LazyLongposter
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User ID: 2993
LazyLongposter
1d ago
I've got 2 under 2 at the moment. I did the first year or so of the first kid's life in stately 'Developed World Nuclear Family' style and then relocated to somewhere with a sprawling multi-generational family structure.
God do I wish I had this. My side of the family is fully devoted to the "we're empty nesting, figure it out" mindset, and my wife's side has some cultural issues with raising kids (that have given her lasting lifelong issues) that I'd rather not pass along. What's funny to me is that my regret is not in my own dip in quality of life - it's in the kid's. Every time I realize I haven't taken mine out for a proper outing, or have stuck them in front of the TV (to my credit, in front of properly vetted age appropriate material for a limited time) I have a huge pang of guilt for not having a proper and engaging village for them to experience. It used to be that having that was the norm. Even as the nuclear family developed, the baby boom was in full swing, and full neighborhoods of children would be able to play and parents could easily organize (or fall into) play dates to lighten the load and develop their children's social minds. Each generation has been a poor recursion of this structure, but with the baby boom, fewer people having kids in more spread out places means the full neighborhoods of kids just don't exist on any sort of scale anymore.
If anything, I would say this is the biggest practical limit to having kids today, though I think some other factors are at play when it comes to the actual decision-making (shameless plug).
LazyLongposter
1d ago
I find discussing this sentiment to be like the discourse around death, except much less compelling. Death is that thing that only those who have experienced it can describe, and those who haven't can only guess at. The catch is that once you've experienced it, you can't explain it to anyone else.
Kids are funny because, in contrast to death, every single person on this earth who has had them can tell you how they have affected their lives, and yet there's a subset of the population (apparently, you included) that will say that it's a lie. Literally all the parents I know, even those with difficult kids, find it much more meaningful and full of joy than they would have suspected. I say joy meaningfully, too. That word gets thrown around but the absolutely out-of-the-blue fun, happiness, and pride I feel when my kid picks up or says something new or outrageous is something that outweighs everything else in my life. These are things that people will regularly say, I'm far from the first, so I have no doubt it will do little to convince you; but I still find it funny.
There are bad parents, there are bad kids, and there are people who are a bad fit for parents happiness-wise, but the idea that a lie that has existed longer than written word has only just broken down as many other changes to our environment influence our behavior in curious and unnatural ways is laughable on its face.
I have a somewhat more involved theory (rather than a totally-unique-to-the-lie-filled-online-world awakening to the objective truth of things on social media) here.
LazyLongposter
2d ago
I think what you’re talking about touches on a bigger problem I’ve noticed culturally, and even within myself: People don’t want to do things unless they’re ideal.
Most media and entertainment you can consume nowadays is exceptionally optimized. Not to say it’s good - but it’s optimized to be approachable and easy to consume. I often think of video games, porn, YouTube/netflix, and the like. These are digital items, so you might think it can’t possibly apply to things that are limited to real life, but it’s really insidious because of two reasons:
- Thought processes you cultivate in one environment rarely stay isolated to just that environment.
- Apps/the digital world tie into just about every real world thing now.
For 1, I cannot understate how insidious this optimized mindset is. I see it in others and in myself. I remember I used to fuck with config files and nested dependencies to make and install game mods, and otherwise set up my system how I wanted. Now, the idea of downloading a mod without an installer/loader is exhausting to me, and generally I just don’t (I also have less free time in general nowadays, but even when I had limited free time as a younger man I was willing to get my digital hands dirty). Installing mods for a supported game has never been easier, so why not just do that instead of fucking with files for an unsupported one to get a mod working?
Websites used to have nested menus and lots of options. Studies have shown that simply increasing the clicks needed to access an option by one dramatically decreases usage of that option. Understandably they’ve worked to minimize this effect, but now we’re very used to sites with exceptionally slick UI, or worse, a mobile design where you scroll endlessly. Pretty much every app that can use this format does because it will be outcompeted and die (see: Instagram and YouTube adding reels and shorts in response to TikTok). Movies are the same. Sure, you could go to an unsearchable or otherwise seedy website and stream/torrent it (after installing and activating your VPN) and waiting for it to download… or you could go to a very slick Netflix/Hulu/HBO site and credit card a few bucks away.
None of these on their own are harmful. They’re understandable and even economically beneficial. But the fact is that everything you do is exceptionally easy.
Now factor in 2. Your food can be delivered with a couple taps on your phone. Sure, you could call and pick up the food for cheaper, but this is easier. You can invest in the latest meme stock, or find an app for a well regarded investment bank (depending on your financial literacy). Sure, you could do research and build a good portfolio, but this is easier. You can scroll your phone endlessly and watch some slop while you eat. You could find some activity or go somewhere nice, but this is easier.
It has never been easier to be fed something that seems good enough, and the mental load is exceptionally low for all of it.
I think this has far reaching implications for a lot of life, but keeping it relevant to kids: I’ve noticed in everyone (again, myself included) that decisions that fall off this tap-to-slop pipeline are incredibly more difficult than they used to be; or rather, should be. Buying a car? I have to cross reference information on models and years and be ready to stand firm against a seller (be it private or a dealership) who is incentivized to bilk as much cash out of me as possible. Job applications? I need to craft my resume and be ready to answer questions that cast doubt on my abilities. Buying a house? I need to look into dozens of factors both in the market and the specific locations and houses I’m looking at.
You will notice that these examples have services that sell themselves on helping you out. Previously, we had family, friends, and other networking to fill in, but we are getting noticeably more atomized. These services likely won’t give you the optimal solution, but they are optimized to give you a solution within the safe and curated app based world we’re all trapped in.
Kids have no such guarantees. Not even a service or app. Everything is something you need to judge for yourself, and put in serious legwork to not only do at all, but do well enough to end up not neglecting or otherwise failing your child.
Oh, and all those services and apps that conveniently bilk money from you and effortlessly fill your time are now an extravagance you can’t afford. You are not only embarking on a path that requires serious thought and effort, you have to explicitly give up the entire ecosystem that society has cultivated around you.
