domain:felipec.substack.com
Can anybody explain the Polish perspective on the Ukraine war?
I went to Poland and it looked like what Western Europe should look like. The urban areas were clean and seemingly safe. Indeed the people living there are mostly European or Slavic.
My understanding is that most of the tsunami of African or Middle-Eastern immigrants of the 2000s would rather go to Western Europe or Scandinavia for better welfare or economic prospects.
Still, Poland used to get in trouble with the EU for not wanting to take in a certain amount of them.
Moreover, Poland has also faced reprimand from the same union for their policies toward non-heterosexuals.
Why did Poland even join the EU? Did they really need the money so badly at the time?
Now it seems that Poland is going toward ever more alignment with the EU and US.
Are they really so scared of Russia that they would drink the corn syrup and give up on whatever is left of their culture/sovereignty/demographics?
Is anybody of relevance in Poland even attempting to contradict the pro-Western turn?
https://youtube.com/watch?v=Tno6nPT66RM
Have we talked about Georgia Meloni’s powerful speech? A few days ago half my twitter feed was talking about.
I believe she is fundamentally correct that we have robbed society of their identity and tried to replace it with whatever pronouns are.
The consumer stuff gets a little silly but whatever it sounds good. Need to have an enemy your fighting against.
My pro nouns are
Man, American, Catholic, Son.
I think makes a strong implication that gender identity and whole pronoun thing is for those without roots. Empty people.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
Congratulations, you just made the worst argument in the world for the millionth time. "You don't care? That makes you a bad person."
I don't care because I already lived through worse in 08, assorted points during Obama where we nearly "broke the buck", COVID, and most recently at points in 2022 where all the gains of my portfolio were wiped out going back to 2017. These tariff hiccups don't even take my portfolio back to the beginning of 2024.
Also, it's not a loss until you sell. Which if you do, you're a chump. Panic selling the bottom is how they get you.
I don't care about daily stock market swings because they are fucking retarded, and you shouldn't either.
I find it pretty distasteful to give up anthropology to positive feedback loops, and let our history become a mockery when it is within one's power to just raze it.
The fundamental problem the Red Tribe/American conservatism faces is a culture of proud, resentful ignorance. They can't or won't produce knowledge and they distrust anyone who does. They don't want to become librarians or museum curators or anthropologists. The best they can manage is the occasional court historian or renegade economist, chosen more for partisan loyalty than academic achievement and quite likely to be a defector. The effect is this bizarre arrangement where rather than produce conservative thought, they are demanding liberals think conservative thoughts for them.
Occasionally rightists will plead weakness to rationalize their lack of intellectual productivity, but this is nonsense. They have had plenty of money, plenty of political power, and a broad base of support. Unless we accept the Trace-Hanania thesis that they literally just lack human capital, we're left with the conclusion that the right-wing withdrawal from intellectual spaces is a sort of distributed choice. Razing institutions because you can't be bothered to make your case is just barbarism.
aeqno
3mo ago
So after Sec Def Hegseth denied posting classified info in the leaked Signal chat, the Atlantic has released more screenshots of him describing the full play-by-play warplan:
Also, looks like it might have been Waltz's deputy Alex Wong who accidentally e-vited Goldberg to the chat:
https://x.com/RichardHanania/status/1904883964072124642
What gets me is that none of this even matters anymore, so I don't get the big deal made over it.
When you've refused to concede a national election, your supporters have stormed the central seat of government, and you've then not only been allowed to run again but been resoundingly re-elected, why would something like this be even a ripple? I'm surprised even right-wing rags like the NY Post have this at the top. What do they think will be the outcome of any of this? Trump already said he's not firing Waltz. The GOP will remain dutifully silent. The public sure as shit don't care.
Yeah, in 2012, this would've been career-ending for everyone involved, but these are different times. Absolutely nothing comes of this.
