Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
No bio...
User ID: 1226
Could Zelenskyy not keep his pride contained for a few hours?
Counterpoint: could Trump not keep Putin's dick out of his mouth for a few hours? Saying Zelenskyy ought to be more polite is a tactical remark at best, and given that Trump and Vance appear to have been spoiling for a fight I'm not sure it would have mattered. Conversely, Trump apologists are continually telling me that I ought to respect Trump as president of the United States, but also that he can't be held responsible for what he says or does. If he's president of the United States he ought to act like it.
Ukraine needs the US much more than the US needs Ukraine.
I don't think people grasp that this goes way beyond Ukraine. This is just the latest in an escalating series of actions from Trump demonstrating to American allies that the alliances are dead - that Trump will abandon American commitments on a whim and prefers Russia to NATO. Even if the next president is a hardcore internationalist, everyone is going to remember the fact that America elected Donald Trump and the rest of the GOP fell in line behind his every temper tantrum.
And yes, the US does need its allies. It's not 1941. Autarky is retarded, and we're going to quickly find it's a lot harder to strongarm the rest of the world than have friendly negotiations.
I find it pretty distasteful to give up anthropology to positive feedback loops, and let our history become a mockery when it is within one's power to just raze it.
The fundamental problem the Red Tribe/American conservatism faces is a culture of proud, resentful ignorance. They can't or won't produce knowledge and they distrust anyone who does. They don't want to become librarians or museum curators or anthropologists. The best they can manage is the occasional court historian or renegade economist, chosen more for partisan loyalty than academic achievement and quite likely to be a defector. The effect is this bizarre arrangement where rather than produce conservative thought, they are demanding liberals think conservative thoughts for them.
Occasionally rightists will plead weakness to rationalize their lack of intellectual productivity, but this is nonsense. They have had plenty of money, plenty of political power, and a broad base of support. Unless we accept the Trace-Hanania thesis that they literally just lack human capital, we're left with the conclusion that the right-wing withdrawal from intellectual spaces is a sort of distributed choice. Razing institutions because you can't be bothered to make your case is just barbarism.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
Tangential: the 'total ideological capture of the academy' by the left is in significant part a product of right-wing anti-intellectualism. If you're going to adopt the position that anything but business, finance, and engineering are parasitic and quite possibly degenerate, it will not be surprising that a) existing academics shift away from you b) smart conservatives avoid academia* in favor of business, finance, and engineering and new academics overwhelmingly lean left c) a feedback loop emerges where conservatives and academics increasingly view each other with hostility because the former (largely correctly) believe the latter don't share their values and the latter (largely correctly) believe the former want to destroy them.
*(This is also why American conservatism is intellectually bankrupt and relies on Catholics, a small number of converts, and borrowing critiques from woke-critical centrists for basically all of their intellectual firepower)
the people who pull the strings in the federal government seem to be okay with defacto open borders.
Easy: the US does not have de facto open borders. "De facto open borders" is a mood expression of nativists who don't like current state of immigration enforcement. If we actually had de facto open borders, immigration would be unfathomably higher.
The people who "pull the strings" are wedged because there's no magic solutions to the material factors driving Latino migration. Nobody wants to spend the exorbitant sums it would require to actually physically secure the southern border. Nobody is willing to countenance just shooting them. Unfucking Latin America to the point where you don't have tens of millions of people who'd rather be an illegal or quasi-legal day laborer in a country where half the people hate them than stay where they are is a nontrivial exercise, and there isn't much support for that either (try and sell the guy who wants to deport all the Mexicans on spending trillions of dollars failing to develop Latin America). On top of that, the US is like most developed countries in that it has an aging native population that demands increasingly high standards of post-retirement living at the same time the retiree-worker ratio is getting worse, so it also just needs immigrant labor.
New York and other cities are howling about migrants being bussed into their communities, but so far seem reluctant to change their sanctuary city policies.
NY and other blue states already absorb the majority of immigrants, including illegal immigrants and asylum seekers. The central objection remains that the migrant bussing project is done in a maximally disruptive and uncooperative way.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Sorry for the heat, but it's probably more honest than what you usually get.
No, I actually hear stuff like this on the regular from gainfully employed relatives and acquaintances, loudly telling anyone who will listen how they're not allowed to speak their mind for fear of dire consequences.
For reasons that I don't understand, a lot of right-wingers simultaneously openly, viciously loathe liberals but also seem to crave their respect and approval.
It reinforces my view that Trump is an intemperate, childish bully who worships power and is a massive Russia simp. I don't think Trump needs to be a Russian asset - though he could scarcely be doing a better job if he was - when he clearly admires and defers to Putin.
