remzem
12d ago
Health care is a bit more important than shoveling shit or working with the dead as well. People might be disgusted by that kind of work but it's unlikely it'd spiral into real hatred. With something as important as healthcare this caste could end up straight genocided, as people directly blame them for their ailments, and if the genocide failed they could end up a protected class with extra powers that controls a necessary and lucrative industry which would give them a lot of power over society.
remzem
27d ago
I suppose, but when we decide to find out how far a drop is before it's lethal, which is of course useful information. I propose that we throw you and the other neocons off for the test. Not random Americans or Ukrainians.
remzem
27d ago
Treaties are pieces of paper, ask the native american's how much the US cares about treaties. Trying to hold the US population hostage to a group of war mongering imperialists because some out of them have made agreements with other countries has nothing to do with morality. It's part of this whole conveniently framing things in bizarre ways in a weak attempt to justify your position thing you have going here that isn't convincing anyone.
remzem
27d ago
This is the same bot talking point NAFO bots spam all over twitter...
It's less an endorsement of the war and more an indictment of our government spending. DOGE save us.
remzem
27d ago
If by the US you mean the oligarchs and the MIC then yes. Though it seems short term focused given the damage they've done to global finance. For us ordinary serfs living here not much of a win.
remzem
27d ago
I think the obvious escalation here is that the houthi's suddenly sink a western military vessel in the red sea with far more advanced and accurate missiles. It's more symmetrical, you strike us via a proxy, we strike you via a proxy. It also has the added benefit for Russia of shifting US and the public's focus more to the middle east which a lot of the zionists in the incoming administration already seem to be focused on.
Oh and there will be some big conventional missile launch pummeling the last remaining bits of Ukraine's industry and electrical grid of course.
remzem
27d ago
I think it depends on what form of deescalation you're talking about. If we just pull all funding and equipment then things will deescalate as Ukraine will fall over in a few months. This is easy regardless, and maybe slightly easier if Biden fucks things up enough that Russia refuses to negotiate since Trump can just say he tried but Biden mishandled things too much so his only option is to just pull out.
The other form would be some sort of negotiated settlement, how this plays out is less within the US's control. Russia is having a lot of success now with Ukraine facing serious infantry shortages. There are no weapons systems or equipment we can send that would make up for the lack of bodies Ukraine has to actually man it. Russia might just prefer to continue the grind for another year or so, capture the rest of the territories they annexed, see if they can push Ukraine to a complete collapse. Further escalation makes it harder to bring them to the negotiating table.
remzem
27d ago
Don't even have to go that far back in history to find an example. Russia said in 2008 that Ukraine joining NATO was a red line. They invaded in 2022 after the west started pumping the country full of weapons and refused to back off its NATO talks. Now half a million Ukrainians are dead and 6 million fled, it's industry and economy are in ruins and it's demographics with those 6 million being mostly women means it's pretty much done as an independent state even if the war ends tomorrow.
Russia clearly has red lines. I don't know why the imperialist faction of western political groups is so intent on finding out where its nuclear one is.
remzem
1mo ago
This isn't even really an example of the markets rewarding companies. Their stocks went way up because the government gave them blanket immunity from liability to bring to market a technology that would normally take years of RnD and also preordered massive batches. This ended up being a failure of central planning because millions of doses went to waste after they failed to convince the court systems they could strong arm people into getting vaccinated and demand for the vaccines was lower than anticipated.
remzem
1mo ago
I don't see how Syria made the US look weak and vulnerable. It just made it apparent that leadership was out of touch since he had no popular support for involvement in Syria and had to backtrack.
If anything Iraq and Afghanistan have done the most to make the US look vulnerable. They showed that a strong enough opposition can actually defeat the US military and this was a case of the US overextending. Too much chest beating.
