Supah_Schmendrick
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User ID: 618
Supah_Schmendrick
24d ago
The big trend with the GWB was the abolishment of the rules of war. There were no prisoners of war, only terrorists who can be tortured in any which way.
Were the people captured while acting as uniformed members of a recognized belligerent state's regular military? If not (and not within a few closely-associated civilian professions like military sutlers and contractors), they're not legally POWs under the Geneva Conventions. And even then, the Convention does not bar prosecution of POWs for acts which contravene the laws of war, such as indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
Pashtuns can't have any reason to oppose the Afghan government.
They absolutely can - they're just not POWs when they're captured fighting out of uniform, or attacking civilians; they're insurgents/terrorists.
Palestinians are completely justified in having armed resistance and participating in an armed conflict.
Sure, that's a moral claim. They can fight if they want to. But if they choose to fight, they then can't complain about the consequences of the other party fighting too.
They are not terrorists, they are armed combatants participating in an armed conflict.
They are not fighting in uniform so as to readily distinguish themselves from the civilian population, and are engaging in indiscriminate attacks against civilians.
There is no special terrorist clause in the Geneva convention.
No, there is a specific definition of who gets protection under the convention as a lawful combatant. Hamas and Hezbollah fighters do not qualify.
Israel is clearly trying to depopulate Gaza in order to steal the land.
Low-effort mindreading.
Supah_Schmendrick
24d ago
However, I also think that this organisation (UNWRA plays an important role in securing basic humanitarian necessities to the people in Gaza.
Hamas regularly hijacks and diverts those shipments to its own use instead of allowing the supplies to go to civilians, and fires at the ones too protected for it to hijack.
UNWRA, consistent with an organization which has been thoroughly suborned by Hamas, denied this was happening.
Supah_Schmendrick
24d ago
there's space for a leaner probably meaner WaPo.
Historically, the WaPo had a reputation as the society/gossip/trade publication for the federal government. There's definitely room for a paper doing that.
Supah_Schmendrick
25d ago
Campaign rhetoric? sure. But clearly some people really believe Trump is a Nazi? Can somebody help me understand the claim? Not necessarily the veracity, but what the substantative argument is. . . . Can anyone lay out the argument and why Trump is Hitler sufficiently captures a real claim about the dangers of his presidency. (Again not looking for veracity, I'm trying to understand what the claim means.)
At the risk of being glib, Orwell already explained this: The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”. They're just screaming "ORANGE MAN BAD" in the most powerful imagery they can think of.
Supah_Schmendrick
25d ago
De gustibus nil est disputandum. shrug
Supah_Schmendrick
25d ago
I kinda wanted Trump to go full-bore off on that tangent about concrete because Rogan is at his best when he facilitates his guest in talking about something they know about and have enthusiasm for, and I really think Trump cares way more about concrete than he does about running the federal government.
Supah_Schmendrick
26d ago
To be fair, comedians literally have as a job description "tell narratively-interesting and humorous stories in as economical, effective, and entertaining a manner as possible." It's useful for politicians to also have this skill, but they're not as hyper-selected for this trait as comedians.
Supah_Schmendrick
27d ago
to make all of her policy platform stillborn.
If the last few presidential terms have taught us anything, it's that the executive branch retains extremely significant discretion to remake policy without legislative say so, precisely because the legislature has been asleep at the switch for a generation. The courts have clawed back some of that power, but the Biden immigration influx was a policy choice implemented solely by executive fiat, as was student loan debt relief (which was reimplemented in a lesser form after Scotus struck it down the first time), as was the seeding of the "whole of government" with DEI practices and racial set-asides.
Supah_Schmendrick
28d ago
Do modern Christians admit the end of witch trials as a defeat? What about Mormons and polygamy? Outside of an edgy fringe, are US conservatives admitting defeat on their erstwhile goal of preventing women's suffrage?
No, but keeping these failures in the popular consciousness and closely-tied to the respective ideologies plays a major part in stripping them of moral authority and discrediting their challenges to the moral narrative of liberalism.
I don't quite understand what would even be the intended purpose of getting progressives to own alcohol prohibition and eugenics and "admit defeat" on those goals.
To knock them off their moral pedestal and assumption that their moral instincts will always result in "justice" and people who have different instincts are necessarily evil.
Supah_Schmendrick
28d ago
The LA Time is not a Trumpy paper. There's actually interesting family drama between the owner - an immigrant South African/Chinese surgeon and pharmaceutical inventor who is reputed to just want to get mainstream influence and respect, and his VERY limousine-liberal/progressive daughter Nika. Nika had initially taken a heavy hand in pushing news coverage at the LAT in a very progressive "abolish the police" direction, but there has been some backlash. Her dad does not share her ideological priors, it seems.
Supah_Schmendrick
30d ago
This all seems to hinge on whether you believe Trump genuinely thought there was outcome-determinative fraud or not.
