American progressivism in its current form can be summarized as an ideology that claims, “we must do A or B will happen.” The A in this formula can be just about anything and often flips from positive to negative. There are times when doing A reverses and the warning is to stop doing it. On the other hand, the B factor is always a negative consequence of the first term. Usually, it is a vague suggestion that it is not just bad but the end of civilization as we know it.
The obvious example is the weather. On the grand scale, the first term will be something like driving cars or heating our homes, while the second term is climate change, which means climate disaster. If we keep driving cars the climate will change in such a way that earth dies. They never make that second term explicit, but the extinction stuff is assumed. After all, climate changes all the time and has often been to our benefit, but that just muddies the waters.
That gets to the other aspect of this formulation. The person or people involved assume that their normative evaluation of both terms is correct. They may be justifying their prejudice against A on the grounds that it leads to B, but they always assume that B is a bad thing that moral people should seek to avoid. You see this with climate change, which is recast as a moral condition, rather than an observation. It is a bad thing not a simple observation of earth’s behavior.
The Gaia worship stuff is easy, but it turns up everywhere, even in mundane things like foreign policy. For a few decades now the American foreign policy establishment has been warning that if Iran gets nuclear weapons, then it will be a disaster. It is in the title of this post at one of the Claremont sites. The post is a veiled argument in favor of going to war with Iran on behalf of Israel. The post is in response to another post on the subject that dismisses this progressive formulation.
What we see with Iran are two variations of the same theme. One is “If we do not do A then B will happen.” The other is “If they are able to do A, then B will happen.” Sometimes they are linked together to get something like, “If we do not do A then they will do B and then C will happen.” The point of this formulation is to avoid examining the second term. The debate must center on the first part, what we ought or ought not do, while accepting the general badness of B.
Again, the Gaia business is an easy example. Every debate on climate policy centers on that first term and never debates the second term. It is always assumed by all sides allowed in the debate, that climate change is bad. In fact, a condition of getting into the debate is that you accept that climate change is morally bad. Your reason for accepting Gaia as your lord and savior may be different from others who accept Gaia, but accepting Gaia is the only way into the debate.
Note that Spivak in his response to Dobson spends a lot of his time smearing Dobson as immoral or otherwise out of bounds. One point of the Spivak post is to anathematize Dobson and anyone who dares question B. Central to the claims of Spivak is that everyone must accept his normative claims about Iran going nuclear. That way, the debate is reduced to the ways to prevent it, since a nuclear Iran is assumed to be a disaster for the world.
It is the natural way progressives control public debate. This is the heart of the debate between those two posts on Iran. Dobson, the author of the post at the start of the exchange, is questioning the veracity of B. He is correct that there are no arguments to support the claim. The evidence we have says that if Iran gets the bomb, they will become even less aggressive toward Israel. We see this with India and Pakistan where nuclear weapons keep the peace.
Spivak, on the other hand, simply cannot accept Dobson’s questioning of B in the well-worn formulation, so he repeats all of the ways people have said, “If A then B” over the years regarding Iran and nuclear weapons. The reason for this is that any change in B invalidates the formula. Suddenly, A does not necessarily lead to B, which then causes a revaluation of the set of choices in A. It also removes the necessity of the person warning, “If we do not do A, then B will happen.”
If there are a set of conditions in which Iran gets the bomb, but like all but one other nuclear country, does not use it, then the debate over American relations with Iran shift from various forms of war with Iran to include peaceful relations with Iran. Suddenly, the war mongers move from being one voice in a choir preaching some form of war, to being war mongers in a room with people calling for peace. They lose their moral high ground and become the high-risk position.
In this regard, progressive ideology inherited the basic formula from Christianity but stripped it of all Christian references. Heaven is just the assumed destination if we follow the progressive formula. If we follow the tides of history, then we will reach the egalitarian paradise. On the other hand, if we do not stop doing a long list of things that meet the requirement of A, then some version of Hell awaits us. The reason our politics is so preachy is that it is dominated by preachers.
Progressivism is secular Christianity of the Protestant variety, which is why all progressive arguments reduce to “Repent or burn in Hell!” You must ride a bike to work, or you will burn in Hell for angering Gaia. We must make war with Iran, or we will burn in Hell for letting her get the bomb. The madness of America stems from the fact that all doors now lead to Hell. There are no choices in the first term that do not lead to the second term and the second term is always Hell.
It is why the antidote to progressive polemics is not facts and reason. Those facts neatly arranged in a chart do nothing to alter the basic progressive formula. Instead, the solution is a revaluation of the values contained in the formula. If the value of B is open to debate, then there is no debate over A. If any part of A is morally questionable, then B ceases to be a consideration. You do not defeat moral claims with facts, but with the dismissal of those moral claims by challenging the underlying assertions.
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It would at least show some consistency if there were “core principles” to be defended.
But the turn-on-a-dime ridiculousness of “I must have a Tesla to save the planet” to “I will now buy a gas guzzler to tell everyone “I hate Elon Musk more than I love Earth” showed how hollow their commitment to Gaia worship always was.
