domain:academic.oup.com
hanikrummihundursvin
18m ago
I'm not sure where you are from but 'Bomb everything and then watch mass starvation, suffering and death whilst shrugging your shoulders saying 'Iran can't have nukes' sounds, at best, bizarre.
Like, at what point does nuking Israel just become a more humanitarian option to your proposals.
Vacuous predictions. That broken record keeps spinning.
Read a relationships thread here some time. Read similar conversations elsewhere. Observe the collapses in sex, relationships, marriages and fertility. Observe general attitudes to such modern marvels as the Dating App. Observe how men and women talk about each other, as a class. Observe the history of the #MeToo movement, and its deployment of unsustainable coercion and attempts to escalate to the police and jail to settle what it perceived to be failures of the previous sexual order, an order built and defined entirely by the Progressive sexual revolution. Observe the grooming gangs in the UK, the total failure of governments at all levels to do anything but pointedly ignore the problem, and contrast that with their heavy-handed efforts against anyone who refused to allow the subject to be quietly buried. Observe the number of Americans willing to endorse political murder of their opponents, the generally bleak outlook, the proliferation of black pills, the evident rise of extremism on all sides.
It is entirely possible that the above is not your problem. It seems unlikely to me that it will continue to not be your problem indefinitely.
Your life so far has been that of a zealot, flip-flopping from one extreme group to the next, fanning the flames of CW and even civil war wherever he went.
I do not mind personal criticisms. I do mind inaccuracy.
I've spent long portions of my life as a moderate by-the-book "none of this matters, let's just chill out and go to work and save and invest in the stock market and let the experts sort it all out." When I became an extremist, I have been the sort that points out that widespread endorsement of unrestrained, lawless mob violence in support of tyrannical and unaccountable government authority will end badly, that incentives are decisive, and that sooner or later reckless hatred will recoil to the ruin of those who wield it. And now I confine myself to attempting to warn people of the foolishness they are evidently stumbling toward.
always trying to force on others the one thing, or its opposite.
It's an evocative image, but the charge is baseless. I do not want to rule you. I do want to live in an orderly, structured environment, and I understand that this requires a non-trivial degree of coercion. There are many whose idea of an ordered, structured environment conflict with my own; we should each do our best to leave each other's communities alone, up to and including moving away from each other. To the extent that it is possible, I want to live in peace and plenty. To the extent that living in peace and plenty is not possible, I am pretty sure it is not the fault of people like me.
It would help to identify our enemies first. Iranians are friendlier to Western Civilization than Israelis.
hanikrummihundursvin
36m ago
That would be a relevant point if we knew nothing about Iran. But we do know things about Iran so I don't see the need for games of analogy.
veqq
42m ago
I would have guessed it's another Iraq, but it's two of them.
Iraq's population has nearly doubled since 2000, like Afghanistan and Gaza. So Iran is actually 4 2003 Iraqs.
Lizzardspawn
44m ago
Doesn't really matter. That is the thing with shooting people - if the penalty is swift and inevitable you won't be forced to shoot too many of them.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
45m ago
The goalposts moving past abortion would be a surprise to the million women who get abortions each year.
From American Conservative link, it's a good example of what I mean by the Online Right's poverty fetish:
It should go without saying that the success sequence as it is actually practiced in the United States is possible only because of artificial contraception. It is not love of chastity that leads the vast majority of Americans who attain it to “delay parenthood,” as the literature puts it, but the apparently successful attempt of pharmaceutical corporations to reduce the marital act to a sterile parody. Whatever virtues the average middle-class American couple exhibit by “delaying,” they are not natural ones. They are really showing us their disordered understanding of prudence, which has become a synonym for convenience.
{snip}
Which is why I say without hesitation that pregnancy outside wedlock is superior to the success sequence. While fornication is indeed a grave sin against chastity, it is not disordered. It is a natural act, albeit one taking place outside its proper context. Where the success sequence is parsimonious, elevating lust and the pursuit of wealth above other natural goods, pregnancy is liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word, indeed by the standards of our professional class, even munificent. It involves the failings of youth and, by economy, the goods proper to it: heedlessness, generosity, and a kind of awe before creation, in which it quite literally participates.
veqq
46m ago
if [Afghanistan] had only half their population
Afghanistan's population more than doubled during American occupation, from 20 to 42-5 million. The Gaza strip similarly went from 1 to 2.1 million, at the same time.
