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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   28881 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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Since nobody seems to be bringing it up, I will:

"Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP"

It really is Poetry.

Over time, I've lost faith in religion. I no longer believe in deontology. I doubt objectivism. I don't think consequentialism produces meaningfully outcomes. I find modernism passe. The rationalists seem kinda irrational. I've done the calculations: utilitarianism doesn't math out.

I think I'll have to RTVRN to tradition: I think Plato might have had it. Maybe Aesthetics as Virtue was the true path all along.

It seems that the aesthetics someone chooses to project and their aesthetic sense (taste? values?) are better predictors of what they will do and who they really are than anything else. It seems that half of my political values boil down to aesthetics in any case: I find trump-hegseth-vance-desantis et al to be disgusting and contemptible; I have more respect for Rubio, but the last Republican I could really get down with was Mccain, purely off of his aesthetics, even if choosing someone as gauche as Palin disqualified him from my vote (Romney was too morman for me to handle, I'm sad to say).

Likewise with the D's: Their candidates have been universally superior to the republicans these past 8 years because they would rather be eaten by wild dogs than put "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP" up in lights and then line up behind it, but I have the most good vibes off of Bernie, Buttegieg, and Mamdani; also probably for purely aesthetic reasons.

I think this might actually be rational: just by observing the aesthetics an individual chooses to portray, you can make a judgment vis. how they intend to act in a way that is much harder to fake than "Saying shit". Kamala was a social climber totally absent of virtue, and campaigned like it. Bernie is a crusty old marcher, and acts like it. Buttigieg is a bloodless technocrat, and looks like it. Trump is a neuvo rich venal tasteless rich guy, and governes like it.

All this to say: I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on, and say that we can allow some grace. Maybe Duublya had a stutter, you can get an aphorism wrong and it's fine. It's ok. That being the case, if any politician in the future sits down and types out something as fucking sauceless and cringe and gross as "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP" and thinks "This is great, fucking SEND IT"; they should probably go back to screaming at the cocain ghosts in an alleyway stop blighting our eyes with their garbage.

I'm not that old but I think aside from the tan suit controversy Obama had the best aesthetics in living memory? Europe was so gosh darn proud of us.

Until he had that Presidential Center built. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barack_Obama_Presidential_Center

I never understood that one, because the only coverage I ever saw of it was "Republicans pounce on tan suit". Despite having what I think is a fairly centrist media diet, I never saw any of the actual condemnation of the suit, but I saw tons of reactions to it. Even looking at the Wikipedia page, I can only find two clear examples of actual comments on the suit by the Republican-aligned (Lou Dobbs on Fox Business, representative Peter King) and a couple of neutral "weird choice" but not particularly condemnatory fashion commentators, amid dozens of links deriding the "controversy".

It always felt very manufactured to me. Honestly, the tan suit never bothered me, but it did feel like everyone focusing on it was distracting from what should have been real controversies of the time (mismanaging the Arab Spring and ISIS, ATF gunrunning, constructing a domestic panopticon). Although in that vein, it does feel like Trump frequently intentionally causes outrage at minor things to distract from major ones.

I get the impression this was something that played out more on Twitter than in meatspace. I’d have thought people had built an immunity by 2014, but apparently not.

It is interesting that even the “republicans pounce” commentary is subdued by post-2016 standards. Outlets are using this to mock Republicans for having nothing better to do; I could barely find anyone calling it racist.

I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on

It sounds like "aesthetics" is mostly just "vibes" here. Vibes are how most of the electorate choose who to vote for. If your vibes are well-calibrated, then it's probably not a bad way to choose overall, though I still think having specific rules or looking for specific things is better.

Vibes are how most people do anything. Anyone who’s ever made an impulse purchase has done so directly on that basis. Only for the most critical decisions do people tally the evidence and weigh the counter objections and even then, they don’t spend that much time doing any real thought.

One incredible thing about Trump's continued insanity is how much of a natural loyalty test it creates. If you take his words seriously, he's now threatening genocide (and implying nukes) against Iran over a war we won weeks ago about a strait that has been open for transit and is safe to cross against a regime that has already fallen and been changed to be favorable to us.

It pushes out anyone who can't, or isn't willing to, commit themselves to the double think and devout followers are making a constant fool of themselves because they aren't all able to update fast enough. There's a reason why the Democrats now hold the edge on the Senate, a thing that in any ordinary year should not be happening (just look at how low the predictions were until somewhat recently). But the mad king is even crazier than people expected and the Trumpist group grows more and more insular because most people surprisingly enough, are not willing to pretend the emperor is or isn't wearing clothes depending on his whims.

Almost half of all voters are independent now and that should be eye opening to these partisans.

If you're a Democrat you should be worried that the Dems are so politically toxic that people won't associate with you, even though the alternative is those "crazy Republicans". If you're a Republican you should be worried that the GOP is so politically toxic that people won't associate with you, even though the alternative is those "crazy Democrats". Just imagine how despicable the average citizen must be viewing you now that they're willing to consider you just as insane and awful. Outrunning the other person instead of the lion brings you only temporary victories, the 2020 Biden mandate turned into a 2024 Trump surge, and the 2024 Trump surge is turning into a 2026 Dem landslide.

One incredible thing about Trump's continued insanity is how much of a natural loyalty test it creates.

It will come as no surprise to you that I think there are many progressive beliefs which serve a similar function as loyalty litmus tests.

The problem is where does this progressivism work outside of the big cities and already blue democratic strongholds? It works essentially nowhere else which is why the party line stays closer to the establishment because the left can’t win the nation on progressive ideology.

I'm not sure if I understand your question.

The most notable progressive belief that serves the same function (feigned confusion toward or rejection of male/female definitions) is mostly harmless, though; worst case scenario, it wrecks women's sports, which no one actually cares about anyway. The Trumpist version has given us the highly escalated Iranian situation, which is much more costly.

It also wrecks the crime rates, which people do care about.

The most notable progressive belief that serves the same function (feigned confusion toward or rejection of male/female definitions) is mostly harmless

I think you can find it anywhere that a progressive who is smugly "pro-science" will completely ignore inconvenient science when it gets in their way of supporting abortion, trans essentialism, or racial handouts.

I think the most costly progressive belief is something like "we should not punish antisocial behavior if we can tell a story where that antisocial behavior is downstream of prejudice around race, gender, or class". While Trump has obviously been acting like a petulant toddler lately, it's not like handing uncontested power back to the progressive "adults in the room" is likely to go particularly well. Probably less badly but that's not a very high bar to clear.

it's not like handing uncontested power back to the progressive "adults in the room" is likely to go particularly well. Probably less badly but that's not a very high bar to clear.

We are in agreement. I might gesture at "let's hand power to people who would do better than either," but unfortunately I don't see a way from here to there.

worst case scenario, it wrecks women's sports

This is probably the least worst case scenario for progressive beliefs like this: it looks the other way while thousands of little girls are raped (Rotherham et al), spends hundreds of billions on public infrastructure that still doesn't go anywhere (CA HSR), lets loose violent criminals on their own recognizance to murder people on the train (sometimes Ukrainian asylum seekers), openly constructs race and gender-based spoils systems, and often-as-not in other countries (Venezuela, Cuba) refuses to even consider public opinion and starts ignoring elections.

Not going to say there aren't a similar number of equivalent failure modes on the right, either: civilization has always been a delicate dance to align incentives to avoid violence.

The belief that American police officers are gunning down unarmed black men willy-nilly led to the 2020 riots (causing something like a billion dollars in property damage), and the subsequent police pullback (resulting in an additional ~10,000 murders, mostly young black men).

Well, given that the Iran war's direct costs are already estimated to be in excess of 20 billion, a couple hundreds more in funding are being requested and this does not even include figures for random damage like US embassies and bases in the region let alone indirect costs due to more expensive fuel and what-not, I think we are some orders of magnitude past that. (We'll see about the deaths depending on whether they actually proceed with a ground invasion.)

(And no, the "military budget is just money reinvested in US companies" argument won't do much here; it's still money that means part of the economy is retargeted towards making things that explode rather than twinkies. You could make absolutely the same argument about BLM damages since presumably the damaged storefronts were also rebuilt by US companies, too. What's the qualitative difference between "fire a missile and pay for a replacement" and "shatter a window and pay for a replacement"?)

If you are going to balance costs you have to also balance benefits, though it is too soon to do so.

It's going to be "too soon to do so" in the anecdotal Zhou Enlai sense for a very long time, and on top of that hopelessly subjective (is "US police are now scared of casual violence towards black do-no-gooders" a benefit or not? Would "Israel occupies part of Lebanon" be? Would "US Evangelicals ecstatic because they think the Rapture has drawn closer" a benefit or not?).

The Iran war is likely not going to have anywhere near the same amount of benefits as its direct costs. At the very least it's unlikely free Hormuz transit is ever coming back.

If a life is worth $10M, that's $100B in damages over a couple years. Not small, but by the end will likely be dwarfed by the Iran War.

Though, your example does bring to mind another that probably will be comparable: COVID and the response to it. I'm not sure what proportion of the blame to place on progressive litmus tests for that, but it's certainly substantial.

Why would I be tired of winning with Trump. America wants Europe to spend more on defense. Twitter is telling me today France now spending more on defense. Prior UniParty - Europe please spend more on defense. Trump - I will end NATO.

Sure he makes sausage a little strange. But it gets us W’s.

Leftist have claimed for years that Trump miscalculated and now he will go to jail or something. Then he wins again.

I am mixed on Iran right now. Hopefully he finds his W again.

I don’t quite want to say Trump is smarter than me. Like his hardware is probably slower, but he has different software with better instincts than me.

Europe started ramping up defense spending in 2022 already (for obvious reason) and hiked it more from 2023 to 2024 than from 2024 to 2025.

Although it is a very healthy sign from Europe in general, i am reminded of how when the US announces something it'll say "100 billion spent on EV charging stations" and China will say something like "10 million EV charging stations have been made"

German spending in particular seems prone to this. So much money spent, so little actual product made.

Sure, but that's ephemeral if the question is whether Trump is making Europe spend more on defense through bully-boy tactics or whether Europe would be spending more on defense anyway - and, indeed, an important point is that it's after Europe has done what Trump ostensibly wants it to do that Trump has decided to start provoking and undercutting Europe in various and sundry ways.

that is a very good distinction

Europe spending more on defense isn't really a good thing if Europe and the US are at odds. It also wouldn't be good if Europe couldn't use those defense dollars productively if they're politically paralyzed due to e.g. Hungarian intransigence.

The final resting place of TDS: acceptance that it was just aesthetic snobbery all along. The greatest political actor in the US since FDR, vanquished both parties, slew the Bush and the Clinton dynasties, co-opted the Kennedies, rewrote the political playbook and realigned the party system, the international treaty system and US policies more generally. One day they'll probably teach this little banger in 300-level poly-sci classes, in the same chapter as the Fireside Chats.

So gauche!

My problem with TDS is that it conflates three different things. The original meaning was hating something purely because it was done by Trump (and the assumption that people would have approved of a policy if it was enacted by their tribe). This is the true aesthetic snobbery, which probably happens more than we would like to admit. There are two other factors at play though.

1 - Genuine dislike of Trump's goals. This is certainly the case with true believers on the left. They like the bureaucracy that is getting axed. They like the world order that is being dismantled. They like the identity politics and moral panics, etc. I wouldn't say they have TDS. I'd say they don't like change.

2 - Approval of Trump's goals but dislike of his methods. I'd say the vast majority of objectors fall into this category (myself included). I do support a bunch of what Trump wants to do (at least from a very high level). But his ways of doing those things are some combination of a) incompetent or b) designed primarily for the aesthetic appeal. This makes sense from an electoral perspective, but it's not a long term strategy. Eventually the underlying reality of the world (ex: oil and gas economics) catches up. And at that point, you end up causing a crisis and delivering the government back to the very people you wanted to remove from power. You put on a flashy show, but just end up as a small detour in Cthulhu's leftward swim.

Yeah. This has long been my position about the Trump rhetoric and phraseology. It’s brilliant politics, and honestly fair game, but transitions very poorly to governing where people actually do expect government officials to utter things with a stronger relationship to truth. Take Trump’s recent threat about ending civilization in Iran. Facially, that’s a nuclear bomb threat. The fact we cannot tell if that’s what he means or if it’s pure vibes is dangerous. Even if we assume it’s pure politics, it degrades the future ability to rationally assess the official positions of the government and facts on the ground. What particularly grinds my gears is some of the most ardent defenders of Trump around here have taken the simultaneous and cognitively dissonant position that Western civilization is in trouble because it is losing high trust social dynamics. But no, it’s the darn immigrants and their trust-caustic culture that is at fault, or maybe the darn liberals and their moral purity crusades, it can’t possibly be something as simple as the loss of trust from a direct attack on institutions or a President who lies and exaggerated as easily as he breathes.

I'd say they don't like change

In other words, they're "conservatives". They don't like that name because in their worldview (informed by a memeplex that began in the '60s that they applied despite its ideas being objectively too advanced for them) it means they're the bad guys.

I think the term TDS is perfectly appropriate for both dislike of the man and dislike of the change, because the former is how conservatives launder the latter.

The problem with (2) is that I would not say the vast majority of objectors fall into that category, because if it was you'd find quite a bit more measured discourse rather than, y'know, what we see right now. And half of these also tend to fall back into TDS by going "Trump stupid, reeeeee", which you can see in every thread that talks about the guy on this forum, to say nothing of what happens in the wider world.

And at that point, you end up causing a crisis and delivering the government back to the very people you wanted to remove from power. You put on a flashy show, but just end up as a small detour in Cthulhu's leftward swim.

That's just kind of the nature of government, though. However, I would mention that Cthulhu swims rightward- towards the conservative and the local maxima of corruption (International SJWery, at present)- not leftward, which is more just general chaos.

The problem with (2) is that I would not say the vast majority of objectors fall into that category, because if it was you'd find quite a bit more measured discourse rather than, y'know, what we see right now.

It's an issue of granularity. If you take the 10k foot view "I want to improve boarder security / decrease illegal immigration", the vast majority of people are okay with that. Only like 20% of the population truly wants open boarders. It's only an issue because a bunch of political thinkers buy into the whole "people are fungible and we need as many as possible in an era of negative population growth" ideology. So 80% should in theory agree with Trump. But each time you get more specific, you lose people. Do you want ICE roaming around picking up criminals? A decent size chunk of people are okay with that. How about just general illegals? Eh...probably less. Do you want them doing performative raids with face coverings and tactical gear in quiet suburban neighborhoods and occasionally detaining or killing a citizen? Your average person is probably not happy anymore. It started hitting way too close to home.

Basically any Trump policy has this shortcoming. Because when you come to the fork in the road where you can choose pragmatism/results on one path and showmanship on the other, Trump always chooses showmanship. In the end, it is just aesthetics. It's what Trump lives for, what he derives his support from, and what keeps him from actually getting anything done.

