domain:x.com
ToZanarkand
Some day the dream will end
13m ago
This is an old argument that we've seen a lot of times before. "I suspect the majority of these people are only Scottish by parentage, and don't actually live their lives in any way that's discernibly and truly Scottish".
That doesn't make it any less valid. Biden got a lot of flak for his whole "I'm Irish" shtick. But at least he invoked his heritage fairly frequently and in a variety of situations. It's clear it meant something to him. I strongly suspect that for the majority of these "I'm Jewish and I don't like Israel" types their Judaism means nothing to them in any other context.
But either way there's a decently sized population of orthodox jews who reject Israel for scriptural reasons as well.
Sure, but I don't know what relation that bears to non-orthodox Jews who are anti-Israel.
This is the number of dead that they're able to verify, which is extremely difficult for a variety of reasons. There's another 10000 that are missing and can safely be presumed dead as well, and I believe about 90000 with severe injuries. I don't think we're going to get true or accurate casualty numbers until after the war ends, and even then I have my doubts.
It makes very little sense to accuse Israel of genocide/ethnic cleansing if you claim that you we don't have a reasonable sense of the numbers of civilians killed. What are you even basing the accusation on then?
I have seen too many photos of dead Palestinian children to give the story that little credibility. On top of that, Israeli murder of children is common enough even outside the conflict that there are a lot of reports of it from the west bank as well. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/nov/19/west-bank-children-killed-unprecedented-rate
The article doesn't give any evidence. I'm not saying none of this happened, but I think it's very likely the Guardian would simply reprint potentially made-up stories without any due-diligence, so long as they paint Israel in a negative light.
If you've got a comprehensive debunking of the x-ray claims I'd like to see it, but I've seen enough direct video footage of these kinds of attacks that I can't just brush the claim off wholesale,
I'll have a look. I'm also interested in direct video evidence of Israelis shooting infants in the head.
https://x.com/FranceskAlbs/status/1858304872963010840 Franceska Albanese makes the claim here.
Albanese's whole thing is being cartoonishly anti-Israeli. If she was at least providing evidence that might mean something, but her simply repeating the claim means very little.
There are countless claims from released Palestinian prisoners that rape and sexual abuse was endemic in Israeli prisons - and Israelis themselves (including high ranking government officials!) have protested any attempt to hold the perpetrators accountable.
I wouldn't remotely put it past Palestinian prisoners (who are mostly terrorists) to simply make things up to try and make Israel look bad. Such propaganda is a core pillar of their strategy. But sure, every accuser has a right to be heard. Perhaps Israel really does treat prisoners that badly. This really doesn't add much to the argument that Israel is carrying out ethnic cleansing/genocide.
So that this debate doesn't get derailed into a series of speculations about the veracity of individual accusations against Israel, it's worth reflecting on the path of this discussion, which seems to be following the typical route with anti-Israel individuals, which is to accuse them of genocide, and when challenged to defend that position on the basis of the numbers, pivot to a mass of unsubstantiated claims of supposed Israeli atrocities. All those atrocities could have actually happened, and they still wouldn't support the ethnic-cleansing argument.
ControlsFreak
20m ago
Now what part of that changes by forcing a doctor into the process? Does the doctor come to your house and give you your pill, so you don't take the wrong dose? Does he monitor you 24/7 so that you don't take specific different medications at the same time? That might seem wild, but does he at least come twice a day to make sure you are taking it correctly so that it will treat your underlying disease?
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
48m ago
This. Discord is their domain.
sun_the_second
56m ago
They're on discord, if my hobby servers are anything to go by.
WhateverHappenedToNorman
59m ago
I presume that's oral finasterise
Yes.
and the topical version is less effective?
No idea.
And doesn't the impotency go away if you stop talking it?
Supposedly, yes. There are accounts of people who claim it remained after suspending treatment, but eh, who knows.
