ccc
23d ago
The "don't tread on me" crowd is already dead and irrelevant, as if they weren't already 10 years ago.
Laws are tools for power. You don't just get one of them and say "ah, we're done, now let's just enforce it and call it a day." Did liberals stop once they got the Civil Rights Act of of 1957 passed? Civil Rights Act of 1960? Civil Rights Act of 1964? Did they call it a day then? No. Of course not. They packed courts with sympathetic judges and universities with sympathetic admins. They even got Republicans to sign off on amendments.
If you want to win, you keep passing more and more laws that get you more power until you get as much of what you want as you can get. You tear up as many enemy laws as possible. You do all of that and you do everything else you can too. Propaganda, persuasion, institutional capture. Enforcing laws you like, ignoring ones you don't. This is politics.
What you don't do is piss and shit yourself and then have a cry when that doesn't do anything.
If you want your state to do things, you need state capacity. That is reality. You might not want that, but the average MAGA voter has a laundry list of things they want their Daddy to do to their enemies.
ccc
2mo ago
I can understand why pundits or political players would engage in this sort of sophistry, but to see it on a niche anonymous online forum is utterly bizarre.
A retvrn to the state of affairs where the USA was not global hedgemon would not benefit the average US citizen, much less the average Trump voter. It doesn't even benefit Trump himself. Who would benefit is China. That is self-destructive.
ccc
8mo ago
he knows a lot about boxing and MMA and they spent half the interview talking about that
I got the impression Trump was bullshitting his way through this subject. He said nothing of substance, just mirrored and affirmed Joe.
This has been the procedure for his whole 2nd term. Flood the zone with shit. Put feelers out to see what people will tolerate. So what if he telegraphs the punch? Making the opposition flinch (and laughing at them when they do) is half the point. The other half is it gives him options. Nobody panics if things go according to plan, even if the plan is horrifying.
There won't be any Literally Hitler moment (i.e. broad suppression of civil liberties comparable to the Reichstag Fire Decree) because the media landscape is totally different today than it was 100 years ago. Today the playbook is individual opposition buried under a litany of accusations, reports, and kangaroo courts -- too many things to litigate for any Informed Citizen to keep up with, each with a sliver of truth behind them. It will look like a hollowing out of the Democratic party to the point where they run someone like AOC for president. You'll still have your first amendment, you'll still be able to say whatever you want online, and you'll vote for a 2028 Trump ticket of your own free will, never minding that the USA is more like Mexico than ever before.
ccc
23d ago
You seem to be conflating the Tea Party and MAGA. They're not the same thing. Plenty of people were involved in both movements. That's just politics.
MAGA doesn't care about deficits. They're about to sign a $2.6T omnibus bill. Take a guess how much of that is going towards capacity for deportations.
ccc
30d ago
I don't know where you live that cyclists blow through red lights on the regular, but it sounds like the laws of physics should take care of that eventually. Unless you're talking about them doing it where there's clearly no traffic, in which case what's the problem? What's the danger? Are you just mad they get to and you don't?
ccc
8mo ago
So back in 1908, when there weren't any primaries, the US wasn't a democracy? Only in the 70s, when binding national primaries were first implemented, did it become one?
Elites always win. This isn't new.
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
1yr ago
Removing people on purely substantive grounds is difficult even when you're right. Ousting power requires some level of opportunism.
Unilateral disarmament would be a noble if naive goal, but if you can excuse Rubiales' blatant lies you can just as well excuse an opportunistic ousting. Otherwise it's pure who-whom, and no point discussing further.
ccc
1yr ago
[...] just say that's what you are.
This is disarmament. So you are advocating unilateral disarmament then? Unless your demand is only for your enemies, in which case yes they will of course ignore it.
Maybe, if you can't oust a corrupt president or prosecute a guilty criminal for his actual crimes,
They should just get off without any charges? If your commitment to due process and the impartial hand of justice is that great, you can't turn around later and defend Rubiales' because he's on your team.
I'm not advocating for lawless vigilantism or witch burning. I'm pointing out that one party engaging in power politics doesn't necessarily disqualify their legitimate complaints.