None of that is true; is the thing. He is a gross capering clown who leads a populist interregnum; he does things that are stupid and counterproductive to his own goals while still doing normal neocon things. He is Bush 3: Bush harder, just worse in every way.

The things you attribute to him are just end process that began with regan and thatcher, the rotting away of the state and of society into atomized citizens and neoliberal incentives.

I think the idea of TDS is a kind of prion some people ate that is stopping them from looking at the fat, senile lunatic they have decided is a master manipulator and realizing: Holy shit, our guy is a silver spoon moron!

He is a gross capering clown who leads a populist interregnum

LOL. Nice choice of words for someone who has been protested by a group called "No Kings".

For anyone else like me who needed to look up the root, interregnum, as in, regal, rex, king. Inter, between, so if Trump is the leader of the populist interregnum, we are definitionally between the reign of two kings (Obama in this case being one king).

I like words.

To be unnecessarily nitpicky, it's inter regnum, and regnum means 'kingdom', 'reign', or 'authority'. As Etymonline notes, the term was used in the Roman republic, to mean a time between consuls. As such, though it is etymologically related to rex, 'king', I think both the Romans and ourselves validly use the term to mean any interruption in political authority.

Constitutionally, the American system is designed to never have an interregnum. If the president dies, the next person in the line of succession instantly becomes president - the office is never vacant. Western monarchies often work the same way - "the king is dead, long live the king". The throne is never empty. The presidency is the monarchal element of the American constitution (America being a Polybian mixed constitution), and it too is never empty.

That said asdasdasdasd is clearly using the term more informally, to just mean something like 'interruption'.

His opposition including some stupid people who can't get their narrative straight is not a particularly strong point in his favour.

Sure it is; in the land of the blind the one-eyed man is... err, there's that word again.

Does the one-eyed man get to be king of the properly sighted just by presenting some blind people he would be comparatively fit to lead, though?

I don't think the metaphor you chose works here. In the end, you are just trying to force the parent poster to answer for some incompatible view espoused by unrelated people who happen to agree with him on the "Trump bad" part, which we can maybe consider to not be completely invalid if you also take responsibility for the "support Israel to position the set-pieces for the Rapture" camp on your side.

It so happens that if you are too stupid and malicious to consider consequences, you can do a hell of a lot as the president of the United States of America. You can do great things indeed. The greatest. It's a tremendous force, this office.

For example, you can kill a whole civilization.

You can realign everything into a crooked parody of itself. You can throw a temper tantrum and wreck international treaties, replacing them with your preferred club of third world kleptocrats. Easy-peasy. The hard part is getting into that office, but thankfully even the smart Americans have grown tired of treating things seriously, and so happily elected a random moron.

What insightful commentary. Do go on.

Trump killed a civilization with a tweet. Hysterical. Chuck Norris jokes as political analysis.

The US President making a thinly veiled threat to commit genocide is, in fact, a bad thing. Even if he's practically guaranteed to TACO and just do some airstrikes on civilian infrastructure at worst. The fact that Trump does it through Twitter does not reduce its badness since Twitter is basically an official communication channel these days.

It wasn't Twitter, it was Truth Social. Which is where Trump rants.

Sure, but Truth Social is just a reskin built to be Trump's personal Twitter. The fact it has a different name doesn't really matter since people will still see his posts if they're controversial enough.

They are two entirely different entities.

... that does not make it better.

Chuck Norris jokes as policy announcements.

Does it not tire you to maintain this disaffected persona chuckling at "lib" overreaction? Do you really believe that the proper treatment of POTUS's words is "unhinged and obviously non-credible bullshitting", but also that this kind of person deserves to be POTUS?

Does it not tire you to engage in this constant catastrophizing? It's been ten years. How are people still driving themselves into madness like this?

Four years of ineffectual flailing due to political sabotage, 4 years out of power, and now a bit over a year of uninterrupted and unprecedented shitshow. The list of his follies is very long, but an American consumer is very rich, so can ignore it for a time. Still, it hasn't been a long time. What did you mean by ten years?

uninterrupted and unprecedented shitshow.

No, everything has been between "basically fine" and "awesome, actually". This is what I mean by catastrophizing.

What did you mean by ten years?

That's how long Trump has been dominating our political conversation. That's how long lefties and NeverTrump types have been having crashout meltdowns EVERY. SINGLE. WEEK. about whatever new calamity is making the rounds on TikTok or BlueSky. How many times has Trump DESTROYED THE ECONOMY?!!/1 How many times has Trump STARTED WORLD WAR THREE!!!!1? How many times have we seen THE END OF DEMOCRACY!!1?

(They screamed, on their national television shows where they will definitely never suffer consequences for open, deranged antipathy for the purported fascist king of America. Unlike Europe, where complaints about being raped by migrants or criticizing politicians gets people jailed for longer than the migrant rapists.)

And no one ever stops and recalibrates. No one ever pauses to take a sanity check. They just lose issue after issue, fact pattern after fact pattern, and dive straight into the next hype cycle.

Remember the other day when all those idiots thought he was dead?

LMAO.

It's certainly flailing and I want to call it ineffectual, but at this point the sheer staying power of the moral panic / doomsday cult mentality is honestly impressive. Terribly unhealthy, but impressive.

I mean just to pick something that has had a very personal impact to people I know, the NSF and related science cuts have basically been Covid-level fallout for higher education and related research. The fact this was done on purpose and even lauded is nauseating. For every person like my friend’s wife whose half-bullshit psych masters degree got derailed by a year or two, there’s two people like my aunt who got laid off from her incredibly important job at a primate research lab that does a ton of stuff on both infectious disease and cancer research, where the whole lab is probably going to close. For all the whining Republicans did about Covid pummeling K12 education with knock on effects for another decade or more, it’s extra astonishing none of them seem too concerned at all that the same thing is happening in slow motion at higher levels.

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Trump has caused hundreds of billions in damage with Liberation Day tariffs, attacked Denmark and forced EU allies to orient towards China, basically wrecked NATO by this point, foolishly escalated against the same China and got humiliated in Busan, exposing American industrial ineptitude (particularly to Korea), is about to lose Taiwan, and is in the process of shaving off 1% or so off the global GDP growth. That's just the big foreign policy stuff I care about, domestic policy is discussed daily here.

That loyalists conveniently forget such issues or reframe them into WINS is unsurprising.

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The person who deserves to be POTUS is the person who gets enough votes to be POTUS. This is the horrible truth, the thing from which you desperately struggle to avert your gaze. The United States is a democracy and Donald Trump is its democratically elected president. His legitimacy derives from the people.

Donald Trump did not trick his way into office and then surprise everyone by acting in a manner unbecoming of a president. The people of the United States of America decided to elect someone who breaks all the rules of what a president is 'supposed' to do. They don't care what the president is 'supposed' to do, they care whether the president is doing what they want him to do. For quite a long time, through many administrations, the president has not been doing what the people want him to do.

Donald Trump did not trick his way into office and then surprise everyone by acting in a manner unbecoming of a president

He apparently surprised Catturd and other major boosters who were celebrating NO MORE FOREIGN WARS upon his election. That said, they've quickly pivoted, now foreign wars are Based.

The people of the United States of America decided to elect someone who breaks all the rules of what a president is 'supposed' to do. They don't care what the president is 'supposed' to do, they care whether the president is doing what they want him to do.

This is mostly sophistry, but I suppose you are making a sharp point: the problem is not Trump, it's the American people.

For example, you can kill a whole civilization.

Have you made similar objections towards "death to America" or "death to Israel" coming from Middle Easterners, including Iran? Or is this one of those "America isn't civilized, so it's fine to destroy America, but Iran, whew, that's civilized" ideas? Or is the reasoning perhaps that it's hyperbole when Iran says it but serious when Trump says it?

Well, I had higher expectations of the USA than Iran personally. Makes sense to me people would find such rhetoric coming from the POTUS more notable than similar rhetoric coming from a mob in a third world country or from a notorious extremist theocracy.

I note that at least going back to the Bush administration (and probably back into the mists of time, but I haven't checked) that there is a significant subset of people who simultaneously want to claim moral superiority and seethe at being held to any kind of standard.

  1. yes, it is hyperbole in the case of Iran. This has been covered enough. Iranians have, in fact, never had the genocide of Americans or even collapse of the American state to be their policy.
  2. Iran cannot credibly threaten death to America, or even Israel, for it has no means to inflict such death. On the other hand, the US can credibly send Iran to the Stone Age, or whatever, with near-complete impunity.
  3. I do have double standards. An ostensible vanguard of the Western Civilization cannot conduct itself like an insular theocracy it says is ruled by "crazy mullahs".
  4. This victim posturing is exactly what I've been talking about, it's unbecoming of a superpower.

Iranians have, in fact, never had the genocide of Americans ... to be their policy

Where has America had the genocide of Iranians to be its policy?

Iran cannot credibly threaten death to America, or even Israel, for it has no means to inflict such death.

Which is why it was working on nuclear weapons.

Their nuclear program was completely obliterated less than a year ago.

Obviously not, since they still have the enriched uranium, a nuclear reactor, and other parts of said program.

...or because they don't want to be regime changed.

Ali Khamenei made those objections already, stating that it means opposition to U.S. government policies, not the American people. Hard to imagine a greater authority on the matter.

Besides that, rhetoric coming from a protest or some mass gathering is slightly different than rhetoric coming from world leaders. 'Glassing the place' became a common term for what many Americans said should be done to the middle east, I don't suppose you think that's the same as an official statement from a national leader? Though Trump has now narrowed that gap.

Ali Khamenei made those objections already, stating that it means opposition to U.S. government policies, not the American people.

If that counts, it should exonerate Trump too; Trump said in the same statement that he didn't want the civilization to die. It's even above in the link!

I'm not sure if claiming to oppose a regime and expressing intent to bomb a civilization into oblivion are the same thing. That was kind of the game the US was playing with 'Regime Change'. Or the US claiming to stand for global order, instead of Hegseth going out there claiming no quarter would be given, which is just a random declaration of wanting to commit war crimes.

That being said, I'd accept the terms, if only to not ever have to listen to someone claim that Iranians shouting 'Death to America' represents an existential threat, rather than just being the same kind of empty bluster US officials are now want to put out on social media, assuming it's empty, of course.

A major difference is that right now the US bombing Iranian cities and has the capacity to inflict catastrophic damage on civilian infrastructure while Iran is not bombing American cities and on their best day could inflict minor damage.

So is it ok to threaten genocidal destruction so long as you don't have the capacity to actually carry it out?

From a Banksian perspective, aspirational Fully Automated Gay Space Communism says "yes", but still has to manage "real threats" (ideally non-kinetically, but not always). I don't think we're there (yet?), so I wouldn't call that a fair expectation in 2026.

I don't know how you inferred that from what I wrote, but I want to raise two points.

Firstly, and this is unbelievably important: evil behavior from others does not excuse your own evil behavior. There's a kind of self-conscious human orc who feels the need to justify their own brutal impulses by pointing to the depravity of others, but they don't actually seek to resolve anything.

Secondly, power implies responsibility. The fact that one party can act on their threat and the other cannot is absolutely a reason to care more about the one than the other. You should not be threatening genocide, period, but you definitely shouldn't be doing it when you are currently in the process bombing the shit out of the people you're threatening to exterminate.

Firstly, and this is unbelievably important: evil behavior from others does not excuse your own evil behavior.

I say it does (or rather, that that prevents it from being evil to begin with.)

Shooting someone out of the blue is wrong. Shooting someone in self-defense is not wrong. What's the difference? The difference that makes it okay is precisely that the other guy did it first.

If Trump just picked a random country out of a map and said it needs to be destroyed, that would be bad. But that's not what he did. He picked a country that used similar threats against us first. It's the equivalent of self-defense, only with words instead of shooting people.

You are also ignoring that in the very next sentence, Trump said that he didn't want it to happen, and who knows, maybe it won't happen. When BigObjectPermanenceShill only quoted the first sentence and hoped that nobody would follow the link to see what Trump actually said, the effect was to mislead.

There's also the question of exactly what he meant. He didn't say "kill all the people". I'm sure he wants the regime to fall.

The fact that one party can act on their threat and the other cannot

Come on. Iran has also said "death to Israel". And they absolutely could genocide Israel (through bankrolling Hamas and Hezbollah or through nuclear weapons) if they aren't stopped.

I don't know how you inferred that from what I wrote

You were replying to someone who asked if you raised similar complaints over Iran calling for death to America for decades with the argument that a big difference between the two is that the US is currently bombing Iran and has the capacity to inflict significant damage while Iran currently isn't and cannot. I'm not saying anything excuses anything else here, I'm just replying to the argument you made.

It's not okay, but it's self-evidently better. With great power comes great responsibility etc.

He actually can't kill the civilization. Islam did that already.

Islamic Persia has produced a huge amount of architecture, art, poetry and literature. They were the intellectual elite of the Caliphate. And have existed in that form since before England was a country.

So I guess all of these domestically manufactured missiles and drones that are currently raining down on the Middle East are the product of some other civilization that happens to inhabit the same geographical location?

Yes.

Can't argue with gigachad responses.

A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again

This is genocidal rhetoric. What do you even say at this point? We are clearly in the wrong. Trump has disgraced America more than anyone before him. The Republican Party may be over for the next decade. Perhaps endless immigration will simply be our punishment from God for allowing the bloodthirsty to occupy the government.

The Republican Party may be over for the next decade.

Democrats are currently polling worse than anyone except Iran itself.

Going to log the prediction that the polls in 2 months are substantially identical to the ones from February.

Remember when Trump ended everything with that horrible tweet about Robert Deniro?

Did it take everyone a minute to dredge up the memory and substitute the correct actor?

Democrats are currently polling worse than anyone except Iran itself.

Well, either the pollsters are delusional or the Democrats are, because they're already counting the money from the wealth tax and all the other taxes they're going to put in after their landslide.

Also, Iran seems to be winning if you read the NYT, Economist, Free Press, etc.

Oh, for sure. "The Democrats" poll insanely poorly because their positions are mostly insane troll nonsense, but "John Normalson [D], who spends the campaign talking about nice, moderate things and never taking tough questions before getting elected and voting like Mao" will poll and perform pretty well in the general.

Have we forgotten that polls are inaccurate when it comes to predicting actual voters?

Do you think this is actually calling for genocide, or is it just strategically useful for you to call it genocidal?

When Trump refers to the "civilization" dying, do you sincerely think he's referring to mass-murdering the civilians in the region, rather than the obvious reading that he's referring to the society and regime?

If so, why didn't he just say that?

