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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   17058 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of October 12, 2026

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I made a prediction that Iran might step up attacks before the midterms. Looks like that may be happening and the rates of attacks are up:

Two ships sink near Hormuz after being hit by projectiles amid surge in attacks

Container ship hit by projectile sinks in Strait of Hormuz, Singapore says

A Singapore-flagged container ship has sunk after being struck by an unknown projectile while transiting the Strait of Hormuz, according to Singaporean authorities.

All 21 crew members of GFS Pride were evacuated and no injuries were reported after the attack on Tuesday, which caused damage and a fire, the Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore said.

Another Singapore-flagged container vessel, GFS Giselle, sustained hull damage after being hit by a projectile on Wednesday but was able to reach a safe anchorage with all 22 crew, it added.

Iran's Revolutionary Guards said a ship hit naval mines and sank while passing through what they called an "unauthorised" route in the Strait of Hormuz.

The decision to pause the war by Trump remains puzzling to me, and it suggests a lack of conviction in the war effort. A side confident of success would act immediately rather than grant Iran weeks to strengthen its defenses, plan retaliation, consult its allies, and position its assets. One thing it certainly isn't doing is helping with inflation:

Consumer prices rose 3.7% annually in September as gas prices skyrocket

The consumer price index showed annual inflation of 3.7% in September after rising 0.6% for the month, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Wednesday.

The Core CPI, which strips out food and energy, posted an annual reading of 2.6% after climbing 0.3%.

Energy prices were a major factor again as gasoline rose 9.1% and accounted for half the increase in the index.

However, price pressures were broad-based, with gains in shelter, vehicle costs and apparel.

Trump seems to have a plan though, although it is not popular even among Republicans:

Bipartisan group of senators call on Trump to rescind Russian diesel deal

"This deal is a gift to our adversary and a betrayal of our allies; it should be rescinded," wrote six Republican and six Democratic senators in a letter Tuesday to the president.

Polling numbers and prediction markets also paint a pretty bleak forecast for the Republicans.

From Nate Silver:

Over the weekend, Donald Trump hit yet another all-time approval rating low of net -23.9. As of today, he bounced back slightly to -22.4. That’s in large part due a pair of new polls — one from TIPP Insights and one from Noble Predictive Insights — that showed Trump at a relatively rosy net -13 and -12, respectively.

Things are also looking bearish for Trump on the issues. Net approval of how he’s handled trade (-28.7) and the economy (-29.9) are both near their all time lows. Trump’s inflation approval has dropped so much — to net -47.5 — that we’ve once again had to adjust the y-axis on our issue approval chart downward.

If things go as they seem, we are about to witness the end of the age of Trump. If we get a Blue Tsunami -- and I believe we will -- Republicans are going to turn on him. Why wouldn't they? What can he offer them at this point but big fat L's. The only question now is what comes next on the Right, because it's certainly not Trumpism.

Yeah I predicted shortly after the war began this would continue until after the 2028 election. The Gulf War was an outlier of Middle East conflicts resolving quickly. Iran wants Republicans to lose. And NATO was not going to help either, as they don't feel any inclination to help dig trump out of the hole he created. To profit from this I bet "no on Strait or Hurmuz traffic returning to normal." So far this has been right and extremely profitable. All Iran has to do is just wait for Trump 's successor, presumably Vance, to lose. So far this is working as evidenced by falling approval ratings.

And NATO was not going to help either, as they don't feel any inclination to help dig trump out of the hole he created.

I think this understates the problem. I think a large part of the failures of the Iran war were predictable, but probably not by people in the mainstream, and probably not people in the Trump admin. I have very large outlier views on the matters of Iran and Iran's relations with other countries, which I think would have been necessary to predict what actually happened.

Because yes, NATO not helping is predictable, they barely ever do anything.

What no one in just about ANY mainstream, left or right, warroom would have predicted is that France, Germany, England, etc would be just fine with Iran pirating boats destined for their countries and/or flagged to their countries and/or crewed by people from their countries. Which is what we have seen. Iran bombs a tanker bound for Germany, and Germany just shrugs, or even more derangedly, blames the USA. Its like blaming the SWAT team when a highjacker intentionally kills a hostage during the raid. But this is Europe's mentality now. And IMO not predictable by any mainstream people.

Unless you understood the JCPOA as I did, as tacit approval by all the signatories for Iran to obtain nukes and continue terrorist operations while obtaining nukes for the purpose of deploying them against Israel and ultimately the USA. If you think that is what all those countries actually wanted, then you understand why they act so limply while their ships are bombed by a hostile power.

Europeans generally (except for Britain), doesn’t really have a useable military capability. They have a nominal military, maybe 5% of GDP, and one that hasn’t been used for any serious war since WWII. Of course they aren’t going to go into Iran over a few missiles aimed at their ships, they simply can’t do so. They don’t have the capability, the training, or the stomach to fight a hot war against an enemy with a real military. That’s why the European strategy to most confrontations is appeasement. That’s all they have, and they have to pretend that it’s the moral high ground to simply ignore the enemies and their growing power.

I agree on JCPOA. Allowing a country that wants nukes to stockpile enriched uranium is allowing them a nuke. They have to agree, basically, to stop juuust short of the kind of enrichment that would create weapons grade uranium, while totally pinkie swear that they would never enrich further. Of course, the nominal inspections were meant to prevent the final step, while ignoring that uranium is easy to hide, and final enrichment isn’t that hard. It was intended to fail, as it could not possibly work, and quite often it would mean that they can create the weapons while giving their rivals the false sense of security that they couldn’t be developing a weapon because they’re being inspected (in ways designed to miss weapons development).

Unless you understood the JCPOA as I did, as tacit approval by all the signatories for Iran to obtain nukes and continue terrorist operations while obtaining nukes for the purpose of deploying them against Israel and ultimately the USA.

JCPOA was explicit approval by all the signatories for Iran to maintain, subject to monitoring that ensured they didn't actually enrich to weapons grade while the deal was in force, a nuclear programme that would get them to a place where a c. 2 year breakout was possible (i.e. working centrifuges and a large stockpile of reactor-grade uranium). Iran was complying with their obligations, and the monitoring ended and the breakout process began because Trump tore up the deal in his first term. You don't need to think that anyone was giving Iran tacit approval to nuke Israel for the argument you are making here to stand up, and none of the JCPOA signatories could have given Iran meaningful tacit approval to nuke Israel given Israel's own nuclear deterrent.

Why did a bunch of powerful countries give Iran approval to maintain a dual-use nuclear programme? Because a global coalition was required to contain Iran via sanctions, and it wasn't in the interests of Russia or China to do so (and most Westerners who are not aligned with the US Deep State were sceptical as well, including European elites and Obama's foreign policy team, because Iran was on our side against Al-Quaeda and ISIS at the time).

Its like blaming the SWAT team when a highjacker intentionally kills a hostage during the raid.

America is not the SWAT. There is no SWAT. It's like blaming a rival terrorist group who thought they can take out the hijacker's leader, and have him replaced with their guy.

or even more derangedly, blames the USA.

would this be happening had Trump not attacked Iran in the first place ?

In a directly causal way, this is true. Iran realized it could do this thing only because they were so desperate.

In the real world, Iran could always do this thing. Ever since the Euros basically sanctioned it we have seen it proliferate through the mid east. Imagine if Israel shuts down Suez Canal traffic after a Gazan Hamas attack. Will the French blame Hamas then? You and I both know that is silly.

We had hundreds of years of countries enforcing maritime norms abandoned because Euros are wimps now.

Two ships sink near Hormuz after being hit by projectiles amid surge in attacks

Slightly misleading headline: one of the ships sank due to damage sustained in a September 23 strike (so unconnected to the recent surge, except that it maybhave hindered damage control/salvage efforts but I've seen no claims of such), the other from recent damage that Iran claims was a mine rather than a projectile.

So actually as a headline it seems to be very factually inaccurate, but directionally true.

Also they were container ships, likely very small ones going by the pictures. The unsaid implication is that they were tankers.

Of the ships that sank this week, one was a 39k dwt. container ship (~3k TEU), the other a 170k dwt. bulker. So yeah, neither was a tanker, but the 170k bulker is a pretty big ship -- too big for either Suez or Panama, I believe

It took me a bit to realize you weren't measuring capacity in pennyweights. That would make 170k dwt. about 600 lbs., so a small boat.

Now I know.

There's a ton of fog of war but I believe there are no mines and iran is just lying about the mines for some incomprehensible reason. I suspect Iran thinks the idea of missiles, drones AND mines is scarier than just missiles and drones.

There is only one single documented instance of a mine actually existing, it was announced by the ukmto in the mou period. You'd think that if there were actually mines, there would be at least a microscopic scrap of har evidence or osint of mines existing or demining activities actually happening.

Naval mines are like terrestrial mines, they are used for temporary area denial. There aren’t that many mine strikes because most ships are steering clear of the mined areas, which are well known. Ships can avoid the minefields easily, but that funnels them into areas where they are vulnerable to short range drones and coastal defenses. The ship last week was crewed by idiots who decided to just risk running through a mined area.

