Fair enough. I appreciate the well-wishes and I think this has been a helpful and productive conversation; I feel like I understand your perspective better now. I apologise if I've been for being rude. I'm a little hot under the collar about this stuff at the moment.
Let's leave the discussion about European military weakness for another time since I don't think either of us are up for it. As a brief TLDR, I think that there was originally an understated quid pro quo of 'America pays for Europe's defence, in exchange for free staging posts against the real threat Russia plus Europe not (being able to) do anything the Americans don't like' and that the agreement has broken down over the last twenty years due to various factors on both sides.
We did a lot against Iran in the intervening 45 years and Carter's weak response to the mullahs was considered disgraceful for generations. It was on TV constantly, Reagan's inauguration speech was played split-screen with video of the hostages boarding planes to come home. A huge part of the controversy over Obama's Iran deal was that it viscerally reminded many of that exact weakness.
Interesting to hear. Not my history so helpful to get that perspective.
there has been total hostility to spending more on NATO, eliminating tariffs, Trump's warnings about Russian oil, Greenland, etc., even when what America is proposing is in Europe's best interests.
European governments do and say such stupid, stupid things. Closing Germany's last nuclear power plant in the middle of an energy crisis was stupid. Immigration policy has been stupid. Sending Labour volunteers to help the Democrats was stupid. Giving away the Chagos Islands, in defiance of the islanders' own expressed wishes, was profoundly stupid and self-harming.
Pretty much everything Vance said in his famous speech was correct despite the reception it got. The military, oil and tariffs stuff is a bit more complicated IMO but again let's save it.
The trouble from my perspective is that all the ridiculous and performative bleating has made it almost impossible to break through when Europeans are actually legitimately nervous and have a real point. I believe that the same is true inside America - Scott's essay You Are Still Crying Wolf was very prescient in that regard. Anyway, thanks for the talk.
EDIT: 2500 comments, get! I need a life.
Corvos
1d ago
(Just noting that I have read and appreciate your comment. Some broadly appropriate thoughts were expressed in my discussion with Shakes but I hope to write you a proper reply as well.)
My comment about "taboos" was directed at the hostage crisis
Then I mistook your meaning and I apologise. To be honest, I find the hostage crisis less compelling than the nuclear justification. It's a taboo so sacred, so utterly demanding of violence and death that America did nothing for 45 years except support Iraq, apply economic sanctions and blow up a couple of oil platforms? The weakness implied by turning a blind eye is so desperately dangerous that nothing similar has happened since that time?
I'm aware I'm slipping into sarcastic paraphrases and I apologise for that, especially since you argued in good faith in the other thread, but I just can't see this. It seems to me to be transparently self-serving justification that exists primarily because the Right/MAGA has a justified fear that if they show weakness then we will be back with the old regime of throwing conservatives to the wolves every time anyone gets performatively upset. I get that. I felt the same about Boris Johnson, especially when he was so obviously being targeted with smear campaigns over trivialities by scalp-hunters who loathed him. Nevertheless, he also had some fairly serious flaws. I hate to say it but even Keir Starmer is sort-of better (i.e. a hell of a lot stronger on immigration).
The fact that you disagree is treated as proof that you were right to disagree.
I regard myself as sane (he says wryly). Everyone including me broadly understood at the time why you (+ Britain) went to war after 9/11, because 9/11 was legitimately that awful. A hostage crisis that I doubt either of us are old enough to remember just doesn't seem on the same level to me. Not to mention that America's new habit of abducting or assassinating heads of state is considered pretty damn taboo in itself.
I really wonder what kind of news they print in Europe. If you can't even imagine American motivations as rational I do think this is analogous to TDS, because it's not hard actually to understand what America wants or why.
I get the lion's share of my info about America here. Some of it literally from you yourself. Everything that I have ever written about politics over the last five years is in my posting history on this very site - please look through and decide for yourself whether I am suffering from TDS. Like I said, I understand intimately why people on the right are inclined to roll their eyes at people wailing about Trump, and why they are so protective of him. I can only beg that you in turn consider that you are now dismissing serious worries from inside the tent (or at least adjacent to it) as TDS.
But see this attitude is part of the problem. Trump's interest in Greenland is not irrational or sudden. It's strictly transactional. It could be arranged easily. There is no special reason why Denmark has to have it, it doesn't form a core part of the Danish identity or state. It's some land they technically own. And instead of being willing to deal at all or even producing good reasons why the deal should not be done, everyone says, "it's our sovereign territory!" Well, yeah, can we do a deal about it? "It's ours! Not yours! You can't have it!"