Deliberately inflicting on a group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in (substantial) part is an act of genocide, and I don’t see another means by which Trump can cause “a whole civilization” to “die” “never to be brought back again” without inflicting such destruction. You can’t bring an entire nation to “the Stone Age” because “they’re animals” without consciously inflicting such destruction on the members of the group.

rather than the obvious reading that he's referring to the society

If Iranian “society” is defined as a national or ethnic group, or, in its Shia adherence, a religious group, then you can’t aim to destroy the “society” either. If Trump’s actions are designed to destroy a substantial part of the Iranian population according to nationality, ethnicity, or religious identification, through (say) targetting enough civilian infrastructure that it necessarily destroys a substantial part of the population, then that’s an act of genocide. We also don’t have to use words with a specific connotation; we can just say that it’s not in the interests of the human race to do such things because it’s an act that is unnecessary and really bad for wellbeing, and thus those who do it should face a Nuremberg-style tribunal as deterrence for future defectors of the norm.

If so, why didn't he just say that?

Why didn’t he just say “regime” or “political party”? Why did he choose the word civilization, which has never been used to refer to a regime before? I’m having a hard time imagining how you can destroy a civilization forever, without intentionally destroying a significant portion of the members of the civilization.

Google gives me this for the definition of "genocide":

the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.

This comports with a couple of dictionary definitions I checked.

The key part, and the part you're trying to emotionally invoke, is the killing of people. That's the central concept of genocide, and it's what people who say "genocide" are trying to lean on. When people hear "genocide", they're supposed to think "murdering an ethnic or national group"; they're supposed to think "sending people to the gas chambers".

Is that what you think Trump is threatening? If so, where does he say anything remotely like that?

If, instead, you think Trump is threatening something that's still bad -- such as regime change that will inherently come with collateral damage, or the destruction of civilian infrastructure -- then say that. It will still be bad! But calling those things "genocide" is co-opting a stronger word purely because it's a stronger word. I don't believe you actually believe Trump intends to murder "a significant portion of the members of the civilisation" (please tell me if I'm wrong), so I don't take that as a sincere defence of using the word "genocide".

https://www.un.org/en/genocide-prevention/definition

The problem with trying to use a non-robust definition of genocide is that it allows someone like Hitler to cause the same destruction simply by thinking cleverly for twenty minutes. This is why you need to work with robust definitions of terms of art here. Imagine, for the sake of argument, an Egyptian Hitler in the year 2040ad. This hypothetical Führer may declare that he will “destroy Jewish civilization forever” because they are “animals”. What would we intuitively understand is being referred to by these remarks? And if our Pharaonic Führer proceeded to target with his air superiority the civilian infrastructure, medical institutions, technical instititions, scientists, and so forth, all while threatening water desalination plants and the electric grid, I don’t think anyone would doubt his genocidal intent. It’s pretty clear he would be intent on destroying in substantial part the population of his victims.

I don't believe you actually believe Trump intends to murder "a significant portion of the members of the civilisation" (please tell me if I'm wrong)

He threw his support behind a plausible genocide just last year. Why would you doubt that he would do it this year? Causing starvation and preventing infant formula from entering the Gaza Strip is, also, a textbook act of genocide, as it is “imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group”. Trump supported this. Why would he not support it against Iranians, whom he has already dehumanized?

Chronologically speaking, it's more like allowing the openly bloodthirsty (previous Presidents probably weren't saints in that regard, but generally kept their mouths shut) to occupy the government is the punishment for allowing endless immigration.

The Republican Party may be over for the next decade.

Press X to doubt. 2 reasons:

  1. Any foolishness from the side of Republicans will be seized on by the Dems to be more foolish themselves. It'll allow them greater leeway to hang themselves politically by supporting nonsense like defacto open borders or wokeness 2.0 or whatever else they can cook up with. Then that'll alienate more people, and we'll be back to equilibrium.

  2. MAGA voters could choose to end this war at any time by aggressively protesting what Trump is doing, threatening to withhold support, etc. Trump listens to them in broad strokes, and becomes much more TACO-y when he senses the ground shifting beneath him. So far though, MAGA has not done this. It's going along with the Iran war despite the massive hypocrisy of many MAGAs of previously being isolationist. There's a few tiny cracks and some softening support here and there, but Trump's base remains relatively united behind Trump.

A lot of major conservative names have actually defected here. Here's Candace Owens calling for the 25th amendment over his comments. Tucker Carlson is calling on troops to disobey these types of orders. Theo Von has been extremely against the war in Iran (I havent yet seen any comments on this recent but specifically)

They're the 3rd, 7th and 11th most listened to podcast on Spotify in the US.

It's not just the traditional podcasters either, for example here's Alex Jones. You can find plenty of major conservatives, many who have been conservative way before Trump even was, who oppose this war.

You're correct that there have been some defections, but even Tucker Carlson has been pulling his punches, going more for the "bad boyars" critiques rather than directly criticizing Trump. And polling has shown that most of the rank-and-file support the war, at least as of a few weeks ago. Self-reported MAGAs were 92% in favor of continuing the war.

If Trump called for the slaughter of the first-born, self-reported MAGAs would poll 92% in favour of it. I'm not sure if this is because 92% of Trump's supporters are sufficiently keen to give the loyal answer to pollsters that they would claim to support the slaughter of the first-born, or whether it is because former Trump supporters who can't bring themselves to claim to support the slaughter of the first-born stop self-reporting as MAGA.

MAGA didn't always mean "cult of personality around Donald Trump". It's a relatively new phenomenon in the wake of Trump's re-election. MAGAs theoretically had some principles like low immigration and being anti-war. And when a group has principles, it's theoretically possible for an individual to break them.

I'm surprised that no one brings up the option "MAGA are Trump supporters by definition, so you're more likely to see the group itself shrink, than to see the percentage of positive responses drop".

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It is true that Candace Owens, Tucker Carlson and Alex Jones have large audiences, and that most of these audiences are Red Tribe.

It is also true that they are opposed to the war with Iran, and yet we are having a war with Iran, and at least to date that war is overwhelmingly popular with Red Tribe.

I do not see how it is possible to claim that Red Tribe is both taking Owens, Carlson, and Jones' arguments as authoritative, and also overwhelmingly supporting a way they vehemently oppose.

So let us speak plainly here: is it your argument that Red Tribe should be taking Owens, Carlson, and Jones' arguments as authoritative? If so, why do you, yourself, personally, think that would be a good idea?

Bonus Question: One of your more notable posts, in my opinion, was your extensive arguments that Red Tribe is increasingly converging on anti-semitism of the Fuentes/groyper variety. I believe I've previously noted that I consider this one of the worst arguments I've seen on this forum in quite some time, but have not yet had the time for engaging with the substance of your arguments in detail (or indeed with most other arguments, sadly.) Still, pursuant to such engagement, could you elaborate on your personal understanding of the nexus between Israeli government influence and Trump's decision to go to war with Iran?

It is also true that they are opposed to the war with Iran, and yet we are having a war with Iran

Opposition to the war doesn't really matter that much, especially when there's a disconnect between the average politician and the voters anyway. It's the politician who decides until their time is up and they might get replaced, and as we're seeing with the midterms Trump is increasingly losing influence in that area.

at least to date that war is overwhelmingly popular with Red Tribe.

Confidence and support are still falling and that's despite the selection bias that people who change their minds don't always show up as mind changers, because they retcon it to begin with. The increased dissatisfaction among independents isn't just independents turning sour, but also sour republicans who turn more independent. And independent registration is at the highest ever because of dissatisfaction by otherwise Dem and GOP leaning voters. People who are upset leave, the tribe shrinks and election chances get worse even if the inner tribe circle jerking gets stronger.

Bonus Question: One of your more notable posts, in my opinion, was your extensive arguments that Red Tribe is increasingly converging on anti-semitism of the Fuentes/groyper variety

It's simple, Israel is not the average Jew, especially the average American Jew. I believe in personal responsibility and some random Joe Stein who works in accounting or whatever holds absolutely zero responsibility whatsoever for the Israeli government's influence on US politics. Antisemitism, like all bigotries, is mostly based around blaming groups instead of individuals.

Like imagine a world where Nazi theories were correct and powerful secret elites did control Germany and were corrupting it, and those elites were all Jews. Even if that were true, it would not suddenly make it ok to round up a bunch of random Jewish people, including many children, and just kill them. There is no world where literal babies and newborns could have done anything wrong, and yet they died too.

Confidence and support are still falling and that's despite the selection bias that people who change their minds don't always show up as mind changers, because they retcon it to begin with.

I voted for Trump because he promised no foreign interventionism and I thought Trump 1 was better than Biden, and have regretted it immensely. Unfortunately, there aren't many people who are willing to listen to this; strong Trump supporters hold this to be traitorous, and Democrats don't provide much of a runway for people who had reasons to support Trump but feel betrayed, because they were already on the bandwagon of anyone who voted for Trump is evil. Retconning your vote is basically the only pathway to being respected, so it's not surprising people are doing it. Trump is a phenomenon that has to be survived, because he has a stranglehold on his base. Hopefully the country survives.

That said, unfortunately the anti-war movement on the right has coalesced around antisemites and undesirables like Carlson and Owens, who oppose this war, like the local antisemites, because they believe Iran is a necessary counterweight to Israel which is the country they actually care about. I'm anti-war for reasons that rhyme with leftist views; I hate the American foreign policy apparatus, I believe it is a force for evil in the US, and I believe it does damage to the world while not aiding actual American interests. So it's frustrating to see that the right's anti-war impulses are being redirected into a shape that blames the problems of American foreign policy on THE JEWS!!! and not, for instance, the military-industrial complex, the blob, and the deep state.

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I don't agree with you must of the time but the GOP won't be over for the next decade. I know it feels that way in the present but it isn't true. You're looking at him through the prism of seeing a sitting American president. The people that elected him elected a wrecking ball, not a suit that focus group's every third sentence. That isn't what they wanted. When people say "... but Kamala's platform was better than Trump's...," that presumes there's political will and integrity behind the candidate and their administration. People need to touch and feel tangible results in their own life to believe that the political system is working for them. Saying "fiscal spending is going to increase $200 billion for clean energy initiatives," is empty when compared to a $1,200 COVID stimulus check that shows up in people's bank accounts.

Will need some kind of truth and reconciliation process after this. Can't have another weak Democrat administration pretending it never happened.

Yes more than actual genocidal presidents.

Netanyahu is not an American president.

I know you hate the joos but I was referencing the the trail of tears

Supposing that Jackson’s actions did constitute genocide, there are 200 years of moral progress separating our era from his, which I think does make Trump’s threat of eternal civilizational destruction more shameful.

I think that's exactly what he's talking about:

... I was referencing the the trail of tears

That's "at the expense" and tail end of things that sits on a pile of injustices and atrocities where the flag of "progress" gets planted.

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Over time, I've lost faith in religion. I no longer believe in deontology.

I am not sure what is this about. If one evaluates Christianity, it is at worst a mix of deontology and virtue ethics.

I doubt objectivism. I don't think consequentialism produces meaningfully outcomes. I find modernism passe. The rationalists seem kinda irrational. I've done the calculations: utilitarianism doesn't math out.

I wholeheartedly agree

I think I'll have to RTVRN to tradition: I think Plato might have had it. Maybe Aesthetics as Virtue was the true path all along.

Again, it seems that you discovered virtue ethics. Christianity - or at least Catholicism - specifically talks about transcendentals of Good, Truth and Beauty. This is basic Thomas Aquinas, he talks about concepts related to beauty such as Claritas, Integritas, Consonantia, Honestas and their relation to the other transcendentals and also toward deontological concepts such as duty. For example if you act in accordance to your duty (of let's say POTUS) you radiate Claritas. It is often cited concept where duty formed by reason forms something beautiful when in action - e.g. when a worker honestly and dutifully pursues his craft, he creates beauty. One can also say the same about politics as a craft.

There is also great deal of wisdom in Catholic teaching when it comes to aesthetic morality. While sin is ugly, it can also lead to a dangerous sin of pride. Sometimes seeing ugly things all around you means something lacking on your part, inability of you as an observer to honestly judge correct aesthetics. In a sense it is lack of your inner beauty, replacing it with ugly sin of pride, which prevents you to see the harmony even in supposedly ugly things.

All this to say: I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on, and say that we can allow some grace.

Oh, welcome then! I have some great picks for you. Real aesthetes, if you can only overlook some minor issues. Have some d'Annunzio, some Mussolini, some [insert 1930s Japanese leader]!

No! Those are all gross pencil necked chickenhawk NERDS playing at being big strong men, they're so strong guys, you don't understand, I can bench 450, you don't get it. Fuck those guys!

Give me an FDR or a TR or a lincoln or a Eisenhower or a Degaulle, if you want suggest a muscular authoritarian type!

Well you're not wrong, I'll give you Degaulle and Theodor Roosevelt, easily. But I thought the point was valuing aesthetics over performance?

The aesthetics are how you perform your character for others to see. That's why I give the nod to FDR and lincoln, although it's impossible to say if that is post-facto given how baked in they are as pillars of american aesthetic virtue

It's hard to say, because Lincoln and FDR are kinda baked in as aesthetic icons of strength, given the situation. Same with Churchill and Stalin.

FDR

Beautiful shitposting there.

NO! Well, yes, but also no.

FDR qualifies because dude was dropping banger lines all the time AND he was your kindly uncle who had his shit together and wanted the best for you, but also knew better than you and WAS better than you, and you better never fukin forget it. His vibes were immaculate.

I mean, don't get me wrong, he had some great points, but I don't think he was benching 450 as a "muscular authoritarian type". At least not the image most people have of him...

We know that NOW, but at the time they were doing movie magic to imply he wasn't President hotwheels and besides that: only fools and weaklings believe that muscularity exists in the body. You are muscular in your SOUL, you emanate muscle vibrations into the world. that's why so many ripped gym dudes come off as little bitches. they failed to train the most important muscle: the indomitable spirit.

All this to say: I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on, and say that we can allow some grace.

Your terms are acceptable.

What's wrong with Admiral Levine's aesthetic? The impression I get from her is of an outwardly-stern but decent grandmother.

I suppose that Levine is getting praise as "first female" and being transgender that accolade is a little sketchy, if one feels that trans female is not the same as cis female:

On 19 October 2021, Levine was commissioned as a four-star admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, becoming the first openly transgender four-star officer in any of the United States uniformed services as well as the first female four-star admiral in the Commissioned Corps.

Though at least in uniform their appearance is not quite as baldly "guy in a dress", due to late transition.

The impression I get from him is that he's a corrupt bureaucrat who leaned on a medical organisation to manipulate their recommendations of best practices for political reasons, not to conform with the best medical evidence available.

The impression I get from him is that he's a shameless hypocrite who wants to prevent young children from ever having children of their own while freely admitting he can't imagine life without his own children.

The impression I get from him is that he's an autogynephile whose wife predictably divorced him shortly after his "coming out", as she had no interest in playing along with his delusions/roleplay/whatever.