Rov_Scam
5mo ago
This is a total myth that was fabricated by the Right to excuse the absolutely inexcusable behavior of Trump supporters. If you spent the summer of 2020 watching Fox News point to a few high-profile incidences of police cowardice or listening to NPR's defund the police nonsense then it's understandable how you would get that impression. But if you watched local news or actually paid attention to what was happening you'd have seen that there was no shortage of people who were arrested and charged. Hell, here in Pittsburgh there were news reports on an almost weekly basis that consisted of a grainy photograph of people the police were looking for in connection to spray painting buildings, or throwing rocks at police, or some other minor crime that wouldn't even merit a mention in the newspaper let alone a media-assisted manhunt. I can't speak to this happening in every city, but I know the same was true for Los Angeles and Atlanta, and the Feds were looking for a ton of people as well, which is interesting considering that they only had jurisdiction over a small percentage of the total rioters.
The reason you didn't see many high-profile convictions is because the BLM protestors were at least smart enough to commit their crimes at night and make some attempt at concealing their identities. For all the effort police put into tracking these people down, if there's no evidence there's no evidence. To the contrary, the Capitol rioters decided to commit their crimes during the day, in one large group, in an area surrounded by video cameras. Then they posed for pictures and videos and posted it on social media. Were these people trying to get caught? Which brings me to the dismissals. Yes, a lot of the George Floyd riot cases were dismissed, and conservatives like to point to this as evidence of them being treated with kid gloves. But the prosecutors often had no choice. The tactics of the Pittsburgh Police (under the administration of Bill Peduto, no one's idea of a conservative) were to simply arrest everyone in the immediate vicinity the moment a demonstration started to get out of hand. Never mind that they didn't have any evidence that most of these people committed a crime. If a crowd throws water bottles at the police and they arrest everyone they can get their hands on, good like proving that a particular person threw something. Unless you have video or a cop who is able to testify, you're entirely out of luck. So they'd arrest a bunch of people and ten the DA "(Steven Zappala, no one's idea of a progressive) would drop the charges against the 90% against which they had no evidence. In any event, I didn't hear about Biden or any liberal governor offering to pardon any of these people.
Seriously. The Capitol rioters were morons operating under the assumption that their sugar daddy Trump would bail them out because he agreed with their politics. If he wanted to give clemency to people who got swept up in the crowd and trespasses where they shouldn't have, I could understand that. But by pardoning people who assaulted police officers, broke windows, and the like, he shows a complete disrespect for law enforcement and the rule of law. And all of it coming from a guy who is supposedly about law and order. It's absolutely disgraceful.
TheAntipopulist
Formerly Ben___Garrison
8mo ago
Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses? Trump himself has a big personal incentive to say the election is "rigged" if he loses no matter what. It redirects the conversation from analyzing the defeat ("how could we do better"), which will inevitably shine a light on Trump's shortfalls, to one where the basic facts of reality are debated instead. The obvious example is the 2020 election. Lesser known was that Trump did the same thing in 2016 when he lost the Iowa primary to Ted Cruz. Now it seems he's preparing to do the same in 2024.
Many Republicans are more than willing to go along with this, mostly due to either negative partisanship or living in a bubble ("everyone I knew was voting for Trump, then the other guy won? Something doesn't smell right!"). If the pain of defeat stings, why not just be a sore loser instead? I've debated many people who thought the 2020 election was rigged, and inevitably it goes down one of three rabbitholes:
-
Vibes-based arguments that are short on substance, but long on vague nihilism that "something was off". Nearly 70% of Republicans think 2020 was stolen in some way, yet most are normies who don't spend a lot of time trying to form a set of coherent opinions, so the fallback of "something was off" serves as a way to affirm their tribal loyalty without expending much effort.
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Motte-and-bailey to Trump's claims by ignoring everything Trump himself says, and instead going after some vague institutional flaw without providing any evidence to how it actually impacted 2020. For instance, while mail-in ballots are a nice convenience for many, there are valid concerns to a lack of oversight in how people fill out their ballots. People can be subjected to peer pressure, either from their family or even from their landlord or another authority figure to fill out their ballot a certain way. However, no election is going to 100% perfect, and just because someone can point out a flaw doesn't mean the entire thing should be thrown out. In a similar vein, Democrats have (rightly) pointed out that gerrymandering can cause skewed results in House elections, yet I doubt many Republicans would say that means results would need to be nullified especially if Democrats had just lost. These things are something to discuss and reform for future elections.
