Obviously, the Ukraine needs to sign on to the peace deal, if there is to be a peace deal, and Putin insists that only a plausibly legitimate government can sign, therefore Zelensky needs to be eliminated. So this confrontation serves Trump’s goals. And, because the US is out of ammo, it also serve’s Thermidor’s goals, or at least those of the less insane part of Thermidor. At minimum, they need a break so that they can rebuild weapon industries, improve weapons, and build up weapon stocks so that they can resume proxy war with Russia all over again. The lunatic left wants to continue the war to the last Ukrainian, oblivious to the fact that we are out of ammo, but even the loony warmongering part of Thermidor does not want to continue the war to the last missile and artillery piece.
So many people are plausibly arguing that this confrontation was a setup. Kayfabe, at which Trump has lots of professional experience: The US dumps the Ukraine problem on Europe so that the US can concentrate on stirring up trouble on China’s borders, Europe ups its defence spending, and everything continues as before. Only with more weapons manufacture and Europe paying more. Certainly that is quite explicitly the plan of the loony warmongering part of Thermidor. They say so out loud, and they have had their way so far.
Nonetheless, I think this dramatic confrontation was spontaneous, not planned. The coke addled gnome, who came to the meeting a track suit even though Trump had insisted on business attire, fired a shot across Trump and Vance’s bows by telling them that diplomacy would not work, and that Trump (along with Obama) had done “nothing”, and then leaned back with arms crossed in a defensive aggressive posture, which body language says “I just hit you, and I am preparing for your return blow” Which return blow promptly came.
The body language shows that from the perspective of the coke addled gnome, he started it, even though it was wildly contrary to his interests, and very much in Vance and Trump’s interests. Especially in the interests of Vance, whom Trump has forced to bow to the loonier warmonger faction of Thermidor.
Obviously the Trump administration needed to remove Zelensky on day one, but the loony tunes faction of Thermidor would not let him, and he was trying to keep them onside.
And if you attack Trump in words directed at Vance, you are going to push them closer together. As a result of this confrontation, even the loonier faction of Thermidor has decided that even they have had enough of the coke addled gnome. Zelensky was making the loony left attack on all of Thermidor, which has pushed its fractious components closer together.
This is absolutely characteristic of the left, which seems to have a hopelessly bad theory of mind. Thus for example “President Musk and Grifter in Chief Trump”. They think to use Trump’s notorious vanity to split the most powerful man in the world from the wealthiest, and probably the second most powerful. But for all his notorious vanity, Trump does not have an envious bone in his body, he admires Musk’s genius, and admires his prodigous ability to get stuff done. Trump knows perfectly well that Musk is much smarter than he and can get more stuff done than he can, and is honored to be Musk’s friend. So vanity is not going to work, while attacking them both in the same breath pushes them closer together.
The attack by the coke addled gnome was intended to persuade the warmongering faction of Thermidor. It did not. Zelensky was perhaps planning a fight with Vance to isolate him from Thermidor, but if so, leading with a condemnation of the previous Trump presidency was not a good idea. It is never a good idea to piss off Trump. He gets even.
This little verbal sally may well have an outcome similar to the time Ayatollah Khamenei replied to a Trump tweet by tweeting:
“You can’t do anything.”
Don’t tell Trump that.
I fear, and the left noisily and frequently hopes for, a split in Thermidor, during which the left will attempt a massive counter attack. Thermidor is always fractious, and therefore always unstable, an instability usually ended by one man making himself absolute dictator. The loony left hopes that their man will be that absolute dictator, though this is not a common outcome of Thermidor. The dictator most commonly comes from the somewhat less insane left, is usually a warrior, and is apt to be replaced after his death by the right, or the reactionary right. Trump fits the bill for a potential dictator to replace Thermidor, being a 1980s leftist (therefore 2025 rightist) and though he is not a warrior, he has proven he has the warrior spirit, so warriors will obey. Lack of warrior spirit was Trotsky’s weakness. Though unlike Trump he had plenty of military experience, he lacked the warrior spirit, so when push came to shove, warriors would not follow, and he got pushed. Warriors will follow Trump, and warriors will follow Pete Hegseth. Who has the left got? (And who has the Supreme court got? They theoretically have the federal marshals, but it is clear whom the federal marshals will obey should push come to shove.)
