Shrike
3hr ago
And I'm sure Russia would like to achieve a similar outcome in this case via "denazification" although achieving it might be more difficult.
Shrike
18hr ago
Russia also can't achieve its goal (rapid overthrow signalling rebirth of the empire)
I don't see the need to stretch for some 4D chess signalling goal when Russia's actual and obvious goals (ceding territory, neutralization, demilitarization, "denazification") have been stated openly and repeatedly and are borne out by their actions.
I maintain that the Wests continued interest in Ukraine is not (just) to continue poking the bear but to ensure the bear doesn't get kidney punched and does a nuclear spergout. Leashing the dog is better than letting it run wild in its dying breath.
What nobody seems to have contemplated is how Ukraine is going to feel about all of this in the aftermath, although quite possibly they will be so reduced to a nonentity that it will not matter if they grow to hate the West for precisely this attitude.
Shrike
1d ago
This time Russians are only fighting Ukraine and have basically no need to accept anything beyond complete submission, for now, unless the costs become too large.
It seems to me that the demands made of Finland and the demands made of Ukraine are quite similar, although I suppose it's a bit debatable because Russia's postwar relationship with Finland was hammered out over a period of time.
-
Ceding territory: Ultimately, Moscow got half of Karelia (more than their prewar demands) and other choice parts of Finland, amounting to nearly 12% of their total territory. This is similar to Russian territorial demands of Ukraine (which it looks like amounts to something like 15% - 20%?), although it seems Putin may be climbing down from earlier demands for the totality of four full provinces.
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"Denazification" - Finland paid war reparations, had to remove German troops from its territory, ban parties that the USSR considered fascist (and legalize the Communist party) and hold war-responsibility trials. The Reuters' story I linked to does not mention any details of "denazification" of Ukraine. It's been a public Russian demand in the past, but perhaps they've backed off of this as well.
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Neutralization/disarmament: Finland had to accept limitations on its armed forces as per the 1947 Treaty of Paris and neutralization in the Finno-Soviet Treaty of 1948. Similarly, Russia is demanding limits on the Ukrainian army and essentially neutralization by forcing Ukraine to give up its NATO aspirations.
Shrike
1d ago
Worth asking what the goal of a defensive war is.
Shrike
1d ago
I agree that neither of these are ridiculous.
I actually think it is reasonably clear that some version of #1 has been correct ever since the attempt to seize Kiev failed: it would be extremely hard for Russia to seize all of Ukraine and this has been acknowledged by the Russians in their negotiation proposals (and I don't even think their attempt to seize Kiev was an attempt to do this). Thus, if by "Ukraine continuing attritional warfare until Russia gives up" we mean "until Russia comes to the table and negotiates," that's already happened.
If however we take "Russia gives up" to mean "Ukraine accomplishes their war goals" - yeah I don't think Ukraine is getting Crimea back.
Shrike
1d ago
Aren't religious conservatives generally anti-AI?
I don't think religious conservatives are best described as anti-AI per se; I think it might be better to call them AI skeptics. I think this is downstream of both their beliefs about the soul ("AI has no soul or spirit, so can it truly be intelligent?") and due to the uses it might be put towards (obviously even if AI progress somehow stalls tomorrow it has already advanced sufficiently to generate pornography, for instance). So you see skepticism about its potential and concerns about its application.
Obviously people's views about AI are changing and it seems quite possible that religious conservatives (or any other group) will rapidly shift or crystallize.
Shrike
1d ago
Ukrainians sometimes deliver up to 300 drones and ballistic missile strikes a day.
Nitpick-y point, but I don't think the Ukrainians actually have any ballistic missiles left at this point, or if they do it's just a handful. I think you're thinking of cruise missiles (which is what the headline of the linked article references).
Not to worry, the Russophiles may have a counterproposal, "Your country and women will be raped anyways, wouldn't you rather spend your few remaining years in a nice camp in Siberia rather than the frontlines?" — @No_one, probably
I just don't see how this is helpful or productive.
