All back to the vibes thing. The idea that Dems were the ones itching to go to war but Republicans were just smol peace loving isolationists was just insane if you actually knew or read anything about these parties such as they've existed since what the 80's/90's? The neocons of the Bush era got parodied a lot for their desire to spread democracy at the barrel of a gun. Dems were parodied for being Whole Foods kumbaya types. Trump literally did airstrikes against Iran in his first term!
But alas the *vibes* (well disingenuous stuff online) said Kamala was a warmonger and it stuck.
Her line about the "lethal fighting force" at the DNC is used as proof of this; it's been mentioned in this comment thread a couple of times already.
I haven't gone back and combed through every convention speech of the modern era, but I am willing to bet that there are similar sentiments expressed in all of them, by all candidates. Americans don't want war on their shores; more important, they don't want to elect a wimp. It's almost a pro-forma line.
Anyone who was watching what Trump did and said in his first term wouldn't have fallen for the idea that he wasn't into foreign adventuring. He very much is, and he kind of loves doing it forcefully, too.
Conservative commentators? Or conservative politicians?
I don't listen to a lot of conservative commentators, or any political commentator, for that matter. I like my sanity. I made an effort to listen to a couple of Rogan podcasts because he was considered a force in the 2024 election, and I had to see what was up. He was all in on Trump as a peacenik, and he talked about his friendship with Tulsi and how she was just a reasonable anti-war operative.
It's not so insane if you consider that the entire appeal of Trump was that he was a clean break from the GOP of the past, and one part of his strategy was to appeal to the anti-war left (a portion of the Bernie types) who could be persuaded because of the populist vibes that he gave off, similar to Bernie. This is how Trump got the anti-vaxxers too, by cozying up with RFK Jr., a noted left-winger! Once the political spectrum became establishment vs. populist instead of left vs. right, it makes sense - the populists have always been the more isolation, anti-war ones. Going to war means meddling with international affairs, which was always a more globalist-coded thing.
It proves that most people cruise on vibes when it comes to politics. Because if you looked at Trump's first term, it was obvious that he loves meddling in international affairs. Sometimes with force.
His whole reason for running for president in 2016 was that he couldn't stand watching the world "take advantage of the US", and he wanted to rectify it. He bombed Syria three months after taking office! Almost all of 2019 was taken up with accelerating the war with the Islamic state and recapturing territory. But, vibes, you know.
And this is something that the “pure MAGA” types like MTG don’t like about him. He actually does like meddling in foreign affairs and takes a clear side in the Middle East (the Israel-Saudi-Gulf side, opposed to the Iran-Assad Syria side). But in American politics, someone who displays too much knowledge about foreign policy gets establishment and globalist-coded, and that codes for “warmonger” because the foreign policy of the US regardless of party has always been internationalist and aggressive. Trump sounded like he was different from all of them, talked a lot about taking care of home more in a way that sounds more similar to a typical person, and the people believed that. Both Hillary and Kamala sounded too knowledgeable about foreign policy, and people who know a lot about that get coded as “neocon”, just as how on the left, people who know a lot about economics get coded as “corporate shills” because they tend to be more pro-market than the left.
Fuck the “leftist” dirtbags who made their personality pretending the Democratic Party is what the Republican Party actually is. They are 99% responsible for the “Donald the Dove” bullshit, because it was another angle to attack Clinton, the usurper of the rightful President Sanders.
Yeah, I did find it pretty odd that most of the anti-war protests were aimed at Harris when it was obvious Trump would do the same or worse. Granted she probably seemed easier to persuade.
It's because leftists can hope to influence the Democratic party but they have no hope of influencing the Republicans.
Calling Biden "Genocide Joe" and painting Kamala as a hawk was an internal power struggle where they tried to shift them left by threatening to withhold votes. With Trump there is nothing to shift because they have no leverage over him, so there's far less outcry.
It's also why the Gaza encampments died after Trump was elected, even as Israel re energized their efforts with him in charge.
Actual real Palestians get vastly worse deal, American campus activists got to do preening virtue signaling.... for ultimately far far worse outcomes for the people they supposedly were supporting.
And probably 50/50 odds of West Bank annexation. Woo, super.
I don’t know that campus activists are really the ones calling the shots here. I’m genuinely not sure what the best option would have been for protesting the war, but having a polite conversation with one another about how bad the war is I don’t think would have moved the needle all that much either.
The Ivy-&-Ivy Plus campus activists were most definately significant drivers.
And since the US was not doing either the bombings and ground war (that would be Israel) nor the initial trigger (that would be Hamas), and that for anyone with a modicum of awareness should have known Netanyahu Regime is pack-filled with extremists whom a Trump/Christianist-Republican administraiton would in now way restrain, the proper godamn thing would be to realise going on about "Genocide Joe" was stupid goddam indulgent tubby spoiled American virture posturing.