Russia is harder to say since the information environment has gone fully 1984 and there is almost no factual information circulating in western media at this point about the conflict. Equal odds we are deluding ourselves about Putin's red lines.
remzem
1mo ago
He also got outmaneuvered on Ukraine and with all the MIC Russian collusion agitprop had limited options when it came to Ukraine without giving their propaganda more credence and further tanking his reelection prospects. The Soleimani thing was pointless though and did nothing to better America's position in the ME and that's entirely on him. He's also definitely in Israel's pocket, but so is most of the US government, there's a reason we'll never get the full info on Epstein. Only politicians I can think of not owned by them without doing research would be the ones owned by Islamic interests and Thomas Massie.
remzem
1mo ago
Nah it's 2024, you don't need to beat your chest and throw your spear threateningly in the direction of the rival tribe's line of warriors. We have enough nukes to destroy the world multiple times over. Speak softly and carry a big stick and what not. Trump's bravado stems more from insecurity and narcissism, which makes him easy to manipulate by the deep state.
remzem
1mo ago
Most of his confirmed appointments seem to be Rubio tier or worse. Complained about the Cheney's during his campaign and literally appointed a Cheney loyalist and ex-advisor as his national security advisor. Trump's criteria for a cabinet member is how loudly nice they are too him, not their political policy.
Really the big question surrounding Trump's second term was, "Has he learned from his first term?" and the answer is clearly no. X seems to be in near open revolt after all the appointments and Thune getting voted Majority lead. He's gonna lose all the libertarian support, all the weird center-left? populist RFK support and so on. It'll be funny if he loses the house because he appoints to many people from it and republicans all lose the follow up special elections.
remzem
1mo ago
Yeah they've been cooking this one for a while, started around the first assassination attempt. They were already seeding Trump with "intelligence" about Iranian assassination plots, after the first one (which was entirely homegrown) they fed this intel to the media to attempt to co-opt the backlash into fueling the deep state's global imperial ambitions. https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/16/politics/iran-plot-assassinate-trump-secret-service/index.html
Now we have this convenient arrest. Pompeo and his lackey Hook starting to worm their way back into Trump's inner circle. etc.
Probably a good chance this is the deepstate's new strat, similar to how they used the Russian pee tapes to corner Trump on backing out on their expansionist efforts in east europe.
Some other smaller deep state moves as well, like McConnell coming out and saying the filibuster will remain which was framed as being nice and magnanimous but will conveniently limit republican power. Then you have the proposed new senate majority leads with Thune and Cornyn both leading and being RINO deepstate ghouls. Senate of course has to confirm cabinet picks and so will have some influence there.
remzem
1mo ago
For longer really, ever since people over corrected their priors on Ukraine's chances vs Russia after Russia failed to take Kiev in 2022.
It just solidified things more, there's uncertainty in anything even if all the facts point in one direction you can't account for every variable. If time passes and you continue to get the results you're expecting it becomes more likely you're correct. That's all.
Trump did so but only after a mass pressure campaign coordinated by the three letter agencies that painted him as a compromised Russian asset. Which conveniently for the MIC put Trump in a tough spot when it came to doing anything that could be construed as pro-Russia. This time after the whole Russiagate investigation fell flat it will be harder for them to pull off the same maneuver.
Johnson is a snake for sure though and it's a point against Trump's judgement that he was up there celebrating with him at the rally last night. Really a lot of Trump's next term is going to depend on whether he has finally managed to be able to tell friend from foe and won't just fire anyone that doesn't tell him what he wants while hiring every brown noser. Hopefully some of the better allies Trump has picked up can steer him away from the mistakes he made last time.
remzem
1mo ago
Earlier this year I would've said it'll make a forced Truce more likely, but at this point I don't think the outcome of the election matters that much. The ball is no longer in the West's court after how disastrous this summer was for Ukraine. Ukraine's lack of manpower and conscription failures mean it's basically out of steam regardless of what the west does. There weren't many weapons systems left to deliver that weren't risking overly escalating things anyways. Unless maybe an EU country decides to throw their population into the FAB grinder which seems unlikely Ukraine is SOL.
It'll come down more to how much more Putin is willing to spend and what his goals are. I'm guessing at least the rest of Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporozhia and Kherson oblasts. If things really start to degrade even faster for Ukraine maybe Kharkiv and Odessa I'd put at the more maximalist goals, unless he thinks he can just regime change Kiev at some point.
