remzem
17d ago
Trump as well is speed running losing long term support. He's alienated the more libertarian voters by attacking Rand Paul and Massie, while having a really bloated pork filled spending bill. He's alienated the isolationists by continuing to provide intel to Ukraine, basically doing the same good cop bad cop routine he just did with Iran to claim neutrality while all the evidence points to continued support. He alienated the moderates and boomers with his poorly planned tariffs, even managed to alienate the pro tariff people by waffling too much on them. If he does the amnesty he was talking about yesterday his base is going to shrivel up. I've never seen this much hate before for Trump on right wing twitter.
remzem
17d ago
No one is foolish enough these days to negotiate peace with the west. Every country knows it is just a pretext for the west to wait until it has a better position to destroy you.
remzem
18d ago
Rubio has denied American involvement. Not that we'd admit it even if we were involved.
https://x.com/WhiteHouse/status/1933328486669697508
Though it makes sense for Israel to claim otherwise. If Iran strikes US bases it will help them pull us into their war. On the off chance the neocons haven't already greenlit it.
remzem
18d ago
Another insult to Trump given he asked for one more weekend of talks. I suppose they own enough of the other politicians and news orgs they don't mind if he isn't 100% on board.
remzem
22d ago
Charging everyone present because their protesting made it inconvenient to undertake a planned future action is already stretching the law beyond anything it's been used for in the past
Jan 6th?
remzem
25d ago
Yeah he's not as influential as Tucker, but still has a decent audience. I don't really understand why Bannon still stans for Trump so hard tbh though. Trump basically tossed him aside early first term and never looked back. Trump really doesn't come close to Bannon's populist levels. First term Trump, Bannon wanted taxes raised on the 5m bracket to bring down deficits. He wants the dollar to stop being the reserve currency to help US production, etc. Trump is almost closer to Romney politically than Bannon at this point.
remzem
25d ago
Who are they even pillaging it for? Dems are more PMC now so they are hardly all low income and will likely benefit from the tax breaks, especially the SALT deduction changes. There are plenty or rust belt Trump voters on medicaid that will lose coverage along with the inner city dems. The military gets more funding which seems to be a requirement of every democrat or republican bill so it's basically bipartisan. I guess the border funding? Seems like pretty lame spoils compared to Biden's term.
remzem
25d ago
Yeah but everyone knew USAID was just a regime change operation and wanted it cut for that reason. That was the whole point. Neocon Rubio swept in and pretended like we really cared about mosquito nets to Africa or w/e
remzem
25d ago
He didn't even successfully cut foreign aid. Congress kept punting it, now they've said they'll cut 9b which is only 1/4 of USAIDs budget.
remzem
28d ago
Not really, you want to do damage to conventional weapons, not nuclear fleet. You're in a conventional war, you won't win with random deep strikes on weapons that aren't being used in the war. You could just start suicide bombing tons of people in moscow or something if you just want to do damage to your enemy, but that will just backfire and weaken your position. The pro-russian people tend to think more strategically and the pro Ukr in emotional displays. So they are eternally confused by eachother. It reminds me of the battle of the sexes.
remzem
28d ago
Seems like the numbers were exaggerated with 2 of the attacks randomly detonating en route and another getting blocked by random civilians. Maybe 10 destroyed / damaged. Still pretty crazy though, not an attack that will change the outcome of the war but it could lead to countries tearing up / rethinking a lot of current nuke agreeements.
More and more the deep bombings are just drone swarms. With a record of over 400 lancets launched in one day last week and newer jet propelled variations using up more AA. The glidebombs doing most of the work on the front line are carried by smaller aircraft. It seems like this was purely (if it had been more successful) intended to try to provoke a nuclear response. Force Russia into a lose-lose situation where it either makes a major escalation, which they could use to try and get western boots on the ground. Or if Russia doesn't respond show the western powers that it's safe to greenlight deep strikes that slowly chip away at Russia's nuclear deterrence. As that is obviously the main reason the west won't get involved, everyone loses a nuclear war between NATO and Russia, but NATO wins a conventional war (unless China steps in).
I guess they've recognized they have no chance without European troops so they're going for crazier shit.
remzem
28d ago
If i were a US rival i'd be buying up lots of farmland around US military bases and industry. They seemed to be using cellular networks though, not ai.
remzem
1mo ago
Really good, GOTY so far. Probably the best traditional JRPG type story since Square's big 6-10 run. Good voice acting, music. Minor issues with lips syncing to voices. Combat is serviceable. I still think what square is doing with the ff7 remakes is better. Manages to keep the more tactical aspect of turn based games while adding dodges and parries and more modern real time freedom of movement. Felt like with Clair Obscur the ability to perfect dodge and parry is so important that it almost forces glass cannon builds if you want to feel optimal. Which hurts build variety. Like Sekiro a lot so that probably helped me enjoy the game and FF 6-10 were all breakable after overleveling anyways, FF8 before leaving the first zone, so the short fights aren't that big of a deal. Its way better than the awful ff16 combat and complete lack of rpg mechanics though!
remzem
1mo ago
Never really liked him as a populist since he's basically open borders. He seems to lack a basic understanding of humans. It's become especially grating now though since he's basically this term's Romney/McCain/Cheney. Being held up by all the left wing posters as a conservative with morals and principals, aka beliefs that align more with their own.
remzem
1mo ago
Trump could EO himself a billion dollars and as long as he stops immigration, deports all the migrants here and stops all funding for the foreign wars / foreign aide I'd still vote for him. The country has just gotten bad enough that normal crime doesn't really matter. The threat is existential.
