ccc
10mo ago
Of all the reasons why this is grade A copium, the simplest is this: Trump is not a good actor. Go watch Wrestlemania 23. He has no range. In fact, one of the big things people say they like about him is exactly that: he's an honest liar. His motives are clear as day, even as he lies to your face, because he has no capacity to hide them.
There are very few states right now who are trying in earnest. Most still act as if the Non-Proliferation Treaty is real and that the U.S. nuclear umbrella will protect them. Ukraine thought they were still safe because they were in line with U.S. interests. They had the Budapest memorandum, and destabilizing Russia was a perennial U.S. interest. Now, suddenly, U.S. interests are... the fleeting whims of the current president, entirely divorced from geopolitical realities. So now there is a new lesson to learn: the U.S. is no longer a reliable ally, no longer a benevolent hedgemon. It's a very different lesson than one anyone learnt from Gadaffi's fate, and a dramatically different state of affairs to live in.
All these states formerly relying on U.S. protection are going to want their own nukes now: Finland, Poland, Romania, South Korea, Japan, Australia, Canada, Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand; perhaps Singapore and Taiwan as well, although those may be less practical (no land to test with, risky that Malaysia and China respectively would be aggravated by such programs before they get off the ground).
On top of that, states which were grumbling and maybe learnt from Gaddafi and were maybe doing things slowly in secret but were still somewhat checked by U.S. soft power are now certainly not going to hold back. That's at the very least Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Kazakhstan accelerating their programs.
And what's stopping Mexico and Brazil from starting a nuclear program at that point, other than lacking state capacity?
ccc
10mo ago
The position is MAD, which is still the only real response to nuclear threats. If Putin gets what he wants in Ukraine, every capable nation in the world starts its own nuclear weapons program. How does that fare for global nuclear war?
ccc
10mo ago
He doesn't want to be a parent. He wants to be a sire. What you've described is in line with this. It may well be unusual or alien but it isn't confusing and lines up with his stated preferences, so yeah my vote is "autistic compulsion".
ccc
10mo ago
I'm confused by the confusion. He thinks his genes are superior and wants to spread them, and he has the means to avoid having to raise them personally.
ccc
10mo ago
I feel a bit stupid
You should feel more stupid. Even now with hindsight you can barely muster a proper mea culpa. Your failures of judgement are innumerable, yet you fall back to "I didn't even vote." And you have the audacity to say the accelerationists are full of pretense? You will learn nothing from this.
ccc
10mo ago
Anyone who thought Trump 2024 would be the same as Trump 2016 was being lazy. You should feel stupid. You were willfully ignorant. Your entire plan was, "libs will save me from myself."
You knew that the only thing stopping Trump 2016 was career bureaucrats. You knew he had a plan not to let that happen again. Project 2025 was no secret. Did you think unitary executive theory was a joke? Or did you just pretend Trump would not even try, that he'd roll over and lose to the same move twice? Or did you stop thinking here and murmur idly, "libs will save me from myself."
You got what you voted for.
ccc
11mo ago
Seconding that the best thing to teach would be social skills, i.e. compassion for others. I should hope you gently admonished his comment sbout the social worker.
Encouraging any more STEM studies would only further his descent into the antisocial, half-clever asshole life.
ccc
11mo ago
Why do you need sync if you're only going to write at the disconnected setup? I would think the simplest way to heed that advice is to get a machine that can't connect to the internet and write on that using some offline word processor (e.g. Scrivener). Maybe back it up on a USB drive occasionally if you feel the need.
In most places you can get refurbished office PC's for cheap that should be up for the task. An old laptop with a broken WiFi card could also work.
If this offer were on the table, backed by security guarantees, Zelenskyy would take it in a heartbeat. Trump has not made any such offer.
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