Lord Ratner

Another fundamental disagreement. You believe that there is such a thing as a state of peace. I believe that's a fantasy of well-meaning but historically ignorant people. We may create different enemies and different problems. But there was never the possibility, much less the reality, of doing things perfectly such that we have no enemies. Go back a hundred or more years and see that there was never a desire for peace, and that the people complaining now about being displaced from their lands were the displacers not very long ago... They weren't holding hands as peaceful Pearl Farmers before the United States started meddling in the Middle East. They just slaughtered each other. Similar to the many myths told about the noble native Americans before the evil Europeans arrived. Again, and I'm not pointing this specifically at you though you do seem to fall into the category, I just find it childish to have this view where the United States is constantly framed as actually not always the good guy or objectively wrong or all the other ways in which people do gymnastics to avoid the reality that there has never been a country as powerful as we are that has shown the Goodwill or restraint that we have. And many of the countries that are today viewed as paragons of global morality and cooperation (Nordic countries especially) are just the powerless husks of once-ruthless imperialists, fed and watered by the global power of the United States post WWII. The conversation always falls apart when the idealists are forced to identify some country that's better. They can't, because the ideology requires all things to be compared to a hypothetical. Again, everything is short-term with this argument. The jcpoa only afforded 10 years of reduced enrichment. They were allowed to build and maintain all of the facilities required to enrich to weapons grade, and the second that we pulled out the agreement, they did. And it's largely irrelevant because you've already conceded that they want a nuclear bomb. So there's really not much else to talk about. They want it, they can't have it. Everything they've done has justified our refusal, up to and including October 7th. You think it would be better for the US to allow that to happen. I don't. And I think all the hand-wringing about Trump is over-complicating his position, which is basically mine: Iran can't have nukes, and we won't trade terror funding for temporary compliance. The end. Good convo.

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. 🤷‍♂️