netstack
Texas is freedom land
No bio...
User ID: 647
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4hr ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4hr ago
You’re right. I’m used to seeing “security dilemma” deployed in reference to existential threats, since that’s usually when people are most motivated to find an excuse. It seems clear that the academic definition includes any sort of military advantage.
Would you agree that Ukraine reaching out to NATO was driven by a security dilemma? Or that Western support for Ukraine was likewise justified by the tangible security benefits of thousands of dead Russians?
There’s also the Taiwan situation. Increased Chinese influence in the Pacific is, of course, a threat to American hegemony. Does that make a preemptive deployment to Taiwan rational?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9hr ago
First, my whole point was that a "security dilemma" refers to last-resort measures and tangible existential threats, which are the exact situations where nuclear weapons change the calculus.
Second, I want to argue with you, not your pet robot.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
9hr ago
I'm confused about how Canadian regions are divided. Which ridings are you counting? Central Newfoundland, Terra Nova, Avalon, Long Range, Labrador...what am I missing?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
23hr ago
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
- You can embed links by enclosing the link text in brackets: “[[1]](https://www.umass.edu/political-science/about/reports/2025-8)” becomes “[1]”.
- A summary of links is not, on its own, enough substance for a top-level comment. Please try to add some of your own commentary, theorizing, etc.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Don’t worry, just comment as a reply to the main post. It’s the first text box that has a “Comment” button.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I don’t think you’re using “security dilemma” correctly.
The traditional dilemma is a race to the bottom. Either you gobble up your neighbor or you’re the next meal for someone who consumed theirs. In this model, Russia would invade Ukraine because it needs it to have a chance against NATO. But this is obviously false when Russia has a much, much stronger deterrent already.
(I have seen the argument that NATO missiles launched from Ukraine would somehow invalidate that deterrent, but I don’t find it very convincing.)
More importantly, it should be symmetric, right? Doesn’t NATO have an incentive to keep Russian missiles off its borders? Why aren’t the Baltics clamoring for NATO to invade?
The post-Cold-War international order avoided the security dilemma because it wasn’t a peer competition. America won, we set up the rules which benefited us, and we got what we wanted without having to invade Russia. We don’t have to invade neighbors to feel secure. Maybe that's become less true in the last decade or two. It’s still a hole in the pro-Russian apologetics.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Hello, and welcome to the Motte.
We do require that culture war content remains in the Culture War thread. Since I don’t expect this discussion to go very far without someone bringing up a certain spectre, I’m going to ask that you repost this as a top-level comment in that thread.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
Right now the biggest rhetorical weapon against young adults is this idea that your brain isn't finished developing until 25.
Uh, no it’s not. I’m sure it gets cited in the occasional thinkpiece, but how much does that translate into zoomers’ decisions? Have you ever seen an adult say, “sorry, I can’t, my brain isn’t developed enough”?
Today’s twentysomethings are getting out of college with alarming debt and questionable prospects. They’re looking at rampant inflation of credentials, let alone prices. Cars are expensive. Housing ie worse. Insurance is fucked. There is a sense that someone is benefiting and they know it can’t be them.
COVID-era remote school and work derailed their social lives. Social media, a poor surrogate at the best of times, metastasized into something actively discouraging. They are constantly reminded that the world is struggling, with the people in charge malicious and/or incapable. No matter what they believe, they are reassured that half the country hates them and will dismantle anything they like on principle.
Given a choice, more of them are choosing to hunker down and hope for better times.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
1d ago
I finished Alastair Reynold’s Absolution Gap. There was a lot to like, but it was extremely confused as a novel. More thoughts to follow.
Currently reading The Fool Lieutenant, Bob Edlin’s autobiography of his time with the Army Rangers. Writing is a bit more amateurish than some of the memoirs I’ve read. This doesn’t detract from the charm and/or awe. We’re talking about a guy who was shot in both legs on Omaha Beach because he wouldn’t stay down after the first one. Then he spent two or three months in the hospital before shipping himself back to his unit and participating in the rest of the liberation of France. Tremendous badass.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
2d ago
…no?
Media lives or dies on novelty, so good writers can combine all sorts of things. Sometimes they even play them straight, no pun intended, and do back and forth commentary with other works in a genre.
But maybe I’m just confused. I’d have described the premise as “grizzled survivalist shoots his way across the wasteland to protect little girl.”
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Wow.
Is it normal for ICE to bring along a pair of FBI officers and another pair of CBP guys? Were they expecting trouble? Either way, it paid off. Doesn’t sound like they’d have caught the guy without an extra officer who hadn’t been recognized.
The only way I can see this falling apart is if the “courtroom deputy” turned out to be lying. But enough of his testimony is confirmed that it seems awfully unlikely.
Specific groups, specific people. “Some of these folks” is not enough. Show us stats, show us prominent individuals telling people to opt out. If you can’t, consider whether the generalization you’re making actually holds up.
It’s been like a week since I reminded you that mocking one phrase is not a sufficient argument. Mocking zero phrases is not any better. One day ban this time.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Man, I’d be way more worried about “computer expert, self taught, whose task with the government was going to be digitally erasing people.” But at least he’s “beyond reproach” as a government subcontractor, lol.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
How do you find these things?
And how are you just gonna glide over the part where Juror 1 apparently threatened Juror 10 hard enough that the defense insisted it was a mistrial?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
Isn’t “baiting a response” the important bit? It’s the main reason I was ignoring Steve.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
4d ago
War (sigh) has changed.
Motorization. Improvised explosives. Handheld automatic weapons. Radio. A small number of motivated individuals can deal a lot more damage today than they could during the March to the Sea.
Personally, I think a hypothetical U.S. balkanization would look more like the Troubles than the American Civil War. It’d be high-variance: some regions would see a bombing every week, and others would be left untouched up until the point a militia rolled into town. Even the best-off, though, would suffer compared to the globalist, interconnected society we have today.
Not everyone would see the outcomes FC described. But enough of them would, and then they’d take up arms and gouge back. And your children would never expect to have it as good as we did.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
Dallas/Fort Worth is doing alright. Unlike certain cities, it’s had enough room to keep adding more suburbs. My rent is like 20% of my pay and I have an easily sub-half-hour commute. That would change if I were getting into a house, mind you. I’d have to live a lot further out to avoid competing with the tiger parents fighting over the best schools.
We’re not as much a hub as Austin, but on the other hand, we aren’t Austin.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
5d ago
Isn’t “heretic” literally a catchall term for holding the wrong beliefs? I don’t think it really entered the lexicon until Christianity, though.
Wikipedia suggests that the Old Testament used “αἵρεσις” as something more like “partisanship” or “factionalism.” Ironically, that’s probably closer to what you were looking for.
The Romans labeled a number of practices superstitio if they seemed too incompatible with Rome’s weird flavor of religious tolerance.
Eh, we did end up developing the Special Relationship. There’s no country on earth with a better track record of influencing American opinion.
My mid-1800s history is a bit rustier, but I understand slave economics were rather entangled with the British market, since textile industrialization was in full swing. The Confederates were certainly hoping for more direct support from their trade partners.
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