Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
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User ID: 1226
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
The fundamental problem facing fiscal conservatives is that practically speaking balancing the budget necessitates cutting (or at least curtailing the growth of) entitlements and raising taxes. Doing the latter is apparently unthinkable and doing the former in a way that is consequential is electoral suicide (at least absent a bipartisan agreement to tell elder voters to shove it, which, uh, lol). There's only so far delusional claims about efficiency improvements and tax cuts paying for themselves can take you.
Sidebar: Trump brought up his desire to annex Greenland and the Panama Canal again, if you want another reason why a lot of allies are feeling antsy about their relationship with the US.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I feel like one should consider the possibility that JD Vance was just running his mouth, didn't really think about what he was saying, and is now trying to backpedal from an obviously ridiculous statement without admitting anything.
I thought one of the goals from disentangling from Europe was so they could build up their own military capabilities to defend Europe. If so, why insult the allies (well, maybe no longer allies in the near future) who you want to accomplish this task? Why even make snide comments at all?
I think the most likely explanation* is that this was a performance for domestic audiences, but one view of Trump/Vance-ian foreign policy re: Europe is that they want to bring Europe to heel, not cast them adrift. Europe is supposed to build up their own military capabilities, not so they can forge their own path but so they can better support US goals. Essentially reimagining NATO as vassals rather than allies. In that view, the snide remarks are supposed to remind Europe how much she needs the US so she stops looking for divorce lawyers.
*I think the actual most likely explanation is Vance trying to deliver a dunk and not thinking his statement through.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
This sort of presupposes that there's an actual war and European troops sent to Ukraine aren't able to deter Russia further. (Bear in mind that the proposal European countries are discussing is not sending European troops in to fight the Russians - it's to send peacekeepers in afterwards). But let's go with it and assume there's a direct war between NATO - US and Russia (and nobody gets nuked).
Whoever comes home from the war will end up controlling the governments of Europe.
By what mechanism? Is your position that cadres of veterans will stage a coup? That seems... incredibly unlikely. As I'm sure you are aware, they have police in Europe. Many European countries have a gendarmerie or equivalent, which the US does not.
In the event of a war between the EU and Russia, the means by which veterans take over European government will be that they will run for office and anyone who isn't a veteran will be so delegitimized in relative term that it will be an easy win.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
is there some way to provide a guarantee that doesn't inevitably degenerate to boots on the ground?
US airpower and Other NATO ground troops. But that's really beside the point - the security guarantees discussion is about post-ceasefire/peace arrangements, not sending NATO troops (American or otherwise) in to end the war. If the proposition is that Russia cannot be deterred, then that's implicitly conceding that any peace deal is pointless regardless.
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.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
Fucking up the economy has got to be the one way to get congress to step up.
Congressional Republicans are sufficiently cowed or sycophantic that unless their base turns on Trump they're unlikely to yank his chain. And Trump has repeatedly proven that he can dictate reality to the base.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I actually don't think that it does, both because that isn't on the table re: Ukraine and because they're not actually against that in other cases.
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
Yeah, I don't buy this at all. A policy of acquiescing to aggression encourages aggression and the idea of nations being 'too weak' to exist presumes there is some sort of natural arrangement that is being violated. International relations is 100% artifice. Nations don't stand or fall on their own, and Ukraine being too weak to be independent of Russia without Western support is another way of saying Russia is too weak to dominate Ukraine with Western opposition.
The Russo-Ukrainian War is fundamentally a product of western ambivalence (or, less charitably, cowardice) towards Russian aggression. It certainly didn't have to be this way. The people saying "that's just how it is" are creating the world they purport to describe.
it demonstrates that under no circumstances can they actually get the state they want.
A major problem with this theory is that this has been apparent for literally decades. It hasn't brought peace.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
What strikes me about most of the people in the "surrender for their own good" camp is that they would never in a million years apply the same logic to themselves.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I think it's bad that those supposedly-neutral institutions have taken up partisanship.
