Also until about 2010, the Eastern European former Soviet states had a reputation for being corrupt war-torn economically depressed hell holes so I’m not sure they would have been held up as a shining beacon of the benefits of regime change. I think @DradisPing might be anachronistically applying the good reputations that countries like Poland have now, rather than how everyone saw that region fresh off the Balkan Wars.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
9/11 is one of the reasons the dissident Republican groups never went anywhere, because of all the new, much more comprehensive terrorist financing laws.
ABigGuy4U
2d ago
Iran's irrational hatred of Israel is not rooted in history or geopolitical sense
Yes it is. Israel and Iran are the two most militarily powerful countries in the Middle East. If Iran or Israel disappeared overnight, the other would be in an excellent position to dictate terms to the weaker Arab states. Whoever survives is the major regional power for the next 300 years (barring Turkey). You’ll notice that while Israel and Iran had a few scuffles through the 80s, the knives really started to come out after Saddam Hussein fell and Syria collapsed. Iraq (and the threat of a Ba’athist axis) being the main third player for regional power.
Iranians would benefit tremendously if their insane leaders were overthrown and a sensible government aligned itself with the US.
That’s how we ended up in this mess in the first place!
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
One especially funny detail from that era is that you saw a lot of people nostalgically pining for their idyllic childhoods back in the Nineties... the 1890s.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
It’s the only steel framed skyscraper in history to do that. Grenfell tower was burned to a charred husk and didn’t collapse.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
Yes, but notice that the easily quotable catchphrase that Loose Change coined, “Jet Fuel Can’t Melt Steel Beams” works to take your focus off building 7, and put it onto buildings 1 and 2 where there is at least a plausible argument that the building collapses were caused by the plane strikes.
ABigGuy4U
6d ago
It means... oh god... it means she might HAVE A BABY?! AHHHHHH I’M GOING INSAAAAAAANE SAVE ME MARGRET SANGER!
@VoxelVexillologist I suspect the Loose Change video was what conspiracy theorists refer to as “well poisoning”. It only brings up issues that are easily debunked with ten minutes of research, or ones that are absolutely loony like directed energy weapons.
Also unfortunately even the ones investigating in good faith often tend to focus on the flashy improbable things and often miss the more plausible and often quite damning details.
ABigGuy4U
7d ago
I definitely would not be surprised if your theory turned out to be correct. Quite fittingly, the reason Lovecraft himself was so obsessed with madness and sanity slipping away is that he had to watch both his parents go insane from neuro-syphilis.
Regarding your last point. I suspect that many of the cases of war PTSD are actually caused by TBI from exposure to explosions. Ancient warriors didn’t seem to have much problem with it, and notice that the absolute worst cases of shell shock seem to come out of the Great War, in which indirect exposure to heavy artillery was most common.
Some types of people are so used to deriving their self worth from their (real or imagined) intellect that they can no longer admit to being influenced by their base human drives. They are Prometheus unbound! ‘Twas their mind that was seduced, not their PP! Aellla provides just enough of a fig leaf to allow her fans to maintain this ruse. It’s a bit hilarious and sad to anyone outside of the bit, its obviously no more intellectual or advanced than a Midwestern boomer AWWOOOOOOOGAA-ing over the local Hooters waitress.
ABigGuy4U
8d ago
I think there are definitely external factors that contribute to mental illness. There are twin studies that show that in twin pairs where one has schizophrenia, there’s only a fifty percent chance of the other twin having it. So clearly it’s something beyond just base genetic predisposition. Nobody wants to admit that because the idea that madness is something you can catch is an extremely disturbing idea. Almost Lovecraftian.
ABigGuy4U
9d ago
Harris still cackled her way to 75 million votes.
There’s another upcoming structural wrinkle, and that’s the 2030 census and accompanying electoral college redistribution. Blue strongholds like California are set to lose electoral votes, and several increasingly red states like Arizona and Florida will be gaining them.
Because America is gradually turning into Europe. All the land is fenced off and owned, there is no social mobility or opportunity for economic advancement, social class is passed generationally and rigorously guarded with shibboleths and rituals that go far beyond the money in your bank account, what you are allowed to do is constantly policed and often varies based on your class, top-down authority is lauded and self sufficiency and personal autonomy are frowned upon, all the lower classes hate each other because of 1000 year old ethnic grievances, people have effectively zero control over what their government does. What exactly does a having a king change at this point?
ABigGuy4U
9d ago
Israel can’t actually finish the job on their own, at least not with conventional arms. Their whole strategy was to suck the United States into the conflict, preferably with a ground invasion. Trump knows this, hence his annoyed tone.