Hoffmeister25
American Bukelismo Enthusiast
46m ago
Me: [looks at photo of Natalie Winters] “I would let her press my correspodent until my whole house is white, if you know what I mean!”
From outside it seems that all major sides of US political discourse are cursed with insanity of a special kind, that comes only for powerful and wealthy. You can't solve anything alone but participating in creating and shaping a subculture is the closest you can come to it. Yes, MAGA people are mostly retards, that should only motivate you to find a viable alternative and use them to your advantage. Neoliberal status quo forces are too entrenched for this, too fixed in their structure and institutions, you can't have a sensible centrist reform there, you need to dive into chaotic primordial soup of a radical variety. Movements quite often are turned on their head and completely transformed from inside, some small group in the right circumstances can capture the minds of hundreds of millions of people. Nobody expected the radical communists, the ISIS of their time, to come to power anywhere, much less the largest European state. Yudkowsky built a subculture alone, from some scraps in a cave and now it holds the hearts of many people who try to bring the singularity into existence. You shouldn't be BASEDtm, but you should still be based in the original meaning, trying to build a solid base for something better which can include not only sensible university educated people, but same unvaccinated retards and even the basement dwellers.
P. S. Looking at this, I think this comment feels disjointed and off topic to the op, but I will leave it as is because something in your text inspired me to write this, so why not let it exist
Shrike
49m ago
It's built for precision strikes, not mass destruction (unless nukes).
Yes, the USAF is built for precision strikes, but the US builds guided bombs the way the Russians build artillery shells. We've made over half a million JDAM kits (although of course we've used a lot of them). Assuming a stockpile of around 200,000, we have roughly one precision guided-bomb for every squad in the Iranian military. That's without getting tapping our inventories of cruise missiles, guided missiles, guided and unguided rockets, or cannon ammo at all.
The MOP is a bespoke weapon designed to fill a small niche, and the fact that it has been procured in small numbers doesn't reflect on the broader state of the USAF's procurement of guided weapons.
Tree
51m ago
I don't take responsibility for any action committed or idea defended by anyone left of center. I don't agree with trans policy. On the issue of permissibility of sex, the trad project involves a lot of coercion and the liberal one doesn't. I don't give a shit about your left-right spats and choose my policies on other criterias, like coercion. Also @Hadad .
fmac
Ask me about bike lanes
52m ago
I'm honestly pretty confused as to how this got communicated so poorly, but you seem to be acting in good faith so I'll take responsibility for the miscommunication.
I tried to differentiate earlier between "missiles", "interceptors" and "JDAMs/bunker busters". Perhaps you are not aware of the difference, which is fair.
When I say "missiles", I mean weapons like Tomahawks, PrSM, JASSM, JSOW. Guided missiles with engines that target and destroy things. When I say "interceptors" I mean missiles that shoot down other missiles. "JDAMs" are dumb bombs (think ww2) that have guidance kits (computer+wings) strapped on so they can aim and hit things. However JDAMs need to be dropped much closer to the thing being exploded, as they have no engines. Bunker busters are basically fuck-off huge JDAMs + some extra tricks.
What is keeping China out of Taiwan right now, is that they are not confident that they can keep the US Navy far enough away from Taiwan to stop the USA from blowing up all their landing/resupply craft to execute a miliary occupation of the island.
So every Tomahawk, PrSM, JASSM, or JSOW shot at Iran, cannot be shot at a Chinese landing ship (or missile launcher, or SAM, or shipyard, or airbase, etc). Every interceptor used to shoot down an Iranian ballistic missile cannot be used to defend against a Chinese missile.
Hence why I said that if America bombed Iran with only JDAMs, that wouldn't effect readiness against China, as JDAMs are useless against China (can't get close enough to release). However this feels unrealistic as it would be high-risk, lower effectiveness. Usually militaries don't tie one arm behind their back. Also even if you only use JDAMs, you're still going to need to use interceptors when they start shooting back.