We’re talking half a century of preaching/indoctrination demanding we must do X to save Y being thrown out in a couple of weeks.
There is no living with these people.
The point for them is control and not logic. They believe in nothing other than their will to power.
That’s right.
Their fundamental goal is to force YOU to live what THEY preach.
They could care less about living what they preach, which is why they are immune to charges of hypocrisy.
Exactly. It is why trying to understand their arguments is futile. Deranged and sick people, they are.
They partied while they locked others down. Confirming to themselves that they really ARE Special.
Only one way to deal with this mentality.
“They could care less about living what they preach, which is why they are immune to charges of hypocrisy.” Which is exactly why the “non-proliferation” types clutching their pearls about Iran getting the bomb are silent about Israel violating the NPT. I read a fair bit about nuclear deterrence in the 1980s and 1990s as a student. Initially I bought into the non-proliferation stuff, but over time I saw that it was all bullshit. The American foreign policy establishment has been beating the war drums about attacking Iran’s “nuclear program” for over twenty years — but Iran still doesn’t… Read more »
Correct, now take the next step. How do you deal with people like that who refuse to argue in good faith?
Expulsion, minimum. You don’t argue with them, for starters. Subduing is pointless.
The Spiteful Mutants are Deranged Zealots.
You do not engage in conversation with these kooks, let alone live with them.
Preach it.
I used to enjoy crucifying them on the multiple contradictions in their philosophy and watch them go mute when I hammered home point after point. You will never convince these true believers, just as any of you could never convince this Catholic through reason that the Host doesn’t transubstantiate into the literal Body of Christ on the altar. It’s a matter of faith to them that Gaia is angry, that whites are the greatest force of evil on the Earth and that the sweet-sweet butt secks is perfectly natural and good. They are as immune to reason as a barking… Read more »
When i was a child, the school would have assemblies on the Ozone layer. Who talks about the Ozone layer now? It was the same shit, do something or we’re all going to die.
Anybody remember this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8oJzfmWO3CU
One of the biggest downstream effects from Christianity is the philosophical worldview that everything must be resolved into a binary and no other options can be considered. This recent push from the right that pollution is good because it’s the opposite of what leftists prefer is a perfect example. One can hold the view that the green movement has gone way too far with environmentalism to the point of inhumanity, and simultaneously think that allowing Globohomocorp to dump their benzene byproducts into the river is a bad thing, and that people who modify their trucks to emit more pollution are… Read more »
Agreed, but conservation is a very white thing, so the Left is opposed to it as anything other than a control mechanism.
Witness how quiet the various conservation groups are about the eco-disaster being caused by illegals in the Southwest. Vast regions strewn with trash, whole sections of national parks no-go zones. The usual shitting everywhere.
Exactly. To that point, the largest donor to the Sierra Club demanded it lift its long-standing opposition to mass migration several years back. Guess what happened next.
Back when he was going by Frame Game Radio Mike Benz made a great video detailing how the jews subverted their entire mission & made them shills for infinite spic migration with all the ecological damage that came with it.
Now its an environmental organization that doesn’t give a damn about the environment. Many such cases.
The Sierra Club took $100 million from some billionaire to reverse its former position that illegal immigration was bad for the wilderness and environment….
Yeah I remember that about the Sierra Club, back in the mid-2000s. Not surprised that they turned. I didn’t know how blatant the bribery was though. $100 mill eh, at least they didn’t sell out for cheap, lol!
Years ago there was a bumper sticker that read: “Sierra Club Go Hike To Hell”. It appears they did.
We once took the Boy Scouts to a remote spot in the desert to clean up a gathering point for IA’s. We literally filled up a couple of large dump trucks with IA trash. These sites are/were all over. They are used by IA’s for the final trek into the US—that is to say, their last journey to a pickup point for motorized transportation into cities across the continent. They (IA’s) need to clean up and change clothes so as to be as little recognizable as IA’s from the rest of the Hispanic populace around here. Everything else brought is… Read more »
I’ve been arguing something similar lately. If you were truly concerned about our carbon footprint, then you should be anti-immigration. More people living an American standard of living means more water wasted, more chemicals in our ecosystem, more non-renewable natural resources being used, more pollution, etc. You can’t be an environmentalist and be pro-immigration at the same time. You should want as much of the world’s population living in grass huts as possible.
If you truly are concerned about carbon foot print, then the logical conclusion is to be anti people. That or we have to regress to living like its the 1700’s and a lot of people will die on the way to that. I don’t think we’re out of resources per se, but i do think we’ve used all the cheap ones that allow “growth”. But if you were to kill say, 7 billion people, well those resources that are now low would last another few hundred years. They’re stupid. They don’t see that the thing they support will lead to… Read more »
Let’s not forget the return of eradicated diseases. There is a mumps breakout in Texas they are blaming Kennedy for instead of the mass influx of Central and South Americans. They don’t want to talk about the return of Leprosy and other diseases long forgotten by the American people.
