Oceans Yet to Burn

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

Where does "we're legitimately afraid for ourselves and our families" fit into the narrative? Do they just not believe us?

theunitofcaring answered:

Actual supporters of Trump correct me if I’m wrong but I think they’d say “you’re afraid because the left has deliberately promoted hysteria and fear; the things you’re afraid of aren’t going to happen”. Like, I think they legitimately do not believe that someone could be scared of Milo because they are scared he’ll say their name on stage and then they’ll be beaten or strangled or deported or murdered over it, I think they model fear of Milo as ‘the left has deliberately self-modified to find anyone who is not cowed by leftist orthodoxy terrifying’.

So yeah, they don’t believe you (or they believe that your being scared has almost nothing to do with their behavior). Unless you or your loved ones are an undocumented immigrant or a refugee, in which case I think they’d say ‘well yes I am endangering your family but I don’t have an obligation to endanger my family to protect your family”. 

This is not exactly encouraging but I think it’s roughly a description of the thing.

[mitigatedchaos]

From the Trump supporters I know, this is reasonably accurate.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

G-d. I am so fucking nervous about where this anti-fascist stuff's going. I feel like I'm an island in a sea of an increasingly violent left-wing culture. I lean left and libertarian. I sincerely feel that initiating the use of force is wrong. I have a kid. I don't want her growing up in the middle of a civil war or a totalitarian regime, and I feel like one or the other's inevitable. People keep telling me 'if there are Nazi sympathizers in power, why shouldn't we use violence', but no, _no_...

sinesalvatorem answered:

*hugs*

I know how you feel. I’m terrified. But I think in the coming months it’ll settle down a little as the left realises that Trump isn’t going to run away scared and the Administration realises that people are actually going to resist if they do anything egregious, and we’ll reach a lower-energy-if-still-unstable equilibrium.

I’m still not happy about anything that’s happening, though. You have all of my sympathy. Feel free to message me any time.

[mitigatedchaos]

If Orange Capitalism Man has any idea what he’s doing - and my estimate is like 50:50 he does vs does not - his plan works based on creating outrage on demand to suit his purposes.  He can only extract so much outrage that way until outrage reserves are tapped out and people start pursuing other methods that involve more argumentation and less use of social power.

Probably.  I’m only estimating that those outrage reserves are finite.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Instead, the attempted transformation of the euro area into Greater Germania has simply dumped the persistent surpluses of German-speaking Europe, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia onto the rest of the world. Between 2008 and 2016 the combined current account balance shifted by 0.8 percentage points of world GDP. This can be explained almost entirely by a collapse in consumption and investment in Greece, Ireland, Italy, and Spain. That was mostly a consequence of policy choices pushed by the European Central Bank, the Eurogroup, and the IMF, with strong guidance from Germany and the Netherlands.

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2017/02/01/2183509/the-us-shouldnt-blame-mexico-for-losing-at-trade-it-should-blame-germany/

AKA: Michael Pettis has been saying this for 2 decades, Mark Blyth’s been on the train since… at least 2012, and now we’re finally catching up.  

Free Trade doesn’t work.  

(via poipoipoi-2016)

Heck, Keynes said it in the 1940s and gave the solution.

(via collapsedsquid)

If this is doing what I think it’s doing, a single country could get part of the way there by having its own currency and applying tariffs at a rate based on its trade balance.  I was kind of hoping the Orange Man might do something like that, but it looks like he won’t and will do per-country punitive tariffs instead.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

If Trump is a time traveler, what did the original timeline look like?

[sadoeconomist]

I think we can guess a few things - I think Hillary won in 2016-α against Jeb, who was weakened in our timeline by the changes made to the Republican primaries after 2012 (which were influenced by Trump through Reince Priebus, another possible time traveler, judging solely by his name), as well as early targeted attacks from Trump himself. But Trump had a strong strategy in mind for beating Hillary, which he was absurdly confident in as far back as 2012 - and I think it’s possibly because he saw it work already. I think he might have copied his style, key elements of the campaign (the MAGA hats? the critical Rust Belt working class focus? his Twitter media manipulation? maybe the hacking of the Hillary campaign was accomplished using Trump’s foreknowledge?) from someone else who ran against Hillary in 2020-α, who was possibly even more of a strident nationalist than Trump and was riding an even greater populist backlash against Washington DC.

Perhaps this was one of the things Trump came back to prevent - something that became much more worthy of being called a fascist takeover of the US. And he did it using their methods because he knew they worked. Maybe the hats originally just said ‘Make America Great’ and Trump added ‘Again’ because for him, it’s the second time.

I’m not sure who this mysterious nationalist candidate could have been, but maybe Andrew Breitbart survived in the original timeline (did a time-traveling Trump orchestrate his mysterious death?). Maybe it was actually Richard Spencer? Maybe it was a reality TV host, which would explain why he did The Apprentice. Or possibly Steve Bannon - that would explain Bannon’s position in the Trump administration, perhaps.

