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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   35537 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of June 9, 2025

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Who's they and what's why in this context? I don't get it.

It's a reference to a supposed Russian proverb "the Jew will always tell you what happened to him, but he'll never tell you why."

Iran and Russia got hit because they engaged in acts of war against other countries. It doesn't occur to "they" that you can avoid having to worry about such things if you don't pick fights with foreign countries.

It's basically the mindset of the prison gang guy who's big and tough and strong and always thinking about how he will defend himself from attack, who sees of himself as a hard-headed realist, and is 10x more likely to die a violent death than the average schlubby insurance agent who never thinks about self-defense at all. MAGA is an entire political movement based around this mentality, which wants to drag the entire country down with it.

Is your position here is that if we get attacked by a foreign adversary it is because we deserve it? [Edit to add – if Russia could have avoided having to worry about such things if it didn't pick fights with foreign countries, does that mean Ukraine doesn't have to worry about it, in your view?]

I don't think that can be anything but a straw man of your actual position, but – it really doesn't matter whether Iran or Russia were in the right or not, we need to pay close attention to the conflicts going on around the world or risk learning their lessons the hard way.

(JD Vance if you're reading this get Hesgeth to fire a five star every month until we have soft cover around all of our strategic bombers.)

Ah I see, you've never actually lived in a failed state and have therefore no organic understanding of the necessity of a monopoly on force for what you consider a normal life to even exist.

That's easy to remedy, Hispaniola is really nice at this time of year. You can have a quick trip to Haiti and the Dominican Republic and convince yourself which society you'd prefer to live in based on their approach to border enforcement.

Be sure to ask any insurance providers what they think of either place, though you might have trouble finding any in Haiti at the moment.

I will say I don't even mind anarchists myself, so long as they can take a hard look at a lawless society and genuinely desire it for themselves. Me I'm more of a Leviathan guy, private property, courts and all that jazz you know.

Nice takedown of that strawman.

I thought your position was specifically that being concerned with the enforcement of borders or your country's strategic security was pathological.

The only sort of people I know that believe this are anarchists of various stripes, some of which I'm good friends with actually. I assure you they're not made of straw.

But given your answer this is surely not your position, so can you explain how come you believe this without having to make yourself the enemy of Leviathan?

Are you maybe one of those people that believe that we should have a global government or something? Or some kind of multilateralist who thinks states can diplomacy their way out of the state of nature?

During the trade war with Canada the Canadians threatened to turn off its electricity supply to America. Trump and MAGA used that as a reason why America couldn't rely on foreign countries for electricity:

https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/3zhsGGkCA11aj2O0t57NaQ--/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjt3PTk2MDtoPTQ5MQ--/https://media.zenfs.com/en/the_independent_635/80f6a10cc60a71ffc764529da7c7eb2a

They really cannot grasp the correlation between their behavior and outcomes and think that's a good argument.

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