Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
17d ago
The cult of personality around Obama didn't hold a candle to Trump's. Obama was regularly attacked from both the left and right within his own party. You could be a Democrat in good standing and also an Obama critic. Meanwhile, in Trump's GOP absolute fealty is the bare minimum. Criticism, where it exists, is either of the 50 Stalins variety or carefully suggesting that perhaps the Tsar is being poorly advised.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
1mo ago
God-willing these lawless men who roam our streets, threatening innocent people will be identified and brought to justice.
I cannot help but feel like "either the Russians have a mind control device or else the alternative media were right about everything" is a bit of a false dichotomy. The alternative alternative hypothesis, born out by his behavior during his first term, is that Trump is a simp for authoritarians in general and Putin in particular. It doesn't take a mind control device to explain how a not-very-bright 78 year old conspiracy theorist might fall for bullshit that flatters his preferences.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
If you uncritically accept Russia's position that they have the right to dominate Ukraine, then the Ukrainians did start it by not applying their tongues to Russian boots with sufficient vigor. However, I refer you to my remark about thuggish worldviews. Russia has no more right to demand subservience from Ukraine than the US does from Canada or Mexico.
It's hard to see how a change of government in a neighboring country justifies invading them (twice!) and engaging in naked land grabs.
with generous help from the West
What exactly does this mean? The "Euromaiden was fake/astroturf" position runs aground on the absolutely massive, cross-spectrum popular participation.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
Or they replace the fired workers with Republicans and the bureaucracy goes from 95-5 to 70-30.
What's your source for Federal employees being 95% democrat?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
9mo ago
What you live in a world where corruption is already rampant and the norm? One where you are going to have to bribe your way through no matter what. Consider yourself in that situation.
What if you don't live in that world, but want an excuse to act like a bandit, so you claim that you do?
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
10mo ago
Why on earth would you jeopardise these favourable battlefields to tilt at ideological windmills that the large majority of Americans and Westerners consider sacrosanct? Bad and stupid ideas, but also bad and stupid strategy.
As a poster here (actually back on reddit, but same diff) once trenchantly observed, bigots can't help themselves. The reason people from the New Right keep getting caught out doing Nazi apologia is that the New Right is shot through with Nazi sympathizers. Maybe they're not champing at the bit for an expansionist totalitarian dictatorship, but they often think Mr. Hitler had some interesting ideas about the use of state violence to enforce racial/cultural purity and fight degeneracy.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2mo ago
The Trump admin has the power to crush Harvard. They have HUGE reasons to play ball, the things that the administration can do to them are existentially threatening.
The Trump administration has made it abundantly clear that showing your belly is the wrong move, because it won't earn you the tiniest shred of leniency. When the barbarians tell you to throw open your gates and surrender or be destroyed while you can see the smoke rising from the last city to surrender, you're not going to comply. You're going to hunker down and put out calls for aid.
Harvard has a lot of wealthy and influential alumni, and they may reasonably believe that making themselves a beacon of opposition will allow them to weather the storm more or less intact.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Trump made tariffs a cornerstone of his campaign, and he's acting on that, so there is nothing to expose.
It's exposed Trump apologists. After years of his defenders insisting we should take him seriously but not literally, it turns out he's a malicious idiot and we should have taken him literally.
I think I've solved the mystery of why the right never makes much headway with Jewish voters.
Christian countries actively ignore it and really couldn’t care less
I hazard the 'Christian' countries he is talking about are actually secular nations that merely happen to have large populations of nominally Christian residents.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I've been consistent in my view that Trump is not a Russian asset, just a simp for Putin. This is why he's not being very strategic about it - he's not acting like this because he works for Putin; he's acting like this because he likes Putin and doesn't like US allies.
A genuine Russian asset would be doing many of the same things, but they'd be trying to boil the frog and they'd be trying to be less polarizing domestically. As it is, Trump is largely calcifying anti-Russian sentiment without building any counterbalance. The pro-Russian element in the US government is essentially just Trump. And while a mad king can do a lot to trash US relationships, I would presume the Russians would be looking to sever them in a more permanent fashion.
As an American, I'm glad that after four years of pointless struggle under Biden Trump has finally taken bold steps to normalize relations with inflation.
Seriously, these tariffs are an absolutely bizarre own-goal. Yet another reminder that the people with TDS were absolutely right all along.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
A lot of American conservatives seem to be in blissful ignorance about how negatively Trump is perceived in Europe, especially given the bizarre events of the last month.
A lot of American conservatives relationship with the outside world is mediated entirely by Donald Trump and an imaginary snooty Frenchman who lives rent-free in their head. If Trump says he's made America respected again on the world stage after Biden destroyed our reputation, they're going to believe him.
Americans don't have to care what Europeans think, but a lot of them take American global standing for granted and don't grasp that a world much less friendly to American interests is possible.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
This seems like a bog-standard Republican move to gut anything that might inhibit business/financial elites as executed through the Trump admin's position that the president is functionally an elected dictator. They're probably not thinking that long term, but if they are I would hazard to guess they are wagering on an emerging Republican majority an extremely favorable position on the Supreme Court plus an electoral system/political geography heavily biased in their favor to prevent the Democrats from exercising power the same way the next time they win the presidency. A lot of Trump's ambitious executive behavior is predicated on an extremely deferential Congress, which a Democratic president is unlikely to get.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
5mo ago
What are his actual motivations?