When the world is built of sure things, kids are a very unsure thing, and that makes them novel and scary in a way no other generation has experienced.
This is the crux of it. You can talk about cultural meddling, you can talk about financial insecurity, and those are problems for sure. But to me the biggest cause is the silent problem in the way people live their lives every day. There are obviously degrees to this but except for the most unplugged of us, this way is not conducive to risk taking. Being comfortable is simply too easy.
As for me, I have a young child. What’s funny to me is I haven’t given up all that much. I still order out, I still watch movies and TV, I still play some games, I still have some hobbies that I get to. Sure, there are limitations, but life goes on. I credit this to two things: 1) I’m a bit of a Luddite and eschewed paid services and apps for convenience purposes. What few services I paid for I terminated when my kid was born. 2) I always wanted kids, and I realized a few years back that the purpose it gives me outweighs any insecurity in my life. Without both of these factors, it would have been much harder to justify it.
I’m reminded of the meme of clippy looking at you with the prompt “It looks like you’re waiting for ideal circumstances to make a change. Might I remind you that ideal circumstances cannot and will not exist?”
The only options are “I’m aware” and “Wow, rude”. I think society is solidly set in the second prompt, and having the proper response is very difficult when life is fed to you every day. Sure, it’s a cheap and unfulfilling one, but this is easier.
LazyLongposter
13d ago
Nobody is forcing these people to become police officers, if they lack the temperament, or ability to react in a competent manner in split second decision making, even after training then they should either be confined to a desk or fired. I'm remined of the previous discussion on the Uvalde Police officers and how the neighboring police actually responded competently vs the local ones who just cowered and beat up parents.
Here's my issue. You have repeatedly talked about how cops who fail split second decision making shouldn't be cops. I definitely agree there, but that's such a vague statement that it needs to be defined. My position is "barring information and time to judge further, could this cop reasonably have made this call?" Given how chaotic and high stakes many of these situations are, that clears a lot of cops, and there needs to be some huge failing of in-the-moment judgment, or clear intent to be excessive or needlessly violent to make me think otherwise. The Pretti case is pretty endemic of that, where I don't think it is good or "right", but understanding the requirements of the work I'm not much more interested in going after the agents. It's too much an edge case.
My point here is that I suspect your requirement for "split-second decision making" is unreasonably high, if not impossibly so. There are many situations where people are explicitly trying to commit suicide by cop, the cop doesn't want to do it, and might even suspect a gun might be a fake, or that the person has no intent to shoot, or may not even have something that looks like a gun at all (quickdrawing a wallet or some other item in a pocket and aiming it like a gun is very common) but he shoots anyway because he can very, very reasonably assume in the time that he has that the person has the intent and capability to do lethal harm, and if he's wrong he or others could die. Many of these cases fall on the edge, where someone with slightly faster reaction speed could identify the silhouette of what the person drew, or make some very risky judgment call that "this guy doesn't really want to do it", but I find those to be wishful thinking at best.
And then you bring up Uvalde. Uvalde is the exact opposite of split second decision making. Uvalde was a whole police force (or rather, the people in charge of it - I recall that many officers wanted to go in and were held back by their own) that chose, given an agonizingly long amount of time, to do nothing. Had an officer had a 10 second freakout, or initially ran but turned back, or even the department made some bad call like assuming it was a prank or something but quickly corrected - I don't think people would be judging that very harshly. Uvalde stands out because it was such a bad choice maintained for so long. It is the absolute worst example to bring up in this debate where we're trying to determine what acceptable split second decision making is. Especially because there was no decision made at all! They did nothing!
Accuse me of tilting at windmills all you want but if I am it's because your argument is not well founded. If I'm not it's because you are indeed trying to wedge this issue behind the facade of principled outsider.
LazyLongposter
14d ago
This is just an attempt to spin a narrative to defend the in-group. Government agents killing people in "panicked split-second decisions" does not make it not an execution and does not engender the levels of competency that should/is required by agents of the state. If ICE agents cannot act competently in high stress split second situations then they shouldn't have guns and the power to exercise the state's monopoly on violence.
This strikes me as an opinion that is completely unaware of the standards and realities of policing, or more likely, is trying to obfuscate those realities and hold ICE agents to an entirely different standard. I don't think, to extend an olive branch, that this was a "good shoot". However, these things, as you can see if you watch any amount of body cam footage, do not fall in simple boxes of "good" or "bad". Those split second decisions that you seemingly think ICE agents are not up to the standard of are ones that cops are exposed to - and often call poorly - every day. Most of the time, if cops could have reasonably believed, in that moment, that the suspect had a gun, or was reaching for one, they are cleared, even if it turns out they made the wrong call.
If your opinion is that the level of organization of the ICE agents was overall poor, and there were things they could have done to reduce the amount of confusion (or even avoid the shooting all together); then great! I agree. If your opinion is that American policing is on the whole too protective of officers; that's an opinion I do not share, because I think it would bind police's hands in a lot of cases and get cops and innocent bystanders killed; but I think it's at least a consistent opinion to have. But the media circus and your adherence to it as an ICE-specific problem makes me think that's not your opinion. As I said, at best you are simply unaware of what is required of cops and what standards are applied to them after the fact. At worst, you're disregarding it to frame this as some kind of wild outlier because of the relevance to the culture war fight of the week.
I'm inclined to think it's the latter, right down to your framing. Your classification of it as an "extrajudicial summary execution" is both legally and morally weak.
Legally, the choice to call it an execution implies the intent was killing, even though in every American context (be it law enforcement or personal self-defense) it is a choice to use lethal force to stop a threat. Yes, that (often) leads to death, but it's not the intent! That's explicitly why the agents could actually be in legal danger here, as if they can't prove they thought he was a threat they were not allowed to use lethal force to stop him. Then the choice to call it "extrajudicial" implies that they are exercising some power that is illegitimate or otherwise not vested to them, which is just false.
