Shakes
3hr ago
Fighting a defensive war against the Great Satan put the Iranian government in a very sympathetic position with their neighbors
Maybe on twitter. But Iran's actual neighbors (diplomats, monarchs, officials) wanted Iran curtailed a long time ago. Iran is the rogue state out. Whatever official sympathy might still have existed evaporated when Iran started bombing uninvolved countries.
Shakes
5hr ago
back pain
If you haven't tried it yet I would highly recommend Joe Sarno's book "Healing Back Pain"
Shakes
1d ago
I don't think any authoritarian societies really did better with lockdowns except maybe in projecting the fantasy that they were followed.
I guess what I'm starting to think is, lockdowns don't really work in theory because the amount of social distancing you need to contain a virus is greater than people can actually really sustain. You can maybe sustain some amount over a small period of time. But anything that approaches solitary confinement, which is essentially what is needed for the theory to work, is impossible. It seems to hit up against some kind of soft biological limit because we need to spend time with other people. And in practice people created enough exceptions within the ideal of a lockdown that the virus could never be stopped.
I think with an authoritarian country like e.g. China they could pretend to have more rigorous lockdowns. And their draconian government could even keep the charade going at great cost long after it stopped working. But I'm not sure they actually got any better results.
Shakes
1d ago
Cryonics supposes that someone else will do the hard part.
Well, who's going to invent this amazing life-saving radical biotech? Not you, you were busy having your body frozen. Or busy working out how to build the refrigerators. Somebody else studying biology or something will have to achieve the breakthroughs cryonics depends on.
Meanwhile someone like Bryan Johnson is probably doing more for the future of extending lifespan than anybody hooking refrigerators into armpits.
Shakes
4d ago
And they think Trump's offer is shit, for whatever reason they wish.
This is a non-sequitur. I'm not denying Denmark's right to have a reason. I'm calling their reason irrational.
Why is it rational for Trump to want Greenland, but not rational for Denmark to want Greenland?
What does Denmark get out of owning Greenland? A vacation spot? Gold? They really really like running sterilization campaigns? Because they don't really develop Greenland economically outside of running a shitty state shipping monopoly. And whenever this conversation comes up all the Europeans can talk about is pride and dignity and sovereignty. Ok, what's inherently undignified about selling some land to America? Because apparently this is such a disgusting concept that it's worth no quantity of money, there is nothing that could wash the stains out of doing business with, gasp, with the Americans! Yeah and they're such good allies too don't forget, they just insist we wear a mask when we make love.
Shakes
4d ago
America is a pretty chauvinistic and patriotic country but tomorrow if news came out that negotiations were underway to sell American Samoa or Puerto Rico or Guam, most people would actually not care. You'd get some rally-round-the-flag rah-rah and maybe the other side would shout accusations of selling the country out. But by-and-large the average man on the street would not care unless there were some other scandal involved. These are not core parts of America, we don't have some fantastical attachment to every last inch our "sovereign territory" actually. I can say this relatively confidently because nobody cared when the Philippines went, even though we fought a huge war to acquire it, nobody even noticed, it's a barroom trivia question now at best. Ryukyu Islands were American until 1972. Nobody cares.
So you want to tell me that maybe the politicians could negotiate, but the Danish voters can't possibly have that, and it's the most rational thing in the world. -- ? Why? What does the average Dane actually care about Greenland? Is it a core part of their nationhood? Do they all vacation in Greenland? Fond memories as boys? Does everyone in Denmark have Greenlandic friends, relatives, wives? Is Greenland a point of pride in Danish TV shows and media? Does Greenland form a core part of Denmark's economy? Greenlandic basketball star? Modeling agency? Because it seems like none of that is the case. As far as I can tell, nobody really thinks about Greenland at all, has nothing to do with it. The Danes committed a sterilization campaign there within recent memory. They could barely spare it a thought for defense during World War II, when the Americans had to step in before the Nazis did. So the fanatical Danish attachment to Greenland is based on... what, exactly? Can I not notice that this is extremely irrational?
Because from the beginning even before Trump made threats and boasts the Danes refused to even consider trading Greenland. Why? Is it beyond the pale? Is the ability of Greenlanders to sell technology and land to the Chinese an inviolable human right? Because all that seems to be left is that it's "bits of our continent" as if that settles the matter, it's theirs so we can't have it out of some exaggerated pride. Wailing about how they've been such a good boy and they don't deserve this. Threatening to blow it all up if they don't get their way. ???
A rational Danish leader would say, "well, it's a little goofy, but the Americans are a rich country, we're willing to hear them out as long as the rights of the Greenlanders are respected." The Americans would say, "$100 Billion," or whatever. The Danish public would say, wow, that's a lot of money, we can use this to make Denmark a better place. The Greenlanders would say, "Thanks, hm, we're not so sure but these are our demands." It would be easy and technical, like when the Danes sold us what are now the US Virgin Islands. Did they cry then and wail and complain that we were violating their core territorial sovereignty and stealing their continent? No, it was totally unimportant because nobody cares.