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People who do buy at least some of the object-level claims that Trump or Giuliani has advanced about 2020 being stolen. There's certainly a gish-gallop to choose from. The clearest meta-evidence that these are nonsense is that nearly everyone I've debated with has chosen a different set of claims to really dig deep into. For most political issues, parties tend to organically rally around a few specific examples that have the best evidence or emotional valence. The fact that this hasn't happened for Trump's claims is indicative that none of them are really that good, and they rely more on the reader being unfamiliar with them to try to spin a biased story. One example occurred a few weeks ago on this site, one user claimed the clearest examples were Forex markets (which were subsequently ignored), Ruby Freeman, and the Cyber Ninja's Audit. I was only vaguely aware of these, so I did a quick Google search and found a barrage of stories eviscerating the Ruby Freeman and Cyber Ninja narratives. I then asked for the response, preferably with whatever relatively neutral sources he could find, since I was sure he'd claim the sources I had Googled were all hopelessly biased. But this proved too high a bar to clear for him, and so the conversation went nowhere. Maybe there's a chance that some really compelling evidence exists out there that would easily prove at least some of the major allegations correct, but at this point I doubt it.
At this point it seems like the idea that elections are rigged is functionally unfalsifiable. The big question on the Republican side now would be whether to claim the elections were rigged even if Trump DOES win. The stock explanation would be that the Dems are rigging it so they have +20% more votes than they normally would, so a relatively close election means Trump actually won by a huge margin. On the other hand, saying the election was rigged at all could diminish Trump's win no matter what, and it's not hard to imagine Trump claiming "this was the most legitimate election in the history of our country" if he manages to come out on top.
The argument that the election was inherently flawed because mail-in voting somehow violated the principle of a secret ballot doesn't hold water and is made in bad faith by those who didn't like the outcome in 2020. Mail-in voting has existed in various states for somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 years, absentee voting has existed for longer, and no one I'm aware of made the argument that it was inherently flawed prior to 2020. Indeed, as late as the fall of 2019 PA's mail-in voting bill sailed through the state legislature with unanimous Republican support.
Claiming that mail-ins are suddenly unconstitutional to the point that we need a redo is a convenient argument to make if your guy loses the election and you're grasping at straws for some excuse undo the result, but let's not pretend that this is an argument based on principle. Would you be making this argument if Trump won?
It's also telling that 2020 is apparently the only election they care about. No one was protesting the 2021 off year elections for local judges and clerks, no one was protesting the midterms, no one was protesting the various special elections that have been held over the past few years, and I doubt anyone will protest this year's elections. Hell, there doesn't even seem to be much of a legislative push in red states to completely do away with mail voting, or any serious court challenges raising the secret ballot issue. It all comes back to Trump—shit only matters when he's involved. The entire system is rigged against him and him alone. I've always thought he was a narcissist but at this point I can't really blame him giving the number of people who do act like the world revolves around him.
nopie
2mo ago
I think it is obvious now that he has a mild form of dementia.
Scott Alexander wouldn't accept that Biden was senile but it was clear to me early on. It is not professional to diagnose people online, but from the other hand it has to be done for political persons who could cause a lot of harm.
Biden could function because he was surrounded by reasonable people. It does not appear to be the case with Trump. Trump should be removed from the office for reasons of mental incapacity.
WhiningCoil
2mo ago
I've largely ignore all the tariff talk the last, jeeze, two weeks? Three weeks? It's just repetitive top level posts really adding nothing over and over and over again, everyone so certain they know what's going to happen.
Nobody knows what's going to happen. Did anyone know this would happen? Does anyone know what happens next?
I'm just so tired with everyone's vapid obsession with tariffs. To the point where it feels like a psyop. I've repeated my criteria for the Trump administration, and my hesitancy to rush to judgement too quickly. I'm waiting until the mid terms to see if my life has gotten better, or worse. I don't care about twitter post, I don't care about stock market swings, I do care about inflation, but in the "Has my pay risen faster than my grocery bill" sense and not a "Here's how the federal reserve is lying with statistics" kind of way.