Personally I suspect that this sort of corruption was always happening, we just didn't get coverage of it because the uniparty was in control and they didn't want to release things that overly damaged trust in the system. Now the knives are out and all the dirty laundry gets aired. I mean epstein was getting dirt on mega rich businessmen and influential politicians way back in the late 90s.
(there should be disclaimers on hanania links so people don't give him traffic against their will, or use archives)
remzem
2mo ago
Trump should lean in on this. Require Amazon to list the tariff price, also require it to list the country it was made in, the wage payed to the factory worker, the safety regulations in that country, and their weekly work hours.
Let's inform the American consumer
remzem
2mo ago
In diverse low-trust spaces conflict theory and it's associated strategies (defect, defect, defect) simply wins, or at least loses less. I feel like we've discussed the whys on this place for a full decade at this point, but basically you have to at least have a space in which people agree on fundamentals like good faith discussion before you can have moderate and rational discussion. Zero point in wasting your breath trying to convince someone that isn't actually open to being convinced. Add some dead internet theory in: corporations, state actors, random universities in switzerland with access to LLMs, manipulating votes and discussion and anonymous open internet forums are basically the worst possible place to find mistake theorist type discussion.
The motte is sheltered a bit by it's obscurity and it's adherence to strict mean girls, minus the social clique formation, inspired rules. Where conflict that is indirect, hidden under a veil of verbosity and mostly about group status seeking (QCAs) is preferenced. Though this is really still a conflict theory space, just with faux mistake theory employed to mask aggression and maintain status.
If you want good discussion it's best to just make some friends that like politics, pretty much even the most brain wormed internet troll will communicate in your preferred mistake theorist style with people they trust. Or you could try to find some closed communities where access is invite only, maybe on discord or something. You should only go to open forums when you want to verbally punch someone in the face and be punched in the face.
Calm your tits It's not happening, though now that I think about it, if it does happen it's probably not a bad thing. The left has become increasingly violent and anti-semetic, with the blm riots and polls showing most of them are okay with political assassinations, they are a very dangerous group, more dangerous than muslim extremists even. They really have only themselves to blame.
(that's not happening and it's good that it is)
remzem
2mo ago
It's play acting. The same people with the crocodile tears over this were laughing when people were getting locked up for protesting not being able to see their dying loved ones during covid and had no problem with the complete suspension of rights when it was their team in power or jan 6 protestors getting solitary for loitering. They regularly vote unanimously to extend the patriot act overreach, etc, etc, etc.
remzem
2mo ago
It's all play acting. Most of the American's that are "frightened" about this deportation don't actually think they are at risk for being deported. Where would they even deport actual Americans that didn't come here as looters? Most of em are from parts of Europe. You're gonna threaten someone by deporting them to the UK? Germany,? Scandinavia? Most of the left supposedly want that.
What they think is at risk, and correctly as this is what the actual fight is over, is the shadow government. By circumventing all the procedural nonsense and bureaucracy that the establishment has built to defend it's own interests Trump eats away at their power. The arguments they are posting here are the same sort of fake outrage and concern they were pushing about Elon gutting USAID or how social security was going to collapse and stop working if you audit it, or really anything touching any of the many other appendages of the shadow government.
remzem
2mo ago
If he were actively using it to censor and promote his own viewpoints I'd call it buying power, but since beyond a few erratic bans over personal grudges he is not it doesn't really qualify. More like liberating the public square.
Yup, that's me. The biggest lib on the Motte.
It's all relative. You are far to the left of me.
remzem
2mo ago
A single non censored source of information vs completely managed media = buying power. I think libs are just used to having complete authority over communication via control of media, hollywood and the power of false accusations of the various "isms" to deter any critical speech and formation of grassroots organization.
It's such a load of hypocrisy. Like the whole Bernie, AOC nonsense tour. The Oligarch has bought our government, Trump is Musk's puppet. Trump? a puppet? I think he's easy to manipulate, but he's not someone you buy. Meanwhile they ignore that the dems are propped up by Gates, Bloomberg, Soros, Cuban etc. and the last guy they installed up as president had to literally be led around by handlers and fed his lines.
Someone named "Hadad" telling an American whose ancestors came here in the late 1600s to stop being insubordinate in order to prosper. It's like a perfect encapsulation of what is wrong with US politics. Fuentes massively vindicated by all this.
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