Honestly, hand on heart, it looks extremely sudden to me and simply about Trump's desire to have a big block of land that he can colour in on the map and point to when his presidency is done and say, "I did that." One can construct reasons for America to want ownership of it after the fact, but I personally don't believe they're the true cause. Just a personal opinion. But putting all that aside...
It's strictly transactional. It could be arranged easily. There is no special reason why Denmark has to have it, it doesn't form a core part of the Danish identity or state. It's some land they technically own. And instead of being willing to deal at all or even producing good reasons why the deal should not be done, everyone says, "it's our sovereign territory!" Well, yeah, can we do a deal about it? "It's ours! Not yours! You can't have it!"
My understanding is that Denmark’s stance is the traditional American approach to property rights. You have the right to offer stuff unilaterally, sure, and maybe the other person will decide that they're interested after all. But "it's mine, I like it, there's no BATNA you're willing to offer and I don't want to give it to you right now" is equally a valid response. Do you disagree? Does that disagreement extend to your daily life and your own possessions?
There has been a total refusal to understand America's motivations as anything except some kind of ur-bully instinct. Now in the spirit of good will and good discussion, sure, I can admit that Trump's tone becomes hostile and threatening. But this is only because Denmark and Europe refuse to negotiate in the first place.
I sincerely appreciate the good will (I can't prove it over the tubes). Again, though, becoming hostile and threatening when someone doesn't give you what you want is the ur-bully act. If you demand someone’s ice-cream out of their hand and you say, 'look, I want that ice cream, there's no reason you shouldn't give it to me for a fair price', then 'no thank you, we’re not interested' is a fair response and getting hostile is inappropriate. It's just in the nature of things that this interaction looks very different to the two different people involved.
Corvos
1d ago
Oh, please. Go and level North Korea if you're so worried about your taboos, followed by India, Israel and Pakistan. This is about 'we can and we felt like it and hey, it worked in Venezuela'. If it were actually a sacred do-or-die moment where the correct action was obvious, everybody would be on board.
The fact that America is increasingly willing to kill for a chocolate bar, with a significant contingent of Americans grinning and making finger-guns the whole way, is why the collective response of the rest of the world has been to treat you like a drunk who barged onto the subway with a gun on his hip muttering 'bang, bang' when he looks at people.
The feud of the Hatfields and the McCoys was, as far as I know, popularised by Mark Twain's book Huckleberry Finn, where a chapter is dedicated to their exploits or those of an expy. Perhaps they were well known anyway and this was merely a literary reference, but it's where I know them from.
Thing is, you are fundamentally a patriotic American at your core and you know in your heart that yours is the best country even if it's not perfect. As you should! Moderate patriotism is a virtue. But it means you cannot genuinely empathise with people like me who are looking at the behaviour of America and Americans right now and getting really creeped out.
My history of posts on this site is available for you to make up your own mind, but 10 years ago I would have classed myself as definitely pro-American. The Americans weren't always perfect, there was Iraq, they had the usual imperial tendency to have difficulty distinguishing their personal interests from the interests of the world, but they did their best and there were much worse people out there.
I got rather more dubious about America's social and economic dominance once wokeness and especially BLM came in: race relations in the UK were never perfect but I didn't like watching them become a carbon-copy of America's, right up to and including the 'hands up, don't shoot' slogan when police in the UK don't have guns. Trump and the American Right were fighting hard though, and things did indeed turn the corner, and I was very pleased to see it. Again, please read my posting history.
I went off Israel in a big way after Oct 7 when the biggest contingent of pro-Israelis on this site started just outright saying, 'look, it's time to exterminate the Palestinians now'. I don't want to huff and puff on the internet, and I don't like the Palestinians or Hamas either, but I was genuinely shocked at the number of people who seemed to be A-OK with campaigns of racial extermination as long as it was their guys doing the exterminating.
Likewise, a few months ago, when Trump suddenly decided that he wanted Greenland, the sovereign territory of an ally and perhaps the least woke country in Western Europe, I was horrified to see a big contingent of Americans on this site with massive grins on their faces saying, "Yeah! Fuck those smug Europeans! Sorry boys, if you didn't want us to stomp on your balls you should have grown some bigger ones!" Even from posters I respect, often the response was essentially, "Look, you've been weak and disrespectful, and if my party wants to stomp on your balls then you basically deserve it."