It's kinda sad there aren't mines considering how easy it would be for a semi-functional country to make them.

I assume Iran has some mines in the back, but the countermeasures are good enough that they're not worth using.

It's just bizarre behaviour from Trump too. He was already struggling with legislation, the SAVE Act is still not passed. That's critical electoral engineering to help prevent another Democratic admin sending him straight to prison the moment he leaves office (or before). The threat of lawfare really ought to be front and centre in his mind, given his experience since 2020.

What did Bibi have on him to prompt such an error? He should've had no illusions that starting a Middle East War would be short, cheap or popular. He campaigned on not starting any more wars. Higher fuel prices caused the Biden administration serious harm, why repeat the experiment? He was gullible in the extreme or actively compromised.

On twitter, I read reasonable arguments from Trump supporters saying that the war doesn't really matter and domestic concerns (getting rid of DEI and illegals) are paramount. The Democrats would struggle to make anything better on the battlefield but would likely make things worse for Trump supporters, sure.

Far be it for me as a foreigner to tell Americans how or why they should vote. But if the Trump base is so loyal that they can be taken for granted, there is nothing to stop the neocons playing Trump like a cheap electronic piano. He can count on his base's support no matter what idiocy he does but the neocons demand wars. The dynamics of the situation are bad even if loyalty is the Nash Equilibria. It's like a repeated prisoner's dilemma where the other guy defects but the payoffs are worse for you if you defect back. Are you supposed to just take it? Or alter the situation?

And the Trump base being loyal does not in itself guarantee success. To win elections Trump needs to persuade moderately apolitical people on the margins either way.

Starting a war isn't going to make it any easier to get rid of illegals or DEI, it takes away political capital that could be deployed elsewhere. War is not the price of deportations or slowly, barely winding back DEI a ratchet. War is a major distraction and a detractor against these domestic efforts. It should've been strongly lobbied against during the lead up period to the attack where aircraft were flown in but while the train wreck was still avoidable people seemed to think 'maybe it'll be fine, Venezuela went well'. They could've railed against the war up till the last minute when Trump was undecided. I don't remember any big names on the right doing that.

There are some tragic quotes from Lindsay Graham:

https://x.com/zarathustra5150/status/2103316151011074523

When I asked Graham about his keys to manipulating Trump, he was remarkably transparent about some of his go-to formulas. I was struck by how, in Graham's telling, Trump was a big, fat mark. "lf you flatter him all the time, he'll lose respect for you," Graham told me of the president. If he had a goal of getting Trump to do something, especially if it involved foreign affairs, Graham would just tell the president that his then- predecessor, Barack Obama, would do something that was 180 degrees different. This method "can be very effective," Graham told me. "Obama drives him nuts."

Trump is not smart enough to be a good President. Charismatic enough to get elected and manipulate the media, sure. But actually running a country requires different qualities. It's an enormously demanding job that would exhaust a clever man at the peak of his powers.

Like a good bit of Trump era policy, the SAVE is intentionally bad and over the top so it can't actually be passed. Even Republican senators don't actually want to pass it for very fixable reasons, but they won't be fixed because it's not designed to succeed from the ground up.

The main thing being that everyone knows requiring passports and birth certificates as the main ID fucks over republicans (who are more rural and poor of a voterbase) than it would Democrats..

A young voter registering for the first time may not have a passport. A married woman whose legal name no longer matches her birth certificate may need to produce additional documentation. A rural voter may have to travel a long distance to an election office. A low-income worker may struggle to take time off during business hours. A service member stationed away from home may face barriers that civilians never encounter. A citizen who has voted for decades may suddenly need to produce paperwork simply because they moved, changed names, or updated their registration.

Murkowski is just the biggest example of a Republican senator who would be fucked if rurals couldn't vote as easily because of how extreme the ruralness of Alaska is. Every single issue with the SAVE act is amplified there.

A citizen who has voted for decades may suddenly need to produce paperwork simply because they moved, changed names, or updated their registration.

isn't this already supposed to be true, it's just that many states have completely given up elections actually being run properly?

Yes, but on the other hand, making it easier means opening up security holes that will be exploited. If I just take a woman’s word for that her name had changed, then obviously, people can use that to register multiple times, or register when they should not be allowed to. Allowing people to register in locations that are not set up as voter registration sites, means that potentially people slip by because the person working the counter doesn’t do due diligence. Online registration is absolutely easy to commit fraud with because if I have your name, a picture of a driver’s license issued to you, and your DOB and SSN, I am you to most online registration systems. That’s why identity theft is so common. It relies on the obscurity of data in a world where data is easy to come by. And without a physical appearance by the person, Theres zero chance of noting that the picture on the photo ID is of a white male, and the person in front of me is black. Online, doesn’t matter, heck if im good with VPNs, I don’t even need to be in the country to become you to most online systems.

I think the difficulties created by the requirements of securing the registration system can be solved by simply expanding infrastructure in a controlled and secure way. Opening a new registration center is probably not nearly as costly as it’s made out to be. Johnny Brockscan set up hundreds of Halloween stores in October every year. Having the government rent out an empty retail space for two months in rural areas is probably not that hard.

Clarity Act not passed either. Trump and the GOP overall has never been that good or determined at getting legislation through unless it's minor stuff or tax cuts. This is why the dems win long term because they actually put the work in changing institutions, which far outlast executive orders or strong words.

The SAVE Act's provisions would have hit Republican voters harder than Democrats in pursuit of a solution to a nearly non-existent problem and the Republican congressmen knew that, which is why it didn't pass.

Then why haven't Democrats passed Voter ID?

Voter ID and the SAVE Act aren't the same thing.

Then why didn't they support the SAVE Act if it was such an own goal? This one doesn't pass the smell test.

I think both Republicans and Democrats have a weak sense that there's a lot of cheating that goes on in the big blue cities and that clamping down would probably help Republicans.

Just because something hurts the other side's supporters more doesn't mean that it doesn't hurt your own supporters, and just because Republicans have lost all pretense that they aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage doesn't mean Democrats are willing to do the same.

and just because Republicans have lost all pretense that they aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage doesn't mean Democrats are willing to do the same.

Are you willing to actually defend the view that the Democrats aren't hacks willing to do anything for partisan advantage? It seems pretty trivial to argue that they are.

Both parties have their moments, but this is an issue where the Democrats aren't going to be as nakedly exploitative as the Republicans.

The Democrats have repeatedly demonstrated that they are not willing to risk being called racist by their own supporters in order to secure a partisan advantage. This is sufficient to explain their opposition to the SAVE Act or other dumb Republican voter-suppression proposals.

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The dynamics of the situation are bad even if loyalty is the Nash Equilibria. It's like a repeated prisoner's dilemma where the other guy defects but the payoffs are worse for you if you defect back.

That's the payoff matrix of Chicken, not Prisoner's Dilemma.

I was thinking more of an asymmetrical game where you can defect back and hurt the other guy but get hurt more yourself. Chicken is symmetrical.

PD payoffs for one player/Chicken payoffs for the other, according to a table I found, is known as Called Bluff.

Just fyi, since you say you're not in the country and thus not irradiated as much by our media, the SAVE act is long dead. Enough Republicans in safe seat sinecures decided it wasn't worth upsetting the apple cart. Generally, you can safely assume that Congress intends to do nothing and there are no meaningful legislative agendas aside from "spend more money so we can raise more money".

He should've had no illusions that starting a Middle East War would be short, cheap or popular.

Why not? Venezuela went off perfectly and then he got rizzed hard by Bibi, Graham, et al

Wasn't Graham literally flying to Israel to be coached by Mossad as to how to best sell Trump on this? The entire weight of one of the world's greatest intelligence agencies was deployed to convince an 80 year old man of something.

Poor fucker never had a chance

I was gonna quote that second instance where Graham boasts about how he was helping Netanyahu persuade Trump, getting 'special intelligence' from Mossad but I thought my post was getting too long.

But Trump did have the CIA and NSA and military to advise him. He has agency and bears responsibility for ignoring their warnings and favouring Israeli 'intelligence'. US intelligence has been reporting for years that Iran was not actively seeking nuclear weapons. An indictment on the system, that key information doesn't make its way to decision-making circles. It's a little like how in the late Soviet Union, Gorbachev couldn't even get access to the real military budget and Politburo ministers did not understand inflation at a basic level.

CIA/NSA/State Dept/Shadowy Deep State Inc. have been vocally wanting to attack Iran for like half a century -- I find it highly implausible that Trump went to them and said "Bibi says we should bomb Iran", and the response was "Noooo" or even "one does not simply bomb Iran" rather than "hell yeah, warm up the fleet"!

There was skepticism about attacking Iran from the CIA, they came under lots of political pressure to take a more hawkish tone about Iran's nuclear capabilities:

https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/2007-Iran-Nuclear-Intentions.pdf

It was the same story in the later 2019 reports and everything up until the war itself, no imminent threat from Iranian nuclearization - but Trump and the hawks hated this intelligence. Tulsi Gabbard was also pressuring against the 2026 war. The military wasn't too keen either, Caine said the attack was risky:

https://www.adn.com/nation-world/2026/02/23/trumps-top-general-foresees-acute-risks-in-an-attack-on-iran/

And previous CENTCOM commanders had been against an attack as well, years prior, Gates warned against an attack. The general US deep state attitude is more like 'this is a very courageous decision, on your head be it' than genuine enthusiasm.