Israel has never been an American sock-puppet and it was fucking naive as fuck what the activist crowd did
Yeah, immigration activists love to do the same thing with the same “reasoning.” Obama’s speeches were interrupted constantly (and frankly he should have been less nice to them.) I think they were doing to that Kamala in 2024, which is… kind of amazing, considering her opposition.
(Because you replied I will limit my kvetch about your unfair and inaccurate description of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to this self-referential sentence.)
It's because of the latter. Trump wasn't going to listen to left-wing activists, but Kamala had incentive to, since she was at risk of losing their votes.
This ridiculous posturing is why I think presidential campaigns should be six weeks long. Tops. Four would be better. Less time for the spinmeisters to lay out these narratives. Kamala as the war dog and Trump as the Prince oh Peace is just the most recent, and one of the most egregious examples.
Wonder how Joe Rogan is doing today? He was all in on the "Trump will keep us safe with deal making, and my buddy Tulsi Gabbard will help him because she's just a gal who wants everyone to get along" spiel.
From what I can tell, most other democracies have campaigns for elections that last like a few weeks tops, like Canada and Britain. Our lasts like literally two years. A part of that is because of primaries but geez
Well Kamala did say she wanted America to have the most “lethal” military in her DNC speech so it was totes joever.
The aspect of the male resent towards the “rich” women, that I never understood, is why don’t they want the fake email job where they can join the girls dancing? It sounds like a pretty good deal to get paid a bunch to do nothing while being surrounded by beautiful women. It’s one of the reasons I miss my teaching job in China because, as the only male teacher, I had my own personal harem.
It’s a weird juxtaposition of them being black pilled losers but also admiring Andrew Tate for being an alpha male with Bugattis & bitches. If they truly subscribed to the Nietzschian notion of being the ubermensch, they would grind for the fake email job. Ultimately I see these young men as baby bitches who want the money but don’t have the discipline to grind for it.
I guess slightly related to this, I found it extremely funny that ppl (many of whom those angry online men) hate “female coded polite speech” while the are extremely horrible at taking any slight hint of criticism. Like my guy, you literally just explode at more blunt feedback, where is your self awareness lol
A thing they don't tell you about professional life is that you can spend a whole workday with your emotional state rocking back and forth based solely on subject lines in Outlook...
That goes back to my conclusion that they are losers because even if there is some structural bias against men, be sooo good you get the job anyways. You can’t idolize Andrew Tate & friends then lack the ambition to win at life.
Totally agreed, like to be very uncharitable, essentially they are saying “I deserve everything including high status to girls without making extra effort myself like an ancient aristocrat”
lol so true!!! Like I feel like this comes down to extremely aggravated victim complex - I guess the sense that they are entitled to get everything without making any effort but somehow they don’t get it???
Based on the four days I worked in an office I’d like an “e-mail job”, but they seemed reserved for mostly young and middle-aged women, with a few young men, and then a few grey-haired men as the bosses (strangely no women seemed to be top bosses, only old-ish men), unlike my regular job doing building repairs, which is all men, but there is a lady who drives the forklift across the hall.
Only the custodians at work seem equally men and women, and their current boss is a woman (though their previous boss was a man).
As a firmly middle-class man who is dicking around at his white-collar job (i.e., reading CHH instead of completing my TPS reports), I just want to note that between this article and Saturday's comment section on MST, I clocked the fact that we've gotten two CHH "Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" references since Friday.
Which, ya know, fair play. It's an amazing short story. I also appreciate you adjusting the reference to meet the needs of the article. On Saturday, you were the child in the basement, tortured endlessly to give us the most unhinged Twitter discourse (thank you for your service). Today, angry and confused young men on the internet writhe in agony so that Jessica in HR can enjoy her matcha.
I don't think I realized what a versatile metaphor the "tortured basement child to allow for broad success they'll never know" was!
me not reading the ones who walk away from omelas is kinda the kid in the basement which enables my enjoyment of these pieces by continuously disabling the part of my brain that nitpicks about scifi shorts i've read
Kind of an interesting piece. It's not what Trump promised and the odds of KH doing anything, anything at all, were long.
But here we are. Will the theocracy fall? Will Iranians be able to liberate themselves? If Iran reinvents itself and is no longer the destabilized-in-chief of the Middle East, is that a good thing?
Well... As Americans wil never learn, it happens the interests of the Farsi speaking Shia are highly divergent from the interest of the Wahhabite Sunni on the other side of the Gulf.
and as like with Russia (Sov to non-Sov), it turns out magical thinking doesn't erase the fundamentals, even if a regime change occurs
It also happens that other human being are not alien creatures but like Americans also tend to Rally Round the Flag when attacked by an inimical outside power group (here US with Israel)
Sure, though it'd be a very different world if that conflict took place between non-theocratic democracies.
Of course, this raises the point that the last time the U.S. supported the overthrow of an Iranian regime, it... uh... did not push the country in a democratic direction.
So the thing is, Iran was already neutered as a regional power by last summer (which was an unalloyed good). But now, the regime has its back to the wall, and that's a dicier affair.