The whole point of Russia invading was to prevent Ukraine from becoming armed to the point that it was a threat to Russia, and it seemed like they waited too long on that. There is no way Russia will sit back and let the US train up and further arm what is left of Ukraine simply due to a temporary cease fire. They aren't that dumb.
remzem
2mo ago
I think they'd be pretty low. 82 is old, he'd be president til 86. After Biden that will be an impossible sell, Trump makes decisions emotionally but I think even he would see the futility in running in 2028. He also does listen to some of his closest advisors, family etc. and they'd certainly advise against it. I'd give it maybe 10% tops.
That said I'd give a return to pre-Trump election dynamics even lower odds than that. You'll have someone like Vivek or Vance running next. The neocons were jettisoned and joined the dems, Republicans are solidly the populist party for now and I don't see any changes in the political trends that caused the political realignment. If anything there will be long term effects of the recent mass migration that will fuel populism and racial spoils politics for decades to come.
remzem
2mo ago
there was nothing even remotely close to J6 on the Democratic side
because they are different groups so radicalism looks different between the groups? Repubs are populists, their reaction to disbelief with elections was to riot and generally distrust institutions even further.
Dems are statist bureaucrats and their response involved having all of the government machinery they control rebel against Trump, endless lawfare in the lower courts and district courts they control, government agencies continually leaking things to state aligned media. Laundering fake intelligence through "foreign" (really just parts of the state beyond Trumps jurisdiction) intelligence agencies back to the US so they could endlessly keep the Trump admin under surveillance. etc. Selectively enforcing laws and managing media coverage to encourage and legitimize their npc's riots while cracking down harshly on any opponent's riots (blm riots vs covid protests). Cracking down on access to positions in state institutions, things like diversity and inclusion statements being required in college's. Honestly the republican response to 2020 was pretty mild compared to the state's response to Trump in 2016.
remzem
2mo ago
I mean not actively voting against measures that explicitly disallow non-citizens from voting while simultaneously spending millions to fly migrants to swing states would be a start.
remzem
2mo ago
The last attack was actually quite different. There was much more communication between the US and Iran about the timing of the "attack" and it was seen as more of a way to regain face and be seen as doing something. Far more missiles were shot down and only a handful of impacts were recorded. This attack was launched with less forewarning and dozens or maybe 100s of missiles managed to impact as there was less of a coordinated response and Israel lacks sufficient anti-ballistic missile platforms to defend itself w/o the US.
remzem
2mo ago
I'm surprised Elon hasn't done anything with twitter. He's talked a lot about wanting to save free speech and keep the free marketplace of ideas going, except twitter's format is absolutely garbage for discussing and sharing ideas. From it's inception it was always more top down and geared towards established brands and personalities using it to soapbox or advertise. He spent all that money on the massive install base, but hasn't really done anything with it. Even for the people that have followings they tweet out to it's a chore. I occasionally will see for example that one motte user that quit and created the schism and now posts to twitter effortposting on there and they will have to break their posts up into multiple and rely on users knowing to use some 3rd party tool like threadreader to make it more legible.
You'd think it wouldn't cost that much to spin up some reddit clone but with alternative modding or some kind of free speech list of user's rights to balance mod power. Combine with twitter's userbase and now right wing people or even dissident left no longer need to ever frequent reddit.
ah it's a US vs UK thing then
here its federally defined as:
Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim.
if STDs were one of the main risks taken into consideration you'd think there would be more focus on male prison rape as male to male rape (anal) has a higher chance of spreading disease than PiV. Seems to me that here in the states the objections are more about putting people less able to defend themselves at risk of abuse.
From the POV of western empire it's hard to argue this though. With examples like Georgia where earlier this year they voted to limit and track foreign NGO funding and this was met by western backed protests. Now that a non western government got elected the west is full tilt on propaganda and encouragement for violent protests and overthrowing the elected government.
Had something similar in Hungary as well where they tried to limit foreign NGO funding and this was met by mass tantrums from the EU who said it was contrary to European values. So apparently European values are that they get to influence others thinking and no one else does.
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