Anyone who’s even remotely qualified to lead the military is being replaced with sycophants

it’s a purge. we’re watching our own version of what Saddam Hussein did when he took power. it definitely weakens the country overall but it strengthens the hold on power for the executive.

as for the military, we’ve been spending more than like the next 8 countries combined for decades. it’s hard to understate the relative power of the US military. there are hundreds of military bases all over the world.

even a weakened superpower is still a superpower

If no enemies exist, they are created.

i don’t disagree. that’s why the rhetoric. but I would disconnect the rhetoric from the policy. trump says one thing and does another. he wants to deport everyone but at the rate he’s going we won’t even see a 10% reduction in the illegal immigrant population. mouth says one thing, hand does another

notice how tariffs were a trend that started a decade ago. Trump placed tariffs on China on his first term and then Biden increased the number of tariffs. the ban on Tiktok was a bipartisan effort- it’s in the interest of US foreign policy. obviously tariffs on Canada and Mexico are insane and probably wouldn’t have happened without Trump… but more tariffs were a definite part of the future regardless who won in 2024

Trump isn’t doing this because he’s some brilliant strategist

couple of things. first, i wouldn’t underestimate trump. he successfully hijacked the Republican party which is a party full of wealthy and powerful people who did everything in their power to try and stop him

second, the people around Trump are very principled ideologues (ie people like Peter Thiel and the dark enlightenment ideology they’re enamored in)

these people are educated, intelligent, and dedicated to their cause. they also have near-limitless money and now they have the control of the federal government of the strongest country in the world- a country that has an executive branch that has gotten progressively more powerful.

they have a vision and they planned for this and they are enacting it. this is not a spontaneous thing. they view a future where there is a showdown with China and tariffs play into that future

the analogy was in reference to the size differential between david (boy) and goliath (giant)

sure david wins in the parable but to quote bo burnham

South of queers, north of Hell

The queer ones suck and the brown ones smell

We guard the border and we guard it well

But some slip through the cracks of the Liberty Bell

Did I say liberty? I meant taco, Paco, hey you better let that rock go

'Cause in real life, Goliath wins

And then sells all the silk that the widow spins

I would very much like to preserve the freedom that attracted you to this country in the first place

i would very much like to preserve the freedom as well. i’m not pro-fascism if that wasn’t clear

i was just saying that even if shit gets really bad here people may still come because everything else could be worse

because there’s a war coming soon that will destroy most global trade. trump wants the US in a better position in that near future by having more factories and such inside of the US.

in a peaceful world, you allow free trade and specialization to do its thing and everybody gets richer. you farm bananas, i farm apples, and we trade. we create value out of thin air, it’s an amazing thing.

but in a world where superpowers are at war and the world splinters into factions, half of the global economy will be cut off from the other half. therefore it’ll be a huge liability if we for example depend on Taiwan for 90% of our computer chips when China can blockade Taiwan and we cannot reliably break that blockade. that’s one industry… now imagine the thousands of other products we need for a modern economy. it would cause massive economic shockwaves.

so this tariff thing is accepting that this will happen in the near future and preparing for it, slowly weaning off the economy from that connection to the rest of the world. so when it does come, it doesn’t hurt as bad.

it doesn’t really matter if you piss off your allies. since you’re the biggest military power they are going to have to rely on you anyway. you have leverage over them. the difference is that Trump is a reality TV star and so he is loudly exploiting this leverage whereas most past leaders would be more subtle and diplomatic about it.

Canada, Mexico, Germany, Japan, etc aren’t really allies. Being someone’s ally implies there’s a sort of equal footing. When someone has no choice but to bend to your will, is that a voluntary relationship? the US essentially wrote Japan’s constitution and they told the Germans what to write down for theirs. Canada and Mexico are heavily dependent on US trade- US growth might slow a half percent or two whereas Mexico and Canada are liable to fall into a recession because of these tariffs.