The Ukraine War is tougher because the United States has less leverage over both parties. Russia is an already heavily sanctioned nuclear nation and the only major stick that can be deployed against them is the threat to deploy American ground troops in Ukraine, which is unlikely. Europe is still convinced that the war is a good idea and if they are willing to sacrifice a bit they could continue to fund and arm Ukraine for the next several years, even if all US support is cut off. Both Ukraine and Russia seem to be convinced they can still win and that continuing to pursue the war is in their own best interest. There’s not a lot that America can actually do to force them to stop.
ABigGuy4U
10d ago
Lovecraft was pretty intense in his writing, but in person he was usually pretty kind to his friends and relations. Even those who belonged to racial groups that he otherwise didn’t care for, like his ex-wife Sonia Greene, who he remained on good terms with even after the divorce. And he was nice to cats.
Israel just tried to blow up the Ayatollah. Multiple bunker buster strikes in Tehran, other cities in Iran. I don’t know if this technically counts as a ceasefire violation, so the deal may still be on?
EDIT (2:20 GMT) Iran is now launching ballistic missiles at Southern Israel. I’m seeing some sources saying that the ceasefire time is a bit ambiguous and might not start for another hour or two.
EDIT (4:35) It is now well past the agreed ceasefire time and both sides are still enthusiastically bombing each other.
To be fair, you’re describing about 75 percent of the major 20th century authors here. The personal dysfunction (Raymond Chandler, Ernest Hemingway, James Ellroy, David Foster Wallace), the string of failed careers with writing chosen less as a calling and more because it’s easier than working a real job (Bukowski notably, but most of them), the constant seething racial and personal axe-grinding (Phillip Roth, James Baldwin, James Ellroy). Sci-fi writers back then tended to be more functional and less of an emotional garbage fire, which is probably why this was such a surprise to you. To be fair I think it’s a big part of the reason their writing is actually interesting. Riley Sager has a stable home life and is emotionally well adjusted and unfortunately you can clearly see that on every dreary page of fish-wrap.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
The current state of R/Stupidpol is against the spirit of everything that the late Comrade General Secretary Dolezal stood for, and all currents of her revolutionary thought as transcribed in the Little Beige Book. I can only conclude the subreddit was covertly overrun and subverted by wreckers, Kulaks, and Gucci-ist counterrevolutionaries.
The Palestinians have alienated every single one of their neighbors single one of their neighbors, ruined every chance at peace they ever have, and maintained the world's biggest victim complex while being the world's sorest losers. The average Palestinian is a regressive piece of shit who supports the cruelties of his people -- he's just mad he's losing.
Ok, now I’m convinced you’re an intentionally anti-Semitic troll. The belligerent Israeli act was straining credulity already but this is just a 4chan screed about Jews that you’ve Cntrl find+replaced with “Palestinian”. You’re even playing up the Goebbels stereotype about Jewish projection.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
The Islamist faction didn’t have huge popular support, it was (again, like the Bolsheviks) a minority faction that was very well organized and coordinated compared to the fractious mass of the other revolutionary factions. That’s why the current administration has such a domestic siege mentality and has to exercise a lot of top down force compared to say, Saudi Arabia.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
It’s just aesthetically a very good axe for her to grind. It lets her criticize Trump, but also distinguish herself from the more hawkish establishment boomer-neoliberals in her own party. It curries favor with both isolationists and third worldist zoomers. And there’s little downside risk since almost no one else in Washington will listen to her.
ABigGuy4U
11d ago
The Iranian people were always pretty secular. They never had a grassroots Wahhabist movement like the Arab states did. It’s like the Soviet ‘20s where the state is ideological but the people are mostly indifferent.
ABigGuy4U
12d ago
There is a rumor that Saudi Arabia put up a lot of the funds for the Pakistani bomb project, and as a result has an agreement that they could get a shipment of nukes if they ever decided to ask for them.
It shall be the policy of this Nation to regard any nuclear missile launched from Cuba against any nation in the Western Hemisphere as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, requiring a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.
There’s nothing preventing such a transfer. The problem is, if whoever you gave them to uses them, the victim is probably going to hold you liable for that and respond accordingly. And second, who would you trust with that, long term? Alliances sour, governments change and maybe in forty years they are pointed at you.
@MadMonzer You’re both right about 2006. The insurgency took about a year to really going and 2006 is when the coalition casualties really started to pile up. People forget that the Iraq War was much more intense than Afghanistan. The casualties sort of evened out in the end, given that Afghanistan lasted 10 years longer. But the Iraq War caused more coalition casualties in three years than the entire twenty year long Afghanistan conflict.
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