Now you get to sell more vaccines! Why do you think they didn’t require invaders to get the covid jab? Why was it important you get it, but not people invading the country who they could easily jab? Why do you get fired and they get free shit? Create problem, profit from “solution”.
I’m calling them invaders from now on, no more illegal immigrants.
I recently read that the previously impenetrable Panama/Columbia Darién Gap area, that was starting to resemble Penn Station because of all the sneak-ins, was already returning to nature. I doubt any of the enviro-kooks feel like smiling about that.
The fact those camps have not been bombed into oblivion shows how utterly worthless a military is in a corrupt, hostile and dying system like this one.
VDare had an article about this that came out around 2011 and it detailed how the Sierra Club accepted a donation of around 80k from la raza if they removed four pages from an environmental impact report discussing this very subject.
Not only that, but all of AINO’s population gain comes from immigration, legal and otherwise. Population gain drives urban sprawl and the destruction of the natural environment. But does the Sierra Club support immigration restriction? The hell you bellow.
.
“… conservation is a very white thing…” I had a Bharati Indian colleague at an American institution decades ago, when the individual was a postdoc physicist, who was unfamiliar with the concept of conservation. This is not a put-down. The man was very smart and perfectly capable of learning. The point is that he did not know. It was not part of his people’s culture, their shared cognition/outlook on reality, and hence not imparted to him during his formal and informal training. Has anything changed in India? Maybe, but I do know this: if those capable of learning are all… Read more »
“ Maybe, but I do know this: if those capable of learning are all allowed into the West after their Western training and not sent back to their own countries, who will affect change in their countries? Is useful knowledge seeping back anyone? Spread of ideas doesn’t require movement of people, but it can’t but help.”
It’s impossible to know the future. But I can’t help but think that a mass repatriation would be the most effective way to spread the best of West Civilization to the world.
It ought to be a ‘put down.’ India has nukes and a space program, while most of its people sh*t in the streets and even their ‘smart ones’ who come to the west have minimal hygiene and are unwilling/unable to adopt classical western values. Their magic dirt ‘merkin kids have no concept of conservation either. And I don’t share in the concern about AINO siphoning off anyone else’s ‘talented.’ We don’t need them and they should not be allowed here, but my concern is for Whites (in AINO, Europe, and even Canada and Australia, lost though they may be). I… Read more »
“Brain Drain” used to be something we were instructed to feel guilty of.
No White guilt.
“This recent push from the right that pollution is good because it’s the opposite of what leftists prefer…”
What? Are you speaking in hyperbole or is this a thing?
Geoff writes
“””One of the biggest downstream effects from Christianity is the philosophical worldview that everything must be resolved into a binary and no other options can be considered.”””
Poppycock. The early Church declared what you claim is a Christian dualistic worldview a Manichean heresy. Not either/or but both- and saints as dissimilar as Francis from Loyola serve as testimony.
We still go into a brown cloud upon entering the cities. Alas, this cloud is a different form of polution than car exhaust and refinery residuum…
It’s still that, too. I absolutely loathe having to drive across even I-80 south of Chicago, particularly if it hasn’t been living up to its nickname lately. Taking the I-294 loop is even worse.
We have obviously “made a market” for nuclear weapons by regime-changing or wrecking anyone we disliked who lacked them. So our current policy summarized is: “Forswear your nuclear program or be wrecked, and do exactly what we and our pitbull “ally” say, or be wrecked”. We’re pretty lucky that the existing nuclear powers, including the Norks, haven’t given sold bombs to whomever. There’s probably some game-theoretical logic that explains this “luck”, but I will have to think about it more. Meanwhile, I’d feel safer if Iran had a nuke than if Zelensky had one.
Understatement of the century!
Someone cited Tom Lehrer the other day, so..
“We’ll try to stay serene and calm,
when…. Alabama gets the bomb.”
During the Bush years, when the UN International Atomic Energy Agency was under a Muslim director, the number of nuclear nations went from 5 to 15.
AQ Khan, a Pakistani immigrant to Holland, stole the blueprints of the nuclear facility he was working at and went back to sell nuclear plans to as many buyers as he could.
We do know that the Saudis outsourced their nuclear program to Pakistan, the Saudi Bomb(s) was warehoused there to be called in at need.
So sure, Israel is scared of the Muslim Bomb. Till they use it on the West.
It is all just sophistry. You don’t beat pathological liars, users and subversives with debates and changing the moral framing. In the end remorseless users and liars leave you with a choice; utter ruin or exercising the iron will to rid yourself of them.
Spot on. To the small degree National Review types are not liars and grifters and actually accept the Left’s premises whatever they are at a given moment, they are fools. Their point is to bend you to their will. There is no reason to engage in argument or debate with them.