it isn’t equal footing. it’s a david v goliath situation

to give a recent example, Ukraine. Ukraine in 2014 had the Euromaidan coup and the president had to flee the country. The new government that was quickly appointed without an election realized one thing very quickly- Russia was about to invade them. they had only one option in terms of getting military aid and that was the US. so immediately, the same day that the government was appointed, they started cooperating with the US. a few days after that, little green men showed up in Donbas and the Russian army waltzed into Crimea

so you can say they “allied” with the US but a more honest way to say it is that they were desperately pushed into America’s orbit. and the US ultimately doesn’t care about a country like Ukraine. people are starting to see it more clearly today because of Trump, but I honestly don’t think the situation would have been meaningfully different with Biden or Kamala. The primary difference would have been rhetoric. Instead of calling Zelensky a dictator, we would have just dragged our feet with military aid instead, like what has been happening the last year or so

tldr: the US is a imperialist superpower and this is what they do.

i was born in a country with a military dictatorship who used to disappear people. just because the country is going to hell doesn’t mean you can’t carve out a meaningful life for yourself in the chaos. and living in a dystopian version of the US is probably still better than living in a dystopian version of a 3rd world country

then history has a very important lesson to teach you.

at no point in US history has the US been at war with a neighboring country over a trade war escalation and instituted a draft as a result of that war

any future war is going to be versus China and we’ve probably got at least a few years before that comes to fruition.

we’re in the years leading up to WW3. think of it like the early 1930s. if you look at history, everywhere sucked. i’d rather be in a 1st world country when the bombs go off rather than a 3rd world country where i’m liable to starve due to mass famines

Imagine there are still people who chose to go to USA voluntarily?

I’d rather live in neo-fascist USA than in a war zone where I’m liable to be sent to the frontlines and die bleeding out in a trench after a drone blows my leg off.

I’d rather live in neo-fascist USA than live in poverty in many parts of Latin America where I would make 10x higher salary for unskilled labor. I would also have a 10x lower chance of getting my throat slit walking down the street at night.

Sometimes I feel like I was the only one who remembered that this is what it was like the last time he was in office

I feel like it’s worse this time. Darker. We didn’t have the Ukraine or Israeli war. We didn’t have perverse AI videos like the Gaza video with a giant golden Trump statue.

2016 was the rise of Trump. Right now we are in the age of Trump. Trump is steadily increasing his power and I believe fairly soon he will be able to more or less unilaterally control the federal government as he continues his purges.

just means they are in bed with Nazis

Fascism is always the best business decision. This is the inevitable result of capitalism. The institutions on a good decade are strong and resilient. Oligarchy, yes, but still a more or less free society.

Eventually though, there will be a series of crisis in succession that causes the establishment to weaken just enough for a strongman to slip in and take the reigns. In the 20th century it was the fallout from WW1 and the Great Depression. In our time it was COVID and the Ukraine + Israeli wars (and to some extent, 2008 housing crisis)

One key part of fascism is that it is almost paradoxical

a) A populist-driven ideology, which means it appeals to the lowest common denominator

b) An elitist-driven ideology, which means it idolizes and puts value in the elites of a society

What ends up happening is the state picks and chooses elite groups of people who end up running the show. So for example, if you are Zuckerberg or Musk or Bezos… you know that if you play nice with Trump that he will reward you and you will have certain advantages by having a friend in an authoritarian government. You also know that if you don’t play nice with Trump, he will try and hurt you using both legal and illegal mechanisms.

Therefore, the best investment you could make is aligning yourself with the fascist state.

This was always going to happen. Sort of like how humans eventually will catch a cold or develop cancer. The immune system on a good day is strong enough to repel these types of problems. But eventually, you will be under some stress for one reason or another and your immune system is not enough to stop the inevitable cold or what have you.

yeah well said. and while there probably isn’t much of a difference to the people getting rained on with bullets and bombs… i think there is a fundamental ideological difference between at least pretending like you care.

we’ve reached the point where the executive is so powerful he doesn’t feel the nice to put the mask on. it’s a blatant and almost ostentatious use of power.

i think one thing he said in the 2016 election cycle was so spot on.

“I have the most loyal people – did you ever see that?” “I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn’t lose any voters, OK?” “It’s, like, incredible.”

Trump says and does ridiculous things (did you see that Gaza AI video?) that have no coherence because he understands his power lies in the chaos. one day he says one thing, one day he says another. ukraine and US will make a good deal one day, zelensky’s a dictator the next day, zelensky’s a good leader one day, and then zelensky’s disrespectful the next, etc etc

it’s sort of like when Stalin would go through one of his purges. He would have a long list of names on a paper and he would look through him. Every once in a while, for no apparent reason, he would cross a name off the list. He was reminding everyone that his power was absolute and he could arbitrarily choose to end you or spare you.

