I'm not asking politically per say- politically it's obvious the GOP and the right will never disappear- but more ideologically. It just seems like this level of incoherent fury is not sustainable. Like a star when it ceases fusing light enough elements, as soon as the force of "hope for winning nationally" vanishes it seems to me like the whole thing will implode in on itself.
What is the succeeding ideology? Libertarianism sits exposed of being not even hated but utterly disdained by those that it once claimed to represent. Social conservativism is a swirling vortex of "head for the catacombs" panic and "Integralism forever!" derangement. Neoconservatives sit utterly discredited, universally despised and their great international bugaboo raison d'etre are proving neurotic, inept and... well... lacking in scariness.
Obviously the old stool is defunct. What'll the new one be? Even the new kids on the block on the right are fundamentally wobbly. Identarianism is already looking like it's on the wane so anti-identarians are going to run out of easy windmills to joust at. Anti-Immigrationism is, basically, one legislative bill away from being defanged at any moment and weakens every year that unemployment remains low.
Mmm yes rereading your original comment I'd say it does.
To your original comment I'd say there'd be two ways to approach the Imperium. The first would be direct: campaign on reining it in and calling it to account, win the election and then go after it. The second, and the way we are going, is to view the claims of the Imperium’s civilian politician cheerleaders with great cynicism and suspicion and starve it of fresh conflicts. The neocons were, rightfully, turned into a punchline by Iraq. The Liberal interventionists may not have suffered the same savage fate in Libya but their sins were smaller as was the price tag and they have paid dearly for it. There’s a strong anti-interventionist streak in American politics now that wasn’t present before.
Sure but your most excellent list is intersectional. You roll up on the General executing #3 and he says "I wasn't told that the whole state would fold in the matter of weeks" and points at #2 and #1.
Well, also, he probably flips you the bird behind your back because, as I mentioned previously, we got out of Afghanistan cheap.
The iranian revolution happened in '79 Lee. That puts the Theocratic state of Iran at the same age as me. The illiberal monster Iranian state is barely a generation old and every kid under 30 that lives there despises it.
Are we sending cutting edge tech to Ukraine? My understanding is it's mostly surplus and second string gear? All the cluster munitions we sent over was slated to be destroyed for instance.
Sure, but we're talking about their commanders and leadership cadres and they had their hands in it up to the elbows. No one's talking about persecuting the grunts.
Well, I'm just spit balling here but since Bush the lesser rolled into Afghanistan to when Biden finalized our ignominious departure was roughly 22 years. Afghanistan (and Iraq) was a festering ball of passed bucks and kicked cans stretching over multiple administrations from both parties over more than two decades. 20 years in the military is pretty much a lifetimes' service. So, we have a festering policy that taints every command officer involved by association (anyone you blame can point up the chain to their predecessor for blame) stretching back over more than a lifetime's service. So, if you held the various commanders responsible, we’re talking about an inquest and consequence raining down on pretty much everyone in the existing chain of command starting with the senior most officials and then working your way down until you hit officers and officials too young to be blamed. All of these people, I’d add, being people who are well connected, are desperate to keep their careers/reputations and have speed dials to media figures and books full of the names of the politicians who’re just as implicated, over the years, as the officials and officers are. That’s possibly more than an entire administrations worth of accountability and, of course, the voters would not appreciate, at all, that instead of addressing current problems the whole government is standing in a circle flamethrowing each other. It’s like the W Torture problem on steroids- Sure Obama could have tried to prosecute when he came into office, but only if he wanted it to devour his entire administration at the cost of anything else he’d hoped to do.
I’m not saying declining to proverbially impale some heads on the Whitehouse Fence over Afghanistan was a moral decision but I’d say it’s an understandable one.
Yes well there're only two ways to make people in the places where, the Taliban and organizations like them operate, open minded to liberalism.
A-generational conquest, occupation and reformation of society. Massively expensive in blood, treasure and time, unpopular with modern states and almost impossible to pull off successfully.
B-Let the illiberal monsters do their thing until their populations are sick of them and want alternatives. AKA the Hundred Years War solution. Cheap and comparatively moral but presents some risk of terror attacks and other flailing attacks from those areas.
Bush the lesser tried to pull off option A's outcome while using option B's footprint and ended up with the worst of both options. If there's another method I don't see it.
