laxam
8mo ago
I think signing on the R ticket and declaring we give too much money to Ukraine and Israel is a really bad way to grift.
That's an absolutely exceptional way to grift. People like Trump and Kari Lake have been doing it for years and raking in the small dollar donations by the millions for years.
When are you people going to realize that you are the establishment. You are the power now, so every time you sneer about the establishment neocons what you're actually doing is sneering as the heel to the face. The """"establishment"""" is terrified of voters that think like you do and have been bending over and spreading wide for almost a decade to try to please you. All they've gotten for it is cascading electoral failure. As someone who likes it when Republicans win, I'm not very happy about that.
If you break them up into conjugal family units, you can even get some cultural change going.
laxam
8mo ago
The US doesn't have an empire. It is the hegemon within a state system. Abandoning the hegemony doesn't mean it can go back to ignoring the rest of the world and nothing bad will happen to it, it means there will be a new hegemon who will remake the system in its image and without reference to the interests of the United States.
Isolationism worked in the 19th century because the UK decided to be nice to us and no one else had the ability to touch us. Today, the UK is a minor power with no real wooden walls to hide behind, and now anyone with an ICBM can touch us.
The Tea Party wasn't coopted by the mainstream GOP, it became the mainstream GOP. When Ted Cruz could force a government shutdown and the Tea Party could force Boehner out of power, they're the ones with the whip hand.
Edit: Lest we forget, the big representative of the GOP 'Establishment' (a vacuous concept to be sure -- Trump is the establishment) this year, Nikki Haley, was elected as a Tea Party Republican, originally.
And, of course, Boehner himself was originally elected all the way back in 1990 as part of a micro-anti-establishment wave with particular bugaboos about corruption and the GOP Establishment being gentleman losers. But, of course of course, they actually were corrupt, gentleman losers when Boehner was elected, having not held Congress in 40 years, and there actually was genuine Congressional corruption he could attack, like the House Bank scandal. It's just an eternal cycle with the Republican Party.
laxam
3mo ago
The other Arab states couldn't care less about Israel. The Baathists were the only ones who ever actually disliked Israel at higher echelons of government and Saddam is dead and Assad has got bigger problems to worry about. The monarchies occasionally make anti-Israeli noises for their populaces but otherwise don't give a damn, Egypt has been sucking on the American military funding teet in exchange for peaceful relations with Israel for so long that the mask-for-money has become just standard Egyptian policy, and other Arab states are too distant to actually be bothered.
laxam
6mo ago
The idea that the parties themselves should be Democratic organizations is itself a Progressive idea. They did fine for a long time functioning as deliberative, member organizations which we're focused on winning general, rather than primary elections.
laxam
24d ago
Also, Scots are Celts
Highlanders, yes. Lowland Scots are Anglos with a funny accent and some Celtic wives.
laxam
24d ago
'Christianity' declined in America when elite institutions started getting filled up with Catholics and jews. This happened in the 1940's and by the 1960's the new 'elite' was throwing their weight around. The old WASP ideals were pushed aside. That's all there is to the story of modern America. 1,2
The Modernism versus Traditionalism split in the Presbyterian Church pre-dates the 1940's. The split between what were essentially modern professional class atheists and fundamentalist Christians who still insisted on the Westminster confession dates from then, at the latest, not from the 1960's.
The growth of socialism, progressivism, modernism, and secularism in the 19th and early 20th century elite is something you can't ignore when telling a story about American social history. The guys in the scenes at Harvard from the 1930's in The Good Shepherd were quintessential WASPs but they certainly weren't Puritans.
And, of course, the most resounding condemnation of this from the 20th century, God and Man at Yale, was written by a Catholic conservative...
laxam
1mo ago
I don't know about 'horrifically riven' but it did have plenty of civil war and strife over the years.
laxam
3mo ago
The IRG is a few hundred thousand personnel. If 'a few layers' was more than a couple of thousand people I would be shocked.
laxam
3mo ago
The point is that the Israelis aren't actually a source of instability in the region, except in terms of their relationship with the Palestinians. Get rid of the latter and you've solved the problem. Get rid of the former and you've still got a problem because they're a radicalized Islamist population which hates all of their neighbors.
laxam
6mo ago
What about in the more literal sense of being not male gendered or female gendered?
laxam
6mo ago
A tiny portion of our energies, maybe. It's not like these things are mutually exclusive.
