laxam
9mo ago
To the extent that all conflicts can be described as about 'overlapping war goals', yes, and all war is a failure of diplomacy.
The whole exercise just seems to be about embedding the same old Russian gripe about NATO expansion in more respectable, historiographical context. Learned and wise. Except anything is analogous to anything at a high enough level of vague generality.
laxam
1yr ago
Trump would have been safely defeated and probably too old and beleaguered to run again
And imprisoned. I think, if Trump loses, there's a very high chance he's found guilty in the Smith case and he goes to prison. That hanging over his head is probably a big reason he's so willing to listen to campaign advisors on so many things.
laxam
9mo ago
those who want to do it again
Fascinatingly, there is still a Prohibition Party in the United States. They've apparently run a Presidential candidate in every election since 1872.
laxam
10mo ago
Bush's lead had disappeared by the time Trump started taking off. It was essentially an open race and, to be honest, would probably have ended up being either between Rubio and Cruz or a three way between them and Kasich, depending on if Kasich and Rubio could consolidate. However, Rubio's pro-immigration image would have turned off the people who went for Trump in real life, so I could see it easily going to Cruz.
He's a weak vessel, but we didn't know that in 2016. He could probably handle Clinton fairly easily, especially if he focused on immigration like Trump did.
laxam
1yr ago
I wonder if the online right intellecto-sphere will ever figure out that Trump wasn't for them.
laxam
2yr ago
If we can’t actually protect Ukraine despite billions in sanctions and giving the most powerful weapons we have, what sane country is going to trust us to be their defense or to protect their trade or solve their disputes?
Ukraine isn't getting the most powerful stuff NATO has. Ukraine got a bunch of old Soviet equipment from the ex-WARPAC NATO members and it's gotten some stuff a generation or two out of date from the US. They're also only getting some of the wider environment of military organization NATO militaries operate with. They don't have the training, the military traditions, the economy...
Ukraine is NATO supporting a country it has no formal commitments to because NATO countries think it's either the right thing to do, a good realist move, or some mixture thereof. If it doesn't work out, that's humiliating, in a way, but not incredibly moreso than the Afghanistan pullout or the mess in Iraq. Countries with whom NATO or the US have actual treaty obligations will know they have nothing to worry about. They saw what happened with the HIMARs. They know how far ahead of everyone else NATO is. If things don't work out for Ukraine on a strategic level, that's ultimately because the West didn't care enough to do more than throw some pocket change and old equipment at them.
Japan and Korea may develop a niggling fear in the back of their mind about just how far the willingness of the US and NATO to commit to a war in their defense may go, but they also know the situation is sufficiently different that they can re-assure themselves and move on with their day.
laxam
2yr ago
"We know better than you how you should use your land", is roughly analogous to, "We know better than you what you should put in your body".
For a decade now the Conservative party has thought the way to victory is by tacking ever closer to the middle (actually center left) in order to get the all important 36-37% of the national vote.
It sometimes surprises me how infrequently Canadian elections produce a popular vote majority government and just how small popular vote minorities can be and still win enough seats to form feasible minority or even outright majority governments.
People complain a lot about how undemocratic outcomes in the US are related to the Senate and the Electoral College but it's shockingly common across the democratic world to have governing majorities in parliaments elected by popular vote minorities -- even very small ones! Relatively few countries seem to consistently product popular vote majority coalitions, like Germany, although some countries like Israel or the Netherlands have a habit of building coalitions that are just under 50% of the popular vote.
laxam
1yr ago
Yes, we are basically hobbits, content to live in nice towns with little in the way of crime and no real desire to seek power over others.
I remember reading Lord of the Rings growing up and thinking the Shire sounded like paradise. I'm not exactly surprised to find people who don't think so exist -- I knew this, there are people who like the city --, but finding that there are people who think of the Shire as an example of a bad thing is a little funny.
I live across a river from the hospital I was born in, five miles from the house I grew up in (well, one of them, anyway -- we moved a lot when I was young, but always in the same county. My father chased the housing bubble upwards), and, while the old rural character of the place is mostly gone and paved over by suburbia, enough of it is left that I love it here and have no desire to ever leave. I've married a girl I met in college, most of my immediate family lives within a 45 minutes drive, and I pretty consciously chase stable, salaried employment that provides dependable income and doesn't ask too much as far as travel or flexibility.
The funny thing is that I'm actually from an area of the country that is otherwise very much like the 'coastal elitopia' the guy found out he prefers, just far enough out on (what used to be) the edges of the suburbs that you can still see the shimmer of the rural past in the ponds and the creeks. The small towns are still small (even if they're expensive and trendy and surrounded by miles of SFH neighborhoods), the parks are still pristine (even if the bike trails are getting more defined and nature outside those parks is disappearing, at least in this part of the county), and the job market is healthy enough that I don't think I'll ever even have to leave (even if my wife wants to move to Europe someday -- we both want something like Bavaria, which is pretty much exactly like here but with less tract housing and better beer).
laxam
1yr ago
Is it to discuss policy? Is it to discuss aggregate public perception? Averages matter.
Which averages matter a lot.
