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New culture war news, from the secret squirrel cloak and dagger part of culture war.
And it is top tier blockbuster spy thriller tale. Tom Clancy might be dead, but his spirit is marching on.
Inside Israel’s Secret Operation to Cultivate Ahmadinejad
Inside the Mossad Plot to Install Israel's Arch-enemy Ahmadinejad as Iran's Leader
True if big, but is it big enough? What is really going on?
1/ All true news, you can always trust NYT and Haaretz. No one can resist Mossad grooming, even old revolutionary and God fearing true Muslim like Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. All resistance is futile.
2/ All fake news, designed both to enhance Mossad reputation and depress Iranian morale. If even Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was traitor recruited by the Zionist entity, who can be trusted? All resistance is futile.
Any way, Israel looks strong, but far from all powerful.
Speaking of Mossad and Iran, check out what the vice president just said https://x.com/BulwarkOnline/status/2077462242488971283
Now as we can all assume that just like Trump, Vance would never lie or act irresponsibly in his position at the top level of government so we should take him seriously when he said that Israeli and American intelligence clearly had connections to Epstein. And Epstein had a known interest in Iran.
One has to wonder how all these things may be connected, and why the Trump administration continues to cover up valuable parts of the Epstein files implicating American and Israeli intelligence communities. I wonder if it could have anything to do with what a former top advisor to the admin once said before being forced to censor himself. Did we get into the war because our president is being blackmailed by Israeli intelligence? I doubt it, he doesn't act like he's being blackmailed. And blackmailing when you're also guilty is a weird strategy. It seems more likely that the Israel/Epstein/Trump connections aren't blackmailing each other, but instead collaborative even now. They all scratch each other's back, and while there's a predator shaped chain wrapped around each one, the MAD situation gives them lenience too.
Actually, no. The rules say "speak plainly".
Stop doing this.
If you believe that Trump and Vance would lie and/or act irresponsibly, say so. Ideally in a substantive, interesting comment that adds to the discussion. Obviously, taking this path would be incompatible with what you want to vaguely but vigorously hint at: something like "Trump is paedophile". If that's an uncharitable distillation, then maybe try speaking plainly so people don't have to guess.
If, on the other hand, you don't think that Trump and Vance would lie and/or act irresponsibly --i.e. you want to disavow the entire smug point of your comment as, well, a lie -- then you can absolutely use Vance's comment as part of a chain of reasoning to connect Trump to Epstein, like you're salivating to do.
You want to have your cake and eat it. You want to simultaneously claim:
... can you please pick a principled position? You might learn something, if you actually made a single falsifiable claim and tried to honestly discuss it, rather than throwing out a general shitstorm of "my outgroup is bad" without ever committing to a single coherent position.
You're forced to guess either way. As the highest officials of the US government, there's good arguments we should presume they act in a mature manner and generally tell the truth. The courts do this with the executive (or at least generally did it). I, and you, don't know if Vance is lying here or even what parts (if he is) are lies and what are truths. None of us can know. I can not say that Vance is lying because I do not have access to all the redacted and hidden information he does.
So if we take the stance: "The executive branch is filled with honest, serious and mature people that should be given the benefit of the doubt" then we should assume that Israeli and US intelligence likely were involved with Epstein. If we don't take that stance, then it's hard to say because again even if he's lying we don't know which parts are lies and even if we did we only know that it is lies and not what the truthful alternative is. Given this site is extremely pro MAGA, I assume most people here take that stance and thus I reasoned from there.
If you want to explore the "Vance is lying" hypothetical instead and discuss what implications that could lead to, go ahead and do that instead of whining.
These can both coexist! Even the worst liars don't lie about everything. They are perfectly willing to be truthful if the truth benefits them. And you can't just flip around a lie and find the truth, not how lies work. We don't know what the truth is and what the files show. Even if he is lying about some parts of the Epstein files, it doesn't mean he is lying about every part!
Both possibilities here are suspicious.
Vance is lying about something, in which case what is he trying to coverup and which parts are a lie?
Vance is not lying anywhere, in which case what do those connections mean?
You are breaking the rules and wasting everyone's time.
Pretending that pointing that out is "whining" is pathetic.
Speak plainly.
No, I wouldn't be forced to guess about what you believe if you actually stated what you believe. I wouldn't have to guess, because I would assume you were attempting to honestly represent your beliefs.
I want you to be honest and state what you believe. Not just on this, but in general. I want you to make comments where you actually stake out a position that people can discuss, rather than just flinging shit at people you don't like, but in a way where you can't be pinned down on any particular claim, because you veil your claims behind ambiguity, sarcasm, and contempt for people you consider to be less intelligent than you.
No, they can't. Not inside the same argument!
Then say that. Ideally, pick one possibility, explain why you think it's true, and explain what it would imply.
Or, less ideally, construct a position of "one of these two things must be true", explain why you think that, and explain what each of them would imply.
What's juvenile is to simultaneously push for both being true. "Hey guys, Vance and Trump are pieces of shit and lie all the time. Also, Vance said this thing, and because he said it, it must be true; and, if true, it implies Trump is a paedo".