I once viewed the claim that progressivism is mental illness to be nothing more than political rhetoric. That no longer is my view. The beating heart of progressivism is power and control and the desire to command people to do things they otherwise would not do. This is nothing more than a specie of sadism somewhere along the spectrum. Psychological studies repeatedly have shown people on the Left to be very high on aggression and very low on empathy. Professor Edwar Dutton makes this point often. Progressives have BPD and other personality disorders at very high levels and often are… Read more »
‘The reason they can do a 180 on beliefs is they actually believe in nothing other than power and control.’
Exactly. Well said.
‘Psychological studies repeatedly have shown people on the Left to be very high on aggression and very low on empathy. Professor Edwar Dutton makes this point often.’
I can recommend Ed Dutton’s ‘Witches, Feminism, and the Fall of the West’. Guess what it’s about? :O)
where is the historical precedent though? Hubert Humphrey didn’t seem like he was a BPD stricken person
Well said. Ultimately they & every other hostile foreign invader is a symptom of self proclaimed conservatives who act as an autoimmune disorder that prevents antibodies from neutralizing threats. Once a certain threshold of conservative infection is reached every foreign virus under the sun can freely enter & do damage under their protection. They & the left are two sides of the same coin playing their respective roles running down the demographic clock until nothing is left. We could expell every last illegal, lynch every criminal & put all the leftists up against the wall with a firing squad tomorrow… Read more »
It is always 1979 for some people. Iran, as well as her enemies, know that becoming part of the Biggest Stick Club makes them invasion proof and permanently changes the balance of power in the region. That will stabilize the region. Bagel Land will hate it, but it is quite apparent that they increasingly cannot prevent it.
The very fact that they have to couch their nuclear development as pursuing “energy independence” proves the Iranians don’t get the game. It makes them easy prey to get caught in the “no, you’re lying and further reinforcing the point that you’re bad for trying to get nukes.” They’ve conceded the A. They should simply come out and say “until we have nukes, we are at the mercy of regional nuclear powers and powers with allies that are nuclear powers. In order to have national sovereignty, we need a deterrent.” It rejects the moral authority from the nosenites to dictate… Read more »
“The Middle East’s only Democracy (TM) has caterwauled for decades that Iranians can’t be trusted with nukes because they’re insane terrorist jihadists who do suicide bombings and therefore they’d be fine with doing a “national suicide bombing”“ That’s always been my complaint about Mearscheimer — he deliberately ignores the fact that muslims in general and maybe shia even moreso really are suicide bombers. “This doesn’t come across well when you know what the Samson Option is..“ You can’t credibly make the case that any state would not resort to the Samson Option in extremis. Of course the nukes would fly if a nation’s… Read more »
To your point, Iran’s most effective argument was that it would tie giving up nuclear weapons if Israel did so. Crickets, of course.
They vehemently deny, while smirking, that they have nuclear weapons and toss the counter-accusation of blood libel at anybody who alleges it. Everybody knows they have nukes, but nobody can definitively say it, as it would immediately lead to unfavorable consequences. For example, under the Symington Amendment, all foreign aid to Our Greatest Ally (TM) is illegal as they have not subjected themselves to the International Atomic Energy Agency despite having nuclear capabilities.
Can you imagine the circus of deceptions that would occur if Israel had to submit to weapons inspections like the US wants to apply to Iran?
One thing that’s interesting w.r.t. climate change is that in history, when climate changes, it’s when it cools that you see the worst effects. For example, when climate began cool in Europe following the establishment of the Roman Empire, food production dropped, diseases proliferated, and population diminished. Read “The Fate of Rome” by Kyle Harper. A similar dynamic occurred in 17th century Europe
The Little Ice Age, which began around 1300 and ended around 1700 (although some climate historians claim that it lasted until about 1850) probably contributed materially to the Black Death of 1348 to 1350, in which it is possible that 1/3 of humanity between India and Iceland died.
