Lord Ratner

Now it's leftist? This is a semantic game at this point. Kamala was very progressive. It's funny because we were supposed to take everything Trump says literally, but now we don't worry about what kamla says? This conversation is at least useful in demonstrating how successful the extreme leftists have been at moving the goal posts. Personally I think anybody who supports cutting the tits off of a 14-year-old has no business being considered moderate in any capacity, or run of the mill.

The few times she was able to put enough words together to stake out a position, it was not at all establishment. Medicare for all was her most mainstream position, but the other were... Not Abolish all private health insurance Federal Jobs guarantee Green New deal Banning fracking and offshore drilling Mandatory gun buyback for "assault weapons" Bail for protestors/rioters Abortion until birth Trans surgery for prisoners on government dime Prisoners voting Pack the supreme Court/dump the filibuster Sanctuary cities On and on and on Again, I disagree completely with the notion that Trump is the one creating interest in the DSA. For starters, it predates Trump. And second, I view Trump as the conservative version of the DSA. It's just a politician who tells the voters everything they want to hear with no ability to follow through on most of it. Some of you guys weren't paying attention. Then Trump showed up and all of a sudden the absurdity of it all made you look around and now you see the rot and corruption, but some of us have been watching that for decades. All Trump did was pull the mask off of DC. The DSA was coming regardless of who won on the conservative side. Same false premise., was not an establishment Democrat. Or at least not a Clintonian/Kennedy Democrat, if we need to get specific on what establishment means anymore. And remember that Joe Biden was supposed to be the moderate choice and he ended up regurgitating Bernie Sanders' platform for 4 years. The moderates are not going to win for now. The Democrats have one, he had a debilitating stroke and yet is somehow the only sane voice in the room. He's not very popular in the party these days.

Sure. But I think it's more likely that we're in an environment where the American people want everything for nothing and there is no shortage of politicians willing to offer it. The failure to provide the impossible will keep ping ponging the party in power. Terrible execution, no argument there. But I think the DSA surge has more to do with what I said above. We're in the bad part of the cycle, and the politics are going to reflect that Sure, but I listed a lot of very good policy from the conservative perspective. Trump pairs it with unhinged social media posting and rampant lying. And familial corruption now. That'll drive voters away for sure, but again, not more than the unrealistic voter expectations. The flaw in the logic is that: @No One is trying to say Kamala would have been better. Trump may drive voters to the Democrats, but the response to that isn't to give crazy Democrats power earlier. Just like I wish the Republicans picked a better candidate (DeSantis), I wish the Democrats did too. But they didn't. We got two idiots, but with very different policy. And Trump's policy is overwhelmingly good. Everything else about him sucks. I don't care about hypothetical candidates. There wasn't a Clinton Democrat to vote for.

On the first point, both parties are in a civil war of sorts against the nuts. Progressives on the left, populists on the right. And the right is catching up to the left in the game of "defend your side no matter what." That's almost certainly because of Trump smashing all the old conservative value norms. But the crazy policies of the populists are nowhere near as damaging (by my political calculus) as the crazy policies of the progressives. One is very much worse. As far as institutions go, which ones do you believe the right/Trump is destroying? I can tell you which ones I disagree with or agree with. On the left, it's packing the Supreme Court, eliminating the electoral college, using federal law to trump states' rights, attacking the 2A, etc etc. you know... All that minor constitutional stuff. I find it funny how many people on the left love the TACO meme. It's really Trump-Always-Choses-The-Stock-Market. Personally I'd love to see a 50-75% market crash, but there's not much difference between my friends and family on the right and left as far as their reliance on the stock market for their personal wealth. Everyone with a 401k with an S&P or bond fund should be kissing his feet for "chickening out."