I'd be much more interested in reading an argument against No_one's past positions - and honestly, although your assessment that the Russian press is prepping the people for hard years ahead is interesting, I'm interested in more from you on what you think this "bad-news-for-Russia" round up amounts to. There's been no shortage of bad news for Russia ever since their initial attempt to blitz Ukraine failed. If you think this collection of bad news will reverse the trajectory of the war, or how you think the war will play out from here, I would be interested in knowing why you personally think this.
Shrike
3d ago
Has the Trump administration actually changed the way the O-1/EB-1A visas work?
Shrike
7d ago
Unless you think that every unsolved murder in Washington, D.C. is also such a conspiracy I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it's quite possible to evade D.C.'s surveillance footage even if you don't have an inside person, and having one would make it even easier.
Frankly, that's all that needs to be said here. But I'm going to go further than that. Remember when I said
That's the thing that really muddies the waters in conspiracy discourse, everyone acts like they have no idea how the government (or people) work. They act like "the government" is this magical monolithic entity.
You're doing this here! "The government" and even "the FBI" doesn't have access to all of the footage from D.C.
There are going to be three types of cameras in Washington, D.C. - government, public, and private. Government cameras will be split between different agencies - no single agency will have custody of all of them. Public cameras are livestreaming on the internet. Private cameras' footage is not available to the government without a request.
This means that when the FBI-ATF team is put together to deal with the bomber, they don't have access to ~any of the relevant footage. They have to go around and get it: speak to other government agencies, knock on the doors of hotels and restaurants and ask if they have video surveillance footage, etc.
Now, I don't know how large the team working this is (it likely fluctuates based on the need) but my guess is that probably you have a small core team, plus subject-matter-experts and analysts that are tapped for specific tasks.
This means that the group of people who have access to the footage that is relevant to this event is possibly quite small! Call it an agent-in-charge, a six-man team, and about two dozen SMEs and analysts who are tapped with specific tasking at the discretion of the team lead.
And the minimum theoretical amount of people on that team that can gatekeep access to the video footage is...one. Potentially whichever agent raises his hand and says "I'll do it" when the lead agent asks who wants to go round up the video footage, that guy is your chokepoint. Any cameras he decides weren't rolling that day weren't, any livestreams that he decides to ignore are ignored, any footage that was regrettably scrubbed the day before he happened to knock on the door was scrubbed. As long as he doesn't get caught ignoring any obvious leads, what are the odds that someone double-checks his work? The Bureau isn't drowning in free time.
Now, I don't know how the FBI does things. I hope they have procedures in place that make this difficult or impossible. But I do know how research and analysis works. A single eye can blind the whole body.
Shrike
7d ago
Why would you tell the MAGA true believers about Operation Bring Down Trump?
That's the thing that really muddies the waters in conspiracy discourse, everyone acts like they have no idea how the government (or people) work. They act like "the government" is this magical monolithic entity. But "the government" doesn't do things, people inside the government do things, and sometimes they do things unofficially and/or illegally.
The threat that people are trying to get at when they talk about "the Deep State" isn't that "the CIA" will "decide" to screw over an elected official. You think there's some internal CIA policy that says "it is the official position of the Central Intelligence Agency to bork This Guy in Particular"?
No, the threat is that some guys at the CIA who don't like This Guy in Particular will use their official position and resources to bork him. I mean, look at Watergate. There wasn't an official FBI position of "we will leak evidence of the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post," Mark Felt took advantage of his position as Deputy Director to do that. And it would be the same with the DC police - IF this theory is true (and it seems too soon to tell, to me) it's not "the DC police" doing this. It's a group of DC police officers who, by virtue of not being completely stupid, aren't going to tell DC police officers who would disagree with their plan any more than they would post it on the Internet.
That's not to say that there's never been an Official Policy To Do Something Bad (there has), but the Stringer Bell's rule applies doubly so to people in the government. (If only conspiracy theorists would actually watch and pay attention to The X-Files, which actually understands the dynamic here decently well.)
Shrike
8d ago
“There is a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.. that’s why you have Latin lovers”
Hilariously, if you dig into the links, you'll find that one of the reasons Watson said this is, apparently, because of an experiment where injecting melanin directly into men had Viagra-like results.
