TheFooder
1d ago
I feel like that would fit my theor that the Dems have been hoisting flags and wearing belief that force them into ever smaller corners. They can't act because they, through their own speech, have outlawed the beliefs needed to act.
TheFooder
1d ago
I have a feeling this calculus is understood by the Trump team and is the fulcrum of their attack: ain't nobody gonna do nothin about it!
fundamentally, congress is just 435 dudes.
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/congress-needs-be-way-way-bigger/611068/
EDIT: sorry. I posted this because I thought it was a pretty good article about why congress is too small and how we might imagine a much, much larger congress. Every time I see "435" now I snort in derision. The number is too low to be representative and too high to be functional. Representatives should be regular shlubs from around the block not life-time politicians. It should move fast--voting with a phone app or something--none of this mugging for the camera and grandstanding. Anyway, thought you might enjoy the read. didn't mean to drive-by post.
TheFooder
2d ago
Cults of personality seem to swing both ways don't they. I am also radically apathetic.
TheFooder
10d ago
Wouldn't conservatives get want what they want just by driving out anyone? The "replacement" part seems like a superflous second order effect when the goal is "shrink the gov't"
TheFooder
11d ago
Funding kids shows in Iraq is a loss because Middle East TV simply pushes Islamic fundamentalism and jihad.
I've seen television in the middle east...hours of it. You know who the big star was? Oprah Winfrey. After that there were tons of music video stations for each of the different leading countries. Sexy lebanese videos, super sappy Saudi Orchestras with lame poets, Emirate gun twirling and cane dancing...and Iraq? It was all blue jeans in night club dancing shows, like a very tame American Bandstand. I would not be surprised at all if Iraqi Sesame Street was popular. that's one of the USAID expenditures I find least offensive--even admitting that modern Sesame Street is peak Wokoso.
Anyway, it's not all fundamentalism. That's what's on the radio...
TheFooder
15d ago
Opening the Overton window doesn't mean implementing every idea that flies in, it means we have a breadth of ideas that weren't previously accessible to us. That is precisely what has been killing us--an unassailable belief that nothing could be changed or fixed.
Anyway...
I do not want the US to be the only global power. I don't even necessarily want it to increase in size. I'm merely saying that the course we've been on since 2001 has been one of mass global suicide, partly because the heat death of the United States, post 9-11, guarantees chaos and war everywhere else on the planet. Until this month I was certain it was unavoidable. Now that very weird and unexpected things are being said, in public, by the president, I actually have a hope that we might change course.
For instance, try with all of your might to imagine a State of the Union address that doesn't begin with, "The state of the Union is strong!!!" and every dumbass congressperson rising to a standing ovation. It's performative disinformation top-to-bottom. What we have happening right now is another crack in the facade--one that was failing to hide our rotten core. Prior to Trump (and it should be said I never voted for him and am not a fan) our political class had no way to stop pretending. No way to be normal, rational or real. There is a game called "American politics" it consists of lying, laundering, lamenting and lambasting. The only time the public gets meaningful truth is by accident. The 2016 Republican primary debates laid this at our feet and the Biden/Trump debate burned it into our foreheads.
Gaza is another perfect case. The truth of the Palestinian plight is they lost all claim to their lands in 1948 by dint of being conquered militarily. Someone decided that instead of resettling them there'd be some kind of humanitarian compromise...or something. Well, the outcome of that "civilized" reaction is 80 years of misery and an increasingly intractable problem. Our modern Gordian knot. The only solution is to cut the knot. Curtis Yarvin Donald Trump is the first one to publicly acknowledge it. His prescription is probably wrong and his political capital such that he is unlikely to make it happen, but he's saying out loud what has been apparent for ages to anyone with a brain. Gaza as a paradise that might actually benefit Palestinians (as shareholders--not citizens) is now on the table.
This is consistent in regards to Panama, Greenland, Canada, Mexico--all places with decades long intractable economic and political problems that hinge almost entirely on the inability of politicians to deal with anything directly.
