EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
I know what you're here for. What's his bias? Politically I at least like to think of myself as a true moderate, maybe (in US context) slightly naturally right-leaning but currently politically left-leaning if I had to be more specific.
User ID: 1043
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
You just can't skip the necessary process step though! Fundamentally, the executive branch can't decide things on their own like this, even if they are ultimately correct. It's typically a fairly bright line.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1d ago
The whole point of a legal system is to take these assumptions and inferences, and then make them explicit, in court, rather than allow opinions to be made outside of the court structure. It defeats the entire point if judgement is rendered without recourse out of court.
Like, sure, if a Border Patrol agent apprehends someone at the border clearly trying to cross, my understanding is that it's fine to turn them around and send them right back. It's allowed, as a concession to being "reasonable", which is a thing in the legal world. Other people caught less immediately/obviously have to go through the court system, because the court system has a monopoly on appeals against state sanctioned violence, force, and punishment. That's one of its core jobs. There's obviously some wiggle room in the middle where plausibly, law enforcement (broadly defined) can just kick them out, but due process does kick in at some point. This guy has lived in the US for years, have kids who are citizens, have a wife who is a citizen, etc. Clearly, he needs to go through the normal process. If the process is short and somewhat perfunctory, okay whatever, that's fine. Even if we assume everything that comes out of his mouth is a lie, that doesn't change the fact that the lies need to be heard in court before they are officially declared lies.
If the Monopoly game is rigged, it's the job of lawmakers to write better rules to prevent counterfeiting. You don't even need to prove that they cheated, everyone can vote and say "yeah that's sus, you're kicked out" and that's fine, the standards don't need to be perfect. It's still unacceptable to flip the game board.
The US justice system at least nominally and certainly historically strongly, strongly weights the rights of innocents. That is to say, if there's a tradeoff involved where some other good outcomes happen, but it has a real and practical cost in weakening what happens to a conceivably innocent person, that's still seen as a not-so-good tradeoff in many cases. A lot of legal wrangling goes into the exact balance, but structurally the overall tilt of the table on which the weights are balanced is a given. The table is not flat. The original creators, and many lawmakers and lawyers since then, all thought this was a good idea and did this on purpose. "Fairness" is a little subjective, so opinions can vary over time, but I think there's a pretty strong case for the legal system to stay this way. As you can tell from my username, perhaps, I would point out that we're on to 250 years of this working out pretty well for most people involved, in spite the absurdity of legal fees. Ultimately, it's still at least partially a values thing too, but
This case is bad because here, forget "do not pass Go", the game just ended immediately on drawing a bad card, even if your poor finance situation made this possible. It might have genuinely bankrupted you (to continue the Monopoly analogy) so the game probably was over, but that's not an excuse to flip the board, you have to actually check and count the money and the debts before you end the game!
Legal systems acknowledge that sometimes, the facts are so clear there's no need to wrangle things for too long. "Motion to dismiss", "summary judgement", these are all real things. You seem to be talking as if they didn't exist. They do.
You might just accept that someone flipped the board once, and deem it not worth the effort to try and restore the game state to what it was, but if someone is consistently flipping the board, that's no good. Even if you're just another sibling, not the parent, you gotta nip that behavior the bud, or your kid is always going to think it's an option, and they might be right if they flip a more complicated game later, which cannot be restored. Deportation to a foreign state directly to a prison with a significant chance of literal death is a board-flipping move that cannot be allowed to stand. Not even once.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
It just sounds crazy that anyone would endorse anything other than B... like, motives clearly matter, and outcomes clearly matter, why do we need to be all dogmatic about it and only care about one or the other? We aren't (presumably) mostly all children discovering "realpolitick" for the very first time. Plans backfire. People lie and misrepresent. Both happen often enough that neither polar view "works" by itself. I'd argue that both are actively detrimental.
To me it's like Communism - like, literally the ideal form of government. But, spoiler alert: people are too consistently flawed to make it work. Heaven? Sure. Jesus' favorite society is plainly something similar. Still, turns out badly. On the other end... Anarcho-capitalism? Actually, turns out people are too consistently order-loving to make it work. Even prisons with minimal supervision don't internally develop into that fully, gangs show up fast and make informal rules and shit.
So C's weakness is that people are too consistently emotional. No system of governance, for example, is immune. The best systems manage this, the worst ignore it, and the merely bad indulge it.
