domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
LacklustreFriend
37 Pieces of Flair Minimum
2hr ago
she was ponderously slow to realize Assad was an asshole, and remained skeptical that he used chemical weapons after.
Assad is an asshole, but my understanding is that the evidence he used chemical weapons is actually quite weak and possibly false intelligence. And it's not like the US and her allies and the international community more broadly have never lied about Middle Eastern dictatorships doing bad things for propaganda.
But it has been a long while since I've looked into this all.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
2hr ago
I mean, that's been the general pattern with so many others Trump converts previously, why would it change?
That's just people, every day we negatively polarize just a little bit more into being a complete magatard or a woke zealot.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
2hr ago
Sure, but voters are bad at punishing politicians for specific transgressions in the best of times. If Desantis really wanted to snub Trump he could likely get away with it if he staged it correctly, and didn't go too far like nominating a Democrat. That's not to say that that's likely to happen, just that it's a possibility, which is part of why it's implausible that Trump has some 4D plan in his head. It's far more likely that one of Trump's advisors put Rubio's name forward, Trump went "oh yeah, that guy, he's alright, he didn't vote to impeach me" and that was it.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
2hr ago
On further thought I take that back, a good college try at devising a "system" that prevents (reads: delays as long as possible) the inevitable corruption is a noble endeavor and I'm sorry for discouraging it.
Quantumfreakonomics
2hr ago
I'd be an asshole too if I had to defend my country from ISIS, Turkey, The United States, and Israel all at the same time.
Goodguy
2hr ago
I think the Democrats unleashed the most massive wave of bot and shill astroturfing that they ever have before onto Reddit in the last year or so. I have heard a theory that seems very plausible to me, which is that one of their main astroturf focuses has been to put political posts up on relatively obscure subreddits and then massively upvote them using automated or semi-automated means to drive them to the front page. https://old.reddit.com/r/houstonwade/ is often presented as an example of this theory, and if you take a look at it it seems to check out.
The astroturfing combined with years of censorship having driven out most political dissent means that a large fraction of the political discourse on Reddit in the last few months has consisted of waves of bot and shill astroturfing slamming into the minds of people who are already mentally prepared to believe in wild pro-Democrat political theories.
Reddit is almost done as a political discussion space. Even /r/politicaldiscussion, which was maybe like 70% pro-Democrat a few years ago, is now more like 90% pro-Democrat. /r/moderatepolitics is still holding out but I don't know for how much longer. The dirtbag and socialist left on places like /r/stupidpol and /r/redscarepod is still being tolerated but again, I do not know for how much longer given that they criticize mainstream Democrats almost as much as Republicans do.
I don't know if trying to turn Reddit from 95% pro-Democrat to 99% pro-Democrat was worth what the Democrats invested in it, but it might be. Such astoturfing campaigns are not necessarily very expensive, and in a close election they well might swing it.
X has also been full of astroturfing, and still is for that matter. But in the case of X, the astroturfing is coming through from both sides, rather than almost entirely from the Democrats like on Reddit. I don't know if Republicans didn't bother to invest much into astroturfing Reddit or if it's just that their attempts got foiled by censorship, but on X their astroturfing attempts seem to have decent penetration.
SubstantialFrivolity
I'm not even supposed to be here today
2hr ago
Because I'm not a hypocrite? I don't really think it needs a justification to be willing to apply rules consistently, or to be willing to suffer the negative consequences of a rule because you believe it's a good rule overall.
SophisticatedHillbilly
2hr ago
Machine operator is a pretty basic role. If you’ve ever used a 3d printer and had to deal with leveling the bad, clearing stuck plastic, verifying that prints are proceeding correctly etc. it’s basically that but with bigger machines.
I found some commentary on /r/moderatepolitics where she's criticised for being pro-Russian (so of course a Russian agent) and pro-Assad (because apparently she visited Syria and had an opportunistic meeting with Assad; after which she was a 'skeptic' of Assad using chemical weapons on his own people). There was some speculation on reddit that the senate wouldn't confirm her DNI appointment for the above reasons. She apparently also backed conversion therapy when she was younger. I haven't fact checked or done a deep dive on any of this. I'm just providing a hook for people to start their own research.
I'm actually a big fan of Tulsi after seeing her several times on Rogan (Transcript). She is against the MIC, the deep state (unelected bureaucrats) and forever wars. I was disappointed that she didn't get SecDef and worried that she would be sidelined, but my confidence was restored with the DNI selection. She's unironically what I would like to see as a female president.
I don't know how 2028 primaries will turn out, but I'd expect Rubio, Vance and Gabbard to compete. Vance and Gabbard seemed to get along very well on the campaign trail (Vance being an (ex)marine and Gabbard being Reserve Army).
Edit: Adding some links. Atlantic article doing some character assassination here.
gattsuru
2hr ago
Most of the opposition is going to point at her record on Syria -- she was ponderously slow to realize Assad was an asshole, and remained skeptical that he used chemical weapons after . She cites the Iraq War as cause, and that's fair to an extent, but it's an odd thing to bring to the DNI. I dunno whether to read it as a (figurative) bomb-thrower that'll root through some of the various agencies' more corrupt bits or at least throw some chaos into the various whisper campaigns, or just something she really wanted and Trump was willing to give her.