The hawks are more in the 'think tanks, FDD, political aides and Israeli officials' sort of genre.

It was the same story in the later 2019 reports

What reports are those? And what in the world makes you think that the Deep State is putting its true goals in reports on the internet? That seems like the very opposite of their MO, no?

Tulsi Gabbard was also pressuring against the 2026 war

Tulsi Gabbard is strongly against frivolous warmaking and diametrically opposed to the Deep State on most any matters that come to mind; it's kind of her whole deal! Trump was clearly not listening to Tulsi on this one.

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/33199-document-33-office-director-national-intelligence-worldwide-threat-assessment-us

The 2019 Worldwide Threat Assessment says this:

We continue to assess that Iran is not currently undertaking the key nuclear weapons-development activities we judge necessary to produce a nuclear device. However, Iranian officials have publicly threatened to reverse some of Iran’s Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)commitments—and resume nuclear activities that the JCPOA limits—if Iran does not gain the tangible trade and investment benefits it expected from the deal.

And its the same since then in later reports, with politicians. US intelligence said Iran was not racing towards a bomb. If they wanted a bomb, they'd just get one.

Iran wants optionality, to be able to quickly acquire nuclear bombs if they decide they want them.

If you want a more narratival version of what I'm saying, here's Amerikanets, he lists a bunch of sources to justify his point, the US military and intelligence forces have not been eager for this conflict: https://www.amerikanets.com/p/they-saw-it-coming

I don't think the Deep State wanted a war with Iran, they wanted to focus on China and Russia rather than get bogged down in the Middle East again. They were somewhat embarassed by the last politically motivated WMD story and it also really damaged the US position, they weren't keen to let the politicians bully them into making up false intelligence to justify a war again.

And what in the world makes you think that the Deep State is putting its true goals in reports on the internet? That seems like the very opposite of their MO, no?

No, and I'm not sure what could possibly make you say that. The deep state isn't about putting a smoke generator in a room, because smoke-filled room consoiracies are fun, it's just the unelected parts of the government coordinating enough to become their own faction. In our managerial system "here's a report written by experts (us) saying you should do exactly what we want you to do" is the textbook case of their MO.

This is another one of those lazy Trump myths that needs to be challenged. Trump ignored American intelligence and only listened to the Israelis? You were there in the Situation Room? What did the American intelligence reports claim? Did the Israelis say Trump should do a naval blockade?

An indictment on the system

Hard disagree. Obama or GWB or Clinton could have all gotten honest capability assessments from the military/intelligence community. So could Trump, if he wanted. I am not a fan of the CIA, but I do not think they would push a president they dislike into a bad war just to harm him domestically. I also do not think their median employee is a pink-haired lesbian with a gender studies degree.

While Obama and GWB have fired some high-ranking generals, under Trump 10% of the top brass was fired or sidelined. I surmise this is not conductive to an atmosphere of honest feedback. "Mr Hegseth, I think engaging Iran on this scale will not result in regime change, but drag the US into a long-winding and unpopular war" is unlikely to be received very well -- probably he would tell you to get your testosterone levels checked because you are lacking the Spartan warrior spirit or something.

Trump got the presidency twice because he is good at influencing public perception -- who cares if his claims are bullshit as long as the people believe them. Unfortunately for the US, neither the economy nor the military run entirely on vibes.

The system which really failed is not the US intelligence apparatus, but the electorate which decided to elect an egomaniac who believes he is better at everything than the long-serving domain experts.

Hard disagree. Obama or GWB or Clinton could have all gotten honest capability assessments from the military/intelligence community. So could Trump, if he wanted. I am not a fan of the CIA, but I do not think they would push a president they dislike into a bad war just to harm him domestically. I also do not think their median employee is a pink-haired lesbian with a gender studies degree.

This is where I think you are wrong. I don't think capability assessments are the issue here, its all about willpower assessments, which long time employees and generals appear to be the worst at.

There is no way to think there exists some "deep state" (for lack of a better word) general or civilian in the DOD circles would have told Trump that if Iran pirated French vessels in response to airstrikes the French would do nothing. Who would have been that guy? Such a person with such a low opinion of the French would have been driven out by the establishment years ago. They'd never make general while openly stating that NATO is a bunch of wimps who would rather just mail Iran nukes then lift a finger to stop them obtaining nukes.

While Obama and GWB have fired some high-ranking generals, under Trump 10% of the top brass was fired or sidelined. I surmise this is not conductive to an atmosphere of honest feedback. "Mr Hegseth, I think engaging Iran on this scale will not result in regime change, but drag the US into a long-winding and unpopular war" is unlikely to be received very well -- probably he would tell you to get your testosterone levels checked because you are lacking the Spartan warrior spirit or something.

I agree this feedback would be risky under trump and hegseth, but I just disagree that it is relevant. The Iran war is a military success despite having no real end date. In fact, if the question is the lack of end date, it is the lifelong employees that will be advocating against the best ways to bring about an end date, such as destroying power plants, Kharg Island, "bridge day" as it was once floated as an idea, etc.

And on the other side, its not like there was a lack of people telling Trump not to do the war, almost all reporting indicates that Vance was opposed to the war on the grounds it would be unpopular.

I was a little unclear there, I was sort of gesturing more at what you were saying about 'neither the economy nor the military run entirely on vibes.' Obviously it didn't come out that way.

I agree that there's a problem in that US decision-making circles include a bunch of flatterers, lightweights and foreign agents who can crowd out the sober analysts.

While Obama and GWB have fired some high-ranking generals, under Trump 10% of the top brass was fired or sidelined. I surmise this is not conductive to an atmosphere of honest feedback. "Mr Hegseth, I think engaging Iran on this scale will not result in regime change, but drag the US into a long-winding and unpopular war" is unlikely to be received very well -- probably he would tell you to get your testosterone levels checked because you are lacking the Spartan warrior spirit or something.

They already lied to Trump during his first term to keep doing shit they wanted to do in the Islamic world (Syria and Afghanistan). I sincerely believe the Afghanistan pullout was deliberately sabotaged to punish Biden for taking away their medal farm.

And the fundamental question that the Hegseth shakeups are attempting to address is "Are these generals good at war, or are they good at slide decks that brownnose the right people and don't rock the boat"? The core criticism is that for the last 20 years, the top levels of the military have, in fact, been running on vibes. Directly disagreeing with your boss is, in fact, high-T behavior.

believes he is better at everything than the long-serving domain experts.

Those “long-serving domain experts” got us Afghanistan and Iraq. Your premise that Trump firing generals is bad for war fighting falls apart when they are generals like Milley.

Obama or GWB or Clinton could have all gotten honest capability assessments from the military/intelligence community.

Clinton oversaw the blowback to the Tailhook Scandal which ultimately purged the military command structure far more severely than anything Trump has done so far.

This was the "October surprise" you predicted? More attacks on neutral shipping with no casualties? Spare me.

Why would Iran want casualties? The point is to punish the American voting public into voting against Republicans. A 50 cent increase in the price of gas and a dollar increase in the price of diesel hurt Trump more than thousands of dead Indian sailors.

The "October Surprise" is that the price of products Trump is desperately trying to tamp down are actually shooting up at the worst possible time electorally. Even before the "surprise" when said prices were gradually falling the GOP was still on track to lose Texas, now they're on track to lose even safer states like Kansas. These seats will remain occupied until 2032, giving future President AOC a generous buffer in the Senate to pass the "Send Death Squads After Republicans Act".

Fun fact: real average wages are actually net negative since the war began

now they're on track to lose even safer states like Kansas

It's worse than that. Polls show that Republicans might lose the Kansas Senate seat from 2020 as well.

Woke-tolerable pastors and seminary students is probably the democrats strategy going forward. Obama was noted for his sermon-like speeches. Atheism plus might be finally dead.

Maybe the real October Surprise was the friends we made along the way.

If the path to a good outcome is so narrow that a 50 cent price increase in gas will send the country into tyranny, then it was always going to be tyranny. We were always going to have President AOC and death squads. You weren't ever going to walk the narrow path. It was all just an illusion.

If it wasn't this it would be something else. You'd be dooming because Fat Tony said something mean about Puerto Ricans and now Trump is going to lose by 5. There's always something.

If Kansas goes red then you're right we're fucked. But I'll just say calm down and we'll see. I give people in real life a lot more credit than internet hysterics. Early voting is indicating that the blacks and youngs are staying home this time. Seems important.

Republicans are going to turn on him.

You've been sounding like a broken record repeating this talking point over and over. Trump got impeached twice and started a laughably incompetent coup, and he's still here. Surely this time he's going down.

Trump's influence will likely wane quickly after his term is over, as he's old as af and doesn't have any prospect of running for any other office. But you'd better get used to him being in the house because you have another 2 years of it.