Of course, a cold climate reduces agricultural production, leading to malnutrition and outright starvation…Civilization expands in warm periods, one of which, around 8,000 BC was much warmer than today, and saw an explosion of civiizations…
They prattle on about ‘net zero’ along with the glory of solar energy, yet plan to dim the sun to prevent ‘climate change.’ They are pathological liars and convinced they are meant to be as gods.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-14638689/Experiments-dim-SUN-curb-global-warming.html
Lying or psychopathy? I always make a point that the United States is infinitely worse demographically than either the UK or continental Europe. That aside, Britain truly is a madhouse now and probably the worst in the West. While I doubt he is sincere, Starmer at least rhetorically is clawing back on immigration and the drones are howling about it and labeling him the Second Coming of You-Know-Who. Dimming the sun is of a piece–racial suicide. There is a genetic defect within white people, particularly those of us of British ancestry, that compels far too many to sacrifice themselves and… Read more »
I always get a kick out of the US blabbing about nuclear weapons acquisitions by other countries – this coming from the only country ever to nuke another. A lot of moral high ground there. I have no doubt that threatening Iran has much to do with its proximity to another country in the region…
I agree with Z that generally you don’t defeat moral claims with facts but by dismissing the moral claim, preferably by countering with your own moral claim. However, there are times where facts – simply do to their overwhelmingly importance – do intrude, and I suspect that this is one of those times. Spivak claims that Iran’s missile attack a year or so ago was a complete failure and the US and Israel successfully defeated and destroyed Iran’s air defenses recently. Both of these claims are false. Now, often, the narrative makers don’t care about reality, but this time, reality… Read more »
There is a strange game of chess going on here. It seems likely that the Iranians provided the Houthis with missiles that could challenge American warplanes. A leak from the Pentagon says the Houthis came close to hitting both the F-35 and the F-18. That could have been a signal to Washington that any attack on Iran will result in downed American warplanes and maybe even a damageed warship. Frankly, my hunch is that Trump has concluded that Netanyahu is insane. His obsession with war certainly suggests it. Logically, a deal with Iran works to the favor of Israel, if… Read more »
Yes, it’s quite possible that Iran used the Houthis to send the Pentagon a message. It does seem as though Israel (the world really) is reaching a crossroad. Will it finally accept peace in the region which entails accepting Iran as an equal power or will it try one last roll of the dice to knock out Iran? Netanyahu wants to roll the dice. The Pentagon seems to be saying that it’s already too late. Trump seems to be siding with the Pentagon. The rest of Israel needs to realize that we’re in a new world. Netanyahu definitely doesn’t want… Read more »
“Netanyahu definitely doesn’t want anything to do with that new world. He’s a lunatic, but he’s right that he’s better in the old world.”
This is the observation that we’re all stuck in 1975 until further notice. Trump is better than most in observing that it’s not, but our global governance can’t get out of this mode.
Oddly, Western articles claiming the Houthi air defenses nearly shot down F-35s and F-16s have surfaced.
I can only think this admission was was made to justify printing up more FRNs to fund a new decade of pork barrel aviation programs.
Along with those “leaded stories’ we get the hints of a system-wide reevaluation of our military posture. My guess is the Pentagon has watched the Ukraine war with a great deal of concern. it is not just that the wonder weapon is not the determining element, but that wars of the future will once again be defined by the supply chain. We simply do not have what it takes to defeat Iran. We will run out of missiles and maybe even planes before they capitulate and we probably cannot sustain a ground force in the region. We put a half… Read more »
It is questionable if, even at its cold war peak, the GAE military could have conquered Iran (without nukes). Then or now, probably the best the GAE could hope for is bending Iran to its will through some air/missile strikes. Maybe the WW2 military could have done it, but it would have required an Overlord scale deployment.
Yep. In the 1990s, it would have been an air campaign plus sanctions – and probably Israel assassinating some generals and leaders – to cripple Iran. Today, Iran can shoot back. They also now have the BRICs to do business with. Finally, their govt is stable enough to deal with Israeli assassination teams.
The world has moved on. We’re now starting to realize it.
Exactly. We can’t fight a prolonged war with anyone. GAE officially became a regional power (RAE) – the most powerful regional power but still a regional power – in 2022. The world is just now waking up to that fact and figuring out how to deal with it. Also, we can’t “rebuild” ourselves into GAE. Our economy is too small. Militarily, we have a multipolar world. Israel needs to accept that. So far, it’s hasn’t, but the fact that a US president and the Pentagon are saying No to Israel is a sign that reality on the ground has overtaken… Read more »
This is a key point missed by far too many.
The GAE industrial base and skilled, motivated workforce just isn’t there any more.
If folks want to see this illustrated in quantitative terms, all they need to do is go look up GAE industrial output in terms of steel, aluminum, and ship tonnage versus what Russia and China are currently producing.
Based on those numbers, it’s pretty laughable that so many honestly believe the US is still, “The Arsenal of Democracy.”
That is the only reason we have not moved on Iran yet. The current administration is not less neocon in philosophy. They are just more pragmatic than people like the Kagans.
We would go Winchester on missiles in a few weeks in a war with Iran and days if we had to deal with China. The production capacity isn’t there for an extended war thanks to the financial class outsourcing everything overseas.
“wars of the future will once again be defined by the supply chain.”
There it is. The best strategy at this point is to stop buying major weapons systems and create a development, procurement and fabrication system that can quickly react to whatever the latest drone technology is. The war winning weapon isn’t an jet, tank or ship, but some kind of unknown tech that can break the drone stalemate.
Until that tech comes into being, it seems the ability to mass produce and deploy drones is more important than any advances in conventional weaponry’s capabilities or numbers.
The F-47 will be the best warplane ever!
Yep, but as with the rest of our wunderwaffen, too expensive to use/lose in battle and impossible to replace in an acceptable timeframe of a modern war.
The F-16s, yes. But the F-35s. Not likely. You’d need a very long wavelength radar with a gigantic antenna. Just look at the RAF’s radar stations during WWII and you’d get an idea of the size needed to detect one of our low observable aircraft, which are built to deal with X-band radars. That’s how the Serbs shot down an F-117 over Kosovo in the 1990s. They largely got lucky because they had some antiquated radars that had a long enough wavelength to allow them to at least get an idea about a firing solution. More likely, it could’ve been… Read more »
The war party reports that Iran’s air defenses were destroyed so it is now vulnerable to an easy Isreali-US attack. It would be a cakewalk to destroy their nuke sites. Yet Iran has so many missiles that it is able to supply the Houthis with air defense missiles to threaten the best planes the US has. Both cannot be true.