Here's another one that's coming: defaulting on our debt. Assume this will happen because the only thing that would prevent it from happening is actually Making America Great Again, i.e. rebuilding and re-centering our economy, taking the huge --and increasing-- financial hit that's waiting for us and ensuring we have a political class that serves the polity. If we default, we tank the global economy. Defaulting on our debt would be infinitely worse for Canada, Mexico, Europe, Saudi Arabia, Japan and even China than threatening them with tariffs. If it takes some economic saber rattling to wake people up so be it. We can't afford to be weak and we can't afford weak allies.
Anyway, I find all of this craziness refreshing and long needed. I've also been on this tip for 20 years; heterodox and contrarian to the max. Feel free to dump my opinions straight into the garbage, but I do reasonably well on Metaculus, so I can't be completely insane (that's my hope anyway). The levee was always going to break and frankly this is far more controlled and moderate than I imagined it would have been. The churning Earth--the tumult of the political class is like nothing I've seen in my life nor in my limited study of history since, maybe, FDR. People are bitching about how years are happening in weeks, but that's what it looks like when reality deferred asserts itself. I'm here for it.
TheFooder
15d ago
sure. I meant, there's technically a way to sew 298 tiny little stars on a flag. What if I sad 296 stars?
TheFooder
16d ago
Consider the world in 50 years: will the US have more, less or the same territory? Until very recently I would have taken the under that the US would only exist as the Eastern Seaboard of the North American continent. A re-alignment and interest in territory expansion might be the thing that re-invigorates the nation and let's it kick it's decline down the road. I have no illusions that any of this will happen under Trump but boy am I glad to see the overton window thrown open. These things need to be discussed and not shunned as gouache or déclassé. I think a lot would need to change at the federal level to make increasing the number of states workable, but there's no technical reason our flag couldn't have 298 stars. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
TheFooder
16d ago
One is that Egypt and Jordan, the obvious candidates,
This is part of the problem. Everyone just assumes Palestinians can only go to Egypt or Jordan. There's a lot of land in Uruguay or southern Alaska. I hear Greenland is nice. Get creative people!
TheFooder
18d ago
You may be surprised to know that the tower is for managing ground traffic. the real ATC is in the basement in a dark room watching a hundred screens. (Source Father is a pilot and was an ATC for a few years in the 80's. I've seen the rooms)
TheFooder
22d ago
I was long in falling out with my antifa/goth/LARP friends but I think the call of, "death to Andy Ngo," was the final straw. If he's wrong...show the world he's wrong. Instead they prove him right over and over and over.
I had nothing to do with his beating, wasn't even within 2000 miles. I don't hold truck with any antifa people anymore either. And yet I feel a deep shame for the violence that was enacted upon him. It's likely similar to the shame some folks felt at watching the George Floyd videos. Good people...bad people--a true person should feel sadness at the death at another, not delight.
TheFooder
22d ago
or you exercise your strategy openly and go to jail (or get killed in retaliation by someone else).
I mean that's ultimately the problem, right? It's a disgenic ethos. It leads directly to compromise or death.
TheFooder
22d ago
"making you pay rent" (as was apparently the case)
My read was the landlord was going to rat one of 'em out for murder and stabbed with a sword.
Thanks for the Ziz analysis. I was blissfully unaware of these turkeys.
TheFooder
22d ago
Man...this is kind of my sister, and it's super hard as a guy who's been tumbled about his entire adult life by the wiles of the workplace. My loosey-goosey feeling is, "yeah, that's too bad, I don't want you to lose your job, but a lot of people have lost jobs in the base couple of decades. Why should yours be saved?"
TheFooder
22d ago
I moved to Frederick, MD from Chicago. Pretty wild difference. It seems like we're just outside of the "North Bethesda" type personality. Every time we run into them when we go to one of the local craft breweries.
TheFooder
22d ago
Just an observation, but back when I used to use Reddit, that "42k" number (or thereabouts) would constantly appear under some of the most inflammatory left-type posts I'd see. I'm pretty sure it's a 'goldilocks' number. It was so pervasive I just presumed it was either astro-turfing or Reddit's patented "show whatever number you want" system. Frankly, I figured it was the CCP having a laugh.
Seeing it now...all I can say is I have my doubts. ...Except about ditching Reddit. No regrets there. Best decision I made since leaving Twitter and Facebook.
link? (not a pun)
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