Morally, it's weak because the word "execution" is an exceptionally loaded term, and you're doubling it up with "extrajudicial". It's an attempt to paint ICE agents as some kind of unprecedented perversion or conduction of law enforcement, when that explicitly is not so. So unless you're trying to sovcit chadyes at me and tell me that every form of police killing is an "extrajudicial summary execution" and that the cops should not have that ability, you're just talking up a very mundane (in the scheme of things) shitty police shoot as some sort of unique thing, and it's just not.
For what it's worth, if this shooting sparked some huge discussion about how American policing is conducted, I'd find it somewhat tiresome but at least internally consistent. There are things I don't like about the "rules of engagement" for law enforcement (Despite the bad implementations in cities like Chicago, there are certain crimes/potential criminals that can simply be dealt with after the fact, when they're less aware of police presence and more likely to be caught by surprise/when they're not amped up), but this was never the discussion. It's just another piece of manipulated evidence to hammer home how fascism is very obviously around the corner.
LazyLongposter
14d ago
I know people on the right are also attached to their narratives, but as an urbane white person who mostly talks to other urbane whites, the right's craziness is common ground. But I just take reputational damage if I observe hypocrisy or craziness on the left.
This kills me on the daily. I am so willing, desperate even, to throw the people I talk to a bone, but I'm still looked at like a crazy person when I ask for even the tiniest concessions. It's led me to the point where I am explicitly against the left due to the amount of narrative control they have. If Trumpism becomes the de facto political movement in America (fat chance) I would likely flip the script as I would find myself getting shit on for pointing out dumb policies or excesses in this theoretical world.
More than that, I get very sick of the "oh are you both sides-ing?", as if reducing my own ability to recognize separate but still-true issues to some kind of waffling is a winning argument. The sides are very different, their excesses affect people in much different ways, but they often rhyme because it turns out humans lie, overreact, and punish their opponents in very similar ways! And if I point that out, I'm trying to fence sit.
I am happy that I have fostered real life friendships with left leaning people that will at least politely allow me to voice my concerns, even if I get troubled looks and "I don't agree". I have become very tired of politics in general, and I'd probably have taken the grillpill a while ago, but unfortunately unplugging doesn't fix the problem, so I might as well do a modicum of trying to get a clear picture of things so I can at least push back when I get told about fascism for the umpteenth time in a week.
LazyLongposter
4mo ago
Lights back up
That's just LA.
That is decidedly not all LA was. As I mentioned in my reply to remzem's comment, the LA I grew up in was not overcrowded as a whole. It was population dense, but not overcrowded except for the most touristy/central spots (Hollywood, downtown).
The question of whether the up-zoning improved quality of life can be answered right now, because it's been going on for over a decade: It decidedly has not. The LA I visit occasionally is unrecognizable in the most in-your-face, uncomfortable way. The streets cannot support it, and barring a radical shift in the entire city council's (and let's be frank, populace's) attitudes toward law enforcement, no amount of transit overhaul will fix the problem.
I will probably get drunk and annoyed enough to write a top-level post about this because watching LA go from a quiet post-90s crime wave city with a ton of culture and places worth visiting to a homelessness, crime, and overpopulation-ridden nightmare has been a huge lesson inspiring my disenchantment with the idea that people on the whole will work to better things.
LazyLongposter
4mo ago
Sounds like Los Angeles to me. I grew up in the Los Angeles area during the best time to grow up there (I might make a top level post about this some time) and it is essentially unrecognizable. I'm no stranger to city living, but whenever I go back, it's almost an anxiety attack as every street, every home, every parking spot is filled beyond its natural capacity in every sense of the word. Small streets are covered in towering luxury apartments that replaced the more meager (and more charming) buildings that preceded them. Single family homes are filled with people, leaving 3-5 cars to somehow fill out the driveways and street parking to the point that visiting is almost impossible unless you coordinate in advance with the people that you are visiting. Shopping centers, as you mention, are plopped down in areas that cannot support them, and the traffic (and light pollution, which is never something I thought I'd care about) make the entire area unpleasant. I know Los Angeles hate has been low hanging fruit for decades, but the city is in such an unlivable state these days I can hardly believe it.
LazyLongposter
4mo ago
Yes, undoubtedly. Most troops I know are relatively to very conservative, and the reactions range from confusion to derision to anger. Every move by SECDEF, or rather, SECOW, has been highly visible with little to no benefit to troops, and that includes the warfighters who want to get shit done. Even amongst the strongest of conservatives, the sentiment is "I get where he's coming from, but he's doing it terribly".
LazyLongposter
4mo ago
The military (by its own standards) already has a swath of pedo stache looking dudes because it's the only facial hair the system allows. I'd much sooner be in favor of the Canadian "try your facial hair, and if it doesn't look like shit we'll allow it" system. Or none at all, I don't really care. If Hegseth held a principle like you describe, he'd ban all facial hair in the military tomorrow, and also not be covered in tattoo sleeves that make him sound a lot more hypocritical.
The fact is this is another example of the Trump regime using the good will of the voter base (i.e. "please god i'm so sick of neoliberal hell") to make a wildly low-benefit change that burns a ton of that good will.
This is one of the most universally unpopular moves in the military I've seen. Everyone I know regardless of political affiliation is reacting with confusion and annoyance and stress at this change, and all it does is make people think of politics daily, rather than having it be a secondary background thing (apart from force posturing). And when your only concept of "what is the president that is technically my boss doing" is "he's flying a bunch of generals around at huge cost, pomp, and circumstance to talk about how gay beards are, which is going to get a bunch of people around me fired", that's the dominant concept.
LazyLongposter
4mo ago
Much like masturbation, I'd be much happier if philosophers kept it to themselves.
Have you ever been in any "philosophy" circle? It quickly becomes unreadable because every single person will come up with their own definition for already defined words to match one of their theories, and then will use them in concert to try to make their thesis a mathematical proof. You end up with sentences that look like plain English, but are completely unintelligible. This is the antithesis of good communication and discussion.
LazyLongposter
7mo ago
A quick response, as I'm mostly on board with your response (and I'm burning my night!):
The United States and its allies did enter Iraq, but it never got within 100 miles of Baghdad. If Iraq had had a credible WMD program, it would not have been sufficient to neutralize it.
