My take is a different one. 3k people killed in 9/11 is bad, sure, but his real success was to drag the US into a war in Afghanistan. Not only did the Taliban kill another 3k US and allied troops during 'Enduring Freedom', they spent more than 150 billion dollars on it.
At the risk of sounding callous, this was totally survivable.
If all Osama Bin Laden had to show for his actions is a displaced (temporarily or otherwise) Taliban and a bullet in his face it wouldn't have gone down as badly. It might even have been accepted as the cost of having an empire.
The damage domestically was due to the neocons deciding to overdraw on the opportunity he gave them in Iraq by lying.
This is simply not cost-effective when the marginal price of a QALY in US healthcare is on the order of 100k$.
I'd take this seriously if it was a response to a hurricane. Given human adversaries who can respond to your math I think it's not a good idea to tell shoplifters so long as they stay under $X they're good.
It might be more expensive and "pointless" in a sensible world but you're just going to have to ruin some lives here.
Nor are jihadists motivated by fear of retaliation, Bin Laden himself was (I think) a minor Saudi noble who could have happily lived without having to work a single day in his life, but instead spent it hiding in caves doing Jihad.
They may, however, be motivated by weakness. Osama saw the US pull out of Somalia in one of its fits of humanitarianism over a relatively small human cost. This is not the sort of message you want to send to a person like that and the organization he leads.
Tanista
2d ago
- The Shield, which is a better version of Breaking Bad (which imo got way too enamored with its lead for such a moralistic show). This is not to say that it was fun. I found it an incredibly stressful watch but the show had basically made tension its trademark circa Season 6 and never stopped so it was true to form.
- Succession also knew to wrap itself up instead of overstaying (it was on the brink) in a way that feels true to the plot.
- The Good Place expanded as far as it could go, had maybe one additional twist on the premise and then ended well.
Suppose instead, after first going viral, Mr. Beast had decided that "looks are the most important factor in achieving positive social outcomes" and doubled down on that, rather than his 'stunt' focused avenue. Would he have ended up with better social outcomes? No.
On the flipside, Liver King's hard-earned clout immediately evaporated when he broke kayfabe and admitted it was all based on a contradiction and he was full of shit.
MrBeast's gimmick is basically inviting you to watch a Youtube nerd recreate Fear Factor with some additional consumerism for that fantasy element. So long as he can find some new wrinkle in that formula (or new people) he can get attention. Not sure it's the same for people like Clavicular.
How can society better support the men who sincerely look up to Clav as role model?
Ban social media.
I don't see another way to square the reaction to the recent articles about female radicalization (where most people seem to think the internet/ideology caused an unjustified reaction) with this post (where we seem to take it for granted that men are reacting to some objective fact about their circumstances). The internet is the common factor. We can't control when people feel oppressed but you theoretically could ban the internet and stop them being subject to memeplexes that push people towards self-victimization.
Of course, a lot of us don't consider this feasible or wise in practice.
Is there a way to become as viral as Clav by doing pro-social things (so offering a viable competing worldview)?
No, they all seem crazy.
Seriously, who is the best adjusted streamer? It seems to select for the most dramatic. Going down the list of streamers I know something about:
- Destiny, of all the recent left-wing influencers probably one of the best political streamers because he's autistic enough to read sources and then disagree if he thinks it something doesn't make sense (which let him get shockingly far in recent Israel discourse with "experts" like Finkelstein) but has an incurable addiction to crazy white women that inevitably destroys whatever career he's built up since his last relapse. May have also blown Fuentes.
- Fuentes, may or may not have been blown by Destiny.
- Hasan Piker, the least masculine masculine role model who has drama continually. Honestly, you might as well put Ezra Klein on TRT and he'd do a better job of it.
- Clav, overdosed on stream.
- Johnny Somali, ran into Korean justice because he was stupid.
- Vitaly, ran into Philippines justice because he was stupid.
- IShowSpeed...okay, he seems pretty cool. I only see him doing a) implausibly athletic things or b) visiting various countries and actually being well-received cause he's not going to do some bullshit.
Spending untold billions to get a terrorist who really annoyed you is something which some people might think is worth establishing as a precedent, but I would hardly call it necessary.
Bin Laden's attempts to harm Americans overseas were "annoying". His attempt to harm America on 9/11 and get its attention was simply "successful". He made it clear that he had no intention of just being another annoying nemesis nestled in the Outer Rim.
Other countries had to suffer evil men who committed mass murder against their population enjoy their freedom, and yet they survived.
Something can be necessary and not an existential matter. Nations that have the wherewithal and are expected to respond to aggression globally can only be so circumspect.
Packing up and leaving other inconvenient battles may have been what emboldened Bin Laden in the first place.
It's not a problem unless you're the SOB born at the exact wrong time to benefit from either family support or welfare (or AI)
The country/ethnic group will survive but it's not gonna be fun for you personally. Which is a major incentive, in people's eyes, to not fight immigration or the dominant pro-immigration parties.
They also went after Sam Harris and Maajid Nawaz for being anti-Islamic extremists/racists (they eventually settled this with an apology).
Harris I can get even if I wouldn't defend it. He dared to defend Charles Murray after all.
The Nawaz one was just particularly grating . Reminded me of a lot of leftists who don't actually know or care about Islam but feel justified in taking a stance on it based on how it fits their own domestic political battles (this is actually my charitable take: the alternative is that they got taken in by anti-reform Muslims). Absolute no sense of care in how they use their supposed expertise.
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