There is no universe in which the USA is bombing TSMC facilities. I'm really not sure how I gave that impression, but to be clear that is not happening. There are allegedly "kill switches" in fabs to make the machines not work anymore in the event of an occupation.
In a hot war with China I assume that the USA would target mainland Chinese facilities for strikes. Although it's actually an interesting question as I doubt they could materially impact Chinese war production given the size and distribution of it. Russia can't even shut down Ukrainian war production. So shooting at their mainland might not be worth inviting China to start lobbing things at LA. Who knows, that's beyond my pay grade lol. They would definitely be trying to swat every plane from the sky, sink every ship on the sea, and destroy ground based missile launchers in and around Taiwan.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
53m ago
One MOP may not do it, but the MOPs are made to be used in multiples.
Hadad
1hr ago
Not true, not convincing
True, and I'm convinced. You might not be, but that's fine.
If stopping proliferation were all Ted wanted to do in Iran maybe youd have a point. But its not. So you dont.
If Ted starts advocating for boots on the ground and a commitment to rebuilding Iran, I will oppose him -- but it still wouldn't matter that he doesn't know the population.
Becauase if there is a civil war, then all of the progressives in America are going to do whatever they can to import a billion refugees.
They will do this anyway. The way forward is to not let progressives have power, not to hope they won't abuse the world to import infinite third worlders.
BreakerofHorsesandMen
1hr ago
Like the sorts of police who show up with a court order taking children away from parents who won’t trans them?
Are those the police you are referring to? Because that sounds coercive to me, at least.
Hadad
1hr ago
I ask again: do you think the left does not use real coercion to promote their values and ways of life?
Tree
1hr ago
Vacuous predictions. That broken record keeps spinning.
Your life so far has been that of a zealot, flip-flopping from one extreme group to the next, fanning the flames of CW and even civil war wherever he went. Life at the end of a horseshoe, annexing societal and personal dissatisfaction for one cause or another (you're mad as hell, and you're not going to take it anymore), always trying to force on others the one thing, or its opposite. Perhaps too personal a criticism, but you’re bringing up your personal journey and mental health as an argument, so let it be weighed.
phosphorus2
1hr ago
America loves doomed interventions and military misadventures, but it loves them because it has such an overwhelming military and wealth advantage over everyone else it can afford to be reckless and half-ass imperialism
Not true, not convincing
I reject that population size is an important factor when deciding to halt nuclear proliferation. It is the military and the President who will handle the logistics of destruction and/or conquest.
If stopping proliferation were all Ted wanted to do in Iran maybe youd have a point. But its not. So you dont.
What? No, of course it means those things. Why do you think Ted Cruz or people who support bombing Iran care about another civil war in the Middle East? So long as they're not nuclear, they're welcome to go full Mad Max.
Becauase if there is a civil war, then all of the progressives in America are going to do whatever they can to import a billion refugees.
Sloot
1hr ago
:laughingcrying_emoji:
Has she ever acknowledged the irony of her being persistently extra over the phrase “high maintenance”?
YOLO; funemployment is a general value-add when it comes to freeing-up schedule.
Tree
1hr ago
No one forced you to have lots of casual sex, did they?
When you say ‘police’, do you mean that someone said something? Because I mean real police and real coercion.
AlexanderTurok
Alt-MSNBC
1hr ago
[Note: the following story is fictional. Sort of. Read to the end for an explanation.]
My name is Cynthia Goldblatt. Cynthia Goldblatt. Cynthia Goldblatt. I am this person. I must respond to this name, even a split-second delay could give the game away. No, I thought, I’m worrying too much. If I ever fail to respond to my name, I’ll just laugh and say my brain was fried by watching YouTube shorts.
I had considered dying my hair black to fit better with my obnoxiously Jewish name. But I decided against it, for if there’s one thing I’ve learned about the American far-right, it’s that they have terrible J-dar. If anyone comments on my “Aryan” appearance, I’ll tell them I’m “half-Jewish.” I am the stereotype, a representative of the lying, Jewish-controlled media they don’t trust and are eager to appear in.