This was because Iraq capitulated. The regular army had surrendered by the tens of thousands and only the Republican Guard remained. I don't mean they would walk right up or go unopposed - but had they chosen to do so, they could have. It was a common criticism of the war at the time that we did not go far enough (not even Saddam, just allowing the Republican Guard to escape/continue).
But the US doctrine is to fight with air support
In this case, as we've agreed, the Israelis are doing quite alright in that regard (RIP F-14s). Not that I think we'd need no air support - despite anti-Israel concerns, neither the US or Israel is at the other's beck and call, and only a fool would assume there is no situation where US forces would need support - but the cost would be greatly diminished due to Israel's exceptionally successful air campaign.
On the other hand, I think that the nuclear asymmetry arguably makes the world more unstable and more prone to violence.
I actually somewhat agree with your overall assessment. Rational actors will likely never use them unless pushed to the brink. And they contribute to a lasting peace. But my worry is that an increasing number of countries with nuclear arsenals greatly increases the odds that an irrational actor gets into power, or that poor safeguards are implemented. To separate my feelings from my (theoretical) policy suggestions: I am against any country nuclearizing. I am not in favor of world policing literally any country nuclearizing. But Iran, or as worse hypotheticals, Syria, or Sudan - those are problems. With the African continent in mind, I am counting my lucky stars that South Africa denuclearized before going through its current continually corrupt and often hostile decline. That would be another situation where the world (i.e. the US because no one else has power projection) would need to step in and make sure nothing went missing. That is my concern.
LazyLongposter
7mo ago
Them getting into a cold war with Iran might not be the worst thing in the world, there.
I don't deny this, but it's nonetheless an insane risk that risks global consequences. If you presented me a button of "these countries may nuke each other but you can guarantee it will never affect the world outside the middle east", I'd probably press it. But such an eventuality is no more a guarantee than some zealot in Tehran sees the Israeli missiles on the way and goes "fuck it, I'll take Europe/America out with me".
The conquest of the Taliban was undone in a heartbeat as soon as the US withdrew, and the US invasion of Iraq prepared the ground for daesh.
I mention this in another post but I think the prolonged nation-building stuff doesn't work if you don't a. rout the actual supporters (which would include a lot of collateral damage and questionable arrests where Afghanistan was concerned) and b. Don't work with the surviving establishment to make something new. In Iraq, this would have meant letting at least some Ba'ath party members be involved in the reorganization of the party, rather than completely ousting them and making them and all their supporters de facto enemies (hence the insurgency) while propping up a bunch of previously uninvolved Sunnis (hence ISIS). In Afghanistan, this likely never would have worked, because the only existing mass establishment they had was the Taliban. There were no mid level bureaucrats who were going "I'm just in the Taliban to do city planning", the Taliban was it. You can't replace them with tribal, sometimes boy raping farmers, and declare victory.
Point being, as I said in another post, you can just gut a country's military and leave, a la Gulf War 1. There's a reason we had an even easier time rolling over their conventional army in Gulf War 2, which is that they were never able to recover to the level they were at pre-Gulf War 1. I would be fine with the same thing happening to Iran.
LazyLongposter
7mo ago
Russia – the world's nuclear power – has been subjected to a conventional land invasion and have been struck within their borders innumerable times by Ukraine.
I mention in my reply that strikes within a border are different than a conventional land invasion. Secondly, said Ukrainian land invasion barely penetrated the Russian borders before they were expelled. It was also a retaliation in an active conflict - likely to pull Russian forces off the front line - which colors it differently than, say, an unprovoked mass invasion of Russia. Put differently: If Ukraine was magically and decisively winning this war, and pushed the Russians back to the border, I seriously doubt they'd get much further than there, out of a very founded fear that Russia would use nuclear weapons against them. Russia has said they would use nuclear weapons if their sovereignty was threatened. While this was a veiled threat along the lines of "Ukraine and the occupied portions of it are part of Russia, so don't you dare take them back", I don't doubt it would ring very true if Russia proper was legitimately under threat of losing territory.
You opened your original post saying that you were arguing in opposition to the "let the two parties sort it out" position, but it seems to me that you're happy to let Israel sort it out and your main concern is that they will be unable to "finish the job." What exactly do you think the US can do that Israel cannot?
A very large army (but you don't want ground occupation)
You can invade a country without a prolonged occupation. Once again, see the first Gulf War. We rolled over then-one-of-the-largest armies in the world in a month and then immediately pulled out. I mentioned I wouldn't be explicitly against killing their leaders and leaving, but thoroughly gutting the military and their nuclear stores/bunkers (very easy to do if you've conquered them and can walk right up!) and leaving the leadership humiliated would even be fine by me. It would leave a very credible threat in the Iranian government's mind that we could do it again, because we already did it when they had years to build up their defenses. I don't want to be involved in nation building because (this is a separate thesis of mine) modern militaries, at least the United States', seem to be incapable of totally subduing an enemy via mass bombardment (i.e. killing a shitload of civilians), or nation-building. I don't think the former is necessarily "what it would take", as I am against civilians dying, so blowing up all their major military and nuclear assets and making them toothless for a good long time would be as good a solution as any.
On this note, a large army would likely not be the primary thing we'd need to fight China if they up and decided a US invasion of Iran was the perfect time to strike. In the short term, it would be primarily a naval and air defense, with the biggest land target I can think of being Taiwan (who has their own army - and ideally we'd want to keep the Chinese marines from ever making a landing, making them secondary). I'm not saying an army couldn't or wouldn't become necessary in the long term, only that a land component would not necessarily be a huge limiting factor. A CSG? Maybe, but we do famously have many more than only one CSG. And as you mention below, Israeli air support may prove mostly sufficient in such a circumstance.
More air power of the sort Israel essentially already has (which seems relatively pointless right now if the Israeli air campaign is as effective as is currently believed, doesn't it?)
