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There's a reason I assume he's trying to ingratiate himself with his new overlords. Legit sounds like a classier translation of racist xanxia slop.
We should be demanding the same level of shamelessness from our own immigrants.
Yes, the reason you assume so is extremely hierarchical, amoral and anti-aesthetic priors of your psychology, pure lustful brownshirt orientation towards power and impunity. The same reason makes you a Trump supporter to begin with, and incapable of understanding principled disgust. I guess the same reason makes you insist I've moved to China, bizarrely. (I have not, and have no plans to jump through necessary hoops or put up with their own problems).
At this rate I'm more likely to come under American overlordship, if anything (hopefully not). It would be quite prudent to ingratiate myself to this ridiculous regime; and believe it or not, I've turned down some opportunities offered from up high.
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Given the kind of patriotic preening Shakes routinely engages in, his unconditional and triumphant support for yet another war of aggression in the Middle East, his constant tendency to claim US victory under virtually any circumstances including the now-defunct MoU (his theory of victory seems to reduce to "We fucked them up! We fucked them up so bad"), and considering the brainrotted knee-jerk condemnation of everything China that you and many other posters routinely engage in, I'm most certainly not convinced that Dase is anywhere near as shameless as half of the posters here.
It's almost as if US hawks have no barometer for how insane they look to the rest of the world, and consider any China-bullishness as "ingratiation" because nobody could possibly ever like that country for any reason at all.
Which is still vastly more self-aware and humble than what Daes engages in on this topic, or what we see from the "America lost" faction. My god, it's like the Black Knight from Monty Python.
I actually rather like China. I don't trust them as a nation, but I do have a certain fondness. I just don't take it seriously when someone does, er, literally exactly what you're accusing Shakes of doing - shameless, jingoistic boosterism that doesn't even try to make a serious analysis of their situation. Which is easy because of how opaque they are, compared to the ten million words we spill on this forum alone wrangling over the issues and struggles America is facing, based on enormous quantities of reasonably transparent data and reporting.
Because it comes off as projection. Screaming "America lost" when what you actually mean is something more like "Iran is still holding on while their military and economy are in shambles after a few months of casual love taps, and this is arguably a failure to attain all strategic goals of the war" sounds genuinely insane. It sounds like you're trying to manifest a conclusion via sheer memery, rather than making any effort to understand - particularly when even the most jingoistic Americans (Shakes) are making meaningful admissions.
It just comes off as shameless, low-trust rhetoric, like watching some underclass defectbot try to scam a quokka.
In that case, kindly point to any large number of comments that Dase has made regarding his China-boosterism that doesn't include any "serious analysis of their situation", and is situated in the context of a thread where he hasn't made any serious analysis. That would help prove your charge. I follow the guy, and while he can be needlessly inflammatory I have to say his comments are routinely more well-informed than the America First crowd here. And on Xitter there are a good number of tweets where he criticises China (I think he has requested that his account not be shared here though), so I don't think your model of him as a jingoistic unconditional booster is accurate.
This is far more true of Shakes regarding America, who can talk about the war in cartoon-villain ways like "Now I advance the argument that Bestern Civilization is better than the Third world, and better than Iran, so I support our moral claims against theirs etc. etc. etc. etc." and "It's good to destroy evil and it's evil to destroy good" which just translates to an unconditional support of America against its enemies regardless of what they do and how many second- or third-order effects it may have. In spite of how inflammatory Dase can be I don't think he has said anything to the effect of "China blowing up The Evil is Good Actually and I support it unconditionally". It is low-quality tribalism par excellence, it is disturbing, and is the farthest thing from "self-aware and humble".
Also where did you get the idea that Dase was living in China? Since many of your comments appear to imply he currently does, I'd like to see where that was indicated. I am genuinely curious FWIW.