Ultimately your post seems to me to be saying that America deserves to subjugate the world forever, and if anyone decides they don't like it or they'd at least like to try being stamped on by a different boot, then that makes them an enemy and a threat to oh-so-benevolent American hegemony which needs to be dealt with. "The whole world benefits from U.S. lead global stability and this affirms our capacity," you say happily. Have you asked the world? In general, I think your position contains a serious Kafka trap where any serious attempt to defy American authority or defend against American hostility (like preparing nuclear weapons that could actually defend against an American attack, or seeking good relations with other powerful nations, or engaging in proxy economic or military activity, the last of which I do not endorse) is automatic proof of guilt indicating the need to subjugate or raze. Strong 'if you didn't resist, I wouldn't have to hurt you' vibes.
I feel confident saying that America could and would black-bag my democratically-elected prat Prime Minister if they felt like it and the response from the aforementioned contingent would be the same as it was to Gaza, Denmark and Iran. They, and the US government, seem to feel that the problem with Iraq and Afghanistan wasn't that they killed vast numbers of innocent people and turned whole nations into warlord-infested torture deserts for nothing, but that America was mildly inconvenienced while doing so.
TLDR: Apologies for being a little heated. I think our positions and priors are too different for us to viscerally appreciate each others' positions, but
a lot of people are actively cheering for America to lose and to support Iran, a country that is recently accused of killing tens of thousands of its own population and actively, joyfully supports global terrorism.
Likewise the U.S. isn't an amazing hegemon, but people cheering for China or Russia to take over?
please consider what it might say about America's recent behaviour if it causes sensible people feel even an ounce of warmth towards Iran (whose government is as awful as you say). Likewise, that the People's Republic of China is looking sensible and level-headed. I hope that this is America's 'wolf warrior' moment and the bloodlust will recede and America will realise that other people's opinions matter at least a little bit and retrench, but I'm not confident.
Corvos
1d ago
Thanks. I liked Tom Sawyer a lot better than Huckleberry Finn, and it shows. Tbh I never got the hang of Twain in general, though. Good with a zinger but just too grim and cynical to enjoy spending time with.
There is a very beautiful moment in the otherwise execrable Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court where the King comforts a leprosy victim, but apart from that I can't say I've ever enjoyed his oeuvre.
As long as you don't mind looking like an absolute psychopath, sure. I don't believe that within America, 'Hanson Jr. raped my daughter so I slaughtered every child at his school with an AK' is considered appropriate. The Hatsons Hatfields and the McCoys were jokes even in their own time, not role models.
Corvos
2d ago
In the nicest possible way, a lot of these justifications seem deeply hypocritical and self-serving.
The whole world benefits from U.S. lead global stability and this affirms our capacity.
I am glad to be told this by my benevolent overlord.
Oil (long term stability, not short term obviously).
America, unlike Iran, famously never uses its dominance of key global markets to get its way /s
The country has threatened to kill our president.
You have killed their president! And let us not forget that America created the Taliban, supports Kurdish rebels, and almost certainly aids and abets Mossad campaigns of sabotage and assassination in Iran. There is no possible way that America can present itself as a principled objector to asymmetric warfare.
Iran actually getting nuclear weapons would represent an existential threat to global stability
It's weird how unstable American global stability feels. More to the point, this is precisely the kind of behaviour that spurs people to make nukes. It's now absolutely undeniable that any country who doesn't wish their cities razed and their leaders black-bagged when America feels like it, needs nukes that aren't controlled by America. Even the UK Labour party now supports getting a new nuclear deterrent that's not American-controlled. These people were unilateral abolitionists 5 years ago! America eying European and Canadian territory and licking their lips doesn't help even slightly.
If our intervention ends out being bad, then that's evidence waiting while they get stronger would have been even worse.
'If this goes badly, that makes it even more important to do it!' That's a Kafka trap.
The moral argument I give you, but taking that seriously seems to demand that:
- America invades every country that represses its citizens and slaughters protestors. Lots of candidates there, starting with the Saudis and quite possibly including Israel. I don't get the feeling that you, America, or the rest of the world actually wants this.
- America's interventions actually make these people's lives better in ways that they appreciate. Not only is this kind of nation-building very much against Trump's stated intentions, but I frankly don't see how you get there from here.
Corvos
2d ago
Duly noted. It's one of those terrible language things where the correct answer appears in your mind and then you think, 'hang on, I remember getting this wrong before,' and then you swap it round and you get it wrong and the whole ghastly cycle repeats.
Anyway, keep up the good work!
