ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
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User ID: 2935
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
28d ago
Also drone warfare seems a pretty clear loss for the US in the last decade: I remember 15 years ago DARPA (or maybe some other part of defense) was funding quadrotor control research, but even though that looked interesting at the time, they weren't the ones to operationalize it first, and still don't seem to have (announced) plans to do so.
That surprises me. I had always just naively assumed the US was at the leading edge of all technology, especially defense related.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
30d ago
Their hatred of Russia/Putin vastly overshadows the reality of what's going on to the actual Ukrainians they say they support.
I don't think this is unusual. For instance, I'd estimate >99% of people who claim to be pro-Palestine are motivated far more by hatred of Israel than by concern for what's actually best for Palestinians.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
A Russian-controlled Trump would be much less hostile towards China and Iran. As someone else already mentioned, you could argue Obama is more likely to be a Russian asset than Trump based on this.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Trump is the one planning to send Americans to disarm every land mine in Gaza.
Is he?
I think the term "woke right" has value to describe rightists who make arguments that sound like they've come straight from an ardent progressive but just with certain groups swapped. For example, people who believe in HBD when it comes to explaining the black/white achievement gap on most metrics, but who come up with elaborate non-IQ related explanations for why Jews and east Asians do better than white people i.e. "group evolutionary strategy".
Funny to see how quickly this association vanished with Zelenskyy, although maybe it was already an outdated 20th century relic anyway since most dictators today just wear business suits.
Zelensky did earn it to some extent. Staying in Kyiv when it looked in imminent danger of falling to the Russians and famously telling western leaders trying to convince him to flee "I don't need a ride, I need ammo" was pretty heroic and effectively created the image in most people's minds of a leader close to literally fighting on the front lines to defend his nation. His habit of wearing military attire seemed a lot more appropriate in that context.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Source on killing journalists?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
That'll show Putin! Or something.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
I'm curious about how Australian demographics will look c2100. The primarily European population is quite low - could east Asian immigration ever reach the level where we'd see the first mostly European/east Asian mixed background society?
However, the mainstream European left, right, and centre is deeply committed to the Liberal International Order that Trump is crusading against.
Rhetorically, perhaps, but certainly not when it comes to investing money and manpower in actually defending it. I'm pro-Ukraine, and not particularly pro-Trump, but I find myself frequently defending him against these sorts of accusations because they're so hard to take seriously.
Your statement also applies only if we consider the Liberal International Order to specifically encompass the region around Russia and Ukraine. For instance, much of the mainstream European political class is quite unconcerned with China's ambitions in the pacific, or Iran's actions in the ME, which aren't exactly in line with the idea of the LIO. These statements about the LIO are mostly window-dressing for standard geopolitical concerns - when it's happening close to us then it's all about high-minded values, when it's far away then it's not our business.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
My guess wrt India would be that population wise the UK probably didn't have the capacity to keep it subjugated long-term, at least not without resorting to the sort of brutality that would have been diplomatically infeasible. But 2rafa is no doubt better placed than me to comment.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
China's involvement comes presumably through taking advantage of the distraction to invade Taiwan.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Any more so than siding with the US in its clash with China?
Yes, because siding with the US in such a situation is unlikely to involve killing millions of Chinese civilians for the sake of some weird revenge fantasy.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Worth noting that this kind of incident is very bad for right-wing parties in Europe and the Anglosphere. Trump is monumentally unpopular in Europe, the UK, Canada, and Australia, and support for Ukraine remains very high. Additionally, this kind of "Reality TV diplomacy" is generally poorly received outside the US. The result will be that right-wing parties in these countries will likely have to distance themselves from Trump, and even that may not be enough to restore their pre-Trump election hopes (witness the recent resurgence of the LPC, in no small a gift from Trump).
Right-wing parties in Europe owe their popularity primarily to anti-immigrant sentiment. What Trump says/does won't affect that much.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Conversely, Trump apologists are continually telling me that I ought to respect Trump as president of the United States, but also that he can't be held responsible for what he says or does. If he's president of the United States he ought to act like it.
