domain:drrollergator.substack.com
BreakerofHorsesandMen
4m 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
5m ago
I ask again: do you think the left does not use real coercion to promote their values and ways of life?
Tree
14m 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
14m 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
35m 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
36m 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
38m 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.”
MaiqTheTrue
Renrijra Krin
56m 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.
Hadad
1hr ago
Yeah its why I said that American superiority doesn't matter. Seems that you should be not confident in American superiority. And yet you are. Ok.
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.
No, it is not a senator's role to do logistics. Yes, it is a senators role to make informed choices on the people he wants to declare war on. Ted Cruz not knowing basic information about the country he wants to attack is an excellent indication that he is not making informed choices.
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.
The fact that Ted Cruz could not answer those questions, that he didn't know there were large minority populations, is a damning indication that he did not consider that regime change very likely means civil war and refugee crisis.
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.
I guess I’ve just had better experiences than you. I’ve never been depressed about casual sex or masturbation. Or anything, really.
Quite possibly this is true. Perhaps it will continue to be true for the rest of your life. What I observe from society at large, however, is deep discontent bordering on open rage at the sexual environment our society has delivered. Having attempted to have the bloom only, the bloom withers and is gone, and people generally are much worse off for it, and perceive themselves to be much worse off.
Meanwhile, I have a spouse, and children, and strong ties to a family of considerable size. Do you have these things? If you do not, how do you think that fact shapes the world over the next two or three decades?
Another difference between you and me is that I do not want to stop others from choosing your path, or the other, while your side is fundamentally willing to coerce.
Then you and your preferences are irrelevant to the question of what the future will be. Coercion is an indispensable building-block for large-scale, high-complexity social order. To the extent that you disagree, it seems likely to me that you are either blind to the coercion you endorse and participate in, or else you are in a temporary pocket of calm created by the push and pull of competing ideological constructs. The tide goes in and out, and there's doubtless a moment there in the middle where it seems that the water is being neither pushed nor pulled, but it will not last. You will be found either by the coercion of Progressive ideology, or the coercion of people like me, or the coercion of some other construct, because atomic individualism creates a vast power vacuum, and sooner or later that vacuum will be filled.
On the first Feminian Sandstones we were promised the Fuller life
(Which started by loving our neighbor, and ended by loving his wife)
Till our women had no more children, and the men lost reason and faith
and the Gods of the Copybook Headings said, "The Wages of Sin is Death."
naraburns
nihil supernum
1hr ago
If you read Tribe's comments in context it's clear that he's referring to her having a certain arrogance where she thinks she'll be able to persuade conservatives where she's more likely to put them off.
This does not seem clear to me at all.
In any event, Tribe later said that he was proven wrong.
He's a partisan. I trust his unguarded opinion about someone whose status was in the moment unimportant to his tribe, above anything he said later in public when he was likely to be speaking more to save face or engage in "yay ingroup." I'm applying something like a Bayesian version of the "statements against interest" rule, I guess.
As for Jackson, she didn't ask that question,
Sorry--looks like I dropped a word ("was") from that sentence, mea culpa. You are correct; she was asked "what is a woman" and her answer was "I'm not a biologist," which is a stupid answer even assuming she is a hardened partisan. Someone who believes "woman" means what trans advocates want it to mean ("a person who identifies as a woman"), should have answered in a way that would not imply that the answer was grounded in biology at all. Her answer wasn't just a pointless dodge, it was a bad dodge. If you think it would be more charitable to characterize her answer as a lie than as stupidity, like... okay? But that's not actually clear to me. (I also disagree that the question was a "gotcha." It's not a "gotcha" to ask someone a question that requires them to either admit to the force of biological reality, or speak lies and prevarications in service of one's ideological paymasters. But that is a different discussion I think.)
Yeah, she gave an idiotic answer, but it was an idiotic question.