I think context you are assuming is fully baked in, is in fact not baked in at all, so I think it's perfect you bring this up. What you probably realized mentally, maybe took for granted, but didn't actually state (causing confusion), is that the current immigration system is also accompanied by a lack of effort to reform said system. As an illustration, Trump claims that he's pro-legal immigration, but the proof is in the pudding: have Republicans introduced a better legal immigration system? No. They haven't even tried. They also almost never talk about it (or at least the leaders don't). You need to explicitly state something to this effect, rather than just say "it's an obstacle course" and rest your case, because "the immigration system is an obstacle course" might be true but is not enough to actually end up with POSIWID.
Some Republicans could easily say "no no, we still want to fix the legal immigration system, any inaction is just " and so we're right back to the importance of intent, where we started. They might say "the system is broken due to too many band-aids" and we dodge the intent discussion overtly, but it's still lurking around because inaction also betrays intent (albeit much more loosely, so I acknowledge this leap might be logical but is potentially weaker).
Or, maybe there was some other latent assumption and I misidentified it. Either way, while POSIWID is what I'd term an occasionally-useful psychological re-framing tool (thus, worth talking about in the loosest sense) it's not actually an argument.
To me I think the entire debate has missed the point altogether. While it might be a "deepity", that's not the source of cross-purposes!
Let me make a useful analogy, and honestly this really should have been Scott's approach. In statistics and machine learning, you have something called a "confusion matrix": you are trying to classify something, and you are either correct or incorrect. In each cell, you have the true positives, false positives, false negatives, and true negatives. You need all of them to correctly decide if your classification has acceptable tradeoffs, and the tradeoffs are problem-dependent. Also, some measures don't tell the full story - a classification can be highly "accurate", but if you didn't have many of one class to begin with, this number is deceiving, because you're essentially just juicing your numbers with the "easy" cases (simple but common example). You need to dig deeper.
In the case of police, as an illustration, "what the system does" could plausibly focus on any of these cells: action that is justified that cops should do and do successfully (true positive) vs action that is unjustified and causes bad things to happen (false positive) vs stuff the police ignore but should have done something about (false negative) vs stuff the police should ignore, and actually do ignore (this could be trivial stuff, or it could be declining to take action to protect broader civil or legal liberties). There are four cells of action/inaction and justified/unjustified, each meaningful on their own, but not only that, there are like, at least eight different ratios (see here) you can compute that all mean something different, and have distinct and important real-world implications. For example, we might say "policing is racially biased" but that statement alone needs substantial clarification. Arguably, you can't actually contain it within a single phrase, you might need a full sentence if not two. Because "bias" could mean a lot of things, and have different causalities on top! Do you mean white people get pulled over more? That white people get let off with warnings more? That identical crimes get different punishments? Do we care more about the ratio, of given being pulled over, does the cop find a crime? Or do we care more about, given someone is guilty, how often do the police catch them? What about innocent victims, wrongly convicted, how high do we weight that? What about police response times, what about geography, we can go on. Do proportions matter more, or absolute numbers? When talking about systems, a simple conversation is almost inherently impossible. So yes, POSIWID is doomed from the start there.
LOTS of politics is like this, people quite often get stuck and make judgements based on just one or two pieces of information from the matrix, or a single computed ratio. To use Scott's example, police beating a suspect is obviously a false positive in a loose sense - action the police took, which was bad, but that's just one piece of the puzzle. If we're talking about the system as a whole, you can't just look at that. You need to make an argument that the balance of all the cells is way off - and even then, abolition of the system often isn't the answer, especially if the "true positive" cell still has significant value for society.
In my opinion, everything stems from a values disagreement, over how strongly to weight "false positives", i.e. actions taken by an institution, often a hot-button one, that result in negative consequences. In theory, a POSIWID advocate is saying that "the ratio of false positives and true positives" (i.e. all affirmative actions a system takes and the associated results, good and bad) is "out of whack". That's fine to say. That's an important conversation to have. You don't even need to talk about intent there (though you probably should) to have a good conversation based on facts and weighted by personal values, even a few opinions. In practice, however, many POSIWID advocates (that Scott skewers) focus entirely on the "false positives", and obviously that is both illogical and potentially bad faith. I'm inclined, however, to say that these dynamics have more to do with people not being thoughtful and considered enough in their takes, plus internet dynamics, than they do genuine stupidity, for lack of a better term. I still think the underlying disconnect is one of values (after all, we have to subjectively weight each cell and ratio differently, and this is compounded and made messy by the news and political environment), but the vocabulary is genuinely difficult.
No wonder that Twitter especially has a problem with this? As I explained, exploring the tradeoffs in even a simple system's "confusion matrix" requires full English sentences.