I agree with you here.
I don't think people grasp that this goes way beyond Ukraine. This is just the latest in an escalating series of actions from Trump demonstrating to American allies that the alliances are dead - that Trump will abandon American commitments on a whim and prefers Russia to NATO.
I think the burden of proof is on those saying this actually does go beyond Ukraine. I'm not aware of any official commitments the US had towards Ukraine, so I'm not sure how we're supposed to conclude from recent events that the US' other alliances are now dead.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
How much choice did the UK have? Genuinely curious, I don't know much about the history.
While I don't think I'd call many European leaders morons, over the past few decades many of them have shown themselves to be quite unserious. Sweden tried to launch a "feminist" foreign policy in the 2010s. Germany dismantled their nuclear power supply for no good reason and became dependant on Russian gas. Leaders in countries like Spain and Ireland larp as third-world revolutionaries with their Palestine support. The UK is trying to pay Mauritius to take the Chagos Islands from them. And so on. For all of Trump's weird antics his mercenary nature is at least better suited to how the world actually works.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
The extent to which people react differently to Obama's regarding his position on Ukraine compared to how they do to Trump is quite noteworthy.
Ukraine is not an ally. I get that the U.S. foreign policy blob sometimes talks like that, but they are not part of NATO, there has never been a treaty of alliance, the American people were never sold on Ukraine being an ally.
This is part of what confuses me about the recent discourse surrounding what's been going on. I'm very sympathetic to Ukraine, but the sorts of comments about how recent events are evidence of the US betraying Europe or its allies or whatever seem so much more divorced from reality than they usually are that I'm left wondering if I've missed some crucial development in all this.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
I can't imagine why I would'nt take that opportunity at this point.
...because it's psycopathic?
No serious and fair negotiation can happen unless he either changes direction or fucks off and let's Europe negotiate.
I've seen this sort of sentiment quite a bit but I'm not sure I entirely understand it. Surely the Europeans can open their own collective negotiations with Putin they want to?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
So there's the question: Under what conditions does a state's right to sovereignty outweigh its failure to secure the welfare of its people?
Broadly speaking, I think the a state's right to sovereignty ranks very highly, as long as the way it expresses that largely aligns with the wishes of its citizens, and doesn't directly impose externalities on its neighbors (this is why I don't view Palestinian sovereignty as particularly sacrosanct, as it's pretty much entirely directed towards starting unprovoked wars with its neighbor).
I guess you could make a case for violating sovereignty on utilitarian grounds, such as in the example you gave of Brazil taking over Haiti, which would almost certainly involve a substantial increase in living standards for the Haitians (as long as they were absorbed as full citizens into the new Brazil++). When it comes to Ukraine, it's not entirely clear to me whether you're talking about the potentially higher welfare of current Ukrainians if Ukraine became part of Russia, or simply if Ukraine stopped the current war with Russia. I suspect the latter, although the latter corresponds more with your Brazil/Haiti analogy.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
Some, possibly even most, of the monetary aid we send is purloined by the leaders of Ukraine.
What's the evidence for this?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
1mo ago
to get rid of cancel culture by targeting a sacred cow with minimal effort (activation of some hand muscles) and minimal risk (initial performers highly resistant to being canceled).
keep potential opposition in the form of political activists constantly exhausted. Or rather, make them spend their energy now against a literal body movement that can later be motted as a "muh heart" or whatever, so if / when something more outrageous ends up happening (deliberately or by accident), they'll be exhausted to become an OWS or pre-BLM scale threat.
keep the infosphere polluted with easily-generated noise to dis-coordinate potential opposition.
These are the only ones that seem possible IMO
This was also my issue with the book. It was gifted by a friend, so I felt compelled to read all the way through, even though I could tell within about 20 pages it wasn't going to be my thing at all.
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