Corvos
2d ago
I have been climbing stairs very aggressively.
I'm not quite sure of the maximally aggressive way to climb stairs. I have this image of a Teutonic figure ein-drei-zwei-ing his way up and down 10 flights for half an hour, moustache bristling, possibly with a longsword slung over his shoulders.
From a foreigner's perspective, all of that Imperial presidency stuff is happening because voters want things that congress isn’t providing.
I would estimate that 20% of the population max are principled states’ rights maximalists. The other 80% want ‘good things for me and my brothers and sisters in the rest of America’ and they want to be able to move around without risking those things. They can’t agree on those things which is why we have all our modern drama but that’s by the by.
If you dam a river and the throughput of your dam is insufficient for the pressure of the river, that dam’s going to end up underwater.
Corvos
3d ago
The Founders envisioned 'Citizen Legislators' who returned to their farms and businesses.
The thing is, you cannot nowadays become a leading politician in idle moments between managing your farms and businesses. Not unless you are a wealthy landowner who doesn't need to spend the first 35 years of their life building those things or working their way up the corporate ladder.
Corvos
6d ago
Even if we're discounting rhythm in AI prose, though, there are many other reasons it's bad. There's a lack of structure at any level, other than randomly inserted lists and stuff, and it's fraught with all sorts of repetitions and other inefficiencies. It blurs meanings, inserts arbitrary detail, hallucinates, forgets stuff, etc. Much of this is difficult to be seen at a paragraph level. It's the kind of thing that builds on itself, until you're left with a tottering spire of slop.
I don't actually disagree with this. I enjoy using it for roleplay and I think it does novel-writing fine, but I had to push my CEO quite hard to stop using it for business communications and info summaries because the structure is always wrong somehow. That is, the structure is appropriate for this kind of communication but not for the actual info being communicated. It's hard to describe what I mean but 'arbitrary detail' describes it well. It's like the student essays I used to mark where you aren't sure if it's incomprehensible because you're tired or because the student can't write.
Corvos
6d ago
Maybe your second language is stuck in 'the virgin internal voice', and only your native tongue escapes to 'the chad cerebration'.
Oh god, my eyes. I cerebrated your meme and now I can't uncerebrate it...
What's the context of it?
I like to think both have their place, and it is advantageous to be able to swap between them.
I take your point. I actually can't swap in my second language (and really want to find out why) and in my first language I've never really dared try because reading and remembering fast is an ability I value and worry about losing.
you choose your words on account of the syllable sounds and count and plosive arrangements in addition to their semantic content
I am convinced there is a huge difference in reading interests between those who hear what they read as an inner voice and those who don’t.
In my native tongue, the sounds and rhythms of what I read mean almost nothing to me. I look at it, and the knowledge it encodes appears in my brain. That means I read very quickly and have very little interest in artful writing or poetry, but a great deal of interest in plot and character.
In my second language, for whatever reason I can’t do this. I read much more slowly and care much more about how things are written.
I strongly suspect this is responsible for much of the gap between ‘literary’ forms and appreciations of writing and ‘genre’ standards of writing.
Do you hear these sounds when you read, or later on analysis of the text?
Corvos
6d ago
If you say something contentious enough to trigger a dogpile, you have to reply to every comment on it.
Corvos
7d ago
Just to be clear, this meeting happened to you specifically? Oliver Sacks wrote about a similar case and I found it very striking, but I wasn’t sure if he’d made it up.
Corvos
7d ago
While I disagree with Crow’s second paragraph, I can definitely see why he’s creeped out at people who believe ‘my life and all of yours are meaningless flotsam, no meaningful relationship between us can exist, even if I kill you nothing important dies’ having influence in his life or his community.
Corvos
7d ago
Hypothesis: in a modern society, law and regulation is simply too complex for an MP or congressman to learn in the time they have, much less meaningfully edit. That would be if democratic politics selected for autistic systems people to begin with, which it doesn’t.
These people *have * to delegate their power to professionals one way or the other. All that’s stopped is they no longer have the fig leaf of ‘approving’ the one page summary that the person with real power gives them.
Also, literally, an entirely different chromosome in every single cell of their (our) bodies, with a big chunk of DNA that they share with no biological woman.
But nobody does this, because everybody knows perfectly well which damn sex people are. What they want, and what you are adamantly against, is to be permitted to notice it and take action on it in public. As with race, your unique deontology seems to require fingers in the ears and eyes firmly shut, lest you see or hear things that lead you to sin.
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