Shrike
23hr ago
Why would you tell the MAGA true believers about Operation Bring Down Trump?
That's the thing that really muddies the waters in conspiracy discourse, everyone acts like they have no idea how the government (or people) work. They act like "the government" is this magical monolithic entity. But "the government" doesn't do things, people inside the government do things, and sometimes they do things unofficially and/or illegally.
The threat that people are trying to get at when they talk about "the Deep State" isn't that "the CIA" will "decide" to screw over an elected official. You think there's some internal CIA policy that says "it is the official position of the Central Intelligence Agency to bork This Guy in Particular"?
No, the threat is that some guys at the CIA who don't like This Guy in Particular will use their official position and resources to bork him. I mean, look at Watergate. There wasn't an official FBI position of "we will leak evidence of the Watergate scandal to the Washington Post," Mark Felt took advantage of his position as Deputy Director to do that. And it would be the same with the DC police - IF this theory is true (and it seems too soon to tell, to me) it's not "the DC police" doing this. It's a group of DC police officers who, by virtue of not being completely stupid, aren't going to tell DC police officers who would disagree with their plan any more than they would post it on the Internet.
That's not to say that there's never been an Official Policy To Do Something Bad (there has), but the Stringer Bell's rule applies doubly so to people in the government. (If only conspiracy theorists would actually watch and pay attention to The X-Files, which actually understands the dynamic here decently well.)
Shrike
2d ago
“There is a biochemical link between exposure to sunlight and sexual urges.. that’s why you have Latin lovers”
Hilariously, if you dig into the links, you'll find that one of the reasons Watson said this is, apparently, because of an experiment where injecting melanin directly into men had Viagra-like results.
Your takedown of Watson (...shortly after his death) doesn't ask if any of his kooky views might be true or why he believes them, it just holds them up and says they are bad. Some of them were probably wrong (which, for a scientist, is arguably worse than bad) and some of them were probably insensitive, but aren't you a little bit curious to know more about the effects of melanin on sexual desire?
Shrike
2d ago
I'm just trying to understand the epistemology that makes this all work. Is it Red Tribe to actually trust the government now?
I think Red Tribe distrust in the mainstream news media has always [within recent memory] been high, perhaps even higher than Red Tribe distrust in the government.
So yes, all of the things people are saying about arguments as soldiers and people wanting to believe what they want to believe are true, but it's pretty consistent for Red Tribe to see a news story and assume there's a massive and substantially misleading spin involved.
Why distrust the media so much? I think this is the perception:
The government always lies to protect its own interests. Sometimes that hurts Red Tribe. Sometimes it doesn't. But when the media lies, it is always to hurt Red Tribe or help its enemies.
Shrike
4d ago
For me, the problems you describe make parallel institutions more appealing, because you are correct that Christianity is oriented towards serving God, which means that it will be treated with hostility by the world (Christian Scripture says this specifically!) As I said on a prior occasion, "you might as well be weird."
That doesn't mean, though, that you should tie one hand behind your back and not talk about the good that your religious group does. (And just as an empirical matter, nondenominational churches are actually growing in membership, even while most other denominations are shedding membership – so I am not 100% certain the choice for churches today is necessarily between quickly shrinking and slowly shrinking, as I think you are suggesting.)
Shrike
4d ago
Personally what I hope for is a combination of the evangelical view of the world as mission space and its non-hierarchical, liberal approach to conversion with the focus on interior cultivation and community practice of Orthodox communities, but it is very rare that I get what I hope for in any field. So it goes.
I tend to agree with you. We're here on The Motte, and it seems to me that in theory there's a very clear synthesis with parallel institutions serving as a motte from which believers can sally forth to evangelize and retreat to in times of hostility. Dreher chose the name Benedict because the Benedictines ended up preserving so much literature that was later extremely influential on changing the course of history (if memory serves).
I think that, just in general, parallel spaces serve a potentially valuable role in terms of providing vital back-ups or redundancy, as well as a bulwark against tyranny and disaster. A city with a firmly established religious benevolence network will do better caring for the needy if government services shut down than one without; if the government oversteps its bounds, a place with alternative or parallel means of communication, organizing, and moving money will be much better prepared to resist than a place where all logistical and ideological endeavor is essentially routed through the same small cluster of institutions that, fundamentally, rest on a few fragile datacenters that can easily be accessed, subverted, and denied by a powerful government.