Trump being a time traveler might explain his odd organizational structure, too - the handful of insiders who run everything and report directly to him could be the only people who know he’s from the future and can understand what he’s actually trying to do. And all the people who are otherwise unknown/from humble backgrounds but have been given a large degree of authority - it could be that Trump knew them in the future of the alpha timeline. I think one could argue that the way Trump does things is exactly how one would expect a time traveler to run an organization. Especially if that organization is inexplicably effective for how small and ad-hoc it seems - like if it can run a successful presidential campaign and manage billions in assets with just a few not-that-competent-or-qualified-seeming people.

If we assume that Trump’s major policy initiatives are anticipating the problems he’s seen the US run into in the alpha timeline, it doesn’t paint a pretty picture. I think his seeking detente with Russia and attempt to weaken Chinese industrial power and enhance America’s domestic industrial base suggests that in the alpha timeline, the US faced a strong Russo-Chinese alliance in some manner of conventional conflict - perhaps a new cold war, with many proxy conflicts around the world? Maybe a direct conflict in the South China Sea?

His rhetoric around Israel is basically ‘I’m going to be amazing for Israel’ with few explicit stated benefits - maybe in the alpha timeline, Israel suffered a great deal and possibly was destroyed, but Trump is confident he can prevent that? Maybe that has something to do with his similarly sketchy but apparently powerful hatred for Obama’s Iran deal? And the Wall - what did Trump see happen to Mexico that he’s so keen on building it so quickly? A natural disaster, a plague?

Perhaps also there was a terrorist attack early in 2017-α and Trump’s seemingly hamfisted immigration order was designed to disrupt it in our timeline - there’s a lot about the order that doesn’t add up unless there’s something bizarre like that going on. And tonight he made it obvious that he already knew the outcome of the Super Bowl, of course. Anyway, I think as his administration goes on, we’ll see more signs of the future Trump came back to prevent. Keep watching!

[rangi42]

This is not the first time Trump has come back. Perhaps this is his fitfh attempt, or his fiftieth. He communicates in Tweets because he’s sick of long professional speeches, he’s memorized them by now and boiled them down to their 140-character essence. They haven’t saved us from nuclear war in any previous timeline, but maybe now… if he can just grab enough global attention, knock fate off its path by any means necessary… we may yet be saved.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[xhxhxhx]

I think China’s gonna get stuck in the late-Soviet productivity trap, you guys

[xhxhxhx]

like, the problem with Beijing crushing Hong Kong and Taipei is that the non-communists were the only folks who knew how to coordinate investment, marketize innovations, and reward efficiency

letting Beijing and Shanghai coordinate investment while promoting SOEs, starving private firms of capital, and distorting financial markets is a recipe for disaster

[argumate]

I’ve gradually become convinced that the 21st century is going to remain the American century until some other region of the world can pull its head out of its butt and craft some decent institutions.

[xhxhxhx]

Europe and Asia might have just had a disastrous run of own goals, but now America’s working hard to even the score

[argumate]

meanwhile on Earth Prime, President Clinton has opened the borders with Mexico and Canada and is negotiating a global free trade deal

[xhxhxhx]

on Earth Prime, Stein and Johnson and Sanders voters are all very smug

(more interesting is Earth 3, where Bernie presides over the killing of Nawar al-Awlaki and years of legislative gridlock)

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[collapsedsquid]

One of the reasons that’s generally given for Trump wanting a war against Iran, China, or somewhere else is the idea that it will unify the nation behind him.  Could prove unpopular in the long run, but as long as the long run after re-election that’s not too much of a problem.

This time though, I’m not sure if a war would be unifying barring a Chinese attack on Japan or something equally extreme.  I can’t think of a scenario that both doesn’t involve Xi acting like an extreme dumbass that gets war without massive day one opposition.  Maybe I’m just comically naive though.

[youzicha]

The 2003 Iraq war had massive opposition from day one, and it still bumped Bush’s approval rating from 55% to 75% overnight.

From eyeballing the graph, it’s seems that the 20% boost basically persisted (the approval decays at the same rate, but from a higher starting point), which if true was probably enough to carry the 2004 election?

“I oppose no war; I opposed one once and it ruined me. Henceforth I’m for war, pestilence, and famine!” —Justin Butterfield

[collapsedsquid]

Yeah, this is why you could think it could unify, but I’m thinking the opposition here could be on a different level.  At least then it was tacitly accepted that Bush had the authority to take the US to war and we had the 9/11 attacks. Even people against the war felt we had to “support our troops.”  Don’t think that’s the case for Trump, the war would be not just bad, but illegitimate.

Don’t really know though.