Trump is toying with this same type of arbitrarily derived chaos but instead of it being occasional he seems to be embracing it as his source of power. everyone (both his opposers and his appeasers like rubio) get their nerves frayed. you don’t know what’s coming next. who is next on the chopping block. the truth is slowly dissolving until it’s meaningless

and privately supported

we openly sent over thousands of MK84 2,000lb bombs that have used to kill thousands of civilians. not really private to be honest

hell, right after Oct 7 Biden personally made the trip over to Israel to bend the knee on live TV

kamala was more biden. the same group of people that was around behind created the conditions for a kamala run to even be possible.

they had to pull some weird “democracy games” to even get her on the ballot. pretend like biden was gonna run so he automatically wins the primary and only then announce he’s gonna leave. really shows how far this democracy has fallen

as for kamala, biden’s immigration proposals were “compassionate approach” and “immigration reform”

if you went to her website and looked under immigration there was only “strong border” and “border security”

to be honest, i only wanted kamala to win because she was a woman and that woulda been cool. but the descent into fascism would not have been meaningfully slowed down, i think

a chromium skin

i don’t think it’s so simple as they worship power. i think there’s a very strong inbuilt desire to belong to an “in-group” when you feel insecure and vulnerable

and if unchecked neoliberal capitalism has done anything over the last half century, it’s made average americans feel insecure. financially and emotionally

so sort of the same reason there’s race-based prison gangs is the same reason fascism tends to flare up when the system is going through severe stress. just like when your immune system is weak and the herpes virus manages to break out. we always have fascism possible yet most of the time the immune system is strong enough.

2008 + covid + ukraine + more have left us vulnerable

so is that the key differentiating issue here? whether someone can mistake it for a real photo?

what if I’m a really talented artist and make a realistic drawing of you posing in a sexually suggestive way. Should that be criminalized?

if I put a watermark “AI generated” on some of this AI porn, does that make it OK? if the issue is someone mistaking it, then the watermark would remove that doubt.

i’m trying to get a sense for the rationale here. basically- does this issue at its core really have anything to do with AI?

not claiming private organizations don’t have to the right to regulate speech on their platforms. was responding to statement

I understand why there are exceptions for those in positions of power, but I’d be more than happy to live in a world where there weren’t.

which to me implies some sort of state censorship on this type of material

Really, I just wanted to understand the rationale behind the desire to ban this type of material.

On the topic of Judge Roberts, on a similar although different legal issue

He wrote the Court’s opinion in United States v. Stevens (2010), invalidating a federal law that criminalized the creation or dissemination of images of animal cruelty. The government had argued that such images should be a new unprotected category of speech akin to child pornography. Roberts emphatically rejected that proposition, writing that the Court does not have “freewheeling authority to declare new categories of speech outside the scope of the First Amendment.” Roberts also wrote the Court’s opinion in Snyder v. Phelps (2011), ruling that the First Amendment prohibited the imposition of civil liability against the Westboro Baptist Church for their highly offensive picketing near the funeral of a slain serviceman.

In oft-cited language, Roberts wrote:

“Speech is powerful. It can stir people to action, move them to tears of both joy and sorrow, and — as it did here — inflict great pain. On the facts before us, we cannot react to that pain by punishing the speaker. As a Nation we have chosen a different course — to protect even hurtful speech on public issues to ensure that we do not stifle public debate. That choice requires that we shield Westboro from tort liability for its picketing in this case.”

If Judge Roberts were to be consistent, and I make no such claims that he will ever be consistent, I believe he would likewise not support banning fake AI porn.

In this case, it’s clearly a form of speech and therefore protected under the 1st amendment.

I also don’t understand such a strong reaction to non-consensual AI porn. I mean, I don’t think it’s in good taste but I also don’t see why it warrants such a strong reaction. It’s not real. If I draw a stick figure with boobs and I put your name on it, do you believe I am committing a crime?

As shady as Mozilla is, they’re competing against a functional monopoly

yeah this is a part we need to recognize. right now there are essentially three browsers. Chrome, Safari, and Firefox. Every other browser is some derivative of one of these- mostly Chromium.