Cook
1hr ago
Thanks! I presume that's oral finasterise, and the topical version is less effective? And doesn't the impotency go away if you stop talking it?
Folamh3
1hr ago
That's just kicking the can down the road. No bathroom has a bouncer stationed outside checking people's IDs to ensure that their legal sex matches that of the bathroom they wish to use (and if such a policy was proposed, you and I both know that trans activists would be the most fervently opposed to it). Once you've established that at least some obviously male people are permitted to use the ladies' room (because they've legally transitioned), inevitably perverts will take advantage of this by trying to pass themselves off as people who've legally transitioned when they haven't.
Addendum to my "genderfluidity" hypothetical: an obviously male person walks into the ladies' room, gets some funny looks, and falsely asserts "don't worry, I've got a gender recognition certificate". The women in the bathroom aren't entirely satisfied by this, but what can they do? It's not like they can demand that he produce his gender recognition certificate on the spot. Shortly afterwards, the obviously male person sexually assaults someone/spies on someone without their knowledge etc., then walks out of the ladies' room and goes about his day.
And besides, the object level question in this case is "should congresswoman Sarah McBride be allowed to use the women's restroom?", and I think it is reasonable to answer, "She should have the same right that an XY androgen-insensitve cis woman should have to use the restroom, based on the government's tracking of her as a woman." Certainly, I don't think anyone's fears that Sarah McBride would sexually assault someone in the bathroom are super justified.
That's not how rules or heuristics work. If a person is volunteering at an event and there's a possibility that they may have to supervise children, the person is generally required to undergo police vetting to ensure that they can be trusted to supervise children. It's irrelevant if the person truthfull says "I shouldn't need to go through the police vetting, I'm not a child molester" - an actual child molester would say the same thing. That's what the police vetting is for: to determine who is a bad actor and who isn't.
Likewise if a woman is walking home alone at night and notices a lone male person walking some distance behind her, and begins to form a suspicion that said person may be following her. I doubt very much that she would be consoled if said male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm not a rapist!" And even if the male person yelled out "don't worry, I'm a trans woman!", I don't think she should be consoled by this either - trans women commit violent crimes at the same rates as cis men, so this male person revealing how he "identifies" has provided the woman with zero additional actionable information.
And you might scoff "maybe some trans people are creepy perverts, but surely a high-ranking politician would know better". Think again.
vorpa-glavo
1hr ago
My preferred standard is based on legal status, not mere identification. That's what stops your "just long enough self-ID" hypothetical scenario.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
The idea for letting individual users customize their algorithms? It was ages ago. Early 2010's, or even late aughties. I read it on some blog. I can try to look for traces of it, but the blog might be long gone, and search engines have gotten terrible so I hope you understand this is a tall order.
On the flip side, are you actually saying this is something strange for blue-tribers of that era to recommend? What are you basing your opinion on? This was standard politics of the Stallman-Torvalds techie faction.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
1hr ago
think we do it for similar reasons to why we track whether people are married, whether they've adopted a child, etc. Because it gives the otherwise blind goverment a way to see what's happening with its citizens.
I don't think this answers my question. When they keep track of marriage, they're keeping track of which couples have entered a specific relationship with sweeping implications on rights to each others' property, and duties to one another. When someone adopts a child they're declaring they're assuming responsibility for them until they come of age, which grants them power to make decisions for that child until they grow up. What are they keeping track of when they designate someone a "man" or a "woman", and why is it important to not remain blind about it?
I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously.
Alright, then why are you arguing for letting men-documented-as-women into women's bathrooms instead of just abolishing sex segregated facilities?
Certainly, I don't think anyone's fears that Sarah McBride would sexually assault someone in the bathroom are super justified.
These kinds of laws aren't about specific people, they're broad rules.
We're talking about the kind of hysterical women who would answer "bear" to the infamous "Would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods?"
I can only pity the fool that took that meme literally (as opposed to seriously).