Can we all reflect, for a moment, about all the breath and ink that has been feverishly spilled over this topic the last two weeks, to come to what? Do we even know what this point is supposed to represent? Or what tomorrow's tweets will be?
We've had topic bans before, and honestly I wouldn't be opposed to a month long ban on tariff discussion. Or putting it into it's own thread. Might as well be arguing alternate histories as far as I'm concerned.
WhiningCoil
1yr ago
Having charity and kindness being rules here was a mistake. Our great enemy has no concept of truth as we'd understand it. I'd accuse them of being habitual liars, but the dichotomy of truth and lies simply is not in their world view. In this environment where you are required to take their truth-void statements "charitably", it's impossible to grapple with them. Think of Darwin.
Furthermore, they have hacked our empathy to such an extend that our truth is offensive to them and cannot be spoken under rules dictated by "kindness". We are constantly forced into using their terminology. It's not mutilating and sterilizing children, it's "Trans health care".
If this place in an experiment, it's failed.
Minotaur
Si vis pacem, fac bellum
2yr ago
I'm unsure why Zelensky fleecing the west, consolidating power, and eliminating domestic opposition is heroic. Sure, he could have fled the country, but why? It was perhaps brave in the war's beginning, but once it became clear Russia had drastically less competence than expected the calculus changes. Zelensky is setting himself up to be President for life and a heroic icon. Fleeing would be worse for him.
Chrisprattalpharaptr
Ave Imperaptor
21d ago
The following is a nakedly partisan take, but that's because you asked for a poll of opinions. These are my sincerely held beliefs; there's no room for anyone to argue me out of them, but I'm not expecting anyone to share it, either: there is simply no good faith left at all in my heart. my political opponents, and they will never operate in good faith. There is no negotiation in existential conflict. There is only the will and the power to act.
'You see Charlie, these liberals are trying to assassinate my character. And I can't change their mind. I won't change my mind, because I don't have to. Because I'm an American. I won't change my mind on anything, regardless of the facts that are set out before me. I'm dug in. And I'll never change.' For your viewing pleasure - one of my favorite clips, and not even for that quote.
Every time I read one of these pathetic tough guy screeds, my first thought is to laugh at the absolute lack of self-awareness. 'Reee, my outgroup is full of animals who would never compromise or act in good faith! This justifies me never acting in good faith either. I can't wait for my fellow citizens to get mown down by the stasi for disagreeing with me!'
My second thought is to reply, 'Say it louder, and into the microphone, please.' Seriously. Go hop on Fox News and give an interview about how you want to shoot protestors and cruelty is the point and God praise Donald Trump. Write your angry, impotent screeds and spread them as widely as possible - under your real name if you can. There's really nothing better for democratic electoral odds than platforming people like you.
Or, and I hold little hope for a week-old-probably-troll account, you could dig yourself out of your sad little internet radicalization hole and stop holding so much hate in your heart. I guarantee your life would be better for it.
imreallywondering
1mo ago
So much clueless discourse and blathering on here really makes me think that a lot of people here have rather interestingly false conceptions of the gap between them and an attractive man in terms of dating success. That's not to speak of the absolutely massive gap between the average man and the average woman that I think could do with some amount of rectification though the use of a couple particularly pertinent examples. In short-- the average man i.e a guy who would probably get rated a 6 or 7 by most people is virtually invisible to women online to a degree that's frankly quite horrific when you compare it to the experience of an attractive man. The average guy could probably expect to reasonably manage about 5 to 10 likes a day, probably dropping off to less than that after the first week, with maybe a couple matches a week and perhaps 1 out of 50 matches actually converting to a date and an even smaller proportion converting to anything more significant than that. That doesn't sound too bad, right?
