to 7:15 it was dark. We have a group chat on WhatsApp so it was an issue for about 3-4 weeks on talking about how to mitigate. I had the brilliant idea of why don’t we just call the city to turn the lights on earlier instead of talking about how to mitigate the issue and play around it. Turns out a 30s phone call solved the issue.
A half year later I was traveling around Argentina. The WhatsApp group was blowing up every day about whether the court was open. The city repainted the court and had locked it. It was locked for like three weeks. People just bitching the court is locked everyday. I get back in town and I reply on WhatsApp has anyone tried calling the city. I call next day and it’s open in a day.
I guess what I am getting at is Maduro could have just called Exxon and a 30 second phone call they would have been like ya we can just start drilling. But for whatever reason Latam sometimes just doesn’t make that phone call.
So for geopolitics if the white guy just says he’s in charge now the Latin Americans kind of just accept it. And sometimes it’s literally really easy.
My gut says Trump is in that situation. Only has to make a short phone call to Exxon and everyone is happy.
I may be wrong. But my gut is that the no casualty coup means it was just accepted US is in charge.
Opt-out
13d ago
He definitely has more power there. End of day US is viewed as competent. So new people in Ven can talk shit but imply they are US backed
I live in Miami. I was thinking about putting together a longer posts where I take a small scale example but extrapolate to how geopolitics work. But the summary of it would have been white guy does shit and it fixes a group issue.
I live in Miami. My gut is America has status here. Trump can just say he’s in charge and the new administration has that backing. Which gives them legitimacy. All we really need to do is let Exxon do what they do. Boost oil production to 4m barrels a day. Let the current admin steal 100-500k barrels a day. And that’s a huge win for Venezuelans.
I guess I’ve lived in Miami. And there was like obvious situations that you could fix. And I did 30s conversation and fixed it. Then did some racists shit and said white guy fixed it. And no one cared. White guy fixed it and everyone was just happy the issue was solved. I think Venezuela is there.
So when people question whether VP will have respect I would counter that Trump says Venezuela is ours.
Opt-out
14d ago
It’s no where close to 0. And like a puppet like a Trump son exists instead of Vance.
You think people didn’t know the rules based order was fake for decades?
The only difference is that knowledge has slowly trickled down from heads of states to the simply smart people over decades. It’s always been as Cersai said, “Power is Power”
And yes I like Ukraine. I think they are morally right. And I think in terms of power Russia is in the wrong. The US could intervene. We shouldn’t. Europe can. But acts weak.
Milei was going to lose elections. Then US implied they are backed by US and won. Being US backed both has beneficial policy goals and also electoral success.
Opt-out
14d ago
I never defended Afghanistan. I didn’t even defend Iraq (which we won at huge costs).
I simply said we were involved in ME because we had to be. The GWOT started because of Arabs. 15 out of 19 hijackers were Saudi. 2 others were UAB. Those are oil countries. I said we’ve always needed oil. Tactics and strategy after 9/11 are a different discussion. But I will stress we always had very real American interest in oil.
Which ones? That aren’t somewhat narco states or commie? I would only say Chile (who had Pinochet)
And I don’t hate Sheinbaum though she’s not really Mexican. But she won’t get rid of the cartel influence. Which means outside of Mexico City and Monterrey she’s not the dominant force.
Opt-out
14d ago
“Get shit done guy” I advocated for a MBS or Pinochet is that in question?
“A guy like that is vanishingly rare” Outside of white societies and some East Asians how many successful Democracies are there?
“Paper over flaws due to sheer natural wealth?”
Have you heard about the natural resource curse? How many non-white civs have monetized natural resources? Besides MBS. Two biggest oil reserves Venezuela and Saudi Arabia.
Opt-out
14d ago
“If the US hadn’t been meddling in the ME”
- The post WW2 order was built on ME energy supplies. That’s factual. Not meddling in the ME was never an option. That was the Oil Age. Pre-Shale.
Maybe we could have figured out another energy source earlier but that was prime oil-age economics. You can throw shade now because Americans no longer remember how our economy would shutdown from an oil crisis. Today we could close to fully transaction to Tesla’s and nuclear, but I don’t think we had the tech stack back then. Energy crisis do tend to solve themselves so maybe we could have build an alt tech stack after a decade of crisis.