He's in the tank for Xi Jinping
The hysterical critics were correct. Donald Trump is a thug who thinks he can extort concessions from Canada because they are weak and the US is strong. Best case he wants to get some symbolic concession in exchange for dropping the tariffs so he can tout it to his guileless supporters as proof of what a tough negotiator he is. Worst case, he's really serious about trying to use economic coercion to force Canada to accept annexation, which will almost certainly fail, but will have the added side effect of absolutely shredding American international standing. Somewhere in the middle is thinking he can force Canada to equalize the balance of trade between the two countries.
I've met people who have that energy, except 90% of them go around wrecking shit and making a mess while effete, low-agency people have to clean up after them. They're also usually incorrigible because they rarely have to deal with the consequences of "helping".
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
10d ago
Ideological submission as the price of entry is pretty normal in world historical terms
This is a tremendously underwhelming endorsement. Being exploited by brutal overlords who demand sycophantic bootlicking is pretty normal in world historical terms. Being a subsistence farming peasant is pretty normal in world historical terms. Fifty percent child mortality is pretty normal in world historical terms. I have no idea why we would accept "normal in world historical terms" when we're presently doing far better and we know we can do better still.
American conservatism(like most imperial state ideologies) is a big tent that 95% of people can fit into comfortably
In the sense that you can always be a submissive peasant with no rights worth respecting. In the sense that it actually accommodates everyone, no.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2mo ago
the tariffs have not in fact collapsed the economy, while the institutions' commitment to being paranoid ninnies about covid did.
Putting a pin in this.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
2mo ago
At least from personal experience, I suspect it's unaddressed because it's an incredibly minor problem.
It is alienating and subconsciously hostile to one’s innate sense of community when the prevalence of myriad exotic accents reaches a certain level.
Speak for yourself. I truly do not get the visceral disgust people experience from hearing other accents or languages.
Also, the Chinese nationals are totally spies for the PRC.
Really? All of them?
See, I am a China Hawk, and I think it is absolutely braindead not to siphon off every bit of human capital from them we can. The risk of the occasional PRC spy pales in comparison. You don't have to give them jobs designing ICBMs.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
Probably because during the campaign (and now, for that matter) it was routine for Trump defenders to pretend that he wasn't going to do it, that it was just big talk, take him seriously not literally, etc... Encouraging people not to believe Trump was (and is) standard practice.
"Of course he's not going to do it, that's ridiculous" -> "He said he was going to do it, what are you complaining about?"
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
3mo ago
I don’t think conservatives have been in the cultural drivers seat since at least the 1970s.
I disagree. The fact that American conservatives don't make very much art isn't especially material*, both because popular art still tended to defer to conservative sensibilities and, more importantly, because I am not just talking about art. Piecemeal challenges to conservative cultural hegemony didn't change the underlying fact that you had to convince conservatives to let you succeed and conservatives were still ultimately setting the baseline. ∃ liberals who have substantial breaks from conservative orthodoxy is not the same thing as liberals driving culture. It took 45 years to go from Stonewall to Obergfell, and that issue still isn't exactly settled. Hell, you had Prop 8 in California in 2008. The 80s were full of conservative backlash to the cultural turmoil of the 70s and the 90s were marked by Clinton's 'triangulation' strategy (i.e. pivoting right on a lot of issues) and a general sense that everything was fine, don't rock the boat.
*Although perhaps a better metaphor then would be that conservatives were in the back of the cultural limousine, being chauffeured around by liberals.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
If the US invades your country and you fight alongside the invaders, the least you could be rewarded with is protection.
A scorpion wants to cross a river but cannot swim, so it asks a frog to carry it across. The frog is willing to help because the scorpion is fighting the frog-nazis. But it hesitates, afraid that it'll be punished if the frog-nazis see it helping a scorpion. The scorpion offers to let the frog move in with it afterwards. The frog considers this argument sensible and agrees to transport the scorpion. After crossing the river, the scorpion hops on a helicopter and flies away. As the chopper takes off, the frog asks the scorpion why it changed its mind, to which the scorpion shouts back: "I just remembered I'm super racist. And besides, you're not a scorpion, so any promise I make to you doesn't really count." "But I'll die." "Damn, that shit sucks."
Then the frog goes to read a history book and learns that scorpions do this all the time.
--
When you're dealing with desperate people, there's really no cost to screwing them over except the moral injury of going back on your word. They don't have any ability to get you back and the concern that they won't work with you in the future is mostly obviated because desperate people don't have a choice but to queue up to get screwed over again and again. And the moral injury is heavily defrayed if you don't consider the people you're betraying to have moral worth.
Many Trumpists have more or less openly embraced the idea that the only people with moral value are a nebulous subset of Americans. For everyone else, it's transactional at best, if not outright malicious.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
Because it's not a stable long-term equilibrium, especially with pro-Russian US leadership rather strongly indicating they won't actually follow through on US defense commitments.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
Or is the point to "break stuff", in order to stress-test the system and find out what's actually important
If this is the theory, it strongly suggests that they're barking up the wrong tree, because government programs don't have the same feedback mechanisms (or goals) as private firms. If you shut down something important in private industry, you have the clear feedback of your company going out of business losing money. There's no analog for government funded research. Nothing is going to explode if you defund a bunch of really important basic science. The government won't collapse. It just... won't happen. The losses will take the form of foregone gains. The closest thing you'll get to financial feedback is angry people yelling about it, but that contains very little useful information.
Trying to apply start-up logic to government activities is a mistake. If you want to figure out which research is worthwhile you're going to have to do serious investigations and exercise your best judgment, but that's pretty much the opposite of 'move fast and break things'.
No, but then, Argentina is not the US.
Twitter is a billionaire vanity project (or alternatively, an influence op). It is markedly worse as a service post Musk takeover and sacking 80% of the staff hasn't made it any less unprofitable.
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