The thing is, an attractive man isn't just getting say 10% more matches, or even just doubling their matches. The amount of attention they get from women usually dwarfs the average male by several orders of magnitude. The top profiles on Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, are maxing out the like counter in give or take under an hour, the rungs below that with ease in under a day and so on and so forth. There are plenty of men who are not rich, not famous, not exceptional in any way really other than the face God gave them and perhaps the muscles Trenbolone gave them (though if you're thinking steroids alone will make you one of these men, you're living in a world of delusion-- women want the complete package) breaking 20,000 matches in relatively modest sized metro areas like Copenhagen, Stockholm or Denver. I should probably note that these profiles are typically white men though, as funnily enough even here racial gaps manifest, though this is frankly a matter of degrees, as even these disadvantaged attractive men of color are usually not lacking for women-- but it's going to be generally significantly less attractive and desirable women and they'll have to be a point or two better than their white counterpart to compete. These men have such an abundance of choice and easy access to women that they effectively dwell in a completely separate reality when compared to the average man-- they are the pickers and choosers and have no desperate need to compromise or settle down with one woman. Think of the gap between a man with 70 IQ and a man with 160 IQ in terms of capacity for intellectual output and perhaps multiply that gap a few times and you'll have a somewhat decent grasp of the dynamic in play here.
No amount of game or self improvement will ever get you close to that if you lack the genetic basis for it. It's like thinking a 70 IQ man can become a world class physicist and win the Nobel prize if he just tried hard enough-- the world doesn't work that way.
It's well known that attractive women have their pick of the litter, but I'll just add in that a woman need not be particularly attractive to be bombarded with options. The average girl you see on the street could open any dating app and find literal thousands of men throwing themselves at her within a day, maybe two or three if she's a bit ungifted in the face. Though as with attractive men, there's a pretty big gap between the kinds and amount of attention that white women get, and every other race of woman, including Asian women (of the northeastern and southern varieties) and having blue or green eyes supercharges this a surprising amount.
sun_the_second
could survive a COD lobby and a gay furry discord server
1yr ago
Calling a specific subsection of women unrapeable is a pretty clear implication that you consider other subsections acceptable to rape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exception_that_proves_the_rule#Proving_the_existence_of_the_rule
It's not rocket science. Sure, it would't hold up in a decent court, but "acktchyually I said I wouldn't even rape her, why are you upset" isn't fooling anyone.
One of the less stupid notions to come out of LessWrong was the idea of making one's beliefs "pay rent"
The fundamental problem with HBD as it is typically advocated by dissident progressives and users here on theMotte is that if the hypothesis is correct (and that is a big "IF") the actual benefit/utility to adopting "HBD Awareness" over some flavor of "colorblind meritocracy" will be less than zero. Accordingly I feel that it only appropriate to question why certain individuals/users seem to be so invested in their opposition to "blank slatism". I have my theories but none that are likely to be considered "charitable" or "kind" by the mod team.
Job
2yr ago
To anyone who has discussed the issue with pro-Ukraine people.
Why do people support Ukraine fighting against Russia, with a strange militaristic fervor, instead of supporting surrendering / negotiating peace?
-the war is severely impoverishing Europe due to high energy costs
-the war is destroying Ukraine ( population + territory / infrastructures / institutions)
-continuing the war increases the chances of a world war
Is it cheering for the possible destruction of Russia?
Something to do with the current leadership of Russia, anti-LGBTQ, pro-family policies?
Is it about the 1991 borders of Ukraine, issues with post-Soviet Union border disputes?
Notion that 'if we don't stop Putin now he will never stop no matter what'? Is it something about broadly standing up against aggression of one state vs another, supporting the 'underdog'?
The issue with that one which seems to be central to Alexander's March 22 post is that there isn't much that seems capable of stopping Russia.
Sending another 100k Ukrainians to the meatgrinder for that end seems a little bit harsh coming from people with very little skin in the game.
Just signaling what they are told is the correct opinion?
Is it about saving face, sunk cost at this point?
What would be the best case scenario for a Ukraine/State Department victory?
To my understanding, Putin is not the most radical or dangerous politician in Russia, and an implosion into ethnicity-based sub-regions would cause similar problems to the 'Arab Spring'. Chechens for example would not appear very West-friendly once 'liberated' from Russia.
