LazyLongposter
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User ID: 2993
LazyLongposter
5d ago
Which is entirely the above thesis. It’s what we all do.
That's why I posted; I agree with you!
I'll clarify "in their personal lives with the consent of others". I'll stand by that as far as support for gay marriage.
LazyLongposter
5d ago
I can personally attest that my values/principles have been largely unchanged. What has changed has been my understanding of situations and how applying (or misapplying, given leftist theory!) those principles work. It's no secret the reason that leftist ideology sells/fails to be snuffed out so well is that the basic ideas seem so basically right. Looking at the way they were applied, however, completely changed my positions on many things. Some small examples of principle:
- People should be allowed to live how they want (gay marriage good or at least acceptable!)
- Keeping people down is bad (let's implement programs to raise people who have the potential to be good candidates a chance!)
- People dying to violent crime is bad (let's keep guns out of the hands of the violently criminal!)
And how they were implemented:
- People should be allowed to live how they want (you will not question or criticize me living in a poly relationship while taking life altering hormones, and not even question me advocating it to others)
- Keeping people down is bad (let's explicitly fudge hiring numbers to fill quotas despite the qualification of the candidate)
- People dying to violent crime is bad (let's not punish violent criminals in any way, and punish lawful gun owners, violating the constitution the whole time)
These are simple examples, but they're good examples of how the world has changed around my principles.
LazyLongposter
17d ago
You can ignore my central point and restate your argument all you want, but it's not very convincing.
LazyLongposter
17d ago
Yes, by ignoring my central point of "all of it's a disaster, you better have an objective you are accomplishing by doing so, and that better be worth the deaths", you can twist the tragedy of any intentional death into equivalence with genocide.
I also reject the "morally neutral" framework. The circumstances of what a country's objective is matters more than anything. It's the exact reason I support US and allied interests and do not support the objectives of hostile nations. It's not merely that they're opposed to me (though that is my personal stake in foreign policy, as I admitted earlier); it's that they're nations that do bad things and make people suffer. I can't think of a modern adversary that we've had where the opposing nation is hunky dory, and we're just going to war because we failed to resolve things in any other way (in fact, that is the great advantage of the post-World War II order we live in). It's not like we're bombing Canada over border disputes.
Again, object to the feasibility, justification, or alignment (if you dislike the US) of the use of force all you want. I'm just saying that if you're going to object to even a single civilian casualty in cases where the regimes are both actively operating against the US and are pretty nasty in and of themselves, you're not going to sway me.
LazyLongposter
17d ago
Military promotions used to be absolutely insane, especially in World War 2 with rapid replacements and battlefield commissions. Vietnam was less, to my knowledge, but chosen ones like Westmoreland still existed. For the life of me I can't understand why he was a chosen one, though.
I saw some really good talks about Westmoreland. The one that really opened my eyes is here.
LazyLongposter
17d ago
Iran, and tell me if our history does not match up here, wanted the same thing you want for yourself. Peace and prosperity. To that end they wanted control over their natural resources. Resources that the US and UK were making use of. This leads to a very clear incursion into Iran by these nations. Which ties into reason 3, 4 and 5. What else is a nation to do when foreign entities so clearly disrupt their process of self determination?
I get it, 'aw shucks, sucks to suck, now give us the oil'
To my knowledge there has been no "give us our oil, we're going into take the oil back" discussion from any level of the (admittedly scatterbrained) Trump administration. The fact that the discussion is so scatterbrained makes me more likely to believe it's not the intent, not less. In fact, given your own rundown of history, it looks a lot more like Iran was the one that said "sucks to suck, now give us the oil" when they nationalized it. I'm not personally hurt by that, in fact that's par for the course when you play in other countries. No one I can see in a decision-making position is using that as a casus belli.
Also, both your "process of self determination" and this
not that these attacks were unjustified or unrelated to US provocation that might have caused them.
line do a lot of work to reframe what Iran was doing. Soldiers in Iraq were killed by rocket strikes from Iranian backed militia groups. In what way were soldiers in Iraq (during a huge drawdown, mind you) doing to Iranian self determination? Self determination in Iraq?
It also ignores the Houthis, Hezbollah, the support to Hamas, all of which lie far outside Iran's borders. Was Yemen's government part of Iran's self-determination? Was Lebanon's? As far as I'm keeping score, there has never been a strike within Iran. The last time there was any firing on Iranian infrastructure (i.e. not Soleimani in Iraq, again far outside of the self-determination defense) was the accidental shootdown of the Iranian Airliner in 1988. Which is indefensible, but that doesn't really read as "we're destroying your country for self-determination".
At some point, it all regresses to the original Iranian revolution and overthrowing of the US-backed Shah. Is that an eternal defense from any meddling the nation commits? Where would you draw the line at their self-determination? I'm not defending the US strikes as a support of our own - it's our geopolitical strategy. Iran wanted to play at that too, and so now we're fighting.
