Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
26d ago
Ireland being aggressively in the tank for Palestine is not exactly new, but it is also an outlier. It certainly does not reflect American sentiment.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
27d ago
we really could be bombing a school for every ayatollah we take out and it really would change the balance much here.
That makes no sense. It's not like Iran killed 30k people (nb estimates of the ongoing Gazan war are significantly higher) so we're The Good Guys as long as we keep casualties lower than that. Collateral damage happens in war, but it cannot be justified if the war cannot be justified. If you take out one ayatollah and a hundred civilians, you need to be able to justify why that is a morally acceptable tradeoff. "He was a really bad guy" isn't it. Not when there are numerous functionally identical really bad guys available to to take over because he's just a senior cog in a machine, not a load-bearing element.
And it really has to made clear: the US is not trying to democratize Iran, so these civilian casualties cannot be justified on that front.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
27d ago
I'm not sure I see the relevance. Iran massacring tens of thousands of protestors would a strong point in favor regime change but that isn't what is happening. "We're the good guys because they're the bad guys" logic doesn't check out because not starting a war was an option. It is possible that both parties in a conflict are bad actors, and is possible that well-intentioned actors are exercising criminally poor judgment. The fact that collateral damage happens in war is why you need to think carefully and exercise judgment before going to war. Even if your adversaries are the most despicable people in history, you still have to ask yourself if starting a war will make things better.
In point of fact, we have very little reason to extend the benefit of the doubt to the current US administration. They've failed to articulate a clear purpose for war (basically everyone has offered a different rationale), but they have been openly disdainful of humanitarian concerns and dismissed democratization as a priority.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
27d ago
There is a reason that MtG imposes minimum deck sized in various formats, but generally not maximum deck sizes (beyond the practical restriction that you have to be able to physically shuffle your deck). Even without turn-one combos defaulting the win to whoever goes first, it would enable efficient, hyper linear decks to an extremely boring degree.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
27d ago
I can't speak to sentiments in Europe post 9/11, but I think this:
You do also have to understand that, just like 9/11, it is in a way nothing personal; Israelis are simply (1) abstract distant foreigners and (2) the smug overdogs who had been running circles around everyone else with impunity.
is wrong. The people celebrating had a problem with very specifically with Israel, and it was absolutely personal. Israel had been bleeding reputation for a while, and 10/7 was a momentary shot in the arm, precisely because you had a very visible group of people openly celebrating it in a way that seemed to validate Zionist critiques of anti-Zionism. They proceeded to burn all that good will and more with their conduct afterwards (not helped by Netanyahu being an extraordinarily repellent figure to all but the far right), which is when their reputation really started to tank.
"yeah, this kind of thing happens in war, just like friendly fire, it sucks but it's understandable since it's not like the US is omniscient & omnipotent".
The problem with "shit happens in war" is that, while true, it still rests on an underlying belief that the war is justified. "We accidentally bombed a school while fighting against tyranny" is easier to swallow (assuming it's credible) than "we accidentally bombed a school while carrying out a raid because we didn't like their drug importation laws."
As the USG made approximately zero effort to sell the effort to the US public and has had incoherent messaging, that belief appears not to be particularly widespread. As civilian (and, for that matter, military) casualties continue to mount, it raises the question of what aim is justifying them. By the Trump admin's own words, we're not spreading democracy and we're not responding to an attack or imminent threat. Best I can tell, this has either been an exercise in kinetic gunboat diplomacy or the US getting suckered into doing the heavy lifting for an Israeli attempt at regime destabilization.
I'll note again that people were fairly willing to swallow the collateral damage of coalition air and artillery strikes around Raqqa and Mosul because it was generally accepted that the alternative of leaving ISIS in control of these cities was even worse. They were less willing to excuse civilian casualties resulting from bad targeting/intel (or callousness) when it came to the broader efforts of Inherent Resolve, where it simply seemed to be adding to the carnage of the Syrian Civil War rather than achieving anything desirable.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
28d ago
I don't really think that's right. There are militant atheists, but they're the villains. Granted, the dynamics of religious faith are a little different when God turns up for major holidays and performs incontrovertible miracles. The D&D comparison I can see, in that it's got more than a whiff of D&D-style kitchen sink fantasy (each book is set in a different locale with its own idiosyncratic fantasy elements) in the setting.
I really honestly thought that the Murderbot series was making fun of leftists and that the show was too.
It is, but there's noticeable difference between people poking fun at themselves and outsiders mocking them. Murderbot is, IMO, very clearly the former; this is pretty noticeable if you compare how right-wing sci-fi would/has portrayed a similar group of characters.
I'd also note that it paints an extremely rosy picture of the Preservation Alliance society as being a functionally utopian society with complete abundance of core needs and functionally zero crime.
(are we sure the author isn't a closeted pro-capitalist?)
I think it's more that insiders don't realize how ridiculous they look to people who don't share their assumptions and blindspots.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
28d ago
When people say Trump is fascist, you should take them seriously, not literally :V
Clearly strikes me as descriptive, rather than normative.
It's not. Have you seen the context that quote is from? It's Miller justifying the US trying to strongarm Denmark into surrendering Greenland. It's not simply a bare description*, much as its proponents try to present it as such. It's a belief that power entitles you to do what you want, and that acting with scruples or restraint is weakness and stupidity. It is also why they become so petulant and angry when threats fail to secure submission - it's a violation of their understanding of order of the world and why the Trump administration is soft on Russia and China. It's why they seem to have miscalculated so badly with Iran. The IRI was supposed to be reminded of our overwhelmingly power and be awed into submission. Now they're fumbling because it turns out that "might makes right" is actually an extremely naive way of looking at the world.