By definition, overthrowing a despotic regime is risky business. It may well be that enough of the Revolutionary Guard and other military units remain in place to suppress the Iranian people. We won't know that for a while.
As an aside, a country neutered today may or may not remain so going forward. Absent regime change, count on the theocracy to make trouble.
You’re really onto something here. A crazy number of right-wing men have derided ME, a woman who is quite open about being a working class woman who has never earned very much money as being “affluent.”
Some people have highly malleable/creative definitions of “elite”. There seems to be a widely-held belief that anyone who votes Democrat is an elite, which makes about as much sense as saying all Republican voters are tech billionaires.
I don’t remember the “Kamala will start a war” campaigning at all!
But I’m a 57 year old blue collar Californian instead of a draft-age young man in a swing state, so I guess I wasn’t targeted?
All I really remember about the 2024 “campaigns” was Harris asking me for money hundreds of times, and Trump asking me for money about a dozen times, neither asked me for my vote, or articulated a reason to vote for them, so I didn’t.
I now regret that, as so far Trump 2.0 has been worse that anything that Harris could’ve plausibly done.
Yeah it was 100% memes; idk if it actually affected a single vote. but a lot of weird online right wingers seemed to earnestly believe it.
I appreciate your ability to reflect openly on your voting choices; most people conveniently for get the votes/non-votes they regret! I know it's embarrassing to reflect on my screw ups.
I trust that those people are now seeing the error of their ways, and are busy drafting apologies to the parents of folks serving in the military, as well as to the entire country, as we speak.
Excuse me, our Austin correspondent is reporting that Veterans For Trump have referred to the attack on Iran as “fake news” and that their message to military families and the rest of the country is “EAT SHIT”. More after this commercial break.
1. It doesn't really fit in the point this post was trying to make, but I recall seeing a ton of "Kamala will do the middle-east war" things from the left as well. There was a ton of "Since The Ghost of Karl Marx isn't running I just won't vote because Kamala and Dems are really just Neocons now anyway!" nonsense and, since we are revisiting this stuff in the wake of the attacks on Iran, I don't want it to be forgotten...because it was also fucking stupid.
2. I am firmly a left-of-center guy. My wife and I both have white collar jobs. I don't think I harbor any misogynistic bias against women in office jobs. BUT! I will stand 1000% behind the belief that "Gen Z boss and a mini" is one of the most nail-on-chalkboard abrasive things I have ever encountered in my life.
I briefly heard about it when it came out. I watched it and I didn’t really feel any great way about it besides “that one over there is kind of hot”. Should I have?
I don't totally disagree. I will say that I am mostly off social media (no Twittter or FB for years, less than weekly pop-ins to Threads) and this video found me anyway. Additionally, for me anyway, it was a different tier of annoying than normal annoying social media stuff. I have no idea why, but it was.
I often have a hard time telling whether insane right-wing takes come from a place of extreme cynicism or extreme gullibility - often i end up suspecting it’s a totally radioactive mix of *both*. Maybe an actual right-winger in CHH’s readership can explain “Kamala will start a girlboss war in Iran because reasons” for me.
The canard about Republicans being the "party of peace" is literally the most ripe piece of bullshit that I have ever heard. I have no idea why people would believe this, except for that whole old saying attributed to Hitler about people believing something if you say it enough.
We should all understand now that Republicans/conservatives lie A LOT!
Well, she did a horrible job convincing people she *wasn't* going to.
She called Iran the "greatest adversary" of the U.S., said we need to "ensure Iran never becomes a nuclear power", and constantly peppered her speeches with hawkish language about needing "the most lethal fighting force" or whatever.
And she wholeheartedly backed the genocide in Gaza, against the wishes of her entire base.
Trump's campaign, meanwhile, completely lied about his intentions. But it was on her to draw a distinction, and she didn't really do that.
All of these are things that basically every US President has done or said. I don't think we've ever had a President say "I would definitely never (insert military thing.)" They often refuse to answer hypotheticals.
Most voters desperately want to move away from the foreign policy of previous U.S. presidents.
There are ways of framing it to signal you oppose military action, but won't take it off the table completely. You can always say "war is the last resort". She chose to say things like:
"We will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend U.S. forces and interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists. And we will continue to work with our allies and partners to disrupt Iran's aggressive behavior and hold them accountable."
I can't blame people for thinking she was a warhawk.
I never even heard of the quote at the time, and it would have made zero difference for me, because a. it’s absolutely banal bipartisan boilerplate that every presidential candidate in history has said and b. come on, who is more itching and twitching to start shit between Harris and Trump? Clearly there’s a moral imperative to believe the “they’re eating the dogs” guy.
I never bought into Trump being anti-war, but he spent the entire campaign lying that he was, and Harris spent the entire campaign trying to sound tough. I can't fault people who don't follow politics closely for being misled.
Key word being "rumored" - she didn't want to risk publicly breaking with Biden on it, which was a horrible miscalculation given how the issue played out for him.