The right in a nutshell. I am afraid to ask because it feels like jinxing it but if Trump goes down to an L in 2024, and I think if ol' Joe keeps keeping on Trump will go down to an L in 2024, then what comes next on the right?
Not widely and that is also why accountability was so incredibly hard that the whole political set shied away from it. You'd have had to fire most everyone in multiple major branches of the military, foreign service etc and neither Republicans nor Dems would have been able to avoid the mud slung by that blast of a reckoning. Neither the voters nor the politicians wanted that.
Agreed and, frankly, considering how badly Afghanistan was fished up from the get go, the butchers'' bill we had to pay to get out was exceedingly slim. It seems ghoulish to say but we got lucky.
I'm with you, I found the Matrix' story quite approachable and enormously fun. Unlike you, however, I had no fishin clue what was happening in Tenet beyond time travel assassins.
I like your analysis on Nolan. I earnestly hope we get several more masterpieces out of him and would happily leave the Tenet films on the cutting room floor to pay for it.
The studio system is imploding and I have no fishin clue what is going to come next. Somehow money will go from interested audiences to the manufacturers of content but whether the paid for content will continue to be a couple of hours of digestible material or something else is unknowable. Likewise how the money will get from us proles to the proles making the entertainment material is unknowable beyond some general capitalist mechanism.
Yeah muscle memory and artistic memory seems a lot more durable- or perhaps persistent in a different way from other more intellectual memories and skills.
I'm so sorry you are having to endure this with your wife. My mind reels at the idea of facing it one day.
On “For Republicans, It’s Time to Panic”
On that we are both in agreement.
"
I'm not asking politically per say- politically it's obvious the GOP and the right will never disappear- but more ideologically. It just seems like this level of incoherent fury is not sustainable. Like a star when it ceases fusing light enough elements, as soon as the force of "hope for winning nationally" vanishes it seems to me like the whole thing will implode in on itself.
What is the succeeding ideology? Libertarianism sits exposed of being not even hated but utterly disdained by those that it once claimed to represent. Social conservativism is a swirling vortex of "head for the catacombs" panic and "Integralism forever!" derangement. Neoconservatives sit utterly discredited, universally despised and their great international bugaboo raison d'etre are proving neurotic, inept and... well... lacking in scariness.
Obviously the old stool is defunct. What'll the new one be? Even the new kids on the block on the right are fundamentally wobbly. Identarianism is already looking like it's on the wane so anti-identarians are going to run out of easy windmills to joust at. Anti-Immigrationism is, basically, one legislative bill away from being defanged at any moment and weakens every year that unemployment remains low.
What is the new coalition on the right?
On “Columbia Up And Left Kabul”
Mmm yes rereading your original comment I'd say it does.
To your original comment I'd say there'd be two ways to approach the Imperium. The first would be direct: campaign on reining it in and calling it to account, win the election and then go after it. The second, and the way we are going, is to view the claims of the Imperium’s civilian politician cheerleaders with great cynicism and suspicion and starve it of fresh conflicts. The neocons were, rightfully, turned into a punchline by Iraq. The Liberal interventionists may not have suffered the same savage fate in Libya but their sins were smaller as was the price tag and they have paid dearly for it. There’s a strong anti-interventionist streak in American politics now that wasn’t present before.
"
Mmm true, I wasn't thinking about the defensive systems much. The field testing of those Patriots has got to be worth its weight in gold.
"
Sure but your most excellent list is intersectional. You roll up on the General executing #3 and he says "I wasn't told that the whole state would fold in the matter of weeks" and points at #2 and #1.
Well, also, he probably flips you the bird behind your back because, as I mentioned previously, we got out of Afghanistan cheap.
"
The iranian revolution happened in '79 Lee. That puts the Theocratic state of Iran at the same age as me. The illiberal monster Iranian state is barely a generation old and every kid under 30 that lives there despises it.
"
Are we sending cutting edge tech to Ukraine? My understanding is it's mostly surplus and second string gear? All the cluster munitions we sent over was slated to be destroyed for instance.
"
Sure, but we're talking about their commanders and leadership cadres and they had their hands in it up to the elbows. No one's talking about persecuting the grunts.