Obviously religious groups and institutions are not the ONLY institutions that can provide this. But I think it's important to note this because a lot of times Christians building parallel institutions invites hostility, and I think it's helpful to note that these organizations can actually provide a real public good (even if they are to some degree motivated by a desire for insularity).
And this sort of comes back to the Motte itself, I think: the Motte was created, as I understand it, precisely due to the perceived need to create a parallel institution without having to worry about a way of life discourse being strangled in its cradle by a hostile culture. The Motte is the Dreher Option in action, albeit not intended for religious conservatives (which to be clear I am not complaining about!)
even if I think it is often wide open to heretical teachings or pseudo-idolatry
I hear this a lot from Catholic intellectuals, but empirically it seems to me that Catholicism is far worse at teaching proper catechesis than evangelicals. You can see this in polling that shows that Catholics are more likely to reject core Christian doctrines, or in polling that shows they are less likely to go to Mass than evangelicals are to go to service (even though as I understand it this is much more of a religious obligation in Catholicism than in evangelicalism), or in polling that shows that a majority of US Catholics support abortion (performing worse on a cornerstone Catholic issue than evangelicals!) and birth control, where in practice Catholics are nearly as likely to say it is morally acceptable as Protestants, or in personal anecdotes (for instance Dreher talks about a priest counseling him and his wife to use contraception!)
Part of this, of course, is that Catholics who are essentially secular will still identify as Catholic in surveys, whereas lapsed evangelicals, I think, often won't bother to pretend. However, I also think there's a broader lesson here about human nature. People like control, and are entranced with the idea that a clear, rigorous body of rules, disseminated through a hierarchical organization, can give them some measure of control. But the facts on the ground often play out differently.
Now to be clear, I don't think this is the end of the story for American Catholicism – I suspect it's going to essentially shed most of its non-serious members and end up smaller but with a more committed (and conservative) core that will continue to have an outsized impact on US culture – but I think it's important to realize that just because the Catholics have One Big Book with all the answers to doctrine written down and evangelicals don't (or, if you prefer, have 2,184 competing One Big Books), doesn't actually solve the problem of getting people to read the book, let alone convincing people that the book is correct.
Shrike
10d ago
If you are carrying a handgun or a knife openly and someone tackles you, you are at risk of being shot or stabbed.
Shrike
24d ago
Keep in mind that Electoral College votes are determined by population (which would include illegal aliens), so even if no illegal aliens vote their presence, if large enough, does skew the Electoral College. Not coincidentally, the President has been calling for a new census.
Gerrymandering and court cases and deportations might be unseemly (or they might be politics as usual, I suppose that depends on the specifics and your personal judgment) but all of them are at least done under the color of law, unlike outrider voter fraud.
I think Trump running as Vance's VP as a backdoor into a third term would go against the spirit of the 22nd, but whether it's actually forbidden would be something the courts would have to decide.
This would be extremely funny, and I hadn't considered that seriously, but I suppose it is possible. The 12th Amendment bars people ineligible for the Presidency from the position of Vice-Presidency, though, which might be ruled to put a damper on the idea.
Shrike
25d ago
Anything with significant quantities of rare earths - which describes a lot of modern military technology.
This is a problem for all countries that aren't China right now - but I think most of those countries will survive.
China's not going to help - China wants to make sure the Israeli security situation is as miserable as possible, because that means US resources and attention will be diverted there and away from Taiwan.
This isn't really a consideration at play if the US is no longer Israel's patron, is it?
France? I wouldn't pin my hopes on France coming to the rescue given their own large internal problems. They can't even supply the Ukrainians with enough materiel to fight off Russia.
I'm not suggesting France will "come to their rescue," I'm suggesting France will sell them military hardware. France's support of Ukraine hasn't halted French arms sales elsewhere (e.g. they are still attempting to sell the Rafale to various parties, I believe). You can make of that what you will but "France can't/won't sell people military hardware" doesn't seem correct.
As for Russia itself? Russia supplies the air-defence systems used by Iran and has been accepting a lot of help from them with regards to drone technology and drone warfare. Russia is the largest military partner of Israel's biggest regional threat - I don't think they're going to be much help.