I agree. I think it would have been better for everyone if scientists had steeled themselves against the slings and arrows of the resentfully ignorant. Alas, the scientists are only human, and after decades of being told "you're an enemy", they took it to heart.
You think it's thoughts that the conservatives are opposed to?
You know what? Yes, actually.
Again and again, the American right has proven itself to be distrustful of thoughtfulness. Many are quite proud of not being effete intellectuals who think too much. The business gentry that comprises a large share of the conservative elite resent academics and think education is solely for training new workers, nationalists can't stand critical examination of cherished patriotic myths, and religious conservatives have concluded that science is an existential threat. A large part of why they're liable to view academia as parasitic is that it doesn't sit well with their cult of action.
(This is also why they've largely been reduced to begging liberals to make conservative art for them - it's not some fundamental inability of the conservative mind to produce art, but that modern American conservatism holds artists in contempt).
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
It turned out that smells really do have social and class connotations.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
...this paper seems entirely unobjectionable. I'm genuinely baffled as to what the problem is here.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I in fact did not know that, because I don't keep a comprehensive list of petty far-right bugbears in my head.
Whenever I see people going off about ridiculousness in academia, I am unavoidably reminded of Twitter Smell Lady, who was held up as an example of silly research only to be repeatedly vindicated. The core problem here is that most of the would-be critics of academia are fundamentally incurious, which is why about half the time their cherry-picked examples turn out to be totally reasonable and only sound "dumb" either because the reader lacks the education to understand what they're talking about or has an ideological blindspot.
"I cannot fail by now to recognize the tactic of wholly emptying out one's head when put on the defensive" really stuck with me because of how often you see it.
Quite.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
I decided to google feminist vulcanology, and tbh everything I see looks like incredibly pedestrian efforts to encourage women to study vulcanology. This may be triggering to misogynists, but this does not look like some anthropologist rambling about other ways of knowing. If this is what's corrupting science, then I withdraw my previous statement and chalk this up as another instance of American right-wingers demanding slavish submission to their beliefs. Acquiescing to that would be pretty much the opposite of integrity.
If conservatives want to contest ideas, they should throw their hat into the ring, not demand liberals think conservative thoughts on their behalf.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
Unsurprisingly, when you completely abdicate a domain to your ideological opponents, it becomes dominated by your ideological opponents. Things like "Feminist vulcanology" exists because American conservatives decided the only way they were interested in engaging with intellectualism was by standing outside and throwing rocks.
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'.
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)
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
4mo ago
the country that spends more on it’s military than the rest of the planet combined.
This isn't remotely true, even in purely nominal terms.
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
This impression comes from the fact that Trump wants to somewhat reduce the current level of diplomatic and trade restrictions on Russia, and increase the current level of diplomatic and trade restrictions on NATO
It comes from the fact that Trump has repeatedly praised Putin and disparaged NATO allies, siding with the former to excuse Russian territorial aggression. You say the above like it's normal and reasonable to want to rebalance away from your long running allies towards your longest running enemy (led by a guy who has proven again and again to be unreliable and belligerent).
Skibboleth
It's never 4D Chess
4mo ago
It's called the Department of Defense because that's what the Constitution talks about as a core governmental responsibility: common defense.
It wasn't called the Department of Defense until post WW2 reorganization. Before that it was the War Department.
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.
If you want further US-Canadian integration, this is pretty much the dumbest possible way to go about it. Not only is it all stick, no carrot, it's being packaged in an extremely humiliating manner.
I don't think that this is true, and Kulak claiming it makes me less likely to believe it, given his... ambitious analytical tendencies. Canadians in general appear not to believe it is true, given the backlash to the proposal. The US and Canada being very similar culturally in some respects* is not the same as Canadians lacking a distinct identity.
*I think the cultural similarity is overstated. Ontarians having significant similarities to upper Midwesterners is one thing - I don't really know that the Quebecois and Floridians have that much in common.
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