TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
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User ID: 373
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
7hr ago
I sort of moshed it together to save time in the explanation, but you're correct -- Netanyahu proposing this plan may end up having very bad long-term implications for Israel by alienating the US, even though it might be better for Netanyahu personally.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
7hr ago
Correct, this is basically what I'm saying. Israel made a pitch. Plenty of countries make pitches. It's up to the President to accept or reject them if they are/aren't in US interests. Trump chose incorrectly, but the buck should stop with him. We don't need to blame Jews or even Israel more broadly, though that's what's probably going to happen, which is why I used the term "scapegoat".
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
10hr ago
Nothing you said here is incorrect, but all of it is explainable by 2 things:
- Israel is acting like a self-interested country, as any other country would.
- Jews are overrepresented in the US decision making class, and while some of them are so staunchly pro-Israel nearly to the point of treason, most aren't.
So yes, Netanyahu "convinced" Trump to do this war. But it's clearly in their interest since Iran is a long-term threat to them. The person at fault here is Trump for being convinced to do something obviously risky and against US interests. Other nations leaders' are trying to convince America to do stuff all the time -- that part isn't unusual.
And yes, Jared Kushner is Jewish, but I don't think he had some master plan to lure America into a senseless war.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
11hr ago
MAGA didn't always mean "cult of personality around Donald Trump". It's a relatively new phenomenon in the wake of Trump's re-election. MAGAs theoretically had some principles like low immigration and being anti-war. And when a group has principles, it's theoretically possible for an individual to break them.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
20hr ago
Wow. This story basically hands a giant bazooka to the anti Semitic wing of the Republican party. MAGA will do anything to shift blame away from Trump. Before this, the MO was the old Good Tsar, Bad Boyars schtick. But now there's a clear scapegoat: It's the (Israeli) Jews' fault.
Nick Fuentes will be eating good it seems.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
You're correct that there have been some defections, but even Tucker Carlson has been pulling his punches, going more for the "bad boyars" critiques rather than directly criticizing Trump. And polling has shown that most of the rank-and-file support the war, at least as of a few weeks ago. Self-reported MAGAs were 92% in favor of continuing the war.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
Going from a one-shot to something more robust can be problematic because AI will often default to simple dirty solutions, which subsequent prompts double down on. If you plan on building something robust from the ground-up, however, it's very doable with AI over many prompts.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
Sure, but Truth Social is just a reskin built to be Trump's personal Twitter. The fact it has a different name doesn't really matter since people will still see his posts if they're controversial enough.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
This reduces the amount of prompting you need to do since more of its assumptions will automatically be correct, but is by no means required. I use AI quite successfully on very janky 30 year old SQR code -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SQR if you don't know what SQR is, because neither did I before I got this current job.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
The US President making a thinly veiled threat to commit genocide is, in fact, a bad thing. Even if he's practically guaranteed to TACO and just do some airstrikes on civilian infrastructure at worst. The fact that Trump does it through Twitter does not reduce its badness since Twitter is basically an official communication channel these days.
the only TDS I see at this point is unquestioning, defensive loyalty to Trump that has become completely untethered from his faithfulness to any policy line – except, perhaps, owning said libs, making them seethe.
This really feels like it. There were some people who were genuinely interested in MAGA from a policy perspective, but they've been slowly boiled away by Trump's capriciousness, while others may have started out with principles only to slowly jettison them over time while still remaining on board Trump's coalition out of either misplaced loyalty or revealed preferences. Now it really is just 90% Catturd-esque "he makes my outgroup seethe and I LOVE it!!!" like you say with a small thin slice of policies here and there that he still holds to. He still has immigration somewhat, but it's in a "he's better than Democrats" sense rather than "he's actually doing the policies I want" sense.
But the really blackpilling fact is that despite all this, Trump's coalition remains sizeable. Nearly half of Americans are fine with Trump's foolishness, and while Dems can't get away with quite as much as Trump they have their own sizeable base of ultra-loyal followers.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
The Republican Party may be over for the next decade.