Russia has relatively good relations with Israel (and notably Israel has declined to assist Ukraine) and a history of cooperating with Israel on military technology. Russia also doesn't have much qualms about selling to both sides of a conflict, I don't think, and have (allegedly) agreed not to sell arms to Iran due to agreements with Israel in the past, so I'm skeptical that the Russian relationship with Iran would actually prevent them from selling arms to Israel.
In the same future where the US has abandoned them, there's no doubt going to be a cessation of remittances and other support from American jews to Israel
Why? I don't think American Jews are sending support to Israel because the US government suggests it.
paying Egypt to stay friendly to Israel
Why do you think this is necessary? Israel and Egypt are trade partners, Egypt is the first Middle Eastern nation to recognize Israel (getting close to 50 years ago) and both the Arabism and the Islamism that precipitated past Israeli-Egyptian conflict have waned somewhat. I don't see it as impossible, but I don't see why it's inevitable, either.
The nations surrounding them, and by simply closing their borders to land/air traffic.
My understanding is that the majority of Israel's imports are via sea.
Iran is more than capable of shutting down their shipping infrastructure, even if they have to send the weaponry to the Houthis to do it.
Why hasn't Iran done this, then? It sounds to me like Iran could have destroyed Israel already without needing to develop nuclear weapons. This would probably have been a better idea than letting Israel bomb them nonstop for days. What's stopping them?
I would note that the Houthis are in Yemen. Yemen and Iran are both too far away from the Mediterranean to close shipping lanes there with the ease that they can close shipping lanes through Suez. What mechanism do you propose for shutting down shipping? Missile strikes on port facilities, maybe?
I don't think they'll necessarily attack them, but charging obscene fees to render those imports uneconomical when they don't just sabotage or block them is well within the bounds of what they could do.
How are the neighboring nations going to charge fees on goods imported via the Mediterranean traveling through international waters? Cutting them off in Suez would be annoying, but it would not be the end of the world - the Houthis already accomplished a partial closure of the Red Sea, rerouting many ships around the Horn of Africa, and Israel didn't collapse.
It sounds to me in your telling like losing the United States as a patron would be irritating and expensive - does it really follow that Israel will cease to exist as a state?
Shrike
25d ago
Trump is term-limited, there will be no vote on whether or not he leaves office absent a Constitutional amendment (which is extremely far-fetched).
US elections are also held at the state level, so there's no real way for him to rig the elections via the federal bureaucracy (unless he's using the CIA to hack the voting machines, or something). I suppose he could attempt to stage a coup of some variety, but I agree with you assessment of the federal bureaucracy there.
Shrike
25d ago
(the orthodox, who do not contribute to the economy in any real way and are exempt from military service)
Interestingly that exemption ended last year.
Their military additionally requires a vast array of inputs which they are unable to source domestically, and if their current imperial patron left they would be unable to maintain the military edge their security environment requires.
What, specifically, can they not make? And if they can't make something, why couldn't they source it from a non-patron power? The US declining to be Israel's patron doesn't mean, for instance, that the US stops selling Israel aircraft - but if they did, Russia, France and China would all be happy to source anything Israel couldn't domestically manufacture, don't you think?
But energy independent?
Ah, my mistake. They export LNG, but that doesn't go writ large for the rest of their energy.
Without the US empire giving money to all the other nations in the region to pacify them, supplying Israel with interceptor missiles/other materiel and engaging in various trade arrangements with oil suppliers, how does Israel maintain their energy security? How do they maintain their food security, given that modern farming practices also rely heavily on petroleum for energy and fertiliser? How exactly do they make up for that 95% reduction in available energy when the imports get cut off due to war? How much of their military supply chain is entirely domestic?
Presumably the answer to these questions is "the same way all other nations do." (Now, in point of fact, I think Israel sources their own interceptors - Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow, since they have retired the Patriot.)
Who, specifically, is going to cut off their imports? And how?
Perhaps you tacitly assume that all surrounding countries will attempt to attack Israel again as soon as the US withdraws its security umbrella? I do not understand why I should assume that this will happen (let alone why the attempt should succeed) - a lot has changed in the Middle East since the Yom Kippur War. But if I should assume that, I would like to know!
