Botond173
19hr ago
Meh. I remember McCain's and Romney's lame-ass campaigns, and I'm surely not the only one.
Botond173
1d ago
Not only have we now pardoned even more criminals who should be serving punishments for the things they did, Trump has now given the other side incentive (and justification, no matter how flimsy) to defect further.
Which is the same thing they'd most likely do if he decided to pardon everyone except those who provably committed violence against the police.
Botond173
1d ago
The reelection victories of Nixon, Reagan and Bush Jr. GOP midterm election victories in 1994 and 2010.
Botond173
1d ago
In what sense do you consider yourself radical while at the same time rejecting woke tactics?
Botond173
1d ago
I think it bears mentioning that the reason that war was rather short was that it had no other goal than the capture of one rogue general usurping de facto rule over the state.
Botond173
1d ago
I guess not too many people complained about him in the sense that he was mostly seen as a sweet, thoughtful and caring old man. But I imagine he was scarcely seen as a successful and effective head of state, and more like somewhat of an idealistic, out-of-touch loser.
Botond173
1d ago
The US trucking industry has a serious problem of truckers ageing out of business and scarcely getting replaced, which is supposedly the long-term consequence of Carter's and Reagan's deregulations turning it into an unappealing career choice, as I've read on the interwebz.
Botond173
1d ago
Wouldn't that make the problem of illegal immigration about 10 times worse?
Botond173
1d ago
Deregulation of interstate trucking, airlines, etc.
Setting up the Education Department
Government recognition for Asian-Americans as an identity group
Can you explain why you see those as good decisions?
Botond173
1d ago
Particularly since the Cold War and Cuban-sponsored regional insurgencies were still a thing.
And were, in fact, about to become a much bigger thing in Central America.
Botond173
1d ago
Carter was exactly the sort of politician normies say they want to see as a leader. It's rather sobering to observe how that all worked out for his legacy.
Botond173
1d ago
Water under the bridge. By 1977, Panama was a country with her own history and a population with certain political inclinations. Reaching a compromise on the canal without violence was a good move.
Botond173
1d ago
Carter finds more success in the arena of foreign policy, where instead of dealing with mercurial politicians from his own country, he can deal with mercurial politicians from other countries. He starts by tackling the third rail of the Panama Canal. The United States built the Canal by essentially colonizing the part of Panama it runs through, and obviously, the Panamanians aren’t super cool with that. The U.S. government has been kicking the can down the road since the LBJ era by continually promising to return sovereignty over the canal to Panama eventually, and after over a decade of “eventually,” the Panamanians are getting impatient.
The politically easy move for Carter would be to drag out the negotiations until the canal becomes the next president’s problem, just as Johnson, Nixon, and Ford all did before him. But for better or for worse, Carter almost never does the politically easy thing. “It’s obvious we cheated the Panamanians out of their canal,” he says, and he negotiates a treaty in which ownership of the canal is turned over to Panama, in exchange for the U.S.’s right to militarily ensure its “neutral operation.” It’s a clever diplomatic solution—Panama gets nominal ownership while we retain all the benefits ownership provides—but the American public hates it. To the average voter, it feels like we’re just giving some random country “our” canal.
To get the treaty approved by the Senate, Carter plays the congressional negotiating game well for the first and maybe only time in his presidency. He lobbies heavily for his treaty with every senator, cutting individual deals with each of them as needed. One even goes so far as to say that in exchange for his vote, Carter has to… wait for it… read an entire semantics textbook the senator wrote back when he was a professor. Oh, and Carter also has to tell him what he thinks of it, in detail, to prove he actually read it. Carter is appalled, but he grits his teeth and reads the book. It’s a good thing he does, because the Senate ratifies the treaty by a single vote. Although it remains unpopular with the general public (five senators later lose their seats over their yes votes), those in the know understand that Carter cut a great deal for America. Panamanian dictator Omar Torrijos knows it too. Ashamed of his poor negotiating skills, he gets visibly drunk at the signing ceremony and falls out of his chair. He also confesses that if the negotiations had broken down, he would have just had the military destroy the entire canal out of spite.
https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/your-book-review-the-outlier
(emphasis mine)
Botond173
2d ago
Since the victory of Donald Trump in the 2024 US Presidential election, there is speculation that the worst of wokeness might now be behind us. History suggests otherwise. Tyrannical ideologies often endure political setbacks, even seemingly crippling setbacks, only to later reemerge with renewed strength.
I'm rather sure that Trump's victory last year is by far not the first setback of wokeness in the US, and arguably not the biggest either. I recall reading the argument from Walt Bismarck and maybe other rightist bloggers as well that the period between Nixon's reelection and the LA riots of 1992 can be interpreted as two decades of racial detente, for example.
Botond173
2d ago
On the other hand, I'm pretty sure the greatest opponents of any potential measure to introduce contractual agreements in the realm of heterosexual mating would be women.
Botond173
2d ago
The thing is, if women can’t be trusted to assert their desires or boundaries because they'll invariably lie about what they want in order to please other people, it's not just sex they can't reasonably consent to. It's medical treatments. Car loans. Nuclear non-proliferation agreements.
The one obvious and crucial difference is that all those examples are forms of written, signed agreements with detailed rights and responsibilities of the signing parties, effecting penalties in case of breach of contract etc. In the current year, trying to regulate human mating would be seen as an enormously icky idea and would never fly.
Botond173
2d ago
An attached garage lets you enter your house directly after getting out of your car, which is rather practical whenever it rains/snows, or whenever you need to wipe your feet.
Botond173
2d ago
Shielding your car from precipitation and sunlight at least is generally a good idea and contributes to the longevity of the framework. And if you go as far as to build a garage for that purpose, it should be used for that purpose, and not as a shed, I'd say. If you also need a shed, then get one built.
Botond173
2d ago
It’s tempting to say that a Vaisya is anyone who is not a Brahmin, Dalit, Helot or Optimate.
So I suppose the notion that America has her own Kshatriya caste is something he neglects to even mention?
Botond173
2d ago
I suppose what you actually mean is closer to "women are perishable, men are disposable"?
Hasn't Chinese civilization been basically an autarky for most of its history?
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