Your takedown of Watson (...shortly after his death) doesn't ask if any of his kooky views might be true or why he believes them, it just holds them up and says they are bad. Some of them were probably wrong (which, for a scientist, is arguably worse than bad) and some of them were probably insensitive, but aren't you a little bit curious to know more about the effects of melanin on sexual desire?
Shrike
9d ago
I'm just trying to understand the epistemology that makes this all work. Is it Red Tribe to actually trust the government now?
I think Red Tribe distrust in the mainstream news media has always [within recent memory] been high, perhaps even higher than Red Tribe distrust in the government.
So yes, all of the things people are saying about arguments as soldiers and people wanting to believe what they want to believe are true, but it's pretty consistent for Red Tribe to see a news story and assume there's a massive and substantially misleading spin involved.
Why distrust the media so much? I think this is the perception:
The government always lies to protect its own interests. Sometimes that hurts Red Tribe. Sometimes it doesn't. But when the media lies, it is always to hurt Red Tribe or help its enemies.
Shrike
11d ago
For me, the problems you describe make parallel institutions more appealing, because you are correct that Christianity is oriented towards serving God, which means that it will be treated with hostility by the world (Christian Scripture says this specifically!) As I said on a prior occasion, "you might as well be weird."
That doesn't mean, though, that you should tie one hand behind your back and not talk about the good that your religious group does. (And just as an empirical matter, nondenominational churches are actually growing in membership, even while most other denominations are shedding membership – so I am not 100% certain the choice for churches today is necessarily between quickly shrinking and slowly shrinking, as I think you are suggesting.)
Shrike
11d ago
Personally what I hope for is a combination of the evangelical view of the world as mission space and its non-hierarchical, liberal approach to conversion with the focus on interior cultivation and community practice of Orthodox communities, but it is very rare that I get what I hope for in any field. So it goes.
I tend to agree with you. We're here on The Motte, and it seems to me that in theory there's a very clear synthesis with parallel institutions serving as a motte from which believers can sally forth to evangelize and retreat to in times of hostility. Dreher chose the name Benedict because the Benedictines ended up preserving so much literature that was later extremely influential on changing the course of history (if memory serves).
I think that, just in general, parallel spaces serve a potentially valuable role in terms of providing vital back-ups or redundancy, as well as a bulwark against tyranny and disaster. A city with a firmly established religious benevolence network will do better caring for the needy if government services shut down than one without; if the government oversteps its bounds, a place with alternative or parallel means of communication, organizing, and moving money will be much better prepared to resist than a place where all logistical and ideological endeavor is essentially routed through the same small cluster of institutions that, fundamentally, rest on a few fragile datacenters that can easily be accessed, subverted, and denied by a powerful government.
Obviously religious groups and institutions are not the ONLY institutions that can provide this. But I think it's important to note this because a lot of times Christians building parallel institutions invites hostility, and I think it's helpful to note that these organizations can actually provide a real public good (even if they are to some degree motivated by a desire for insularity).
And this sort of comes back to the Motte itself, I think: the Motte was created, as I understand it, precisely due to the perceived need to create a parallel institution without having to worry about a way of life discourse being strangled in its cradle by a hostile culture. The Motte is the Dreher Option in action, albeit not intended for religious conservatives (which to be clear I am not complaining about!)
even if I think it is often wide open to heretical teachings or pseudo-idolatry
I hear this a lot from Catholic intellectuals, but empirically it seems to me that Catholicism is far worse at teaching proper catechesis than evangelicals. You can see this in polling that shows that Catholics are more likely to reject core Christian doctrines, or in polling that shows they are less likely to go to Mass than evangelicals are to go to service (even though as I understand it this is much more of a religious obligation in Catholicism than in evangelicalism), or in polling that shows that a majority of US Catholics support abortion (performing worse on a cornerstone Catholic issue than evangelicals!) and birth control, where in practice Catholics are nearly as likely to say it is morally acceptable as Protestants, or in personal anecdotes (for instance Dreher talks about a priest counseling him and his wife to use contraception!)