We won’t agree on win conditions. I don’t care about Democracy especially in that region. The administration doesn’t care about Democracy. An American aligned regime is better for us and better for the region. The ideal would be a Pinochet or MBS. A get shit done guy who locks Venezuela as a friend for a generation. I am not opposed to Democracy but it’s not a key.
Exxon etc returning to Venezuela because they trust the regime. A significant portion of the Venezuela diaspora returning would be a win. Let’s say 5 years out 4-5 million barrels of oil production.
I probably would have said Machado in charge with elections in 3-4 years would be ideal. But honestly that’s not important to our interests or the Venezuelan people. To be honest when most of your population is sub 90 IQ Democracy just doesn’t work that well.
Our current regime isn’t a bunch of neolibs trying to spread Democracy. Which is a big reason why they can win versus the Bushes and Clintons trying to put geopolitical packages wrapped in Democracy. Saudi Arabia worked - the roads are greats in large part because we never fucked with Democracy there.
Opt-out
14d ago
The migrant crisis already happened in Venezuela. That’s in the past and occurred under Biden.
Opt-out
14d ago
Saudis disagree with you. El Salvador. Argentinians. Smart Chileans. Polish. Ukrainians dying for that opportunity. Often the issue has been weak local partners.
Opt-out
14d ago
Obama lost those interventions. Europe got a migrant crisis as a result. Today doesn’t matter. It’s what’s created next that matters.
Also I think it’s fair to say Trump has been putting this in play for months. Rubio for a decade.
In the start-up world they laugh about NDAs because the idea doesn’t matter. It’s the execution. Day 0 was executed successfully.
A simple question here would be to asks you to define terms of “winning” before this plays out. Taking Maduro out is impressive logistically but creating chaos alone isn’t winning. It’s what you build after.
What’s the end game for Venezuela that you would agree is “winning”?
Super long-term is too long to wait for. But we can define going on the right path. Within in the next month we should have inklings of the new power structure and more apparent in 6m-1 year. And obvious win would be Machado being the leader but that seems to have been ruled out by Trump.
Opt-out
14d ago
I want the US to deport everyone. Venezuelans are annoying. The ones not homeless on the streets are super loud and want to argue about everything. To me fixing Venezuela is all about fixing countries so that they remigrate. The rest of Latam is fairly pissed off at Venezuela too. Nobody likes migrants. In the US non of the recent ones speak English. With Maduro in power it was tough to figure out how to deport them. Now we can send a few million back.
I don’t think Venezuela is one main drug supplier. I don’t think the oil matters for a long time. But I do think fixing Latam lets us deport a ton of people I want out of America.
Maduros gone. Now we can get rid of asylum claims and begin the process of shipping people back.
The best Casus Belli we had here was the 10 million Venezuelans who have invaded countries throughout Latam and the US. That’s far worse than fentanyl claims. This won’t be a Syria/Libya situation because the migration already occurred.
Opt-out
14d ago
100% inside job. We had helicopters. A handful. They had fortified official positions. There is no way you break into an official residence and have zero casualties. The question is whether everyone surrounded him took a deal or if Maduro made the deal.
People asking what’s next….most of the old power structure is in place and nothing will change… That is silly. Bribes have been paid. Deals struck. We just don’t know what else is in the deal yet.
Funny thing is if Israel did this everyone would expect Israel to know what they are doing. But because of Biden, Hillary, Bush incompetence we all assume incompetence.
Opt-out
14d ago
A big difference. Trump wins, Biden loses. Israel and Iran was played well. Ukraine neither solved. Though Ukraine War started under Biden watch. Biden fumbled Afghanistan withdrawal. People care far less about process than they do winning. Trump wins.
Opt-out
16d ago
I’ve seen the term IQ shredders but it’s close to what you are referring as fertility shredders. Cities also attract higher IQ folks. Then the population shredding kicks in. Which makes them at a society level IQ shredders since the new city folks are higher IQ then the people that stayed rural.
Simplistically I voted for this. We won the election. I got ICE to enforce immigration law. As you said he’s been run over before. I don’t want my tax dollars going to him trying to be nice to people obstructing him from doing his job. I voted for ICE enforcing immigration law which includes using deadly force with people obstructed him from doing his job. One dead obstructor should eliminate thousands of others from obstructing. FAFO.
This wasn’t cosplay. I even read an article where an obstructor remarked what are they using real bullets instead of rubber bullets. Believe it or not but ICE are real policemen doing a real job of deporting millions of people unlawfully in America.
More options
Context Copy link