Well we had nuclear agreements before that very much kept them from nuclear arms. If anything Trump ripping that up increased their nuclear program and made them less likely to make deals like that.
It's the difference in having a strong military led by someone who understands diplomacy and has trusted advisors with experience to know when and how to use it vs a leader who does things because they look cool on social media.
The "propaganda" was coming from Harris's own campaign! She was trying to convince everyone she was a hawk. Well, it worked, and she gave us Donald Trump.
No. You can tell you didn't get this from her own campaign, because you clearly got the impression that something she said in one speech was something she talked about all the time. How did you become convinced of that? Propaganda.
She didn't give us Donald Trump, people who bought into this kind of bullshit about her did.
Yeah I agree! Very-online people can be so weird about that stuff, she obviously wasn't trying to convince everybody she was a massive war hawk, it's just propaganda from people who hate her so they want to believe it.
And it's also pretty inaccurate to say "she gave us Donald Trump" because of her position on the middle east, it implies that if only she had a more Leftist stance there that Trump wouldn't have won.
Middle east foreign policy soundbites were way less impactful than cost of living or social issue messages overall. And it's not clear to me that the average voter would have been thrilled about those lefty messages about Gaza or not having a powerful army anyways...
What she said was presidential candidate boilerplate!
And yes, it is propaganda to say she backed genocide in Gaza. Obviously it is, lol. Do you think we would currently be selling Gaza off piecemeal to the highest bidding oligarch if she were in charge?
It is not propaganda to say that she campaigned with Liz Cheney, that is a fact. But whatever horrific thing you think that implies is almost certainly downstream of propaganda. I'm not brain poisoned by left wing social media enough to even know what the theory is there though, so you'll have to tell me.
You were pretty clearly a dupe and a fool about this stuff. I can sympathize with your defensiveness about that here. But the better approach when you get duped is to wise up, update the priors that led you astray and do better next time, not to double down and make foolishness your identity.
On the boilerplate point, I remember when leftists had memories longer than a goldfish. Now it seems like every leftist is discovering politics for the first time.
I'm firmly of the.conviction that NOTHING in the Epstein files could hurt him at this point. The base is too devoted and the powers around him are either too scared or too power hungry.
He still gets 89% approval among Republicans, and I don’t expect that to change ever, but his approval rating with independents has fallen off a cliff, and there’s still room for it getting even lower.
I mean sure, I get that. But it feels like things changed pretty sharply after the second assassination attempt. Foreign policy hawks across the world noticed that Trump became more aligned with lines of thought previously considered "deep state"
Still seems like a stretch to me. I think the better model is just that he actually has no fixed ideology (except maybe “tariffs good”) and is just winging it all the time based on what feels good to his ego in the moment.
All back to the vibes thing. The idea that Dems were the ones itching to go to war but Republicans were just smol peace loving isolationists was just insane if you actually knew or read anything about these parties such as they've existed since what the 80's/90's? The neocons of the Bush era got parodied a lot for their desire to spread democracy at the barrel of a gun. Dems were parodied for being Whole Foods kumbaya types. Trump literally did airstrikes against Iran in his first term!
But alas the *vibes* (well disingenuous stuff online) said Kamala was a warmonger and it stuck.
Her line about the "lethal fighting force" at the DNC is used as proof of this; it's been mentioned in this comment thread a couple of times already.
I haven't gone back and combed through every convention speech of the modern era, but I am willing to bet that there are similar sentiments expressed in all of them, by all candidates. Americans don't want war on their shores; more important, they don't want to elect a wimp. It's almost a pro-forma line.
Anyone who was watching what Trump did and said in his first term wouldn't have fallen for the idea that he wasn't into foreign adventuring. He very much is, and he kind of loves doing it forcefully, too.
Did conservatives use the lethal talking point because I only heard it from leftists like Hasan ?
Conservative commentators? Or conservative politicians?
I don't listen to a lot of conservative commentators, or any political commentator, for that matter. I like my sanity. I made an effort to listen to a couple of Rogan podcasts because he was considered a force in the 2024 election, and I had to see what was up. He was all in on Trump as a peacenik, and he talked about his friendship with Tulsi and how she was just a reasonable anti-war operative.
It's not so insane if you consider that the entire appeal of Trump was that he was a clean break from the GOP of the past, and one part of his strategy was to appeal to the anti-war left (a portion of the Bernie types) who could be persuaded because of the populist vibes that he gave off, similar to Bernie. This is how Trump got the anti-vaxxers too, by cozying up with RFK Jr., a noted left-winger! Once the political spectrum became establishment vs. populist instead of left vs. right, it makes sense - the populists have always been the more isolation, anti-war ones. Going to war means meddling with international affairs, which was always a more globalist-coded thing.
It proves that most people cruise on vibes when it comes to politics. Because if you looked at Trump's first term, it was obvious that he loves meddling in international affairs. Sometimes with force.