Shrike
26d ago
Quite possibly this was not an attack but I don't think it's a post-hoc claim; the warning that Russia would strike our infrastructure has been registered in some corners well in advance of this happening. Jack Murphy reported in 2022 that the CIA was conducting a sabotage campaign inside Russian soil and I've been operating under the assumption that the Russians would retaliate in kind (if the claims were true, which seemed plausible) ever since.
Shrike
26d ago
The only explanations I can come to are that it was the Russians, and that's why it isn't being speculated in the news that it was the Russians.
I think this is plausibly correct. It might not even be about the Tomahawks: we're running sabotage teams on Russian soil, they're running sabotage teams on ours, we're both pretending that we aren't. Maybe something else happened in the specific case in Tennessee but my guess is that there's been an entire series of Recent Incidents that may later be revealed, if the .gov/Kremlin opens the books in 50 years, to have been done by Russian sabotage teams.
For states, violence is a form of negotiation. It makes governments look bad to admit that foreign sabotage teams are operating in their soil (both internationally, as it may constitute an act of war with the implications that entails and domestically, as it signals impotence or incompetence) but if you don't want to come off looking weaker in the negotiation you need to respond.
Shrike
26d ago
Why does Israel need an imperial patron?
In the past Israel got along okay without the US (buying military hardware from, notably, France).
Today they are capable of manufacturing most of their own military hardware except for fighter aircraft and helicopters (the bottleneck on the former likely being engine manufacturing). It looks like they are a net food importer but are energy independent. As others have pointed out, they have a growing population and an advanced military.
So why do they need a patron? I'm not trying to be confrontational here, I'm just trying to figure out the argument that they can't survive without a sponsor. It seems like to me that as long as they can prevent sea access from being cut off they should be just fine on their own. Is there a bottleneck that I'm not seeing here?
Shrike
29d ago
Ah yes this makes sense - and yes, I do think it's correct that the Russians don't have the capability to generate aircraft in numbers approaching that of the US or China.
I do seem to recall when last I checked that their 40 or so losses of Su-34s had probably set them back about a year's worth of production, which I really don't think is all that bad, particularly considering how small the Su-34 fleet is. Whether or not they can afford to purchase them, though, I don't know - and losses of aircraft that aren't still in production (IIRC: Su-25s, Su-24s, Tu-95s and Tu-22Ms) will obviously hurt quite a bit more.
Shrike
29d ago
Afghanistan borders China, seems funny potentially helpful to have an airfield there!
Shrike
29d ago
because they know that they're not that great at building airplanes.
I'm not really sure how much it matters how well your aircraft is "built" when it's hit by a missile, but I am given to understand that Russian aircraft are actually designed pretty well - the Flanker, for instance, is pretty commonly acknowledged to be a peer to the F-15 (and of course the Russians equipped their aircraft with equipment such as high off-boresight dogfighting missiles and electronically-scanned arrays before the States during the Cold War and today continue to develop capabilities not fielded by the West, such as the Felon's cheek radar arrays and of course the favorite weapon of comic book villains everywhere, nuclear-tipped air-to-air missiles).
The major game changers have been the Russians introducing their equivalent of the JDAM (allowing them to drop far more tonnage for far less money from outside the range of Ukrainian air defenses)
Yes. From what I can tell, the (embarrassing) lack of glide bombs was more important to the lackluster support provided by the Russian air arm than any sort of aircraft quality issues.
However, I'd suggest a third thing where the VKS has stood out - perhaps not a "major game changer" in the course of what is primarily a ground war, but their employment of the MiG-31 and Flankers carrying long range air-to-air missiles seems to have been relatively effective, with the Russians scoring at least one kill with the R-37 in excess of 100 miles. Being able to threaten Ukrainian aircraft even when they are able to mask themselves from the Russian surface air defenses seems to have created real problems for the Ukrainians, and of course despite receiving F-16s more than a year ago the Ukrainians don't seem to have been able to seize air superiority, which I would guess is due partially to the effective Russian SAM network but also partially to the fact that the F-16/AMRAAM combo is just outsticked by the MiG-31/Su-35 and R-37 combo.
I could be wrong as I haven't looked into the Mainstay's situation very much, but from what I can tell the Russian airborne early warning fleet is too small for them to consistently keep them on station providing situational awareness, which is also embarrassing but if anything makes what their fighters seem to be able to achieve more impressive.