The "America First" mindset is nonsense from petulant idiots whose core grievance seems to be that our allies don't lick our boots hard enough. Literally weakening America for the sake of wounded pride (and absolute children are going to applaud this because this is their idea of "strong leadership").
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
Otherwise, "we're a sanctuary city so long as none of the alleged refugees turn up on our doorstep" is just virtue signalling.
What share of illegal immigrant/asylum seekers/etc... do you think wind up in California? (Spoilers: it's a lot, considerably more than Texas)
LA and the state of CA have perfectly adequate reasons to oppose migrant busing without exposing themselves as secretly anti-immigrant hypocrites:
- lack of coordination from TX government
- Denying precedent for the principle that TX can shuttle indigents or undesirables to CA in lieu of handling them itself
- Ideological belief that shuttling migrants around is unethical.
The preponderance of evidence suggests this is an exercise in lib-owning, so it really shouldn't be surprising that liberal governing bodies are opposed to it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I think a lot of the outrage about "European ingratitude" from the American right is caused by right wingers failing to realize that European 2025 is not the Europe of 1950, or even 1990.
As I said downthread: a lot of the outrage about "European ingratitude" is caused by a) an imaginary Frenchman that lives rent-free in the heads of many red tribers b) taking a world that defers to American interests for granted.
To steal a turn of phrase, America is a country afflicted by "big country autism". Most Americans have no idea what other countries are like and mostly don't think (or care) about them. The average American voter has no real strong opinions on foreign policy beyond liking flashy, muscular actions because 'Murica. This has led to a half century of foreign policy that is, outside of a few big wars, mostly technocratic. I think the idea that American conservatives are outraged by some dissonance between their expectations of Europe and reality is faintly comical.
This explanation is certainly too pat, and there's more nuance to be explored, but do you think this is more or less the direction in which things are heading?
No. I think the central ideological divergence is within the United States, between Trumpian nationalists (who view European nations as unruly vassals who need fall in line and be grateful for whatever they get) and internationalists/atlanticists (who view European nations as strategic and ideological partners who need to led, not commanded). This is almost entirely an elite conflict, with voters either tuning out entirely or following the lead of their political leaders.
Within Europe, this mostly seems to come down to the question of what you think about the US' long term reliability, which is very much a developing situation. Right now, European nations cede at lot of de facto sovereignty to the US (e.g. on trade and foreign policy) in exchange for US security guarantees, but Trump's erratic, Russophilic behavior combined with the cultlike support he receives within his own party calls into question whether or not those guarantees will actually be matched. Right now the only NATO country to have invoked Article 5 is the United States and the current president has strongly hinted that he wouldn't reciprocate. Of course, given how erratic Trump is this could all change in a week. It's possible that assurances are being made behind the scenes that grandpa won't be allowed to do anything too disruptive (I wouldn't count on it though - per above, Trump is the party establishment).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2yr ago
Jan. 6 detainees say a D.C. jail is so awful that they'd like a transfer to Guantanamo
Glossing over the performative nature of this gesture, you'd think the travails of the Jan. 6 rioters would engender a degree of sympathy for criminal justice reformers. Instead, the reaction seems to be outrage that Upstanding Citizens like themselves should be subject to the same conditions as common criminals.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
Does anyone have anything to say about the OBBB being passed
Nothing that wouldn't make me sound like a broken record: an unparalleled triumph of sycophancy, fiscal conservatism is a scam the barons use to con the peasants, dream of Argentinafication, etc...
I find it largely to defy discussion.
It definitely looks like trump is making a military force loyal to him personally because he doesn't trust the loyalty of the existing forces.
The Trump administration is run by people who are genuinely rabid xenophobes who view Hispanic day laborers as an existential threat, but I suspect this is in the back of their mind as well. Well, less of a military force per se and more of a political gendarmerie. You want someone you can count on to shoot protestors and whose fortune is tied to the regime.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
"Gulf of America" is some freedom fries-tier petulant nationalism and everyone who supports it deserves to be mocked relentlessly for their lack of dignity.
If you're a white man under 50, then you've experienced things being renamed as something that is done to your people
Speak for yourself.
Renaming thing can be good or it can be bad, because who and what we choose to honor says something about ourselves. Nor are we bound for eternity by the preferences of those who came before us. We don't expect Latvians to keep up Soviet monuments or Germans to preserve the aesthetic decisions of the Third Reich.
Renaming things that bear the names of Confederates is good, because it is a repudiation of tyranny and white supremacy. The best you can say about these men were that they were good generals (usually not even that), and we're not lacking for pillars of martial excellence that weren't traitors. Renaming things named after, say, Jefferson is bad, because while Jefferson had many less-than-admirable qualities, they're not why we honor him. I'm pretty mixed on Columbus Day, because while Columbus was pretty terrible even by the standards of the time, it's meant to be a celebration of Italian American heritage, not exploitation and genocide (though, as above, I think we could probably dredge up a less notorious alternative who was also actually American).