His whole reason for running for president in 2016 was that he couldn't stand watching the world "take advantage of the US", and he wanted to rectify it. He bombed Syria three months after taking office! Almost all of 2019 was taken up with accelerating the war with the Islamic state and recapturing territory. But, vibes, you know.
And this is something that the “pure MAGA” types like MTG don’t like about him. He actually does like meddling in foreign affairs and takes a clear side in the Middle East (the Israel-Saudi-Gulf side, opposed to the Iran-Assad Syria side). But in American politics, someone who displays too much knowledge about foreign policy gets establishment and globalist-coded, and that codes for “warmonger” because the foreign policy of the US regardless of party has always been internationalist and aggressive. Trump sounded like he was different from all of them, talked a lot about taking care of home more in a way that sounds more similar to a typical person, and the people believed that. Both Hillary and Kamala sounded too knowledgeable about foreign policy, and people who know a lot about that get coded as “neocon”, just as how on the left, people who know a lot about economics get coded as “corporate shills” because they tend to be more pro-market than the left.
“noted left-winger”
Yes, but this seems to ignore that everything about this was a total and obvious lie?
Fuck the “leftist” dirtbags who made their personality pretending the Democratic Party is what the Republican Party actually is. They are 99% responsible for the “Donald the Dove” bullshit, because it was another angle to attack Clinton, the usurper of the rightful President Sanders.
Yeah, I did find it pretty odd that most of the anti-war protests were aimed at Harris when it was obvious Trump would do the same or worse. Granted she probably seemed easier to persuade.
It's because leftists can hope to influence the Democratic party but they have no hope of influencing the Republicans.
Calling Biden "Genocide Joe" and painting Kamala as a hawk was an internal power struggle where they tried to shift them left by threatening to withhold votes. With Trump there is nothing to shift because they have no leverage over him, so there's far less outcry.
It's also why the Gaza encampments died after Trump was elected, even as Israel re energized their efforts with him in charge.
quite the perverse outcome in the end.
Actual real Palestians get vastly worse deal, American campus activists got to do preening virtue signaling.... for ultimately far far worse outcomes for the people they supposedly were supporting.
And probably 50/50 odds of West Bank annexation. Woo, super.
I don’t know that campus activists are really the ones calling the shots here. I’m genuinely not sure what the best option would have been for protesting the war, but having a polite conversation with one another about how bad the war is I don’t think would have moved the needle all that much either.
The Ivy-&-Ivy Plus campus activists were most definately significant drivers.
And since the US was not doing either the bombings and ground war (that would be Israel) nor the initial trigger (that would be Hamas), and that for anyone with a modicum of awareness should have known Netanyahu Regime is pack-filled with extremists whom a Trump/Christianist-Republican administraiton would in now way restrain, the proper godamn thing would be to realise going on about "Genocide Joe" was stupid goddam indulgent tubby spoiled American virture posturing.
Israel has never been an American sock-puppet and it was fucking naive as fuck what the activist crowd did
Yeah, immigration activists love to do the same thing with the same “reasoning.” Obama’s speeches were interrupted constantly (and frankly he should have been less nice to them.) I think they were doing to that Kamala in 2024, which is… kind of amazing, considering her opposition.
(Because you replied I will limit my kvetch about your unfair and inaccurate description of Joseph R. Biden, Jr. to this self-referential sentence.)
It's because of the latter. Trump wasn't going to listen to left-wing activists, but Kamala had incentive to, since she was at risk of losing their votes.
Rightful President Sanders. Now that's funny. But makes so much sense that is your MO
Sorry, what's my MO?
This ridiculous posturing is why I think presidential campaigns should be six weeks long. Tops. Four would be better. Less time for the spinmeisters to lay out these narratives. Kamala as the war dog and Trump as the Prince oh Peace is just the most recent, and one of the most egregious examples.
Wonder how Joe Rogan is doing today? He was all in on the "Trump will keep us safe with deal making, and my buddy Tulsi Gabbard will help him because she's just a gal who wants everyone to get along" spiel.
To be fair, the nutjobs would have made the accusation even if the campaign had been 10 minutes long.
From what I can tell, most other democracies have campaigns for elections that last like a few weeks tops, like Canada and Britain. Our lasts like literally two years. A part of that is because of primaries but geez
Well Kamala did say she wanted America to have the most “lethal” military in her DNC speech so it was totes joever.
The aspect of the male resent towards the “rich” women, that I never understood, is why don’t they want the fake email job where they can join the girls dancing? It sounds like a pretty good deal to get paid a bunch to do nothing while being surrounded by beautiful women. It’s one of the reasons I miss my teaching job in China because, as the only male teacher, I had my own personal harem.
It’s a weird juxtaposition of them being black pilled losers but also admiring Andrew Tate for being an alpha male with Bugattis & bitches. If they truly subscribed to the Nietzschian notion of being the ubermensch, they would grind for the fake email job. Ultimately I see these young men as baby bitches who want the money but don’t have the discipline to grind for it.