Not only that, but economic crisis in Europe could generate additional security risks.
quiet_NaN
3mo ago
Okay, let me try too.
Dangers and downsides to having the US air force firebomb Kansas City:
- A lot of people will die in agony.
- A lot of housing and means of production will be destroyed.
- Refugees will increasing the housing crisis in other cities.
Economic benefits of the USAF firebombing Kansas City:
- Housing prices in KC will be much lower while it is an uninhabited wasteland
- It will incentivize other US cities to prefer non-burning building materials and invest in air defense, which will both increase disaster preparedness and be a boon to the some industries.
- It will open up avenues to redevelop the city.
Ideological benefits (for various ideologies):
- It will drastically lower the amount of immigrant crime at ground zero.
- Over a period of a decade, it will likely lead to lower GHG emissions.
In general, firebombing is much more acceptable than nuking because of (a) the lack of nuclear fallout and (b) it does not contribute to the normalization of nuclear weapon use.
In conclusion, there are good economic and ideological arguments both for and against firebombing random cities, and experts in law, strategy and economy disagree if it is net beneficial or not. The fact that every administration before president Harris has refrained from burning down KC does not mean that she is wrong to do so.
HaroldWilson
3mo ago
Is the economy good?
This takes the cake for the biggest load of nonsense I have ever read. It blusters a lot with only a few actual points made in defence of the notion that government economic statistics failed to capture true economic conditions post-Covid, all of which are very silly indeed.
My colleagues and I have modeled an alternative indicator, one that excludes many of the items that only the well-off tend to purchase — and tend to have more stable prices over time — and focuses on the measurements of prices charged for basic necessities, the goods and services that lower- and middle-income families typically can’t avoid. Here again, the results reveal how the challenges facing those with more modest incomes are obscured by the numbers. Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI. Put another way: The resources required simply to maintain the same working-class lifestyle over the last two decades have risen much more dramatically than we’ve been led to believe.
In the first place I am disinclined to give this any credence because their calculations are very opaque. Even if you got to their website the 'data' section and 'white paper' for their 'True Living Cost' don't seem to give their actual weights or the changes in weightings (other that impressionistic statements like saying that 'luxuries' have been deweighted). However, even if I could trust their numbers it doesn't at all resolve the 'vibecession' question because based on TLC the Trump years were ones of economic decline too. However, the economic discourse in those years was uniformly positive. So what gives?
If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.
Aside from the fairly preposterous gambit of saying that we can count some people in full-time employment as unemployed if their wage is too low (words have meanings, if you want to talk about wages then just do, don't crowbar it in to unemployment figures). More importantly though, what you will see again is that his 'true' unemployment figure tracks exactly the common U-3 figure over the years. So again it's totally worthless in explaining post-Covid dissatisfaction because the post-Covid 'true' rate was actually the lowest it has ever been since his data series starts in the 90s.
Here, the aggregate measure of GDP has hidden the reality that a more modest societal split has grown into an economic chasm. Since 2013, Americans with bachelor’s or more advanced degrees have, in the aggregate, seen their material well-being improve — by the Federal Reserve’s estimate, an additional tenth of adults have risen to comfort. Those without high school degrees, by contrast, have seen no real improvement. And geographic disparities have widened along similar lines, with places ranging from San Francisco to Boston seeing big jumps in income and prosperity, but places ranging from Youngstown, Ohio, to Port Arthur, Texas, falling further behind. The crucial point, even before digging into the nuances, is clear: America’s GDP has grown, and yet we remain largely blind to these disparities.
This is insultingly dishonest. Why does he say 'since 2013' in an article about the post-Covid economy? Because the trend doesn't hold true - after over a decade of sharply rising inequality, the 2021-23 period was actually saw bottom quintile income rise as a proportion of top quintile income.
This article is utterly irrelevant to post-Covid economic perceptions. What is might prove, if one believes the statistics, is that Americans ought to have been pessimistic about the economy throughout the 90s, 2000s and 2010s as well as post-Covid. But they frequently weren't. It still doesn't answer the question of why Americans get specifically upset in the post-Covid period.
