Is your position here is that if we get attacked by a foreign adversary it is because we deserve it? [Edit to add – if Russia could have avoided having to worry about such things if it didn't pick fights with foreign countries, does that mean Ukraine doesn't have to worry about it, in your view?]
I don't think that can be anything but a straw man of your actual position, but – it really doesn't matter whether Iran or Russia were in the right or not, we need to pay close attention to the conflicts going on around the world or risk learning their lessons the hard way.
(JD Vance if you're reading this get Hesgeth to fire a five star every month until we have soft cover around all of our strategic bombers.)
Shrike
5mo ago
Right, this is the other problem. Imagine if Rhode Island unilaterally declared it was giving residency (but not citizenship!) to everyone in India and instantly gained a supermajority in the electoral college.
This is obviously crazy and it doesn't seem like a good idea to say "well no this is fine as long as you fly millions of Indians to Rhode Island."
Shrike
5mo ago
Are they upset about illegal immigrants in their communities? If so, letting California be a sanctuary could actually help them, as more ICE resources could be dedicated to their areas and some illegals would leave and go to California.
Right, but this leads to a couple of things logically
-
the states that don't want the illegals will want to cut off any potential indirect federal subsidies to the illegals, because it makes no sense for them to help pay for aliens when they aren't even receiving any e.g. tax benefits. This means fights over things like "public school funding" and "welfare funding."
-
internal border checkpoints.
Maybe this is compatible with a United States, but I think in many ways it vibes as being less "united" than the European Union.
If they're upset about illegals living in blue communities many hundreds of miles away, then no compromise is possible.
One of the things that's been proven dramatically twice over the past few weeks is that if you don't control your borders adequately then hostile enemy security services will infiltrate your country and use inexpensive one-way attack munitions to blow up your strategic assets. It's not really unreasonable for red states in a collateral security agreement with blue states to want to prevent this outcome.
Shrike
5mo ago
Of course there are perhaps more moral parallels with the extreme abolitionists, but in terms of contempt for the constitution, federal authority, and inability to understand the game theory of their opponents, the anti-ice protestors remind me a lot more of Jeff Davis and Robert Toombs than William Lloyd Garrison or Abe Lincoln.
William Lloyd Garrison burned a copy of the Constitution while calling it "an agreement with hell." In many ways I think the radical pro-slavery South Carolinian Fire-Eaters gave the other side a free win by splitting from the USA first, saving the radical abolitionists from the unpopular position of "destroy the Constitution and abolish slavery by any means."
I see a lot of parallels between the South's position in the 1850s and perhaps surprisingly the pro-immigration crowd in California/other Blue States.
While I understand where you're coming from (and wouldn't necessarily disagree in some respects) I actually think their position is closer to the North's in a specific aspect that is under-discussed.
A lot of the anger in the North towards the South wasn't due to the abstracted question of slavery, it was because slaves would escape from the South to the North, settle someplace like Massachusetts that would welcome escaped slaves, and build a new life for themselves...until federal officials showed up, tore them away from their family or friends, and returned them to the South, as was required by the Constitution. What caused the South to secede wasn't that the Constitution didn't favor their position, it was that they were getting locked out of conventional power by the more numerous free states (that's why South Carolina bailed when they did, after it became clear the federal government was going to be hostile to them due to a presidential election, even though the pro-slavey side had been racking up Wins like the Dred Scott decision just a few years earlier. (In this respect, I think your blue-states-as-South analogy is arguably very apt: the center of gravity in the electoral college is shifting redder and redder every census, and the Supreme Court's decisions haven't been cutting towards the blue states either.)
Interestingly, the Lincoln-Douglas debates saw the introduction by Douglas of the "Freeport Doctrine" which essentially said that even when slavery could not be legally prohibited, if the local government exercised its authority in such a way as to be inimical to slavery it would constitute a de facto ban.