Shrike
30d ago
My understanding is that close air support was always understood to be extremely attrition heavy in a peer war - supposedly, the USAF expected to lose 60 A-10s against the Soviets daily.
Other sorties are much lower risk - while the Russian Su-34 and Su-25 fleets have been hit hard, the MiG-31s and strategic bombers have been quite safe in the air.
(Frankly if anything the Su-25 losses are lower than what we might expect from Cold War projections, the Russians have been using them for close air support - and I think continue to do so, Wikipedia lists one as lost in February to a MANPADS, which suggests a CAS role, and they've lost around 40, it looks like, over the course of years, not weeks. However without knowing the total number of sorties I can't compare to the supposed USAF projections for the A-10.)
Shrike
30d ago
I suspect this will make it harder, not easier, for the Chinese to enforce the rule, unless they actually intend to cut all trade of rare earth with the US (which is not what they are saying, as I understand it).
Either way, if the US wants to get stuff, and the Chinese are Serious About It, they probably won't go to the Chinese and say "hi yes we want to put these rare earths in our stealth bombers" they will use third party cut-outs in other nations, just like they did the last time the US needed rare metals from its main geopolitical rival/Communist totalitarian enemy.
Shrike
30d ago
It's not an either/or, the US can pursue onshoring as a permanent long-term solution while pursuing other avenues in the interim.
The USA isn't actually capable of replacing China's role in the productive economy in any timeframe that's actually relevant.
Replacing China's worldwide economic production isn't necessary; what the US ideally needs to be able to do is fulfill domestic national security needs. Nevertheless, it's worth noting that the US (re)opened a single rare earth mine in 2018 and in a couple of years it supplied 15% of worldwide production.
This means no more harddrives, no more lithium batteries etc.
First off, it does not. It means the Chinese are putting regulations on export. If you read the article it suggest the Chinese will likely ban exports to defense companies. So yes, I suspect the tech and defense industries will actually be able to source harddrives, lithium batteries, etc. for the next 5 - 10 years.
Why? Well, setting aside the fact that the US actually has at least some rare earth mining and refining capability in-country (and is currently, as I understand it, in the process of building more, so 7 - 10 years to have at least some replacement for Chinese goods is probably pessimistic even if you don't assume the US invokes national security to cut through red tape), I'd just remind you that Russia has been able to source actually embargoed items for its military from Western sources despite the US having a much better ability to deploy soft and hard power worldwide to sanction them than China does to sanction the US. If the Chinese move to cut US defense firms out of the loop, that
- Does not impact the tech sector, and
- Is no guarantee that the US won't just import them via shell companies.
Shrike
30d ago
Obviously the best solution for the US is to bring all of these capabilities in-house (to one degree or another) but the funniest solution would just be to say "these Chinese have made their ruling, let them enforce it" and then buy secondhand from India, same way the Russians have been getting around our sanctions.
Shrike
1mo ago
I think I agree that a firearm has a lower entry point. However the drone might pose a greater threat at relatively similar skill levels, although it's possible that counter-drone tech advances and popularizes quickly enough to once again raise the skill level necessary to use a drone competently.
The truth is that a low-functioning psychotic with a gun (or a drone) does not pose a threat to society even if he poses a threat to individuals in society. It's intelligent and organized individuals that pose the threat to social stability, and guns and drones are a force-multiplier to that effort. Drones are to modern society what firearms were in an earlier: an extremely powerful tool – or weapon – that allows relatively under-equipped groups to reach parity with professional soldiers. The drone is to the tank what the musket was to the knight.
Shrike
1mo ago
I have nothing against shotguns (used one recently against a raccoon) and with a slug or buckshot they can be effective at the 75 yards or so that I was shooting at for sure. But compared to a small caliber rifle, they have some disadvantages:
- Large bore, meaning there's a lot of recoil
- Accuracy will fall off at longer ranges, and on sporting shotgun models the bead sight might not be the best possible configuration (as you say, while performance at longer ranges might be less relevant for people in the UK, particularly in Western American states it's the name of the game, although people will likely use slightly spicier rounds than the .223 if they're shooting out at longer ranges).
- Much less modular
Of course – with sufficient practice, almost anyone could have made the shot I made with a smoothbore musket, or a bow. The reason the AR and similar platforms are popular is because it's versatile and easy to use, not because it's the only possible solution.