I think even a manlet would trigger such women. Or do you think their answers would change if the questions was changed to, "Would you rather meet a 5' 4'' man or a bear in the woods?
I'm saying most of them could tell a difference between a trans man, and a 5'4" male, and the event where they couldn't would be less frequent than the event where they clock a trans woman.
I'm not sure how policing bathrooms in this way doesn't end up harming "ugly" women and non-gender conforming women, which seems to go against the stated goal of helping women.
Personally I'm pretty sure it's a temporary state resulting from the ambiguities that come from blurring the category of "man" and "woman" to begin with. Once it becomes clear that men entering women's bathrooms are penalized, people will be more likely to trust that whoever entered a woman's bathroom is a woman.
Folamh3
1hr ago
I'm also not convinced that the fig leaf of "(bio)sex seggregating" bathrooms makes much of a difference here. A quick Google search was able to show there are some cases of cis men sexually assaulting women in bathrooms without the need of cross dressing.
To quote myself:
While Freddie is correct that, under a policy of sex-segregated bathrooms, there is nothing stopping a male rapist from simply walking into a women’s bathroom, a trans-inclusive bathroom policy makes it dramatically easier for such people to get away with committing an opportunistic rape, as bystanders will be less likely to intervene if they see a male person entering a women’s bathroom for fear of being accused of being transphobic. The reasoning is similar to regulations in which adults are not permitted to enter public playgrounds unless they are the parent or guardian of a child: obviously a child molester can simply ignore the regulation, but the regulation is designed to make bad actors more obvious to bystanders.
If a woman is in a public bathroom and an obviously male person walks in, there is no reliable way for her to tell if that person is a harmless trans woman just minding her own business, or a rapist exploiting well-meaning inclusive policies for malicious ends. The fact that the person has a penis is not dispositive in one direction or the other (as Freddie acknowledges not all trans people may wish to medically transition); nor that they are bearded and wearing jeans and a T-shirt (because “trans women don’t owe you femininity", and a trans woman presenting as male does not in any way undermine her trans identity).
You'll never get sexual assaults in bathrooms down to zero, but as argued in my other comment, there's some evidence suggesting that they're more common in gender-neutral bathrooms compared to sex-segregated bathrooms. A common understanding that male people are not supposed to be in a particular space (and hence that any male person who violates that rule is up to no good) seems to go a long way towards preventing sexual misconduct.
DirtyWaterHotDog
1hr ago
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has said that the policy of the House is that women's restrooms are for women, and men's restrooms are for men
Why is this such an issue? Restrooms have stalls. I couldn't tell what gender was in one if I tried.
I hear that women tend to change & reveal more skin in women's locker rooms. In men's restrooms, we pretty much do their business and leave. From that perspective, the men's locker room is more 'gender neutral'.
Yes, it was a woke rallying-cry. But in 2024, it's become a tier-1 losing issue.
I've seen several prominent-ish democrat spokespeople openly blame transgender people for the 2024 presidential loss.
AOC is the democrat's weathervane. She's scarily opportunist and makes radical position changes right before a movement runs out of gas. She broke rank with the squad on Israel right before the campus protests turned ugly. She recently removed pronouns from her twitter bio. It's Joever.
As for people being naked in locker rooms, I'd be happy to see the practice die out. Trans people or not. I don't wanna be looking at random dick and balls. It's the old men who're the worst. Dude, don't spread your legs on the bench to clean your saggy balls, and what the fuck's up with being naked while having socks on !! Please No !
I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously. The best case I've seen people come up with is that one high school bathroom assault, and that involved a couple who had met up for consensual trysts several times in the same bathroom.
When I wrote my post criticising Freddie deBoer's stance on trans issues, I admitted that, of all the demands made by trans activists, "using our preferred bathrooms" is the one I find least objectionable, even though I understand why it makes some women uncomfortable.