Some of that's just a tendency for conservative hawks to treat anyone remotely skeptical of their institutions as deadly poison, but even in the self-described neocon circles that wouldn't have cared about other spheres are really concerned on this one -- there was a minor news cycle when she mentioned demanding a ceasefire around Ukrainian that was mostly noteworthy for Romney calling it treason. Same from the places Democrats have been hawks. Which... may or may not be persuasive to you.
She shares a bit of crystal healer woo with RFK, though that probably matters less at here than any other cabinet position. She's also separately a social conservative on a lot of stuff (gays, trans people, abortion, DEI), though that's mostly a separate deal.
From the Blue Tribe-specific stuff, it's a little more boring: she pushed against Clinton getting the 2016 nomination, and hasn't treated Trump or January 6th as The Worst Thing Ever, and is not pro-LGBT.
ActuallyATleilaxuGhola
Axolotl Tank Class of '21
2hr ago
But why?
SubstackNecron
2hr ago
feds stop putting roadblocks in front of them
If/When the Dems regain power, especially if MAGA dies fully with Trump, what do you think is going to happen to them long term? My guess is imprisonment or just thrown off a building depending on the fallout of a Trump administration.
While I see and understand the throughline of her appeal to the Gribbler faction, I don't see or understand what earns her crank-hood.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
3hr ago
She's followed quite a similar arc that RFK Jr. has, initially being a Democrat but being very out of step with any major faction. She also has a big thing for conspiracies, like claiming the Syrian gas attack was a false-flag by the British, or being very worried about "biolabs" in Ukraine that Putin was using as fodder for innuendo that the US was creating a supervirus to mass-murder Slavs. The Gribble faction loves stuff like this.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
3hr ago
Isn’t “welder” likely to be a union shop, too? And I’m not even sure what qualifies one as a “machine operator.”
zeke5123a
3hr ago
It is functionally the same. Ad hominem in the classic sense is “your argument is bad because you are a bad person.”
There was zero intent to engage with the concept that Tulsi is good or bad pick Instead, the poster just said “she is a crank.” It is functionally the same—not addressing the issue and instead basically name calling.
Funny enough the poster claimed I was engaging in ad hominem. Instead, I was pointing out that the poster’s judgement isn’t great—especially when it comes to political topics. So read most charitably his comments re Tulsi amounted to “trust my judgement.” So bringing up his bad judgement is directly addressing his argument. He couldn’t handle it and decided to throw a fit and block me.
MaximumCuddles
3hr ago
r/neoliberal on suicide watch rn.
I know, reddit. But they are so confident that she’s a Russian agent. What’s the deal with that? Is it just normal radlib demoralized Russia hysteria? It seems deeper than that.
On a related note; I’ve been on Reddit a lot in the last week, mostly out of morbid curiosity. I had stayed away for probably 12-18 months, and it’s terrible. A much worse echo chamber than I remember, and it was incredibly bad before. Good god.
FCfromSSC
Nuclear levels of sour
3hr ago
But you understand that we, the base they both depend on for their continued careers, want them to work together, right?
Templexious
3hr ago
Sorry, that was a joke!
I phrased it in such a way that I expected most to recognize.
The_Nybbler
Does not have a yacht
3hr ago
Small business (possibly owner or part-owner) vs union shop, I suspect.
Lewis2
3hr ago
Libertarians tend to be contrarians who are comfortable with preaching their message from the sidelines while the mainstream ignores them. It is my impression that a smaller but still significant percentage of the other eclectic groups that flocked to Trump this time around are made up of those with a similar mindset. If I’m right about that, they’re probably more likely to jump ship when they don’t get their way than Trump’s other supporters are.
zeke5123a
3hr ago
Dude. This isn’t an ad hominem. You made nothing but an ad hominem in the OP and then I called out that maybe you should show more humility.
As for the Selzer poll, I pointed out that the Selzer poll would require believing there were massive shifts in multiple populations over a short time that wasn’t captured by anyone (indeed her prior poll showed Trump +18 — a 21 point move wasn’t explained by Biden to Harris). That should’ve given you pause. Calling those bad arguments ignores the fact that those arguments actually reflected reality whereas yours did not.
I owned up to the Selzer poll being wrong, specifically about thinking it would be off by less than 10 points. The arguments against it were pretty uniformly medicore, along the lines of "nah, it just feels wrong" or crosstab diving or "unskewing", against a pollster who had a track record of proving her critics wrong over and over (e.g. in 2020, when she was far more pro-Trump than most of the competition, and ended up being right). Obviously it ended up being incorrect, and now Selzer has a lot of egg on her face.
Also, I'm not a fan of ad hominem attacks so this will probably be my last response to you.
Yeah, that one's going to stick around to the end of his career.
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