Two people can be idiots at the same time!
it comes across as below the standards of this board to imply that someone who has risen to the rank of Supreme Court Justice acts the way they do because of low intellectual capacity
I am opposed (and increasingly opposed every passing year) to the deference shown the judiciary by lawyers, journalists, and the public. Specifically, you are probably familiar with attorneys being disciplined and sanctioned for impugning judicial integrity in court proceedings; I regard that as a blatant violation of the First Amendment. My experience with law practice and legal academia is that there is a prevalent attitude of deference to the judiciary, not only to its supposed impartiality, but to its competence. I think that is both mistaken and a little bit disgusting, especially as the judiciary has become increasingly professionalized. One does not "rise" to the rank of Supreme Court Justice, because these people are not above anyone. Especially when they are explicitly affirmative action selections. Even the brightest SCOTUS justices are approximately comparable to your typical tenured professor in an R1 university (except that university professors do more real, actual work than appellate justices, but again--different discussion). SCOTUS justices just are not that special--and even then, Jackson would not be a SCOTUS justice if she were a white man. Probably she would not even have been admitted to Harvard Law, though we don't know for sure because apparently it's "racist" to ask about her LSAT scores--even though legislatures often demand such information from judicial appointees. (Seriously, have you ever listened to a state legislator who graduated from Fly By Night Law with a 2.1 GPA harangue an appointee over going to State Law with a 160 LSAT? The chutzpah of elected officials really is something else!)
Whenever I see someone people tying themselves in knots trying to explain and/or justify Trump's latest Outrage of the Week, I'm tempted to respond by simply saying that Trump is obviously too stupid to engage in anything approaching coherence and that his supporters, almost without exception, are too stupid to notice that he's incoherent, and that if you want to bemoan the decline of conservatives in academia then maybe it's time to consider that it isn't so much persecution as it is proof that conservative ideas are simply unappealing to anyone with half a brain.
I think it's important to be able to discuss people's intelligence, not just in absolute terms but relative to the intelligence of others. I am not a blank slatist. Apparently you're not the one making them, but I know I have seen posts here discussing Trump's intelligence and mental functioning, and in the past those conversations were also had about Biden. "Trump seems to be showing himself less intelligent than past U.S. Presidents, and here is why..." is an argument I would identify as within bounds, provided the rest of the post were sufficiently backstopped, not needlessly inflammatory, etc.
Now--very importantly--generalizing that to the intellect of "his supporters, almost without exception" or to "conservatives" generally, would be out of bounds. Why? Because of the rule about focusing on specific individuals or groups rather than general ones. Arguing that a person is stupid, and providing evidence for why that is the best explanation of what they said or did (in particular, explaining how you are not using "stupid" as a stand-in for mere disagreement), is a very different thing than characterizing an entire group (especially, an ideological group) as stupid.
despite the fact that I can point to all kinds of evidence supporting the idea that Trump and Trump supporters are generally all morons
I also am of the view that Trump is not very smart (though he does sometimes seem to possess remarkable cunning). You're welcome to say it, when it seems relevant, and I doubt you'll get many reports for doing so (though I couldn't say for sure). Frankly, if you brought real evidence that "Trump supporters are generally all morons" that might be an interesting post! But it would require you to actually bring such evidence, and it would have to be pretty strong to counterbalance the "bring evidence in proportion" rule, and frankly "Trump supporters" are a sufficiently diverse group that you would be on very thin ice. But hey, we've had Jew-obsessed posters manage to get away with quite a lot of bullshit by adhering to the letter of the law; if you wanted to become a raving anti-Semite but with MAGA instead of Jews, that could be novel and interesting. (With apologies to my fellow mods for even suggesting such a thing.) Just notice that most of the raving anti-Semites here do eventually get themselves banned over it. Very few manage to keep the touch sufficiently light.
So when I see it coming from a mod it's disappointing, and when I see it trying to be justified on the grounds that Larry Tribe once said this and "Did you hear what she said to the Senate Judiciary Committee?" it makes me wonder if I should just say "Fuck It" and see what I can get away with.
Those aren't the only grounds, those were just the easiest and most obvious grounds. Other posters have fleshed out other relevant concerns.