Edit: I'm conflicted on the proper use of bolding. Reverting to minimal
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
2d ago
Huh, interesting - I actually attempted something similar. After getting pretty good at Spanish following a few years of what passes as an immersion experience, and taking a university Spanish class or two on top (including a Spanish lit class), I also decided I really wanted to read it (plus, had some at least decent Latin American history knowledge, thanks IB program). It's a cool book in principle, but the execution, I agree. Tried twice, got only to about 100 pages in the second time, and came to basically the same conclusion. On a technical level, it's super cool. Was neat to read in Spanish. But as a book, ehhhh...
If you find a more enjoyable Spanish book (not Marquez cuz I'm still burned out) though, that's worth it in original Spanish as opposed to a translation, I'm all ears. Could be nice to brush up again a bit.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Here's a few of my personal favorite single player experiences of all time. You will notice that almost all of them are post-2010!
Nier: Automata is an all time incredible single player game with an awesome aesthetic/vvibe + soundtrack + plot. The core combat is somewhat hack and slash, with a few cool boss fights, and the story if you're not familiar is non-linear in that you "play through" the game about 3.5 times across alt-timelines and different perspectives. Top 3 game of all time I think. Excellent ending.
The Last of Us and The Last of Us 2 are both awesome story-first zombie games that get you invested in the characters and setting way more than you'd expect for such a common zombie setting. I could write a ton more about especially the second one and its amazing narrative albeit somewhat unpopular narrative choices but others have written about the appeal of these games a lot already.
Horizon Zero Dawn is just plain fun, and also has a super great story. You fight robot dinos with bows and arrows - but it doesn't feel contrived. In fact, the world is semi-tribal post-apocalyptic Earth, but without too many of the typical tropes. In fact, the storyline has you slowly discover why the world is the way it is, and the slow but emotional reveal is executed super well. Combat is very fun too. There's a sequel that's better-looking, has gameplay refinements, but is overall more of the same with much weaker story, but IMO the first is the right entry point. The sequel is more for fans who liked the first.
Rounding out the legitimately incredible PlayStation hits, Ghost of Tsushima is beautiful and has solid gameplay to match.
Baldur's Gate 3 or its cheaper but fun cousin Divinity Original Sin 2 are both fun turn-based party RPGs with tons of flexibility and player choice. If you want an older game, Dragon Age Origins (OK this one is older) is an awesome party RPG that uses a real-time-with-pause kind of party combat that's got some cool tactics, and is a classic game where there are no easy black and white choices, no pleasing everyone, and your party members might even leave if you make them mad enough. Similar vibes for BG3 in that way, though BG3 is newer and more popular (for a reason).
Other RPGs that are engaging and fun worth mentioning are Kingdom Come Deliverance (cool medieval game with some sim elements but without the full boredom some sims have) (allegedly new sequel is even better but not on sale), Cyberpunk 2077 (neat setting, tons of side content, Keanu Reeves).
Special shoutout to Dishonored, a stealth-ish game (still some action and heart-pounding moments) in a very unique setting with a few supernatural powers. As you progress through a set of revenge assassinations, the world reacts to your choices, and gives you a surprising variety of ways to approach things in a genre that sometimes puts you on rails too much. Along that line, the World of Assassination (Hitman) trilogy if you like creative stealth gameplay where getting caught and going into a shootout is also plenty fun.
If you're a turn-based tactics guy, XCOM and XCOM 2 are classics and very fun. There have been a few great Civ entries. Slay the Spire had an insane impact on gaming too!
If we turn to handheld, at the very least I loved the DS Fire Emblems and Three Houses too. There are definitely more handheld solid titles probably since 2010 but that’s not my main jam.
But even if we circle back to shooters, Apex Legends had a decent time in the sun with decent movement and pace. Games like Battlefield 1 or the Battlefront remakes have incredible sound design and aesthetics that truly offer something new and different. If you like hardcore realistic ish shooters? Insurgency and its sequel, and others too have some decent handling and require some patience and skill. Valorant and CSGO are popular for a reason though I personally dislike them.
Want some run and gun, plain insanity madness? Borderlands 2 from 2012 is just plain fun. Tons of guns and mechanics and high intensity. You could also shift genres a little bit: Armored Core 6 is from FromSoft (dark souls people) but way more accessible, and two words: mecha combat! Respects your time and fun in big and small doses alike.
All of this to say that gaming is plenty healthy and some AAA games still break through too. And the indie space has never been more full and vibrant, ever.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Not OP but that was at least classically held to be the initial softening of the Iron Curtain/major arms treaties plus some economic improvement
Two thoughts. One, every time you invest you should always (always!) have at least a rough timeline in mind. If your timeline is >3 years, great! You're still, historically speaking, probably going to be fine. If it was less, this is a valuable life lesson about stock volatility many have not learned and you might gain some lifelong net-benefit, even literally. Carefully evaluate your timeline and beware of panic selling depending on said timeline.