It seems pretty clear to me that the blue states (or at least some of them) have been running their own version of the Freeport Doctrine as regards illegal immigrants and get upset about ICE for much the same reasons as Northerners were upset about slave catchers. And while that might function for a while, it seems unlikely that the United States can survive with each state having its own immigration policy any more than it could survive half slave and half free. Returning to your casting, it seems to me that the administration is quite content to dangle Fort Sumter in front of the other side, not necessarily in terms of secession but just in the reality that violent demonstration against the governmental authorities will radicalize reds and blues, but it seems plausible to have a net effect that favors the administration's position. Perhaps just as firing on Fort Sumter gave the abolitionists on a platter what they otherwise were arguably decades away from being able to seize by conventional political means, so too the protests against ICE in California (no matter how popular they are in California) will enable the Trump administration's previously radical push to aggressively deport illegal immigrants writ large.
Are there other examples that you can think of where the attention span and deep thought that Postman aspires to have helped cities/nations get through tough political challenges?
Off the top of my head, the Revolutionary War might be the best example. Unlike other examples (such as World War Two) the Founding Fathers were having to make up a lot as they went along because they had to create the institutions they needed to be a nation as they went (yes I know the state Congresses were already a thing, so there was actually less of a jump there than one might think, but still!) and from what I can tell they did a lot of it on sheer "I have read history for 1000 hours and we're remaking the Roman Republic from scratch but better this time" energy. (Back to the Civil War: the South actually aspired to emulate the success of the American Revolution and saw their secession as an ideological successor but failed in part because George Washington could afford to retreat from the British in a way that a slaveholding agrarian state fighting for its independence against a neighboring country could not.)
Shrike
5mo ago
Technically noticeable, but barely! Very interesting if true.
If I had to guess there's probably better ways to make farm work attractive, too, besides that – the article says that the average wage is $28/hour right now. For instance, normalizing shorter workdays (two shifts) or work weeks and paying more might generate a lot more interest and keep costs lower than simply quadrupling wages. But I'm spitballing (and not terribly familiar with what's normal in big ag right now anyway).
Shrike
5mo ago
I don't actually believe this but it definitely seems possible that the markets clear at prices that would be noticeably bad for the consumer.
Shrike
5mo ago
We don't have to speculate, though, we know that's very literally an 80/20 issue in favor continuing to fund social welfare programs.
Shrike
5mo ago
You can see how running for office as "that insurer who denied you the care that you wanted" might not be popular even if it is fiscally smart.
Shrike
5mo ago
A lot of Americans who aren't part of those groups will be taking care of those groups if Social Security and Medicare are cut.
Shrike
5mo ago
I think it's easy to see infighting and assume it's a sign of weakness. It's only a sign of weakness if it isn't handled properly. If Trump publicly "wins" the fight, it consolidates power around Trump as The Sole King. (And I think this is what will happen - Musk is definitely a live player but I don't think he has the proper levers in this situation).
Over the longer term, Trump consolidating power into the party could prove to be a weakness, simply because he's not going to be around forever, and after that the party could devolve into infighting. So perhaps the Western Right is in trouble over the long term. But this was always a possibility, and getting some of that infighting "worked through" now while Trump is still around to dictate winners and losers might actually help the right get some of that infighting sorted out before, making them stronger in the post-Trump stage.
Elon calling for a party that supports the 80% of Americans is sort of funny - balancing the budget [inevitably: by nuking Social Security/Medicaid/Medicare] might be good and necessary, but it's not an 80% position. Socially conservative and yet fiscally liberal is actually the closest thing there is to an American consensus, and right now Trump occupies that high ground.
Shrike
5mo ago
You don't think Trump v. Hawaii is instructive here?
Shrike
5mo ago
A 3.5 generation aircraft would be something like a late-model Phantom
FWIW, Wikipedia suggests that the Chinese definition of 3rd generation is different from that of the West, with the Su-30 (which Nambiar mentioned) being a 3.5 generation fighter. While it's quite possible that Nambiar is making ridiculous claims, it seems a bit more likely to me that he is using the PLA fighter generation definition...although that doesn't preclude making ridiculous claims – amusingly Wikipedia thinks that the Rafale would also be a 3.5 generation aircraft under that scheme, and I personally don't think the Rafale is exactly all that compared to an Su-35, particularly not with the original PESA array, although it looks like the Indians got the AESA variant.