The Right is, of course, free to rename things, but of late the people and things they seem to want to honor have a tendency to vindicate their critics.
Also, Denali is a vastly superior name name to Mt. McKinley.
I think it's a good move
Has Trump ever done anything you didn't consider a good move?
Not sure what your point is
That they are, despite their self conception, common criminals, not some weird edge case. That if you think they don't deserve the treatment they're receiving, your problem is with how we deal with criminal suspects in general. That their attitude is fundamentally rooted in a belief that they are not supposed to be subject to the criminal justice system.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Do you ever wonder what they don't say to you, you seemingly being clearly hostile to their entire worldview
Considering that several of them are openly sexist or homophobic and routinely make outrageously bigoted comments about blacks and latinos to my face, with seemingly no expectation that I might find any of that objectionable, I can only imagine the true opinions they're hiding are that George Wallace was right.
(to be fair, at least one of them seems to grasp that it's not appropriate to openly say all our black coworkers are incompetent, but he either thinks I privately agree with him or at least trusts that since he outranks me I just have to put up with it (he's correct on that last point)).
I think you will understand this position better when you are made to bow.
What makes you think I haven't? I don't think conservatives understand that the reason their ideological adversaries are unsympathetic is not because they don't understand what it's like to have to bite your tongue, it's because many of them have had a boot up their ass their entire lives.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
the left has devalued American citizenship
What does that even mean (aside from the obvious white supremacist angle)? Citizenship is not a scarce resource.
I mean a Venezuelan gang member who's here illegally is every bit as American as you, who was born in Western Michigan, so yes, I'm quite aware of that.
What does this mean?
Anchor babies, birthright citizenship, all of that must go.
Opposing birthright citizenship is contrary to the ancient traditions of our people and thus unAmerican. But then, Erik Prince is a Dutch fifth columnist and not to be trusted.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
His Excellency Joe Biden
I believe you mean Generalissimo Biden.
Thoughts?
I'm not a theologist, but I'm pretty sure this means that until next Easter only trans people get into heaven.
No, seriously. You yourself note that this is a coincidence. I do find it to be a humorous example of how Republicans will complain about grievance politics while being its most prominent practitioners.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
The Robert E Lee statue from Charlottesville has been destroyed. Liquidated, actually, and slated to be replaced with some statue for black people, which is striking symbolism of how Americans are being liquidated to be replaced by foreigners.
I can't imagine why African Americans occasionally feel unwelcome in the country of their birth.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2yr ago
The entire point of sending them to Martha's Vineyard is that it was small and ill-equipped for the problem. Specifically, previous efforts to stir shit by bussing immigrants to major cities on the eastern seaboard failed to draw attention or rile up anti-immigrant sentiment (few noticed and no one cared - little enough surprise, as these are big cities and already have very large immigrant populations, including large numbers of illegal immigrants), so it was necessary to step up the shit-stirring. The defense offered - that this is about sharing the burden that border states have unfairly been forced to shoulder* - doesn't hold up to scrutiny. GOP-run southern states have made no serious effort to arrange for the large-scale transfer of migrants or asylum seekers to northern blue states, which is what you would actually do if you were burdened and trying to redistribute it. Instead they (Abbott and DeSantis) have done it about as inefficiently as possible, sending penny packets at considerable taxpayer expense and without regard for the welfare of the people transferred. That suggests that the point was either publicly owning libs or trying to rile up nativist sentiment.
(As an aside, I will not be at all surprised if it turns out that these people agreed to transportation under false pretenses.)
*whether or not it is actually unfair is another matter, considering the flow of Federal money and economic cost-benefit analysis of immigration.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9d ago
Maybe it's cruel, morally, but I fail to see the connection with patriotism at all.
To steal a turn of phrase from someone I spoke to several years ago who was probably quoting someone else without attribution, "the truest form of patriotism is a desire to see your countrymen prosper." A political program which constantly castigates your fellows as parasites, regards their welfare with indifference, incites hate against them, or treats them as means to an end is not, in this paradigm, at all patriotic.
As evidenced by the whole patriotism thing: a Republican is quite literally less likely to listen to you, because they will get the impression that you hate the country and hate their values.
I think this is backwards: American conservatives want to define patriotism as equivalent to conservativism. Patriots must be conservative; conservatives cannot be unpatriotic; liberals are unpatriotic by dint of their politics. This is fundamentally unworkable because it is a paradigm that demands ideological submission as price of entry.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9mo ago
That might sound weird, given the murderous pedophile thing, but to me supporters of those theories generally just seem like they are stupid and prone to weird fantasies and LARPs but have always been that way, whereas people who are existentially shattered by Trump seem like they might have been different at one point, but then suddenly Trump appeared in the corner of their reality and traumatically inverted it into some new configuration of dimensions.