Of course, a huge part of that was that the American people didn't really care, at the end of the day, once Bin Laden was dead. Israelis will care about what happens in the Gaza Strip.
laxam
8mo ago
But, I do agree this is substantively a center-left country, and a few lucky EV wins (Bush in 2000, Trump in 2016) along with great timing on SC Judges dying have given right-leaning people an overrated view of their own support within the country
Only ever paying attention to Presidential elections is going to give you a really warped view of the country and the electorate.
First: if you think the US was a center-left country in 2000, you're just lost. I wouldn't even know where to begin.
Second: Republicans controlled at least one chamber in 39 out of 50 state legislatures in 2016 and had 31 governorships (and would win 3 more that year). The US was still a center right ght country in 2016, it's just that the Trump years have caused a lot of center-right people to question their convictions just enough to be willing to vote for what at least looks like a sane Democrat over Trump or a Trump affiliated Republican.
laxam
11mo ago
their preferred outcome is to continue to lose forever
They were doing a lot of winning down ballot prior to 2016 for a bunch of people who like losing.
In fact, most of the losing they've been doing has been from 2018, onward.
laxam
3d ago
Whether or not a successful Reconstruction where blacks enjoyed equal rights and Southern whites were reconciled to this and to the Union was ever really in the cards is a pretty deep historical question that would probably take a lifetime of historical research to opine on in an informed manner.
But not coming down hard on ex-rebs absolutely kiboshed any chance of serious armed insurgency and Ireland-style long term separatism. I'm of the opinion that a bit stiffer a spine from Congress in the 1880s could have preserved most of the civil rights against made but, as per above, that's not really something I can back up to an adequate degree.
laxam
4d ago
I'm serious. The light hand used against the ex-rebels after the Civil War -- Reconstruction but not imprisonment or execution -- played an important role in reconciling the South to once-again membership in the Union.
laxam
4mo ago
This argument conclusively fell through about 1860. One population in a group of states decided that the other population in a different group of states was not allowed to have the laws their electorates broadly supported, so they formed a massive mob and... well, you know the rest.
1860?
Dred Scott happened in 1857...
laxam
7mo ago
I continue to be unsure of how much you remember, but the invasion of Iraq took place almost two years after 9/11, with a lot of focus on things other than that event to justify the invasion to the people, like WMDs.
The invasion of Afghanistan took place a month after 9/11 and that absolutely was an expression of outrage by the country.
laxam
7mo ago
People wanted to know who was responsible the day of.
Unfortunately we can't test that. But the reason I believe in my model is that things as shocking as 9/11 I've seen happen elsewhere in countries where a war on terror wasn't in the interests of the ruling class, and those somehow failed to materialize the will for such a thing despite clearly fertile ground.
Most other countries cannot do what the US did.
laxam
7mo ago
If by the "Ukrainian people" you mean the people in charge behind Biden and Zelensky.
No, I mean the people who threw out and would have killed another leader they were unhappy with if he hadn't gotten away less than a decade ago
laxam
10d ago
It has been quite the journey over the last decade seeing this general space, in its various homes, drift from being a place for a variety of dissenters, idle imaginers, original thinkers, and malcontents to being just another space for Trumpers to get together and gripe about everyone but themselves.
laxam
6mo ago
This is a lot of words to write, "I don't understand why aggregate statistics don't apply to the individual".
Subsets of aggregate data can move in different directions from the summary statistics of the whole dataset. Trying to understand why people don't take selected macro statistics as gospel truth about their own lives is, to use a common phrase, extremely out of touch.
And stuff like this:
- Republicans think the economy is doing absolutely terribly, much worse than Democrats think, and 3) that most of this perception difference is because Biden, a Democrat, currently occupies the White House.
Is bordering on outright delusional. There are more Americans than just Democrats and Republicans and you don't get 55% fair/poor personal financial situation from just Republicans (no matter how much I'd love for 55% of Americans to be Republicans, alas).
What's actually going on here is that the chattering classes and the politicians and bureaucrats they support are finding, once again, that they can't actually tell people what to think about their personal lives. It's baldly obvious that this group doesn't actually know what they're talking about any functionally better than most people and that their ability to cite macro statistics is more an attempt to cast a magic spell than a real explanation of ground truth.
laxam
1mo ago
The bill said "owned or controlled, directly or indirectly". That seems incredibly broad to be honest.
