frezik @ frezik @midwest.social

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5,366

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2 yr. ago

If it doesn't recover, you're no worse off than anyone else.

Because he's not that smart. It's not even a Project 2025 thing, because it's somewhat split on the issue of tariffs. In so far as it supports it at all, it's mostly about working around some free trade treaties and tweaking things here or there. This strong, across the board tariff is entirely his own idea.

Can't argue with that logic. CHECK AND MATE, LIBERAL!

To begin with, Franco was not strictly comparable with Hitler or Mussolini. His rising was a military mutiny backed up by the aristocracy and the Church, and in the main, especially at the beginning, it was an attempt not so much to impose Fascism as to restore feudalism. This meant that Franco had against him not only the working class but also various sections of the liberal bourgeoisie—the very people who are the supporters of Fascism when it appears in a more modern form.

From Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia", emphasizes added.

The bourgeoisie aligning to the resistance has happened before. Now, make no mistake: they will betray the movement as soon as it's in their interests to do so. Don't trust them past the current crisis.

And if you do take it along, set your lock screen to a pin, not a fingerprint. There are still some legal protections left (for now), and police can make you unlock a fingerprint but not a pin. I know, it's silly, but that's how it works.

Lol at directly quoting Keynes.

Right, he did, but here's my point: Project 2025 doesn't actually come out clearly for or against tariffs. So in so far as "they wrote it all down in Project 2025 and told you exactly what they're going to do", that's just not the case for tariffs. And even the guy in favor of tariffs wasn't talking about such broad and strong tariffs all at once.

In other words, this is Trump's plan on his own.

I mean, that's basically what US Social Security is. It also has a cap, and poorer people actually get a little more out of it than they put in, while higher earners get less. It's just that it doesn't pay enough to work on its own.

The old idea was that the US would have three legs of retirement: Social Security, 401k's, and traditional corporate pensions. Each of these has downsides, but a failure in one can be propped up by the other two. However, Social Security is being pilfered, corporate pensions rarely exist unless you have one of the unions that has maintained power until now, and 401k's are too subject to the wild rides of the stock market.

What does Project 2025 have to say about tariffs?

How weak is weak? Prior to the first Gulf War, Iraq had the fourth largest military in the world. That was as much of a curbstomp as you'll ever see in military history.

There's some theories out there about just how vulnerable modern carriers are to modern subs. One thing detractors bring up is a Chinese sub popping up in US Navy maneuvers completely undetected in 2007. However, active sonar methods are usually turned off outside of wartime, so it's not as simple as that.

One theory is that subs are at an inherent disadvantage in a technological arms race. Let's say a nation produces a sonar that can pick up any sub currently built. Likely, they'll be able to fit that sonar onto all their existing ships. Conversely, if you wanted to protect your own subs against that new sonar method, you will likely have to rebuild all your subs. Now, even nuclear subs are cheaper to produce than supercarriers, but this still isn't a favorable technological position in the long run.

Drones and hypersonic missiles are a bigger threat, IMO. More so drones. Hypersonic missiles have some disadvantages of maneuverability that make them a poor choice for a moving target. Drones are limited in range, though, so the US Navy could just keep the carriers away from shore.

Even in a scenario where the EU massively increases production of tanks and guns and drones, they still have to get those things into the theater of operations. One thing the US military is really, really good at is logistics. The EU up until now has little modern experience at it, because the US did it all for them.

Carriers would provide air superiority to prevent any reinforcements from landing. That's all. Trump is willing to push a war of attrition on this one, because again, he's an idiot.

If a nuclear sub did manage to sink a US supercarrier, Trump would likely try to galvanize support in a "Remember the Maine!" fashion. I doubt it would shift actual support much at all. Quite the opposite; without doing the legwork for a paper thin excuse ahead of time and building a media frenzy the way the Bush II admin did, it only highlights how dumb and pointless the whole thing is, and that he's putting American service members at risk for no gain whatsoever.

Oh, and that nuclear sub would be hunted down and sunk in response. The EU doesn't have the forces to win a war of attrition.

The only way I see this working out for the EU is if there's a major purge of the US military beforehand. That would ensure loyalty to Trump, but it would toss competence into a woodchipper. Edit: see the Finish Winter War for how well purges work out. And the Finns technically still lost that one.

The US has more supercarriers than France has nuclear attack submarines. That's not even counting US "amphibious assault ships", which would be carriers in anybody else's navy. It's pretty unequal.

It's illegal by international law--UN charter and the ICC both have sections against invading other country's territory. International law is only as good as anyone is willing to enforce it, which in the case of Iraq, wasn't very much.

Why would Greenland be different? Iraq was supported by a paper thin excuse of WMDs, and the history of antagonism. The Trump Administration hasn't done the legwork to even setup a paper thin excuse beyond "they have resources we want", and there's no particular history of Greenland invading its own neighbors or even threatening them. In fact, it's been an important strategic location for the US Navy's control of the North Atlantic since WWII. Trump hasn't bothered with even the slightest attempt at this because he's an idiot.

Does that mean the military will refuse the order? I really have no idea. It's not something anybody should count on. More likely, you'll have different units making different decisions. Some outright refusing, others slow walking their orders while appearing to obey, and others eager to do it. However, it's possible that the military will refuse en masse.

I think the burgeoning protest movements in the US should also be prepared to take direct action against the military. Things like linking hands to block the gates to weapons factories. And to the naysayers of "what are these protests even accomplishing?", it's to prepare a mass movement that is capable of doing this sort of thing.

Bush II had an approval rating around 25-30% at the end of his time in office. Consider that the bottom for how many people will still support a complete and obvious failure.

I don't think there's a practical ability. The European powers can't project power outside their boarders without the US helping. Especially with an overseas nation like Greenland.

England and France have a few carriers, but that's about it. Landing troops would be highly vulnerable to US air superiority. US carriers are larger and more numerous than anything Europe can put up. Based on the local geography, those carriers can stay safe from drone range (a benefit Russia does not have on the Black Sea).

But that also assumes the US military is unified to follow orders into an illegal war, and that may not be the case.

Washington warned against political parities, period. The problems of first past the post creating a two party duopoly weren't understood at the time.

It's not a very practical approach to nationwide electoral strategy, IMO. Washington himself was allied with Hamilton's Federalist party in practice, even if he never officially declared for it.

The argument against the M16 right now is that an intermediate caliber rifle can't do anything against modern body armor (Edit: and to the other poster, this also applies to the HK416). Works if you're shooting poor brown people, but not anyone with a well equipped military. The US itself is in the middle of replacing the M16 for this reason.

When the XM7 was being developed, there was a chance the whole thing was a mistake if a near-peer war never happened. Now the likelihood of a near-peer war is looking more likely.

The depth of stupidity of this Administration will be studied by mathematicians for centuries as a new form of fractal.

I like the bidet's we have at home, but I don't get the ones that are separate from the toilet. Saw this type when visiting San Juan, PR once. Their plumbing system can't handle toilet paper very well, so it's all bidets with a stack of washed towels.

Not only do they take up extra space in the bathroom, but are you supposed to waddle over to this thing with a dingleberry hanging out? I don't get why you'd want that.

The one argument I've heard in their favor is from people with vaginas who don't like the idea of the built-in sprayer catching bits of poop that'll get in their cootch.