Tanista
1hr ago
I tend to be a Cofnasian about wokeness (remove the "equality thesis" and it collapses) but stuff like this does make me wonder.
I suppose you can say that saying IQs are low is fine. Saying groups have lower IQ is very much not fine.
Tanista
1hr ago
I don’t think it’s a big leap to go from “some population groups run faster” to “some population groups do management/science better”.
It's also not a big leap from "men are significantly stronger than women" to "and this is almost certainly paired with related psychological differences" and yet it's resisted valiantly. Even while feminists also say that men are - correctly - the dominant major suppliers of violence.
You don't have to have a coherent position. You just have to have a position that isn't on the side of racists. You can't deny that men are stronger (well, mostly not; the trans stuff has been sidling up to that position and suffering predictable consequences) or some people are better at sprinting. You have to deny that some races are smarter. Just always pick the pro-migration position.
Tanista
5hr ago
I think Labour might have done better under a coalition government actually.
They got a large but brittle majority based purely on the Tories collapsing and then had to square what they had to do for the economy both with the promises they made to sweep into power (no broad tax rises which meant trying to squeeze taxes everywhere else which both pissed off specific segments of the population and may have caused employment issues) and with the ideology of the backbenchers (who want to do things like lift the limit the cap on benefits for children during a moment when they need every pound they can get, there was a bit of whining about Mahmood's immigration turn but it seems to have gone through)
If they couldn't get anything done without some other party those people could be the bad guys and take the blame.
I think internal revolt is something to fear. You can't expect a thing to be done that'll destroy the government that does it and bring into power one that will reverse it. By that standard I could have solved the problems of the Roman Empire in 15 minutes: stop paying the soldiers so much. I'd be dead but hey, I cracked the issue!
Putting that aside, you also have to factor in that they took Israeli hostages. So it wasn't a situation you could walk away from. It was between letting those people languish, going and getting them or another wave of danegeld that led to this problem in the first place. Sinwar should have died in an Israeli jail.
Maybe they should have taken a deal for the hostages sooner and wrote off Gaza (assuming the deal was honored and that Hamas, who you note had an explicit goal to cause enough damage to their own to wreck normalization) but then some damage would already have been done by the necessary war to get to that. Whatever price Hamas asked while it was whole and intact would have been intolerable.
If an enemy has already shown that concessions made lead to worse outcomes, it's difficult to justify making future concessions that are even more ruinous. Your theory of the case was tried. The Palestinians outperformed expectations. Leaving them in the same spot opened the risk of future spikes like that, especially since we didn't know how their allies would react or how competent they'd be.
Who has an international monopoly on violence? That would be the US which makes them the judge in this case.
The US doesn't have a monopoly on violence, it has a commanding market share. This should be terrifying.
There is no monopoly on force. There is no Constitution, there is no rulebook, there is no immovable constraint on escalation nor any way to roll back decisions you've made. That means America isn't a judge either. It's just another monkey, just one with the biggest stick. And yes, that stick gives it leeway.
But a monkey with a big stick can still suffer consequences, especially if it shows the other monkeys that it is willing to destroy them for things that do not warrant it.
This isn't the time of the Old Testament. Or the age of the Romans. We live in a world where you can wipe millions out with '40s tech, and can do an even better job of it with biological research.
What, you think you're the only ones who can be ruthless? A lot of these countries have proven themselves as or more ruthless than Americans. In this situation people don't even have to want to be suicidally defiant, you can see how these things can escape containment or get out of hand.
In any case, your theory of the case is simply not shared by most of the world leaders (thankfully). You have to explain why they're all wrong for not escalating to hell when facing serious resistance.
Tanista
7hr ago
I can't think of a nation that has reacted that way to this sort of thing.
It's not just psychologically impossible for the populace to absorb, it's just a bad part of the world to be seen as weak. The minute it happened the people who supported Hamas were emboldened. In the West protests started immediately.
Netanyahu and co. just gambled they could contain Hamas easily and lost. Once the attack happened it was just functionally impossible to not react and no reaction would have been good.
Whether or not how Israel waged the war was wise or whether it could do better I don't know. The enemy gets a say too and I think it's telling that the best we can come up with here to avoid the consequences is "turn the other cheek". I don't think that particular Jew is in charge.
Tanista
7hr ago
Can I see if we have any agreement on certain factual questions:
- Did Trump seek regime change in Iran?
- b. More of a question: what was the win condition of the regime didn't collapse? Would anyone have considered this deal it? Was that reported by anyone beforehand?