Shrike
5mo ago
Virtues are dead so there is no point in up holding them.
I disagree with this. It's good to be personally virtuous.
If (for the sake of argument) "the system" truly is broken and it needs someone who can operate outside of the rules, bending or breaking them at times, even getting his hands dirty, then the necessity of that is worth considering. But the aspiration behind that should be returning to an era where virtue is rewarded, not creating an extraordinary state where the system being broken is acceptable.
Shrike
5mo ago
Exploding or minimizing the definition of "corruption" largely seem like post-hoc justifications for bad behavior rather than genuine attempts to understand the issue.
Yes. As I said, it's a motte-and-bailey issue, and it is to the advantage of both sides to accuse the other side of corruption while suggesting that their side is blameless under the more narrow definition. But after decades of this, it is not surprising that "populists" think that there is a massive corruption problem. Populists read the mainstream media too.
If the valences were reversed, e.g. if Hunter Biden received a $200M jet and gave it to Joe, do you think Republicans would make a stink about it? I certainly do.
Yes. We don't have to ask this question hypothetically.
Shrike
5mo ago
Populists have hallucinated that there's massive amounts of corruption already going on
"Corruption" is itself a motte/bailey issue, because on the one hand there is the general (and nonspecific idea) of "dishonest gain/graft/abuse of power" and on the other is the very specific criteria of "that's illegal." And when you're defending, the question is "is this legal" and when it's the other side doing it the question is "does this seem at least a little bit sketchy to the reporter with a deadline."
So everything alleged in the NYT article [AFAIK, sans insider trading] is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt, just as a major defense contractor making a practice of hiring former Pentagon procurement officials who selected for them in contract awards is perfectly legal and therefore not corrupt.
Now - I actually think "there are massive amounts of corruption going on" is a defensible position. Just look at the acknowledged and prosecuted cases in the defense industry, which publicly produces major malfeasance with gigantic price tags roughly once a decade.
But whether the Fat Leonard scandal or similar incidents pegs as "massive" to you depends a lot on if you are outraged at a few tens of millions of dollars here or there or consider that the cost of doing business. And when discussing "corruption" people alleging it often go beyond cases that result in a successful prosecution. Look at the problems with falsification of data, plagiarism, and non-replication in the academic community. Is this "corruption"? I would say yes, at least with the fraudulent data cases - abusing your position to accept money and then producing a fraudulent product should count as corruption, no? Yet the issue becomes fuzzier in the less blatant cases (is accepting money to make a shoddy study corruption? Is intentional plagiarism? Inadvertent plagiarism?) What about setting up a nonprofit as your own personal piggy bank (examples can be trotted forth on both sides) - the man on the street likely answers "yes" even though the behavior is (or can be) quite legal.
In short,
- There are and have been massive amounts of corruption measured in absolute values, but it's easy to flip back and forth from absolute numbers to percentages based on whether or not you're trying to score points or defend your own goal.
- Unless people agree on what specifically "corruption" means, there's just going to be an endless roundabout of "my politicians earned the money from their businesses and nonprofits while yours were doing it in the service of corrupt Eastern European oligarchs."
- Neither side really wants to agree on any one definition of corruption because that would either constitute agreeing to look bad, or agreeing to stop accusing the other side of being corrupt (since most cases of alleged corruption are not prosecuted and may not even be illegal.)
Shrike
6mo ago
Antibiotics - As far as I know, there is nothing about penicillin as an antibiotic agent that could not have hypothetically been developed and systematized 2000 years ago
If this had happened, would we know? What if overuse caused antibiotic resistance and caused it to be abandoned?
I'm not saying I believe this, I just find it interesting to ponder.
Natural selection
I seem to recall that the idea of common descent (which might imply or include natural selection?) was known to the ancient Greeks. I don't recall the details, though!
Shrike
6mo ago
This is uncharted territory.
I don't think this is entirely true – my understanding is that a lack of population growth is considered a contributor to the decline of the Roman Empire, and I suspect (although I haven't put intense study into the issue) that similar factors may have contributed to poor French performance in the Second World War as well. I think there are distinguishing factors in all of these cases, but to the extent that we have historical analogies, they give us cold comfort.
they are consistently graduating more and more highly educated workers
And yet it is unable to employ all of those workers – the United States has a better youth employment rate than China (even after China "recalculated" their data to make it look better). Perhaps you and Faceh are focusing on the wrong Chinese employment problem.