Also, again, it's an oppressive theocracy that kills its own people, but again, that's not a casus belli. It does undermine me feeling bad for them not being able to self-determine themselves in other countries, though.
LazyLongposter
17d ago
Why do the Iranians and Syrians deserve civilian casualties.
I touched on it a bit for Iran, but in short:
- Funded/armed/directed Hamas, Hezbollah, Iraqi Shia militias (a very large part of why Iraq is dangerous), and the Houthis, as in basically every major destabilizing group except ISIS/Syrian variants.
- Killed US servicemembers with those Shia militias even when we were not militarily involved in Iran
- Nominally aligned with China and Russia, receiving arms from them and lining their pockets (I think this is A Bad Thing because I do not like China and Russia as adversaries)
- Fucked around with nuclear capabilities while making "death to America" an official slogan
- Is a brutally repressive regime. Not a good enough reason on its own, but usually a given in these situations and also a reason that the civilian casualties caused by military action may be offset by a regime change. This is more likely true for Iran than Syria.
Points 1, 3, and 5 also applied to Syria, and back to geopolitics I like for there to be less nations that are economically and militarily aligned and supported by Russia and China. I am explicitly for American dominance on the world stage because that means I am more likely to keep enjoying the benefits of a giant and very defensible united land mass that is far from war in all its forms.
What will be the result of Europe turning the refugees away.
Presupposes a tide of refugees which I am not inclined to think will happen (I touched on this in my first comment). I'd also mention that even if it did happen, overall Iranians are a good bit more westernized, less Wahhabist (that's a Sunni thing!), less tribal, and less teen-rapey than the current stock in Europe (to oversimplify, Syrian in the mainland, Pakistani in the UK), so a few refugees from there are more likely to integrate unless they do the whole "we'll just import young and pissed off men" thing again. Even then, I doubt they're nearly as bad as what we see now.
Persians are not Arabs, and will proudly tell you so, and that's for the better.
What on earth did the average Iranian or Syrian do to deserve any of this?
The average nobody did anything. I don't know of any nation ever where, from top to bottom, every single person was wicked. You can say they voted for it, they tacitly supported it, whatever. Germany, Japan, the Serbs, the Koreans, the Vietnamese, none of these countries were filled with vile people who "deserved" carpet bombing, starvation, embargoes, displacement, whatever. It's the nature of nations that when they get involved on the world stage, war is often the only way to get what you want.
The question is what you want, and how badly.
People roll out the World War 2 examples because they're pretty cut and dry, and the closest example in a western, developed sense we have to the present. "We want you to stop invading and conquering others, and our roughly evenly matched forces will make a push all the way into your country to make you stop." Superpowers with precision munitions (remember this part) did not exist. A global economy, such as we have now, did not exist. Cheap travel and the resultant mass migration did not exist!
Oh, and live broadcasting of the war didn't exist either.
But to the point, people will defend those wars as just - and I agree with them - despite the fact that the civilian tolls are so staggering they don't even register even with an aid. The lasting debate of civilian casualties from that war, the nuclear bombings of Japan, often dies in its throat when many of the people who consider it an atrocity don't even know that the firebombing of Tokyo produced around as many casualties as a nuclear bombing in a single night (I would much rather die to a nuclear blast than an incendiary firestorm, for what it's worth). This is to say nothing of the bombing campaigns across Germany, which were specifically designed - given the failure of precision bombing promised by the Norden bombsight and massive air casualties the Allies endured as a result - to reduce a city to being ineffective. They didn't want to kill civilians. Okay, maybe Harris did after the Battle of Britain. But generally, the purpose was not to inflict needless and horrifying casualties. It was all they could do to prosecute the war until the Germans and Japanese capitulated. Note that in Germany's case the bombing alone did not do this and it took massive ground movements to do so all the way into Berlin itself, but the bombing made those ground advances easier.
Did those civilians deserve it? It's a rhetorical question, because of course they didn't. But it's just irrelevant once you are the citizen of a nation that another nation has determined it has just cause to prosecute war against you. No amount of justification of geopolitics will make it okay to the people who die in the crossfire. They suffer and die and all their dreams are lost for something impossibly bigger than they are, that they could have not possibly changed on an individual level.
This is the reason I brought up superpowers with precision munitions, global economies, cheap travel, and the media. Because by Vietnam we lost the stomach for the same type of campaign pretty much overnight. I will find the source, but there has been a lot of talk about how North Vietnam was desperate by the early 70s. Bombings of Hanoi were driving their nation, not the guerillas, but the nation, into disaster. Had the US bombed them as mercilessly as Japan or Germany, they likely would have caused the nation of North Vietnam to fail. Whether that's enough to have killed communism in Vietnam is up to debate, and I'd say it's unlikely, but it would have prevented the immediate rolling of the conventional NVA over South Vietnam after the US withdrawal. But at this point, the war was broadcast, and things like napalm girl and the Saigon Execution photos made people see how awful geopolitics is on a micro level. Weapons were becoming actually precise, and people were asking if such things were necessary. I'd say they're only necessary if you want to actually defeat the nation you're fighting.