Obviously this is a developing situation. Since I made the original post, Iran has apparently come crawling back to the bargaining table since the Israeli air campaign so completely dominated them. I genuinely hope this puts a bow on the whole situation, and the US never needs to lift a finger to change this. As I said, I have skin in the game when it comes to American conflicts, and one less is fine by me.
You opened your original post saying that you were arguing in opposition to the "let the two parties sort it out" position
The attitude was "let the two parties sort it out regardless of the outcome". The second part is what I take issue with. I have no need for an American flag to be on the wikipedia page for this conflict, I just explicitly and powerfully do not want a nuclear Iran - or any new nuclear country that has even a chance in hell of using them.
LazyLongposter
7mo ago
Two caveats. Firstly, my thesis was not "the US should strike NOW", but that Israel succeeding here is undoubtedly very very good for us, and if they needed help to succeed, I'd want to do so. I say that as someone with skin in the game.
It seems to me that obviously either nations with nuclear warheads can be threatened, in which case they can be deterred. Or they can't be, in which case the United States (and Israel) has nothing to worry about. But you seem to be trying to have it both ways!
Secondly, allow me to rephrase: Nuclear weapons make you functionally immune to a conventional invasion and will make anyone think twice about even striking within your borders. At any point during a real conventional invasion you can consider (or declare) your existence threatened and use them to great effect, either wiping out entire armies or the invaders' home front. They do not make you immune to internal rot, discord, economic decline, or anything else, as the USSR will gladly tell you. That this is your opening argument is disheartening, because I find it quite intellectually dishonest to feign ignorance of that distinction.
As such, I don't worry about someone invading the United States. If decades of discord and hostile messaging (bolstered by adversaries who are quite happy to watch us tear ourselves apart without firing a single shot) leads to the United States to cease to exist as a political entity, then we would be quite susceptible to invasion, be it by a hostile force or something more covert. A "North American" continent with dozens of individual nation states that are likely at each others' throats would present a foreign actor many potential inroads into allying with, occupying, subverting, or otherwise controlling part of the landmass. As I live on that landmass, I'd like the huge boon that "two massive oceans and only two continental neighbors" to stay that way. We already have Chinese and other agents coming through our weak border to the south. Imagine that ten or a hundred fold. That is why we can be both a nuclear power and vulnerable.
Nuclear powers can also be defeated abroad, as in within other people's borders, without really having the right (in international eyes) to use the nuclear option. We have failed to achieve many military objectives, as has Russia, and neither have deployed nuclear weapons. But it also means no one can ever go to the source. As for Iran, yes, they have weapons that can reach us, but they are not yet nuclear capable. Once they are, you essentially waive all your chances to military deterrence. And from there stems the problem. A nuclear Iran can proxy war to their hearts' content. A nuclear Iran can threaten to retaliate to conventional Israeli strikes with nuclear weapons (whereas now only Israel can), leading both to consider a nuclear first strike necessary to preserve their existence/secure their victory, depending on perspective. A nuclear Iran can lock up within its borders when its armaments are exhausted and refill its stockpiles and have a credible threat against anyone trying to stop them. They go from being a regional power to a fact of life unless some sort of unconventional method deters them or causes their regime to collapse. Once again, see America. I am reasonably hopeful that we won't collapse in the near future, and I am also reasonably sure that a nuclear Iran would also last quite a while. Even if they didn't, those nukes would have to go somewhere once they collapse, and that's a huge security risk. All you need is one powerful higher up or base deciding they wanted to get massively rich, or being insanely anti-Israeli/American/whatever to sell or use them.
These were all real arguments up to the end of the Cold War, and they ring true now. Every single nation that develops its own nuclear weapons increases the risk of some sort of horrible outcome, be it an entrenched regime, accident, or sale to/use by crazies within or without the government. I don't want it to happen.
FIRST, the United States does not have infinite capacity to do things. If we actually want to fight China, which we've said we want to be able to do publicly, that means very specifically that we cannot write blank checks where ballistic missile interceptors, smart munitions, etc. are involved. We are already arguably under-equipped to deal with the very real Chinese threat, which will likely be a more serious threat to American hegemony than anything that Iran can do. And part of the reason we are under-equipped to fight China is because we canceled procurement and research programs throughout the Global War on Terror to fund the Global War on Terror – effectively eating our own seed corn.
I agree with this. I admittedly did not make this clear enough in my post, but I must say I am aware of the looming threat of China to American interests and I don't want to be bogged down in this. I really hope that Israel succeeds or Iran comes back to the negotiating table, as you said. However, there are two issues here. Firstly, Iran has been "at the negotiating table" several times, including with previous administrations, leading to billions of funds going into their pockets in return for them only pursuing civil nuclear reactors... which they then proceeded to ignore completely. Secondly, the inverse of your statement is true as well: Iran does not have infinite capacity to do things either. They have already used a huge amount of missiles in the current exchange, and their IADS seems to be in shambles. They may already be close to their limit as far as projecting power is concerned, and dealing with them now is a lot more appealing than waiting for an armistice where they are able to refill their reserves. If they actually nuclearize, or perhaps state their intent to use those weapons against the US, and we suddenly have to divert resources back to them to stop an imminent threat, it will be a lot costlier, and likely bloodier.
And the only reliable way to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon is regime change.
I don't know that this is true. There was a lot of fear about Iraq getting one, and after we utterly demolished their ability to make war in the first Gulf War, they were never a credible threat. That's why the "they're making WMDs" justification for Gulf War 2 is a persistent joke.
Second (another commenter posted in response to this but I'm going to put my reply here, as it's relevant and I've received a number of replies) I think the biggest issue with Gulf War 2 (other than doing it) was that we picked the worst middle ground imaginable. We banned every single Ba'ath party member from ever being in government, which is not even a thing we did with the Nazis or Japanese. This essentially left a fledgling government in the middle of a war zone filled with the unqualified, malcontents, and sometimes literal terrorists in power. That Iraq even exists after ISIS is kind of a miracle to me, not that they're somehow doing great. I think we should have either:
- Completely obliterated their military again, ousted their leaders that time, and left.
