Lord Ratner

I'm not really arguing that they aren't justified in wanting it. It's logical for a refund that seeks the destruction of the US and Israel to want nukes. It's simply a matter of what we can or will allow. The country that proudly funds and executes attacks against the West is going to get what? Bored of attacking us once they have nukes? I'm what reality does Iran with nukes work out better for us? Ignore morality if you must. We have an obligation to our citizens to stop threats against them. Iran with a nuke is a medium threat to is and a huge threat to our allies. It's an existential threat to Israel. Again, fundamental philosophical disagreement. If we aren't the good guys, who is? And if there are no good guys, what's the point of all this. Boiling everything down to some post-modern nonsense where everyone is a player of equal worth measurable only in their power is... Pointless. Why care? Why have treaties or allies it conventions at all? If you can't reason your way to the Iranians being evil and the US being virtuous, and you can't at least reason your way to the Iranian impact on the world being generally bad and the US impact on the world being generally good, or at a bare minimum, Iran bad, US less bad, then why do you care at all? Why does it matter that we are beating up on Iran if there's no good guys? It's so completely at odds with the reality of existence that I'm puzzles as to why some people do desperately want to see all societies and cultures as equally valuable. They aren't. And yeah, the Shah was not a great dude. But it's not like the movement we defending him against was the peace corps with prayer rugs. The previous prime minister nationalized the oil which pissed off the Brits, but the US dis not share that rage. But the coalition between the communists and islamists threatening to take over was why we backed the Shah. And the islamists hated the shah for, amongst other modernizing efforts... women's rights. So it wasn't exactly as clean cut as the United States meddling in the innocuous affairs of the Iranians in order to defend our oil interests. Although that is absolutely what the Iranians want the world to believe now.

If the United States commits to supplying cheap uranium fuel for any civilian nuclear power program, Iran has no leg to stand on. Funnily enough, we've done exactly that and Iran refused. I am baffled by people who twist themselves into pretzels pretending like Iran is interested in anything but nuclear weaponry. That's what they want, and that is why they refuse any compromise. I have not advocated for that standard at all. You will not find a sentence anywhere on the internet where I claim that no countries should have nukes. I have continued to advocate that some countries can absolutely not have nukes. Iran being top of list. I believe Israel is one of the most obvious countries to have nuclear weaponry. They are disproportionately small for their region, and they are disproportionately targeted for extermination. If Israel did not have nukes today I would advocate for giving them nukes tomorrow. The fact that they have had them for decades and have never used them is all the evidence you need that they are not a threat. Yes, I actually do think that's naive. At the end of the day you cannot act on this type of scale without a moral framework, and that is almost definitionally subjective. That is why some of the disagreements are so intractable, because they are fundamentally disagreements about moral ideologies on a global scale. I believe that the United States and Israel governments are, on the balance, moral actors. I believe that the Iranian government is evil. (I also do not believe in God or any sort of supernatural truth, before anybody goes down that rabbit hole.) We are, in fact, always the good guys. You don't become the bad guys just because you do a bad thing if the overall character of your actions is good. That's important, because another non-objective reality of global conflict is that it's different when the good guys do something bad versus when the bad guys do something bad. Intent matters. And the response to the bad action is in fact dependent on the intent. That is fundamental in our justice system. That puts us in exactly the position to tell other countries they can or can't have nukes. I do not think for one second that you hate your country.

Yeah, just another moderate Democrat sprinting to grab the flag of moderation on a bunch of issues only after they have been settled in the court of public opinion. Where was he 2 years ago when the trans issue was burning brightly and parents were mobbing school board meetings to stamp out the ideology from their schools? Where was he when the teachers unions were keeping schools closed during covid, resulting in those math and reading scores? Where was he when Latinx wasn't the punch line of a joke but another crazy attempt to cram fake racism into every corporate budget? If he has a recent interview talking about the evils of Hamas or how the Whitehouse Ballroom project isn't fascism, maybe he's the guy. But as far as I know the only prominent Democrat in the entire country that isn't blowing in the wind of progressive ideology is Fetterman. I definitely would have lost the bet if you told me that the most rational consistent politician in Washington would be the guy recovering from a stroke. 🤣😂 I'm waiting for after Trump's presidency ends, for Democrats to suddenly realize the value of overturning Roe v Wade. Anyone notice how absent abortion is from the national discourse since that ruling?

That's pretty much everything we need to know about your position. This is exactly the Obama/Mandami/Sanders position. Call it power-guilt or whatever, but it takes an absolutely tortured view of morality, statecraft, and human nature to find the Iranian regime (both the old Mullah-led regime and the current IRGC-led regime) somehow deserving of nukes because of the most unintelligent interpretation of US and Israeli histories. It's been fascinating to watch conspiracy-susceptible (and attention whoring) conservatives like Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens fall into this rabbit hole and become indistinguishable from the progressive politicians they became famous by attacking.