This is not, by the way, a defense of the Vietnam war or that it was a good idea from the outset. But once you're in the fight, and you have the objective to defeat one nation and preserve another, there's a cost. The US, via politics and bad strategy (read up on William Westmoreland if you're interested) did not do what needed to be done, so all that happened was South Vietnam fell anyway and the US took a huge hit to its credibility on the world stage.
This debate persists to now, and is even more pointed. Everything is livestreamed, and weapons are so precise that we now expect zero civilian casualties, and anything more is a massive scandal. To the point that Obama is considered a maniac because he killed an estimate of 116 civilians with drone strikes. Tell that to the average American from 1945 and they'd call him a genius on no other level.
This is, again, not a justification for untargeted mass bombardment. This is also not a defense of bad intel, or misusing precision weapons in a way that kills innocent bystanders. Again, even down to one person, what difference does the geopolitical or military targeting situation make? They're dead. They've lost everything for nothing. But I ask what a nation is supposed to do if it has determined that another nation is an enemy, and diplomacy has failed, and it has determined that it must proceed militarily to, put coldly, get what what it wants. If the idea that a civilian death is a tragedy that invalidates the righteousness of the cause, then in a sense I am happy that the average person who thinks these things is so far removed from the idea of war being an existential threat. Certainly it is not for someone living in the US or most of Europe at this point in time (the situation is different for Israel, regardless of your position; it's a fact that they have enemies within and without that are in striking distance and I suspect it's a large reason that the population wasn't clamoring for the war to slow down after October 7th). I don't mean this as a jab, either; it's a miracle we live in the world we do. But at the end of the day, going to war is going to kill a fair bit of people who have nothing to do with it in any meaningful way, because you won't achieve your objectives otherwise.
Make your accusations of Israeli excesses and I'm going to agree. Denounce bad US intel for strikes, or a bad overall strategy, and I'm game there. But this is an argument that is rolled up in more practical criticisms of wars in general and I don't find it compelling, horrible as it may sound. At the outset we know a war is going to kill innocents. But if there's an objective that can only be achieved militarily - and given the constant abuse of diplomatic agreements and funding of militias throughout the Middle East, I'm going to say there's a fair argument for Iran - that's the price.
As to your other questions, I don't have an answer. It's up to Europe to decide what its border and refugee policies are, though if I lived there I'd definitely be in "turn them back no matter what" mode no matter what. I also don't find the idea of Iran splitting into a bunch of ISIS-style warlords very plausible. It's a country that is much more united in religious and racial demographics. You aren't going to have Sunni paramilitary groups gobble up the country, nor are you going to have massive racial violence (and if you did, the Persians would just win). Syria was the last gasp of Ba'ath/pan-arab/secular dictatorship against the tribal infighting and Wahhabism that is inherent to Arab nations. I don't see them collapsing the same way.
Again, it all falls onto whether Iran is a valid target, and if it's worth the squeeze. The comment you're replying to does, and I'd be pretty happy to see the regime fall too. Civilian casualties (let me edit this and say civilian casualties on any sort of normal scale) just aren't a reason not to do it. Call it cold, but geopolitics is fuckin' cold.
LazyLongposter
21d ago
Probably a naval/aviation thing. I work around both and those are the only people I hear say it.
LazyLongposter
21d ago
fat dumb and happy
Your use of this statement is activating my service member recognition instinct, Manchurian Candidate style.
LazyLongposter
29d ago
This is a pretty bad immediate pivot of your argument after drawing out the tired MIC talking point.
needs of the generals that want a hot war for promotions
Big general? Generals are replaceable middlemen, despite their status. Promotions are unrelated to the MIC, unless you flubbed this too and meant to talk about military contractors hiring them after retirement. Which, fair, but even then, they don't need a hot war. There are plenty of peacetime generals who went/go to military contracting companies after their service.
deep state actors
Not even MIC, discounting the conspiracy-isms here.
If the people capable of pulling strings and getting America dragged into a hot war, the corporate money makers seem least in control.
Did you leave out a clause here? I'm not being an asshole; I cannot parse the end the first part of this sentence.
They are happy to benefit and will make sure the wealth gets shared around, but it's not them alone causing this.
Fair point, agreed, even though it seems counter to your original point.
LazyLongposter
1mo ago
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.
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 without 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
1mo 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
1mo 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
2mo 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
2mo 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
2mo 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
5mo 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
5mo 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
6mo 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
6mo 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
6mo 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
9mo 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.
Excellent. Drinks on me
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