Of course, there is no real policy discussion going on with these discussions of macro statistics. It's just Lefty professionals sneering at the rest of the country and saying, "Why won't you just do what I tell you and vote for the Democrats?"
laxam
9mo ago
Acknowledgement of reality. A peace deal now without hard guarantees is just a pause, a frozen conflict so more can be taken in the future.
laxam
10mo ago
There were no great candidates in 2016, but probably any of them but Bush could have beaten Clinton fairly easily. Bush's name would have dragged him down harder with the kinds of voters he needed to make up for the lack of immigration restrictionists that we really got to see when it was just the primaries.
There was a time when people were thinking, "I we really going to end up with Bushes and Clinton's again?!"
laxam
11mo ago
and there's a very decent chance that they would actually lose the conflict militarily to boot
This is delusional. Obliterating the formal militaries of near peer competitors is the one thing the US military is utterly dominant at. The US loses wars when you go all fourth generational warfare and wait for the American public to get tired of hearing about the steady trickle of dead American soldiers and foreign civilians (who are innocent and mostly women ad children, of course).
laxam
2yr ago
Economists realized a long time ago that models used for competition between firms don't work to model behavior within firms, and almost nobody in a firm is actually working with the goal of "make the most money for the firm".
In other words, institutions are principal-agent problems all the way down.
laxam
1yr ago
A parasitical relationships between the producers of wealth, the managers and the oppressed/activist class, who can rearrange the chairs to receive more money, prestige and wealth.
American society used to have a much larger distaste for money being wasted in this kind of corrupt way. However, as taxes increased and government grew, the focus on economy fell by the wayside and it became a lot easier for these sorts of cash flows to just disappear in the torrent of Federal spending.
laxam
9mo ago
American treaty obligations. Tripwire forces. Things that represent an actual threat to Russian attempts to use military force to restart the conflict.
laxam
10mo ago
the will of a democratically elected government
Kind of funny coming from a government elected by 33% of the populace.
laxam
1yr ago
Yes. Multiple times in our history, our politics has chosen the openness of the electoral system over strict adherence to the law.
This kind of prosecutorial discretion used to be considered 'wisdom', the kind of compromise that keeps the system going at the expense of absolute legalism.
laxam
1yr ago
All the “right side of history” framing boils down to is a prediction that future popular consensus will judge Political Group X favourably. I think this argument would be profoundly weak and fallacious coming from any political faction: how arrogant of anyone to think they can accurately predict what the people two generations from now will believe, when they can’t even reliably predict where they’re going to go for lunch tomorrow.
It's not an absolutely terrible argument when used to warn others to really attend to the possible risks they're taking. Patrick Henry had an absolutely powerful speech at the Virginia Ratifying Convention against the ratification of the Constitution:
In his final speech at the ratifying convention, Henry extended the stakes beyond America to the world; indeed, the heavens: He [Madison] tells you of important blessings which he imagines will result to us and mankind in general, from the adoption of this system—I see the awful immensity of the dangers with which it is pregnant.—I see it—I feel it.—I see beings of a higher order, anxious concerning our decision. When I see beyond the horizon that binds human eyes, and look at the final consummation of all human things, and see those intelligent beings which inhabit the ethereal mansions, reviewing the political decisions and revolutions which in the progress of time will happen in America, and the consequent happiness or misery of mankind—I am led to believe that much of the account on one side or the other will depend on what we now decide.
At about this point, the stenographer noted, "a violent storm arose, which put the house in such disorder, that Mr. Henry was obliged to conclude." Archibald Stuart, a delegate to the ratifying convention, described Henry as "rising on the wings of the tempest, to seize upon the artillery of heaven, and direct its fiercest thunders against the heads of his adversaries."
Of course, maybe you are right, because:
The artillery of heaven was not enough. The next day, June 25, the convention voted 89-79 to ratify the Constitution.
laxam
1yr ago
Dunno, but Iran has had several waves of very large scale anti-regime protests. I think you could prevent something exactly like the Mullahs taking back over if you just hand the government over to the right people. Iran isn't really like Iraq, it's a more developed place, even with the sanctions.
Hegel's whole schtick about oppressors and the oppressed is a crock that bears only a tangential resemblance to the real world
The oppressor/oppressed bit is aaaaa-bsolutely not a Hegel original. His contribution (founding contribution IMO) to the current sickness was that knowledge begins with a relation among things, which is where the idea of oppressor/oppressed ultimately comes from, but was not him. He wasn't exactly an old school conservative, but he also isn't clearly recognizable as a modern liberal or leftist in any way whatsoever.
Likewise, the entire concept of "slave-morality" is what the kids these days call "a cope" a desperate attempt by 19th century leftists to rescue their narrative from the increasingly overwhelming evidence of history.
Also, Nietzsche was also completely not a leftist. The slave morality is indeed supposed to be a cope, of a sort, not of the 19th century but of the 7th century, BC. An ideology reaction of the Jews to their conquest by virile, life affirming masters.
The Leftist affair with Nietzsche is not based upon his being in any way on their side. He wasn't. The Masters are the good guys in his telling, to the extent there are any. The horrible man-beasts whose pure will and lack of moral feeling are not Leftists. Their love of him is based on outright ignoring most of what he had to say in order to grasp at a sense of libertinism.
I find my question unchanged.
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