On international affairs, the factions line up roughly as follows:
Loony imperial left. Conquer Russia, so as to be able to isolate China from the natural resources it needs, then conquer China.
Loony imperial faction of Thermidor: “Frozen conflict”: Temporarily put the war with Russia on hold, or let Europe handle it, to concentrate on picking a fight with China.
Trump/Vance faction: Westphalian peace beyond the oceans, pull the empire back to the its natural borders, the oceans, while strengthening and formalising imperial control (Panama, Greenland, Canada) within the natural borders.
Zelenksy was kept around as a barricade against peace in the Ukraine, or even freezing the conflict. Now that Thermidor has signed on with removal of that barricade, we will see what happens. But what much of thermidor wants is not peace, but a “frozen conflict” What Trump and Vance want is Westphalian peace. What the US government that they theoretically control wants is either frozen conflict or war without end. One possible split in Thermidor has been averted, but the next is coming right up. Putin is not going to buy a frozen conflict, when outright military victory is almost within his reach, and that has so far been what the US has been trying to sell him.
Westphalian peace differs from what the “Rules Based Order” call peace in that you stop trying to push your state religion onto other states. Stopping USAID was a big step towards Westphalian Peace, but the state department under Marco Rubio is still pushing a slightly less evil and insane version of our state religion onto other states. Of course Thermidor, unlike the left, is far from internal agreement about what that State Religion is, and has a shortage of demented fanatics to do it, so this is likely to prove less effectual, less coherent, and less obnoxious, so it is a big step towards Westphalian peace, though very far from Westphalian peace. Europe, however is still funding ngos to push the ever loonier far left state religion, both in Europe and abroad, and they, unlike Thermidor, have the demented fanatics to do it.
https://nypost.com/2025/03/01/us-news/house-republicans-looking-to-nix-washingtons-black-lives-matter-plaza/
Am I right to think that Trump and Vance planned to have this conversation in private, but Zelensky decided to start it while miked up in front of the cameras?
Looks like they could have gone either way, and the demeanor in front of the camera told them which way it was going to go.
They did not want to hold this conversation at all, but were pressured into it. Figuring out who exactly pressured them into it is like trying to figure out Kremlin politics in days of the Soviet Union..
What I suspect that at least some of the war faction were imagining that they could split Vance from Trump, by firing off the narrative that Vance is a Putin puppet.
The plan that Trump endorsed was that Trump would bullshit that the mineral reserves were worth trillions (they are unlikely to be worth more than several billion) and this would persuade the Russians to be more moderate in negotiations. They know that Trump does not want war and does not care for empire beyond the oceans, being a foreign entanglement that only leads to more trouble and danger than it is worth, but they know he does care about money, so would suspect he actually believes they are worth trillions and would fear that demanding those parts of Ukraine that contain the minerals would lead to escalation by the US, and if they escalated in response, the nukes might well fly. While if the Ukraine gets to keep its minerals, they know that Trump would not care much who rules Ukraine, provided that the killing stops, and the cost to the American taxpayer stops, so would figure they could safely play hardball.
The war faction of Thermidor’s actual plan was probably “Vance is a Putin puppet, Putin puppet”
But Zelensky knows that actual negotiations are likely to be preceded by his political demise, or actual physical demise, so his actual plan was “negotiations make you a Putin puppet”
The war faction was all over Zelensky, prepping him. Sleep with dogs, wake up with fleas. Some of the war faction split from the left into Thermidor, because they want the conflict frozen until America and Europe can re-arm, but are alarmed that Trump and Vance want an actual peace, or are willing to agree to an actual peace if Putin refuses to accept a frozen conflict.
Trump wants an actual peace, but would be fine with a conflict that remains frozen till he retires, if that is what it takes to keep Thermidor on side, and avoid even more resistance from the permanent government than he is already getting. Putin, however, has repeatedly said he is not fine with a frozen conflict. Vance wants an actual peace.
A large part of Thermidor wants the conflict to continue to the last Ukrainian, but wants Europe to pay for it and supply the weapons. These guys were probably fine with the way things turned out, but it seems that most of Thermidor is mighty pissed, because they lack confidence in Europe’s will and capability. They want a frozen conflict.