Now, having laid all of that out--I could have written that post better. Your concern is valid, and I will try to adjust accordingly. For whatever it is worth, I regarded my mention of the low-IQ wing as a bit of throwaway flavor text expressing my respect for Kagan (despite disagreeing with her). I really do have no respect at all for the intellects of Sotomayor or Jackson, based on many hours of reading and listening to their words, and I think that they are excellent examples of how the "affirmative action" approach to political appointments genuinely harms real institutions. But as that was not the point of my post, I probably should not have included it as a throwaway line, at minimum because it apparently created significant distraction from the actual substance of my post.
you can count on me referring to Alito and Thomas as the "low IW wing" in the future
I... think that's a typo? Maybe? If not, you'll have to tell me what IW is. Assuming you mean IQ--I have seen many people on the Left criticize Thomas as an affirmative action appointment, and maybe that is true; partly I have a less firm opinion of him because he stayed quiet in oral arguments for so many years. But Alito is quite sharp, this just would not be a plausible criticism of him. If you wanted to plausibly identify a "low-IQ wing" on the right it would need to be, like, Kavanaugh and Thomas, and off the top of my head I can't think of any cases where they went in together against the rest of the conservatives.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
Israël
TIL that Israel does Metal umlauts.
phosphorus2
1hr ago
The wrong goals were pursued in all of these cases.
Yeah its why I said that American superiority doesn't matter. Seems that you should be not confident in American superiority. And yet you are. Ok.
I asked this to another, I ask it to you: at what point do you think the US military asks Ted Cruz to handle logistics? This is not a Senator's role. The country's population numbers are not an important concern for him. They are trivia.
No, it is not a senator's role to do logistics. Yes, it is a senators role to make informed choices on the people he wants to declare war on. Ted Cruz not knowing basic information about the country he wants to attack is an excellent indication that he is not making informed choices.
Knowing a country's population and demographics is not trivia when you want to overthrow its government. Tucker asked those questions for a reason. Iran's government is not popular. Iran has ethnic separatist movements, there are close to 15 million Azeris. How many want to join Azerbaijan, does Ted know? 10 million Kurds, how many want a Kurdistan, does Ted know? If Syria, with a quarter of the population of Iran, caused a refugee crisis, why does Ted think that won't happen in Iran? Ted Cruz thinks everyone in Iran is Shia Persian, Ted doesn't even know there are tens of millions of ethnic minorities who have a history of separatism. The fact that Ted Cruz could not answer those questions, that he didn't know there were large minority populations, is a damning indication that he did not consider that regime change very likely means civil war and refugee crisis.
AugustDeRosa
1hr ago
But then he turned around and did exactly that when Tucker said that leaders of governments kill people, as if the idea of the President of the United States having someone killed was unthinkable and that Trump could never, ever have done such a thing.
quiet_NaN
1hr ago
I would argue that the exact population does not matter that much, often. If Afghanistan had twice the population (and area), the US would still have conquered them, and if they had only half their population and area, the Taliban would still have taken over again once the US moved out.
Obviously, the order of magnitude matters, as in "Is the population count similar to Belgium, Germany or China?"
Then there is the area to consider. I would have guessed that Iran was about the same size as Afghanistan, and I would have been off -- they are 2.5 times as large. This does not bode well for any invader who wants to engage in nation-building.
I would add that Iran is also supplying Russia with drones. Now Russia is obviously not the prime military adversary that it was some decades ago, but the fact that they find Iranian drones useful against Western equipment -- and the fact Iran produces enough to sell them to Russia -- clearly indicates (just as the space program does), that this is not a country full of goat-herders.
There is an example of an easy mode regime change target. A theocratic polity with only 2M people in less than 400 square kilometers, whose weapons industry is very much on a DIY level. That example is the Gaza strip. If Trump wants to prove that he is better at nation building that GWB was, this is where he might want to start.
Hadad
1hr ago
Are you trying to suggest with a straight face that the anti-religious right side, whom are the leftists that oppose FC, don't try to coerce and police other people's behavior?
Hadad
1hr ago
Unfortunately, once they're already in the nation, they get significantly more protections due to the madness of the American left. That's why it's very important to keep them out in the first place, which is something this administration can do -- and, I have faith, will.
Hadad
1hr ago
I'm okay with the Middle East destabilizing itself further and making oil prices more volatile; that's just a more intense version of the Middle East status quo. It is infinitely preferable to nuclear proliferation.