Google can change some small detail about how they render HTML or a small part of their JS engine and that has global effects all over the internet. Without a Firefox to compete, they will implement policies to hurt the consumer. People think just because Chromium is open source that this mitigates the risk.

Google’s V8 javascript engine does not only power all Chrome and chrome-derivatives, it also powers nodeJS and therefore vast swathes of server-side javascript as well.

it’s actually difficult to understate how much raw power Google has in determining what you see on the internet and how you see it

we desperately need Firefox. I really hope that an open source alternative could be viable but it’s been decades and we haven’t had a real browser pop into existence. will the death of Firefox mean something else comes out? Or will the death of Firefox be the last nail in the coffin for a free internet?

Saying “kidnapping” and “brutal measures” is a little saucy when this is

Well, it is extreme. Let’s not pretend like it isn’t. Legal technicalities aside, it’s not a good look. People walking with their families down the street suddenly get ambushed and then thrown into a van? Old woman or wife trying to fight off the military recruiters?

The Russians don’t do this. The Americans didn’t do this back during Vietnam. Etc. It’s understandable because of the existential nature of this war, like you pointed out, but it is abnormal when you look at other drafts in other countries.

Part of the reason they’re having such a hard time is again, the recklessness with which they have, at certain points of this war, treated human life. Russia’s running into this same issue. Although Russia has a bigger population and is able to offer higher incentives in the form of payouts, along with a more centralized and mature propaganda system. Because of this, they haven’t had to rely on a draft and mobilization. They are still mostly a volunteer force.

They had lower tolerance for casualties, but that’s just because it was an optional war rather than an existential one.

Lower tolerance for casualties is a bit of an understatement. Over the course of 5 years or so there were less than 5,000 American deaths. Since 2022, we’re looking at a very conservative at least 100k dead from just the Russian side. The more generous estimates have 200k+ dead on both sides.

We’re talking at least an order of magnitude difference

That’s pretty much the job description of a soldier

When military strategy is controlled by the generals, they will prioritize manpower over political goals. When military strategy is controlled by the political regime, political goals become more important.

Retreating from a piece of land that has little strategic significance is the correct move so that you conserve resources and manpower. A soldier is a human being, a life. Not only does this have some sort of moral worth and should not be thrown away recklessly, it has real strategic value.

Both Russia and Ukraine in this war have made awe-inspiringly bad decisions at specific points. If I were a man who was being compelled to serve in either army, I would run away as far as possible.

It was less that OP pointed out this stuff, and more that their “friend in Kiev” apparently phones them up about this and doesn’t mention anything about the Russians who are perpetuating all this and could leave at any time.

I agree.

if you go on reddit to certain pro-russian combat footage subs dedicated to the war, you’ll see one or two new videos a week of Ukrainian men being kidnapped off of the streets and stuffed into a van

they really are taking people off the streets there. they’re low on manpower and the men remaining are all those that don’t want to die so they’ve been ignoring any draft summons. so the Ukrainian gov has been resorting to increasingly brutal measures.

i’m honestly just so glad i wasn’t born in post-soviet slavic country , lol. i swear the value of life there is not nearly what it is here. on the Russian side they’ll force thousands of men forwards into a meat grinder trying to win with pure brute force. if a soldier tries to go backwards, the Russians themselves will shoot you as a motivation for the others to go forwards. hundreds of thousands of men dead or maimed for what? a couple miles of land a day?

then on the Ukrainian side they’ll keep you defending some worthless piece of land forever as all the supply lines slowly close around you. once you’re cut off, you know you and the wounded with you are all gonna die. command promised reinforcements when they had no intention of sending reinforcements. to them , the political benefit of holding onto that land for just a little longer is worth more than the lives of real human beings. you are a soldier and you are expendable. (this also coincidentally makes it harder to get fresh recruitment because ukrainian men aren’t stupid and propaganda can only hide so many deaths)

i’ve seen confirmed cases of both sides killing POWs. men walking out of a trench with their hands up surrendering just to get mowed down anyways. men trying to surrender to drones only to get blown up anyways.

war is hell. it’s barbaric and highlights the absolute worst nature of humanity.

having said all that, yeah the commenter does seem like an astroturfer or at least a biased pro-russian poster if organic. but the statement with ukrainians being kidnapped, at least from what I’ve seen, is true. it has been happening at increasing frequencies