ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
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User ID: 2935
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
18hr ago
Corbyn's only redeeming feature is being honest about how terrible he is.
Much of what the DR calls ‘based’ is just retarded antisociality rooted in the idea of either machismo or offending as many people as possible.
lol I enjoyed that bit.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
3d ago
There seems to be serious protests going on in Turkey just now, does anyone know much about the particular details of what's going on? What the protesters want, how likely they are to get it, the political situation that led to it etc?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
5d ago
Possibly - but then would a person susceptible to such explanations be likely to become a somewhat esteemed rationalist?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
5d ago
IMO (which is also unprofessional!) it's the opposite. It's the autistic person who shouts out that the emperor has no clothes, after all.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
5d ago
While it's obviously not a good thing for natsec group chats to involve unintended participants, I suspect there's a heavy partisanship element to all this. There wasn't such grave concerns being expressed by allies (or even the domestic US media) when a Biden staffer leaked intelligence to Iran, but it's much more politically acceptable to publicly criticize Trump, so there'll be a lot more grandstanding about worries with sharing intelligence etc.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
5d ago
This gentleman is autistic. I'm sure we have more than our fair share, but that's a condition that predisposes a tendency to take things at face value without considering how much of it is virtue-signalling or social fiction.
I'm skeptical of this as an explanation in this instance, if only because of the fact that if he was predisposed to believe in such nonsensical ideas (whether due to autism or anything else) I don't see how he'd ever have gotten to the state of being taken seriously as a rationalist in the first place. After all, the topic of men vs women in sports won't be only contentious issue he's come across where there's a strong social incentive to take one side over the other.
Also, I know you're the psychiatrist, but wouldn't being autistic make it less likely you'd have the requisite cognitive machinery in place necessary to delude yourself about the state of the world for the purposes of social signalling?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
8d ago
Touché.
Still my sense is that Turkey is substantially more democratic than Russia (I haven't heard of Erdogan's opponents being thrown out of windows). I'm no expert though, so will defer to those who are.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
8d ago
Or even Turkey.
Erdogan was democratically elected.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
12d ago
Very interesting. I'd have expected China to be way more centralised because it's, well, China. Maybe the much larger population plays a role?
I've not kept up with it so much, but I noticed a few people on /r/conservative commenting on how Putin made Trump look weak by making him wait on their recent phone call. Most Trump voters probably won't care - the MAGA crowd will support anything he does, and Ukraine isn't a priority to most of his other voters - but I wonder if there's a contingent of his followers he feels he's starting to lose face in front of.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
14d ago
Israel's enemies chant "Death to America" because America supports Israel.
That's one of, but far from the only reason much of the Muslim world hates America, and a common talking point among IDS afflicted people who like to claim that if it weren't for Israel then there'd be no conflict in the ME, ever (not that I'm accusing you of this). Arab antipathy towards the west can be seen as far back as the early cold war, such as during the Suez crisis and in the general orientation of the region towards the Soviet Union years before the US began its relationship with Israel. The current Iranian regime's antipathy towards the US is substantially greater than towards Israel, who it opposes largely because of its alliance with the US.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
14d ago
Prompt: what is it that makes Israel worthy of the friendship of the US whereas NATO is worthy of relegation given both would pull it into wars of choice half way around the world of no strategic importance?
Your premise is incorrect: America has no mutual defence clause with Israel, meaning that unlike NATO, it would not be pulled into a war involving Israel (compare Iran launching rockets at Israel to them hypothetically launching rockets at Germany, who would be within their rights to invoke article 5 and draw the US into a direct conflict with Iran).
It also helps that Israel's enemies also have a habit of chanting "Death to America" and have frequently killed American servicemen over the past several decades.
Follow-up: should Israel be the 51st state?
Only if you actually want the US to be directly involved in "wars of choice half way around the world of no strategic importance" given the sudden spike in numbers of new US citizens being fired at by terrorists.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
15d ago
Two possibilities come to mind:
1/ The global coverage of media. We don't need to name things more descriptively because "we" all know what happened on those dates.
2/ Following the trend established by 9/11 - it was such an unprecedented event that it's not surprising it got named differently to other catastrophes.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
20d ago
I mean, these people literally can't help themselves.
I had a brief look at that article and honestly couldn't help thinking there's something weird about calling a country independent while also implying it's unconditionally entitled to international aid to keep hundreds of thousands of its own citizens dying from AIDS.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
20d ago
Donald Trump is showing himself to be everything his opponents feared, and everything his proponents denied. At this point I think everyone who was ever accused of TDS is owed an apology.
I mean, at the very least he hasn't yet brought about the Handmaid's Tale-style dystopia his presidency was supposedly going to usher in , so I think there's some way to go before declaring all his opponents' fears vindicated.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
21d ago
I'm definitely an outsider, but surely the whole point with Hanania is that he's not pitching to a red tribe audience?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
22d ago
I thought all mods got one?
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
22d ago
Vance is interesting. At times he'll speak thoughtfully and reflectively, and at others he'll sound like a teenage edgelord ("Childless cat ladies"). He's too obviously smart for it to be brainrot IMO, so my best guess is he's trying to gain popularity with the online right who he sees as crucial to his political ambitions.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
22d ago
That would be plausible if not for Hanania's open belief in HBD. Not all of Hanania's positions make sense to me, but I think he genuinely tells the truth as he sees it.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
22d ago
I'm more optimistic about country or bloc-level rearming (i.e. something like the Nordics + Baltics + Poland) then I am about it happening at the EU level. I'm no expert but I'd imagine the political incentives are too diverse between the member states for there to be any sort of unified approach. I'd be surprised if Spain or Italy want to make the same sacrifices as Estonia or Finland when they're at approximately zero risk of invasion. It's also unclear whether countries that are prepared to spend the necessary resources want to contribute them to what might start looking more like Macron's Neo-French empire than a military union equally committed to everyone's interests. We'll have to see.
I think you're using the term liberal to talk about two separate groups of people who subscribe to distinct ethical models. The first type judge other societies based on how well they align with tolerant western ideals, as you said, while most of the type of people who simp for Palestine (lets call them progressives) determine the worth of a society based on where they fit in the progressive stack, where being Muslim or black outranks everything else. That Russia is bad because of their lack of civil liberties is a perception held primarily by the first group, not the second, for whom I'd go so far as to say gay rights/women's rights aren't a particularly salient issue outside of their immediate environment. I think if any of them have a negative opinion of Russia, it's likely going to have more to do with associating Russia with Donald Trump than anything lgbt related.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
22d ago
I could believe 53% is inflated (I've got no clue really) but I suspect anything below 10% and he'd probably have faced an internal revolution by now.
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
22d ago
I know that’s not actually a practical option. I would like some way to convince the public that it’s not actually important, though.
This sort of argument quickly leads to absurd places. Should the government return a kidnap victim to her kidnapper, if she was only found because a racist cop didn't like the look of some black guy who they later found out was hiding stolen children in his basement? Should the government refuse to act on the knowledge that a massive terrorist attack is being planned, if that knowledge was acquired by a racist cop roughing up a shifty-looking Arab?
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