Press X to doubt. 2 reasons:
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Any foolishness from the side of Republicans will be seized on by the Dems to be more foolish themselves. It'll allow them greater leeway to hang themselves politically by supporting nonsense like defacto open borders or wokeness 2.0 or whatever else they can cook up with. Then that'll alienate more people, and we'll be back to equilibrium.
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MAGA voters could choose to end this war at any time by aggressively protesting what Trump is doing, threatening to withhold support, etc. Trump listens to them in broad strokes, and becomes much more TACO-y when he senses the ground shifting beneath him. So far though, MAGA has not done this. It's going along with the Iran war despite the massive hypocrisy of many MAGAs of previously being isolationist. There's a few tiny cracks and some softening support here and there, but Trump's base remains relatively united behind Trump.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
Europe spending more on defense isn't really a good thing if Europe and the US are at odds. It also wouldn't be good if Europe couldn't use those defense dollars productively if they're politically paralyzed due to e.g. Hungarian intransigence.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
1d ago
I think I'm just going to be unapologetically ruled by my aesthetic sense from now on
It sounds like "aesthetics" is mostly just "vibes" here. Vibes are how most of the electorate choose who to vote for. If your vibes are well-calibrated, then it's probably not a bad way to choose overall, though I still think having specific rules or looking for specific things is better.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5d ago
Everything you wrote here is very plausible, and it's probably the modal outcome.
Of course, Trump's TACO tendencies are somewhat unpredictable, and it's also plausible that his advisors are telling him something like "sir, we're on the cusp of victory. If we pull out now it will be a defeat, but if we just give it 2 more weeks..."
I doubt Trump has the foresight to understand that logic is how leaders get sucked into quagmires without meaning to.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5d ago
Occupying a bunch of islands will help a little bit, but again the issue is that it's basically impossible to get Iranian asymmetrical strikes down to 0, which will mean the dual mission (suppression + escort) is required to reopen the strait to any significant degree, and the US doesn't have the hulls in the region to do both.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
5d ago
It's already been reported that Russia is giving intelligence to Iran to help kill American soldiers. I'm a bit worried that Trump will try to do some quid pro quo with Putin cutting off intelligence from Ukraine in exchange for Russia stopping with Iran.
maybe even Alaska and Hawaii
I think the US's relationship with Israel is entirely too close, and we've somehow made their strategic problems into ours. It's absurd that we're basically fighting their war for them. America would be well served by breaking off the special relationship and treating them as any other democracy -- friendly sure, but not whatever the heck is going on now.
That said, the notion that the US would give up Alaska or Hawaii is not a serious one.
The US has a bunch of different options in Iran, but none of them are particularly good. Ordered from least aggressive to most aggressive:
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The US washes its hands of the conflict, and withdraws from the Middle East entirely, including its bases in the region. Arguably this is the best long-term solution since the US presence is nowhere near commensurate with its strategic interests in the area, but doing this now looks like Iran would be singlehandedly running the US out of town, handing it a massive propaganda win and the US a massive propaganda loss. This is not seriously being considered.
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The US washes its hands of the conflict, but remains in the region hoping for a status quo ante bellum but prepared to accept some sort of Iranian victory in terms of tolling the straits, regional proxies, etc. In the meantime, US bases in the region are still targets although the US can evacuate soldiers temporarily. Still a major prestige hit for the US and a big propaganda win for Iran, and eventually the US would have to deal with an emboldened + strengthened Iran, so it's just can-kicking while the problem festers.