Maybe Greenland really is important to the Danes, but every time I ask I get drivel about human dignity and what good allies they've been. Since it can't be explained it seems totally irrational. Well, we have a pretty good model for this already, and you can groan as I repeat myself for the hundredth time, but, yes, say it with me, it looks like TDS. Trump wants Greenland, it's monarchical, it's what Hitler would do, America can't have Greenland it's about our dignity! Yeah, ok, sure, yeah, ok, whatever you say man.
Shakes
4d ago
Those generations and millennia were building up to America, the first country to conquer the atom and the only one to land on the moon.
Shakes
4d ago
“Opposition to Greenland was irrational” “Oh yeah? We have the right to be irrational!”
I think you’re making my point for me
Shakes
5d ago
The whole logic of "we are the good guys, therefore we are allowed to do bad things" is obviously flawed
It's good to destroy evil and it's evil to destroy good. That's what good and evil even mean. Quite literally it's different when we do it, we are not fighting Iran from a position of moral relativism.
But do you really want the standard "any country which supports particularly nasty murderers gets wiped from the face of the Earth?" It is not like the US did not support bloodthirsty dictators, would it be okay to reduce their capabilities to pre-industrial levels in response?
You're conflating several things here: the necessity of all states to commit violence; the extreme acts of aggression of Iran in particular that does not have a counterpart in the West; the value of supporting pro-West dictators over anti-West (Communist) dictators. Factoring all that in I don't think America is just another cartel country that deserves to be leveled by the laws of the jungle. (Not that anybody could.) However, for the sake of argument: sure. I'm glad we genocide evil men. I hope any country that supports particularly nasty murders gets wiped from the face of the Earth.
I do not particularly see a line dividing the Mullah regime from the rest of them.
Well I'm not moving to Iran but you're welcome to if you don't see a difference.
Shakes
5d ago
It's a taboo so sacred, so utterly demanding of violence and death that America did nothing for 45 years
We did a lot against Iran in the intervening 45 years and Carter's weak response to the mullahs was considered disgraceful for generations. It was on TV constantly, Reagan's inauguration speech was played split-screen with video of the hostages boarding planes to come home. A huge part of the controversy over Obama's Iran deal was that it viscerally reminded many of that exact weakness.
Look I'm losing steam for this argument because I have other things to do today but I think you're a reasonable guy and I don't take any offense personally and I'm certainly not trying to insult you either. What I'm getting at in general, more or less, is that every time I talk to foreigners about America, especially Europeans, at some level they throw something up and fail to understand. (Actually I think Arabs and Asians tend to get it pretty well.)
But, from our point of view, it's the Europeans who are going crazy. This is debated within America and you'll find different perspectives but there has been total hostility to spending more on NATO, eliminating tariffs, Trump's warnings about Russian oil, Greenland, etc., even when what America is proposing is in Europe's best interests. Well, sure, America can be a loose cannon and hasn't always used its supremacy in the best ways (hence MAGA), but Europe beings to lose all right to criticize when they rely on us to defend them.
Because America doesn't care about Europe's criticisms at all. I'm reminded of Baudrillard's remark that he came to America hoping to get a different perspective on Europe -- and found that instead Europe vanished entirely. "I don't think about you at all etc."
Shakes
5d ago
Diplomats were furiously communicating and negotiating on both sides of the Atlantic, just because it didn't happen on twitter doesn't mean it didn't happen in real life.
Shakes
5d ago
My comment about "taboos" was directed at the hostage crisis, which is one of the most egregious acts of terror ever committed against America and her people. The hostage crisis merits extreme violence, because a state that can not even respect embassies is already gone rogue. And if we respond with weakness that only invites more violence. That's what war is.
The fact that America is increasingly willing to kill for a chocolate bar,
This bears no resemblance even remotely to anything under discussion. In 2026 America has toppled a violent narco state in Venezuela, bombed a rogue theocratic regime in Iran, and threatened the kleptocratic regime of Cuba. "Kill for a chocolate bar"? I really wonder what kind of news they print in Europe. If you can't even imagine American motivations as rational I do think this is analogous to TDS, because it's not hard actually to understand what America wants or why. The only incident I can think of that even vaguely resembles your remark is the Greenland incident, which as I argued in another post is (in part) a serious overreaction on the parts of the Europeans. We could argue about that too some more I suppose, but it really doesn't bode well if a priori America is to be treated as some kind of crazy cokehead cowboy psycho. (While the good rational Europeans are sending bombs to Greenlandic runways and cheering for Iran to keep the Straits of Hormuz closed.)