Trump will remain the most powerful politician in America likely until the day he dies. You don’t literally need to be the one whose signature goes on an Executive Order to be the person where power resides. George Martin got this right. Joffrey sat on the thrown but the true power was Tywin. Whether it’s Little Rubio or Vance there power will be dwarfed by Trump and if it’s a Dem all eyes will still be on Trump though he will be less powerful in that scenario.

Why else would Dems still be talking about prosecuting Trump if his political power disappears when he’s not in the WH?

Joffrey sat on the thrown but the true power was Tywin.

Not really. The decision to behead Ned Stark was his, not Tywin's, and it had some wider geopolitical implications, to put it mildly. I really do not think the dynamic between Rubio or Vance and Trump would be like the one between Joffrey and Tywin. For one thing, Tywin was a brilliant schemer with decades of administrative experience, someone capable of keeping the kingdom running smoothly. Trump II feels more like "Joffrey has banished Tywin and made Littlefinger the leader of the privy council".

Sure, all the GOP positions are selected for loyalty to Trump personally, but there is no Blood Bond binding Senators to Trump, nor do House candidates have a tadpole inserted into their brain upon winning the primary (to my knowledge).

Unlike an absolutist kingdom, the US has a constitution and it gives the president a lot of formal powers. The default assumption is that the president is the most important politician in the US. At the end of the day, he or she decides who gets investigated by the DoJ, which bills get vetoed, what the policies of federal agencies are.

Trump's cronies might be Trump's, but they are also cronies. Some might be willing to lay down their live for him until the moment he dies, but most are probably loyal to him because at present, it pays to be loyal to him. When Trump leaves office, it will be common knowledge that he will never again hold public office, nor be in the position to repay favors much longer. That is not a great position to be in if you want to be the power behind the throne.

Basically, my assumption will be that he will go back to just being some guy with a twitter account full of bullshit.

Though a bit also depends on how he leaves office. If in two years he gets Vance or Rubio elected by a landslide, that will net him some informal influence -- a lot of congress candidates will owe him for endorsing them. On the other hand, if he manages to lose (as I imagine he will), future generations of Republicans are unlikely to cling to the MAGA platform.

The fact that he was elected twice is already weird enough. But a huge part of him winning a second term was due to unforced errors of his opponents. In six years, even the Democrats will be hard-pressed to find someone more senile than Trump to run against him

Trump II feels more like "Joffrey has banished Tywin and made Littlefinger the leader of the privy council".

This seems grossly unfair to Susie Wiles, whom I read as the straight man in this particular clown troupe.

Though if this is the game we are playing, the far more interesting question is "Which of the younger Trumps is Tyrion?"

I completely disagree with all of this. First Tywin is the one putting Joff on the throne. Killing Ned was a very short term impulse of formal powers. After that incident Tywin gave Tyrion power over Joffrey and charged with preventing Joffrey decision making.

Trump would have no formal powers. But he can still primary any Senator or House Rep. He can tank any Presidency approval with only a tweet.

You are doing dumb Dem shit saying it’s cronyism and loyalty. I back Trump because he’s fought for me. He’s the only one fighting to deport millions even if it’s too slow.

I will abandon Trump the day he’s no longer fighting for my best interests. That day is not today.

Trump will remain the most powerful politician in America likely until the day he dies.

No he won't. Neither did a guy you may have heard about for whom there were such expectations - he was called Ofama or Osama or something. Now pushed into complete irrelevance.

Trump is on the verge of going senile, can't really connect with his disgruntled base anymore and well - doesn't have many years in front of him anyway.

Presidents can't become gray cardinals. The nature of their job forces them to step on too many toes, to grate on too many nerves, to cultivate too much dislikes.

Lefty dreams that the long nightmare of Trump will vanish with term limits and senility. On Obama he largely followed the tradition of standing in the background after he was out of office. Trump is not going to do that. He will be in the White House weekly on giving speeches under a GOP administration.

We aren’t leaving. And honestly now we can’t leave.

The easiest way to lose a (culture) war is to lose touch with reality. Seems now it is my side's turn to learn it.

Trump is in the age in which decline is geometric not linear. His zingers in 2016 were hilarious, in 2020 meh and in 2024 degraded to what could only be classified as street brawl insults. In two years he will be even older. In his first term his rating was bad but stable, now is on stable declining trajectory.

He had only 4 tasks for his second administration - improve the standard of living of the working class, mass depurations, make legal hispanics feel at home, no new wars. This would have cemented 2026, 2028 and eventually 2030.

This war is existential. Win or die. That’s the reality.

I never agreed to making legal Hispanics feel at home. I believe in denaturalization for many. I never agreed to no wars but trust Trumps decision making. You are literally just making up your goals. My goals of course aren’t the entire movements goals so some compromise is ok.

Democracy is just a nice to have thing. Figuring out how to get rid of it if we need to has to be on the table.

It takes some real effort to create worse plan for winning existential war than Zelensky but you seem to have managed it.

A huge country taken by coup that will lack absolute legitimacy in the big cities, led by 80 year old with waning charisma, record low approval, no clear successor, or a figure that people like in that movement aside from said 80 year old, a military that is by no way sure will even follow orders or obey. On top of that you seem to really want to turn it into whites vs everyone else, when the police forces and the military itself is quite integrated. And unfortunately for you the US military is not made out of 2 million Animal Mothers that will do it for fun. In the country in which there are more legal guns than people and ammo is sold like pez dispensers.

Doctor Strange: (panting) I went forward in time... to view alternate futures. To see all the possible outcomes of the coming conflict. Peter Quill: How many did you see? Doctor Strange: Fourteen million, six hundred and five. Tony Stark: How many did we win? (Doctor Strange pauses for a long, heavy moment and looks intently at Tony) Doctor Strange: ...One.

In the current situation to move towards authoritarianism that exclude the latinos (people with european ancestry and culture) - you need total support from all the whites and blacks. Yes even the ones suffering from TDS. Unlike

Don't get me wrong - there is probably a way to pull it off. If you completely automate the nuclear arsenal, take control of it and SV really have AGI and said it is on your side and hacks and disrupts organizing ability and you hold the country hostage with domestic nuclear strikes and demonstrate you are not bluffing. But then what would prevent Dario or Sam to just take control of the nukes and remake USA in their image? And who are the competent people in Trump's administration that could organize it?

Trump is on the verge of going senile

This is what you say when you have nothing else. Trump clearly isn’t senile, he’s on TV every day giving rallies or answering questions. So he’s “on the verge”.

Trump will remain the most powerful politician in America likely until the day he dies.

Agree, even if you don't like trump, there is no evidence to suggest mental decline. he's the same now as he was in 2015: the same bombast , rhetoric, and rambling speech and wall-of-text posts . Someone with actual dementia would not be able to write those long, mostly grammatically correct posts so frequently.

he's the same now as he was in 2015

Let's not get carried away. He's obviously not demented, but he clearly had more energy and was quicker on his feet back then.

Is that going to matter? Trump cares primarily about himself, and maybe to an extent his family members. Does he give a shit about his various hangers-on, the Republican party, or even the US in general?

I would be very surprised if he even bothered to offer support for a Vance campaign, let alone anyone else. Maybe if it came with some form of bribe, but candidates can't offer much until they're elected. Perhaps one of his sons running would bring him out, but Trump loyalty wouldn't be enough to prevent them getting destroyed.

And that's putting aside the question of his increasing senility.

Trump cares primarily about himself, and maybe to an extent his family members.

Trump took a bullet for this country. If he only cared about himself he would have enjoyed retirement at the top of his field with billions of dollars in his bank account.

I would be very surprised if he even bothered to offer support for a Vance campaign

This seems like the easiest bet in the world. Trump campaigns for other people all the time. He is obviously going to support Vance, even if you believe in a selfish Trump, Vance is trivially his legacy, Vance is in Trump’s best interests.

Trump took a bullet for this country. If he only cared about himself he would have enjoyed retirement at the top of his field with billions of dollars in his bank account.

He has made more billions as a maximally corrupt second-term President than he did as a failed real estate developer or a successful reality TV star.

Up until 2024 it was an extremely negative investment. It was just as likely that Trump was going to go to jail. He used to say during rallies and debates that he could have stayed at home and not run for office, it’s what all his rich friends were doing. And that we need those powerful people to serve the country and they don’t want to because the political fallout is too great.

I don’t think a self-interested Trump theory hangs together. Especially after his 2012 foray into presidential politics it was obvious that running for office would vastly complicate Trump’s life. He did it, like him or not, out of a sense that he had a duty to run. And going through his interviews and statements since the 80s it’s clear he’d been thinking about it for a long, long time.

maybe he took a bullet because he also saw an opportunity to profit more by being president? These are not necesailty mutually exclusive.

Being in the public spotlight for Trump is like alcohol to me. He’s addicted to it. So in his self-interest he could never retire because he would hate that life.

Trump will remain the most powerful politician in America likely until the day he dies.

This is good for Trump. It is questionable how good it is for Republicans.

