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Culture War Roundup for the week of July 10, 2023

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Yeah, imagine. We could have had Hillary instead, and the Ukraine war would have kicked off eight years earlier.

I'm not a Clinton fan, but I doubt she would have been bad enough to retroactively start a war two years before her election.

I think she'd have been far more agressige in prosecuting whatever we were doing in the Syrian civil war. One of her stump points was establishing a no fly zone there (which would have meant shooting down Russian aircraft at the time she said it).

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/oct/25/hillary-clinton-syria-no-fly-zones-russia-us-war

Yes, this - this was only and sufficient point given on Less Wrong (or other rationalist space, do not remember after such long time) as reason for supporting Trump.

From rationalist perspective, avoiding raising the probability of escalation all the way into Global Thermonuclear War even by few decimal points beats any bad things Trump ever did or was expected to do at the time.

The argument otherwise knows as "Pascal's mugging". Once we select an infinitely negative utility event, and proclaim certain action has a non-zero probability to prevent this event (no matter how low), there's no cost which we shouldn't pay for performing this action, because nothing beats Global Thermonuclear War. If this argument proves anything is the limits of naively "rationalist" approach where anything can be mathematically calculated from a set of assigned probabilities and utilities.

You found one of the five reasons I voted for him. it seemed obvious to me at the time that Hillary would have pushed NATO forces right up to the Russian border on Ukraine. She wanted Gaddafi’s, al-Assad’s, and Putin’s skulls on her wall, figuratively.

One of the “scandals” from before he was even in office was his “office of the President-Elect” having pre-inauguration contact with the Russian Ambassador, to reassure Putin that Trump didn’t want war. The point of having ambassadors is to ensure diplomacy! Talking with an ambassador is probably the furthest thing from collusion I can imagine.

Putin’s skulls on her wall,

This must be the reason Russian Sberbank paid her husband for "lectures" and why she approved sale of Uranium One to Rosatom after a modest bribe. All that was leading to nailing Putin's skull to the wall, somehow. Must be one heck of 3D chess.

This must be the reason Russian Sberbank paid her husband for "lectures" and why she approved sale of Uranium One to Rosatom after a modest bribe. All that was leading to nailing Putin's skull to the wall, somehow. Must be one heck of 3D chess.

No, there's no "3d chess" involved, just a morass of differing incentives and power relations. Clinton and her charity were willing to take money from any foreign power or interest they could, because they made their money via influence peddling. When she was simply selling access to the levers of power, all that mattered was keeping the business running. If she was elected to the office of president, she wouldn't actually be pursuing her own policies per se. The MIC really wants war, and their influence over the US government is strong enough that it reaches beyond partisan affiliation - the difference is that Hillary would have been a willing servant, and Trump did everything in his power to fight back against it (he didn't win, but he did manage to hold ground in some ways). That's the main difference, not anything to do with ideology or principled positions - there wouldn't be any functional difference between a Hillary Clinton, Jeb Bush, Joe Biden or Chris Christie presidency, but there would be a difference if Tulsi Gabbard, RFK, Ron Paul or Trump was in office. Left/right just isn't that meaningful of a divide when it comes to the administration of a globe-spanning, declining empire.

The MIC really wants war, and their influence over the US government is strong enough that it reaches beyond partisan affiliation

That may be true, but the war they want is not destruction of Putin's regime. What they want is something like the current war in Ukraine - remote, long, expensive in money but not in American casualties, low-stakes as to anything pertaining to the US, and prolonged as far as possible to ensure return business, preferably without generating too many headlines that would promote changing anything. This has nothing to do with "Putin's skull" - if fact, if anything, that requires Putin to be in power, otherwise who'd the war be with?

That's why I object to the premise she wanted Putin's skull on the wall - Putin is a business partner for her, not a mortal enemy. True, in these spheres there are no friends and sometimes competition is very vigorous, but until Feb 2022, Dems did not even see Russia as a real opponent (the 80s called, remember?). And Clinton saw it as a regular business partner, among others. The war does not prevent that too - war is business too. Maybe not for Ukrainians (though for some there it is, unfortunately), but for Clintons it would be. And that's why it emboldens Putin - he knows that for the right prices, he can have Ukraine or almost anything else he wants - because it's just the question of finding the right deal. And he thinks he can afford the price of some hundreds of thousands of Russians being dead and some oil money spent - if that gives him what he wants.

That may be true, but the war they want is not destruction of Putin's regime. What they want is something like the current war in Ukraine - remote, long, expensive in money but not in American casualties, low-stakes as to anything pertaining to the US, and prolonged as far as possible to ensure return business, preferably without generating too many headlines that would promote changing anything. This has nothing to do with "Putin's skull" - if fact, if anything, that requires Putin to be in power, otherwise who'd the war be with?

I disagree. I think that what they want is a balkanisation and breakup of what is currently Russia into multiple competing breakaway republics which have a series of constant low-level conflicts. These can be manipulated and played with, selling arms to them all the while, in order to both boost sales of MIC gear, increasing the total threat and providing an excuse for higher military budgets.. and of course making sure that Russia is no longer a major power on the world stage. They do in fact need to kill Putin for this, or his successor, because he's one of the factors keeping the country together.

That's why I object to the premise she wanted Putin's skull on the wall - Putin is a business partner for her, not a mortal enemy.

That was your claim, not mine! I at no point said that Putin was her mortal enemy - my position is that Putin is someone who the MIC/"deep state" wants gone, and Clinton has no principles beyond venality and self-interest. If she got the job of president, she would mount no objections or resistance to the pursuit of their favoured policy, which would include wiping out Putin and more war in Ukraine. There's no personal animus involved at all - just business. Don't forget that she wanted to enforce a no-fly zone over Syria, which even the most partisan of Americans agreed would be the start of the next world war.

And that's why it emboldens Putin - he knows that for the right prices, he can have Ukraine or almost anything else he wants - because it's just the question of finding the right deal. And he thinks he can afford the price of some hundreds of thousands of Russians being dead and some oil money spent - if that gives him what he wants.

Putin hasn't been emboldened by anything, this conflict has been a problem imposed upon him by the US that he really would have preferred not to deal with. He has already taken the territory that he cares about and nobody outside the most committed partisans believe that it'll be returned - Crimea. His motivation for the conflict now is to make sure that Ukraine is a servile client-state that can never host NATO forces/missile interdiction systems, does not interfere with the flow of gas to europe and does not cause problems for the native Russian-speakers in the area/attack Russian territory. He's most likely going to get what he wants too, no matter how many Ukrainians the Americans want to sacrifice.

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You expect accurate arithmetic in the midst of a polemic?

Well yeah, what else do I expect on this here site 🤣

I genuinely do believe Hillary would have been very eager to show she was Stronk Woman at the time, especially when it came to dealing with Putin, and if Syria wasn't enough to keep Vlad occupied I think he'd have made some move to show that NATO bitches not the boss of me.