They DO want the fake email job. For some reason they don't think men ever get them! (Of course, when I had one, most of my coworkers were male. lol)
Everyone wants a fake email job until they have to write the damn emails. At 11 at night on a Sunday.
I guess slightly related to this, I found it extremely funny that ppl (many of whom those angry online men) hate “female coded polite speech” while the are extremely horrible at taking any slight hint of criticism. Like my guy, you literally just explode at more blunt feedback, where is your self awareness lol
A thing they don't tell you about professional life is that you can spend a whole workday with your emotional state rocking back and forth based solely on subject lines in Outlook...
Everybody gangsta till they actually have to write an email
That goes back to my conclusion that they are losers because even if there is some structural bias against men, be sooo good you get the job anyways. You can’t idolize Andrew Tate & friends then lack the ambition to win at life.
Totally agreed, like to be very uncharitable, essentially they are saying “I deserve everything including high status to girls without making extra effort myself like an ancient aristocrat”
lol so true!!! Like I feel like this comes down to extremely aggravated victim complex - I guess the sense that they are entitled to get everything without making any effort but somehow they don’t get it???
Based on the four days I worked in an office I’d like an “e-mail job”, but they seemed reserved for mostly young and middle-aged women, with a few young men, and then a few grey-haired men as the bosses (strangely no women seemed to be top bosses, only old-ish men), unlike my regular job doing building repairs, which is all men, but there is a lady who drives the forklift across the hall.
Only the custodians at work seem equally men and women, and their current boss is a woman (though their previous boss was a man).
100%. Email jobs are AWESOME and like most awesome things, they are disproportionately held by upper / upper middle class white men.
As a firmly middle-class man who is dicking around at his white-collar job (i.e., reading CHH instead of completing my TPS reports), I just want to note that between this article and Saturday's comment section on MST, I clocked the fact that we've gotten two CHH "Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas" references since Friday.
Which, ya know, fair play. It's an amazing short story. I also appreciate you adjusting the reference to meet the needs of the article. On Saturday, you were the child in the basement, tortured endlessly to give us the most unhinged Twitter discourse (thank you for your service). Today, angry and confused young men on the internet writhe in agony so that Jessica in HR can enjoy her matcha.
I don't think I realized what a versatile metaphor the "tortured basement child to allow for broad success they'll never know" was!
me not reading the ones who walk away from omelas is kinda the kid in the basement which enables my enjoyment of these pieces by continuously disabling the part of my brain that nitpicks about scifi shorts i've read
^ I chuckled at that
If you’re into Omelas themes, check out The Broken Earth trilogy by NK Jemisin.
Kind of an interesting piece. It's not what Trump promised and the odds of KH doing anything, anything at all, were long.
But here we are. Will the theocracy fall? Will Iranians be able to liberate themselves? If Iran reinvents itself and is no longer the destabilized-in-chief of the Middle East, is that a good thing?
Well... As Americans wil never learn, it happens the interests of the Farsi speaking Shia are highly divergent from the interest of the Wahhabite Sunni on the other side of the Gulf.
and as like with Russia (Sov to non-Sov), it turns out magical thinking doesn't erase the fundamentals, even if a regime change occurs
It also happens that other human being are not alien creatures but like Americans also tend to Rally Round the Flag when attacked by an inimical outside power group (here US with Israel)
(also see Iraq).
Sure, though it'd be a very different world if that conflict took place between non-theocratic democracies.
Of course, this raises the point that the last time the U.S. supported the overthrow of an Iranian regime, it... uh... did not push the country in a democratic direction.
It's ok to look back and point out how the campaign of the current president was fundamentally dishonest.
Not every article has to be about "what now". There are plenty of those being written.
So the thing is, Iran was already neutered as a regional power by last summer (which was an unalloyed good). But now, the regime has its back to the wall, and that's a dicier affair.
By definition, overthrowing a despotic regime is risky business. It may well be that enough of the Revolutionary Guard and other military units remain in place to suppress the Iranian people. We won't know that for a while.
As an aside, a country neutered today may or may not remain so going forward. Absent regime change, count on the theocracy to make trouble.
Massively ironic coming from the side that launched the attacks.
Count on Powers that are in competition to make trouble
theocracy has pretty much f-all to do with it.
You’re really onto something here. A crazy number of right-wing men have derided ME, a woman who is quite open about being a working class woman who has never earned very much money as being “affluent.”
I’m a guy and I’ve been called “affluent” and a member of the elite by knuckleheads online and I’m like my brother in Christ I drive a 2012 Mazda 3
Some people have highly malleable/creative definitions of “elite”. There seems to be a widely-held belief that anyone who votes Democrat is an elite, which makes about as much sense as saying all Republican voters are tech billionaires.
For a minute, I was wracking my brain trying to think of a prominent woman hated by the right whose initials are M.E.
I don’t remember the “Kamala will start a war” campaigning at all!
But I’m a 57 year old blue collar Californian instead of a draft-age young man in a swing state, so I guess I wasn’t targeted?