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The current operation: The US continues its high-intensity but noncommital air attacks hoping Iran blinks. If it doesn't, the US tries to wedge open the strait regardless. The best insight into how this would go is this video by Perun (who is easily one of the best defense analysts publicly posting). To summarize, the US has done an excellent job at pulverizing Iran's conventional forces like its frigates, submarines, and airframes, but it can only do an OK job at suppressing asymmetric tools like the "mosquito fleet" that could dump a few mines into the water, its shoot-and-scoot anti-ship missile launchers, and drones. The US could reduce the rate of these quite a bit, but getting them down to zero is implausible. To reopen the strait then, the US would have to heavily subsidize ship insurance, but this alone would be insufficient -- you'd likely see a few brave captains willing to YOLO it but most shipping companies probably wouldn't be willing to go full Lord Farquaad with their crew. Naval escorts would be required. The problem is that the US just doesn't have enough hulls in the region to do the dual mission. If it pulls ships away from the suppression campaign to put them on escort duty, then the rate of Iranian asymmetric fire would likely increase again. European and Asian allies would actually come in clutch here since they don't have a lot of ships with the magazine depth of an Arleigh Burke nor the power projection of a supercarrier, but they do have a lot of frigates that would be great at escort duty. The problem is that allies have been noncommital so far, and, uh, Trump isn't exactly the best diplomat. Maybe he'll be able to blackmail them into some sort of arrangement, but he'll have a steep hill to climb. There's not exactly a lot of goodwill from other democracies to come pull America's chestnuts out of the fire.
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Economic warfare: The US tries to strangle Iran's economy by shutting down oil exports. The US has naval supremacy, so doing this to its maritime exports would not be hard. Iran wasn't exactly in a great economic position before the conflict, and shutting down a major chunk of its oil exports would be another severe blow. The best-case scenario is this being the straw that breaks the camel's back and triggers a general uprising that overthrows the regime. But the Iranian state is very adept at suppressing dissent, and there was already a major crackdown before the war started. If there's not a general uprising, then there might be some slim hope for this to make the regime buckle in some other way -- maybe some senior leaders rely on oil exports for their corrupt slush fund, and if this gets taken out then perhaps they try to seize control of the state and negotiate an end. But at this point we're mostly wishcasting. Also, shutting down Iran's oil exports would worsen the global supply situation which would boomerang on the US, and it would probably take more than a few weeks before the effects really started biting Iran.
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The US invades Kharg island by air or by sea. The US could almost certainly take the island relatively easily, but stationing marines there for an extended period would expose them to strikes from the Iranian coast. It's a decent ways from the mainland, but not far enough that it would be considered "safe" by any means. People have speculated that this would be used to shut down Iranian seabound oil exports, but that's already very doable with the US navy in the region, so the main point of this would be to use it as a bargaining chip of some sort. "See how serious we are, we're willing to invade sovereign Iranian territory!" That sort of thing.
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The US invades Qeshm island, which is situated in the narrowest part of the strait. This removes one of the easiest launch points and lets the US set up a defensive perimeter as well as being another bargaining chip to hand back to Iran to get them to make peace. But it alone doesn't remove Iran's ability to target ships, it just removes one avenue. It's also fairly large, well-populated, and situated closer to the Iranian mainland than Kharg with Bandar Abbas right there. All this puts US troops at much greater risk while still not forcing a decisive outcome.
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The US invades a bunch of Iranian islands like Kharg, Qeshm, Kish, Lavan, Siri, Abumusa, etc. This gives more bargaining chips I guess, but I don't know what the other islands would give beyond that. I've heard some people float the idea of giving Musa and Tunbs back to the UAE after Iran seized it from them a few decades ago, but otherwise Iran still has the mainland and can still credibly threaten ships.
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The US invades the Iranian mainland to establish a buffer zone between the regime and the Gulf. The larger it is the more effective it would be at stopping shorter range missiles and patrolling for random fishing boats with mines, but this is a massive escalation and would take many tens of thousands of troops at the minimum to be effective, and at this point Iran could switch from targeting ships to targeting US soldiers until it hopes the US loses political will.
