The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
If you're gunning down crowds, I guess. If it's riot suppression, normally you wouldn't get anywhere close to that number, people don't behave like an army and just disperse.
If you're trying to kill them, you block their escape before machine-gunning them. As a bonus, you'll probably get even more killed from the trampling.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Unless the Shia clerics can drink blood and summon rain, you can't kill your way out of having no water.
They don't have literally zero water. And killing indeed reduces demand, though it's unlikely they'll kill enough to make a dent.
If the Iranian opposition starts getting denied water, they have literally nothing to lose but their lives - which their evil government is determined to do by dehydration and starvation.
So the government simply reserves what water it has for its security forces, and the dehydrated and starving people are easier to kill.
The humanitarian catastrophe is already priced in: intervention is the difference between a impoverished but recovering democracy and an atrocity on par with the Great Leap Forward.
Note that the regime which did the Great Leap Forward is still in power.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
You mean when we restored the House of al-Sabah, just deposed by Iraq? Sure, that worked out OK, but it was a much different sort of intervention, and part of a larger one which didn't go so well.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
But at least half of this is circular. Iran would not need to worry about being crushed by Israel and the US if they credibly overhauled themselves into an enlightenment-values democracy
And the US wouldn't have had to worry about being attacked by Osama bin Ladin if we'd credibly overhauled ourselves into an Islamic theocracy. These are not reasonable things to ask.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Iran has 90 million people. This "mass uprising" is what, a few tens of thousands? Maybe a hundred thousand? They can just kill them all; then the remaining few dissenters are cowed and the loyal Islamists are satisfied.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Look, I understand that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria were glorious boondoggles.
Iraq actually went rather well by these standards. And it's still shit.
It's an incompetent regime.
The Soviets were incompetent for 70 years. I mean, to the point of holding all of Ukraine and STILL not being able to feed themselves. Still took a leader not willing to massacre his way out to allow it to fall. The Iranian regime is still willing to massacre its way out.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Won't matter if the in-country opposition is all dead by the time it happens.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Because all the PREVIOUS US interventions in the Middle East in general and Iran in particular have gone SO well.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Do you understand that it's not a valid critique to ask for something that couldn't be possible beforehand as a necessary variable?
Sure it is. It's tantamount to saying that the Iranian regime has successfully arranged for themselves to be not removable by air attack, but there's no reason that can't be true.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Also as the current structure was the result of the Iranian Revolution / Islamic Revolution shouldn't the current thing be 'anti-revolutionary violence'?
Almsot 50 years of essentially uncontested rule later and you're no longer the Revolution, you're the Establishment. Whatever you call yourself.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The officer was not in front of the car when she began backing up. Her reverse maneuver is what put him (barely) there. Certainly it is true there are places he could have been (Cleveland, for instance) where no action on her part could have put him in front of the car, but in fact he didn't put himself there.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
It’s so consistent it should be part of the anti-ICE training manuals. Never drive in a way where it could even unreasonably be interpreted that you’re going to collide with police.
They're not written for the benefit of the cannon fodder.
Also, Barnes v. Felix was a case where the cop was not in the path of the car -- he jumped up onto the doorsill after the car started fleeing. The Fifth Circuit ruled only the 2 seconds immediately before the shoot could be considered, and the Supreme Court unanimously overruled that and said the "totality of the circumstances" must be considered.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Excuse me, did you miss the "shout your abortion" campaign like a decade ago? The way people reacted to Margaret Thatcher's death?
And Antonin Scalia's.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Qualified immunity is a civil doctrine. The cop has neither absolute nor qualified immunity. He has what's called Supremacy Clause immunity from state prosecution.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
That was a big wall of text. But, the main thing I'm responding to is this:
This is so obviously a murder.
No. It was so obviously not a murder. And that is why Noem and Vance are right to do what they're doing and not do the normal professional thing. The normal professional thing is for the administration to refuse to comment and insist on letting the process take place. Then, in a few months, when the officer is acquitted, you get ANOTHER round of protests and more bad press as to how murders are being excused. An environment where people refuse to see the reality in front of them and insist on substituting their own headcanon is not one where an impartial process can help. Nobody's going to believe there is such a process, and nobody will believe the outcome of such a process. If the process were to happen in state courts and is investigated by state investigators, the cop gets railroaded. If it happens in Federal courts, he gets exonerated (rightly or wrongly). The possibility of one side merely making a mistake is utterly absent. The possibility of correcting the mistake, then, is also absent; this is all conflict.
Certainly, however, this explains why so many wanting to condemn the officer insist he was not hit by the SUV. He was, in fact, hit by the SUV, and that ruins so many useful claims, such as that she could not have been attempting to run him over, or that he could not have been in reasonable fear that he would be run over.
Yeah, something's wrong here. Something's wrong with the idea that a mother of three thinks she can obstruct a police operation and then when they go to arrest her for it, flee in a way that at the very least demonstrates reckless disregard towards the life of the police officer she hit, and nothing at all will happen to her. She was wrong. And something's wrong with the fact that so many people think she should have been right.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
You can't really have "a rival faction" when the police state kills those off immediately in the normal course of business.
Yes, that's what the police state is for.
Eventually the regime is just going to machine gun the protestors and get on with life. There are plenty of Iranians who support the regime, after all.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
There's a lot of ruin in a nation. They can muddle along.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Ooh, good point. Unless they shot that random T-Rex instead. Eh, ¿por qué no los dos?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
Trump is definitely more than a bit weird. And he's serious about wanting Greenland and probably DOES think he can make a deal to get it. But he's not going to take it by force.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
4d ago
I think "The President of the United States launches a criminal investigation against the Fed Chair" is a bigger deal than "10% random" implies, although I don't know if there is much to say about it.
He claims he wasn't personally involved, though in phrasing that generally means very little from him ("I don't know anything about it"), so there's a chance this ends up a nothingburger. (perhaps a trial balloon that didn't make it)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
Has there ever been a human society where there weren't taboos or ideas that were considered dangerous and wrong? Even relatively open societies have lines you're not supposed to cross.
I'm just going to ignore this smokescreen, and again point out that you are not only comparing the social circles you are in with Stalinist Russia, but blaming anyone who doesn't keep silent for not getting along.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
5d ago
I always felt like Scott Alexander's Kolmogorov Complicity and the Parable of Lightning was at least in part a guide for people with controversial beliefs to go along to get along.
[...]
I definitely have beliefs that would make me a pariah in some of the social circles I move around in. Who doesn't? But I am polite and politick enough to not make a big deal out of these beliefs in the circumstances where it could go bad for me.
You now find yourself advising people to act like they live in the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin, and implicitly criticizing those who do not.
Support would be more difficult? We're no longer in a cold war? We have an even more mercurial President?
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