All I really remember about the 2024 “campaigns” was Harris asking me for money hundreds of times, and Trump asking me for money about a dozen times, neither asked me for my vote, or articulated a reason to vote for them, so I didn’t.
I now regret that, as so far Trump 2.0 has been worse that anything that Harris could’ve plausibly done.
If you're not online much, or at least not in political spaces, it was easy to miss.
Yeah it was 100% memes; idk if it actually affected a single vote. but a lot of weird online right wingers seemed to earnestly believe it.
I appreciate your ability to reflect openly on your voting choices; most people conveniently for get the votes/non-votes they regret! I know it's embarrassing to reflect on my screw ups.
There was a giant "Veterans for Trump" billboard in an Austin suburb, saying that Kamala would get our boys killed in foreign wars.
I trust that those people are now seeing the error of their ways, and are busy drafting apologies to the parents of folks serving in the military, as well as to the entire country, as we speak.
Excuse me, our Austin correspondent is reporting that Veterans For Trump have referred to the attack on Iran as “fake news” and that their message to military families and the rest of the country is “EAT SHIT”. More after this commercial break.
Two comments:
1. It doesn't really fit in the point this post was trying to make, but I recall seeing a ton of "Kamala will do the middle-east war" things from the left as well. There was a ton of "Since The Ghost of Karl Marx isn't running I just won't vote because Kamala and Dems are really just Neocons now anyway!" nonsense and, since we are revisiting this stuff in the wake of the attacks on Iran, I don't want it to be forgotten...because it was also fucking stupid.
2. I am firmly a left-of-center guy. My wife and I both have white collar jobs. I don't think I harbor any misogynistic bias against women in office jobs. BUT! I will stand 1000% behind the belief that "Gen Z boss and a mini" is one of the most nail-on-chalkboard abrasive things I have ever encountered in my life.
For the record, I said it was annoying when it came out! I just did not think it was worth crashing the global economy over. Lol
Yeah, my comment 2 was not counter your post. I just wanted to make it clear there is a third option in addition to:
"Gen z boss and a mini is rad!" and "it's proof that women don't deserve jobs!"
What if, "it's just the most annoying thing imaginable...and *probably* not worth crashing the global economy over...probably..."
No, I totally agree. I’m just pointing out that we agree lol
I briefly heard about it when it came out. I watched it and I didn’t really feel any great way about it besides “that one over there is kind of hot”. Should I have?
YMMV! Maybe I am in a unique category of "Don't hate women but do HATE that video" lol
Tbf most social media nonsense like that is annoying as hell. The best thing anyone can do is ignore it or better yet just stay off social media
I don't totally disagree. I will say that I am mostly off social media (no Twittter or FB for years, less than weekly pop-ins to Threads) and this video found me anyway. Additionally, for me anyway, it was a different tier of annoying than normal annoying social media stuff. I have no idea why, but it was.
I often have a hard time telling whether insane right-wing takes come from a place of extreme cynicism or extreme gullibility - often i end up suspecting it’s a totally radioactive mix of *both*. Maybe an actual right-winger in CHH’s readership can explain “Kamala will start a girlboss war in Iran because reasons” for me.
The canard about Republicans being the "party of peace" is literally the most ripe piece of bullshit that I have ever heard. I have no idea why people would believe this, except for that whole old saying attributed to Hitler about people believing something if you say it enough.
We should all understand now that Republicans/conservatives lie A LOT!
Especially to themselves.
Great one, CHH! And I agree with you again that so much of the "discourse" is about class. Can I still use the word discourse?
I'd been thinking that at the age of 86, in reportedly failing health, being wiped out in a millisecond is a pretty good way to go.
Well, she did a horrible job convincing people she *wasn't* going to.
She called Iran the "greatest adversary" of the U.S., said we need to "ensure Iran never becomes a nuclear power", and constantly peppered her speeches with hawkish language about needing "the most lethal fighting force" or whatever.
And she wholeheartedly backed the genocide in Gaza, against the wishes of her entire base.
Trump's campaign, meanwhile, completely lied about his intentions. But it was on her to draw a distinction, and she didn't really do that.
All of these are things that basically every US President has done or said. I don't think we've ever had a President say "I would definitely never (insert military thing.)" They often refuse to answer hypotheticals.
Most voters desperately want to move away from the foreign policy of previous U.S. presidents.
There are ways of framing it to signal you oppose military action, but won't take it off the table completely. You can always say "war is the last resort". She chose to say things like:
"We will never hesitate to take whatever action is necessary to defend U.S. forces and interests against Iran and Iran-backed terrorists. And we will continue to work with our allies and partners to disrupt Iran's aggressive behavior and hold them accountable."
I can't blame people for thinking she was a warhawk.
My theory is that as a woman she felt like she needed to be extra hawkish to convince sexist people she's not "weak".
While I'm sure this was her calculus, when you're dealing with millions of human lives at stake it's completely unacceptable.