If it were actually a sacred do-or-die moment where the correct action was obvious, everybody would be on board.
See what I mean? The fact that you disagree is treated as proof that you were right to disagree.
Shakes
5d ago
Likewise, a few months ago, when Trump suddenly decided that he wanted Greenland, the sovereign territory of an ally and perhaps the least woke country in Western Europe
But see this attitude is part of the problem. Trump's interest in Greenland is not irrational or sudden. It's strictly transactional. It could be arranged easily. There is no special reason why Denmark has to have it, it doesn't form a core part of the Danish identity or state. It's some land they technically own. And instead of being willing to deal at all or even producing good reasons why the deal should not be done, everyone says, "it's our sovereign territory!" Well, yeah, can we do a deal about it? "It's ours! Not yours! You can't have it!"
There has been a total refusal to understand America's motivations as anything except some kind of ur-bully instinct. Now in the spirit of good will and good discussion, sure, I can admit that Trump's tone becomes hostile and threatening. But this is only because Denmark and Europe refuse to negotiate in the first place. Refuse to even consider it. What threat does it pose to Denmark to make a deal? It's their "sovereign territory"? That's not a good reason actually, that's declaring a priori some kind of status quo as an inviolable metaphysical truth. It doesn't actually violate the dignity of the Danish people to propose swapping some land. It's a kind of TDS, of a kind with when Trump warned the Germans of their dependence on Russian gas and they laughed at him.
Europe wants to act as though America is totally irrational but it doesn't seem as though Europe is rational either. This is why, when you say, "please consider what it might say about America's recent behavior," nobody is interested. People support a theocratic regime over Trump because they think Trump is mean? They want Iran to win and cripple the global energy market so Trump suffers a loss? That's not rational. It's not the product of a rational mind. Irrational people are not going to prod us to introspect, except maybe to consider if we need to change our behavior to avoid their erratic behavior.
Shakes
5d ago
It sounds like you don't understand war or even the concept of violence. It's not about what we "look like" as if reality is parsed through the feminine consensus mechanism. This is war. You broke one of our most sacred taboos so now we are going to kill you. Anything beneath that is just playacting. And if you're not willing to go to kill* for what you believe in then you don't really believe in it.
* Or die. True pacifism is the other side of this coin.
Shakes
5d ago
Israel is obviously not part of the Western civilization, it's an older and completely distinct tradition
Israel is a settler state run by the grandchildren of European Jews. Perhaps it's diverged perhaps the Seph migrant influence was too great perhaps proximity to the Arabs is too much. But even if we adopt some Spenglerian definition of Western Civilization rooted in the Medieval Experience and let's even adopt the Khazarian hypothesis for the sake of argument and the Jews really have nothing to do with the shared root of Christianity and their influence on European-American-European history can be dismissed as a foreign one -- what are we talking about? What does Trump praising two Jews have to do with whether American is Western or not?
Consider Jung:
Jung is hysterical, Teddy Roosevelt's laugh is an expression of the primordial Negro? (Did Jung even meet Roosevelt? I can't decide if it's funnier to imagine Jung standing in a corner at a party seething while an American laughs, or whether it's funnier to imagine him hyperventilating over a newspaper caricature where Roosevelt is drawn with bugged-out eyes and a wide grin.)
Jung is so ridiculous I want to try to construct another argument so I can at least respond with some kind of decorum: Western Civilization has always been open to influence from the foreign. The British had India, the French Morocco etc. There's nothing unique in principle about America being influenced by the blacks. (America at the time Jung was writing was also 90% white.) The argument that the "transplantation to a primitive soil" is a definitive "break" is maybe stronger, but this is then an argument that falls apart if it generalizes: What of Canada, Australia, New Zealand, etc.? Can no colony planted by the West be called Western? Or is there something special about America? (Well, there is, but it's not anything as crude as that.)
And generally Trump is very clearly a representative of Middle Eastern culture, what with his extended family nepotism, corruption, bling, low-inhibition behavior, and yes, Israeli ties.
Sounds like Agamemnon, sounds like Napoleon. Trump isn't Israeli, his family is German and Scottish, his grandfather built the family fortune running a saloon in Gold Rush Yukon Canada. That's just what New Yorkers are like. I don't think Western Civilization has some special claim to inhibited behavior and a disdain for bling.
It's just that, not being your kin, the Western Civilization doesn't owe you shit. Worse, you're engaged in zero sum competition against it, trying to annex its lands, steal its markets, offload consequences of your tribal conflicts on it, rope it into your weird theologically motivated wars etc etc. You're not providing enough value to justify further tolerance of this behavior from an alien society.