Two, sometimes it is emotionally easier to "structure" investments (and their sale as well). Although in theory, it is best to invest it all at once and sell it all at once, as soon and as late as possible respectively - this is due to the tendency of the market to go up - in practice as you have learned it can be difficult and full of self-doubt or recrimination. "Structuring" in this context means that you stagger any and all entries and exits into the stock market, effectively 'averaging' the price points. This means, maybe you have 30k to invest, you put in 10k one month, wait a month, 10k the next, wait a month, 10k the next, or something like that. This way, you can at least emotionally free yourself from trying to "time" the market, since the timing effects are diluted (they don't go away entirely, but it's a lot easier to stay convinced that your entry or exit was deliberate and rational). This also means your gains are averaged too, might be good or bad. Like I said, I personally consider it an emotional-management technique, but emotions are a valid and real factor in investing. You can always park the to-be-invested money in a high yield savings account temporarily while you wait.
I guess I have Israel loosely modeled as a middle player and local Palestinians as a small bit player. Israel-Iran as a conflict I view as something we should be worried about, Israel-Lebanon, not as much, Israel and mid/post-collapse Syria, also not so much. I'd model Russia-Ukraine as a big vs medium conflict so a medium vs small conflict just doesn't feel like it's in the same category. In this sense, I'm evaluating these in terms of power first, particulars second; you seem to be saying "war of conquest" is the first or maybe only filter. Medium vs small conflicts, war of conquest or not, are part of the natural course of history and of only incidental and practical concern to the big powers.
Very roughly speaking: big vs big conflicts, big vs medium, and medium vs medium conflicts all strongly benefit from a norm-based paradigm in a way that big vs small, medium vs small, and small vs small conflicts do not. A large part of this seemingly-arbitrary division is involved in "how likely is conflict to spread?" and "how devastating would a serious conflict be (to the norm-makers and bystanders)?" As a cynical but authentic example, if Russia pushes around Moldova instead of Ukraine, even militarily, although I would find that worrisome and bad, it's not a critical world threat and norms are not the be-all and end-all. Though, full disclosure: I'm still a bit on the fence about "how much should another big player care" in big vs small conflicts particularly. I guess I did invoke Georgia as an example of where Russia was maybe headed, which was certainly a big vs small kind of deal? I might be persuaded to include big-small as in the former category, but my initial feeling is to count it in the admittedly euphemistic but perhaps apt phrase "letting off steam".
Absolutely nothing would change on the ground and the war would still be taking place
I somewhat disagree. First, I think the modest but real direct Russian support tipped the scales in 2014 a bit more strongly than it otherwise would have, meaning the conflict didn't get resolved as 'authentically' and furthermore, obviously if the norm were upheld better Russia never would have directly invaded later. I called out some of their specific grey-zone tactics there as something that should fall on the 'prohibited' norm list precisely because of their effectiveness surpassing some (admittedly not bright, but nonetheless real) line. Russia's 2014 actions were not organic in any sense - rather they deliberately took advantage of norms that are usually used to allow for some plausible deniability, and cynically manipulated that grey zone in a manner completely contrary to why the grey zone even exists, stretching them to an extreme. All of these words to say that yes, if you drop the coordinated cyberattack and don't directly deploy your own troops, I think Russia's 2014 actions would have still been, well not desirable but at least vaguely within the norms up to that point. It's still possible e.g. Crimea secedes, but it's no longer guaranteed. We are in the realm of concern, not crisis. We don't have all this talk of escalation and war and direct conflict.
Similarly, China merely announcing support for a separatist Taiwanese party is not in and of itself a violation. They still have a mostly-functioning democracy, it could always backfire, and if they genuinely decide to join China it's a massive mistake but their right, I suppose. The question of economic pressure, even embargo, is a much more thorny question that current norms don't quite have a great answer to, at least not a direct one (the vibes might still matter).
More broadly... something I've been sitting on for a while and still don't quite have an answer to, is the idea of secession in general. It feels like 'we' (Western thought?) reached some kind of vague idea about when revolutions are okay-ish, but it doesn't feel like anyone (or any ideology) has a good answer to when secessionism is, and if so, what form it ought to take (or can be allowed to take). At least, not in any kind of universal way. It still feels like there should be a universal answer, though. Something for a top-level post sometime.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
They do have some economic leverage, and a little bit of military leverage (we get actually a LOT of mileage out of NORAD and a little out of intel collaboration), but a decent chunk of it is "nice-to-haves" and/or inertia. But yeah, acting offended is silly. It's a classic Trump power move, and the winning response is to be firm and quiet.