- Actually worked with the remaining government to allow for some kind of legitimate regime change.
Both of these things are something I would accept, at least on the home front. "Don't fuck with the US or they'll show up, kill all your leaders, and break all your stuff" is at least something we can credibly do multiple countries. We cannot get continuously bogged down in a 20 year nation building/peacekeeping quagmire.
SECONDLY
I somewhat responded to these points above, but I agree partially. I'll explain below.
If Israel conducts the war successfully, they may reduce the cost of a limited US intervention (destroying the buried nuclear facilities with bunker busters – although it's possible that some of them are buried even too deeply for oversized US ordinance!) to near-zero.
As I said above, I want this to happen. As with Ukraine, I like the idea of adversaries blunting themselves against our allies at zero cost to American lives and (relatively) low cost with materiel. As it is, if we're going to have to strike, I want to strike while the iron is hot and their munitions and defenses are depleted. If we're not going to take our hands off the steering wheel of the entire region and withdraw entirely (which I think is a bad idea outside the scope of this already long-winded discussion), then I want it done now when it's going to be the easiest for us to do.
The Iranian regime may not last forever.
I hope it doesn't. The average Iranian is not a lover of their regime, which is why we see regular protests despite the authoritarian nature of their government. While I've mentioned I prioritize American interests over others, I don't want a single life to be lost. But I have to be realistic and consider the fact that their nation will be able to do damage as long as they're in power, even more if they nuclearize.
I recently got into an argument regarding Israel vs Iran with a staunch "America First Isolationism Now" type. It cemented my views on the issue, not from an "Israel is righteous and Iran is not" angle but a practical weighing of the facts. The other party's opinion was "I don't want another war, and that region is bloodthirsty anyway. Let them sort it out." My thesis is simply: I cannot understand anyone who has Western or even strictly American interests in mind could think that the strikes on Iran are none of our business.
Mind you, I don't mean "United States Government" interests. I mean the interests of every single living American.
To recap the history: The current Iranian regime rose from a revolution overthrowing a US-backed monarchy, which we had previously supported economically and supplied with military technology (The F-4 and F-14 being the big examples you can still see today). Said regime hates the US with a burning passion, both for backing the monarchy and for getting in the way of a regional Islamic revolution in the entire region. This is why they back the Houthis, Hezbollah, Hamas, and insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hamas and Hezbollah are strictly against Israel, but the Houthis were explicitly anti-American and attempted to strike us, luckily with no loss of life (RIP drones). I can't say the same for the militias in Iraq, which successfully killed several US service members in 2023. Nowadays that's mostly directed at Israel, but I cannot imagine these groups and their funders suddenly had a change in heart towards Americans themselves.
Even putting that all aside, even when you think the whole region is a backwater shithole that can sort itself out, a hands-off position on Iran makes no sense when they're developing nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons are a complete game changer, making your nation functionally immune to any threat to its sovereignty. It was bad enough when North Korea developed them, but I can at least understand the hesitancy there due to its Chinese backing and already-existing existential threat to South Korea (thousands of artillery pieces would reduce Seoul to rubble regardless of NK's nuclear program). More than that, North Korea is an extremely poor country which has continuously struggled to develop a missile program. I don't think that it's outside the realm of possibility that they do, but again, at least there's some reason as to why we all sat around on it.
This is not true of Iran. Iran has ties with Russia and China, but they've never made so bold a defense pact as China did with North Korea. They are geographically separated from their backers as well. This makes them assailable. However, they are not geographically separated from the west. Iran already has MRBMs that could be converted to take a nuclear payload right now. Those threaten our bases and our allies. They have a functional space program, and if you have put a satellite in orbit you can build an ICBM. Those threaten the continental US. Iran has demonstrated that it has the intent to strike the west and US if it can. They are working on the capability, and once that's done, an active nuclear arsenal presents them the opportunity at any time. They will be incapable of being invaded lest you risk nuclear hellfire for the region, at absolute best. The only time you can strike them is now, before their nuclear program yields results.
I was genuinely shocked when I saw the posts from Rubio and the like denying our involvement in the Israeli strikes and implying that they were unwarranted aggression. Personally, it makes me understand why some people think Israel is simply America's attack dog, doing the dirty work we don't want to be involved in directly. Perhaps it is will be a fortuitous outcome for us simply because Israel would be in even more danger, and felt they had to attack no matter what. I wouldn't mind Iran buckling without a single American life lost.
I mentioned this in another post long ago, but it seems to me that echoes of the bygone neolib/neocon 90s and early 2000s world order have been crystallized in a really stupid way. An aversion to quagmires and wars of questionable outcome seems to make a lot of people (including Rubio - a bad indicator of the administration's position) think that any American intervention is some kind of ill fated, possibly bloodthirsty action. In the opinion of the person that spawned this post, it would be a war to continue some kind of dominion in the Middle East, which would hurt individual Americans to benefit the rich and powerful. While I don't think the US can magically fix countries in the area (see: Iraq), there is a middle zone between "Try to prop up an unwanted regime after removing the previous one" and "do nothing". Applying Iraq's sample size of one reeks of an embarrassing application of prior results to me.
At the end of the day, I can say that Israel's righteousness in this matter does not have a bit of sway as to whether or not I think these strikes are justified (or whether or not American involvement is a good thing). I do not want another nuclear power in the world, especially one so blatantly aggressive toward the West. I will admit that the odds of them cementing their own destruction via a nuclear strike against another nuclear power is low, but I worry about the insurgents they fund or political instability within leading to a device going "missing". That these are even possibilities makes my skin crawl. I find it ignorant and borderline cowardly that there are so many purportedly in favor of American interests who can plug their ears and say "let it sort itself out".
