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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
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
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
Polling numbers and prediction markets also paint a pretty bleak forecast for the Republicans.
From Nate Silver:
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.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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?
As @gattsuru notes, enough people have been in favor of it that it has already happened at considerable scale.
...Polling the current voting pool, right? What do the numbers look like for the post-amnesty voting pool?
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?
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.
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.
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.
I've addressed this in my response to him here
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.
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.
If you don't believe in the political project of the united states then you should leave.
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.
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.
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