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The US invades, and seeks to balkanize the country through its various ethnic minorities to render it impotent. This would reduce US exposure over the longer term, but it's unlikely to get much backing if those regions think the US will just abandon them in short order without giving them their own means of establishing deterrence. It would also inflame regional tensions -- I doubt the Turks would like a Kurdish pseudo-state on their border, and ditto for Pakistan in terms of a Baloch state.
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The US does a full regime-change invasion and seeks to occupy the entire country to force an end once and for all. The smallest operation could be something with special forces to take out Iranian nuke stockpiles assuming US intelligence knew where they were, but even that would mostly just be can-kicking since they could just restart their nuclear program after the US left. The long-term solution would be to occupy everything, dismantle the nuclear program and missiles, put a Delcy Rodriguez in charge that's more amenable to US interests, then leave ASAP and cross their fingers that it doesn't all revert afterwards. Going this route would require months of preparation, hundreds of thousands of troops, and a large amount of political will that I doubt the US has.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
If it's actual clear trolling then that's something a moderator should deal with. I've rarely seen accusations of "bad faith" or being "disingenuous" from a user debating another user to ever end up going well. It's almost always little more than "I disagree with them strongly". A lot of times it happens from 2 users occupying different information bubbles, this causing them to not really understand each others' arguments, and thus putting words in each others mouths as was often the case when people debated Darwin2500.
prevents things from slipping down the slope of easy farmable engaging content
This seems like a different issue.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
A functional European state could also deal with them by saying 'No go away'
Any reasonable state would say this, but doing so violates a deepseated liberal urge to "help others", and provides talking points and photo ops for immigration advocates. Did people forget the picture of that random dead Syrian kid that got blasted everywhere for months? Silly stuff like that can sway elections at the margins.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
Again, I don't disagree with this in vague terms but it's a glass half-full vs glass half-empty sort of thing. It's like if you saw your friend about to shoot themselves in the foot, so you stole their gun. You took something from them, sure, but you also prevented something that was obviously going to end up going badly.
Also, the US was not as monolithically opposed to EU and Russian detente as is being implied here. The US publicly supported the Minsk agreements instead of trying to sabotage them.
I was provided one example, and it was not a good one. He was just stating a normal progressive talking point, and was getting flamed by amadan.
EDIT: Actually I retract that statement, as I came across a post I never got around to replying to from FCfromSSC that contained more examples.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
Actual lefties (of the woke variety) would get absolutely eviscerated here. Darwin was the only person I can think of that was consistently left and who posted for a long time, and his posts were always lightningrods despite him being extremely polite relative to his interlocutors. And people were constantly accusing him of doing something "wrong", of violating the rules somehow, but I kept asking for examples and people could never give me any.
TheAntipopulist
Voltaire's Viceroy
6d ago
Diversification is good, but really it's just "don't become dependent on Russia" specifically. I bet the US would probably be upset if Europe became dependent on Chinese hydrocarbons too, but they don't export much of that so it's not an issue. Buying from Azerbaijan or Kuwait or KSA is all mostly fine. They're authoritarian, but have much less leverage to blackmail large concessions compared to Russia, and also far less likely to have diverging core interests. Buying from nations other than Russia will be a little bit more expensive but it's worth it in the long run.
EU countries could also put a bigger emphasis on renewables and nuclear too. They're better than the US there, but still haven't pursued it nearly as far as they could have.
I'm in favor of US withdrawal from the Middle East broadly, and for ending the US special relationship with Israel and treating them like any other democracy -- friendly, willing to sell weapons to them, but not willing to fight their wars if it's not tangibly in US interests.
But the things you're asking for go beyond what we do for practically any other country. "Banning Israeli visits on American soil"? We don't even do that to China. Do you mean something less extreme by this? And "pruning all areas of government and journalism from pro-Israel subversives" sounds practically like McCarthyism.
The better answer is to just not elect Presidents that make blatantly foolish decisions, and/or those who put Israeli interests above American ones. I don't think Trump was pro Israeli, I think he was just a fool who got overconfident from his Venezuelan adventure and thought it would all be easy this time too. Trump is the problem.
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