I really can't respond to every point thoroughly point-by-point or this my response will become even more unwieldly and unreadable, but I have to ask: What about you talking about? Western Civilization is now against "weird theologically motivated wars"? -- since when? (You should also stop believing every news article you read about how the Americans are doing this to bring about the end world or whatever, that's almost a disqualifying level of credulity, by the way.) Or that America is engaged in "zero sum competition" against Europe (stop putting tariffs on our goods!) and "trying to annex its lands". (I guess the argument that crossing the ocean represents a break between Europe and America doesn't apply to Denmark and Greenland? I can only assume you're referring to America asking for Greenland and the Europeans hallucinating a war.) Moreover: What are you even talking about? "Western Civilization" owes America a lot unless your belief is that everything would have been better off if America didn't intervene in 1941 or had just let the Commies win. Maybe Communist Italy wouldn't have been so bad, the reds destroyed the foodways of Russia but not those in China so maybe Italy would still have churches and bread. Well, we don't have to find out because America has been paying for Europe's defense now for 80 years. And the thanks we get is being told off about it. We're not providing enough value? Enough value? What are you even talking about?
Shakes
5d ago
In Washington DC, Polymarket just opened the world's first bar dedicated to monitoring the situation.
We've all been debating this here and have concluded it's not a real bar. It's a "pop-up" being hosted in another bar that will last for one weekend, i.e. a themed party. Kudos to them for the viral marketing bit, everyone wants to go.
TL;DR: Wokeness is not dead yet. It might be wobbling at the top, but it is marching triumphantly across America.
Not only is this not wokeness as such but it's appeal to the lower classes makes it less likely to succeed at the top. Woke is downwardly mobile, the upwardly mobile will all adopt some new signifiers. This is just what happens when a movement burns through society.
Shakes
5d ago
Is the argument here that Jews are not part of Western Civilization? Trump praised Mark Levin on social media therefore America has severed all ties to Rome. Or is the argument that you don’t like America?
Sure, whatever, America is not part of Western Civlization, Americans can’t do rationalism or science, we lost them in translation. Let’s call America something new, it’s “Bestern Civilization” which is way better than those fuddy-duddy Old World Europeans with all that learnin’, or as I like to call it “Worsten Civilization”.
Now I advance the argument that Bestern Civilization is better than the Third world, and better than Iran, so I support our moral claims against theirs etc. etc. etc. etc.
Shakes
6d ago
We are not the world's police.
Who patrols the sea lanes? Who keeps the oil flowing? When Russia invades Georgia or Ukraine, which country does the world turn to do something?
Why should the US be responsible for defending London? The British should be able to defend themselves. I'm all for alliances, defense agreements, etc but if a country can't handle themselves then we should be able to tell them to fuck off.
This is just words, it doesn't mean anything. You're for alliances that help British defense but they "should be able to defend themselves". Well which is it, should we help them or should they help themselves? This is the question I posed in the first place. You have to actually draw a line somewhere.
If you leave the US and travel to Assaultistan and get assaulted, well too bad.
The example was Americans traveling to Israel getting assaulted by Iran.
Shakes
6d ago
This is like if I said that men are taller than woman and you said, no way, the tallest person I know is a woman, she's 6'5.
Shakes
6d ago
Most important for what?
Income, status, happiness, grades, romantic success, job hunting, everything. It's a pretty consistent finding in social research that people treat you better when you're more attractive. People treat you differently when you're good-looking. They give you things. They take your ideas more seriously. They're nicer.
For developing a soul-deep bond with someone you'd enjoy talking to every day for the rest of your life…
Being physically attracted to someone is an extreme prerequisite for wanting to spend the rest of your life with them.
Shakes
6d ago
Western Civilization is better than the Third World and America is better than Iran. Even for all our flaws America at her best is and can be a force for good. Putting America and Iran on the same moral plane is actually a form of weakness because -- well, if it's all the same anyways who cares if Iran conquers? Who cares if barbarism or civilization prevails? It's all predicated on violence anyways right? Well no, I assert that the ends towards which I apply violence are actually more moral than theirs. I do prefer my civilization to theirs. I'm not a neutral third-party observer, I'm not a nihilist. My values are better than theirs and it's justified for me to use violence to defend what's mine.
Shakes
6d ago
Oh well now the story is Iran just hates us for no reason
I know why Iran hates us and it's even rational within the context of enmity. But I also don't care. I'm not taking the perspective of some neutral third-party, I'm taking the American side, I'm American. Iran won't absolve me of their hatred just because I'm critical of some things we've done in the Middle East. And until Iran makes peace with us even if Israel disappeared tomorrow or we dropped all support, Iran would still be our enemy and still hate us.
My enmity toward the Iranian regime does not dissolve on learning why they are hostile to me. That's actually not how we break the cycle of violence. Either we shake hands and make peace or someone has to surrender.
If we accept that countries that host US soldiers are fair targets then this proves my point: all of Iran's neighbors were already hosting US soldiers and they have no sympathy for Iran.
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