Now if I was marketing to English gentleman, I would consider making a double-barreled .410 shotgun with slugs that could accept a red dot sight (...is that legal?) to get a lot of the same functionality for pest hunting as an AR.
Shrike
1mo ago
Correct, but on balance I'd say it's much easier to manufacture an explosive device (a bottle filled with gasoline, for example, at the simplest) than it is to manufacture a drone. Imagine if you could just walk into a department store and buy a fully-functional guided anti-tank missile with everything but the warhead. That's what a drone is.
Shrike
1mo ago
Not much to tell! Shot and killed a coyote off of the back porch with an AR (chambered in .223) while growing up. Probably at 75 yards? It had come up to steal a chicken. This was a not-infrequent occurrence back on the farm, and we've killed a variety of predators though a variety of means, but the AR-15 was our typical go-to because it's reliable, relatively light, didn't require cycling a bolt for a follow-up shot, and of course it's easy to put whatever sight or other attachments (such as a flashlight) on there that you want. Plus, of course, if you had to you could grab the same gun for a defense against a (human) home invader.
I'm not going to pretend I couldn't have done that with another weapon, but a semi-automatic "sporting" rifle in a small caliber like .223 is ideal for dealing with predators like coyotes and foxes.
Hunting rifles are overkill – they are often heavy, use a larger and more expensive round with more recoil, and you typically mount optics on them that might be more suited to longer ranges and actually hinder target acquisition at closer ranges (this depends entirely of course on your property layout – on a ranch you might prefer a scoped weapon.) Also, I think I prefer the pistol grip on the AR rifle if I am shooting standing. But a less powerful round like a .22 is not generally considered powerful enough to reliably kill a predator, particularly at longer ranges.
An AR is cheap, reliable, and lets you get the first and second shot on quickly. It's also very modular, meaning you can easily adapt the same gun for different situations (so for example I used the same lower but a different upper receiver chambered with a larger round to kill a deer while hunting). This can save you a few bucks, and also it's cool.
Obviously it's not the only option, but for that specific threat (predator, relatively close, say expected at 200 yards or within) I would want a rifle with the same characteristics: small and fast rifle round with a flat trajectory, iron or red dot sight, semi-automatic. And that's a very similar problem to the one the military is trying to solve (especially for dismounted urban combat) so the design convergence is natural.
Unless you think that every unsolved murder in Washington, D.C. is also such a conspiracy I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that it's quite possible to evade D.C.'s surveillance footage even if you don't have an inside person, and having one would make it even easier.
Frankly, that's all that needs to be said here. But I'm going to go further than that. Remember when I said
You're doing this here! "The government" and even "the FBI" doesn't have access to all of the footage from D.C.
There are going to be three types of cameras in Washington, D.C. - government, public, and private. Government cameras will be split between different agencies - no single agency will have custody of all of them. Public cameras are livestreaming on the internet. Private cameras' footage is not available to the government without a request.
This means that when the FBI-ATF team is put together to deal with the bomber, they don't have access to ~any of the relevant footage. They have to go around and get it: speak to other government agencies, knock on the doors of hotels and restaurants and ask if they have video surveillance footage, etc.
Now, I don't know how large the team working this is (it likely fluctuates based on the need) but my guess is that probably you have a small core team, plus subject-matter-experts and analysts that are tapped for specific tasks.
This means that the group of people who have access to the footage that is relevant to this event is possibly quite small! Call it an agent-in-charge, a six-man team, and about two dozen SMEs and analysts who are tapped with specific tasking at the discretion of the team lead.
And the minimum theoretical amount of people on that team that can gatekeep access to the video footage is...one. Potentially whichever agent raises his hand and says "I'll do it" when the lead agent asks who wants to go round up the video footage, that guy is your chokepoint. Any cameras he decides weren't rolling that day weren't, any livestreams that he decides to ignore are ignored, any footage that was regrettably scrubbed the day before he happened to knock on the door was scrubbed. As long as he doesn't get caught ignoring any obvious leads, what are the odds that someone double-checks his work? The Bureau isn't drowning in free time.
Now, I don't know how the FBI does things. I hope they have procedures in place that make this difficult or impossible. But I do know how research and analysis works. A single eye can blind the whole body.
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