...whose wife predictably divorced [her] shortly after [her] "coming out", as she had no interest in playing along....

Or she is very much not a lesbian....

Lesbians aren't sexually or romantically interested in male people, regardless of how they "identify".

Funny how so recently you were speaking so dismissively of the "cotton ceiling" people and how they don't represent all trans people/all trans activists. Now you've just outed yourself as one of them.

In the specific case of Mrs Levine, the possibility to which I was alluding was that, not being a lesbian (or bisexual, which I probably should have included), she is only interested in a male partner, and defines that not to include transwomen.

In the general case, some lesbians, and some straight men, are attracted to natal-anatomy!women, some to current-anatomy!women, some to appearance/'presentation'!women, and some to identity!women; mutatis mutandis for gay men and straight women and various definitions of men.

The 'cotton-ceilingers' are objecting not to the non-existence of the latter categories but to the existence of the former, and my response to them is the same as to those who object to the existence of people who don't pursue intimate relationships across racial boundaries.

my response to them

Your response to whom?

my response to them is the same

... which is?

Your response to whom?

Someone who objects to someone else being willing to date a cis-woman but not a trans-woman.

This is isomorphic to someone objecting to someone else being willing to date a white person but not a black person; both 'a lesbian (or a straight man) not being intimate with trans-women (or a gay man or straight woman not being intimate with trans men)' and 'a white person not dating black people' are personal decisions, and neither, in itself, is an act of wrongdoing.

Thus, my response to both "Lesbian!Alice won't date trans women" and "White!Bob won't date Black women" is the Minnesota Golden Rule.

That's substance, though, not just aesthetics.

Well, I think the third point is aesthetics, but I see your point.

Yeah, that's not an appropriate aesthetic for a man in a position of power.

Is it appropriate for a woman in power?

Yeah, but how is that relevant to what we're discussing?

Because that just brings us back to the question of whether the Admiral is a man or a woman, and whether it is appropriate to consider the biological factors correlated with that question.

If he chose to come to work in blackface, would I have to answer the question of whether he's black or white, and whether it is appropriate to consider biological factors correlated with that question?

Very funny to see people trying to normalize Trump's behavior by comparing him to Dubya, or doing the usual "but the libs", or "TDS". We're not in Kansas any more, this isn't about stutters or being uncouth, Dubya had nothing on this guy, irrespective of bad faith criticism and outright slander by his opponents. Trump 2.0 is a sui generis in American history, whether in his ineptitude, corruption, or malice (or, yes, aesthetics). And the only TDS I see at this point is unquestioning, defensive loyalty to Trump that has become completely untethered from his faithfulness to any policy line – except, perhaps, owning said libs, making them seethe. But perhaps that's all there was to it from the start? Conservatives felt bullied, mocked. Conservatives were fed Romney-style polite retreat or, if they grew intellectually curious, Moldbuggian defeatism about Cthulhu swimming left inexorably, like a law of nature, about the Elite Human Capital destined to convert their kids into hating their bloodline. Conservatives wanted to know how it feels to be on the other side of the boot – just once. And so long as Trump grants them this wish, so long as the moment of ecstasy continues uninterrupted, he can do no wrong.
This is pretty much how Palestinians saw Oct 7. When you're convinced, rightly or wrongly, that you're a desperate underdog, no manner of retaliation feels unjust or unwise – punching up, as libs like to put it. Of course, Israeli politics are the same, perfected, elevated to the core of religious doctrine – eternal righteous lashing-out of a cornered rat, since the Holocaust, since Titus, since the Pharaoh. Iranians are lashing out against the Satan Duo and the entire global economy now. Russians imagined themselves boxed in by NATO, post-colonial third worldists chafe under the White Man's revealed superiority and asserted colonial sins, the Chinese are fantasizing about revenge for the Century of Humiliation… Perhaps the root of evil is plebeian resentment as such. Elites that can feel it themselves are an unacceptable hazard, and political systems that reward fanning and exploiting this loser sentiment are powder kegs. What can stop this? Fukuyamists hoped it'll be the sheer sedating comfort of the unfathomably rich liberal democratic order. Didn't work. Christianity offered some lofty words about forgiveness, but Christianity is now a garish Easter Bunny mascot that ushers in gleeful war crimes on Passover. Praise be to Allah, I guess.

A couple of months ago I argued here that the reevaluation and demythologization of Reagan's legacy is something the Republicans have not yet faced up to. Assuming this will ever be done at some point, I think the same assessment of Dubya will also need to happen.

Trump 2.0 is a sui generis in American history, whether in his ineptitude, corruption, or malice (or, yes, aesthetics).

Hah, no. This is what historical, actual American democracy looks like. The post-FDR bureaucratic-imperial interlude was just a momentary blip.

I don’t think it’s untethered. It’s more complicated because the big reason that no conservative wants to criticize Trump is sort of that the Libs have been screeching about Trump hating democratic values since … he first ran for office. They’ve done everything they can think of to call the man evil and stupid at the same time. And the feeling seems less that “MAGA Republicans are in a cult” and more “Why should they do the enemies’s work for him?” Jews feel the same about criticizing Israel. They know the rest of the world doesn’t like them much and wishes that state would just go away, so they know any negative statements made will be used to paint Israel and by extension Jews as evil and manipulative and secretly running the world etc. so why should a Jew feed antisemitism? No people want to make their tribe an easy target.

the only TDS I see at this point is unquestioning, defensive loyalty to Trump that has become completely untethered from his faithfulness to any policy line – except, perhaps, owning said libs, making them seethe.

This really feels like it. There were some people who were genuinely interested in MAGA from a policy perspective, but they've been slowly boiled away by Trump's capriciousness, while others may have started out with principles only to slowly jettison them over time while still remaining on board Trump's coalition out of either misplaced loyalty or revealed preferences. Now it really is just 90% Catturd-esque "he makes my outgroup seethe and I LOVE it!!!" like you say with a small thin slice of policies here and there that he still holds to. He still has immigration somewhat, but it's in a "he's better than Democrats" sense rather than "he's actually doing the policies I want" sense.

But the really blackpilling fact is that despite all this, Trump's coalition remains sizeable. Nearly half of Americans are fine with Trump's foolishness, and while Dems can't get away with quite as much as Trump they have their own sizeable base of ultra-loyal followers.

The persistant MAGA followers that I know personally think that the U.S./Global Elite are so far past the point of redemption (see: elite Satantic pedophile cults) that they theoretically welcome the Trumpian apocalypse while also failing to comprehend how terrible it could get. I suppose most airmchair revolutionaries suffer the common delusion that they will somehow emerge unscathed, or assume that they will be painlessly transported to their righteous place in heaven if things go shitward. So, yes, they love to see the liberals seethe and that feeds them, but they also feel like nothing is worth saving so why not back the bull in the china shop?

We're not in Kansas any more, this isn't about stutters or being uncouth

Yeah, that's the kind of thing people said when Dubya was compared to his father, whether it be the vomiting incident or the broccoli one. Yes, each Republican will be worse than the last, I understand.

Trump 2.0 is a sui generis in American history, whether in his ineptitude, corruption, or malice (or, yes, aesthetics).

He's not inept at all, but if he were, there's always Herbert Hoover to compare. Corrupt? Warren G. Harding, Nixon, Clinton. Malice? Gonna have to go with Obama and Biden for domestic malice, and FDR for foreign.

And until MAGA people start raping (eww) and killing the libs, I believe Palestinian comparisons are extreme hyperbole.

Yeah, that's the kind of thing people said when Dubya was compared to his father, whether it be the vomiting incident or the broccoli one. Yes, each Republican will be worse than the last, I understand.

Just so I understand, too:

While attending a banquet hosted by Japanese prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa on January 8, 1992, U.S. president George H. W. Bush fainted after vomiting onto Miyazawa's lap at around 20:20 JST. The incident took place at the Naikaku Sōri Daijin Kōtei in Tokyo, the Prime Minister's personal residential quarters. Doctors later attributed the incident to a case of acute gastroenteritis.

"During his tenure as the 41st president of the United States, George H. W. Bush frequently mentioned his distaste for broccoli, famously saying: "I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid. And my mother made me eat it."

And now:

Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP […] A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. I don’t want that to happen, but it probably will.

Is that it? Is your reaction to a claim that the latter is qualitatively worse than the former just an eyeroll about those pearl-clutching libs with TDS who nitpick at gaffes and bully awkward Republican presidents?

Have you considered that it is in fact possible for your side to be getting considerably worse over time, or rather, that specifically Trump is worse than Dubya?

Do you have any absolute frame of reference, or is it just anchored to the current intensity of lib chatter?

It seems to be common knowledge that the Left had in some ways gotten worse over time. Do you say it's a priori implausible the same has happened on your team?

Trump is uncouth. He's more uncouth than any president since Lyndon Baines Johnson. But that is all that it is.

What future observations would change your mind?

It was a different time, with fewer cameras around, but to quote Robert Caro's Master of the Senate:

Even at college, where sexual boastfulness is a staple of campus existence, Lyndon Johnson's boastfulness -- and exhibitionism about his sexual prowess -- had been striking to his fellows. Exhibiting his penis to his roommates, Johnson called it "Jumbo"; returning to his room after a date, he would say "Jumbo had a real workout tonight" ... If he was urinating in a bathroom of the House Office Building and a colleague came in, Johnson, finishing, would sometimes turn to him with his penis in his hand. Without putting it back in his pants, he would begin a conversation, still holding it, "and shaking it, as if he was showing off," said one man with whom he did this. He asked another man, "Have you ever seen anything as big as this?"

There are some further LBJ anecdotes in that book and others. IMO that's at least a bit more uncouth than Trump's behavior in public office. But only a bit.

I don't doubt that Trump is uncouth, nor do I have strong opinions about whether Trump is the most uncouth president. The thing I doubt is that being uncouth is all that's going on with Trump.

No, if you want to change my mind it's your job to convince me, not my job to hand you levers with which do to so.

Ideally, I don't do anything to convince you. Ideally, you will have a mental model of what the actual physical world will look like, and then you will notice what that model predicts about the physical world, and then you will look at the world and at those predictions and see whether they align with each other. The world in which Trump is crashing out and likely to lash out in counterproductive ways looks different from the one in which he's playing six dimensional chess. I am asking you to determine, in advance, what you think each one looks like. What will Trump definitely not do?

You don't even have to write it down. But if you find yourself resistant to making those advance predictions, even in the privacy of your own head, I think you should interrogate that resistance.

Ideally, perhaps. But in practice if I give out a lever -- for example, suppose I say I'd change my mind if Trump used nuclear weapons -- that lever will be used to abuse me. For what should be a silly example but is actually similar a discussion I've been part of, someone will say I SHOULD change my mind or be foresworn because depleted uranium penetrators were used.

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Trump 2.0 is a sui generis in American history, whether in his ineptitude, corruption, or malice (or, yes, aesthetics).

I mean, there are definitely comparisons you can make to past historical eras. Andrew Jackson's presidency has a lot of Trump parallels: non-politician elected to the presidency, political scandals that became loyalty tests for supporters, non-normative uses of presidential powers, firing large amounts of federal employees and putting in their own guys instead, disagreement with the central bank of the US, etc., etc.

And surely some of the presidents we had at the height of the machine politics era of US history were at least as corrupt as Trump is? Perhaps they had more decorum about it, but corruption is corruption.

If you have to go all the way to Jackson…

But America was a bit player back then. I am not sure even Jackson would have been such a jackass in charge of the global hegemon.

Does the ‘flavor’ of jackass really matter in this sense?

I think Trump has been uniquely bad in terms of foreign policy by a pretty massive degree, and this is absolutely the worst time for the US to have bad foreign policy. And it's not even that he's got a strategy that he's competently carrying out but it's a bad policy, it's that he seems to not have a policy and yet is doing so many erratic things that damage US foreign relations that he might as well be taking a wrecking ball to the country. Jackson was pretty bad on domestic policy, but Trump is worse on foreign policy. At least Jackson actually had a military record behind him.

Maybe Duublya had a stutter, you can get an aphorism wrong and it's fine. It's ok. That being the case, if any politician in the future sits down and types out something as fucking sauceless and cringe and gross as "Tuesday will be Power Plant Day, and Bridge Day, all wrapped up in one, in Iran. There will be nothing like it!!! Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell - JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah. President DONALD J. TRUMP" and thinks "This is great, fucking SEND IT"; they should probably go back to screaming at the cocain ghosts in an alleyway stop blighting our eyes with their garbage.

Yes, and people had the same "ew low social status!" intuition when Dubya pronounced it "noo-KYOO-lahr" instead of "NOO-clee-uhr," talked in a texas twang, dared to have big funny poke-out ears, and gave people nicknames like "Turd Blossom". You're just finding the most recent instantiation of it, and it will forever be a dysphemism treadmill where the current departure from the zeitgeist is the WORST THING EVER while the previous instances are actually not so bad in retrospect (because no longer the focus of the social eye of sauron), or even maybe garner a "strange new respect." It's all so tiresome.

It seems that the aesthetics someone chooses to project and their aesthetic sense (taste? values?) are better predictors of what they will do and who they really are than anything else.

Ah yes, that's why Lucky Strike cigarettes are just empirically better than Virginia Slims. Don't you know, they choose to project the most modern and sleek aesthetics, and, haven't you heard, They're Toasted!

You say that, but if people had payed attention to their low social status intuition during the election, we would be in a much better timeline. We wouldn't have had a country fried moron declaring "MIssion Accomplished" Before immediately spending an ocean of money and and blood to accomplish nothing and then deregulating so hard that the invisible hand shit itself and died in 2008.

Maybe Gore would have fucked up, maybe not; but bush did! He fucked up at every turn! The only reasons the devil didn't pull him straight to hell loony toons style was PEPFAR balancing his karma so hard!

You are bringing up a case where the elitists were correct!

The alternative to the actual blunders of history isn't necessarily "everything working out perfectly"; it's likely "things still go completely pearshaped, but in different ways or to different degrees." In particular, if you looked at the candidates' foreign policy proposals in 2000 without foreknowledge, you wouldn't have assumed that Bush would be the one to go hog wild with occupying Iraq and Afghanistan for a generation. Gore, and the Clinton administration of which he was fundamentally a continuation, were the ones who got us involved in Kosovo, and had a foreign policy team full of "R-2-P" Liberal Interventionist types like Samantha Power.

And worse, Gore was (and remains) a climate lunatic. I'm still waiting for the Arctic ice-free summers Gore predicted would likely happen 15 years ago. Insofar as anything has been propping up the U.S. economy recently, it's been the US energy renaissance driven by shale oil and natural gas. With Gore as president, that likely never happens and indeed the U.S. might have gone the same route as the Germans recently and completely slit our own throats in a wild chase after renewables which, whatever you may think of them in the abstract, have not proved to be the panacea they were alleged to be.

also probably for purely aesthetic reasons

Aesthetics are a terrible way to judge a candidate.