Even if we grant that the GOP would not have won the elections that Trump did, a lot of the political capital and momentum of the movement post-2024 win has been bled off on Trump-specific nonsense like his potential connections to Epstein and now this massively unpopular war.

Why else would Dems still be talking about prosecuting Trump if his political power disappears when he’s not in the WH?

Because they believe he tried to subvert democracy, and voters cannot be trusted to punish that.

I see the GOP as continuing Trumpism, as clearly it is winning formula as shown in 2024 and 2016.

his potential connections to Epstein

There are no “potential” Trump connections to Epstein. Trump and Epstein traveled in the same Miami party circuit until Epstein hit on a Trump employee and Trump had him banned from Mar-a-Lago. A few years later Trump provided evidence to the investigation that put Epstein in jail the first time. The current Trump administration has released a lot of records and there is no basis for assuming anything else. This is just a lazy smear campaign.

I like Trump. Mostly like the war. The I think it’s a good thing. This basically comes down to whether you are maga or your a I don’t like the Dems GOP. He retains power because a lot of people like him.

I own a Tesla. What do I care about fuel prices. And honestly don’t understand why any other car company exists at this point because they are inferior products.

Fuel prices make everything more expensive. You pay your share at the grocery store.

yeah his approval ratting is 33%, which is higher than zero. Nominally, there are a lot of people who do like him. It also helps that the dems run the worst possible candidates.

33% is basically as high as you can get now in American politics. We don’t have a uniform culture anymore but a fractured culture so the days of high approval rating are over. Early in a new term people get like 50%, but it seems apparent now that everyone’s going to go down to 30’s once people have things to blame on them.

We aren’t an 85% white Christian nation anymore that you can maintain high favorability doing what that uniculture wants.

33% is basically as high as you can get now in American politics.

Are you saying America was a different country the day before Trump launched the latest installment of ZOG vs Iran Nth: the oil-fired Boogaloo? Because his approval rating was higher back then.

It's actually going to get worse because about a month from now, for the first time since 2015, Trump's time in the spotlight will begin to wane. Come spring, when presidential hopefuls start throwing their hats in the ring, that's where all the media focus will be. By 2000, 2008, and 2016 respectively, everyone pretty much forgot that Clinton, Bush, and Obama were still president, and everything they did was framed in terms of how the candidates would respond. Trump is not cut out to be in this position, and he'll do everything he can to demonstrate that he is still relevant.

Trump was doing great until he decided to simp for Israel and attack Iran. The next Republican candidate could just keep Trump's playbook while doing away with the retarded stuff (Zionism, tariffs).

You could argue just as much that the US foreign policy establishment was already primed for this, independent of Trump’s administration. Had October 7th and the proceeding events happened under Kamala’s watch, for all we know we’d still be in the exact same situation today (or worse). We’ll never know though.

Looking at it from an institutional POV rather than the personal whims of the current president, the war with Iran follows the exact same script as every other war we fumble our way into and lose our way out of:

  1. Create a “problem” by arming or provoking a group in another country to adopt a violent stance.

  2. Stir up a reaction among the public by spreading disinformation or demonizing the government.

  3. Propose a “solution” to the problem that involves military intervention or overthrowing some group or government to put the people you want in power.

This isn’t a “Trump” phenomenon exclusively. Even after more than a quarter of a century of wars, the west still doesn’t understand shit about how the Middle East works. That’s why back in 2019, Ali Khamenei gave a speech in Baghdad where he said, “Praise be to God who’s given us such foolish enemies.”

And just because there’s “opposition” in Iran that would like to see change (as there is in every country), that doesn’t mean they think an outside force should overthrow the government. That’s why in places like Syria, protests had to be instigated from the outside, via social media; and in Iran, the US setup an entire network of servers and app’s to facilitate the mobilization of dissent in the country (that’s what the smuggling in of thousands of Starlink terminals was about).

The whole point of the Starlink system (which was reputed to be impossible to jam) was to create this ‘parallel Internet’ that would evade the surveillance of the IRGC. What Starlink essentially does differently than other satellite systems (which are geostationary systems in high orbit) is use a large amount of satellites that move rapidly in low orbit with equally rapid changes in frequency. And so the “thousands of terminals” then formed these arrayed beams that effectively “track” the satellites. So the system goes in and scans the sky with a terminal, locks onto a satellite rising in the west and follows it until it sets in the east; and then repositions itself to pick up the next one.

The reason why the network went down though, was because its claims were false. The signals did end up getting jammed due to jammers that were synchronized across the entire landmass of Iran. They adopted a strategy the Chinese actually came up with that was developed in anticipation of an invasion of Taiwan: synchronize jammers across the ku-band frequency to saturate the airwaves with a stronger signal, blocking communication between terminals and satellites.

Trump has a Jewish daughter. He's also used attacks on Jews as a hook for going up against campus woke. I think he's quite serious about it.

Sure, that person is J.D. Vance. But the problem is how does he get the retards motivated to vote? Trump is a uniquely talented politician because he can speak to regular people the way that someone like Vance or Buttigieg cannot.

It does feel existential because if Democrats get a trifecta in 2028, odds are high they will establish a permanent one party state.

It does feel existential because if Democrats get a trifecta in 2028, odds are high they will establish a permanent one party state.

No they are not. What an absurd claim.

It is not an absurd claim at all, in fact it's very likely to happen. But I need to explain what I mean.

I don't mean that Kamala Harris is going to abolish the republic and cancel elections. That would be absurd indeed. The odds are zero, or near to it.

Instead, a Democrat trifecta will pack the Supreme Court, abolish the filibuster, amnesty most illegal immigrants, and open the borders. None of this is at odds with statements that Kamala Harris and other top democrats have made. In fact, just yesterday Kamala reaffirmed her commitment to packing the Supreme Court.

Notably, none of this stuff is unconstitutional. It is eminently doable.

There will still be elections, but with all the new voters, the Democrats will have a lock on federal power for decades to come. Changing the rules for how elections work under the guise of fairness will also ensure a favorable result. For example, under the Voting Rights Act, states in the south were gerrymandered to give blacks special districts. Constitutional? Not really. But well within possibility and precedent. An enlarged Supreme Court with 4 new Kentanji Brown-Jackson level partisans will give official legal blessings to other similar efforts.

People think the two party system is a stable equilibrium. It is. But one party rule is even more stable. This is exactly what has happened in California. Republicans can still exercise some power in local areas, but they have been nearly entirely sidelined as a small Democrat majority ballooned into a supermajority through demographic change, left-wing justices overruling prop 187, and patronage networks.

So yes, if Democrats win the trifecta (with a little wiggle room for future Fettermans and Sinemas) I trust that they will do the things they have promised to do and fundamentally change the republic. As a result of these changes, it will become a one party state. There will still be Republican governors in many states. No one is getting sent to camps. But the only way to exercise power on the federal level will be through the Democratic Party. White people will face explicit racial discrimination worse than 2020. The type of grift which currently exists in heavily Democratic areas will extend to the federal level. Taxes will go up. Services will decline. We'll slowly slouch towards South Africa. And you'll be cancelled for noticing.

In other words, believe people when they tell you what they want to do.

pack the Supreme Court

I think this will not happen, I suspect they will go with what is seen as the compromise position in the democratic camp of establishing term limits such that each president gets to appoint a judge. Even if it did happen control of the supreme court does not end democract or cement single party rule.

abolish the filibuster

This has been threatened every election and honestly I wish it would just happen finally. The filibuster only exists as an excuse for congress to not do their job because it's easier to tell voters that they aren't going to do the retarded things the voters want because of the filibuster than because the ideas are retarded and no one in congress actually wants to do them. Importantly the filibuster is not a ward against single part rule.

amnesty most illegal immigrants

At most they'd give the Dreamers a pathway to citizenship and it would cost them a tremendous amount of their political capital. They are not going to open the border because it would be extremely unpopular, even among Hispanics. Who by the way are not a solidly Democratic voting base so long as you don't send under trained goons into their neighborhoods and constantly say weird white nationalist shit, you even associate with some weird blood and soil whignat adjacent people and do pretty well with them as evidenced by 2024.

People think the two party system is a stable equilibrium. It is. But one party rule is even more stable. This is exactly what has happened in California. Republicans can still exercise some power in local areas, but they have been nearly entirely sidelined as a small Democrat majority ballooned into a supermajority through demographic change, left-wing justices overruling prop 187, and patronage networks.

Two parties is stable because if one party is totally out of the game then the one party splits. This happens in the Primaries in very red and blue areas because the national brand is too much overcome at this point. One part states are only stable if you can actually on an ongoing basis suppress any opposition and Americans are just not the type of people who would ever allow that. People on both sides are frothing at the mouth about the mere hallucinated fantasy of it happening so that they can resist whether it's in pink vagina hats or camo.

We've had big blowout elections before, this wouldn't be our first, just our first in a while because of Trumps monumental unpopularity combined with a legion of sycophants that demand the party embarrasses themselves for his honor.

They are not going to open the border because it would be extremely unpopular, even among Hispanics.