Okay, what "meaningful admissions" is Shakes making? He's doing exactly what you're accusing the "America lost" crowd of doing - claiming "America won" when what he actually means is "America caused damage to Iran without achieving many of their larger strategic goals in the timeframe they expected, has likely burned through a significant portion of their interceptors, and is now trying to find a way out of a costly war it can't back out from without losing face and ceding ground it's not willing to cede". The idea that this constitutes "winning" is quite ridiculous; they might win yet (and they may not), but Shakes keeps proclaiming victory every time there is any shadow of an agreement and when these agreements fall apart he predicts victory any time soon. It's tiresome and it's like gleefully proclaiming that Libya was a victory in any meaningful sense because the US fucked them up so bad. It is not a reasonable metric through which to measure foreign policy, and if wanton destruction is the sole endgoal of all your engagements you should expect pushback from those who don't revel in turning countries into Somalia.
Thank you for your support and respect of my wishes.
For your info, I really don't live in China, but if I did and cared for the opinion of my new MSS overlords, I'd probably tone it down with political commentary of any kind. Americans and other Free Worlders seem to often have a naive theory of preferences of authoritarian states. Peak Stalinism, Cultural Revolution, Khmer Rouge – those make a mark in the media but are abnormal conditions of power consolidation (or reconsolidation). Mature regimes seek apolitical quiescence, not fervor, and suppress overzealous and aggressive Patriots just the same as open enemies, if not harder, because Patriots can deliberately or inadvertently challenge the regime's legitimacy by exposing its flaws by its own standards and constraining strategic flexibility.* Strelkov/Girkin is a good (if extreme) case in point; China is no exception (see their crackdown on Western Pseudohistory Theory – for what it's worth, General Secretary I approve, please continue crushing low-IQ kanging on Chinese social media).
If I really were, as accused, a kneejerk America hater in China, I'd probably run some risk of getting (mildly) disciplined for "Picking Quarrels and Provoking Trouble".
Though I don't think they monitor this place in any case. But I do greatly appreciate American doctrine of free speech, and unfortunately the Chinese are not on board. Accordingly there won't be a Chinese TheMotte.
*P.S. That's another reason I get so triggered by Patriotism of @Shakes. It seems there's no consistent belief behind it, it's pure "Let's go Dodgers!" loyal cheerleading for America or even personally for Trump; no matter what Trump/America do it's good and based, even if it's contradictory. He refuses to hold his team to any internal standard at all, can pose no danger to the regime at all, and risks nothing at all (except going down with the ship).
There's personal bitterness too, I guess. I used to call myself a Russian ethnonationalist, and that project, as in, people with the same identification, has on net spectacularly discredited itself by choosing bootlicking, (delusional) prejudice against Ukrainans and the conquest of Konstantinyvka and other ruined shithole villages over the entire space of timelines where Russia was a strong nation and a positive influence on the world. Would be nice if other people took similar risks.
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This is the exchange I had in mind when saying that. Read Shakes post above, too. Both are forcefully arguing for their position. I see several times where Shakes acknowledges points for the other side. I note zero where Dase does.
FWIW, I think Dase is generally very smart and knowledgeable (I've nommed him for AAQQ within the last month), which is why it sticks out to me when he slips into "China rules, America drools" mode. I would love to see him give a decoupled take on some part of the Chinese system, because I expect he really does have a better vantage point than pretty much anyone else I have access to.
But we all have topics that are hard to discuss with a proper detachment.
Comments he made a while ago, I'm not going to try to dig them up. I definitely remember he dipped out of Russia the moment they invaded Ukraine, and mentioned landing in Turkey while he figured out his next move. But I've alternated heavy posting and blocking myself to just lurking over the last few years. I am pretty sure he said something about finding a more permanent spot for himself in the Chinese AI/ML ecosystem at some point, but that's why I keep phrasing it as half a question.
He went to Argentina, iirc.
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Thank you for presenting my most based beliefs, but this doesn’t defend Dasein’s statement at all
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