So you're telling me all of the outrage over "democracy being under threat" is caused by people not being able to believe that Trump could genuinely believe things he says? This whole thing is just the biggest case of typical mind fallacy and projection?!?
I swear to god this country is going to give me an aneurysm.
Supah_Schmendrick
30d ago
Some endowment donations are subject to that tight of a restriction, sure. However, there are also unrestricted donations which may be put towards general educational purposes, and donations whose restrictions are much more flexible (for example, a donation restricted to the support of a school's history department generally could likely be used for just about anything - professor salaries, administrative support, facilities maintenance, student scholarships/grants, archival and research purchases, etc.)
Of course, far more common is a restriction that the principal of an endowment can't be spent; only the profits flowing from investment of that principal, which makes endowment absolute numbers a bit deceptive. Given the speed with which endowments have been growing recently, I'm not that worried about this.
Ultimately, colleges and universities are known for being masterful in manipulating bureaucratic processes to achieve their desired results, no matter what the black letter law may say (see, e.g. the lengths administrations have gone to in order to enshrine race-based preferences in admissions). I'm confident that they'd find a way to put that money to real productive work if they had to.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I'm all in favor of forcing costs down, but a 25% across the board cut will likely result in the kind of emergency cost-cutting measures that are likely to throw the entire higher education system into crisis.
As of the end of FY 2021, American college and university endowments totaled over $927 billion, up 34% from $691 billion at the start of the fiscal year. That slightly outpaced the S&P 500's growth during the same period, which was only up 26%. Even if FY 2022 and 2023 weren't quite as bumper years, the tertiary education system in the U.S. undoubtedly has at least $1 trillion in the bank, not to mention that most of the top research universities are also state institutions, with direct support from state-level taxpayers.
There's plenty of money to go around.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Try it and report back. Perhaps this is one of those "shit tests" I hear so much from the Red Pill folks about.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Words cannot overstate how much a significant chunk of the GOP base gets the ick over Ted Cruz. There's a reason he's running behind Trump and in a dogfight for re-election in Texas.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Aren't organizations incentivized to make the problem they're fighting look worse?
Organizations are incentivized to make the problem they're fighting look maximally affecting - you don't want to push your constituents over the edge to thinking that the problem is insurmountable. You're also incented to make your own efforts look seriously busy and important - or at least like you're forestalling worse outcomes - otherwise you get a reputation as useless.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Isn’t boring and dull bureaucratic number crunching the opposite of “made up”?
No, it means that they are "made up" out of the distortions and idiosyncracies of a horribly-kludged procedure on its 44th revision from an original 1987 typewritten spiral-bound handbook, which has been subject to a constant distortionary tug-of-war to drag it closer to the political expediency of the day, or the latest appointee's personal policy judgment.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
This wasn't a particularly unique period in American history and I am not (quite) saying "Republicans started it," but I am saying that was about the time when I noticed, in the modern era, an end to our civic-minded Schoolhouse Rock version of American politics where Republicans and Democrats could still grill together.
Of course, it wasn't a particularly long period; families were at daggers drawn over culture war and political activism in the 60's and 70's (famously, thanks to Bryan Burroughs' Days of Rage, with actual bombings and shootings), and even Reagan had quite a lot of dedicated haters in the more progressive parts of the country.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I have to believe that this is purely projection.
TBH I've been toying with the idea that most characterizations of the outgroup are inflected with projection.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Conservatives are regarded (and to a shocking degree, regard themselves) as lacking in agency to the point of being almost animalistic.
Can you expand on this a bit? It runs very counter to my impression, given that conservative discourse is full of self-defense, gun-ownership, homesteading, build your own business, build your own mannerbund, a focus on individual heroic virtue, etc. These things all seem focused on building and developing personal, as opposed to institutional or collective agency. What are you looking at/seeing which leads you to draw the opposite conclusion?
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
I don't want to read too much into it, but I can't help but notice that after Florida decided to take elections seriously enough to avoid a repeat of 2000, it changed from "purple" to "reliably red."
A bit of an admission against interest for me, but my prior is that FL has just had an unusually-competent run of GOP state leadership with JEB Bush (who, for all his neo-con wimpiness, appears to have been a good governor), Rick Scott, and Ron DeSantis. Also, it probably says something about the state of the FL Democratic party apparatus that their two most recent standard-bearers have been an ex-Republican (Charlie Crist) and a guy who almost got pinched for laundering his campaign funds and later got himself arrested in a hotel room with overdosing gay prostitutes and meth (Andrew Gillum).
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Is there anything the government could feasibly do to nudge Republicans towards accepting the results of the election in the event that Trump loses?
Implement ballot security measures at least as competent as Somaliland.
Supah_Schmendrick
1mo ago
Randomly, I actually know a guy (who happens to be black) who was in the Arkansas All-State Honor Band with Bill in high school.
Yes, and the traditional penalty for guerillas, francs tireurs, and partisans is summary execution without benefit of trial.
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