That's pathetic and contributes to the degradation of the Motte. Why is it so hard to just present a principled position? Why do you insist on marshalling a troop of mutually contradictory ideas-as-soldiers?
Stop backseat modding.
If you think someone is breaking the rules, report them. Don't start public slapfights. Those do not end well for any participants.
Here is the actual guideline at the top:
Many people interpret this as "sarcasm is against the rules" or "you must state everything implicitly and never imply any conclusion that is not stated outright or invite people to infer your meaning."
Sarcasm is, generally, frowned upon, because it tends to be used for condescension and mockery rather than humor, but sarcasm is not outright forbidden and in small doses we usually let it pass.
Likewise, the "speak plainly" rule. This applies to, for example, pretending you are arguing one thing when you're actually arguing something else, or implying something that is so unclear so as to invite confusion or misunderstanding. It means "don't try to gotcha" people. It means "make your point reasonably clear," not "make your point so obvious that even a literalistic autist cannot misunderstand it." It means "Don't play games with meaning and don't pretend you weren't saying what you were clearly saying when someone asks you if that's what you're saying."
I am a non-fan of @magicalkittycat, and this:
is like most of his posts, not great. He's been told to stop being so annoying, but "annoying" is subjective, and a lot of what gets on the nerves of the people who report him is not his style of argumentation but what he's arguing. We let posts like this pass all the time, and not just from MKC, because there is only so much "tone-policing" we are willing to do. Lots of people want us to ban him because he's an annoying leftist. We're not going to ban him because he's an annoying leftist. (You want me to start banning people because I think almost everything they post is disingenuous and annoying? I have a list and MKC is not in the top 10.)
You know what also contributes to the degradation of the Motte? You losing your temper with someone who seems to get under your skin every time they post.
Take it from someone who has a list of people whom I mostly consider aggravating shitposters - you will almost always regret getting into it with them, and you will almost never regret just closing the thread.
I apologise for what comes across as backseat modding — I don't agree with the characterisation, but it's a reasonable one, and I might be wrong.
I don't agree that pointing this out contributes to the degradation of the Motte.
I didn't think that mkc's comment was bad enough to warrant reporting. I thought about it, but that seemed petty and wrong. If I'm wrong about that, I'd welcome the correction.
Yes, I read this. I figured the additional context weighed in favour of pointing out the rules violation, not like some gotcha that I'd missed.
This is exactly what mkc is doing. My comments explain how.
If I'm backseat modding: fair. Ding me for that.
But I literally explain how mkc is deliberately avoiding holding a stance so that it's impossible to debate him.
I don't think that deserves a ban or anything, so I didn't report it. But if the rule is I can't even point that out, then that's a bad rule. And I don't think that is the rule.
I don't have an issue with mkc being annoying. I'm annoying!
I want him to commit to a position so we can discuss it.
Yes, I correctly received a ban for this, and said so at the time.
Given that we agree on this, I'm not sure it's relevant to what we're talking about now.
If your position is that I'm doing the same thing again, which I don't think it is, then that would be relevant.
Many reports are petty and wrong. While I don't like spite reporting, I like people declaring that someone else is breaking the rules less, because if someone is breaking the rules, you should let a mod adjudicate that, and if they're not, it's just going to start a fight with the person you're accusing. (Or it turns into an argument with the mods, and yes, you're allowed to disagree with us too over whether or not so-and-so in fact broke the rules, but it's probably not going to leave anyone feeling satisfied.)
You are allowed to point out that you think his argument is terrible and you don't appreciate his tactics.
I don't think you're losing your temper and I am not threatening you with a ban. I am, however, noticing a pattern and I'm recommending you notice also when someone is getting under your skin.
And if you really think someone is breaking the rules, report it. If you don't really think they are breaking the rules (or not severely enough to warrant mod intervention), then don't publicly accuse them of breaking the rules.
That's reasonable. Thanks for taking the time to explain.
I want to record some general observations — they're not specifically about mkc, but obviously the context of this interaction is going to be read into them.
This is difficult to mod. Some people are going to call it "subjective" — I disagree, but there's a grey zone. Modding this too heavily is going to cross into tone policing, or outlawing people just misunderstanding each other. It's reasonable to err on the side of not modding this.
But it's still corrosive! Consider this exchange:
ALICE: Water is poisonous. BOB: Water isn't poisonous. Maybe you're confused about "dihydrogen monoxide" [insert effortpost] ALICE: if you're confused about the existence about poisons, I recommend this link. Obviously water itself isn't poisonous (idiot). If you're imagining that poisons can't be dissolved in water, I'm prepared to prove you wrong on that stupid position.
In this situation: does Bob report Alice? I don't think so. Maybe it's worth putting in more effort to point out the bullshit Alice has just pulled by lying.
But multiplied across many interactions... Alice can keep lying with zero effort, while the truth has to put in tons of effort to constantly correct the record.
