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Notes -
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.
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, just because they don't look bad.
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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) -
Monday March 23, 2026, 7:23 AM (ultamatum exteded to Saturday March 28) -
Thursday March 26, 2026, 4:11 PM (ultamatum extended to Monday April 6, 8:00 PM)
Sunday April 5, 2026, 12:38 PM (Ultamatum extended to Tuesday April 7, 8:00 PM)
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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.
The over the top Cruella de Ville laugh seems more like something from a commercial or B-movie than real witches, at least.
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The guy who chanted "Bomb Iran" to the tune of "Barbara Ann"?
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.
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.
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.
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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).
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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.
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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?
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.
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I think this should be read as a threat. Which it is.
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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 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.
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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.
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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