They essentially did this just four years ago. There will be fig leaves about fake amnesty claims and naked lying and nevertheless tens of millions will come and be allowed to census and vote in blue states.

And this was very unpopular, between it and the post covid inflation hitting Trump's second term may have been over determined but disorder at the border hugely hurt the democrats. It's not reasonable to think doing something incredibly unpopular is going to give them some kind of one party state, it's absurd.

Is it? We have an existance proof that they're willing to do hugely unpopular things. Blue states like California and NJ explicitly have laws to get illegal immigrants ID, and then laws that auto-enroll people with ID to vote. 20 million people in the right states could swipe 30 congressional seats and the resulting electoral votes.

I think this will not happen, I suspect they will go with what is seen as the compromise position in the democratic camp of establishing term limits such that each president gets to appoint a judge.

While that would be reasonable, it's much harder to do without a constitutional amendment.

Who by the way are not a solidly Democratic voting base

Hispanics are still a solid Democrat base although Trump was able to draw an unusually high number. The trend would have to survive a non-Trump candidate. We'll see. But there's still a big difference between the Mexicans who've been here for a couple generations and the Guatemalans streaming across the border. The freshly arrived would vote 90-10 for the party giving them amnesty and welfare. One cannot simply elide the difference. It's huge.

Two parties is stable because if one party is totally out of the game then the one party splits.

This hasn't happened since ever so I'd chalk that up to theory. More likely we just go the route of California. A one party equilibrium is extremely hard to break for the simple reason that the only path to power and patronage is through the one party. You see this in deep blue states where they can't find anyone decent to run for governor because why would they? Heck, you see it in Florida where obvious Democrats run as Republicans because they have to.

so long as you don't send under trained goons into their neighborhoods and constantly say weird white nationalist shit

People on both sides are frothing at the mouth about the mere hallucinated fantasy of it happening so that they can resist whether it's in pink vagina hats or camo. We've had big blowout elections before, this wouldn't be our first, just our first in a while because of Trumps monumental unpopularity combined with a legion of sycophants that demand the party embarrasses themselves for his honor.

This is some pretty strong language. I'm starting to get the feeling that this is turning into a "it will never happen but when it does the Nazis deserve it." Being the voice of sober reasoning isn't so easy when deep feelings of anger and betrayal are evolved. And it's exactly this attitude that worries me. The blue team really, really, hates the red team. (Yes, much more than the inverse, there is data). Furthermore the left believes that hate is righteous, which makes it much more dangerous. We've seen some places go extremely far left as a result. Virginia and Massachusetts legalizing abortions of convenience up until the moment of birth was something that greatly saddened me. I can see how compassion can go out the window when politics gets too heated, and opposition just gets steamrolled.

While that would be reasonable, it's much harder to do without a constitutional amendment.

My prediction is that this is something that is talked about during the dem primaries because what's popular in dem primaries right now is talking up how you're going to fight the republicans but gets quietly dropped in the general because it's obviously an extreme measure that invites tit for tat retaliation. In any case having a majority on the supreme court doesn't give you a one party state or else you wouldn't be worried about a dem victory because we'd already be living in Trump's one party state.

This hasn't happened since... ever

The Whiggs in the 1850s split, many in the north went on to form the early republican party. The machinery of the US electroal systems naturally creates two parties. I think it's unlikely that the Republican party actually dies here but there is already a pretty obvious rift in the Democratic party between the DSA/Sanders wing and the more moderate/abundance wing. If the Republican party were ablated off the face of the earth it opens a vacuum on the right with a free ~40% of the country you get just by not being the more left of the two factions. One party states have to be actively maintained through suppression, they aren't natural because there are always issues that people divide.

I'm starting to get the feeling that this is turning into a "it will never happen but when it does the Nazis deserve it."

I have a long posting history here man, I do not think it would be good to have a one part state. I think we all need to be de-escalating and claiming that your opponents are going to establish a one party state to persecute your people is the opposite of de-escalation.

Being the voice of sober reasoning isn't so easy when deep feelings of anger and betrayal are evolved. And it's exactly this attitude that worries me. The blue team really, really, hates the red team. (Yes, much more than the inverse, there is data). Furthermore the left believes that hate is righteous, which makes it much more dangerous. We've seen some places go extremely far left as a result.

This is projection. What exactly do you think you're doing when you claim the next election is existential? You don't see how you're hyping up radicalism? You're not being the voice of reason, you're claiming that the sky is going to fall if your opponents win a democratic election. It's irresponsible and it's wrong. I agree this whole dynamic empowers the far left, but you're an active participant in it.

It does feel existential because if Democrats get a trifecta in 2028, odds are high they will establish a permanent one party state.

No they won't. Zealous partisans lost in the weeds always say this about American politicians they don't like and it never happens. The democrats haven't even chosen a nominee yet and you already think whoever is nominated will overthrow the republic and constitution? This is just the mirror image of the redditors who are convinced Trump will declare himself president for life.

@aqouta too, why not.

Immigration amnesty, multiple million new voters who vote ~70% democrat. Game over. This has been a publicly stated policy objective of the Democratic party for at least two decades.

Broad-spectrum debanking and lawfare against political organization by Red Tribe, systematically crush all remaining Red Tribe institutions, "Disinformation controls" shut down conservative communication, common-knowledge production and grassroots organization. Game Over. This has been a publicly-stated policy objective for at least a decade, and was actively being implemented a few short years ago.

The democrats haven't even chosen a nominee yet and you already think whoever is nominated will overthrow the republic and constitution?

No plausible democratic nominee would oppose either of the above plans. They're all on record enthusiastically supporting these policies, and other similar policies with a similar terminus.

Further, the Game Over isn't gated by Blue Tribe setting up camps or whatever. The Game Over hits when when a sufficient number of Americans lose faith in the political process to begin earnestly pursuing alternatives that the reaction becomes self-sustaining. We've been watching norms collapse and institutions blow out for well over a decade; at some point, there aren't enough remaining to hold what's left of America together; we're an accretion that hasn't been hit hard enough yet to scatter.

This is a conversation we can have in advance. You can, in this moment, extrapolate out potential events and ask yourself how you expect your tribe to react, how you expect the other tribe to react, what basis this model is based on, how it plays out given previous history. You can do this in a way where it delivers you a comforting story about everything working out, and even that is useful: just ask yourself what the discontinuity is to get us from our current trajectory to the one you want to believe in.

This just reads like all the woke whinging about how the republicans were going to strip women of the rights to vote and establish a fascist dictatorship. No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking. Amnesty isn't popular(dreamers is semi-but they'd be giving up a lot of political capital to get it because dems weakest issue in polling is immigration) and wouldn't ensure them permanent majorities because unless you start stupid wars in the middle east or send goons into Hispanic communities they're a pretty conservative constituency and would happily vote for a red tribe without the MAGA tendencies. The first amendment still rules in this land and enjoys broad support, the banning of tik tok didn't even stick and it's a foreign agitprop tool.

The Game Over hits when when a sufficient number of Americans lose faith in the political process to begin earnestly pursuing alternatives that the reaction becomes self-sustaining.

This is you, this is your project, you are preaching this message on this site most days. I'm sure there is a shadow FC in DSA forums with pink hair and strange pronouns making the mirror case. But it's not popular, people don't like this shit. The voters swing back and forth violently trying to escape people like you and your wokkelganger.

just ask yourself what the discontinuity is to get us from our current trajectory to the one you want to believe in.

Our trajectory, god willing, is that the democrats win the mid terms convincingly, Trump proves to be a spent force, the current coalition collapses and a conservatism that can appeal to moderates is reborn from it's ashes, glad to no longer need to mouth Trumps retarded lies in order to stay in the good graces of his sycophants. Then in 2028 we'll see how things settle out. The more moderate wing of the democratic party seems to have weathered the DSA insurgency pretty well, the DSA backed candidates are under performing their moderate counterparts and even they are trying to create separation from the more embarrassing leftwing wing media figures.

No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking.

For a thing that no one is in favor of, it's weird how it already happened with all nine largest US banks: https://www.occ.gov/news-issuances/news-releases/2026/nr-occ-2026-90.html

In reality, debanking had been a popular tool for a while before the Left got so bold it decided to deploy it at present scale. It had been used against legal but "disfavored" industries for years. Look up Operation Choke Point for example. It had been going on for a long time, except that, as always, the boundaries eroded further and further until it arrived to a point where to get debanked, you just need to be publicly known to be a thought criminal.