As an aside, to illustrate where I'm coming from: In political terms I am completely disinterested in the outcomes of the world apart from America. Not that I consider them lesser, or that any disasters anywhere else are unimportant; but I still must practically value my home, my life, and those of my loved ones first. As such, I strongly empathize with the "America First" sentiment. What I don't empathize with is the completely unrealistic expectation that we can simply close our borders, give people the middle finger, and not wake up to a vastly worse world for us in twenty years. The world is connected, and a collapse in one place will have follow on effects in others. See: Syria, Haiti, Somalia. You'd have to be crazy to think that every administration in every coming year would be able to or even want to hold the borders that tight and move all manufacturing to be domestic (the only way to be truly isolationist in my eyes). That's just a pipe dream. Thus America taking its hands of the reins would not be truly isolationist, and the soft power we'd be subjected to by countries filling in the void we leave would affect us at home. We already have adversaries fanning the flames of social unrest in the country (and useful idiots that play into their hands), and that's bad enough. A United States is impossible to invade. A broken one is anything but. So global affairs are our business, and if America can project its power to mitigate much worse threats downstream then I am on board with that.
This doesn't mean I blindly want a war, or to bomb every single potential threat all the time everywhere. But nuclear weapons make this entirely a different question.
LazyLongposter
1yr ago
Do you have some trustworthy - and by that I mean palatable to the average democrat voter - sources to back this up? The whole January 6th debacle is a poison pill in discussions with anyone who has an opinion on it. And unfortunately, anyone with whom I end up discussing it already has an opinion on it! Trump offering National Guard assistance completely changes the dynamic of the event, so it would be nice to have some fact-check-proof evidence I can throw at people who loudly proclaim he wanted an insurrection to happen.
LazyLongposter
1yr ago
Wow, I just read that debate, and it's truly fascinating and somewhat distressing. A lot of the anxiety I have about culture at large comes from the idea of post-modernism, something only truly accessible and enjoyable to a select few, but forced on the many. And somehow it has come to prominence due to the fact that the aforementioned select few are often in places of prestige and power. And more than that, it's self-sustaining; not, as is said in the notes on that debate, simply within the circles, but in society at large. A lot of people are swept up in liking, or at least defending, these inexplicably ugly tastes, which is much more offensive than those styles merely existing.
Just an anecdote that I think is a good little microcosm of your point (with which I agree): I had a friend who once said that he could choose not to be angry about anything if it made sense to him. He argued that if the situation made sense, he would simply not be angry about it. He also, generally speaking, postured his entire life as if he had made only logical decisions, and held logical positions. He considered himself so immune to illogical positions that he began to block anyone who ever disagreed with him, even in passing. So much so that he broke reddit's block list.
Such a logical creature, naturally, regularly threw his controller across the room playing video games, or shattered his keyboard in rage. He would start out mad about something and then start an argument to explain why you were wrong. He was good at avoiding name-calling, and his brinksmanship over any accusation of him acting irrationally (his logic was that it was just going "u mad bro?") caused an extreme chilling effect on anyone actually taking him to task over being so vitriolic about what were either pet peeves or flavor-of-the-day political grievances.
I am no longer friends with this person, but my point in bringing him up is that he's the perfect exaggerated example of what you're talking about. I don't think he was so atypical mentally that he had an entirely different way of processing information and making decisions - he just built an elaborate justification around his instinctive reactions. For someone who claimed to control every aspect of his life so much, it is remarkable how little in control of himself he was. But then, that's how we all are. We're products of our environments and genetics. I consider myself to be well-regulated emotionally, but I owe the vast majority of my developed qualities to growing up in a supportive household, with parenting, education, and friends that nurtured such qualities in me. My development was quite literally determined by these things. I, as you say, react to stimuli in a very naturalistic way, before I've given it any deep thought. And very rarely will such deep thought contradict my initial decisions (unless we're talking about dietary choices!), which implies to me that my decision making is a streamlined biological process to which I do not have access. It's just patterns mapped onto my neurons over the course of my life, even if they're logical ones. I find it hard to believe some essence of logic, some soul lives separate from this and makes decisions contrary to the animal decisions I make on a much more numerous and much quicker scale. One would think they'd differ more.
I think an answer that is both Americentric and true is that the culture war is waged first and foremost in English, and only can perfectly fit to America and countries more like it. The (dominant left wing angle of the) CW is something I've decried as being an extremely insidious corruption of many ideas that most people would agree with - at least they'd agree with the motte. Then the bailey gets snuck in and your average person is neither equipped nor inclined to work to decouple those from each other. As I specified that these are mostly left wing "arguments" - by which I mean streamers, ad campaigns, astroturfing on reddit, twitter, youtube, ecelebs in general inundating the general public with some toxic corruption of a more palatable left wing idea - you can make those receptive to them extremely resilient to dissent, but only if the arguments are constantly modulated to fit the current zeitgeist. Otherwise you fail to resonate with the general population at all, and the spell is broken. Not cleanly or instantly, but the absolute stranglehold can't last.
I think this only can truly happen in the US and our closest countries culturally (the UK and Canada), not only due to the above but also the fact that the vast majority of worldwide media is either from or related to America. My favorite example is the thought-terminating cliche "donate to black trans women". That makes no sense in the vast majority of European countries, because black people are just a tiny fraction of the population, especially integrated ones, and you can't make an appeal to someone's sense of fairness when none of those black people were slaves, or historically discriminated against in any way. Contrast that with the US context where guilt over all of that most certainly has a place in the public's consciousness, and it's much more likely to land.
Now, certainly there are wider schools of left wing thought that are more generally applicable, and have arguably been more popular in Western Europe; but those are less likely to be extreme or have that stranglehold over your terminally online population. Consequently, those downstream of any of the media the terminally online influence are not fed this riveting and completely relevant culture war. What remains in the public consciousness is this weird distorted holdover of 90s neoliberal thought (I've often lamented that something seems to have completely frozen the political elites, but this is not the central point of my response): Immigration good, world police kinda bad, health care good, guns bad, violence is not endemic to our society, number must go up at all costs, etc. None of this is really all that compelling except health care and being against the world police idea. It certainly doesn't hold the vitriol that American politics does.