But it does still seem so misguided albeit predictable that we're feuding with them instead of, you know, teaming up against China. IIRC they've even expressed willingness to go along with it, which is why I think this is more Trump being his typical correct-vibes but terrible-execution self.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Honestly I'm unconvinced that there's some kind of clear link between male sexual frustration and rape. I don't think rape actually comes from that at all - at least not the bulk of it. Though rapist typologies are a bit problematic what I have read seems to run counter to this idea. Of course in relative terms, obviously women going out more will result in more rape, and women being "less safe" will as well, I think when viewed proportionally the connection appears to be fairly weak. It's not like women are being completely blind to danger either and take zero steps for their own protection. A much stronger case still remains that rape comes primarily from the circumstances of the rapist: "Sexual offenders exhibit heterogeneous characteristics, yet they present with similar clinical problems or criminogenic needs (e.g., emotional regulation deficits, social difficulties, offense supportive beliefs, empathy deficits and deviant arousal); the degree to which these clinical issues are evident varies among individual offenders" (and by type). I suppose you could argue that more socially stunted men leads to more rape, but that's not really what you seem to have actually said?
You have some other good points, but claiming more sexual freedom for women is overall bad for women because it will cause more rape is not a good point at all. Also, the assertion that more acceptance of casual sex leads somehow to more pressure have sex seems a bit mixed up to me, much less an increase in "tricking" women to have sex. This is just not a coherent point at all.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Believe me, things like the Cuban Missile Crisis are almost perpetually part of my thinking that I like to challenge myself with. But I try to avoid too-crazy what-ifs because nothing in foreign policy is ever divorced entirely from history or circumstance. Lack of realism proportionally decreases the usefulness of thought exercises. A better thought exercise is, for example, if the US gets in a shooting war with China and loses a major fleet, does it use a tactical nuke? What if instead China air-nukes a fleet, do we air-nuke a city in response? What do we do if China preemptively shoots down a ton of our GPS or other satellites, but takes no other action, how would we respond? All of those are much more relevant and important questions to ask and plan for rather than... whatever weird fiction that is. Or, talk about for example the actual real-world case of US putting pressure on Panama to kick out the nearby Chinese ports near the canal (and whatever other crock Trump is spouting). Maybe engage in some reasoning about what if those ports were militarized or something. Would the US be justified in invading Panama to stop Chinese influence in this case? Well, treaty-wise I think we'd have some latitude, but practically speaking I think that that would be bad and the world would be wise to try and stop it from happening.
To the extent that moral reasoning matters (which is, not much, mostly when convenient and/or don't infringe too much on the more core responsibilities) I similarly think it's enough to put yourself in their shoes and better understand context rather than conjure up some kind of convoluted alter-history just to reason through a low-relevance moral point.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I honestly don't understand if this is a disagreement or tough words because you think I'm hypocritical. Please distinguish. There's no agenda posting here, I'm legitimately trying to give a complete picture. I think big powers and small powers differ, and I think not all parts of the world are of equal importance to foreign politics (I should note that certain areas of Asia as you correctly note are also of high importance in a way yet another civil war in Sudan is not). That's not to assign less value exactly, it's just the reality of foreign affairs where you can't afford to be entirely dogmatic and you can't be entirely pragmatic either. I lean towards pragmatism, but that doesn't mean 'heartless pragmatism', I allow for space to do individually non-optimal things out of a moral stand every once in a while, or in order to gain a wider and broader benefit. I will argue equally with anyone that this kind of ideological-dogmatist-pragmatist balance is the ideal. "I oppose wars of aggression and conquest" is not a coherent foreign policy (to the extent that coherency even matters of course) and perhaps more importantly if implemented it wouldn't work. "Total consistency" is not the benchmark to grade a foreign policy approach even remotely. It's not just naive, it's counter-productive.
For every problem, it's also important to ask how much of the problem is zero-sum, and how much of it is variable? That's the other question in addition to "how much should I care?" which involves, yes, realism about the size and scale of the matter.