Russia’s failure to achieve air dominace suggests that air defenses may be superior to air attacks by planes.
I view the claims that the USA and Israel totally destroyed Iran’s air defenses with the same level of credibility as the Ghost of Kiev.
The Pentagon knows the truth and is letting Trump know that an attack on Iran could be a Suez-level defeat. Nobody loves Jews or Israel more than Trump, but no chance he wants to go down in history as the president who lost the American empire in a humiliating defeat.
Regarding air defense and the narrative that Iran’s air defense was destroyed. Even if partially true it sure looks like the GAE is not ready to bet the farm on that.
The war party can say what it wants. The Pentagon knows the truth, and when you’re facing a humiliating – Suez level – defeat, you tell the narrative spinners to pound sand.
This is the US pulling back. The world has changed. No amount of Jewish spin will change this. Israel needs to come to grips with the fact that the US is no longer the global superpower that can hit anyone, anytime.
This is probably why Netanyahu initiated the greater Israel push when he did. The U.S. is getting weaker every day. As has been noted here already we have no industrial capacity to carry on a real war with Iran.
It was now or never for the greater Israel project. However that project is proceeding with much success. Can it be sustained to conclusion is another matter.
American Jewry is also split on the Israel project. They are not a monolith there. There’s as much of a generation gap inside the Jews as outside.
I’d say the Suez-level defeat would be Obama becoming President except it wasn’t an empire being lost but a country.
Truth, but I suspect Russia’s real reason for not bothering with air superiority is why bother? Artillery shells are cheaper than bombs, and while bombs (and even stand-off air to ground missiles) put a plane at risk, artillery is pretty safe from anything but counter-battery. Which is not a realistic threat from a defanged Ukraine.
You can’t win period. I know a girl around my age. Her mom got knocked up at 16, the guy was a loser and bounced. Then went on to knock up another women. You can not convince her that her mother had done anything wrong. And her family has been living off .gov support of some form for her entire life. She’s entitled to it, she thinks being poor is a sacrifice that she can do nothing about, never looking at the choices that have been made thru out her life. I think the majority of Americans are like that.… Read more »
What we have here is a 250-year old country, trying to push around a 2,700-year-old civilization on behalf of a 75-year-old theocratic ethnostate. I don’t care if Iran has nukes.
“American progressivism in its current form can be summarized”
should we call it a feature of American progressivism or of propaganda media? US media has been running into propaganda mode for a century and it gets paid heavily to say various kinds of “B happens”. Hence the distorted stories follow irrespective of how incredulous they are.
The media, which is nothing more than an arm of the leftist philosophy, continually phrases things in moral terms. The best example of this is the “Donald Trump is Hitler (or at the very least Mussolini)” public meme. The conditional parentheses are meant to be a catch-all, redefining the moral hazard just in case Trump doesn’t turn out to be quite as bad as the worst case. With the second term of the Trump administration, weariness set in as they cried Wolf one too many times. Now the moralists resign themselves to muted mutterings, their tongues firmly in cheek. —… Read more »
Good point about hell. It just goes to show there is such a lack of mature thinking and conversation. If I say all non whites should be removed from North America, and I’m rightly called a racist, and a racist is like totally the worse thing i could be, but so what? i suppose the only real thing progs believe in is hurting another. And racism hurts another. And if you hurt another than it’s the golden rule thing? They could hurt you and we are all hurting each other and society breaks down? I mean, there is no real… Read more »
Does it, though?
Most racism is hurty words, occasional sound public policy, or snobs keeping their country clubs from less than ideal behaviors*. In other words, it’s really nothing in the whole scheme of things. A Southern jury and later private men melted out justice on behalf of an Irish Catholic immigrant girl while refusing to convict the black janitor. They were rewarded with the foundation of ADL. I’m sorry, racism at it’s “peak” just wasn’t that bad. Our modern thoughts about racism are entirely about a lack of real virtue. *I wouldn’t make the cut either, so it’s also not entirely about… Read more »
We are seeing a variation of this construction dozens of times a day from the mainstream media. They will also never change B. New York City was supposed to be underwater 20 years ago and 10 years ago. The core premise is unchanged because Gaia is still angry. Likewise, today, we saw the fake stat that inflation is lower than expected (I say it’s fake because they’re all fake). The media dutifully reported on it, but maintained that the god of the Economy is upset because of Trump’s tariffs and the price pressures are “building” instead of being here as… Read more »
It bares mention again at this point, that much of the conversation so far excludes the obvious, which is that Climate Change models do *not* take into effect human amelioration of the predicted environment impact. To which an excellent book was published years ago by Bjorn Lomborg: False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet. This book is a half dozen years old now, but still a good read as it speaks of how much of Climate Change—if true—can and *will* be ameliorated through technology at a much lower cost than… Read more »
Another good read: How the World Really Works – Vaclav Smil. Again, a book that doesn’t gin up emotion just lots of pesky facts like Lomborg.