So, when you combine those geriatric neoliberal policies with the consequences they bring (e.g. wow these migrants really seem to be causing a lot of problems), and the messaging is not able to sustain it, what do you get? Genuine grassroots support for something, anything different. Wow, there's a part called "Alternative for Germany" that's talking about these exact issues the establishment is ignoring? Sign me up!
Contrast this with America, which is much larger in scale, and arguably a lot more atomized due to its multicultural nature. This compounds with the effects of the terminally online world, meaning a lot of people's perceptions of issues that are not right next to them are completely detached from reality. It's just some streamer, or tiktoker, or AI generated youtube video that even tells them about these things. A young leftist from a hip neighborhood is likely never to see actual race crime, or when it does - as was the case when Ryan Carson was stabbed to death - the feed of content is so strong that they are completely immunized against looking at what happened critically. The hold on them is just too strong.
I will say that I disagree somewhat with the idea that America's young are overwhelmingly democrat. Everything I've seen has indicated that they are splitting along gender lines, with democrats still having an advantage, but only in the aggregate. I can also, emotionally and with no evidence, say that I've felt an extreme rupture in our society between the messaging and reality. I think things like the migrant bussing and ever-expanding nature of activist thought (a self preservation measure - if they don't have something to fight for, do they have jobs anymore?) have soured a lot of people on assumptions they've made. Will it be enough to change the zeitgeist? I don't know. I do know that the American right wing has utterly failed in having unifying figures that are anything short of embarrassing. I don't have a solution for that.
LazyLongposter
1yr ago
It got better (both in ports and native games) in the early 2000s, but then got vastly worse after (ironically) the switch to Intel chips. Once you lost backwards compatibility, and it became clear that Apple had no wish to continue supporting devs, the entire market fell off a cliff. Now there's nothing.
My working theory is that the ability of western writers to model other human beings seems stunted. The current crop are narcissists, incompetent, or incapable of basic human empathy.
This feels Too Good To Check. It would be convenient if we could write off the people who produce bad entertainment as moral mutants, but is it likely?
My comment here mentions Dead Space, which I find to be possibly the best example of the bizarre shit coming out of writing teams now. To reiterate, the people making the Dead Space Remake clearly loved the original game and endeavored to remake it in about as respectful-to-the-source-content a way they could, and I think that it was a resounding success - except for the writing. Not only did they make significant additions to the story that dilute the original formula and make it feel not nearly as tight, they started radically changing what was already there, to wit: One of the characters you see in game has been made a hypergamous bisexual, evidenced by the fact that he refers to several of the necromorphs (monsters born from the crew of this ship that's only been together a few months at most) as "old boyfriends". None of this existed in the original game. Many characters are changed in how they look to the point where they're unrecognizable. Furthermore, many of their styles look like they belong on people from Los Angeles marketing firms. I will note it's not literally everyone - the main character, Isaac Clarke, is completely changed in his appearance from the original series, apparently to match the face of the voice actor, and he looks like a more generic looking white guy. That aside, his characterization is still different (rather than being aware of his breaking sanity and fighting it, he's instead rewritten as a deranged lunatic).
Given the fact that these changes were made across the board for everyone except the most central characters, I actually don't find a Sweet Baby-esque motive to making these changes - namely, an ulterior pandering or cover-your-ass angle to it. I don't think they're people who hate the hobby, and want to destroy it because it didn't appeal to them, as is often the indictment of culture warriors talking about video games. The passion exuded from this project in every other aspect, and the way they changed the characters so universally, makes me think they're "true believers" of the fact that their way of viewing the world right now is objectively correct and would simply be a boring fact of the future.
In a way, it makes me hate it a lot less, because it feels like I'm seeing how these people genuinely view the world. In another, it's a lot worse than it simply being a grift, because how myopic do you have to be to think everyone in the future will hold your exact belief system, straight down to the hair styles that are so often correlated with it? Pair that with most of the new voice actors really really sucking, and sounding like mid-20s kids, and it really makes me think something has gone very very wrong with creatives, insulating them from having a realistic sampling of the world. This, I think, was my deeper thesis, and my original comment sort of obfuscated it while trying to control for other changes in the gaming landscape that have affected game writing. Contrast that with the original Dead Space character designs, which I think are a lot more timeless (maybe Kendra Daniels's hair looks a bit early 2000s, but everyone else has very utilitarian, timeless styles that are certainly not indicative of the subset of "creatives" of the time).
Then definitely agreed. I lump the Black Ops series in with post CoD4 Modern Warfare. Very fun games, completely nonsensical if you apply even the most basic thought to them. And it's sort of indicative of my larger point - the second these games got big and intricate it seemed almost impossible to put a compelling, interesting, logically consistent story in them. Only the lightning in a bottle original game managed to do so, even though MW2 was made by the exact same people (up until the original studio leads quit, which was after its release).
LazyLongposter
1yr ago
Are you talking about the series as a whole or Call of Duty 4 (also known as "Modern Warfare 1, The First One from 2007 and not 2019, No I'm Not Playing The New One")? Because I felt Call of Duty 4 was mostly "realistic" in that I could see
- A Middle Eastern Country undergoing a violent revolution
- A tinpot dictator using nukes if he got his hands on them
- Russia falling apart if it ever had a power vacuum
Obviously not all of it is realistic, but the broad strokes feel pretty plausible. Meanwhile, Modern Warfare 2 has James Bond level contrivances and Red Dawn-esque fantasies of Russian military prowess.
I’m of the opinion that people who don’t want kids probably shouldn’t have them. My main problems are with those who insist it they are bad; and the overall societal landscape that has led a lot of people to never even seriously consider it.
Conversely, I do consider it the civic duty of anyone who is of means and of sound mind to have kids at or above replacement rate. It increases the amount of kids with a) a support system (good for the kids), and b) the genetic and environmental background to be more likely to succeed (good for society). This is possibly the one place I put my money where my mouth is regarding societal issues.
Not that you’re in the position to act on it anymore, but for anyone of decent means I would say in general the highs are very high and the potential lows are not as low as you’d think. The one exception is being unlucky enough to have an honest to God psychopath kid or something, but you’re in “multiple lightning strikes” territory there.
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