Israel is a problem, but it's not a problem on the scale of Russia, China, Germany, or the like. Does the US prop them up and implicitly allow them to get away with a ton of shit? Yes, and I often wish we wouldn't. Do they oppress people and commit borderline-genocidal atrocities? Yes, that too. But they also are a potential anchor in the region, a trade partner, and at least modestly democratic and egalitarian with potential for positive change. I can see "both sides" if we call Israelis and Palestinians "sides" and it's just a shit sandwich all over. My long-preferred solution is for everyone to stop being forever at cross-purposes and just accept that all of Israel needs to fully integrate somehow, and work on doing that and all of its mess well. Two-state solution is the stupidest pipe dream I've ever heard of, and Israel is a democracy right there, so like hey, just go do your messy democracy stuff directly! Palestinians and Israelis both have had some unfair shit go on historically and at some point grievances can't go on forever. Nothing the US does is going to magically fix anything one way or the other. Honestly, I didn't dislike the vaguely Trump-shaped plan of "well if they just have some economic boom it will lift all boats and restore regional diplomatic ties" as a step toward that end.
Back to the point. It's somewhat natural for states, including big ones, to want influence over their neighbors. But despite being a much-maligned word, "norms" actually do work on big states in a way that they do not on small states, since they are more stable, long-term actors. Thus, in my view, it's perfectly rational to apply different standards to them, even beyond the typical dogmatic-pragmatist balance. Russia arming Donbas separatists is worrisome and annoying, funding opposition parties also bad, cyberattacks it depends (haven't figured out the norms for that yet) but it doesn't cross a line in the way that Russia's further actions did. Examples include deliberate grey-zone warfare tactics, deploying their own "little green men" troops directly, hell, even the airliner that was shot down was done so we believe more or less directly by actual Russian military members.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
First of all I didn't take your comment seriously because Israel was attacked both times it took territory, in response, and also because Israel comments often feel more like bait than legitimate attempts at discussion. Sure, they took a little more land from Syria recently, but that's whatever, they didn't even fight over it. Lest you think I'm an Israel stan however, I really dislike their provocative settlement stuff. I think they're borderline apartheid, certainly guilty of the lesser sin of racially-delineated callousness at least. But their behavior falls far short of "expansionist wars" by most measures (I guess they've invaded Lebanon a time and a half? Is that what you're referring to?). If they bomb Iran or something (I want us to strongly discourage this) then we can talk and maybe re-assess. Overall though if you think the US is constantly making a habit of funding expansionist wars I guess we just disagree on the facts.
Anyways, this has nothing to do with the value of lives and everything to do with the balance of world power + avoiding mega-wars. Honestly, I consider war a semi-normal state of affairs, especially for those between smaller states. It sucks, but is also human nature. We can do things to discourage it, sometimes respond on a case to case basis, but we can't solve everything. I care more about big state actions because they tend to domino around the globe more than localized conflicts. Even if I were to say "oh Israel is bloodthirsty invader" that's still not something that has a major knock-on effect elsewhere. China invades Taiwan? That affects not only chips, but global shipping routes, and more. Not the same.
I don't think we have some kind of moral duty to police everyone, though I do think we can do some smaller things to help keep stuff stable. You're free to take another tack, and I don't think on that philosophical stance there is one objective superior truth. So do I hold big states to a different standard than small states? You bet I do. I think most people who claim they don't often end up twisting themselves into pretzels trying to have some kind of defining all-applicable global principles. I don't think such a world-view is possible, not with total consistency.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I think this is Democratic over-correction that will come back to bite them. They raised historic amounts this last cycle and a lot of it was via these exact text campaigns. Rather than go "nice, let's keep that in the back pocket for the next major election" it's really easy to hit the button to mass-text for short-term attractive fund-raising, and they don't have the self-control to stop themselves. In short, it has nothing to do with willpower and is not indicative of grassroots #resistance. If anything, this is yet another thing that will fatigue voters. They'd be better off keeping their powder dry for the actual midterms.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
I think if we're all being honest there is an actual difference between wars of aggression by a major world power and in Europe than elsewhere in the world. Wars of aggression by smaller players is one thing but major players is another. I think it's in everyone's benefit that the major powers stop it, right?
And yes, before you say it, I wish other countries had thrown more of a fit about Iraq, though still more defensible: forcibly exporting democracy was a loser idea, WMDs were a lie, but Hussein was also legitimately an evil psychopath guy in a way Ukrainian presidents just... weren't, and the US didn't even get all that much out of it. Before anyone goes "it was about oil" Iraq actually exported less oil even after the invasion and has only gone down since. It doesn't fit the expansionist mold, and expansionist wars by major powers are the most dangerous kind, the kind we want to discourage. Comparatively, who cares about minor wars in far-flung underdeveloped countries?