If that's the recommended paradigm (I'm uncertain to what extent you endorse this), then backseat modding is kinda an implicit pillar of this ecosystem. People have to keep putting in effort to point out "no, you just lied — you said X earlier, and now you're pretending you said Y".
I'm aware that this gets under my skin. I'm correct to get really, really annoyed by this. I don't care if a person is a rightist, a leftist, or whatever — I care when they lie in a way that's easily disprovable by looking at the transcript, but that the average Motte reader wouldn't bother to go and read.
The correct behaviour is for me not to respond to this by flipping out, as I did in your link.
... but it's also a problem that someone keeps lying so much that they make someone flip out. You don't actually need to have a long list of shit posters who aggravate you.
I'm not proposing banning anyone for being annoying, or for having the wrong politics (that would be insane). I just want to register that there's this middle ground where disingenuous people can DDOS the Motte with truth-agnostic comments without any kind of restriction or punishment, so long as they stay below the level where they'll get actively modded.
I don't know the solution, I just don't think the current situation is... eh.
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You are demanding the impossible, I can not know what is and isn't truthful in Vance's statements. I do not have access to the full unredacted information. I can only operate in the hypothetical and I addressed Hypothetical 1: He is being truthful here.
That's why if you notice a key part from my statement
I will not make bold claims like "Vance is definitely lying" when I can not know that. But I can analyze some possible conclusions if we assume Vance is being truthful, like many assume about Trump's statements, then what does that possibly imply?
"Speak plainly", how about you bother to read instead? I did speak plainly. I plainly said it was a hypothetical assumption! The word is right there.
Again even if we flip the assumption around and observe the hypothetical where he is a liar, it doesn't tell us what parts are a lie and what is truth.
No one was asking for that.
No one even remotely hinted at asking for that.
I asked you to state what you believe.
You are the only person who finds that to be an insurmountable burden, or who deliberately conflates it with being asked for a perfect factual assessment of the world.
Stop lying.
No one asked you to.
That's not what you did.
You stated, while making the patented magicalkittycat ":3" face, that Vance was being truthful.
My entire point is requesting that you cut out this bullshit, and do the thing you just pretended you were doing all along. If you want to construct a hypothetical, construct the hypothetical.
But you don't. You want to dunk on people you think are less intelligent than you, and then pretend you weren't doing it.
I have no idea who you think this onanistic farce is fooling.
Wish granted: I already read everything you said.
You always say this when you run out of arguments. It's lame. Try speaking plainly instead. Other people don't find it hard.
Another masterful exercise in completely ignoring the thing you just quoted.
What are you even doing?
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That wasn't what he was asking for at all. He was asking for your priors, not the content of the truth of Vance's statements. That would give important information ('why are we forced to guess?' and 'why is this important to you, much less the conversation?') That is certainly within the possible, if you weren't so evasive about it.
Let's flip the script on you. If I said 'Now we can all assume that Magicalkittycat both tells the truth and lies', that would be superficially true (no one is completely honest 100% of the time, and even if they tried to be, they would make lies of omission on occasion). The statement tells us almost nothing about which parts of your speech are truthful and which ones are lies. But besides being useless, this statement certainly isn't smuggling in a trojan horse's worth of assumptions against you, which certainly wouldn't be used against you in a partisan way. Certainly, I wouldn't imply you tell the truth when it looks bad for you, and you lie when you argue in your defense.
I mean, I'm just saying the truth, aren't I?
My priors are I don't know! I think Israel likely had some connections to Epstein, and thus Vance might be saying something true here (even if you or I believe he often lies elsewhere) but I don't have anything to prove it, cause I don't have access to all of that.
I can't tell you which way is which cause I don't know. All I can do is give some hypotheticals, which is
If we assume this recent statement is true from Vance because we assume he isn't lying to our faces, then what could that suggest? Well, Mossad and Epstein both want/wanted involvement in Iran, so that could be something they utilized. And we know that the Trump admin is currently wanting to hide something that's still covered up in the Epstein files, so presumbly it has links to him or his allies. Thus within this hypothetical we can propose the possibility that the coverup and Iran war are connected in some manner, and that perhaps Mossad uses their connections to coerce (or at least push a little) on the president for his unpopular war.
If people want to explore the alternative assumption where Vance is lying, they can go ahead and do so. What they shouldn't do is blame their inability to properly read on me proposing a hypothetical
That isn't what you did.
Then say that up front, instead of pretending.
Your original comment had nothing to do with hypotheticals.
People want to explore the alternative timeline where you say what you mean.
You think it's cute when you go "oh, you disagree with my unflattering framing X? Well, if you want to explore even-less-flattering-framing-Y, go ahead!"
The problem is that this hinges on everyone around you being stupid.
You are being criticised for obfuscating your position to try and head off specific criticism.
No one is saying "hey, you're being too charitable when you said Vance isn't a horrible liar!"
Please stop pretending that the latter is the case.
You are lying.
You did not propose a hypothetical.
Stop blaming people for not reading something you did not write.
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