Shrike
6mo ago
I actually tend to agree that social justice warriors are downstream of Christianity, but I don't think this is a sufficiently nuanced portrait of what Christianity teaches. Yes, it criticizes the rich and strong, but also the lazy and the lawbreaker. The Biblical solution to lazy people who refuse to work? Let them not eat. The Biblical solution to bad people who bring destruction? A wrathful sword.
Obviously there's some debate among Christians on these topics – some would disagree with me. (And it is true that many early church fathers were very pacifistic, although they were being persecuted by their enemies and largely did not have to deal with the problems of power; it's not surprising that the emphasis of the church changed when their circumstances did.)
But I don't think, historically, Christians were okay with executing and imprisoning criminals just because they aren't good at being Christians (although, yes, Christians are often bad at following Scripture's teachings.) I think it's pretty natural to read the parts of Scripture dealing with justice and go "...yeah it's totally fine to use lawful force to suppress evil" and do it.
TLDR; while non-pacifistic Christianity might be wrong, I don't think that it is hypocritical.
Shrike
6mo ago
The good-ish news is that (as I've pointed out before) the actual AI on weapons will fall into the simplish camp, because you really do not need or want your munition seekerhead or what have you to know the entire corpus of the Internet or have the reasoning powers of a PhD.
Not that this necessarily means there are no concerns about an AI that's 2000x smarter than people, mind you!
Shrike
6mo ago
Seems more parsimonious to believe that humans as a general rule actually have few-to-no moral qualms about mass murder as long as it fits into what you might call a mammalian herd strategy.
This is not saying that humans have no moral instincts simply because moral taboos are sometimes violated but rather than the moral taboos about mass murder apply only weakly if at all to group enemies.
However, I probably should back up a bit here - I've been using "mass murder" very much in the context of group warfare which is very different from mass murder in a serial killer sense, but the latter is much closer to the actual meaning of the word "murder." If your position is that Genghis Khan doesn't count as a mass murderer but Hitler does, my position is at least closer to yours than I conceived.
Shrike
6mo ago
humans' moral instincts (telling them that mass murder is wrong)
This is not a human moral instinct. Humans are quite comfortable with mass murder. That's why we've done it repeatedly (that, and it's a very good strategy).
(I suppose we can argue about whether or not something is a "human moral instinct" if it's not shared by all humans. And it is true that some humans are uncomfortable with mass murder. But the fact remains that mass murder is a very typical human behavior.)
Shrike
6mo ago
I'd just add that the New Testament is actually very skeptical of wealth (there's a strong connection made at points between the wealthy and the oppressors) and the church is condemned for showing partiality to those who are wealthy. So it's interesting because it's not really proto-communist-egalitarian-paradise but neither does it succumb to a sort of "will-to-power" fantasy where strength or power are to be privileged. Really what's elevated is moral goodness and wisdom.
Shrike
6mo ago
Is not the doctrinal communist ideal -- the universal fraternity of man, sacrifice for those who are in need, "the last shall be first" -- ultimately just an expression of universal Christian love?
Interestingly from what I can tell the "proto-Christian-communism" was within the Christian community - and it came with rules.
Besides Acts 2 (where the holding of "all things in common" was within the church) see for instance Galatians 6:10 ("...let us do good to everyone, and especially to those who are of the household of faith.") and 1st Timothy 5, which gives these instructions for granting charity to windows: "Let a widow be enrolled if she is not less than sixty years of age, having been the wife of one husband, and having a reputation for good works: if she has brought up children, has shown hospitality, has washed the feet of the saints, has cared for the afflicted, and has devoted herself to every good work."
So while Christianity definitely has an idea of the "universal fraternity of man" within Scripture the brotherhood of believers is privileged. That's not to say that charitable works to nonbelievers are forbidden, but it's not the communist ideal of the Universal Brotherhood of Man (...or perhaps it is similar, in the sense that the Communist Universal Brotherhood of Man was in practice often restricted to, well, Communists.)