What is a woman?
Couldn't resist just dwelling on this for a second too. Now, obviously no-one has to buy into avant-garde views of gender/sex, but to be simply unable to entertain the plausibility of a scheme of gender which includes trans women among women betrays a quite remarkable lack of intellectual imagination, and, frankly, intelligence.
This is talk radio 'why are my enemies all so thick' slop. Take it elsewhere.
functor
5mo ago
It is a genocide. First off 80% of the population of Gaza are there because they or their ancestors were forced into Gaza and have been locked in Gaza ever since.
Israel has denied them food, bombed them at an astounding rate and murdered tens of thousands of people. Judaism is a religion which holidays are celebrations of Bronze age genocides of neighbouring tribes and that rhetoric has been used liberally during the war. While Israeli soldiers have been committing war crimes on an industrial scale they haven't been shy about referencing their historic genoicides.
Israel has shown that it is incapable of of taking an area the size of a city against an enemy with no logistics. The war started with Israeli soldiers crying in a bathroom of a well fortified position while getting smoked by men in sandals, and ended with Israelis being unable to fight. Israel has ended up deeply divided and is in a permanent state of crisis. Israels situation today is similar to the situation of French Algeria in the 50s or Vietnam in the 60s. They have a population that hates them and the cost of containing it is too great. Israel isn't a sustainable state and the Arabs know that they can outlast them as long as they sustain the pressure.
the complete inability of the western civilian , and by extension politician, to understand what war actually is
Europeans have fought battles on battle fields for thousands of years with a strong aversion to harming civilians, punishing prisoners and acting in a non-chivalrous manor. The cowardly and brutal fighting style has once again reminded Europeans why the jewish mindset is fundamentally incompatible with the western mindset and how the Semitic/MENA culture simply is not anything we want to deal with. Israel's popularity has plummeted in the west, especially among younger people who consume their news through social media, which is less controlled by the ADL. The same Jewish institutions who attack westerners for the slightest ethnocentrism have the chutzpah to try to justify bombing the Christians in the middle east so they can build summer homes on the west bank.
I hear have an underlying apprehension of violence that rises by the day including today. I don't believe in their hearts these people want violence, but as the right is the political alignment predicted by having superior-to-average faculties at assessing danger, I think even if only intuitively they understand and greatly fear how swiftly we approach violence as the only way out. Blessed are the meek, blessed are those who know when to draw the sword. If and when it happens, it will be the right and only time.
Can you self reflect for a second about how ridiculous this LARPing fanfic is? This is the right's equivalent of lefty women breathlessly imagining the Handmaids Tale is going to come true. The core Trump demographic is old, obese, uneducated people. They are unhealthy. They have no human capital. They live in the middle of nowhere. Their entire personality is centered around talking about how scary they imagine New York to be. Any people like this who are actually talented, have human capital, and are capable of acting with agency have moved to the coasts to participate in the real world.
They are a party of losers. Their greatest political achievement is electing an elite who openly scorns them and handed out tax cuts to other elites. Their second greatest political achievement is one of them having a heart attack during their protest in DC. These days they comically threaten to "boycott" New York, as if the Red Lobster in Times Square will even notice that they aren't there. They aren't some dark brooding populist force that's going to be the vanguard of the revolution. They're a bunch of people who have been left behind and resist the grownups' efforts to help.
It is about a man who refused to kneel when demanded by seated power and has risen to threaten their entire existence. This conviction heralds the imminent arrival of the pivotal figure of American history. It doesn't have to be Trump, but where we are in the reverberations of history is no earlier than the election of Buchanan.
Trump is a talented guy who recognized there are a bunch of losers out there and figured out how to manipulate them. These people spend their political capital on banning lab grown meat to own the libs. They're not leaving anything of note behind in history.
But what's the point? Seriously, why even talk about this just to get gaslit by the people who are celebrating it at the same time as denying it's happening? You could spend your entire life writing tens of thousands of words explaining and analyzing this insanity, and all it does it give the perpetrators the satisfaction of gloating about getting away with it.