It's true that Trump is behaving in a stupid and reckless way and this is causing considerable damage to America. Honest, capable, sober people can also cause considerable damage to America, perhaps even more damage. Even Mamdani can do a lot of damage to America. They just have bad values and so all their good qualities are worthless or even negative.

Would you prefer pointless wars for Israel but with a nicer facade? That's a Rubio presidency for you.

What about a serious, sober, effective campaign to wreck the criminal justice system, have DAs and prosecutors just put offenders out onto the streets to victimize normal people? That's boring, 'sensible' politics, that's what Soros has been doing, what Mamdani would probably do.

Consider Judge Russell Clark. In 1985 he decreed that since bussing (another sensible but torturous and massively harmful social experiment with predictably bad results) couldn't be mandated to desegregate Kansas inner-city schools, he would make city schools so attractive that white kids would voluntarily come back. He told the schools to buy everything they wanted without regard for cost. So they lowered student per teacher ratio, they built robotics clubs, swimming pools with underwater viewing rooms, a model UN with simultaneous translation capacity. Naturally this was paid for by doubling property taxes in the district. Somehow a judge had power to do that in the retarded American system where anything must be done to prevent segregation.

The results: an ocean of corruption, ballooning of administrative workers, administrative dysfunction, test scores no higher, somehow the inner city schools got even blacker than before. Dismal failure in all respects at the price of a few billion dollars.

I bet this judge is very sensible, very normal, a fine dinner guest. He's also a massive wrecker of society, squandering billions of dollars pointlessly. There are many similar stories in the US and around the world.

Just because something looks lawful and officially correct, it doesn't mean it's good. Trump can definitely be bad! But you should not assume that people who appear good actually are good.

Consider Europe. Run by very boring, sensible moderates. Run into the ground, fallen well behind the US, despite all the dumb wars and Trump and assorted incompetence. Real wreckers wear pantsuits.

Part of the job of being a civic leader is instilling/perpatuating/reinforcing faith in the civic model, because without civics we have tribalism. Our leaders should not only promote positive policies, but they should create a sense of faith in the system and appear level-headed while doing difficult things.

Even if Trump doesn't trigger some kind of global apocalypse, his corrosive approach to his civic responsibilities is, IMO, absolutely cancerous and likely to poison our system for a generation or more.

As a conservo-libertarian, I assume that any politician is going to be somewhat corrupt given the size of our current government. While we shouldn't accept corruption, it is far better to have Dick Cheney-like corruption -- quiet, background corruption by adults who are otherwise concerned with oiling an effective civic machine -- than the loud, fuck you, baby-ish corrution of Trump, who clearly cares about nothing and no one other than what serves him in the moment.

I disagree, I think the big problem with the Trump administration is not the corruption but the policies. The US is a pretty rich country, there's lots of room for corruption, sophisticated or babyish. California corruption makes Trump look like a mewling infant dipping a single toe in the water. In fact I think Trump's deregulatory stances probably will do much more to help the US economy than his corruption will harm it.

Going on about anexxing Greenland, trade war with the world, war with Iran. That's where the problems arise.

And all of those things are driven by Trump or his advisor's ideological stances, not their greed. Trump wanting a legacy as a man who expanded the US territorially, Lutnick's/Trump's skepticism of trade and the Israeli/neocon faction yammering about regime change in Iran - that's where the problems emerge. Sure there's insider trading and these policies are pursued in a corrupt way. But corruption is not even 0.1% of the damage. The policies are the damage.

If Trump truly cared about nothing besides what served him in the moment he'd be 10 times the president he is now.

I see acceptable aesthetics as a necessary but not sufficient criterion.

Suppose you are interviewing for a job, and I come in in clothes which I have been wearing for a week which have tomato sauce on them. For most positions, this would instantly disqualify me, and rightly so.

If instead I come in dressed acceptably that does not mean I am actually qualified to do the job, and it would be very foolish to simply hire the best-dressed person (unless you are hiring a fashion designer, perhaps).

Trump tweets like a deranged lunatic. Of course someone who instead wrote masterful sonnets could have policies which were just as bad, but this does not mean that we should just ignore that fact.

Suppose you are interviewing for a job, and I come in in clothes which I have been wearing for a week which have tomato sauce on them. For most positions, this would instantly disqualify me, and rightly so.

If I'm hiring someone to reverse engineer the firmware of a competitor's product, I'm hiring whoever is the most competent for the job, even if it means hiring the sexually deranged catboy wearing programming socks. And for something like reverse engineering firmware, I'd venture a guess that somewhere in the range of 50 to 75 percent of the qualified candidates are catboys (or aesthetically similar).

The same goes for fixing the rot in Western Civilization. The overwhelming majority of candidates capable of fixing it are going to share a lot of Trump's bull in a china shop aesthetics, it's just kind of the nature of the sorts of people capable of what is needed. Sure, some candidate with will and ability to get things done and with the aesthetics of JFK might exist out there, but I'm not going to vote for Democrats that will keep deepening the rot in the meantime while I wait.

If I'm hiring someone to reverse engineer the firmware of a competitor's product, I'm hiring whoever is the most competent for the job, even if it means hiring the sexually deranged catboy wearing programming socks. And for something like reverse engineering firmware, I'd venture a guess that somewhere in the range of 50 to 75 percent of the qualified candidates are catboys (or aesthetically similar).

The same goes for fixing the rot in Western Civilization.

Sure, when you're hiring a guy who will never leave his basement or some other coding lair, you'd hire whoever. But when you hire the face of the PR juggernaut to promote your new rip-off of your competitor's product, you're more likely to hire someone based on their aesthetic appeal to your target market. This isn't likely to be a deranged catboy.

I come in in clothes which I have been wearing for a week which have tomato sauce on them

the sexually deranged catboy wearing programming socks

One of these things is not like the other....

And for something like reverse engineering firmware, I'd venture a guess that somewhere in the range of 50 to 75 percent of the qualified candidates are catboys (or aesthetically similar).

Doubt it; I've known quite a few people good at that kind of thing (including myself) and none of them have been catboys or anything similar. Even SREs, who seem to have more than their share, don't reach 50% catboy. Maybe if you include bronies, but you can't tell all of them by looking.

Honest, capable, sober people can also cause considerable damage to America, perhaps even more damage. [...] They just have bad values and so all their good qualities are worthless or even negative.

This is part of why Trumpism and similar movements elsewhere came about; the Very Serious People responded to the financial crises of 2008, and subsequent public ire, by putting a seemingly-respectable façade on an ideology that effectively amounted to 'compassion and equality for groups that can be proportionally represented in the C-suites; ruthless social Darwinism for individuals, especially those who are not Members Of An Oppressed Group'.

Re Judge Clark, I'm going to invoke Chesterton's Fence on the American taboo against segregation.

After the end of Reconstruction, many Southern plantationists resented that they could no longer coerce unpaid labour from Black people at whip-point without a fig-leaf of a criminal conviction. Having racially-separated schools allowed them to subject black people to worse conditions than their white counterparts, and 'separate but equal' rarely if ever stayed equal for long. (There was one school district, I think in Texas, that gave the schools in Black areas names at the end of the alphabet, and then implemented improvements such as air-conditioning in alphabetical order!)

That does not mean that any particular method of desegregation is necessarily advisable, and I would be interested to hear any alternative you might have in mind.

Regarding desegregation, I'm really more thinking of all these books like 'White Girl Bleed a Lot' or 'Race War in High School' where the black kids go around beating and viciously bullying the white kids, setting teachers on fire. The knockout game where blacks randomly sucker-punch other races. Blacks stabbing white girls (recall Iryna), or shoving them onto train lines as in NY.

It strikes me as unfathomably unjust that the US system bends over backwards for even the biggest lowlifes if they're black. They give this hoodlum an extremely valuable heart transplant, (he was coming to hospital with an ankle monitor on!) they gave him a second life and he still managed to get himself killed by the age of 18.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/crime-courts/anthony-stokes-teen-who-got-heart-transplant-dies-car-chase-n334001

They gave Kansas city an enormous amount of money for the sake of trying to get blacks and whites to be together harmoniously and it failed. How many lifetimes does a couple billion dollars represent, how many millions of hours of labour does that represent?

And yet the narrative is clearly that whites are in the wrong here, it's projected so loudly that it's international. It was compulsory for me in Australia to be taught about Rosa Parks not wanting to sit on the back of the bus despite it being on the other side of the world.

Well here are some of the things I read, letters that Flaherty publishes in his books:

I am a white teacher working in an almost exclusively black middle school. In May of 2012, I left my classroom in an ambulance after two fighting students ran around the room at full speed and plowed into me, knocking me to the ground.

I sustained permanent back injuries and had a knee operation.  This year, instead of remedial reading classes (I am a reading teacher), I was assigned full classes. From mid-September, I have been subjected to almost daily race baiting, racial and sexual taunts, threats, and attacks.

Students chase me and each other around the room with table legs, threaten to kill my “three ugly little niggers”, follow me to my car in groups shouting racial epithets and “get in a white school, bitch”.  Requests to sit in a seat are met with, “Oh, it’s cause I’m black” or “Why you hate black people?”  I often hear, “Imma gonna slap this white bitch”, etc.

On Oct 30, a 7th grade girl with a history of incidents against me had just returned from suspension (she had sprayed me in the face with perfume after telling me that I “smell like old white pussy”) and got angry when I changed her seat.

She said, “Oh, this damn bitch is all up in my face startin’ her shit. Imma gonna kick her fuckin’ white ass”. She then got up and gave a long racially charged diatribe about how she “can do whatever I want to the white bitch and the school can’t do nothin’. It’s just a damn school and I’m about to kick this bitch’s white ass ‘cuz I am DONE with the damn bitch”.

She ended her rant by shoving past me and shoving me to the floor.

Incidents such as these are written off as “poor instruction” or “poor planning”. When I discussed this situation with my (Black) principal, she said, “I doubt they even know you are white.” She also said, “I have to wonder if you are able to really to engage the young people – do they LIKE the work you give?”

I know other teachers who are in similar situations who are also fed up.

There's quite clearly bad blood between blacks and whites in the US and I think they should be kept well away from eachother. Ironically enough I say that segregation was the Chesterton's fence that was broken. And then all these people get stabbed and killed and raped and beaten up, get gaslighted about their racism and have to pay all this money to government programs that fight racism.

Interesting set of anecdotes. If you are not in favour of desegregation, what alternative would you propose for ensuring that the Black schools are not systematically neglected as they were prior to Brown?

Ironically enough I say that segregation was the Chesterton's fence that was broken.

But in that case, the people tearing down the fence do know why it was put up; that's why they want to tear it down!

Why would it matter if black schools were neglected, what's the worst that could happen? Are blacks going to complain more about racism? They already do that a lot.

Is all this top black engineering and technical talent going to be lost? That would be surprising. I don't recall seeing many black names writing AI papers or earning STEM Nobels.

That's exactly what I brought up originally, spending all this money making the most amazingly well-equipped inner-city black schools in Kansas didn't help raise test scores or promote racial harmony. So why bother?

So why bother?

Because it's the right thing to do.

Because while some Black people will grow up to be criminals even with well-run schools, and some Black people will educate themselves even if they attend poorly-run schools, there are almost certainly a large number who could go either way.

Because if Black people are systematically denied the tools necessary to support themselves, and they thus turn to crime, the Blue Tribe will be more sympathetic to their sob stories and be that much harder to convince that anything ought to be done about crime committed by Black people.

Because somewhere in the U. S., there are future versions of Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson, and they deserve a proper education just as much as white children do.

Because a society which stomps on its ethnic minorities risks seeing karma hand it its own arse.

Because if Black people are systematically denied the tools necessary to support themselves, and they thus turn to crime

What tools are these, exactly? Are you saying they turn to crime because their 1950s schools didn't get aircon quickly enough? Or that the student-teacher ratio isn't good enough? If you're upset about my use of anecdote earlier, why not use some statistics? We could compare the crime rates of blacks in the top 10% of income to whites in the bottom 10%, see if the 'tools necessary to support themselves' argument holds up.

In fact, blacks get worshipped in the US, they're treated like gods. Mere mortals aren't allowed to say their magic words, only they can call eachother 'niggers'. The press invent new rules for capitalizing black while refusing the same for whites.

The media goes out of their way to decry anything bad that happens to them. There are movies and laws and constant updates on the Emmett Hill case. And likewise, extraordinary effort goes into valorizing anything they do well, well beyond the point of historical distortion. Some blacks in menial roles in the Apollo program are not a big deal. It was German rocket scientists and white men making electronics or rocket boosters that were the overwhelming contributors to the moon landing. I can only imagine the comical scenes of these writers looking for some black women to valorize, going through the records: 'Werner von Braun, director of the space centre, no (far too white and Nazi), Arthur Rudolph who oversaw the rocket development process, no (another Nazi), George Mueller who managed the development process and introduced all-up testing, well he is at least not a German but he's still white... Dr Jack Crenshaw, hmm well he actually did what we want to ascribe to black women regarding circumlunar trajectories with a computer and not a slide-rule - still too white and male, OK let's pretend that some black women who just worked in double-checking actually were important figures"

Some white kid gets executed by a black and odds are nobody ever hears about it. Blacks do something bad and they're 'teens', 'youths', 'crazed maniacs' or just forgotten by history. Blacks get given cushy DEI jobs and can scarcely be fired without legally ruinous accusations of discrimination. There are constant inquisitions into industries that don't have enough blacks.

They get perhaps the cushiest treatment of any minority group in history despite their terrible behaviour and incompetence. They're not getting stomped on at all. 'Not getting white people's money to support their school districts' is not the same as being stomped on. Certainly not when spending more money fails to have any noticeable effect.

That does not mean that any particular method of desegregation is necessarily advisable, and I would be interested to hear any alternative you might have in mind.

Literally anything but that one. Strictly speaking thé schools weren’t even segregated, thé neighborhoods were(and there was no way to fix that easily).

I wonder where the lib outcry about separation of powers was for that particular judge- like there was almost certainly a statutory mechanism for setting school budgets and taxes that he trampled all over.

Strictly speaking the schools weren’t even segregated, the neighborhoods were(and there was no way to fix that easily).

Gerrymander the school districts?

That was functionally what bussing was, and it was not only incredibly unpopular, it also didn't work.

I bet this judge is very sensible, very normal, a fine dinner guest. He's also a massive wrecker of society, squandering billions of dollars pointlessly. There are many similar stories in the US and around the world.