"Bully worship" is an extremely apposite label. One of the reasons "bootlicker" has such resonance an insult is that it captures this attitude very effectively.
Last i checked, if you fired the first shot, you are the one starting the war.
I am once again reminded that right-wing political violence is completely invisible to many. Either it's excused because it's carried out under a veneer or law enforcement or the perpetrator is written off as a crazy person who in no way reflects on the right more generally. Or the perp gets a pardon. The history of political violence in America did not begin on 9/10/25.
*even as a bare description it is wrong, but it has the appeal of sounding superficially correct and looking like edgy truth-telling.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
28d ago
On the one hand, this should hearten those who like to leave comments regarding feminism with "why aren't they fighting for the right to work in coal mines?" (disregarding that there was a history of women working in coal mines, this was considered terrible, and it was made illegal for women to work down mines).
Maybe I'm being uncharitable/overgeneralizing, but my experience is that the sort of person who says this sort of thing doesn't want women to do this kind of work, they want it as something to justifying subordinating women.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
28d ago
I'm talking about children young enough to not be enrolled in school. The truant officer isn't going to come and arrest you for bringing your 1-year old to the office, but your boss will probably be annoyed if you keep doing it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
28d ago
Doing things you don't care about for the sake of someone you love who does care is not institutionalized untruthfulness; it is the foundational element of a genuine relationship (romantic or not).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
28d ago
The obvious difference is moving from an environment where it is easy to watch children to one where children are effectively prohibited. A pre-modern woman doing domestic labor is working fairly hard, but it's work that (for the most part) allows you to keep one eye on the kids and can be easily interrupted. As work increasingly moves out of the home, that stops being practical. This isn't that big a deal when men do it, because they weren't doing much childrearing anyway, but when women do it forces a choice between working and taking care of your children.
A lot of modern jobs could replicate this - the biggest problem letting white collar workers take their young children to work is that it might be distracting - but making every day Bring Your Child To Work Day doesn't seem to be on anyone's radar. And I imagine managers and business owners would not be thrilled about it.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
29d ago
It's often forgotten, but Ukraine was fighting a low-intensity conventional war against Russian proxies for eight years before the big Russian invasion in 2022, which put a lot of pressure on their military to sort itself out. The ZSU performed quite poorly in 2014, IIRC. Meanwhile, Russia basically sabotaged its own military reforms. The result was that their plans combined both strategic and operational incompetence, leading to the disastrous early days of the war. Russian planners assumed Ukrainian resistance would disintegrate and the Ukrainian state would collapse. They were operating on delusional assumptions about how Ukraine would react and what their own forces were capable of. At least at the outset of the war, Ukrainian troops appear to have been qualitatively superior, and while Russia had (and has) a number of capabilities Ukraine can't match, they didn't have the intel to use them effectively.
To compare and contrast, the US appears to have had similarly delusional strategic expectations, but can at least lean on the fact that the US military is really good at the nuts and bolts of combat while Iran has fairly limited ability to come to grips with the US and is way behind qualitatively. I don't know if this is a function of corruption or just the inherent deficiencies of a regime of globally isolated religious fanatics more concerned with internal security than defense.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
29d ago
YMMV - I am extremely high on the Tyrant Philosophers, though that's fantasy so maybe it doesn't apply.
My biggest criticism of Tchaikovsky is that his narrative voice is kind in a sour spot; it is strong enough that it stands out and overshadows character voice, but it's not really distinctive enough to carry weight (contrast with, idk, Neal Stephenson).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
29d ago
One has to wonder what the issue with Gabbard is, given the Trump admin's otherwise general lack of sensitivity to scandal.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
29d ago
It's not nearly that bad - we don't have Ranger battalions losing pitched battles to armed civilians - but it reflects the same basic mindset and strategic ineptitude. It's just that the US has greater technological and operational competence to compensate.
It seems fairly likely to me that, as with Putin in Ukraine, the Trump administration expected IRI resolve to crumble immediately in the face of overwhelming power, and are fumbling now that it hasn't.
I think taking the country and the troops hostage to your insane decisions is spiritually treasonous, if not treason by the letter of the law. Even if we grant (which I do not) that we really are irrevocably committed, the first thing to do would be to remove Trump and his cabinet and replace them with less corrupt, inept, and irresponsible leadership.
See, I think what is going to happen is that we're going to bomb them for a while more, kill a bunch of people, and then proclaim victory and go home having accomplished very little. Sure, we'll have blown up some Iranian military hardware, destroyed a bunch of civilian infrastructure, killed some replaceable autocrats, and killed a lot of civilians. After which the IRI will rebuild and redouble its quest for a nuclear weapon. Trump does not believe in the Pottery Barn principle and he has a notoriously short attention span. Hegseth has openly stated that we're not in it for regime change and thinks war crimes are badass. So from where I stand, the options are 1) stop the war now and stop killing people, despite the job being 'unfinished' 2) keep the war going, killing a lot more people, and still leave the job unfinished. Either way, at the end of this we're going to be back to negotiating with IRI leadership.
Really, Trump II has really cemented my opinion that we need to gut the executive. The ability of the presidency to embroil the US in a major conflict unilaterally is untenable, and the notional justification for this broad authority doesn't seem to have much real-world basis.
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