Thanks for the thoughtful response. That's some interesting somewhat new information about the missile shield stuff. To be clear, I'm framing all of this exactly on that last premise, where Russia's whole argument against NATO is that it's somehow an existential threat against the Russian state. This is absolutely ridiculous. In absolutely no world would the US much less NATO actually launch a nuclear decapitation first strike against Russia, and yes I'm willing to bet the world on that. The only scenario in which nukes get exchanged is the result of massive miscommunications in the face of existing tensions or fog of war, and in that scenario the actual tactical considerations like "is the launcher in Romania/Poland/Estonia/etc or is it in Germany" are not relevant anyways. And even then it's not NATO pushing the button, it's the United States directly, so even more a moot point. NATO again requires a ton of buy-in from many actors, which means pulling the trigger on offensive actions isn't some secret. Whereas there was legitimate doubt whether Russia would actually invade Ukraine up until they actually did it. NATO would never. It's a committee, for crying out loud.
Anyways. Yes, in theory, the various nuclear agreements were supposed to give decision-makers more time to make such decisions, thus increasing the chance of a good decision, by limiting the (relatively) shorter range types of missile, but IIRC (welcome corrections) the Russians literally were the first ones to purposefully develop such a missile in violation of the treaty, and thus deserve the bulk of the practical blame. I think that's still in keeping with your information, as again, even IF the conversion of Aegis systems to Tomahawks was possible, my understanding is that it's not an overnight fix kind of thing. (Also, didn't the nuclear-variant Tomahawk in question get retired in 2010-2013, says Google?) Thus, even if Russians might be upset that the US isn't keeping the spirit of the INF treaty, developing their own non-compliant missile creates the exact risk the INF agreement was supposed to prevent, and their concerns, while justified maybe more broadly, still shouldn't have extended to this particular issue. Which brings me right back to the original point. I get that the Russians are historically touchy, but there's a difference between paranoia and common sense.
Russia is a single entity and NATO is not. Russia was and will never be genuinely militarily threatened by anyone - even in Georgia it was secessionists who were shelled, not Russian territory - but the same is patently not true for individual European states. Russia wanting the Donbas separatists to win wasn't out of some patriotic desire to help Russian speakers but naked political greed and expansionism. We can tell exactly because of the Ukraine stuff that went down can genuinely cause us to re-examine the 2014 grab and conclude (even if we hadn't been sure already) that this was starting shit, not 'taking advantage' of an existing crisis. The additional fact that Russia has been deliberately and freely embracing "grey zone" tactics to achieve their goals (little green men, online astroturfing, etc.) should work against their credit, not in their favor.
Yugoslavia on the other hand is not Russia. If smaller former Warsaw Pact countries want or wanted to form a defensive military alliance to protect against similar NATO "aggression" (it kind of takes genocide to get them going which is a somewhat high bar?) they are free to, and NATO might be unhappy but it won't like, freak out.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
Newsom is and always will be a shameless chameleon. I think Buttigieg is a better case, because not only is he gay and married himself, but he's already been a good example of 'smart guy, knows which way the wind is blowing, but limits himself to smart political pitching rather than lying or deceit'. Like if you look at him appearing on Jubilee's video 1 Politician vs 25 Undecided Voters when he's asked a couple of questions where he clearly low-key agrees with the questioner (I think he was asked why Kamala sounds so fake for example) he puts a good spin on it but listening carefully he doesn't like, say "oh Kamala is secretly this cool person" like some politicians. At least that's my read on it.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
- I think the Biden level of support was roughly correct. Our military-industrial base couldn't actually handle a lot more without severely depleting the reserves too much, and the fears of over-escalating via too many long-range missiles were also valid fears. Sending boots on the ground is political suicide, not necessary, not very feasible, and a bad idea besides for direct escalation reasons.
- End goal was ideally a permanent peace, but not a restoration of original borders, as that was likely off the table in practical terms seeing as a stalemate being the best military case has been near-obvious for at least a year if not longer. I think I would have liked to see some kind of internationally administered true referendum, a binding one, in the occupied areas as to what they would like their status to be. Maybe a separate one for Crimea and one or two in the Donbas + similar areas. An acceptable non-ideal endpoint would be some kind of cease fire with deterrence in some form, specifics I really dunno. Don't care about specifically punishing Putin or anything. We want to, IN GENERAL, send the message that blatant invasions in Europe for pure conquest purposes are not OK, that's the only message I really care to send. Proportional response, right?
- I don't think I fully understand this question. Can you elaborate? Are you asking about if aid was "too much"? I think it was the obvious response to send the above message. Now, part of the issue was that 2014 was handled poorly by almost everyone, but outright invasion I think literally cannot be accepted. Or are you asking if there's some event that would convince me that Ukraine was the "bad guy" or a "worse guy" all along?