I'm reminded of a few lines from Boswell's Life of Johnson, emphasis mine because it's a fantastic line:

The genteelest characters are often the most immoral. Does not Lord Chesterfield give precepts for uniting wickedness and the graces? A man, indeed, is not genteel when he gets drunk; but most vices may be committed very genteelly: a man may debauch his friend's wife genteely: he may cheat at cards genteelly. [...] it may not be like a gentleman, but it may be genteel.

One means exteriour grace; the other honour. It is certain that a man may be very immoral with exteriour grace. Lovelace, in Clarissa, is a very genteel and a very wicked character. Tom Hervey, who died t'other day, though a vicious man, was one of the genteelest men that ever lived.

I always preferred Saint Augustine's rendition in City of God, "A man serves as many masters as he has vices,” if Dogmatic Theology is your thing. Or if you prefer Nihilism, there's always Tyler Durden, "The things you own, end up owning you." Or the Bodhidharma if Zen Buddhism is your thing, “All phenomenon are empty. They contain nothing worth valuing.” Or Charles Bukowski if Amerian literature is your thing, “Find what you love and let it kill you.” These are all logically identical statements when you run the full gamut of logical consequences under them.

Just so we're clear on the timeline here:

Saturday March 21, 2026, 7:44 PM (ultamatum expiring 7:44 PM Monday March 23, 2026) -

If Iran doesn’t FULLY OPEN, WITHOUT THREAT, the Strait of Hormuz, within 48 HOURS from this exact point in time, the United States of America will hit and obliterate their various POWER PLANTS, STARTING WITH THE BIGGEST ONE FIRST! Thank you for your attention to this matter. President DONALD J. TRUMP

Monday March 23, 2026, 7:23 AM (ultamatum exteded to Saturday March 28) -

I AM PLEASED TO REPORT THAT THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AND THE COUNTRY OF IRAN, HAVE HAD, OVER THE LAST TWO DAYS, VERY GOOD AND PRODUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS REGARDING A COMPLETE AND TOTAL RESOLUTION OF OUR HOSTILITIES IN THE MIDDLE EAST. BASED ON THE TENOR AND TONE OF THESE IN DEPTH, DETAILED, AND CONSTRUCTIVE CONVERSATIONS, WHICH WILL CONTINUE THROUGHOUT THE WEEK, I HAVE INSTRUCTED THE DEPARTMENT OF WAR TO POSTPONE ANY AND ALL MILITARY STRIKES AGAINST IRANIAN POWER PLANTS AND ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE FOR A FIVE DAY PERIOD, SUBJECT TO THE SUCCESS OF THE ONGOING MEETINGS AND DISCUSSIONS. THANK YOU FOR YOUR ATTENTION TO THIS MATTER! PRESIDENT DONALD J. TRUMP

Thursday March 26, 2026, 4:11 PM (ultamatum extended to Monday April 6, 8:00 PM)

As per Iranian Government request, please let this statement serve to represent that I am pausing the period of Energy Plant destruction by 10 Days to Monday, April 6, 2026, at 8 P.M., Eastern Time. Talks are ongoing and, despite erroneous statements to the contrary by the Fake News Media, and others, they are going very well. Thank you for your attention to this matter! President DONALD J. TRUMP

Sunday April 5, 2026, 12:38 PM (Ultamatum extended to Tuesday April 7, 8:00 PM)

Tuesday, 8:00 P.M. Eastern Time!

The other bit of context is that Iran has denied being in negotiations with the US wrt the tweet from the 23.

This does not mean that there were no negotiations (they lie just as much as Trump does), but seems to rule out negotiations which were going great.

Empirically, polities are willing to publicly state that they are in negotiations with an adversary long before they reach terms. Ukraine and Russia had negotiations. Israel and Hamas had negotiations.

If you can't even admit that you are negotiating, the chances that you are able to sell your country on a peace deal are basically nil.

All this to say: I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on, and say that we can allow some grace

It's like coming full circle. The pre-politically interested child who makes superficial comments about a politician's appearance had it right all along. "He blinks too much!" or "he's fat like Santa" was all the political philosophy you need, turns out.

Let's hope he delivers on this. But I am doubtful. But yeah - he is going insane. Which is much more entertaining than Biden's senility.

If you spend a lot of time with men entering dementia, it's pretty clear they're two sides of the same coin. Some old men shuffle quietly around, mumble unclear platitudes, and try to be unobtrusive and confusing enough that no one can figure out that they have no idea what is going on. Others get angry, yell, insist that they know what is going on; this works as a coping mechanism because eventually the rest of the family or the people at the nursing home realize that there's no point arguing it'll just upset grandpa more so let's just agree and then we'll figure it out once he's out of earshot.

Both are extremely problematic behaviors in the white house.

I know we sniped back and forth on the topic of the war so I am trying to think of a way to broach this topic in a somewhat non-confrontational way and I'm struggling.

Thinking Trump is in any way immersed in dementia is just tremendously non-credible.

As contrast consider Biden - he was basically hidden from the American people with an aggressive support by all levels of institutions and the press corp to minimize his symptoms. His last primary care note was also extremely concerning. He also barely worked.

Trump has everyone breathing down his neck, is constantly making himself publicly available in a variety of ways, is working a tremendously grueling schedule, and has had leaks of him going about his social life in his usual way.

He may not be the man he was ten years ago, but he's working harder and functioning better than a lot of men half his age. The stress may or may not be getting to him, where it may or may not have been before, but he ain't demented.

The vast majority of 80 year olds suffer from significant memory impairment. This isn't ground breaking news.

Simple way to keep this polite:

If Trump, as Commander in Chief with apparently sole authority to start a war and draft the strategy thereof, starts a war of choice against Iran and Iran ends up controlling better than a tenth of world oil transit in the peace deal, can we consider that simple evidence of cognitive impairment?

Doing things you don't like isn't evidence of cognitive impairment.

Running an incredibly demanding schedule is evidence of no cognitive impairment.

Either way - age related decline in cognition is not dementia.

So we're in agreement that there's age related cognitive decline, but you're correcting my use of the technical medical term in a casual way?

And to be clear, how do we judge a President's mental abilities if not by their fruits?

Major neuro-cognitive disorders (of which "dementia" is an example) are true pathology. They are generally irreversible, progressive, and ultimately life limiting (if something else doesn't get there first).

When someone says "dementia" it evokes the imagery of a dying grandma who can't remember who her kids are, or as you note other ways in which most people have seen family in their life decline.

Trump has probably lost a step and experienced a decline from his functioning ten years ago in a very normal way. It may be tempting to label this as "fine it is an exaggeration" but these are severely different categories. Your uncle Phillip who used to be razor sharp and stumbles over his words sometimes is not the dying grandma.

This is especially important because of what happened with Biden, who by all accounts is actually for real demented and wasn't fit to hold the job, vs. someone who is fit to hold the job in the sense that some people are unhappy with what he is doing and other people are happy. The dementia accusations are a lying TDS slur.

You can hate Trump and his plans without biting on the misinformation and idiocy.

It's not obvious to me that this would be a worse outcome than them deploying nuclear ballistic missiles.

Which is much more entertaining than Biden's senility.

Say what you will about Trump, he is an S-tier showman

I rememeber when he was first running for office, the amount of analysis that the proper way to think of him was as a pro wrestling commentator.

Try watching Indian news coverage of the Iran-Israel war. I shit you not, when it first broke out, they were amping up the participants and playing this almost headbanger type music, you'd have thought it was a WWE event and the anchor was the announcer. First thing I did was scroll to the comment section and I was not disappointed.

Given that even the French Navy has been putting out MLG-360-noscope-style videos of drone tests and ship interdictions... which then get posted to Naval News and Maritime Executive, some of the drier news sites in existence... we certainly live in a unique era of history.

One possibility: Trump lost his edge after being banned from Twitter. He used to be legitimately great at writing funny tweets, even if you don't agree with him. But Twitter is an ecosystem, and a skill, TruthSocial just isn't the same (I don't think I've ever seen anyone share a post from there that wasn't Trump). He's basically just talking to himself there, so his Tweeting skills are getting rusty.

His live standup insult comedy act is still top form, though. Did you see his meeting with the Japanese PM and journalists? Hilarious. He told an extremely crass joke with no hesitation or shame, off the cuff, and made it work.

Yes, you do understand this goes both ways? You understand democrats come off as Halloween villains to much of the country?

Trump is an aesthetician. He governs on a platform of, essentially, ‘I’m the tsar and I’m gonna look like it’. Yeah, aesthetics. And he baits democrats into the vanguard party damn-fool aesthetics.

Yes, you do understand this goes both ways? You understand democrats come off as Halloween villains to much of the country?

I'd go with actual living demons over Halloween villains, but to each their own.

In light of the over the top evil of the opposition, I'm fine with my chosen champion acting like a Crusader King.

I don't think Trump acts remotely like a crusader king.

Granted, my model of an idealised crusader king is probably Louis IX of France, or the other obvious candidates are Richard I of England, Philip II of France, or Frederick Barbarossa. I do not imagine any of them acting like Trump. I'm curious where you see the similarity?

Unless your capitalisation is meant to imply that you think Trump acts like a Crusader Kings (the video game) character, in which case... um, sure, but those are video games that are substantially treachery-and-murder-and-adultery-and-corruption simulators, so, okay, that sure sounds like Trump, but that's not exactly a defence of him.

Frederick Barbarossa

Fought protracted wars against the towns of North Italy to keep them in quasi-vassalage, by the end of which he almost ruined them and himself and everyone was worse off. I kinda see parallels to the Trumpian tariffs, but it's admittedly vague.

>names four crusaders

>all their crusades were failures

>no Bohemond of Taranto

>no Baldwin of Edessa

>no Frederick II Stupor Mundi Hohenstaufen

You're not beating the beautiful loser allegations there, I'm afraid.

The criterion was 'Crusader Kings'.

Of your three, Bohemond was not a king of any sort, Baldwin became a king only after the crusade's success, and I think Frederick II is not particularly known for being a crusader. Frederick II's 'crusade' was mostly a diplomatic coup, and I think pretty far from most people's mental picture of a crusader.

I would comfortably assert that the most famous 'Crusader Kings', by which I mean kings (or European monarchs of similar standing) who set out on a crusade, i.e. a military expedition to secure the Holy Land, are Richard the Lionheart and St. Louis.

Nor was Godfrey of Bouillon, by that standard. In fact, none of the figures of the First Crusade, by far the most successful and glorious, count. Incidentally, good call to drop Philip II from your list - he was one of the all-time-great sneaky bastards of the Middle Ages, and left the Crusade partly so he could break his Crusader oath and attack Richard's territory before he returned. Also the most successful king of the three monarchs you mention, though St. Louis had a good run of it. Barbarossa, I'd say, is probably the most Trumpian - or, more accurately, closest to Trump's enemies' depiction of him as a would-be tyrant trampling over "norms" - of your list, and the only Crusade he actually made it to was the perfidious shambles of the Siege of Damascus.

At this point, I think we've left whatever WhiningCoil's point was far behind and are engaging in mutually sperging out over medieval history which, as much as I enjoy it, probably isn't particularly productive.

Well, no, that's why I didn't mention Godfrey originally.

I give Philip II pretty good marks as King of France, I think. I just don't think he's synonymous with crusading the same way that Richard is. He went on a crusade to the Holy Land when it was politically convenient, abandoned it opportunistically when it was advantageous to him, and also dragged his feet and avoided participating in the Albigensian Crusade. I consider him a successful king overall, probably more so than Richard, but certainly his commitment to crusading was, at best, tactical.

Though now I'm wondering who I would consider the most Trumpian figures of the Middle Ages... it's an interesting question. Richard II sprang to my mind, but I may just be unduly influenced by Shakespeare there, in the portrayal of an erratic, absolutist king who struggles against his own government and advisors.

The over the top Cruella de Ville laugh seems more like something from a commercial or B-movie than real witches, at least.

but the last Republican I could really get down with was Mccain, purely off of his aesthetics

The guy who chanted "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann"?

Buttigieg is a bloodless technocrat, and looks like it.

And allegedly purchased a child via surrogacy. Probably not the kind of aesthetics I'd support, but I suppose that's the problem with trying to judge someone by aesthetics. I don't care for Trump's, but I'd be hard pressed to name a politician from either party who has aesthetics that make me think I should support them.

Aesthetically, I like all the ex-soldier glass-cutting-jaw congressmen. Even better if they bear some physical wound from service. They fit my citizen-soldier, Cincinnatus vision of what a leader should look like. And by and large, that breed of politician kind of sucks. They've always kind of sucked. Largely (appropriately enough) because they tend to be overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of the actual nitty gritty of politics and governance.

If all we cared about was aesthetics, Dan Crenshaw would be president. Does anyone want that?

....have you read Starship Troopers by any chance?

I have not, but I'm familar with the basic ideas and story beats.

May be worth reading based off of the comment haha.

In the absence of artificial uteruses, how is a gay male couple supposed to have a biological kid for one of the fathers except throug surrogacy? I don't see what the aesthetic opposition could be here unless it is to such a degree that gay males are not able to "aesthetically" have biological children at all.

how is a gay male couple supposed to have a biological kid for one of the fathers except throug surrogacy?

I found the photo uncomfortable to view, it was much too like "new mom in hospital bed after birthing the baby" when it's two guys and someone else's babies, that someone else being written out of the fairytale completely:

Then, in early September, they shared a black-and-white photo of themselves smiling with their newborns.

"Their" newborns? Yes, well. The children are adopted and - is the term mixed-race or multiracial? They're black, anyway. Which is another entire kettle of fish with some controversy around transracial adoptions.

I don't see what the aesthetic opposition could be here

Tearing away a child from it's mother's arms is not aesthetically displeasing to you?

unless it is to such a degree that gay males are not able to "aesthetically" have biological children at all.

They can do it the same way everyone else does.

Since the mother has signed up to be paid for surrogacy, I am not particularly inclined to view the child as being torn away from the mother's possession. Possibly, I am not open enough to the infant's perspective that it is being torn away from its mother, but divorce, mothers dying, infant adoption, etc., seem to me like they are common enough that this is not a huge problem. I am open to the idea that allowing surrogacy should be completely illegal on the grounds that it is too much like selling organs, but a) this would also ban surrogacy for high-risk mothers and b) is better than organ sales in that faking the supply chain is totally impossible. If surrogacy exists at all, it seems like it has to be an option for gay males.

This... gets complicated.

The standard process, right now, is that the surrogate gives birth, the baby and mother are immediately separated, and the surrogate spends the next 24-72 hours recovering in a separate room. Sometimes surrogates are willing to work with the fathers for some time afterward, but for commercial surrogates that's usually a (possibly virtual) meetup a couple times a year at best, and among compassionate surrogates the optimistic case is more often 'stranger who did daddies a favor' than getting six weeks with the kid and two dads to help during recovery before becoming an aunt.

((And then there's the coercive power of large amounts of money, the often-invasive genetic screening, the difficult hormonal supplements and common-place use of a separate donor egg.))