No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking

do we forget 2020 so quickly, of what the teeming masses will suddenly support under the right conditions

The first amendment still rules in this land and enjoys broad support

lol sure sure tell that to cloudflare and mastercard.

even they are trying to create separation from the more embarrassing leftwing wing media figures.

since when? isn't piker still getting fawning puff coverage?

they're a pretty conservative constituency and would happily vote for a red tribe without the MAGA tendencies

In surveys like the ACS, Hispanics as a broad group (there is considerable internal diversity, although it's generally dwarfed by the distance to the broad non-Hispanic white group) hold lots of positions that rhyme with or are basically the same as those held by typical Red Tribe members, especially as far as interpersonal & religious morality is concerned, but on any question touching on matters of state and power they diverge completely. Hispanics by and large want a potent state that taxes heavily and actively redistributes, restricts free speech for social harmony and spends lots of money on disadvantaged minorities, at least as far as their answers in the ACS go (this is also independent of party affiliation, Cubans vote Republican, yet their stated preferences are almost indistinguishable from heavily Democrat Puerto Ricans or Mexicans). In other words they completely lack the libertarian, don't-tread-on-me attitude that pervades the current Red Tribe. American conservatism as thought of by its mostly white practitioners and defenders is fairly alien to Hispanics (and non-whites in general, e.g. Asians fit the economic side a bit better but mostly lack the Christian and classical liberal aspects in their expressed world views).

If MAGA or the Republicans absorb more Hispanic voters, it's IMO much more likely that the policy platform will change significantly than that there will be a Jeffersonian republic with Spanish surnames.

In other words they completely lack the libertarian, don't-tread-on-me attitude that pervades the current Red Tribe. American conservatism as thought of by its mostly white practitioners

Is this a majority of Republicans? It certainly describes a faction of Republicans and likely the majority in places like Nevada and Wyoming. But the religious right when it was ascendant certainly didn't have those attitudes.

This just reads like all the woke whinging about how the republicans were going to strip women of the rights to vote and establish a fascist dictatorship.

In other words the sort of thing that a large enough segment of a tribe believes utterly that it sets long-term political outcomes? Or are you going to argue that the beliefs you describe are rare among blues, or have not significantly shaped Blue politics over the last decade-and-change?

No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking.

As @gattsuru notes, enough people have been in favor of it that it has already happened at considerable scale.

Amnesty isn't popular(dreamers is semi-but they'd be giving up a lot of political capital to get it because dems weakest issue in polling is immigration)

...Polling the current voting pool, right? What do the numbers look like for the post-amnesty voting pool?

and wouldn't ensure them permanent majorities because unless you start stupid wars in the middle east or send goons into Hispanic communities they're a pretty conservative constituency and would happily vote for a red tribe without the MAGA tendencies.

I'm MAGA. I'm not interested in a "Red Tribe" without the MAGA tendencies. Those are my tendencies. I intend to keep them, and to coordinate meanness against anyone who would deny them to me. I'm not interested in asking Blues permission to live in pursuit of my values. Why would I be?

We can observe the voting pattern of immigrants who can legally vote, and we can poll the ones who can't legally vote currently. My understanding is that they lean overwhelmingly democrat/progressive/blue. "you can always change your policies to appeal to the new voters who prefer to vote for policies like ours" does not seem to me to fit the definition of a compromise; Red Tribe has already compromised as much and possibly significantly more than it can afford to, to the point that we are now employing lifelong democrats as our champions.

But in the end, arguing over whether the Dems might perform an amnesty and whether they might secure political closure thereby seems less interesting to me than the question of what the response should be should these events transpire. What should Red Tribe do, in your opinion, if the Democrats were to win an election, legalize all the immigrants, and then win the next election in a landslide? What is the prudent, reasonable, responsible action we should coordinate behind?

Suppose further that Elections Have Consequences, and Blue Tribe takes this victory and begins doing very Blue things to Reds nation-wide, in ways that we consider profoundly harmful and unjust? What is the peaceful, orderly, political solution in that eventuality, unlikely as you consider it to be?

The first amendment still rules in this land and enjoys broad support, the banning of tik tok didn't even stick and it's a foreign agitprop tool.

I disagree. The First Amendment cannot protect me in any meaningful way from the coordinated meanness of Blues. The last decade has provided numerous and pointed examples as to why and how this is so. I do not care about your explanations that the coordinated ruin of my life for daring to speak my mind publicly actually isn't what the First Amendment was designed to prevent, so it's totally okay. I care that I cannot speak freely without disastrous consequences, that Blue Tribe has expended vast resources to make things this way, and that neither you nor any other moderate or blue, individually or collectively, has ever or will ever do anything to change that.

This is you, this is your project, you are preaching this message on this site most days.

My project is to point out that faith in the American sociopolitical system is disastrously misplaced. I am not the person who made that true. I merely insist on pointing out that it is true, and what the obvious consequences of it being true are. Things that have happened have happened, even when them happening is highly incompatible with faith in our present system of governance. This was why it was actually very important to keep them from happening, and failing that, to suitably punish those responsible and set a hard precedent that they wouldn't be tolerated in the future. Sadly, this didn't happen, and it didn't happen enough times that it's not really arguable that it's ever going to happen in any meaningful way under Blue or even moderate rule.

The only pushback Woke ever had was coordinated through Trump or through MAGA. Blues cheered it on, moderates kept their heads down, Reds suffered what they must, far, far, far past the point where conscience should have spoken. You can argue if you like that Woke had a point, or wasn't really that big a deal, or was blown out of proportion. The things I have seen Blues do, I am not willing to tolerate. The toleration shown for these things by Blues, whether grassroots or general population or leadership or elites, I am likewise not willing to tolerate. To the extent that you and other blues or moderates are willing to tolerate these things, I think it is reasonable to point out why that stance is likely to be a bad idea long-term, for obvious reasons of basic human nature.

glad to no longer need to mouth Trumps retarded lies in order to stay in the good graces of his sycophants.

Specific, deliberate Blue lies sparked the BLM movement and killed eight thousand Black Americans in a couple years, and they'll absolutely do it again. Specific, deliberate Blue lies have destroyed our educational system, ruining the best opportunity millions of American children of all races (but particularly blacks) might have had at a better life trajectory, and they will absolutely keep right on doing it indefinitely. They will never stop telling these lies, or the many other similar lies that form the foundation of the Progressive project. They will never learn, they will never repent, they will just keep right on ruining everything they touch so long as their access to other people's resources are maintained. The Cornell Seven are one of the most recent examples; basic object permanence should have prevented the entire episode, but that is not a capability Blues as a social collective possess.

I understand that you and others here have strong negative views on Donald Trump and his supporters. I understand that you believe these opinions to be well-founded. I do not want to discourage you or others in any way from expressing them. What I do want you to understand is that my attitude toward Blue Tribe is, as best as I am able to determine, derived from a solid factual foundation. I will not do you the disservice of pretending as though your disgust with Trump or even MAGA is some sort of elaborate misunderstanding based on fictions and rumor. You might do me a similar courtesy. Politicians who do not appear to disgust you have talked about how seeing my children murdered would be a good thing, and people very much like you looked the other way, or cheered. Politicians who do not appear to disgust you have allowed masked men armed with loaded rifles to take over public spaces and shoot at people, while ordering the police to stand down, and people like you looked the other way, or cheered. And on, and on, and on, and on. These are things I know for a fact you will either allow or are, at best, utterly powerless to prevent. That knowledge has serious consequences.

As @gattsuru notes, enough people have been in favor of it that it has already happened at considerable scale.

I've addressed this in my response to him here

I'm MAGA. I'm not interested in a "Red Tribe" without the MAGA tendencies. Those are my tendencies. I intend to keep them, and to coordinate meanness against anyone who would deny them to me. I'm not interested in asking Blues permission to live in pursuit of my values. Why would I be?

You're welcome to keep them and in enclaves you can enforce them. But if you're unpopular then you're unpopular and in a democracy that means you don't get to run the show unless you become popular.

What should Red Tribe do, in your opinion, if the Democrats were to win an election, legalize all the immigrants, and then win the next election in a landslide? What is the prudent, reasonable, responsible action we should coordinate behind?

Become more popular, in the future don't use your political capital to do unpopular things like invading Iran, enacting retarded broad tariffs on our allies, threaten to invade our allies, spread election denial conspiracies leading to what at least is easy to sell as an insurrection and then pardon insurrectionists or hype up the Epstein hysteria and then conspicuously fail to release the files. I'm sorry but losing political power because your coalition did self destructive and unpopular shit is just democracy. I don't like that it's empowered DSA lunatics, I wish Trump had not done it but that's politics.

My project is to point out that faith in the American sociopolitical system is disastrously misplaced. I am not the person who made that true. I merely insist on pointing out that it is true, and what the obvious consequences of it being true are. Things that have happened have happened, even when them happening is highly incompatible with faith in our present system of governance.

If you don't believe in the political project of the united states then you should leave.

This was why it was actually very important to keep them from happening, and failing that, to suitably punish those responsible and set a hard precedent that they wouldn't be tolerated in the future.

Then you should be in agreement with the people who want to punish Trump as the guy who hijacked the anti-woke movement and steered it right in the dirt with his actions.

Specific, deliberate Blue lies sparked the BLM movement and killed eight thousand Black Americans in a couple years, and they'll absolutely do it again.

Backlash to BLM excesses was a factor in getting Trump a second bite at the apple. I'm trying to explain to you that the betrayal was from Trump. He sold you out to be unprecedentedly corrupt. Can you stop doing "but they're worse" in response to every criticism of Trump and the MAGA coalition? Yes, the far left is bad and has a terrible grip on the Democratic party but the far right is also bad and has a terrible grip on the Republican party, we're ping ponging back and forth because we're becoming powered almost entirely by negative polarization. You can't just point out that they suck, you have to suck less yourself too and this admin has been a total suck fest.