Part of this, of course, is that Catholics who are essentially secular will still identify as Catholic in surveys, whereas lapsed evangelicals, I think, often won't bother to pretend. However, I also think there's a broader lesson here about human nature. People like control, and are entranced with the idea that a clear, rigorous body of rules, disseminated through a hierarchical organization, can give them some measure of control. But the facts on the ground often play out differently.
Now to be clear, I don't think this is the end of the story for American Catholicism – I suspect it's going to essentially shed most of its non-serious members and end up smaller but with a more committed (and conservative) core that will continue to have an outsized impact on US culture – but I think it's important to realize that just because the Catholics have One Big Book with all the answers to doctrine written down and evangelicals don't (or, if you prefer, have 2,184 competing One Big Books), doesn't actually solve the problem of getting people to read the book, let alone convincing people that the book is correct.
Shrike
17d ago
If you are carrying a handgun or a knife openly and someone tackles you, you are at risk of being shot or stabbed.
Shrike
1mo ago
Keep in mind that Electoral College votes are determined by population (which would include illegal aliens), so even if no illegal aliens vote their presence, if large enough, does skew the Electoral College. Not coincidentally, the President has been calling for a new census.
Gerrymandering and court cases and deportations might be unseemly (or they might be politics as usual, I suppose that depends on the specifics and your personal judgment) but all of them are at least done under the color of law, unlike outrider voter fraud.
I think Trump running as Vance's VP as a backdoor into a third term would go against the spirit of the 22nd, but whether it's actually forbidden would be something the courts would have to decide.
This would be extremely funny, and I hadn't considered that seriously, but I suppose it is possible. The 12th Amendment bars people ineligible for the Presidency from the position of Vice-Presidency, though, which might be ruled to put a damper on the idea.
Shrike
1mo ago
Anything with significant quantities of rare earths - which describes a lot of modern military technology.
This is a problem for all countries that aren't China right now - but I think most of those countries will survive.
China's not going to help - China wants to make sure the Israeli security situation is as miserable as possible, because that means US resources and attention will be diverted there and away from Taiwan.
This isn't really a consideration at play if the US is no longer Israel's patron, is it?
France? I wouldn't pin my hopes on France coming to the rescue given their own large internal problems. They can't even supply the Ukrainians with enough materiel to fight off Russia.
I'm not suggesting France will "come to their rescue," I'm suggesting France will sell them military hardware. France's support of Ukraine hasn't halted French arms sales elsewhere (e.g. they are still attempting to sell the Rafale to various parties, I believe). You can make of that what you will but "France can't/won't sell people military hardware" doesn't seem correct.
As for Russia itself? Russia supplies the air-defence systems used by Iran and has been accepting a lot of help from them with regards to drone technology and drone warfare. Russia is the largest military partner of Israel's biggest regional threat - I don't think they're going to be much help.
Russia has relatively good relations with Israel (and notably Israel has declined to assist Ukraine) and a history of cooperating with Israel on military technology. Russia also doesn't have much qualms about selling to both sides of a conflict, I don't think, and have (allegedly) agreed not to sell arms to Iran due to agreements with Israel in the past, so I'm skeptical that the Russian relationship with Iran would actually prevent them from selling arms to Israel.
In the same future where the US has abandoned them, there's no doubt going to be a cessation of remittances and other support from American jews to Israel
Why? I don't think American Jews are sending support to Israel because the US government suggests it.
paying Egypt to stay friendly to Israel
Why do you think this is necessary? Israel and Egypt are trade partners, Egypt is the first Middle Eastern nation to recognize Israel (getting close to 50 years ago) and both the Arabism and the Islamism that precipitated past Israeli-Egyptian conflict have waned somewhat. I don't see it as impossible, but I don't see why it's inevitable, either.
The nations surrounding them, and by simply closing their borders to land/air traffic.
My understanding is that the majority of Israel's imports are via sea.
Iran is more than capable of shutting down their shipping infrastructure, even if they have to send the weaponry to the Houthis to do it.
Why hasn't Iran done this, then? It sounds to me like Iran could have destroyed Israel already without needing to develop nuclear weapons. This would probably have been a better idea than letting Israel bomb them nonstop for days. What's stopping them?
