ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
A few things:
-They don’t want to do it while Trump Is president. Trump’s reputation is different in China. He’s not considered a hapless buffoon. He’s kind of a Vladimir Putin figure. They don’t like him but they see him as extremely ruthless and cunning.
-China was worried by what they saw during the Ukraine War. Blitz offensives have become a thing of the past. China doesn’t want to give Taiwan another decade to turn themselves into an even spinier hedgehog. Especially since there’s a bipartisan consensus in America to give them tons and tons of weaponry.
-America is uniquely distracted and overstretched at this point. Ukraine is taking up a lot of energy and weapons. No matter how the Ukraine war ends, it will eventually end, and America will likely be free to finally focus all its energy on the Pacific. The Middle East is also exploding, and could end up in an a full open war between Iran and Israel. China has its best military shot if it goes now.
-America is weak and divided, but there’s no guarantee it’s going to stay that way. America has had plenty of stunning comebacks in its history and it’s very possible that 2030s America is much stronger and more United than it is now.
-Peter Zeihan’s frantic proclamations of imminent Chinese collapse are overstated, but China will probably have a weaker hand in ten to twenty years. And aging population, fewer expendable young men, a slower economy.
-Taiwan’s attitude has been hardening up for years now. They increasingly see themselves as as their own separate political and cultural thing. Peaceful reunification is going to get harder, as would any military occupation.
-The AI race: military action against Taiwan would at least temporarily or permanently knock out a lot of America’s best chip fabs, and possibly allow China to actually take them. Either would give China a considerable leg up.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
There’s dozens of news articles about it on multiple mainstream media outlets including the New York Post, Time Magazine, and the LA Times.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
There has been yet another assassination attempt against President Donald Trump. A man was apprehended at Trump’s rally in Coachella California. The man was carrying multiple firearms, and a fake VIP pass to allow him to pass through into the central rally area where President Trump was speaking. The man was also carrying multiple passports showing various different names and identities. The man connected to the Ukrainian foreign legion who attempted to assassinate President Trump in Florida also had a similar collection of fake passports.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
You’re right about the inherently small scaling. But small pockets of un-indoctrinated people can form nucleation points for larger groups. It’s a threat to them even if it’s never going to be a big thing.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Good points. I would also add that Canada needs to have a functioning military in case the United States ever Balkanizes or falls into political instability.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Napoleon is pretty great if you consider it less as a serious biopic on the life of Napoleon and more as an adaptation of a British political cartoon circa 1812.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Ah but remember, January 6 happened between Joker 1 and Joker 2. And while I don’t recall anyone in clown makeup sprinting into the Capitol Building (huff huff) from the liberal perspective the insurrection did kind of rise out of the same mileu that Joker 1 was accidentally pandering to.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
I think there’s also some competency crisis factors at play here. Hollywood Communists of the 50s weren’t a bunch of nepo-baby hacks, they were actually good writers. So they could deftly weave subversive themes into an otherwise money-making crowd pleaser. Most modern writers rooms aren’t competent enough to do that, all they can manage is clunky obvious diatribes.
Prohibition was a lot more successful than it’s given credit for. It permanently changed American drinking culture. Prohibition is the reason most men don’t spend every evening standing around a a little stool with a bottle of liquor getting blasted, like in Russia.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
That criminal thug you described is going to be all of us in about five years.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
The problem with the United States is that it’s very interested in imposing all of the shitty and mean parts of authoritarianism without the parts that make the trains run on time.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
I think it’s pretty ironic that both MovieBob and Critical Drinker gave it pretty much the same negative review which boiled down to “this film doesn’t specifically support my politics!”
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
There’s actually pretty good secular geo-strategic power politics reasons. Without the other, Israel or Iran would probably dominate the Persian Gulf Arab States. They’re both frustrating the other’s shot at being a major regional power. That’s why this conflict didn’t really start coming to a head until after Iraq turned into a failed state.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
I suspect the demographics are destiny strategy is going to backfire anyway. Immigrants will initially vote for whichever party is promising not to deport their extended family, but once they are all citizens that leverage goes away. Once their physical safety from deportation is secured, those voters actually start wanting things. Things that the Democratic Party seems unable or unwilling to provide. Just look at how the party seems to be simultaneously hemorrhaging both Jewish and Muslim voters. Or the increasing tension between African Americans and newly arrived immigrant groups. Or the way that the LGBTQ bloc conflicts with the social opinions of most of the newly arriving ethnicities. The Democrats have taken on too many different identity groups and the contradictions are starting to burst them asunder.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
Did we ever have any threads discussing Alex Garland’s film Civil War? If not I think it’s worth a post in the main culture war thread.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
I’m seeing unconfirmed chatter that the leader of Hezbollah Hassan Nasrallah has been killed in an airstrike. I’m trying to find a source but even if it’s true it probably won’t be on mainstream media for a few hours.
ABigGuy4U
1mo ago
I think the 2009 Steven Spielberg film Eagle Eye presented a very interesting scenario of AI misalignment. Rather than becoming a human exterminating paperclip maximizer, the computer simply becomes politically radicalized in the same way a human could.
ABigGuy4U
2mo ago
One thing I’ve not seen talked about much is that the pager attack is a likely indicator that Israel is about to invade Lebanon. This was likely an initial softening-up attack before a ground invasion, not just an isolated act of harassment. Israeli media is also announcing special security zones in north central Israel which would also indicate an invasion. There have also been Israeli troop and equipment deployments to the north, and various statements from the government indicating an imminent invasion.
ABigGuy4U
2mo ago
There’s been a lot of weird stuff on 4chan lately. I’m pretty sure all the top level posts are created by the janitors now, and they immediately slide or prune any organic top level posts made by anons. They’re now taking steps to make posting as difficult as possible: long wait times, more difficult captchas, range banning entire IPs. Except those restrictions only apply to organic posters, the actual shills post just as much as they did before with ease. I think someone is attempting to turn 4chan into a consensus manufacturing bot-farm like Reddit, or to just make it so unpleasant to use that everyone leaves.
ABigGuy4U
2mo ago
I definitely remember seeing a few news stories of people having their jaws blown off by defective vaporizers.
ABigGuy4U
2mo ago
What worries me is that the explosive compound might not exist at all. Maybe this is something that all lithium-ion batteries can do with the right command.
I can’t speculate on whether it makes you permanently stupider, but in my experience it takes me at least a few months of total abstinence after heavy use before I’m back to my usual intellectual level.
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