A lot of people are arguing that Trump is in the pocket of the war faction, and this was all a plan to dump the Ukraine war on Europe. Which is not entirely false, but from Zelensky’s reference to oceans, we may strongly suspect that the issue of the empire pulling back to the safe side of the oceans is a live topic in the Trump cabinet.
It seems that, insofar Zelensky is acting rational, and let us assume he is, a good part of his attitude rests on the assumption that he does not need Trump.
Well, let us find out.
Let Ukraine fight until it falls. A peace deal yesterday is preferable to a peace deal tomorrow, especially considering all the lives lost. But Trump did not create this mess. Zelensky, in part, did. Let him sleep in the bed he made.
One big assumption people are making, including Jim, is that Zelensky gives a shit about the Ukraine or Ukrainians. Z acting rationally has nothing to do with international politics, and everything to do with maximizing the personal gains of Z. I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump offered Z another mansion in Miami in exchange for giving Trump an excuse to back out of a deal. Not saying that is true or even likely, simply pointing out that Z doesn’t give a shit about anything but Z, so we cannot assume his actions are in any way intended to help the Ukraine.
You must have missed the part where we discussed how Zelensky is using Ukranians as ransom.
Zelensky obviously does not care about the Ukranians at the front line. Trump cares more about the Ukranians at the front line than Zelensky. The point made is directed at Trump: that he should not be baited into saving some Ukranian lives at the cost of gambling with World War 3.
If Zelenksy acted on the same info we have, his rational choice for self-preservation would be to strike a deal with Trump asap and gtfo. For whatever stupid reason, ego most likely, he thinks he is better off continuing the war.
I don’t see anyone making this assumption. To the contrary, what do you think we mean when we say “to the last Ukrainian”?
Acting in his own interests does not mean he is motivated by money, though. Zelensky appears to have developed a savior complex, or even a messiah complex. Assuming all the coke speculation is true, it is certainly a factor in that.
You can’t simply buy off a man who believes his due is to be deified and written into legend. He is going to have to be whacked.
Check out this video. Every time Trump says “we want to end the killing and dying”, Zelensky looks like Trump said. “We are going to chop off your genitals and take away your coke supply”
No, Zelensky’s attitude stems from the assumption that Trump will be pressured by domestic elements plus Starmer, Macron etc into giving Ukraine endless aid regardless of what Trump wants.
Since Trump cannot run for office again, and half of the USA already considers him the worst villain in human history, Trump has nothing to lose here. So Zelensky might just be fucked.
US needs to keep UK and Japan as well. Australia and New Zealand are essentially free.
Australia’s unforced geo-political error is so massive it’s taken a while for me to comprehend it. Between preparing for war with China and opening their borders to Chinese and Indian immigrants, they’ve opened up handing themselves over to China within the century. The middle kingdom wouldn’t have played for that in a vacuum, but they’re also not constituted to turn down free real estate and lebensraum when it’s offered up on a platter like that.
And for what? For nothing. For scraps from Harvard’s table, right before the pendulum swung back at the heart of empire. Their best case now is Thermidor still wants their bases and to deny them to China, but doesn’t actually get the war with China they want. Which could well happen, but it’s only a fraction of the range of possibilities.
So, “free,” yes, but still sucks to be them. “You fucked up, you trusted us.”
UK is more secure, they did too good a job selling out to the US in and after WWII. But they’re an odd wholly owned subsidiary to have in that that’s a whole lot of Muslim, Paki and Indian “British subjects” to count on falling in line as Thermidor angles for war with China and Israel’s enemies. There’s a triple bank shot where the jews do the Anglos some good for once by stiffening the spine enough to clean things up to get them in fighting shape, but much more likely they keep providing Jim’s 100 troops under 100 generals.
China is not taking Australia from the inside, there’s no demographic case for that. I’d like to see you make the case. There is a legitimate case to be made they’re headed fast towards American style dysfunction, perhaps at a much larger scale since Aboriginal births are now nearly 10% of new births and are increasing with Aboriginal fertility staying above replacement level and even increasing while everyone else is declining and is well under replacement level.
Australia is pretty much free for the taking by America because it’s far enough out of the way to not cause significant friction with anyone important, and it’s a lot of good real estate that would be better off in the hands of an English speaking nation.