Many feminists appeared in the comments of the Substack article providing sources which suggested that my agnosticism on this issue was misplaced, and in fact women are at far greater risk of sexual assault in gender-neutral bathrooms than in single-sex bathrooms:
Unisex changing rooms put women at danger of sexual assault, data reveals:
The vast majority of reported sexual assaults at public swimming pools in the UK take place in unisex changing rooms, new statistics reveal.
The data, obtained through a Freedom of Information request by the Sunday Times, suggests that unisex changing rooms are more dangerous for women and girls than single-sex facilities.
Just under 90 per cent of complaints regarding changing room sexual assaults, voyeurism and harassment are about incidents in unisex facilities.
What’s more, two thirds of all sexual attacks at leisure centres and public swimming pools take place in unisex changing rooms.
Of 134 complaints over 2017-2018, 120 reported incidents took place in gender-neutral changing rooms and just 14 were in single-sex changing areas.
Unisex facilities account for less than half the changing areas across the UK, but the number is on the rise - doing away with separate male and female changing rooms and toilets is seen as a way to cut staff costs and better cater for transgender people.
As I also pointed out in the post, it's no good saying "we're not advocating for gender-neutral bathrooms - we just want trans women to be able to use the ladies' room". There is zero practical difference between the two. After all, trans women don't owe you femininity, so if you're a female person in the ladies' room and an obviously male person walks in, you're not allowed to kick up a fuss about it even if said "trans woman" is making zero effort to pass and has fully intact male genitalia.
"How dare you say that trans women are rapists?!" trans activists will howl. No - a policy of gender-neutral or trans-inclusive bathrooms poses obvious risks for female safeguarding even if literally every trans woman in the world is just a delicate little flower who wants to use the stalls in peace. (At least some demonstrably are not.) If you're taking the stance that
- women are permitted to use the ladies' room
- every person who says they're a woman is a woman; no criteria must be met (medical transition, dressing in a conventionally feminine manner) to meet that standard.
an inevitable byproduct of that is that perverts will exploit trans-inclusive policies for their own nefarious ends. It is literally unavoidable under this rubric.
Hell, trans activists even acknowledge that "genderfluidity" is a thing, and one can "identify as" a man at some times and identify as a woman at other times, perhaps hopping back and forth multiple times a day. What's to stop a pre-transition male person from "identifying as" a woman just long enough to go into the ladies' and sexually assault someone, then walk out and immediately resume "identifying as" a man? (I say "what's to stop" like it's some far-out hypothetical; obviously I'm sure this has already happened somewhere.)
DirtyWaterHotDog
1hr ago
Best case outcome = Bluesky becomes a Tumblr replacement rather a twitter replacement.
Erstwhile twitter was louder, but boring. Tumblr was where the real stuff was cooked. Autistic wokes have been homeless since Tumblr collapsed, Twitter got taken over, Reels are brain-rotten (it's great) and tiktok has normiefied.
Worst case outcome = It's turns into a threads style bot-o-calypse.
I created an account to verify what you said. Damn it's bad. I avoided politics as a point of interest. I followed we mens wear guy. Still, it was all vacuous nonsense. /r/politics tier. As of now, it's surely headed towards bot-o-calypse.
Where did all the funny liberals go? There were plenty of them on pre-Trump Reddit. Say what you want, but 4chan autistic trans degenerates were funny as fuck too. Tumblr was good shit. Surely all these furries, twinks, trans girls etc. must be around somewhere. Hell, just the wierd porn artists (very left-tumblr coded) created enough engagement for 1 social platform just on their own.
Wonder if they all just grew up, and the woke-censorship era destroyed the pipeline for new degenerates to replace them. Maybe they're deep on Tiktok somewhere.
vorpa-glavo
2hr ago
Fair enough, my mental model was not that trans women are perfect little angels who never do anything wrong ever. (Though investigating one of your second link's cases at random showed that the assailant, Hannah Tubbs, hadn't transitioned until after the assault. So it's not exactly a central case of what I argue for - which is legal sex seggregation, not self-ID or biological sex.)