Norman Podhoretz in a 2007 article, “The Case for Bombing Iran,” inisisted Tehran was on the verge of Going Nuke. Fortunately, by then even Bush was tired of war and just wanted to go back to his ranch.
An appropriate David French Christian roast by the Babylon Bee.
https://babylonbee.com/news/god-i-thank-you-that-i-am-not-like-other-white-evangelicals—op-ed-by-david-french
Ummm. . . French Roast . . . yuummm
fun with AI: AI Overview Learn more The term “David French tool” is likely referring to David French, a prominent American political commentator and former attorney. He’s known for his work in litigation, politics, and journalism. Wikipedia also states that he was formerly a fellow at the National Review Institute and a staff writer for National Review from 2015 to 2019. Elaboration: David French as a commentator and attorney:David French is a well-known figure in conservative political circles, offering commentary on various topics and also having a background in law.His work at National Review:He was previously associated with the National Review, a conservative publication.Variety of… Read more »
It didn’t even mention his black “kid!” What a cuck he is.
I have often cited that dictum that we cannot talk or vote our way out of the mess we’re in. But can we educate our way out? IOW, if our citizens could somehow be educated to understand the harmful dynamics of Progressivism, would that knowledge and understanding lead to a remedy? Ideally, if we were a homogeneous population with above average IQ, then probably yes. But we are now far from that ideal. Perhaps a different sort of education and knowledge would be more helpful in resolving this problem. Perhaps we should ask “how” rather than “why.”
I have often cited that dictum that we cannot talk or vote our way out of the mess we’re in. But can we educate our way out? No. For adults, at least, education is just formalized talking. Once we have ___’d our way out, then we can possibly indoctrinate the next generation to keep us out, the way they indoctrinated the kids over several generations to get us deeper into this. This, by the way, is why I don’t particularly care about free speech. Free speech is a trap. We saw how quickly they have abandoned it once they got what… Read more »
“if we were a homogeneous population with above average IQ, then probably yes…”
Same point we always get to, you can’t reason with the majority of folk. You can always, however, generate FUD. In short, you can appeal to emotion. No sense asking this question over and over. The answer is always the same.
Leftists know this and do not trouble themselves with other paths to power. It seems only Whites—and then a smallish number of Whites—seems to repeat this fallacy of appeal to “logic and reason” over and over again.
Genuine free speech is limited in scope and has a corresponding responsibility. It’s about improving governance, with a duty to use it for that end.
Degenerate or blasphemous public speech are not free speech and never were. Modern “free speech” is a way to clean up hedonism into a virtue.
“Progressivism is secular Christianity of the Protestant variety…” Hmppffff. Well thanks for explaining the the obvious foolishness of our faiths, Z. But as I’ve said before – I can get crap like this off of every second TED Talk. My favourite was when this rat faced jew came on and explained that in reality, David was the murderous bully, and Goliath was the victim. (Goliath was afflicted with gigantism and an over active thyroid, you see…). 😂👍 The mutt even had groupies… enormous fat land whales that thought the sun shone out of his arse. Do you have groupies too?… Read more »
‘I began to study the Bible and it all astonished me. We are programmed from birth NOT to see God’
Sure. It’s the devil’s world. For now.
Whenever I mention the outrage of the day, my husband simply responds “It’s Satan’s time.” That covers it. In the meantime, man proposes and God disposes. The best we can do is take care of our immediate family and worthy friends. The rest is beyond our purview . . . and beyond saving.