"
Well, I'm just spit balling here but since Bush the lesser rolled into Afghanistan to when Biden finalized our ignominious departure was roughly 22 years. Afghanistan (and Iraq) was a festering ball of passed bucks and kicked cans stretching over multiple administrations from both parties over more than two decades. 20 years in the military is pretty much a lifetimes' service. So, we have a festering policy that taints every command officer involved by association (anyone you blame can point up the chain to their predecessor for blame) stretching back over more than a lifetime's service. So, if you held the various commanders responsible, we’re talking about an inquest and consequence raining down on pretty much everyone in the existing chain of command starting with the senior most officials and then working your way down until you hit officers and officials too young to be blamed. All of these people, I’d add, being people who are well connected, are desperate to keep their careers/reputations and have speed dials to media figures and books full of the names of the politicians who’re just as implicated, over the years, as the officials and officers are. That’s possibly more than an entire administrations worth of accountability and, of course, the voters would not appreciate, at all, that instead of addressing current problems the whole government is standing in a circle flamethrowing each other. It’s like the W Torture problem on steroids- Sure Obama could have tried to prosecute when he came into office, but only if he wanted it to devour his entire administration at the cost of anything else he’d hoped to do.
I’m not saying declining to proverbially impale some heads on the Whitehouse Fence over Afghanistan was a moral decision but I’d say it’s an understandable one.
"
The not so great war of Louisianan dependance?
"
Yes well there're only two ways to make people in the places where, the Taliban and organizations like them operate, open minded to liberalism.
A-generational conquest, occupation and reformation of society. Massively expensive in blood, treasure and time, unpopular with modern states and almost impossible to pull off successfully.
B-Let the illiberal monsters do their thing until their populations are sick of them and want alternatives. AKA the Hundred Years War solution. Cheap and comparatively moral but presents some risk of terror attacks and other flailing attacks from those areas.
Bush the lesser tried to pull off option A's outcome while using option B's footprint and ended up with the worst of both options. If there's another method I don't see it.
"
I'm not aware that Afghanistan has a Jewish community, LeeEsq, but if it did couldn't they simply make Aliyah?
On “For Republicans, It’s Time to Panic”
The right in a nutshell. I am afraid to ask because it feels like jinxing it but if Trump goes down to an L in 2024, and I think if ol' Joe keeps keeping on Trump will go down to an L in 2024, then what comes next on the right?
On “Columbia Up And Left Kabul”
Not widely and that is also why accountability was so incredibly hard that the whole political set shied away from it. You'd have had to fire most everyone in multiple major branches of the military, foreign service etc and neither Republicans nor Dems would have been able to avoid the mud slung by that blast of a reckoning. Neither the voters nor the politicians wanted that.
"
Agreed and, frankly, considering how badly Afghanistan was fished up from the get go, the butchers'' bill we had to pay to get out was exceedingly slim. It seems ghoulish to say but we got lucky.
On “For Republicans, It’s Time to Panic”
Well done.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/14/2023”
I'm with you, I found the Matrix' story quite approachable and enormously fun. Unlike you, however, I had no fishin clue what was happening in Tenet beyond time travel assassins.
"
I like your analysis on Nolan. I earnestly hope we get several more masterpieces out of him and would happily leave the Tenet films on the cutting room floor to pay for it.
The studio system is imploding and I have no fishin clue what is going to come next. Somehow money will go from interested audiences to the manufacturers of content but whether the paid for content will continue to be a couple of hours of digestible material or something else is unknowable. Likewise how the money will get from us proles to the proles making the entertainment material is unknowable beyond some general capitalist mechanism.
"
It wasn't no Inception, for sure.
"
Tenet was such an odd duck of a flick. I couldn't stand it- found it entirely incoherent. But I adored Dunkirk and Inception.
On “The Bigger Question To The Richard Hanania Kerfuffle”
There is no way.
On “Tango vs Waltz”
Yeah muscle memory and artistic memory seems a lot more durable- or perhaps persistent in a different way from other more intellectual memories and skills.
I'm so sorry you are having to endure this with your wife. My mind reels at the idea of facing it one day.
On “Open Mic for the week of 8/7/2023”
Pity the GOP can't find any return on all that weather conversation then.
"
That implies an enormous amount of faith in the guile and skills of Hunter Biden on your part which, I'd humbly submit, appears wildly unwarranted.
"
Wasn't her first time at the rodeo, she did a good job.