anti_dan
1mo ago
You act like criminals are Seal team 6 going after Bin Laden. In reality they are low intelligence cowards looking for easy opportunities to make a quick score. They dont have the time or patience to think about a 23.5 degree vertical. If one of them steps on a bear trap going up to your front door they don't redouble their efforts and look all around for bear traps, they run away like scared dogs. Even better, if your bear trap wakes you up, now you are the sniper.
A security system against these sorts of people doesnt need "identify, delay, fix, eliminate" it needs "scare, delay, notify". If a drop trap breaks one guy's leg, activates a bedside alarm that wakes you up, and gives you a minute to actually wake up, it has more than done the job.
anti_dan
1mo ago
Turkey took over half a country, Cyprus, and is currently occupying vast swathes of Syria. Its not orders of magnitude smaller. The only thing smaller is the media coverage.
anti_dan
1mo ago
Your plan just looks like the Biden plan, but the Biden plan is what got Ukraine invaded to start with.
I suppose if I look extra hard its like the Trump plan but super slow and tediously done with no real offramps for the US.
In either case its a silly plan. "Support European-funded response" might as well read "Spread Unicorn horn dust". Also, "support the economic war..." its not possible. The Euros sabotaged that capability by going green.
No, this looks exactly to me like the kind of half-pregnant sort of plan that "serious people" opted into with Iraq and Afghanistan. At least if you came to me with a serious decapitation plan with SEAL teams and assassinations and sabotage of Russian nuclear facilities I could take you seriously. This, I cannot.
anti_dan
1mo ago
Yes. You're just illustrating that myopic idealism is irrelevant to international relations, and what actually matters is cost/benefit analysis. If China were doing what it currently does with no nukes and the 1980 economy we'd already be in Hong Kong and Bejing.
anti_dan
1mo ago
The main end-state aim was that every country in the world understand that there is no hope to change the world order by force. So a deterrent, but not only for Russia: also for China/Taiwan, etc.). This end-state is now unreachable, because the world order has changed, but that it hurts the aggressor is the most important part. Saving Ukrainians is a net benefit, though.
This is just stating that the original goal at the outset was delusional. Many countries have been altering borders by force for the last 3 decades without NATO intervention. At least one of them, Turkey, is a NATO member.
anti_dan
1mo ago
Its not really better than booby traps for security. Its better than getting drug out of your house by the cops then raped for eternity in prison because your booby traps were successful.
In other words, such things are illegal.
anti_dan
1mo ago
Its also plausible that 4 more years of aimless Trump would have had the Democrats doubling down on all their worst ideas, just doing them while out of power. Dozens of impeachment attempts instead of 2, relatively focused federal prosecutions. Even more state prosecutions, now of a sitting President. All in trans crazy activism writ large, etc.
All in all, I don't think Trump 2024 is even that much for normie Dems to worry about. Perhaps they lose some percentage of USAID, PEPFAR, etc slush funds permanently and semi-permanently. That reduces their federal dollars advantage from what? 1000-1 to merely 100-1? They also still have all the universities, and ending DEI doesn't mean you are ending funding for higher ed, which is simply funding for leftist propaganda, as a rule. And they still have captured the k-12 teachers and unions, so unless the public ends all public funding for all public education, there is Trillions of taxpayer dollars flowing into Democrat coffers still. You'd need to redirect like 40% of all public funds spent nationwide to get Republican orgs to parity when it comes to slush funding.
Plus you have inherent "get out the vote ;)" advantages baked in.
So the normie Dem that isn't worried is the correct one. Protect a bit of the status quo that you can, keep running milquetoast candidates like Biden that can pretend to be moderate. Perhaps not one who has been senile for 4 years. The institutional advantages are still overwhelmingly in your favor. Carry on, and maybe stop transing the frogs (and the kids).
anti_dan
1mo ago
I mean I think that the culture is slowly but surely disempowering those institutions. How many people, still, in 2024 get any significant news from “mainstream” news outlets?
Much more than you would think. Its not always the NYT from its website, its a clickthrough from Twitter/Facebook. Its not always CNN, its a CNN clip posted to youtube that autoplayed after the football highlight clip they were watching. But that is the simple stuff. People still watch broadcast TV, particularly for sports. The news-magazines that are on before/after? Heavily biased. The random updates at halftime/quarter? Follow the mainstream narratives. The narrative for large swathes of the population is still set by these legacy outlets. The fact is that is is much easier to live your life that way. It takes a certain amount of dedication to realize the stuff that filters in through to you in the background of your favorite soccer team's games is all lies about the border when you have been listening to said broadcast since you were 10.
anti_dan
2mo ago
anti_dan
2mo ago
Maybe. He doesn't hit any marks for me and I doubt anyone would know these "intentions" and make this argument for him without him repeating it over and over to friendly press. He looks like halfway between a tech billionaire that stopped giving a fuck and an 80s mobster.