This epitomizes general differential expectations of conservatives and liberals. Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves) as lacking in agency to the point of being almost animalistic. When a conservative raves about cities are shitholes full of degenerates and criminals, that's just how they are. FEMA death camps, Birtherism, Jewish Space Lasers, etc... They're dumb, they're ignorant, they can't help themselves and we shouldn't expect anything of them. We practically talk about Trump supporters in anthropological terms with all these fucking Ohio diner ethnographies. It's on the rest of us to manage them.
Liberals, though. They're supposed to be better, smarter, more accountable. Apparently. When they think a guy who says he wants to be a dictator wants to be a dictator, they're supposed to exercise some critical thinking and realize he's not serious, that's just him being bold and masculine. They're not supposed to say West Virginia's a shithole full of drug addicts even though it objectively is. They're supposed to be adults in the room.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
the powers-that-be
There should be a requirement that if you're going to use vague and allusive terms that you define those terms so people can know who you're talking about. Don't just say 'elites' or 'the powers-that-be'. What specific people/organizations/institutions do you mean?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
And nobody is arguing that this was disrupted.
I am. I'm arguing it. Obama nominated a candidate and McConnell sat on it for a year.
it was the usual escalation that can be traced back to Bork, at the very least
Bork always gets wheeled out as the excuse, but it's total bullshit. Bork was rejected (unusual but far from unprecedented) and replaced with... another Reagan nominee. Who was confirmed. In other words, what we'd expect to happen. If McConnell had specific issues with Garland as a nominee, he should have held a hearing and voiced them. Of course, he didn't, because he didn't have a problem with Merrick Garland. He openly declared he wasn't going to consider any nominee.
You still haven't answered the question. To whom does the stolen seat belong?
The seat doesn't 'belong' to anyone because it's not a piece of property, but by long-standing American political norms it was Obama's prerogative to fill the seat. Word games and playing dumb about idiomatic use of the word 'stole' can't duck the GOP's flagrant breach of trust.
Except it was the Republicans who finally Noticed, and truly defected rather than be played for chumps.
That would imply that the Republicans weren't defecting constantly, when in fact that was pretty the standard playbook since the end of the cold war.
The riots in 2020 were triggered by one guy dying under sketchy circumstances.
This seems like a spectacular failure to grasp the deep, unresolved tension in the US over how law enforcement conducts itself. There were anti-police protests in 2014 under Obama as well. You can't attribute these things to a single police murder.
then make a big deal about fulfilling that promise.
This is not making a big deal out of enforcement. It is ostentatious cruelty (one might even say the cruelty is the point :v).
You've also got things like ICE going after valid visa holders, calling immigrants "invaders", and the DHS declaring intent to "liberate" LA from the socialists.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
The red tribe produces plenty of petroleum geologists, clergy are generally quite intelligent, has successfully engineered affirmative action for themselves in the legal profession despite the legal profession trying to do the exact opposite.
All of this just seems to me to be implicitly conceding the point. My contention, contra Hanania, is not that Red Tribers are literally stupid. It is that Red Tribers are somewhere between uninterested in and actively hostile to intellectual/cultural production (by which I mean things like scholarship or art). But they are still very much interested in those products, hence my remark that they want liberals to think conservative thoughts for them. They want (liberal) artists to create conservative-inflected art, (liberal) historians to write conservative historical narratives, etc...
I think it's correct to say that conservatives don't care about academic status and prioritize income/general social status - that's my point. Nothing wrong with that on an individual scale (I'm certainly not one to talk), but a side effect of this taken across a whole society is an extraordinarily vulgar* culture that produces little thought, little art, and can't handle critical perspectives.
*for lack of a better term. I do not mean that it is rude/inappropriate.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1yr ago
If you never hold politicians accountable you encourage corruption and tyranny. Holding politicians accountable means prosecuting them when they commit crimes.
Once prosecuting ex-politicians was on the table
We already prosecute politicians. The constant special pleading for Trump makes no sense.
Trump Derangement Syndrome Utterly Vindicated, Season 10, Episode 19.
Trump promised to act in a lawless, corrupt, and abusive manner. Lo and behold. I don't know if the cruelty is the point, but it certainly seems like a KPI.
The trouble is, of course, that admitting the TDSers were right either requires openly admitting that you're evil
Even assuming this is true, crime does not become legal because you do it really fast. The Alien Enemies Act doesn't apply, and the administration claiming they can nullify due process is textbook tyranny.
More options
Context Copy link