Ugly truth, and neither side seems terribly interested in solving it.

The straits of Hormuz are not open by any meaningful definition of the word and I think as far as the regime is concerned, you can't quite argue that the regime is still in power, as everyone at the top has been killed. But you also can't argue that it's a different regime, since The replacements subscribe to the same philosophy and tactics. It also appears that the irgc is in charge right now, not the mullahs, so I'd say the regime question is still very much open-ended for the time being. But then by the same logic, anyone characterizing the TBM capacity, nuclear capacity, or drone production capacity as "intact" is being equally pedantic. The straits are closed, and for the time being Iran has been neutered as a regional/global power. Personally I'd like to see the United States maintain the blockade on Iran and tell the rest of the world they can do whatever the hell they want with the straits. Open them, close them, minesweep them, abandon them. Whatever. The United States economy is the least affected by Hormuz, so if the rest of the world needs a reminder as to the value of free navigation of international waters provided by the United States for the last 80 years, so be it.

That's a huge bummer for you 🤣😂

Yep, "war." I usually phrase it thusly: China is one of the only countries in the history of humanity to have a significantly higher portion of males than females. They've incinerated the family savings of hundreds of millions of families by building towers that will never be occupied. And they have a youth unemployment problem. There is nothing more dangerous to a society than a bunch of unwed, unemployed young men. Do you know of any ways a totalitarian regime can unburden themselves of a bunch of revolutionary excess males? I don't think war is a risk for China, I think it's the plan. The only silver lining is that China's ~25 million excess males are offset by India vs ~45 million. And they aren't too crazy about each other.

Where's the WaPo article about the incredible effectiveness of the US airstrikes? I wonder if we destroyed any fuel bladders.

Everyone I have a conversation about "what's going on in the world," most people think I'm a little nuts for saying a war with China is coming within a decade. But it's hard to see how things like this are anything but a bad sign.

Jonathan Taylor Thomas?

Hahaha, same. I blew my budget on the MP5K, so now I need to wait to accumulate enough from the (self-imposed) $500/mo gun budget to buy the Thompson. And don't sell the dream short, they make a 100 round drum as well...

Have you bought it yet? It kills me he doesn't have a video with a drum mag

Careful, he'll accuse you of beating his wife or something; my TDS is making it hard to keep up. 🤷‍♂️

Nah. Young men should not be held to the standard of old men. If it's empty, he's good.

I was thinking about responding, but if you can't even keep track of what you're saying, what are the odds you can follow what I'm saying?

It's been 486 pages, bud. How many times do we need to repeat ourselves? Seriously though; why spend time on an Internet stranger who already has an unbendable view of the issues and labels anyone who disagrees an "apologist" or worse? Do you feel better? Are you happier? What's this conversation doing for you? Have your views changed? Do you feel that comparing Trump to Hitler has shifted the political winds back in a direction you consider an improvement? If you think it's time to "go back to lurking" then you're probably right. Which is all I said.

My wife doesn't get irrationally upset about other people having commonplace opinions on issues that are almost completely beyond her ability to influence outside of an occasional selection in a voting booth. But if she started talking about politics like this, then yeah I'd suggest she take a breath and maybe give the Internet a timeout for a while.

They weren't being divided by ideology, which you would know if you actually read the opinion. That would have included white people and Asians, and excluded some black people who aren't "Black Rights Activists." They were specifically drawing the maps based on skin color. Zero effort was spent filtering for ideology. The fact you are trying to equate skin color with an ideology is wild.

So you think dividing people by an immutable characteristic (race) is the same as dividing them by political ideology? Yes dude, they're different 🤣

Could you point to the ad hominem please?

It wasn't a come back. You're obviously upset about the things you read here, and it's not worth being on any website where the discourse is exasperating to you.

Probably for the best.

Or maybe Vance recognized that he was getting caught up in the same political rhetoric that so many others got caught up in? You know, the one where you compare everyone you don't like to Hitler, even though they haven't systematically eliminated millions based on their religion or ethnicity? Or maybe he made the comment in 2016, when nobody knew how Donald Trump was going to govern? And since then, Donald Trump made very clear his stance on a whole bevy of conservative issues that would appeal to someone like JD Vance. Now, if he had changed his mind in a matter of weeks because of a political appointment, I think you'd have a point. But JD Vance is far from the only person who thought Trump was going to be a catastrophe for the conservative movement, but was proven wrong (me).