I was headed to Butterworth’s Restaurant, which was located blocks away from the Capitol in the heart of D.C. Like other establishments in the area, it was unremarkable up close, for the most powerful area in the world was NIMBY-fied and frozen in time. If you didn’t know where you were, you might guess Erie, Pennsylvania.
Butterworth’s was the hangout spot of choice for young MAGAs in D.C., which was not an accident, as it was created and marketed to be such a place. In a society where the personal was becoming increasingly political, it was a good model for an aspiring businessman to copy. You could even get your local liberal media outlet to give you free advertising if you fabricated some incident of “racism.” The name “Butteworth’s” brought to mind the wholesomeness of old England, the interior brought to mind the Victorian era, with small chandeliers hanging from the and sconce lights mounted on the walls, floral wallpaper, fine rugs, and Queen Anne couches and chairs.
I walked around for a while before I found my target, Natalie Winters, Steve Bannon’s 24-year-old podcast co-host who has worked as a White House correspondent since January 2025. She was wearing a fitted, button-down white mini dress with short sleeves. It was a style she displayed often on her Instagram, professional but not too professional. Sitting with her at the table were three other young women. “Hello,” I said, “I’m Cynthia Goldblatt. It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I hoped I got the tone of I’m-going-through-the-motions-to-pretend-to-respect-you right.
“Same,” Natalie said.
I went through the standard journalistic questions for a few minutes, what are your names, can I quote you on the record, etc. They all told me I could quote them, though only Natalie would allow me to quote her by name. Though I’m not a real journalist, I figure I might as well keep the agreement I made, so I’ll call them the black-haired girl, the redhead, and the not-very-pretty one.
“So what are you women up to tonight?” I asked.
“Girls night out,” Natalie said.
I pretended to be surprised.
“You see, we aren’t so different from you.”
“You’re normal Americans, just with more conservative views.”
“Yes,” Natalie said. “Though I’m more of a Bannonite. That was the case ever since I was a teenager. I just really cared about immigration and I loved the Pepes and the Keks and the memes. I was an autistic teen boy, basically.”
“Are you still an ‘autistic teenage boy?’”
“Everyone matures,” Natalie said. “But my politics are the same. I am a Bannonite, a nationalist. I believe that America is a nation, not a shopping mall. Those stodgy old conservatives, the National Review types, they used to insult us, tell us we’re just teenage nobodies, didn’t seem to get that we wouldn’t be teenagers forever. Or maybe they thought we’d turn into them. But we didn’t. And we’re the future of the American Right. Some people still don’t get it, but nobody under thirty buys into that National Review stuff.”
I intentionally formed a look of mild displeasure, which made the girls smile at one another. A lib unnerved! What they did not know was that I was one of them. I, too, had come of age marinating in 4chan. And I thought that 4channers would grow out of their radical politics because I knew the politics of 4chan were impractical. There would be no “white ethnostate.” There would be no git reverting the sexual revolution. You grow out of it or you remain in your politically isolated ghetto. Either way, the rest of the world goes on oblivious. But it turned out not to matter that the vision was impractical. Walt Bismarck said that “the real ethnostate is the friends we made along the way.” That was a humorously wholesome message about his journey out of white nationalism. But there’s a darker interpretation. The real ethnostate is Butterworth’s. It’s these four young women sitting around a table and giggling and parroting nonsensical slogans about how “America is a nation and not a shopping mall.” And then some schlub in northern Minnesota loses his job because his factory relies on Canadian imports. Then some just-married couple struggles to buy a washing machine because of tariffs. Then some kid gets sickened with preventable disease because his parents don’t trust the vaccine schedule. These chicks were poisoning the blood of America, but they were getting something out of it: friendship and community.
“Are there any elements of this new style of politics that you feel uncomfortable with?” I asked.
Natalie looked hesitant. “Yes,” she said. “The conservative media shilling for Russia unnecessarily is sort of a symptom of the Covid backlash. Because we don’t trust the authority on that, we’re going to not take their words on anything. Do I think Putin’s a great guy? No.”
I got out my pen and paper and wrote down some incomprehensible gibberish, the way I had seen reporters do. The problem with the Young Right is that most of its members are not very bright and don’t know much about the world. They don’t know who Rodzianko was, don’t know about the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, couldn’t tell you where Lviv or Kharkhiv were. And unlike the unwashed masses, who rely on the media to tell them what to think, they have no such institution, so they just bloviate into the ether, retweeting other ignorant social media accounts and calling things “BASED!” This is the movement that even some intelligent people think was gonna save America.