Okay, so if that's true then why do you then say in the very next paragraph
and then later
?
It seems to me that obviously either nations with nuclear warheads can be threatened, in which case they can be deterred. Or they can't be, in which case the United States (and Israel) has nothing to worry about. But you seem to be trying to have it both ways!
Look, I actually would like to remove the Iranian regime, and I don't particularly want Iran to get nuclear weapons.
But there are (at least) three things that need to be considered. (Just going to ignore for the moment the legal problems with preemptively striking another nation, but suffice to say that as I understand it it's legally problematic, to the extent that international law means anything.)
FIRST, the United States does not have infinite capacity to do things. If we actually want to fight China, which we've said we want to be able to do publicly, that means very specifically that we cannot write blank checks where ballistic missile interceptors, smart munitions, etc. are involved. We are already arguably under-equipped to deal with the very real Chinese threat, which will likely be a more serious threat to American hegemony than anything that Iran can do. And part of the reason we are under-equipped to fight China is because we canceled procurement and research programs throughout the Global War on Terror to fund the Global War on Terror – effectively eating our own seed corn.
And the only reliable way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is regime change. (And even then...I wouldn't exactly consider it "reliable.") Which will either require local Iranian collaborators (in which case Israel is likely already better situated than the United States to procure them) or "someone" (the United States) to invade and pacify the country. (Or some third, arguably worse option, like creating a massive humanitarian crisis to cause the country to collapse entirely). So asking the United States to "make sure Iran doesn't get a nuclear weapon" is arguably a much more serious ask than our last Middle Eastern incursion, depending on how serious you are about it
SECONDLY, the United States declining to enter the fight may actually in some ways be good for Israel because it could force Iran to withhold a portion of its offensive weapons as a deterrent package. If the United States intervenes at a massive level to accomplish regime change, there's really no point in Iran not firing every last missile that it has. So the US standing out is forcing Iran to make choices about whether or not to empty out its war reserve. Since Israel appears to be successfully hunting Iranian ballistic missile on the ground, this hesitation likely makes the Iranian ballistic missile stockpile less effective (assuming a fixed capacity to destroy ballistic missiles on the ground, the Israelis will destroy a larger number of ballistic missiles on the ground over time if fewer numbers are ordered to launch any given salvo).
FINALLY, the strategic interest of the United States in the conflict lies, as you suggest, in removing Iranian nuclear capability. Trump hopes to do that via negotiation. Israel's actions may force Iran back to the negotiating table, in which case US involvement would be counterproductive (since it may drive Iran away from the negotiating table). Currently the good cop/bad cop (or, if you prefer, Great Satan/Little Satan) routine seems to be worth a shot.
If the good cop/bad cop routine fails, then – while it is in the interest of Israel to push for US involvement as early an often as possible in order to decrease the cost of the conflict on Israel – it is in the interest of the United States to make Israel bear as much of the burden as possible. (We've poured billions of dollars into their ballistic missile defense, it's not as if we are obliged to give them a carrier strike group, too!) If Israel conducts the war successfully, they may reduce the cost of a limited US intervention (destroying the buried nuclear facilities with bunker busters – although it's possible that some of them are buried even too deeply for oversized US ordinance!) to near-zero. While this by itself likely cannot terminate Iran's nuclear program – as they have built up nuclear capability once, we should presume they can do it a second time – it can likely scrap a lot of difficult and expense work and (presumably) set them back for a while. Kicking the can down the road, but sometimes that's all you can do – and it might be all that's necessary. The Iranian regime may not last forever.
Given the above, it seems to me that it would be unwise for the United States to do anything at this point besides let things play out. Diplomacy may still work. If Israel can actually do "everything except the MOP up" then, yeah, sending them a dozen MOPs [I think technically Israel could deliver them via C-130, which would be pretty funny] or whatever is probably a decent deal for the US. Shooting down a few Iranian ballistic missiles to test our capabilities is also probably smart. But what exactly is the US interest in intervening right now and potentially foreclosing a path to bringing Iran to the table?
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