Like I said, the closest I've got is, "guy who goes to the gym all the time but never works out and just sits in the sauna."
anti_dan
2mo ago
Zelensky doesn't wear a military uniform though, he just wears a sort of grey tracksuit style thing? It reads less like military and more like guy spending a lot of time in the sauna while pretending to go to the gym.
anti_dan
2mo ago
I mean, that is true it isn't a notion. He can stop and start fighting in Ukraine for whatever reason he wants. Just like Turkey in Northern Iraq and Syria. There is no regional power capable of checking such whims and the risks of effective responses from non-locals is too high.
Far too much of this Ukraine scenario, and international relations generally is people pointing at a state of being that never was and saying, "I want that thing I pretend I used to have."
anti_dan
2mo ago
This is exactly the kind of company that doesn't care about losing computers for a day. They just call the FBI and business proceeds as normal.
anti_dan
2mo ago
I mean, Europeans are on the side of the American blue tribe, the question really is "does that matter?" Blue Tribe is increasingly the domain of the unmarried woman and effete men. Several European armies don't even practice with live bullets. Its somewhat like that classic 4chan post about how democracy doesn't work if men and women are split on issues. What if worldwide fighters and non-fighters are generally split? Can the parties of the weak, helpless, and welfare recipients keep a party of soldiers and construction workers sufficiently morally cowed indefinitely?
anti_dan
2mo ago
This might be a story you could have told my grandpa or something in the 60s. The academy has been so left-captured and exclusionary of right of center thought for my entire life that being "anti-intellectual" is just not wanting to heap billions of dollars of state funding on communists, terrorists, and sympathizers thereof.
It isn't like there aren't academic fields outside of science that haven't appealed to conservatives. History is an example. But Universities have long limited history departments, and conservative takes meant you didn't get tenure or even considered for tenure track.
anti_dan
2mo ago
In this case: anything, no matter the cost, as long as it hurts the woke! Scientific progress? I don't care about your fake tears and sad puppies.
This isn't really the sentiment. The problem for researchers is most of them are going to be in the academy. The academy is one of, if not the main, core of rot in the system. This means it was also going to be the place where it would be impossible to miss muscle when trimming fat.
Also, if we are being honest, its probably an extreme chore trying to separate actual science happening at universities from Faucian "science"
anti_dan
2mo ago
Yeah, this level of Putin Posting always strikes me as a surefire sign that the person is not thinking logically. 2016-2020 notably did not include any Russian invasions/advancements. Trump consistently warned Germany and others against being reliant on Russian gas. Obama and Biden, on the other hand, saw large bites by the Russian military and could not marshal a response. They are part of the Green movement that has stymied European industry, and are big players in the various NGO movements that shipped millions of unassimilated Arabs into large cities in Europe.
If Trumps a manchurian what are they? Mao himself?
anti_dan
2mo ago
Because these companies aren't that vulnerable. The CEO or his top guy tracks every cent in and out of the company. All expenses are to the same 10 employees and 7 vendors, all income comes from discreet knowable streams. And they have a good relationship with their bank who will flag anything odd, and act on any stop-payment requests they themselves flag to the bank. And lets say you do rip them off, where are you going? Covering up your tracks doing this is going to be nearly impossible unless you are state sponsored. And again, why is Iran interested in embezzling $500k from a copper screws plant in Indiana?
anti_dan
2mo ago
The question that seems to be being presented by people complaining about DOGE and related efforts is, "so you are saying we have been operating illegally all this time?" And the correct answer is a resounding yes. Between USAID being a joint terrorist funding operation and DNC money laundering operation and most grants going to places (not to mention federal agencies themselves) openly discriminating against white men, basically nothing the government did for the last 20 years was legal at all
anti_dan
2mo ago
Well, there will be no crushing US military defeat. Certainly not one orchestrated in any way by Europe.
And if there were one by China you'd be under the boot of an Fascist ethnostate. As opposed to "checks notes" "MAGA American Hegemony" aka, us telling you to let people post memes on the internet and to cool it with sentencing the victims of rape to longer sentences than the rapists got for calling the rapists rapists.
You are acting like the current American regime is some sort of illiberal order with aspirations of world domination, whereas in reality they are politely suggesting you follow the normal postwar rules about free speech and asking you to build functional militaries to check the local aggressive dictatorships.
anti_dan
2mo ago
Yes. Ukrainian graft was merely one part of the Democrat money machine. But it was a part. And when confronted on it Zelensky toed the DNC line and clearly chose to ally himself with them.
USAID is another part of the Democrat money machine. They are all similar operations in that they funnel money to Democrats using 3rd party, often 3rd world, cutouts.
Its not just about making the outgroup angry, it is why they are angry. That reason is that they are losing money that they were deploying both as sinecures for party loyalists, and also money for straight up political activity. Every program will have its charismatic sob stories, but between USAID the Department of Education, and others, a lot of left wing money has the potential to simply dry up. I've commented a few times now, with little engagement on this point, but aren't a lot of honest left-of-center people REALLY embarrassed about how huge portions of the movement are being revealed as government funded astroturf? With that plus the ACTBlue fraud, is there any actual grassroots to the movement at all? What is the response to this? "Yes the left should be funded by the government?" That would be honest for the people angry about various cuts to say, but can they bring themselves to be honest on this point?
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