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You flinch away from self-reflection, which is in character, of course.
Guy who can’t face the inconsistency of his predictions telling me to self-reflect
They're perfectly consistent though. It's the US policy that's inconsistent, because the US has no culture of merit or human virtue and can elevate a random scammer to presidency.
This is a cartoonish, almost ghoulish understanding of the United States of America. It would be absurd to say about almost any country, let alone the country that has made possible the most flourishing in human history. I get criticized for grandiosity but this is far more extreme than anything I’ve ever said.
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.
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 a comment 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 against him. 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 talks 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 its evil, disgusting enemies is Good Actually and I support it unconditionally". It is low-quality tribalism par excellence, it is disturbing, and it is the farthest thing from "self-aware and humble" I can think of.
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.
This was in response to an argument that America isn't part of Western Civilization, so it can't credibly claim any moral superiority over Iran. The point I was making is that this is snobby provincialism, call America "Western" call it "Bestern" call it whatever it doesn't matter.
This was in response to a claim of moral relativism that criticized American attempts to be moral in war as a pretention. My argument is that this is not a mere pretention, America has a righteous claim to morality over Iran, it's actually ridiculous to put America and a terrorist Islamic regime on the same moral plane.
(In fairness to @quiet_NaN I believe his argument was more in the vein that justifying war as moral causes a problem in practical geopolitics. I chose to surface this facet of his argument for criticism because we have already argued extensively about whether America is winning. And I consider it far more pernicious that many are treating America and Iran as equally just. I think this is ridiculous and deserves ridicule: we live in the free world, we can only have these debates because of the freedoms we have in the West, and too many people have bought into IRGC propaganda or, worse, a lukewarm indifference to any notion of good and evil.)
I make no apologies for actually believing in good and evil and using my sense of them to advance my arguments. I think anyone not doing this, out of a misguided sense of sophistication, is kidding themselves.
No my argument has been and remains that America won the war already in every meaningful sense. We destroyed Iran's military-industrial complex, we destroyed their nuclear program, we alienated them from their neighbors and potential allies, we won. And everyone keeps proclaiming that Iran has actually won because they refuse to surrender and they can still control the straits. To me this is like proclaiming that the Super Bowl isn't over when the Packers are up 50 points at halftime because the opposing team of George Bailey High still has the heart of the cards. It's over. So I keep repeating, every time it comes up, that Iran lost in every meaningful way, and this final trump card that they can control the strait keeps turning out to not be true.
I feel increasingly vindicated. The goalposts of the war critics keep moving. It was once confidently predicted that Iran would sink American ships, and toll the strait, and never give up its nuclear program. It was confidently predicted that at least Iran would threaten the strait, and significant concessions would have to be made. Now it's clear that a lot of traffic can still transit the strait, because the American military is that much more powerful than the Iranian military, and I'm starting to hear that maybe the Americans started winning recently, who can really say?
I know you think I've taken leave of my senses. But I think it's you who have taken leave of your senses. America is justified to fight Iran and America is winning against Iran. I have made the same argument, consistently, for months, because I believe I am right and I fully expect to be vindicated.
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