It's at least imaginable that there could be better processes. If I were writing things a utopia, a world where surrogacy and donors are appreciated and common, where they can become pillars of the community as connection points across varied families, and where they're seeing their kids on a monthly or weekly basis during childhood, would all be nice. You don't have to be Ursula Le Guin or a pregnancy fetishist prefer the aesthetics of it. Very rarely, it does happen.

But it's not clear that it could scale. It's not a coup-positive solution, it's a 'rebuild human psychology' solution.

The insistence that the surrogate have little contact with the child after birth is sometimes about greedy parents wanting to maximize bonding, but it's also a clear defense mechanism that surrogates very much want. (This can go to extremes that are a little surprising to me; many surrogates apparently won't pump milk even for significant compensation, and it's pretty common for gay parents to want more contact between the kid and the mother.) Compassionate surrogates often find themselves having to make hard decisions when their career, or a father's career, moves five hundred miles away. People just change, and in a world where 50% of marriages end in divorce, it's hard to complain that surrogates and fathers don't want face legal issues nearly as complicated as a divorce just because they were too close to the mom.

It's not a fun problem!

Since the mother has signed up to be paid for surrogacy, I am not particularly inclined to view the child as being torn away from the mother's possession. Possibly, I am not open enough to the infant's perspective

Yeah, there's that, but also, it's rather naive to think that it's all fine because the mother signed on the dotted line, before a major transformative experience. And that's without looking into the gory details, like how a lot of them do it out of desperation, how the contracts penalize them for backing out, etc.

but divorce, mothers dying, infant adoption, etc., seem to me like they are common enough that this is not a huge problem

All of these things are massive tragedies, and we don't go out of our way to deliberately create them. Divorce, given it's scale, is a huge problem.

If surrogacy exists at all, it seems like it has to be an option for gay males.

Correct. Surrogacy should not exist at all, it is a moral horror. I don't understand how the thought that this is about gay men, enters into people's heads.

Although it is not my own, I find the position of no surrogacy for anyone perfectly coherent. Normally, I would just upvote and move on, but I find myself wondering how you feel about wet nurses. Breastfeeding is a fairly intimate bonding experience, so a wet nurse arguably also has a strong claim to motherhood, or at least it seems aesthetically displeasing on the same grounds as surrogacy.

Depends on the reasons for it. Sometimes a mother can't produce milk, so if it's either wet nursing or the baby starves, it seems fine. If it's because of some aristocratic lady's notions that breastfeeding is beneath her, someone should slap her around and tell her that maybe motherhood is beneath her (though the issue with that is she'd have your hands chopped off for it).

or at least it seems aesthetically displeasing on the same grounds as surrogacy.

Yeah, sounds about right, though it feels less severe to me, as it doesn't involve literally selling a child. From the child's perspective, it's pretty messed up, though.

it doesn't involve literally selling a child.

I think of surrogacy as probably involving the implantation of a fertilized egg that does not originate with the surrogate. This way, a mother without a functional womb would still get to pass on her genetic material, and it would also make it so that surrogate-purchasers would not be forced to use the surrogate's genetics, which is potentially very desirable for both sides of the transaction. The financial transaction here is selling the use of the womb, which seems sufficiently icky for someone to reasonably find it unacceptably unaesthetic, but it does not really seem like selling a child unless the birthmother's egg is being used.

Maybe a way to think about this is to ask if an eggless woman somehow steals a couple's last and only viable fertilized egg from a fertility clinic and implants herself, to whom should the child belong once birthed? My view is that the child clearly belongs to the woman who provided the egg.

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Gay men impregnating women is unironically very lindy.

Surely it hasn't been that long since "kids need a mother and a father" was a mainstream, common-sense point of view on the right?

Obviously the conservative position is that gay couples, whether male or female, cannot have children. It is physically impossible for such a couple to have biological children, obviously. One partner might be the biological parent, but there must necessarily be a mother or father who is being excluded somewhere, and this exclusion is firstly an injustice, and secondly itself a mere pretense, an attempt to ignore the biological fact of parentage while fantasising a similar role for the same-sex partner. And sociologically, sure, the same-sex couple can adopt a child, but it is normatively bad for a child to be raised by a same-sex couple. Children need both their parents, and if for some reason that is not possible (there are divorces, separations, maybe a biological parent dies, etc.), they still need parental figures of both sexes.

It's barely been a decade since Obergefell. Has everyone forgotten the gay marriage debate so quickly? Gay adoption? It is very common for conservatives to just bite the bullet here and say, "Gay couples can't have a biological child, and shouldn't parent children at all. That's the whole point."

Has everyone forgotten the gay marriage debate so quickly?

I mean, you'll find people forgetting that Western society literally went full Nazi 6 years ago and destroyed ~20% of planetary wealth (mostly through inflation) in an ill-fated attempt to cure a particularly nasty variant of the common cold.

So not only is 20 years ago ancient history, but the loudest contingent opposing it has shrunk by half due to a dynamic best described by actuarial tables. People who were 60 and driving the opposition to gayness in 2008 are 78 now, so half of them are dead and the other half have been brainrotted by social media, usually into TDS (these are the kinds of people you see at No Kings protests).

Children need both their parents

Yeah, that's not what the people who came of age during the '70s (and so are 65-70 right now) think (remember, divorce was [simplification] legalized at that time), which is why it's not a big deal for them to have family units with 2 'parents' of the same sex. Which is why once the last generation grew too old to combat it, that "need" was done away with.

conservatives

Conservatives have conserved nothing.

And progressives haven't progressed anything, what's your point? :P

More seriously, I think it depends on the time-scale you look at and who you think counts as a 'conservative', and I'm also inclined to think that it's unfair to judge a movement for not necessarily succeeding overall. Movements tend to name themselves for their goals - we understand that it's not really that fair to criticise American libertarians or communists for not having restored liberty or brought communism, because those are small parties. How small is 'conservatism' as a movement? Over the last decade or so there's been plenty of writing trying to distinguish 'conservatives' from 'the right', with the understanding that actual conservatives might be a significantly smaller tribe than was realised.

Anyway, if I look at the last two hundred years so, I think that conservatives, in a broad sense, have achieved plenty of things. Not everything they wanted, certainly, but I wouldn't say their efforts were wasted. Eugenics and communism stand out as probably the two biggest issues that conservatives were on the winning side of.

firstly an injustice, and secondly itself a mere pretense, an attempt to ignore the biological fact of parentage while fantasising a similar role for the same-sex partner

This would be a salient argument if the only children not raised by their biological parents were either orphans or adopted by gay people.

But reality is different. Gay marriage did not destroy marriage, instead marriage was destroyed long before that. People marry, have kids, then divorce. Or just get pregnant outside of committed relationships. Parents have their kids taken away because they are terrible parents.

Now, you could institute a regime where these cases were avoided. Perhaps you make abortion mandatory for any pregnancy where the parents are unable to prove that they will stay together with a probability higher than 0.95. Or you just extract gametes from everyone after puberty and then sterilize them, and rely on IVF for couples after they convince an expert panel that they will make great parents. Or you just make people require such an expert panel for marriage and make PIV sex outside marriage illegal.

So far, I have not seen any conservatives arguing for any of that. Your 'injustice' lives in every single parent family, and your 'pretense' in any patchwork family. In fact, the pro-lifers are actively creating more of that -- nobody believes that a crack addicted prostitute who got pregnant will become clean and form a happy fairy tale family with her former client just because you force here to have the child.

The imperfect is not the opposite of the good. It’s the imperfect of good. You do not choose evil (which children like Buttigieg is evil) because the world is imperfect.

And it’s the same thing with gay marriage. Because you can find bad marriages does not mean you just get rid of marriage which gay marriage essentially did. You work to improve marriage.

I feel like your arguments boil down to some people starve therefore all people should starve.

For what it's worth, I was describing a position, not advocating one myself.

Personally I agree entirely with the conclusion that marriage was destroyed or degraded long before this particular issue emerged. I am not therefore sympathetic to same-sex marriage, though I note in that linked post that it's probably 'good policy', but I do think that the argument about SSM specifically is missing the deeper point.

From the comments of "The Argument from Cultural Evolution":

People objected to no-fault divorce, and were dismissed as religious fundamentalists who wanted to chain people in loveless marriages. People objected to contraception, and were dismissed as sex-hating Puritans and papists who wanted to suppress healthy, loving sexuality. Slippery slopes were invoked in both cases, but no one paid attention.

It doesn’t matter which hill you choose to die on, you still get called a bigot, and you still die.

And from "Beware Systemic Change":

The strongest conservative case against gay marriage is that it reinforces a centuries-long redefinition of marriage from a strategic partnership focused on child-rearing to a ceremonial acknowledgment of romantic infatuation, potentially leading to a deep shift in the way people think about issues like who to marry, when to have kids, when to get divorced, and how to treat their family. That argument hasn’t been rigorously evaluated by statisticians and found wanting. It’s been found annoying and left untouched.

how is a gay male couple supposed to have a biological kid for one of the fathers except throug surrogacy?

They're not. That's what they sacrifice as gay men. It's a helluva dilemma to be put on the horns of, but that's the hand they've been dealt.

Gay couples having kids really is a bad thing. It’s obvious girls are just different. I see it every time my gf does little baby talk with her cat. Men just don’t have that silliness where they can actually have fun doing dumb kid stuff for hours every day. Mothers are different.

We actually did have a technology that let gay guys have kids. They just picked a wife and had sex. Then occasionally went out with the boys and did gay stuff. It worked fine for gay guys who wanted kids.

Instead modern society places sexual identity at the top of a hierarchy of needs. But not having a mother (by design) seems far worse to me than having to hide some sexual attraction.

Gay couples having kids really is a bad thing. It’s obvious girls are just different. I see it every time my gf does little baby talk with her cat. Men just don’t have that silliness where they can actually have fun doing dumb kid stuff for hours every day. Mothers are different.

You need to broaden your horizons.

Neither I nor Mrs. FiveHour have the baby talk skill. This is concerning for our offspring, but we'll figure it out.

Human experience is broader than you and your girlfriend.

That’s one example. Every girl in my family I can think of has that skill set. For the vast majority it’s instinctual. And for most men it’s not instinctual. My mom had the skill set. My father did not. My sisters have the skill set. My aunts have the skill set. I don’t know your gf or if you have kids but I would still with a great probability assume if you put her child in her hands the instincts come out.

What kind of heartless man wouldn’t want to spend as much time as possible doing “dumb kid stuff” with their own child? Or calls it “dumb kid stuff” in the first place?

I make no commendation of it, but it is very common to find paradigms of masculinity which hold that a man must be tough and serious at all times. Dealing with children is for women.

Having just spent the Easter weekend with my brother’s small kids, there was a lot of kid stuff but remarkably little of it was anything I’d call ”dumb”. Occasional silly (and TBH fun) stuff as you’d expect but mostly helping them get toys / puzzles, dressing for outdoors, pushing them in the swing and making sure they didn’t run into the water without rubber boots on.

5/5, will do again.

I see it every time my gf does little baby talk with her cat. Men just don’t have that silliness where they can actually have fun doing dumb kid stuff for hours every day.

Jfc your life must be boring.

  • -10

What value does this comment have? What's it's point other than to be randomly nasty, unprovoked? Don't do this.

It’s obvious girls are just different.

I broadly agree that men and women have different psychology around kids and nurturing, but has there been much research into ways gay men are psychologically more similar to women?

Like, aside from the obvious thing of being attracted to men, it seems like gay culture in several different times and places tends to adopt a lot of the trappings of the female gender role. Is this just because it is a slightly better way to seduce "straight guys", or does it reflect actual biological differences in gay men? Do gay men tend to have more thing-orientation, or person-orientation?

Is it possibly the case that gay men are better nurturers, on average, than straight men? (Though, if this turned out to be true, it would just shift to the idea that two lesbians raising kids would probably be a bad idea. Unless it is an averaging effect of some sort with other biological factors balancing out, then maybe the best nurturing parents might be: straight woman > lesbian woman ~= gay man > straight man.)

I guess there are tops and bottoms. Of my gay friends I would assume two are tops and the third not sure on. The tops definitely act more masculine and why I find it easier to be friends.

Bottoms probably are a little bit more of a nurturer personality but I would still doubt they come close to the average female nurturing personality trait.

I would be curious what % of gay men would find my comment offensive. It’s sort of taking away a right many think they should have today. But they also don’t find females attractive and I am confirming that men and women are different. And confirming their masculinity. You can be my bro and drink beers together but obviously because we are men neither of us should design a life to be primary care givers to a child.

From the gay (and bi) men I know there’s not really a strict separation between tops and bottoms, most are vers and many will change their preferences over time, and I’ve rarely met stereotypically feminine gay men the way I’ve met stereotypically masculine lesbians.

Maybe it’s because most of the fems end up as trans women these days, so the gay male population ends up consisting of guys who are at least mildly comfortable with their masculinity (even if it’s limited to working out and growing a beard).

I never knew it was any different. I was singing that song in my head a couple weeks ago.

In Pete’s case, the aesthetics has already gone south. Aretaics couldn’t be all that salvific if it produced the same mediocre outcomes. It’s the case with all moral systems. Moral systems fail as people ‘depart’ from their values unless the content itself is the object of your critique (e.g. Nietzsche).

The guy who chanted "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann"?

To be fair, just about everyone of a certain age has to be tempted to do that when the subject of Iran comes up. If the regime falls, the new regime would be well-advised to ask the country be called "Persia" again just to break that association.

It is a quintessentially tasteless tweet

  • Posting a message about your enemy living in hell on Easter, the joyful day celebrating Christ rescuing sinners living in hell

  • Posting it on TruthSocial, which I imagine is only populated by evangelicals who care a lot about the holiday

  • Threatening to destroy civilian infrastructure, which again, is on Easter morning, and presenting it in the language of an easter basket

  • Concluding with Praise be to Allah (???????)

  • Posting no other Easter message the rest of the day

  • Coming off as desperate, not at all in control

My running hypothesis is that the rescue operation went poorly and handicapped his judgment.

Isn’t the rescue operation being claimed as a victory? What's your theory?

The alternative theory is that the WSO was rescued at the same time as the pilot but his rescue is covered up to provide cover for an operation to liberate the uranium at Ispahan.

Trump fires generals opposed to obviously doomed plan. Special forces go in amd take over an airstrip bringing C130s to get the goods out. At some point the whole thing goes south and the plan is abandoned.

Trump tweets in anger at having lost one of the few cards that would let him exit claiming victory.

We're hearing increasingly unbelievable things coming out of the DoW about each Iranian operation. I can't say with any confidence which things are untrue, or what the truth is, but the credibility given to the official story is dropping rapidly.