You also can't point to some mild opportunism and say it delegitimizes all other complaints. That leads to pure who-whom, which sucks.
Your protest is like asking why the USG went after Al Capone for tax evasion instead of his actual crimes. The answer is obvious and it doesn't make him innocent.
ccc
2yr ago
You're putting on a pretty high pedestal a girl who's stuck sitting around for hours on her phone.
Humanize her a bit and it's probably less likely she's made a rational calculation with ho logic to ignore the LVM than it is that she's neurotic and antisocial.
ccc
4mo 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
2yr ago
I can't imagine wanting any trans cousin to babysit my kids, let alone them being put together and selfless enough to do so.
ccc
2mo ago
This is good instinct for politics but awful instinct for statesmanship. No amount of conquering enemies will overcome the fact that these tarrifs are self-destructive.
If you go this hard on conflict theory you end up surrounded by sycophants in an epistemic black hole. This isn't just "one unfortunate thing Trump is doing wrong" it's the primary issue with authoritarianism as a means of running the state. As soon as the guy on top of the hierarchy has a dumb idea (and everyone has dumb ideas) there's no way to stop it.
The more he punishes people for lightly pushing back on his one big dumb idea, the further into the black hole everyone goes.
ccc
8mo ago
This is most commonly raised as a counterpoint to "why are we spending so much in Ukraine, when {pet issue at home} is totally ignored!"
It's also maybe a compromise strategy to appese peaceniks, but this is frankly retarded as peaceniks are never appeased.
I at least fully advocate taking the risk of nuclear escalation, since the alternative (appeasement of nuclear threats) is far worse. This is unfortunately a hard sell to the American voter who cares more about culture war and gas prices. If Trump can make that sell, then I'll be impressed.
ccc
4mo 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
8mo ago
More risk than has been currently been taken.
After almost 3 years of frog boiling, there should have been 30+ escalations along the way that each on their own might receive nuclear responses but that altogether culminate in "there's so much US military involved that Russia loses everything".
Instead of properly following this frog boiling strategy, Biden had a bunch of red lines he wouldn't cross and stopped the boil at a simmer, defeating the whole point of the strategy. There should never be any red lines. At most there should be "don't do that yet" lines.
It took a whole two years to merely let Ukraine fire US supplied weapons offensively. This was not just on its own stupidly risk averse but more broadly demonstrates the failure to commit to the strategy, ultimately justifying the use of nuclear threats. The two year mark of frog boiling should at the very least have both the US air force and navy personnel directly involved, and probably even marines. By three years it should've been guaranteed to be over.
But, well, none of that was politically possible, or maybe Biden just didn't have the balls to do it. I will be pleasantly surprised if Trump escalates properly to give Ukraine the aid it needs to win and/or to get concessions out of Putin, but I'm not holding my breath.
ccc
5mo 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.
There's a lot of ways to get off with (or without) a partner that aren't PIV.
ccc
2yr ago
Specialization is of course good, but all the things you've listed (except changing oil) are much more complicated and take longer to learn than building a PC.
If you're so rich that you can call it a convenience tax rather than an idiot tax, then sure call it that instead. But if your time really is that valuable one wonders why you asked here in the first place.
ccc
2yr ago
People with no care for morality are not in question. Of course it doesn't matter to them. They simply do as they will.
The people in question aren't ignoring any moral axioms of utilitarianism. Ends justify the means is fundamental to it. You can thus be a committed utilitarian and do evil simply via bad calculations.
Other moral systems fail in other ways. But a strict deontologist is not going to rob Peter to pay Paul.
They have all three branches of government and a favorable supreme court. Trump owns the party and can make all the senators and congressmen fall in line. It would be so easy to pass legislation to massively increase state capacity for audits, deportations, expedited court hearings, etc. Well, it would be easy, if the administration had any competency to work with.
But the purpose of this presidency is impotent lashing out at perceived enemies. It's all theatre and grievance politics. There's no intention of executing proper statecraft, of actually doing things. The best you can hope for is wonton destruction. That's what you get when you elect a conman.
So in one sense, no, it isn't necessary -- if they were comptent. But given they aren't, it's the only option they have.
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