“Do you worry about the next thing?” I asked.
“What do you mean?” asked Natalie.
“The next thing. Maybe Alex Jones decides to rile people up about chlorinated swimming pools, then the New York Times publishes an article debunking his claims, and people respond by saying they don’t trust the media because of COVID so Alex Jones must be correct.”
Natalie looked at me skeptically and I worried it was perhaps not something a mainstream media person, of whom she had much experience, would say. “No comment,” she said.
I decided to move on to a different subject. “You called this ‘girls night out.’ For many women, part of that is looking for romance. Is that the case for some of you?”
“Not ‘romance,’” the black-haired girl said. “We’re looking for husbands.”
“Raise your hand if you’re looking for a husband.”
The black-haired girl and the not-very-pretty one raised their hands. After some hesitation, Natalie raised hers, too. “I’ve already got one,” the redhead said.
I feigned surprise.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m twenty-one-years-old, still in college, and yet I’m already married. That’s the theme of 2025: you can just do things. The mainstream media, no offense to you, has been telling us that women of our class aren’t allowed to get married. Well, I just did it.”
“I don’t recall telling anyone they were not allowed to get married,” I said haughtily.
“You didn’t need to,” the redhead said. “It’s in the message of every film out of a Hollywood that’s controlled by people of your,” she paused, “ideological worldview.” The others eyed her naughtily. “You didn’t need to tell us not to do it because you created a world where it was never done.”
“Maybe it’s as simple as people want to see movies about astronauts, not women nursing infants,” I said.
“But many of us do,” the black-haired girl said. “The tradwives draw large audiences. Social media has removed the gatekeepers. No more can a small elite group tell us what we like.”
“Oh,” I said, pretending to be annoyed. I turned to the black-haired one. “So, how is the husband search going?” I asked.
“I mean, it’s a challenge, nobody said it would be easy. I’ve been hoping to meet more of the techbros, the DOGE-guys, but to my disappointment, they rarely come to places like this.”
“Interesting,” I said. I had heard similar things from others. Many of the “techbros” grew up and went to work in very “blue” environments. They were pushed out of the Left by its hostility to capitalism, local government mismanagement, affirmative action, and (most importantly) #MeToo. They weren’t pleased when they met the Rightists whose passions were calling abortion, IVF, and vaccines Satanic and being so low-class the spacetime continuum bends under the enormous weight of the lack of class. A few walked out in disgust in favor of Hananianism, others embraced rightoid brainworms. More just kept their distance, not being interested in having unvaccinated kids who’d wind up in remedial classes.
I turned to Natalie. “What about you? How’s your husband hunt?”
“I think most men are gay in DC — either out or closeted depending on whether they’re Democrats or Republicans,” she said. “I want to marry someone who allows me to protect feminine energy in a world that is forcing me to be a girl boss because they keep sending Steve to prison. Perhaps I have…” She stopped there.
I burst into laughter. It was just so funny on so many levels. How the Trump movement was a lot like Baltimore – women forced to step into male roles because the men keep getting sent to prison, disproportionate punishment that was always evidence “they” were out to get them and never evidence the ingroup is full of lawbreakers. The four women looked at me with hostility, like I had finally “scored a point” against them.
I decided to explain why I was laughing. “Remember, you agreed I could publish anything said here tonight and attribute it to you.”
“I’m counting on it,” Natalie said.
“You’re not concerned Republican men in D.C. will be insulted by your statement?”
“Won’t be keeping me up at night,” Natalie said.
“Fascinating,” I said. “But it does make sense. Most will see it for what it is. It’s not that you literally believe 90% of men in D.C. are gay. You need an excuse for why you’re not living up to your tradwife ideology and this is what you choose. They can forgive you for that. What they couldn’t forgive you for would be if you acknowledged that there was something wrong with their ideology. Like if you had said, ‘maybe the reason fertility rates are down is because birthing an infant just isn’t that fun compared to the many activities modern society makes available to women like working as White House Press Correspondent.’ Loyalty to the tribe is the supreme value.”