- Did Trump say that Iran's stockpile had to be destroyed and has it now been left out of the deal for a later negotiation?
- Did Trump continually threaten to destroy Iran if it didn't open the strait and then back down?
- Did Trump say they have to give up their missile stockpile and has now walked that back?
Tanista
17hr ago
Their leaders are dead.
- Harry G. Summers: You know you never defeated us on the battlefield.
- Colonel Tu: That may be so, but it is also irrelevant.
All aims were not achieved like complete regime change but the reason we failed at that is primarily domestic US politics and an unwillingness to cause a lot of Iranian civilian deaths.
How America chooses to cope is irrelevant. It's especially irrelevant because, for all of the talk that the US would see red bro and just crush if it really wanted to, the supposed wildcard President backed down. You can't even blame it on the effeteness of some Obama-style figure drunk on dreams of liberal internationalism. This is the most vocally ruthless Presidency in a while, that ran around threatening to wipe out their entire civilization and...what happened?
Maybe don't start wars you can't win without massive casualties you're not willing to inflict? Especially don't threaten it if you won't go through.
In any case, I don't see how this isn't a loss. The strait isn't open. The IRGC is still functional enough that the US has to negotiate with it to open it. The US is apparently going to have to pay danegeld and Trump has downplayed disarming them. Iran just now suspended talks again and is working (successfully) to drive a wedge between the US and Israel*
The reason regime change was such a central pillar of the thinking (not some sort of stretch goal) was that it was the only path anyone could see to stopping Iran's nuclear ambitions decisively. That failed.
* Regardless of how one feels about Israel, your enemy being able to do this to you is a sign of weakness.
This has been 90% of international law for decades. The US decides and everyone else has to follow the US decision.
France and Germany did not join the US in Iraq, so the US ability to dictate to its allies is at least somewhat limited. They aren't obligated to join everything the US decides to do.
Yes, the US got away with smashing a sovereign nation with no criminal charges or serious reprisals. But:
- Did America really get away with it? One can think of all sorts of negative outcomes that followed, both internationally and domestically.
- Being able to escape consequences is not the same as achieving your objectives. The point of the game is not actually to show that the US Can Just Do Things, despite what the Elite Human Capital keep telling you. It's to prove that doing them actually achieves your goals.
I'd have thought we'd be clear on this after this whole mess. Yes, the US doesn't have to go with its allies into Iran. Yes, the US can just kill a leader of a formidable nation and Trump will likely retire to golf in peace. What did you achieve though?
It's like watching an asshole watch a 20 minute video on realism and then try to implement it IRL.
On the other hand, it does allow him to go back to one of his campaign messages: "everyone is a freeloader that won't help America when we need them."
Tanista
1d ago
Honestly, if your comparison is that you did well but unperformed compared to Singapore I'm inclined to cut you some slack.
I would sacrifice a testicle to have a dozen more such disappointments.
Tanista
2d ago
Could probably leave the gym out until you lose 100lbs or so
Finding a nearby gym (~20-25mins) and walking there to do some moderate-intensity cardio worked for me (though I was going as much for sleep and general health as anything, I lost via fasting) when I was about 100lbs lighter. So maybe something to tack on when you get to that point.
It's concerning, and in the modern world, unusual, for war rhetoric to aspire to the literal obliteration of the enemy nation
It's unusual for Europeans but probably not as crazy in that part of the world. The problem, of course, is that the Israelis want to be seen as Europeans/Westerners not like the sort of demented terrorists who run around saying they'll obliterate Israel.
Tanista
2d ago
No. It's really irrelevant to the relationships involved.
A pretty solipsistic view of relationships. The reality of the situation and the particular problems your ally faces are irrelevant to the relationship you have with them? You don't think that it matters, if only as an extenuating factor, whether your betas are resisting because they want something non-essential or whether it's because it really is a serious matter for them?
Even the most blinkered tyrant doesn't assume that telling someone to jump and telling them to jump into a chasm are the same thing.
I think you mean irrelevant to the power dynamic.
It's embarrassing to me as an American if this is let pass.
That's my point! You're already being embarrassed! If anyone should be bracketing the Lebanon issue it's Iran. They should be glad to get a deal with America. Instead America is so feeble apparently that Iran can basically bully it into not just surrendering in the Hormuz theater but in Lebanon/Israel.
But I grant that this whole thing is a good representation of Trumpian foreign policy: madman theory without the nerve, deference to enemies who will fight back combined with not just disrespect to allies but a sort of put-upon, aggrieved attitude about American honor as if America wasn't already casting it aside with great abandon under his rule.