I'm also not convinced that the fig leaf of "(bio)sex seggregating" bathrooms makes much of a difference here. A quick Google search was able to show there are some cases of cis men sexually assaulting women in bathrooms without the need of cross dressing. The problem seems to be more a function of having a semi-private space, than anything involving society leaving specific openings. I would be against turning every bathroom into a Panopticon, even if it would make people safer, and I would be against banning fathers from using changing tables in the women's restroom if they need to. Why would I be against trans women in women's bathrooms?
I don't think it nudges women's safety much in either direction.
MadMonzer
Temporarily embarrassed liberal elite
2hr ago
I'm happy to believe that a court interpreted the document @hydroacetylene linked to to mean other than what it says, but I'm not wrong about words on a page. You can check by clicking the link.
functor
2hr ago
When russians fight, they only gain experience and become stronger. When ukrainians fight, they just die.
To a great extent yes. Ukraine has lost more officers than Russia. They are running into German WWI problems where they take their best men and put them into elite units and send those men out first. Ukraine leads more from the front which causes higher death levels among officers. Ukraine rebuilt its military in a more western fashion with a professional NCO corps which is much harder to replace casualties in.
When russians have to re-equip their army, they only get better and more efficient at manufacturing
Russians have done a far better job at scaling manufacturing during this war. Also They aren't trying to control the middle east and fight a war against China.
somedude
2hr ago
I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously. The best case I've seen people come up with is that one high school bathroom assault, and that involved a couple who had met up for consensual trysts several times in the same bathroom.
Transgender woman, 18, sexually assaulted girl, 10, in Morrisons toilet
Here, now you have a better case.
ThisIsSin
The boob tube emits harmful XXX-rays
2hr ago
Or do you think their answers would change if the questions was changed to, "Would you rather meet a 5' 4'' man or a bear in the woods?"
If the question was changed to "would you rather meet a boy [as in, non-adult male human] or a bear in the woods" the answers change, because boys are by definition not capable of being a physical -> sexual threat.
This is the reason why some women accept/welcome ex-men in their bathrooms. They, at least figuratively and sometimes very literally, cut off the part of their body that makes them capable of being a sexual threat- they're no different than a 3 year old boy who needs to use the women's room for pragmatic reasons. Historically, [male] eunuchs had the same kinds of privileges, for the exact same reasons; women have a more limited version of this for gay men.
Women who understand this are currently incentivized (through a bunch of other social mechanisms) to use this knowledge for the purpose of bullying other women who haven't yet figured this out. The cost to their safety, as you noted, does not exist.
cjet79
3hr ago
The "it's a private company, they can do whatever they want" crowd can now enjoy the world they created.
This is me, unironically. And yes I am enjoying the world. Though I don't take credit for creating it.
The secrets to enjoyment:
- Longer time horizons. The transitions of various social media companies has often sucked, or been annoying. But I do find myself happy now almost a decade or more after some of those slow transitions began.
- Social media is a fundamentally toxic relationship. You give them your blood sweat and tears poured endlessly into content. They give you eyeballs and people to see it. These things are not equivalent, and their main lever for getting people to make more content for them, is just to feed them more attention. I've found that in my personal life toxic and unbalanced relationships can be fun and exciting for a little bit, but they all crash and burn.
- The only product you are owed is the one you pay for. I don't trust free products.
- Social media is a cheap and second rate alternative to real life connections. We've now all had a chance to run the experiment ourselves during Covid.
Everyone went on a weird social media bender for a few years, but I think a lot of people are waking up from the haze. The companies got to do what they wanted with their product, and they gave us the drugs so good and hard that now a bunch of us get sick at just seeing the drugs again. This is personally how I prefer to deal with additctions. I like to burn them out of my system hard and fast.
and take advantage of all the special rights and privileges we grant women/especially when everyone is aware the law only allows females to use them, and a male would be penalized for trying to slip in, if caught
You kind of bury the lede here, but this is an equity question.