Part of this is that I feel very strongly that NATO is and would still have remained (and still WILL remain) a fundamentally defensive alliance. I guess loosely related to your question #3 is that I have mixed feelings about the NATO expansion. Clearly, a demand is there for smaller states worried about invasion from Russia - something that even in post-Soviet times they are literally and explicitly guilty of (Georgia 2008 absolutely must be mentioned). I don't know if NATO was really the best tool, but the need was there. So I guess I could say that concrete signs that NATO would consider an offensive, counter-Russia action would be notable, but they do not in reality exist. For example, strong evidence in favor of this is how NATO has promised and still does not station nuclear weapons in any former Warsaw Pact nations. This idea that Russia was somehow 'goaded' into attacking I view as almost explicit Russian propaganda - at least, explicitly spread, I don't think it's intrinsically faulty, though of course it is I believe factually false.
For example, large military exercises near Russia's borders are seen as provocative, and of course they might send a political/diplomatic message, but in no conceivable scenario are they actually threats. The idea behind military exercises being threats is that they can sometimes mask real invasions. Russia, obviously, just used this excuse for its own attack. But the structure of NATO, and the nature of the alliance and its countries (democracies) almost literally prevents NATO from ever declaring a surprise invasion or offensive action. Similarly, missile defense systems being deployed in Poland, etc. are I think a little more understandable, but again, NATO is almost never going to initiate shit, much less a nuclear initiation, so again this isn't a legitimate reason to be afraid of NATO. The only actual NATO offensive action was Yugoslavia, and even that was telegraphed far in advance, was explicitly humanitarian in an already-war situation, so I fail to see how it would ever serve as a template for Russia to be worried.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
- Did you vote in the 2024 presidential election Yes, I voted 94%; No, I didn’t vote 6%
- Who did you vote for in the 2024 presidential election? Democrat Kamala Harris 48%; Republican Donald Trump 50%
Suspiciously high proportion of people who claim they voted, although the population was explicitly registered voters, but actual partisan breakdown is fairly split.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
That may well be your opinion and you may well be right (voters don't always know what they want), but still I think it's worth pointing out that voters surveyed disagree. Specifically, one of the tested messages was:
The Democratic Party stands for a lot of the right things, but they have no real messengers who can convince people they’re right. Democrats used to have people like Bill Clinton or Barack Obama who could connect with the whole country. Now it just feels like a bunch of half-rate politicians who can’t get their story straight or stay on message.
which sounds very similar to your claim... but it tested smack dab in the middle of the pack, a perfect 50% score. The only "committee" aspect of the polling was that the surveyor is strongly Democrat-aligned, and the specific set of 10 messages were crafted by the pollsters themselves.
I think the element that you highlight that was very strongly supported however was that voters want a clear and pro-action "we want to do X" message, not a "we're against Y" message.
EverythingIsFine
Well, is eventually fine
1mo ago
- pet issue
- policy changes
- really big policy change
- vague vibe
The current system can actually accommodate this kind of thing, and I mean it completely sincerely when I say it is possible, but it requires some form of organization, ideally in the form of a movement. So, unironically yes, you should build it. Think Tea Party or something - it took a few years, but we see now the fruits of what they planted on a wide range of issues, and it all started from a strong local groundswell of sorts. But first you'd have to find some way to package at least some of it together in a sensible way. Right now these things don't neatly fit into the packages offered by the status quo. I could theoretically see it sliding in either on the left (housing, green energy, people-centric) or the right (healthy living, lower regulations, cultural prosperity) just as well, though starting on a particular 'side' isn't mandatory.
I'd call it something along the lines of Human Basics, just have a heavy emphasis on health and housing, I could see that blending into a "package", with a reasonable vibe. I think something is brewing at least on the housing front, so your best bet other than starting from scratch would be to try and push the packaged mini-ideology onto an existing and on-the-ups housing advocacy group. Or, if you want to be institutional, if you could find a powerful state government to run a housing-regulation overhaul, that could be a good trial balloon if you can convince some powerful people directly. That's probably the only way to actually sidestep the movement requirement.
Curious if anyone's read and could recommend a good book on the Reconstruction era, and the transition into the Gilded Age - ideally, a political one that starts with Lincoln's assassination, think Team of Rivals. I know there is a good amount of stuff on the racial politics of Reconstruction, and while that's interesting, I was hoping for something a little more holistic. Or, maybe a pair of books.
Like, I want the nitty gritty details about how Southern senators slowly got their seats back in the legislature. I want to know about the politics of the Freedman's Bureau. How demobilization went. Who was in power in the South for the next few years locally. Drama between Johnson, Grant, Stanton, public opinion, carpetbaggers, the healing/scarring process of bitter post-war feelings, the super contested 1976 election, there's so much history happening there that I think gets shortchanged.
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