MathWizard
Good things are good
1hr ago
On an economic level, I agree. This is a very very hard problem. In the case of orphans, you can resolve it by sending them to foster families or other forms of government housing instead of just handing a check to reward every kid that runs away from home. The state still pays lots of money, but the kids don't directly benefit because they get substitute parents instead of just money. But you can't really do that with single parents. You can't realistically assist single mothers with state-funded foster-fathers who come and act as the missing parent for the kid. Because she's an adult and has rights, there's a lot less coercion and control that you can't use to force compliance in the same way you can with a runaway teen (and if you tried it would turn out horribly dystopian). So we're kind of stuck handing out checks and trying to make them exactly the right size: not too small or the kids suffer poverty and neglect, not too large or the mothers have more kids and avoid marriage.
On a social level, there is so much more we could be doing to incentivize marriage. Stay at home mothers used to get respect and praise for their parenting. Single mothers used to be shamed and looked down on. Now we do the opposite. People respond to economic incentives, but they also respond to social ones too. Even if money incentivizes more single mothers, turning the dial on the social pressures in the opposite direction could help mitigate this.
Hadad
1hr ago
Okay. I predict we'll not see people turn away from the idea of bombing Iran over Ted Cruz not knowing the population size. I think we'll probably see approval mildly climb up over the course of the near future, actually, though also not due to Ted Cruz's interview.
Hadad
1hr ago
So what do you think is keeping China out of Taiwan right now, if not the bombs I'm proposing we drop on Iran? Or is it you think we'd be targeting China itself, and not the chip factories?
I'm trying to understand the causality chain earlier.
fmaa
1hr ago
I largely agree with you, but I don't think the last part is true. As with the weirdos wanting to be hunter-gatherers (or worse, raiders), you really can't be those things as they were in the past, because all the good land has been taken by people doing something vastly more productive with it.
And an off-the-grid cabin in the woods isn't really being a medieval peasant. You need a lord for that. But, ironically, for the authentic frontier homesteader experience you really need some nearby raiders to potentially pillage your homestead, otherwise you're benefiting far too much from the peace and prosperity of the modern state surrounding you.
IGI-111
God was a dream of good government.
2hr ago
He's a politician and this is a game all journalists and politicians have played forever ("what's a leppo?") at the least he should have some canned answer when he doesn't know the specifics.
Trump would have never in a million years fallen into that trap, he'd just enthusiastically move it on or make shit up doggedly on the spot "it's a lot of people Tucker, great people, some of the best people, but we have to make a deal, we can't allow nukes Tucker, they're very dangerous..."
quiet_NaN
2hr ago
You raise excellent points.
I would add that in two millennia of Christianity, the amount of blessing that the Christians bestow on Israel (e.g. the Jewish diaspora) seems pretty limited, on the level of "unlike pagans, we will suffer you to live on our lands as second class citizens (until we turn extra faithful and kick you out or murder you as a warm-up exercise for a crusade)".
I think one thing which might have changed this attitude is Christian Zionism:
Christian Zionism is a political and religious ideology that, in a Christian context, espouses the return of the Jewish people to the Holy Land. Likewise, it holds that the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 was in accordance with biblical prophecies transmitted through the Old Testament: that the re-establishment of Jewish sovereignty in the Levant—the eschatological "Gathering of Israel"—is a prerequisite for the Second Coming of Jesus Christ.
I am by no means an expert on Christian prophecy -- my knowledge of that link was mostly due to horror movies and alt-history novels -- neither of which are known to be super reliable, but it seems that a significant fraction of the evangelicals believe that the second coming (optionally followed by the end of the world, seals breaking and all?) will happen Really Soon Now, and that the Jews being in control of the holy lands is a prerequisite to that for some reason.
More pragmatically, Christians have long cared about the holy lands, which was generally what the Crusades were fought about. From a modern Christian point of view, Israel controlling Bethlehem and Jerusalem is tolerable -- Christian pilgrims are allowed and generally not hassled too much. If the ayatollah regime took over Israel, that would likely change for the worse.
True, and I'm convinced. You might not be, but that's fine.
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.
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.
More options
Context Copy link