[mitigatedchaos]

Speaking as someone who did not oppose the Iraq War (I was too young to realize the implications), and who has never attended a protest - I have never forgiven the Republicans for the Iraq War, and I will be out in the streets if they try to start some fake war with Iran or China. I, who rolls eyes at protesters and have never protested. Keep in mind the new President denounced the Iraq War, too.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[gunsanddopeparty2020]

i should follow more people. get my attention, fags

[mitigatedchaos]

You should follow me because:

1. I’m definitely not a Time Cop.

You can tell because, let’s be honest, how many future timelines are dominated by Crypto-Centrist Transhumanist Nationalists rather than either Leftists, the Chinese Hyperunion, the Ultra-Caliphate, or Google Defense Network?

2. Even if I were a Time Cop (which I’m not), there’s no way I’m from the mid North American Union timeline and am just visiting the Trump Timeline, since, let’s be honest, there is no way any timeline Leftist enough to unite North America into one country modeled on the EU would allow time travel to right-wing timelines, much less by paramilitary cyborgs.

3. You already follow me in several branches already.  Probably.  This is just a hypothetical which I’d have no way of knowing.  I’m just, you know, putting it out there as a possibility.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[theunitofcaring]

Last night there was a highly upvoted, highly-trafficked post on r/the_donald declaring that the Quebec shooter (a far-right white nationalist) was definitely a Muslim because no information had been announced yet which meant the media was colluding to cover for a Muslim. Some select (upvoted) comments:

There are rumors of one week old refugees committing this act of terrorism. Wake the fuck up people.

“the media will not report on violent incidents till they ascertain that the perpetrators were not muslim”

Takes time to patch up all the cracks in The Narrative™

> Also to poorly photoshop their picture so they appear whiter.

I checked back there this morning to see if the news that the shooter was actually a white rightist Canadian had gotten any discussion. It hadn’t, of course - the front page is all people declaring they’re proudly boycotting Starbucks, which recently said they will hire refugees. 

I bet there are a lot of people who read r/the_donald and have a vague impression that refugees committed six murders in Canada last night, a vague impression which will stack with other similarly unverified vague impressions and leave them convinced there’s an epidemic of refugee violence. I have no idea what to do about that, and it terrifies me.

[mitigatedchaos]

This is partially a side effect of the media blowing their own credibility, and partially a side effect of conservatives setting up their own bubble.  I’m not even a conservative and I don’t really know who to trust these days.

It’s hardly unique to the Left though, since social conservatives burned through an unbelievable amount of social capital fighting against gays lately.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

[argumate]

then again, banning citizens of every Middle Eastern country except those involved in the 9/11 attacks is about as sensible as invading every country except those involved in the 9/11 attacks.

[mitigatedchaos]

Orange Capitalism Man has shown more opposition than most politicians to the apparent US Death Pact with Saudi Arabia, but it remains to be seen if he’ll do anything about it.

[Oceans Yet to Burn]

Anonymous asked:

What about the American PhD students the Iranian PhD students were taking grad school slots away from?

theunitofcaring answered:

I think grad schools should accept the best students for their programs. I think taking less qualified students because by random accident they were born in the country, instead of people who are actively choosing to spend their lives in this country, does not strengthen the country, it weakens it. 

And I think that the costs imposed by suddenly yanking the rug out from under someone who has been here five years are unacceptably high, and that if we decided to go full racist xenophobes we should at least be racist xenophobes with some semblance of trustworthiness and integrity by making the ban one on evaluating or accepting future students, instead of stranding people who have already built lives here. 

Doing it this way is not just horrible, it is demonstrating a willingness to be gratuitously horrible on a whim, and one of its consequences is that no one should ever again expect that the U.S. government will behave consistently or make it possible to make long-term plans that involve travel into or out of the country. And the cost imposed by that expectation is extraordinarily high. If you care about financial outlooks more than the lives of people stranded in foreign countries away from their newborn children (yes, I personally know of a case of that), you might care that lots of companies have frantically recalled departments of overseas workers lest they later not be able to return to the country, and that they’ve said research and development and their success as businesses will be damaged by the necessity of coping with an immigration system that is suddenly bucking wildly at the whims of an appallingly ignorant corrupt cronyist.

But mostly it’s just that if you think where people are born should decide what rights they have, then we’re fundamentally on a very different page about everything.

[nuclearspaceheater]

I expect that “this should have been handled a lot better” is something I’m going to be saying a lot in regards to even those Trump policies whose goals I basically agree with.

[mitigatedchaos]

Well, that’s a big part of the reason I didn’t vote for Orange Capitalism Man even though I’m an unironic Nationalist.  (I still haven’t got ‘round to writing that post on Nationalism.)

I do follow TUoC even though we are on different pages on a lot of things, because she is insightful and ideologically consistent, and would be willing to bear the burdens of her preferred policies rather than blanket denouncing everyone that opposes them as Xist.