What are we even doing here? Are we just going to keep doing it forever as the country goes completely insane? Why? What possible good will it do? Is this whole place just a safety release valve to stop any pressure building up against the overton window slamming left faster than the eye can see?
Consider that in writing mindkilled screeds about how terrible everything is, you're probably part of the problem. Maybe engage in a bit of self-reflection. Consider compromise. Read the aspirational text at the top of the culture war thread. Do something that makes you happy. Touch grass?
More realistically, Trump gets elected, Republicans suddenly stop caring about deficit spending and cut taxes and voila - all of your problems are magically solved. Instead of crying about how bad everything is you'll be crowing about the liberal snowflakes losing their minds over Orange Man Bad and TDS.
Does anyone actually get any pleasure out of this? Does anyone think it's doing any good?
I used to. When the people like you were diluted by those who were well-meaning, who wanted to have actual conversations and maybe learn a thing or two from someone with a different perspective.
How about this? If you can manage to write a measured and polite post about any of the topics above, I'll respond in kind. If the though of trying to do that is so abhorrent, then maybe this isn't the place for you.
2rafa
1yr ago
Trump represents a pent up peasant and heartland burgher rage in a way that no other GOP politician can.
Yes, they want to “own the libs”, but that’s misses out the most important part. They want Donald Trump to own the libs. Owning the libs is important but not essential. Donald Trump is essential. Better Trump is in power and fails than DeSantis is in power and actually succeeds. This is, in effect, the decision that is being made.
But in a wider sense, American conservatives aren’t serious people. They consider forcing impoverished black single mothers to give birth to more children higher priority than ending mass immigration. That considered ending the tiny amount of GDP sent to Ukraine (tying up a longstanding geopolitical foe for years at the cost of zero American lives) more important than ending affirmative action - which only happened because of a 30-year effort by some autistic Jewish guy who couldn’t let it go. These are people who genuinely abhor the pittance spent on America’s empire when it has been the mission of every great Western civilization to conquer, to expand and to rule other lands and peoples.
They live in an imaginary mid century fantasy that is itself a product of Hollywood. They do not aspire to greatness, personally or collectively. Kevin Williamson was right about Trump, and about his supporters. The libs - if he wins again - will be “owned” well and truly for 4 years, and then simply pick up where they left off. Trump doesn’t understand institutions, but his supporters don’t care. The ‘deep state’ will let him spend 4 years in the AG’s office fighting spurious legal cases against his onetime political foes, and all the while the rest of Washington will tick along as usual.
Update on the Black Teens Versus Pregnant Nurse story.
This twitter thread seems like a reasonable summary. I know it's not entirely unbiased, but absent additional contradictory evidence, the story seems to basically check out like this:
Kids had checked out the ebikes for a ride, and docked them before the 45-minute "free" period ended, planning to undock them to resume riding. (This is apparently a pretty common practice?)
They're sitting on the bikes chilling, when Comrie, the pregnant nurse, approaches and asks to have one of the bikes.
The teens say no, unmoved by her appeals for consideration for her pregnancy.
She scans (checks out) a bike one of the kids is sitting on, and tries to take it.
The kerfluffle we saw on video ensues. The kids apparently filmed it with a legitimate fear that she would turn it into "gang of teens harasses pregnant white lady."
So basically, no one looks like an entirely innocent victim here. The kids were just hanging out in preparation to check out the bikes again, but since they were docked, you don't really get to "call dibs" on a bike you are not currently renting. Technically Comrie was entitled to take an available bike; the kids shouldn't have been squatting on them. They were also kind of jerks for not showing a little compassion for an obviously pregnant woman (their version is that if they'd given up the bike, one of them would have had to find some other way to get back to the Bronx).
That said, deciding "Screw you, I'm taking your bike anyway, get off" wasn't great behavior on her part, even if legally justified. I cut her more slack because apparently she just got off a 12-hour shift, and she was pregnant.
However, even if the teens were perhaps being inconsiderate and less than gentlemanly, the narrative that's basically portrayed them as ganging up on her and trying to steal her bike appears to be inaccurate.
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