Her opponent on the other hand, is widely known for never saying anything unacceptable. Clearly people made the right choice.
We have to expect better from our own candidates
I never even heard of the quote at the time, and it would have made zero difference for me, because a. it’s absolutely banal bipartisan boilerplate that every presidential candidate in history has said and b. come on, who is more itching and twitching to start shit between Harris and Trump? Clearly there’s a moral imperative to believe the “they’re eating the dogs” guy.
I never bought into Trump being anti-war, but he spent the entire campaign lying that he was, and Harris spent the entire campaign trying to sound tough. I can't fault people who don't follow politics closely for being misled.
How many campaign promises go unfulfilled though? This was a pretty obvious case of positioning, not a promise to go wild in the ME.
We know that when it came to I/P Harris was long rumored to be a voice for moderation, more than Biden.
Key word being "rumored" - she didn't want to risk publicly breaking with Biden on it, which was a horrible miscalculation given how the issue played out for him.
Well we had nuclear agreements before that very much kept them from nuclear arms. If anything Trump ripping that up increased their nuclear program and made them less likely to make deals like that.
It's the difference in having a strong military led by someone who understands diplomacy and has trusted advisors with experience to know when and how to use it vs a leader who does things because they look cool on social media.
I agree and I wish she would have highlighted this more instead of letting Trump outflank her on "anti-war" rhetoric.
>constantly peppered
>cites something she said once at the dnc
sure jan
Are you familiar with the concept of an "example"
Yes, saying something at one of the few mass-viewership events of the entire campaign should be taken seriously
I'm also familiar with "I read a tweet and think I have deep knowledge of the thing to which it is referring"
We're talking about her own words, verbatim.
lol, "I got totally duped by propaganda and I still don't see it"
The "propaganda" was coming from Harris's own campaign! She was trying to convince everyone she was a hawk. Well, it worked, and she gave us Donald Trump.
No. You can tell you didn't get this from her own campaign, because you clearly got the impression that something she said in one speech was something she talked about all the time. How did you become convinced of that? Propaganda.
She didn't give us Donald Trump, people who bought into this kind of bullshit about her did.
Yeah I agree! Very-online people can be so weird about that stuff, she obviously wasn't trying to convince everybody she was a massive war hawk, it's just propaganda from people who hate her so they want to believe it.
And it's also pretty inaccurate to say "she gave us Donald Trump" because of her position on the middle east, it implies that if only she had a more Leftist stance there that Trump wouldn't have won.
Middle east foreign policy soundbites were way less impactful than cost of living or social issue messages overall. And it's not clear to me that the average voter would have been thrilled about those lefty messages about Gaza or not having a powerful army anyways...
LMAO. Yeah, she didn't actually mean what she said in a scripted speech on the national stage. This is QAnon levels of delusion.
Is it propaganda to say she backed the genocide in Gaza and campaigned with Liz Cheney, or are we supposed to ignore reality on that too?
What she said was presidential candidate boilerplate!
And yes, it is propaganda to say she backed genocide in Gaza. Obviously it is, lol. Do you think we would currently be selling Gaza off piecemeal to the highest bidding oligarch if she were in charge?
It is not propaganda to say that she campaigned with Liz Cheney, that is a fact. But whatever horrific thing you think that implies is almost certainly downstream of propaganda. I'm not brain poisoned by left wing social media enough to even know what the theory is there though, so you'll have to tell me.
You were pretty clearly a dupe and a fool about this stuff. I can sympathize with your defensiveness about that here. But the better approach when you get duped is to wise up, update the priors that led you astray and do better next time, not to double down and make foolishness your identity.
On the boilerplate point, I remember when leftists had memories longer than a goldfish. Now it seems like every leftist is discovering politics for the first time.
“Entire base” I wish.
Supporting the genocide is mainstream among elected Democrats, but a fringe view among actual Democratic voters
How do I restack a whole essay!? Thank you for saying this!!!
❤️❤️❤️
I think Trump doesn't want to go to war but is blackmailed into it because he's in the epstein files.
This is very possible!
His ops are very limited engagement, so far. Even this he thought it would be done by the weekend, but now he's saying it's four weeks.
I'm firmly of the.conviction that NOTHING in the Epstein files could hurt him at this point. The base is too devoted and the powers around him are either too scared or too power hungry.
He still gets 89% approval among Republicans, and I don’t expect that to change ever, but his approval rating with independents has fallen off a cliff, and there’s still room for it getting even lower.
This 4d chess stuff is unconvincing.
I mean sure, I get that. But it feels like things changed pretty sharply after the second assassination attempt. Foreign policy hawks across the world noticed that Trump became more aligned with lines of thought previously considered "deep state"
Still seems like a stretch to me. I think the better model is just that he actually has no fixed ideology (except maybe “tariffs good”) and is just winging it all the time based on what feels good to his ego in the moment.
The Kamala Harris, war lover take was a cynical ploy to attract dim bulbs who would have found another reason to vote against her anyway.