Natalie frowned at me.
“What we’re trying to do here is rebuild social norms from scratch, often with no help from the older generation,” the redhead said. “This is a difficult process, which will have unforeseeable consequences. But we won’t be psy-opped into giving up.”
I turned to Natalie. “I can think of another reason you aren’t married,” I said. “Hypergamy.”
For the first time in the entire conversation, the four women looked shocked at something that had come out of my mouth. Here was the confirmation I was not who I said I was. “Oh, I’m not supposed to know that word, am I? Well, I do. And yes, the concept has been abused by the Andrew Tates of the world, but you really can’t understand modern dating without it. Women will usually phrase it as ‘I want to marry an equal,’ but the problem is only ever with men who rank lower, never with men who rank higher. 80% of the people in the place are men, but the guy who debugs SQL queries for $145,000 a year is not an appropriate match for a woman who’s on TV.”
The redhead and the not-very-pretty one looked confused while the black-haired girl looked angry. She rose to her feet. “Get out of here,” she said to me.
“No,” Natalie said. “I want to know who this person is. Her name isn’t Cynthia Goldblatt.”
“No s***,” I said. “Do I look like a Goldblatt?”
As I was speaking, the power abruptly went out.
I looked around and smiled. “Right on schedule. It’s true what you people like to say. ‘You can just do things.’ For instance, generals can just order the President of the United States to be placed under house arrest. A hundred thousand nude bodybuilders are converging on Washington. No more will we have a democratic system where our trade policy is determined by some obese loser in Wisconsin who’s mad his town got ‘left behind.’ The new era of Friedrich Nietzsche and Bronze Age Pervert begins today, an era defined by strength and virility.” I pulled out my gun.
Okay, I’ll cut it off there. I said at the beginning that this was “sorta” fictional. There are not a hundred thousand nude bodybuilders marching on Washington, but there is a person named Natalie Winters, who really is twenty-four years old and really does work as White House correspondent. She really did say she wants to “marry someone who allows me to protect feminine energy in a world that is forcing me to be a girl boss because they keep sending Steve to prison.” It’s such a clownish statement you would never believe it actually came out of someone’s mouth, but it did. Other statements in this story, such as the ones about Russia and Natalie being an “autistic teenage boy” are also taken from the same interview a journalist did with Winters, which I encourage you to read.
In a country where 38% of liberal women aged 18-29 identify as LGBT, you, dear reader, may find yourself drawn to the “BASED” subculture. I’m not asking you to stay away, just to see it for what it is. It’s not Crémieux, it’s not Razib Khan, it’s not Steve Sailer. It’s people like Natalie Winters, whose response to the Trump-Musk feud was, “this whole thing is proof of why we shouldn’t vaccinate children.”
Tiber727
1hr ago
Again, this makes it sound like this is a thing that is actively being pursued. That's sort of the opposite of reality.
It has been actively pursued for decades by a small subset of people (Evangelical Christians) who genuinely believe in it. They were ignored because they were a minority who were unsuccessful in convincing others. Which is rather the point here.
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
2hr ago
I’m not sure where the misreading of the Bible is here, because I’m not sure what the prophecy he’s going on actually says. It’s plausible he’s actually right about those verses.
But I think hyper fixating on “omg” he doesn’t know the population doesn’t mean much for very obvious reasons.
First of all, he’s not remotely involved in planning the war. The people who are absolutely have the relevant information and probably intelligence assets on the ground telling them where the targeting drones should go first. It’s like being shocked that the CEO at apple doesn’t know exactly how much RAM the new iPhone has — he’s not the one designing the phone, he’s the one who demanded the phone be designed at built. As with most high powered elites, he has people to handle the details and he has been told that the military can probably pull this off. That’s all he needs to know.
Second, the exact population is irrelevant compared to things like geography, technological levels, military strength and enlistment numbers, and so on. China has a billion people, but how many of them are in the military? How many are rapidly aging members of the generation before the one-child policy? How many are women? Deciding Cruz doesn’t have any idea about Iran because he didn’t know off by heart tge exact population of Iran is really silly.
Agreed—people should marry younger
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