Increasingly, I can't offer any alternative theory, because I don't know anything other than what is being said by two (or three) untrustworthy participants in the war. But it's like reading an /r/relationships post, at some point you decide the whole thing is bullshit.

I think we probably lost lives. There’s the video of a helicopter crashing down; it makes no sense that all the aircraft were somehow stuck in mud when there was no mud in the area; the propellers in one photo are bent as if they crashed while in use; Iranian news showed a skull in the wreckage. Downplaying fatalities is important here for morale reasons: because of the Easter holiday, because Trump fired all those generals who opposed his plans, because Trump-Hegseth have a particular eye for PR, and because Trump wants to make a ground invasion seem easy. We will see, eventually, but perhaps not for some years.

There’s the video of a helicopter crashing down

The only video I have seen shows a helicopter trailing smoke. Please link to a video of a helicopter crashing.

the propellers in one photo are bent as if they crashed while in use

My understanding is that the propellers in question are composite blades, which would have snapped in a crash. They melted due to fire.

Iranian news showed a skull in the wreckage

This was likely the wreckage of a car and Fars pulled the image and said they were going to investigate its authenticity.

The US government can certainly cover things up (although it's hard to cover up the deaths of servicemembers) but your post is not a good reason to believe they are doing so in this case.

It seems more parsimonious to assume the negotiations are going poorly. That also strikes me as more in-character for Trump (seems himself as a big negotiator, probably doesn't really care about the lost C-130s.)

But we did get a couple of birds stuck over there and had to blow them up, which I imagine being frustrated by in theory (particularly for the people who were really hoping we could avoid anything that remotely resembled Eagle Claw this time lol).

Worth noting that the failure of Operation Eagle Claw wasn't the lost equipment (losing the helicopters was already priced in), but the failure to rescue the hostages.

Here it appears at least possible that they contemplated the possibility that they'd have to ditch the planes.

Yeah I think this is a total, complete W for the US of A and probably demoralizing for the IRGC.

But I do find it kinda funny that we still had a C-130 snafu due to Iranian dirt.

The funnier part is the cope, either by the regime claiming they totally shot down those planes, no for reals, or by the shills claiming that this means that it was at best a pyhrric victory for the US, and wow look at all the equipment they lost what a bunch of losers losing two planes and a bunch of helicopters for one guy!

It's kind of funny, a few days ago @VoxelVexillologist made a comment about smug Europeans being a core part of JD Vance's origin story, and I replied to them via DM that if Scott Alexander hadn't purged the discussion threads from his blog when he felt the Eye of Sauron Upon Him, I was pretty sure I could've pointed to the specific discussion.

The discussion I had in mind was a review of "the Top Ten War Movies" that turned into a sub-discussion about the movie Blackhawk Down directed by Ridley Scott. The general consensus was that it was a bad movie that perpetuated "unrealistic expectations" and "anti-utilitarian ideals" by suggesting the US military was right to "waste" 94 lives trying rescue a handful of men. Our future VP came back with the argument that this alleged flaw was exactly why it should be regarded as peak cinema and one of the greatest war movies of all time, only for some of the regular Euros to shout him down and demand that Scott ban him.

I'm getting a similar vibe off of recent discussions about the F-15E Weapons Officer's rescue. The Fact that we we'll go to absurd and irrational lengths to retrieve our guys is being painted by some as a flaw when I (and others) see it as a virtue.

Going through great lengths to rescue soldiers is essentially a form of insurance. Nobody outside the lizardman constant says that if someone has employer-provided insurance and it pays $X to deal with a medical condition, but $X is more than the person is worth to his employer, the money is "wasted". This is exactly the same except the expensive medical condition is "stuck in enemy territory" instead of "needs a costly operation and medication".

Now, in this case it cost lives, and costing 94 lives is bad. But I wouldn't expect that rescuing a soldier costs 94 lives on the average--claiming that this is bad because of the cost in lives is treating a worst case cost as though it's an average cost.

I'm getting a similar vibe off of recent discussions about the F-15E Weapons Officer's rescue.

I outright reject the possibility of anyone taking the other side of that debate. No, I don't care how many links and examples you have.

Hold on, are you saying JD Vance personally commented on one of Scott's articles?

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Praise be to Allah

I think this should be read as a threat. Which it is.

I kind of have the sense that Trump is actually going insane, or at least his emotional control over himself is slipping. It's not that he is bombing Iran - that isn't very different from normal US foreign policy. And it's not that he is being bombastic - he has always been bombastic. But his pronouncements lately have had a very deranged and openly sadistic frothing-at-the-mouth quality that is noticeably different from his usual previous posting style.

I don't think that he is just talking like this for strategic purposes. His base likes the bombast but would probably prefer a kind of bombast that seemed more composed and less emotional. They like the idea of "Trump the strong man", not "Trump the ranting lunatic". As for Iran, after having experienced assassinations and bombings for weeks, there is no reason why they would not believe a threat that was worded more calmly. If anything, I think a calm-worded threat would probably seem more plausible to them. I can't think of any way in which frothing at the mouth would help manipulate the stock market any more than a calmer tone would, either.

I kind of have the sense that Trump is actually going insane, or at least his emotional control over himself is slipping.

When I read comments like this, I feel like I'm going insane. Trump has been openly bonkers for at least ten years, and the real TDS has always been people insisting that he's not. He has always been emotionally incontinent and narcissistic. He's always been a blustering bully with cruel instincts. He re-entered the political arena as the champion of the most laughable conspiracy theory in history. Hell, 75% of his appeal is that he's an uninhibited, incurious asshole. "He says it like it is" which is, as always, code for "repeats my bigotries aloud." (It's certainly not a statement on his commitment to epistemic courage).

Insofar as there has been downward spiral from his first administration, it is down to his advisors going from relatively normal Republicans who sought to moderate his impulses to weird, evil sycophants who seek to amplify and exploit them. Compare Hegseth to Mattis or even Esper. Esper wasn't much of anything, but he at least wasn't a gleeful psychopath like Hegseth.

To me Trump definitely seems more unhinged and less grounded now than he did during his first term or even the start of this term, and I've never particularly been a fan of him.

A lot of his base has always said that they don't like his more extreme rhetoric. 'I like what he does but why does he have to talk that way?'. They're kidding themselves of course. They enjoy having a dog that they've let off the leash, and they enjoy pitting his aggression against people who've committed themselves to some level of public decorum.

I don't know if the escalation in frothiness is just insanity, or more of Trump's gut instinct and bone-deep understanding of madman theory. I don't think he's necessarily wrong in his approach, given he is now in this mess. By doubling down on incoherence and anger, he makes himself somewhat invulnerable to critique for e.g. not actually following through on his deadlines and ultimatums. If the guy is a divinely appointed gut, he can do exactly as his gut chooses at any given moment, making Trump(now) much freer to ignore things that Trump(then) said. If he went about his threats in a calm way, his failure to follow through on a given occasion would be informational for his enemies. As it stands it is easy enough to believe he really meant each and every ultimatum in the moment he said it, whether or not he did.

Nonetheless a certain amount of rhetorical escalation is necessary to maintain this effect, hence his decision to use the f word.

If anything, I think a calm-worded threat would probably seem more plausible to them.

"There are three things all wise men fear: the sea in storm, a night with no moon, and the anger of a gentle man." -- Patrick Rothfuss

I think this communication strategy makes sense in the context of the Middle East and Iran in particular. The region is pretty well known for its bombast. The videos of political rhetoric I’ve seen from that region sound pretty bombastic as they chant for the deaths of their enemies. There are videos of toddlers chanting for the death of Assad, feel good news stories about a kid healing from the death of his father by playing video games (in which he pretends the enemies he’s killing are Jews). You can’t convince those people you’re serious if you’re not over the top bombastic and ready to kill them and destroy their country. This isn’t Sweden, and you can’t talk to an Iranian Shia Muslim like he’s a Swedish Lutheran.

Depends what you watch. It'd be easy for visiting aliens to see the Iranians as the more composed and understated party in this war. Their latest statement was to call for a ceasefire, arguing that it would "give the US and Israel a short pause to regroup and commit new crimes", which is straight up funny vs Trump's unhinged anger.

Personally, this image of "Iranian Shia Muslims" being insane brown terrorists has been one of the casualties of the war for me. Was it always just Israeli-American propaganda, MemriTV cherry-picking, or merely a product of general American ignorance about the broader world, "everyone in the ME is Arab, except Jews who are white"? They don't really look the part. They don't do suicide bombings like Sunnis, they don't deal in over-the-top theatrics, they state conditions and try to execute on those. Throughout the war, Iranians have communicated much more similarly to how I'd expect a European nation – say, Sweden, or Denmark (we've just had a dry run with Denmark, come to think of it) – under attack to communicate, compared to the coalition of Moral Clarity. "This is the Middle East" is a bad excuse for the American side, so bad in fact that it vindicates their desire to have nuclear deterrent. Same logic as Israel uses. You can't expect to be left alone by such people without WMDs on the table.

They don't seem as religiously unhinged, too. Very little talk of Apocalypse.

They don't do suicide bombings like Sunnis

No, they get others (including Hezbollah) to do them for them.

they don't deal in over-the-top theatrics

Like Death to America Day

No, they get others (including Hezbollah)

I presume you mean Beirut in the 1980s. Wow, you sure have been around for a long time.

That one was the first, but it's not the only suicide bombing by Iranian proxies.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1992_Buenos_Aires_Israeli_embassy_bombing

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMIA_bombing

Not to mention their Israel Doomsday Clock.

This isn’t Sweden, and you can’t talk to an Iranian Shia Muslim like he’s a Swedish Lutheran.

I can't disagree more. The Iranian leaders have all got philosophy degrees, study Kant, etc - and their messages are substantially more cultured than the hot air coming out of Trump and Hegseth. I can understand a lot of the chants for the death of their enemies, too - if America blew up a primary school in my country I'd start chanting Death to the Great Satan as well.

My ex-girlfriend who was a convert to Islam years ago, used to take me to a local mosque in the area that was a well known Shia mosque. I used to have dialogues and debate with the Imam who would lead these massive groups in prayer and they knew I was a Catholic, but were very welcoming and always looking to talk to me when I went, but I was a very irregular attendee. They gave me English-Arabic supplication and prayer books and all kinds of other stuff. Was very interesting to read. He was from Iran and at least some of the regulars of the mosque had family back in the Middle East.

On the other hand, I've had lifelong friends who are more or less secular but culturally Muslim/Assyrian, and would go back and visit their families in Amman Jordan and elsewhere. They'd always tell me, "... you ain't shit in the Muslim world until you've threatened death to Israel and had at least half a dozen of your cousins killed..." One of them in particular who is half Arab half Italian and was from al-Sajariyah in Anbar Province in Iraq originally, has relatives who were active ISIS fighters who fought in the siege of Deir ez-Zor and battle of Kobane. Some of them were killed in American airstrikes. You never bring up the American military in conversation with them here when talking to them; it’s a very sore thumb that raises the anger levels.

For what it's worth, "death to Israel" is about as uncontroversial a sentiment in the Arab world as "chocolate is nice" is in the Western world. There is room for discussion about how literally it should be taken, because most of the time what "death to Israel" means is "Israel is bad" without any specific policy action attached to it, but it is completely universal that Israel is a bad thing that we hate. Even when Arab countries try to normalise relations with Israel, that usually provokes significant popular outcry.

So I wouldn't read that much into any specific person saying that. If you're with a group of Arab Muslims and people say "death to Israel" and you disagree, you are the one being anti-social. It's the equivalent of, say, being a Westerner who is vocally pro-North-Korea. If I were having a conversation with a bunch of Westerners, someone casually said that such-and-such is a horror show like North Korea, and I interrupted to say that actually North Korea is a victim of Western propaganda and it's actually a workers' paradise, everyone would stare at me like I'm a crazy person. That is what would happen if you were hanging out with a bunch of Arab Muslims, they said death to Israel, and you interrupted to disagree.

Anecdotally, all my experiences with Muslims in the West have been positive - Egyptian, Afghan, Syrian, Indonesian, Turkish, they've all been lovely. They have in my experience been patient, polite, and happy to respectfully talk about the differences and the common ground between our traditions. I just carefully steer away from anything involving Israel or Palestine. The ones living in Western countries do not say "death to Israel", but they are all passionately pro-Palestinian. Compare how pretty much all my experiences with religious Jews in the West have been positive, and they also have been lovely, polite, generous, and willing to have wonderful conversations; but they are all passionately pro-Israel (even the super-liberal ones), and it is not worth trying to engage on that. At this point my position is just that I like the Muslims, I like the Jews, and I never talk about Israel/Palestine with them because that makes brains switch off and people get angry.

I never talk about Israel/Palestine with them because that makes brains switch off and people get angry.

The same approach works with pro-Israel American normies and pro-Palestine British lefties.

If there was a law against talking about the Israel-Palestine conflict unless you had lived in Israel or Palestine for at least ten years, the world would be a better place.

I can understand a lot of the chants for the death of their enemies, too - if America blew up a primary school in my country I'd start chanting Death to the Great Satan as well.

Timeline is kind of backwards there, no? Unless you're talking about America blowing up a school several decades ago...

I'm referring to how the American strikes on that primary school for girls shored up support for the regime and helped destroy the enthusiasm that the earlier efforts to spur an uprising created. That said, those death to America chants started happening for a reason back then too.

if America blew up a primary school in my country I'd start chanting Death to the Great Satan as well

They've been chanting that particular line for decades now though

I'm sure that Primary School missile struck got a bunch of new ones to start chanting it - after all, the Official Story was that the Iranians hate their government and were just waiting to rise up against it, which very much has not happened. But even beyond that, do you think that they just started chanting Death to America for no reason, completely unprovoked? There's a long history of nasty US behavior in the region that does stretch back decades.

But the hit of the primary school retroactively justifies and explains all the bad things the Iranian regime has ever said or done to the US.

As for Iran, there is no reason why they would not believe a threat that was worded more calmly. If anything, I think a calm-worded threat would probably seem more plausible to them.

Honestly, the 4d chess argument I can come up with for this is that Trump is actively trying to make sure the war does not come to a diplomatic conclusion, and as such is utilizing a mix of insults and obvious bluffs to convince the Iranians to stay in it.

Related to my conspiracy theory that this entire adventure is designed to let some air out of the stock market bubble, on the theory that the AI investment process needs to continue in order to achieve AGI, but that a catastrophic sudden bubble pop would torpedo the whole industry, so they needed to do something to bring down the stock market slightly prior to the bubble.

Honestly, the 4d chess argument I can come up with for this is that Trump is actively trying to make sure the war does not come to a diplomatic conclusion, and as such is utilizing a mix of insults and obvious bluffs to convince the Iranians to stay in it.

Agreed, but I don't think it's really 4d chess; it's not a really sophisticated strategy. He doesn't want them to make an offer that sounds reasonable.

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