No, no one is in favor of broad spectrum debanking

Some one was in favor of executing pro-Trump public speakers, as a demonstrated fact. A swarm of people celebrated the Kirkivesry. People here, literally on this forum, told us at length about how conservatives made that bed and deserved to lie in it

And as a demonstrated fact, enough people were in favor of broad spectrum debanking (twice) -- and siccing the FBI on rando schoolmoms, and harassing kitchen table FLLs, and blocking issuance of -- that these policies happened in a clearly provable sense. Even in the times they faced internal pushback, they still pushed through. It's not some policy proposal you can wave away like some rando put it into a twitter post or wrote up a position paper; it's all been done.

No one polls on it, because the polls don't matter.

Amnesty isn't popular

"Nearly two-thirds of voters (64 percent) say they prefer giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status". I don't think that's real, in the same sense that the '90% of polled want universal gun background checks' didn't real for the polls that actually count. But I also note that undeniable evidence that policy caps out around 60% support in the Bluest of blue states, still hasn't stopped advocates from calling for it, and blue state politicians from doing it.

... wouldn't ensure them permanent majorities because unless you start stupid wars in the middle east or send goons into Hispanic communities they're a pretty conservative constituency and would happily vote for a red tribe without the MAGA tendencies.

This didn't work out that way during the Dubya era -- somehow, Trump scores better among hispanics -- and it's not even a coherent position when the progressive position stopped being about hispanics alone over a decade ago. "Will a Democratic politician send tens of thousands of refugees from a Wheel Of Third World disaster areas to a single specific town" stopped being a newsworthy unless a Republican said something mean enough about the refugees.

The first amendment still rules in this land and enjoys broad support, the banning of tik tok didn't even stick and it's a foreign agitprop tool.

What protected Douglass Mackey, the First Amendment, or Trump?

That's the sort of question that should make you throw up in your mouth a little, and then you look up the answer, and it gets worse. Same for questions like whether the Second Amendment, SCOTUS, or a politician is the line between California being able to spend two years before you can even apply for a permit. Or if you want a mixed case, look at B&L Productions, or the Defense Distributed cases, or the people suing the Gatalog, or how Mrs's Ames has been doing since her 'win' at the Supposedly Supreme Court Of The Land.

The more moderate wing of the democratic party seems to have weathered the DSA insurgency pretty well, the DSA backed candidates are under performing their moderate counterparts and even they are trying to create separation from the more embarrassing leftwing wing media figures.

So, when the 'moderate' wing of the Democratic party is calling for an amnesty, will you eat crow, here? Or is this the sort of claim that's only meaningful until it's tested?

EDIT: the good news is that the moderate wing, the decelerationists, and the self-described reasonable people, all get a vote, now. The bad news is Jay Jones won that vote.

Some one was in favor of executing pro-Trump public speakers, as a demonstrated fact. A swarm of people celebrated the Kirkivesry. People here, literally on this forum, told us at length about how conservatives made that bed and deserved to lie in it

What the fuck does this have to do with broad spectrum debanking? Yes, people on the internet mock Kirk, Floyd and an endless list of people that the opposing side finds tasteless precisely because the opposing side finds it tasteless. Welcome to the edgy internet.

And as a demonstrated fact, enough people were in favor of broad spectrum debanking

This story is incredible weak sauce. broad spectrum debanking is not when a handful of banks decided, without government coordination, to not work with companies that they believed had a "reputational risk". I believe this is bad and have long supported crypto because we shouldn't have choke points like this that can be lobbied by busy bodies but it's basic freedom of association to not make a bank work with people they find odious. That article is a great example of bounded distrust.

The title claims:

Top U.S. banks dropped customers over political and religious views, regulator says

Which is not supported by the text which claims:

found that the nine largest national banks it supervises had policies that swayed their decisions based on political, religious or business activities.

(well duh, you're absolutely supposed to sway decisions based on business activities.)

Which is not supported by the report which merely suggests that the banks could have been swayed by these factors because they on paper took reputational risk into account. Unless a bank didn't considered reputational risk at all then it would have flagged for this in the report. And I'm sorry, I wish it weren't the case, hence crypto, but yes it's reasonable for banks to consider reputational risk with their clients. Preventing this would require more, not less state interference in the banking industry.

(twice)

This is at least closer and unacceptable, but

  1. they were going after pay day loans, not trying to shut down their political adversaries
  2. in practice this was just sending subpoenas to a handful of banks and payment processors. The only actual public cases were 3 banks that did indeed seem to be heavily involved with payday loan fraudulent practices.
  3. It was the subject to hearings and ended because even with the targets being pretty despicable most people agree that the practice is bad.

siccing the FBI on rando schoolmoms

A memo that led to some pointless and fruitless investigations and zero on the ground effects. It could have been much worse though, it could have even been a bad as the Garland memo under Trump which was genuinely worse in every way.

"Nearly two-thirds of voters (64 percent) say they prefer giving most undocumented immigrants in the United States a pathway to legal status".

This is a bellweather poll that was essentially just a referendum on Trumps ham fisted ICE politics. If you position yourself as being intentionally cruel then voters often press the "I don't like this" button

What protected Douglass Mackey, the First Amendment, or Trump?

The filings for this case started under the Trump Admin. It didn't come down to the first Amendment because the law is about conspiring and intent, the method isn't relevant. What protected him is that they couldn't find that he conspired. If he had conspired with others to evaporate his parent's votes by pouring salt on the ground in the shape of a pentagram with some others online and thinking really hard about twilight sparkle's asshole(or whatever it is bronies do) then he'd have been guilty and it wouldn't have any implication on his right to access salt.

What the fuck does this have to do with broad spectrum debanking?

It says: there's a enough support for far more aggressive actions than debanking, and you don't need a lot of support for it to actually happen. Because Kirk's neck didn't Just Do That.

... broad spectrum debanking is not when a handful of banks decided, without government coordination, to not work with companies that they believed had a "reputational risk".

"Reputational risk" is not just some term that some banks invented and implemented on their own. It's the equivalent of a 900-pound gorilla looking over your shoulder and telling you to do what it wants.

(well duh, you're absolutely supposed to sway decisions based on business activities.)

... like "are these people making money", "will they pay us back", "would we be in compliance with the law", not "did they say a mean word about the President".

they were going after pay day loans, not trying to shut down their political adversaries

... and gun companies. Which, coincidentally, happened to be politically opposed to both the then- sitting President and a number of his high-profile claims. Because he wanted them to not exist.

Preventing this would require more, not less state interference in the banking industry.

We don't have an option for less state interference in the banking industry. Sorry. Would be nice if a serious one came up! Instead, the nutjob libertarian candidates can't even fake wanting it.

A memo that led to some pointless and fruitless investigations and zero on the ground effects. It could have been much worse though, it could have even been a bad as the Garland memo under Trump which was genuinely worse in every way.

I forget; is whataboutism good, or bad, today?

Beyond that, try again by pointing to part of a summary that was actually bad, not the ACLU motioning about how waahthiscouldbeawfulinsomevaguewaywecan'tspellout. Because the actual text, and the way the executive order has been carried out, hasn't turned out that way. The central case brought under it -- which the ACLU has also been panicking about -- had a man shoot a cop in the neck, and the man's co-conspirator's planned or were a part of throwing lit fireworks at officers.

There's some fun due process questions about how closely tied some of the planning needs to be for culpability in the violent attacks by a related party; I'm certainly open to more serious debate on that. But this isn't remotely similar to what happened under the Biden admin.

This is a bellweather poll that was essentially just a referendum on Trumps ham fisted ICE politics.

A November 2024 poll gives 38% (albeit obscured as 60% of 64%). Which, yes, is a lower number. It's also very unclear it's actually more real, with a 2015 poll giving 65%.

The filings for this case started under the Trump Admin.

The filings were not started until January 22nd, 2021. The investigation certainly started before then. If you want to claim the Trump administration has a iron grip on the behaviors and activities of the Department of Justice in the second half of 2020, more power to you, but I'd try an argument you can make with a straight face instead.

More comments

The decision to pause the war by Trump remains puzzling to me

What decision to pause the war? We bombed Iran and put them under blockade. We devastated their MIC and they have no response except drone-striking the occasional ship. Iran in fact has signaled willingness to go back to the MOU and Trump has said no.

If things go as they seem, we are about to witness the end of the age of Trump. If we get a Blue Tsunami -- and I believe we will -- Republicans are going to turn on him.

Walls closing in? Is this the beginning of the end? The beginning of the end for Donald Trump? The walls are finally closing in? The beginning of the end?

The problem, as always, is that the people who want to fight with Trump and replace Trump are worse than Trump. As far as the base is concerned. MAGA is not happy about the Iran war but they are not going to move toward pro-amnesty GOPE. The likeliest outcome, if Democrats win, is that Trump immediately launches a counter-offensive of new policies and Executive Orders while everyone else is predicting that he should have been dead already.

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