Policy I like: Closing the border Attempting to end birthright citizenship Many, many pro-2A actions by the administration Tariffs (hate how he tried it, love that it's back on the table) H1B and other visa fees Maduro All anti-trans-normalization policy Deregulation Energy production, pipeline approval, drilling expansion Massive shift in nuclear energy policy Attacking racist admission policies at public colleges Judicial appointments (any conservative would have done this) Welfare work requirements Moving federal agencies out of DC Schedule F reform Reducing funding for planned parenthood Dismantling "climate-change" policy Waters of the US reform Support for Israel Abraham accords Fucking up Iran Even more That doesn't mean he's succeeded on these, but I don't think even you would claim Kamala would have been better for these policies, other than maybe nuclear energy. Obviously you don't agree with these policy preferences, so you don't agree with the vote. But you have to be literally retarded to be confused as to why someone who is conservative wouldn't prefer Kamala who is the enemy of conservative policy, simply because she lies, cheats, and steals in a more dignified manner. It used to be that the Democrats made excuses for the politicians they knew were lying to them and Republicans believed they had the honorable representatives. Now that seems to completely have flipped, and the liberals actually think their politicians are good people, and the conservatives are making the deals with the devil. Funny times

I know this won't make sense to you, because fundamentally the progressive sees only problems in the present and solutions in the future, whereas the conservative sees success in the present and problems in the future. Both are necessary, but they see the world differently. Kamala, Obama, Bernie, AOC, whoever. Now that the DNC is being steered by the progressives (and not the Clinton style liberals), there's no question for a conservative. Progressives are proudly and loudly vilifying the institutions and norms that conservatives believe made our society possible and prosperous. They defend real threats today (illegal immigration, the failures of socialism, the death of meritocracy) in the name of invisible threats (trans genocide, islamophobia, unconscious bias). The things we believe make America what it is (individualism, limited government, free speech, law and order) are the stated enemies of the progressives. Sure there are definitely threats from the right. Anyone now associated with Tucker Carlson is most likely a populist threat. But they aren't in charge, and in fact, they increasingly hate Trump. But I'll take the insane liar (Trump) who at least claims to support the things I support (and acts on them frequently) over the "sane" liars (Kamala) who have opposed my ideals for their entire career. You want it to be a hard choice. Hell, I want it to be a harder choice. But it's not. I like most of Trump's policy. I detest almost everything the progressives stand for. So if you want me to say Trump is a lunatic, yep, agreed. But if you want me to say Kamala would have been better for the country... Nope. Canada tried that with Trudeau and it was a disaster. No thanks. I know. You disagree. But you keep reinforcing our point when you think you're disproving it.

Except it's not working at all. The first assault weapons ban was in in 1993, and States like Illinois and California are just trying to get back to that baseline. Bruen an earthquake, and Rahimi is being corrected. We look to be on the cusp of the legalization of high capacity magazines and all semi automatic rifles in all states. After 100 years the NFA has been de-taxed, and suppressors may be next. FRTs are spreading like wildfire and the govt is afraid to go after them because of the bump stock ruling. As far as wars of attrition go, for the first time in my life they are objectively losing.

Yep. I think maybe one of the ugliest things coming, and I don't mean ugly as in wrong, I just mean it's going to be turbulent and brutal, is the termination of legal immigration to the United States. It wasn't even on my radar until recently when someone who had just written a book about it was making the podcast circuits, and pointed out that a lot of what we're seeing today was happening in the early 1900s, and it was a couple decades of functionally zero immigration that re-enabled the cultural integration machine. Turns out, people don't integrate into a new society if you give them a steady stream of new immigrants from their original cultures. It happened with the varying European cultures back before the world wars, and it's happening with the varying third world cultures today. The H-1B is just a particularly cartoonish example of what goes wrong when you turn immigration policy into a global Utopia issue rather than a pragmatic issue of national interests. All right

Well it's got to be less embarrassing than having the Ukrainians eventually blow the thing up, right? 😂

Hey man, I've only got 20 minutes to catch my commute flight home.

Is anybody else going to be completely unsurprised if we find out that M2's old ass died a year ago and a rogue AI agent trained on his content and took over his account without anyone noticing? 😂🤣

He's old as shit, so it wouldn't be a huge surprise.

Okay so now we've gone from this shouldn't be mandatory, to this should be mandatory and so should a whole bunch of other things? I'm just trying to follow along.

Are they producing new ballistic missiles? I'm just reading what you quoted.

Just so I understand. Low-T is a brutal condition that affects the ability to maintain physical conditioning. And it affects multiple service members on this board alone. and We shouldn't be testing for low-T. Do I have that right? Are we doing to pretend like we care? Women in the military was never about physical performance.