The problem with ex-men and ex-women are that they double-dip in an extremely and intentionally obnoxious -> harmful way.
Ex-men retain the biological specialization for toil while claiming the social benefits we give the people whose sex enables them to birth children. (Men's specialization is general toil, women's specialization is childbirth.) This is why "it's ma'am" and the male schoolteacher with fake breasts so large they'd be a serious medical condition were they real are problems, and it's the root of why their using the wrong bathroom is a big deal (sure, it pattern matches to being a sex pest, but this is the root of why we [can] instinctively only treat men as sex pests when they do this).
Ex-women are a reflection of this, but importantly, not a mirror image- because they become a problem when they assert the advantages men have don't matter, and then can't perform. The mirror image of the obnoxious ex-man screaming "wax my balls, it's ma'am" is not the self-aware/competent tomboy, or even the average ex-woman [that's what the steroids are for], it's the "I'm just as strong as you, that's why I belong on the front lines, there's nothing special about this ability, therefore womankind should not honor men but men should continue to honor womankind".
This is why, instinctively, it's not really an issue for ex-women to use the men's room (especially the ones on steroids), while it is an issue for ex-men to use the women's room. The problem comes from refusing to negotiate this problem in pairs (because we don't understand that men and women are different, or our sociopolitical standing is contingent upon not understanding it).
vorpa-glavo
3hr ago
Why do you think we even have "man" and "woman" as a legal category? I never got the impression they're a permission to perform masculinity / femininity the way a driver's license is a permission to drive, or an arbitrary badge of honor like knighthood in the UK.
I think we do it for similar reasons to why we track whether people are married, whether they've adopted a child, etc. Because it gives the otherwise blind goverment a way to see what's happening with its citizens.
I also just don't take the bathroom argument too seriously. The best case I've seen people come up with is that one high school bathroom assault, and that involved a couple who had met up for consensual trysts several times in the same bathroom. To put it bluntly, no woman who is afraid of this sort of thing seriously fears that it will be someone they knowingly meet up with for sex that will assault them when they change their mind and say "no" this time.
I'm about as okay with trans women using the women's restroom, as I am with fathers using the women's restroom to change their baby's diaper when there is only a changing table in the women's bathroom. Both cases involve biological men in women's restrooms, and both have plausible ways they could be abused (men using realistic baby dolls, or men cross-dressing), but I don't think any of that kind of thinking is necessary. If women are vulnerable in restrooms, then men will use whatever attack vector society leaves open. On the marigin, I don't think anti-trans bathroom bills make women safer.
And besides, the object level question in this case is "should congresswoman Sarah McBride be allowed to use the women's restroom?", and I think it is reasonable to answer, "She should have the same right that an XY androgen-insensitve cis woman should have to use the restroom, based on the government's tracking of her as a woman." Certainly, I don't think anyone's fears that Sarah McBride would sexually assault someone in the bathroom are super justified.
This argument worked great.... right up until the point that the issue gained more prominence and people got a good look at what trans men actually look like, rather than when they're photographed or filmed from flattering angles and favorable lighting. The majority look like manlets, have a funny voice, and distinctly feminine mannerisms, they might pass as a gay man on a good day.
To your question - unironically yes, even with non-zero amount of transmen passing convincingly IRL, I think fewer women would end up uncomfortable with trans men in women's bathroom, than with trans women in women's bathrooms. Especially when everyone is aware the law only allows females to use them, and a male would be penalized for trying to slip in, if caught.
I just don't see it. We're talking about the kind of hysterical women who would answer "bear" to the infamous "Would you rather meet a man or a bear in the woods?" I think even a manlet would trigger such women. Or do you think their answers would change if the questions was changed to, "Would you rather meet a 5' 4'' man or a bear in the woods?"