Here's the whole of the relevant section of the law, so people can judge for themselves how broad it is:
(g) Definitions
In this section:
(1) Controlled by a foreign adversary
The term controlled by a foreign adversary means, with respect to a covered company or other entity, that such company or other entity is—
(A) a foreign person that is domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of a foreign adversary country;
(B) an entity with respect to which a foreign person or combination of foreign persons described in subparagraph (A) directly or indirectly own at least a 20 percent stake; or
(C) a person subject to the direction or control of a foreign person or entity described in subparagraph (A) or (B).
(2) Covered company
(A) In general
The term covered company means an entity that operates, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that—
(i) permits a user to create an account or profile to generate, share, and view text, images, videos, real-time communications, or similar content;
(ii) has more than 1,000,000 monthly active users with respect to at least 2 of the 3 months preceding the date on which a relevant determination of the President is made pursuant to paragraph (3)(B);
(iii) enables 1 or more users to generate or distribute content that can be viewed by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application; and
(iv) enables 1 or more users to view content generated by other users of the website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application.
(B) Exclusion
The term covered company does not include an entity that operates a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application whose primary purpose is to allow users to post product reviews, business reviews, or travel information and reviews.
(3) Foreign adversary controlled application
The term foreign adversary controlled application means a website, desktop application, mobile application, or augmented or immersive technology application that is operated, directly or indirectly (including through a parent company, subsidiary, or affiliate), by—
(A) any of—
(i) ByteDance, Ltd.;
(ii) TikTok;
(iii) a subsidiary of or a successor to an entity identified in clause (i) or (ii) that is controlled by a foreign adversary; or
(iv) an entity owned or controlled, directly or indirectly, by an entity identified in clause (i), (ii), or (iii); or
(B) a covered company that—
(i) is controlled by a foreign adversary; and
(ii) that is determined by the President to present a significant threat to the national security of the United States following the issuance of—
(I) a public notice proposing such determination; and
(II) a public report to Congress, submitted not less than 30 days before such determination, describing the specific national security concern involved and containing a classified annex and a description of what assets would need to be divested to execute a qualified divestiture.
(4) Foreign adversary country
The term foreign adversary country means a country specified in section 4872(d)(2) of title 10, United States Code.
And here's the relevant, referenced section from subsection 4 above:
section 4872(d)(2):
(2) Covered nation.—The term “covered nation” means—
(A) the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea;
(B) the People’s Republic of China;
(C) the Russian Federation; and
(D) the Islamic Republic of Iran.
It's all honestly really quite narrow. It could not be applied to Twitter because Elon isn't 'domiciled in, is headquartered in, has its principal place of business in, or is organized under the laws of' 'the Democratic People's Republic of North Korea...the People's Republic of China...the Russian Federation...[or] the Islamic Republic of Iran', nor is Twitter 'directly or indirectly own[ed]' by someone with 'at least a 20 percent stake' who is domiciled, headquartered, doing business in, or organized under the laws of the preceding four countries.
If, someday, we added Saudi Arabia to that list (not something I would put past the left of the Democratic party, a portion of which will never get over Khashoggi), Twitter might be in trouble. Until then, this law would not apply.
The law is quite short. It's also pretty free of the kind of cross-references and surgical edits that make reading many other bills so confusing. Just make sure to understand that most things in the law are defined somewhere.
The Trump era has been a historic disaster for the Republican Party downballot. After fighting and clawing it's way into centuriate power during the Tea Party era, reaching a peak of state and local power in 2016 unmatched since the 1920s, the anti-Trump backlash drove them out of power everywhere in 2018 and 2019.
They have the luck that the Democrats really suck at not just assuming they will hold power forever, so driving yet more backlash, but people in many places would rather have Democratic leftists over Trumpist conspiracy theorists (even if that is a near run thing).
The fact that the crazies have gained local party power in a lot of places is going to be a hobble on the party's performance for a long time. Arizona -- what is probably still a light red state in natural circumstances -- is probably going to be become blue just because the AZGOP is nuts.
My local party has stayed mostly sane, thankfully, so hopefully we can finish pushing the Democrats who won county control for the first time in half a century back into minority status. We'll see.
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