Israel probably won't hold out against the US for long, it is too dependent. And they have fucked themselves here in a permanent way imo, so you can enjoy that. But to me this whole thing is displacement: you can't actually bring your enemies to heel so you look at the other guy and act like that's where the humiliation is coming from.
I do wish I could see how the realists who've been praying for this sort of break with Israel/approach to Iran reacted upon finding out that fucking Trump and Vance are the ones parroting their talking points now though.
- How do you think America would respond if Mexico just carried off their women in a Bronze Age raid and Canada started launching rockets at them?
- That wasn't the only attack, they fired other rockets at Israel within the week.
Tanista
3d ago
What the fuck did Lebanon do?!
Lebanon was supposed to disarm Hezbollah and couldn't and basically allowed them to continue as is. Post-Oct 7th they started shelling northern Israel and forced many people to evacuate.
Essentially, they declared a (limited) war in support of Hamas and refused to back down until the situation in Gaza was resolved. America invaded Afghanistan for similar reasons.
Not really part of the question here. How we got here and what decisions Trump made are kind of irrelevant.
Ridiculous. It has everything to do with it, and this sort of pivot into fake grievance due to actions people chose to take is not irrelevant.
So Trump started a war with Iran and failed to achieve his ends, folded, and is now trying to buy his way out by forcing the Hezbollah situation to a stalemate again (when they were supposed to be disarmed decades ago, talk about cucked) and because Israel makes some noises via their most demented minister Israel is cucking the United States?
What about the nation whose nuclear program Trump claimed to have destroyed, whose civilization he threatened to extinguish who he's now backing down to and paying and helping maintain the efficacy of their proxy and basically making it clear that blackmailing the world via the strait is now a-okay? Their cock isn't in his mouth?
Question: what's to stop Hezbollah from taking a breather and going back to shelling Israel and demanding nothing be done lest their ally close the strait again? Who'd be to blame then?
I mean, on some level this is delicious karma for Israel. They put all their hopes on the most transactional and changeable man in politics and somehow expected him to take a massive L before the midterms when he could just cut and run and are reaping what they're sowing. Trump isn't Bush, he isn't just going to hang around because global economy/rules-based, liberal international order/blah blah.
But the shamelessness here in the pivoting and scapegoating on the Trump side is intolerable.
Labour is unpopular and it's a long wait till an election. No one knows what'll happen or what pacts will be made.
I think what Lowe would say is that Farage chucked him for being too radical (serious about his positions in his view) and that he's trying to do what Labour did and slide into power off the back of an unpopular party without having to make any concrete but unpopular promises.
Given they've already had one set of Tory politicians promise one thing and then perform a total betrayal it's not insane to be distrustful. Why not pull a Farage and attack him from the right and prevent him from just taking his base for granted and becoming the new Tories?
Well, 2rafa said why but I can see why he wouldn't just slink off into ignominy and trust the competence and good will of someone he think smeared him to cut off any potential challenge to just betraying the base again.
Rupert Lowe quit Nigel Farage’s political bloc out of personal disagreement
Um...I thought Farage defenestrated him and literally called the cops on him? Did I miss something?
At that point, it's war. If you're gonna screw people over, make sure they'll stay that way. Seems like Farage's miscalculation as much as anything.
Tanista
6d ago
Gretchen, stop trying to make European AI competitiveness happen. It's not going to happen.
I think it's past that now. I'm not sure the church is strong enough. Maybe in Sweden, which I'm ignorant of beyond some basics.
And besides, the government doesn't just fund propaganda. It funds actual increases in the status of women, e.g. the support for college loans in the US where women make up >60% of the debt and pay it off slower than men. It's worse: Biden has already made moves to forgive these loans so the government may move towards more subsidies that raise female status.
Tanista
6d ago
They're in the goldilocks zone of allowing women enough leeway for them to this sort of sexualized but high status work but also not so feminist that ridiculous male expectations aren't anathematized maybe?
Tanista
6d ago
As with everything, there is a defense of some alternate universe version of what Trump does. But that never functions as a defense of what Trump actually does because jumping into a war with Iran because you were feeling yourself after Venezuela and were listening to people like Netanyahu and Mark Levin is just so much dumber that you'd honestly rather have the Kennedy School people in charge.
The likely outcome of all of this is that Trump gets a worse deal than Obama did while admitting that the US almost certainly wouldn't use military force. Maybe his "strategy" is more high variance but it hardly seems worth it.
If you go back in time too you'd probably be awash in Brazilians, who are a mess to figure out.
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