I think there is also the problem that there are far more "mannish" biological women than there are either trans men or trans women. I don't pretend to have any way to independently verify it, but this is an example of a story about a butch lesbian getting negative confrontations from her use of the women's toilet. I'm not sure how policing bathrooms in this way doesn't end up harming "ugly" women and non-gender conforming women, which seems to go against the stated goal of helping women.
The fullest extent possible.
A person's support for JCPOA depends on how they reason about America's unipolar superpower status. Ie. Is Pax Americana enforced primarily by carrot or stick ?
Stick Believer:
Carrot Believer:
Ideally, the carrot and the stick work together. But, they've increasingly divorced themselves from the other.
JCPOA was a carrot solution for a country that hadn't given into the stick since the 1990s. By 2016, the US had tried the stick with the whole middle east. Initial successes turned into embarrassing failures as these forever wars dragged on. At face value, JCPOA sounds like a good idea. But, the aforementioned divorce meant that America implements both the carrot and stick with a degree of naive optimism.
Yes, withdrawing was the correct solution.
Naive pro-stick optimism leads to forever wars, a drain on the economy, thorough destruction of the victim and development of perpetual hatred towards America. It's squalor but never a threat. On the other hand, Naive pro-carrot optimism is exploited by bad actors to turn themselves into credible threats towards the US. Pakistan exploited America's (and IMF's) naivety for decades, only to become the home for every one of America's most wanted. Obama was smart enough to withdraw support for Pakistan in his time, but chose wrong on Iran.
Now here's the thing. Iranians are scary smart. Iran is a civilizational state with real history. Its diplomats are among the world's best wordcels socialized to western-elite culture. This coaxes democrats into a false sense of security. Surely, these people (white & cultured) can be brought into Pax America without much friction.
Dead wrong ! The clergy hold a strong grip on Iran's power structures. Leadership of the global shia-aligned militia & (credible threat to) Israel are fundamental to maintaining that control. Against an increasingly militarized Israel, having nuclear weapons would've been an essential component of the clergy's politics.
Also, unlike Pakistan or Myanmar, Iran isn't a failed state. The lives of citizens aren't bad enough to trigger internal revolution or military coups. This means that a stick wasn't yet a 'last nail in the coffin'. On the other hand, unlike North Korea or Venezuela, this is a well-fed civilized society. So, if culture itself shifts then a peaceful transfer of power is a possible outcome. What does opening up to the US get you ? Liberalization and further power transfer to Tehran liberals ? Why would the clergy want that ?
The stick (withdrawing JCPOA and replacing it with crippling sanctions) was the right solution. You do not negotiate with a natural adversary. Especially when they're better talkers (liars) than you.
Post-2016, a bunch of (unforeseen?) geopolitical changes have vindicated the pro-stick faction. In 2016, Iran looked like a stable and non-radical middle-eastern Muslim nation. The rest of the middle east was rubble, mid-arab-spring or chain sawing journalists for sport. Yeah they hated Israel, but who in the middle east didn't. If anything, the shias were moderate.
Since then, 3 big changes happened:
From a global geo-politics stand point, the tensions between Trump & Biden have given China space to plant its flag as an equal alternative to the US rather than a #2.
Trump alienated Europe, driving it away from the US. Then Biden kicked Russia out of all global markets. America's international policy uncertainty has allowed China to start filling in where the US has appeared flaky.
The Iran-Russia-China nexus has materialized outside America's sanctionable world. Europe, India and Africa have settled into neutral/opportunist policies instead of strongly aligning themselves to a temperamental USA. This means Chinese products (electronics, cars, software) are now competing directly with western offerings. Guess what, China's winning.
The US is still substantially ahead at #1, but their lead is fast crumbling. For now, USD as reserve currency is safe, as China failed to make Yuan happen. China's population bomb is about to explode and they fumbled their leading position in the AI wave due to intense anti-Taiwan antagonism. See how these are all Chinese mistakes, not US wins.
How long can you keep banking on your enemies making unforced errors ?
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