Every time I picked up the Bible for myself before I returned to the faith, I saw nothing but angry insanity. Those first 5 books are difficult to read in a modern light. It took other teachers/resources before I could return to the Bible to see what it says. The Eunuch in Acts 8 needed help to read his Scripture. I’m unashamed to say I needed it too. I believe your experience of God for the what’s worth. But I’ve been online enough to know that what you mean of Scripture study and mine are probably wildly different. I also… Read more »
Well.. that’s all true too. In truth there is nothing new under the sun. Human beings are much the same today as they were 2000 years ago. We have been here before. In first Samuel the jews were ruled by corrupt judges and demanded they be replaced by a King. I’m conflicted: God said the people weren’t at odds with the judges and Samuel – they were at odds with Him. Our speecher that day said it’s virtually the same today… we are ruled by corrupt judges and political shitheels and I am hacked right off with the lot and… Read more »
Indeed! The left loves to turn scientific issues into moral issues, though their ignorance of actual science can be a handicao…. As a number of scientists have pointed out, from the climate record, the Earth is currently in a “CO2 desert”, with levels far below what plants want and need…That’s why some greenhouses pump in CO2 to speed up growth…
it doesn’t matter. It’s an op. They can’t stop talking about this one aspect of the environment that is totally unfalsifiable and built on their crappy models. They say those crappy models tell us that we need to hand over all power big and small to them so they can micromanage our lives and corral us into “15 minute cities” (that of course are sufficiently diverse). At the same time, our waterways are insanely polluted thanks to a bunch of shithole countries and our brains are getting filled up to the brim with microplastics. Then they whine because it might… Read more »
But as I had begun to say, a flaw is bad only because it is opposed to the nature of the thing in which it is present. It is therefore obvious that the thing whose flaw we condemn has a praiseworthy nature, so much so that we must admit that our very act of condemning flaws constitutes praise of the natures whose flaws we condemn. For since the flaw is opposed to the nature, the more it destroys the integrity of the nature, the worse it is. Therefore, when you condemn a flaw, you are praising the thing whose integrity… Read more »
I’m much more worried about what Iran might do here if they decide to cause trouble. There are two power sub-stations where I live. Over the last few weeks, all of the foliage out to fifty yards has been cut down, lighting has been installed on the fence lines with the lights facing away and cameras on gimbals are everywhere. This could be simple precautionary steps, or perhaps someone is finally getting serious about the vermin that have prowling around. i know, I know someone here is going to point out that all it takes is someone with basic rifle… Read more »
I’ve been thinking for years that Iran would be well served by testing a bomb. It is one of the few things they can do to assure the continuation of their government and to protect their people. But, AFAIK, the supreme religious leader has claimed nuclear bombs are Harram. Everyone agrees the gov of Iran has not “decided” to create a bomb. This proves attacking Iran is not about the bomb. It’s just Israel first nonsense. Not just Israel, but the gulf states too. They don’t like Iran because of religious differences, so they don’t mind if the big Satan… Read more »
“You do not defeat moral claims with facts, but with the dismissal of those moral claims by challenging the underlying assertions.”
Indeed. Z-man has given us a 1 hour lecture in Logic 101 in today’s missive. As clear as any when I was a student taking such, but with current examples taken from the “news”. Much easier to understand/remember than the old “if A then B” chalkboard outlines.
I used to search out such faculty in statistics when in the major. Nothing is more enlightening than illustrating use of methods with real life examples.
‘Progressivism is secular Christianity of the Protestant variety’ Secular Christianity is a contradiction of terms. Like Feminist Christianity or Reformed Judaism. Oh wait yeah, God’s really wrong about this stuff, we better Reform him. However, I see the Progs as an amalgam of God-free Christian moralism and pagan regression to the sex-fertility-mother goddess cults that dominated the ancient world. They imbibe the worst of both systems. Someone like Nancy Pelosi embodies this, for in her soggled noggin she really does believe she and her sistren are ‘the real Christians’ just as they’re certain they represent Our Democracy, goodness, and fluffy… Read more »
Pr0gresivism started in 1880’s when it was really progressive force. But, as Eric Hoffer wrote”” In America, an idea becomes a ,movement becomes a bussines and bussimes becoming a racket.””
The 1880’s is when West started losing their confidence in God. Before that progressivism was just another protestant rival group. We can even see the jump in real time. Bryan Johnson, who started the “Don’t Die” movement was raised as an LDS member. I’m not going to get into the theological weeds here about their classification. I am going to point out that the LDS are one of many groups from America’s “Great Awakening” era and Protestant in origin. Bryan Johnson is 100% progressive in goal and organization. He’s abandoned even the semblance of believing in God but taken the… Read more »
It’s not hard to see that Progressivism is the logical conclusion of the Protestant point of view It’s just progressed to get rid of that pesky God idea. Some parallels: -Assuming that Heaven is guaranteed with faith alone. Out of all the Catholic teachings, I suspect the insistence that there are no guarantees is the one causes the most chagrin. Move Heaven to a place on earth and we have progressivism. All you must do is believe it and it will happen. -An ironic emphasis on work and salvation through it. There’s a reason why it’s called the Protestant work ethic.… Read more »
hehe, good one
The big problem I see with Iranian nukes is that the same as the 19th Amendment — once you cross that line, there is no practical way to return to the status quo ante.
Leftist progressives marxists communists or whatever they are always seem to have to worship at the alter of something. The Climate changes. Nein Scheisse. Let the Middle East worry about the Middle East. Attempt no landings there.
What Z describes is a type of supervenience. In this schema the principles of Category A, if altered, necessarily affect the principles of Category B. Thus, whether the BFE chooses to bomb or not to bomb Iran affects Iran’s ability and perhaps willingness to develop nukes, and therefore its supposedly genocidal intentions vis-a-vis the Levantine Finkels. This supervening principle may be probable but is not absolutely certain. Hence, regardless of whatever the Pansified States of America may be able do to Iran will not necessarily have that much effect on Iran. The point being that the BFE is not quite… Read more »
Time to dust off the good old “weaponsh of mash deshtrucshun”…
Those facts neatly arranged in a chart do nothing to alter the basic progressive formula
Steve Sailer would argue with you if he wasn’t on Substack looking for subscribers.
(Your point is valid though)