I would note that the Houthis are in Yemen. Yemen and Iran are both too far away from the Mediterranean to close shipping lanes there with the ease that they can close shipping lanes through Suez. What mechanism do you propose for shutting down shipping? Missile strikes on port facilities, maybe?
I don't think they'll necessarily attack them, but charging obscene fees to render those imports uneconomical when they don't just sabotage or block them is well within the bounds of what they could do.
How are the neighboring nations going to charge fees on goods imported via the Mediterranean traveling through international waters? Cutting them off in Suez would be annoying, but it would not be the end of the world - the Houthis already accomplished a partial closure of the Red Sea, rerouting many ships around the Horn of Africa, and Israel didn't collapse.
It sounds to me in your telling like losing the United States as a patron would be irritating and expensive - does it really follow that Israel will cease to exist as a state?
Shrike
1mo ago
Trump is term-limited, there will be no vote on whether or not he leaves office absent a Constitutional amendment (which is extremely far-fetched).
US elections are also held at the state level, so there's no real way for him to rig the elections via the federal bureaucracy (unless he's using the CIA to hack the voting machines, or something). I suppose he could attempt to stage a coup of some variety, but I agree with you assessment of the federal bureaucracy there.
Shrike
1mo ago
(the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service)
Interestingly that exemption ended last year.
Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.
What, specifically, can they not make? And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power? The US declining to be Israel's patron doesn't mean, for instance, that the US stops selling Israel aircraft - but if they did, Russia, France and China would all be happy to source anything Israel couldn't domestically manufacture, don't you think?
But energy independent?
Ah, my mistake. They export LNG, but that doesn't go writ large for the rest of their energy.
Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?
Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do." (Now, in point of fact, I think Israel sources their own interceptors - Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow, since they have retired the Patriot.)
Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?
Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella? I do not understand why I should assume that this will happen (let alone why the attempt should succeed) - a lot has changed in the Middle East since the Yom Kippur War. But if I should assume that, I would like to know!
Shrike
1mo ago
Quite possibly this was not an attack but I don't think it's a post-hoc claim; the warning that Russia would strike our infrastructure has been registered in some corners well in advance of this happening. Jack Murphy reported in 2022 that the CIA was conducting a sabotage campaign inside Russian soil and I've been operating under the assumption that the Russians would retaliate in kind (if the claims were true, which seemed plausible) ever since.
Shrike
1mo ago
The only explanations I can come to are that it was the Russians, and that's why it isn't being speculated in the news that it was the Russians.
I think this is plausibly correct. It might not even be about the Tomahawks: we're running sabotage teams on Russian soil, they're running sabotage teams on ours, we're both pretending that we aren't. Maybe something else happened in the specific case in Tennessee but my guess is that there's been an entire series of Recent Incidents that may later be revealed, if the .gov/Kremlin opens the books in 50 years, to have been done by Russian sabotage teams.
For states, violence is a form of negotiation. It makes governments look bad to admit that foreign sabotage teams are operating in their soil (both internationally, as it may constitute an act of war with the implications that entails and domestically, as it signals impotence or incompetence) but if you don't want to come off looking weaker in the negotiation you need to respond.
Shrike
1mo ago
Why does Israel need an imperial patron?
In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).
Today they are capable of manufacturing most of their own military hardware except for fighter aircraft and helicopters (the bottleneck on the former likely being engine manufacturing). It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.
So why do they need a patron? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, I'm just trying to figure out the argument that they can't survive without a sponsor. It seems like to me that as long as they can prevent sea access from being cut off they should be just fine on their own. Is there a bottleneck that I'm not seeing here?
Shrike
1mo ago
Ah yes this makes sense - and yes, I do think it's correct that the Russians don't have the capability to generate aircraft in numbers approaching that of the US or China.
I do seem to recall when last I checked that their 40 or so losses of Su-34s had probably set them back about a year's worth of production, which I really don't think is all that bad, particularly considering how small the Su-34 fleet is. Whether or not they can afford to purchase them, though, I don't know - and losses of aircraft that aren't still in production (IIRC: Su-25s, Su-24s, Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms) will obviously hurt quite a bit more.
If you believe in God, then being morally scrupulous is much more reasonable, I think.
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