As an Australian I can tell you that China is very much pushing the demographic case from inside Australia. Estimates are around 3 million Chinese in Australia, which is more than 10% of the population. There are entire suburbs in Sydney where the street signs are in Chinese script, including the names of train stations.
I know a Chinese guy, who, a decade ago quit his big city job, took the family to Australia, bought a ranch, made pics of riding a horse dressed up like the Marlboro guy. In short started living out his libertarian fantasies. Lost touch, may he be happy there still.
That Russian chick, Maria Butina, who tried to live out her libertarian fantasies in the US, quickly found out the reality of things when the Russian collusion thing heated up circa 2018, and the sudden need for kremlin spies arose. They kept her in solitary confinement for three months, before she finally signed a confession that she’s a kremlin spy on a mission to subvert democracy, if memory serves.
Pax – what I was thinking of was the combination of demographics and going to war. Say Taiwan goes hot, but escalates into a wider theater rather than just being GAE’s tool to grind China the way Ukraine was their tool to grind Russia. Carriers go down to hypersonics and a wider war doesn’t go the way GAE assumes. China’s now in a position to “protect” their nationals in Australia, and it’s got to be a pretty attractive payoff to a war they’ll think they didn’t start.
I can see I didn’t finish that thought, but “between x and y” did allude to it.
But now with Adam’s 10% figure – the thing is that can change fast when it’s combined with further immigration. And the more you get, the harder it is to limit immigration, because even the conservatively inclined immigrants aren’t inclined to cut off their own kin. And the Chinese definitely have more where they came from.
That’s also what concerns me about Indians – they’ve got more where those came from. So demographic growth plus immigration adds up fast. And unlike blacks, hispanics and market middleman jews there’s not even any reason we should be stuck with them, it’s a completely unforced error.
https://x.com/DonaldJTrumpJr/status/1895983497464225938
With recruitment ads like these, what Ukranian lad is not eager to give his life to keep Zelenskyyyyyy in rentboys and coke?
Well hang on a second. Just for completeness, let’s do this please:
The US gave up on Vietnam in 1973, and it took two years for the VC to finish wrapping up the south of the country. Trump obviously knows this story.
My guess is that the analog to this would be the US dropping out of NATO, or somehow declaring “no Article Five for you”. It would take years to ship our crap back from Germany and whatnot, but without us being in NATO while doing it, Russia would be safe to attack European assets in Poland, Moldova and Romania, and that, I presume, would end up as a for-real peace pretty quickly, right? No?
I know I’m fantasy-footballing here, but then again, a month ago I assumed that USAID was as invincible as Mount Rushmore.
In the case of Vietnam, there was a lot of lag time from the fact that while aimless and shiftless, the USM was still militarily dominant everywhere it occupied. Whereas in the ukraine, the KOG forces are being pressed to the ropes by the RuAF even with the ‘full might’ of GAEto behind them.
A closer analogy would probably be the post-GWOT regime in Afghanistan; US cutting off support could easily result in a collapse of similar rapidity.
Let us compare the coke addled gnome’s interaction with Keith Starmer, and his interaction with Trump. He acted like Starmer was the God Emperor, while Trump was just some random irritating jumped up yahoo whom he had to pretend was president of America.
Neet observed that the commissar was acting as if she still had power, and everyone around her acted as if she still had power. The coke addled gnome was acting as if, in the mysterious absence of a real American President, Keith Starmer is ruler of the empire. Neet’s commissar is acting as if some minor judge has supreme executive authority in America. And I see this worldview vociferously pushed on Youtube.
They believe it, so it must be true, and everything to the contrary is Russian propaganda and a tiny toxic minority of chuds.
The only warriors around, however, are Zelensky’s Nazis, Trump’s grunts, and Putin’s army.
If Starmer keeps the flow of money going to Zelenky’s Nazis, Zelenksy is the supreme military power in an otherwise militarily insignificant Europe. But his Nazis are getting killed off fairly rapidly.
And their chain of command is not rooted in Zelensky. It is rooted the CIA. Unfortunately it is rooted in the CIA operation in Canada, which is likely to be difficult to bring to heel. Plus, any Trump deal with Putin is going to disband them. Who pays them, if not Starmer? On the other hand, Starmer is going to get them all killed.
Yes! That’s very well put, and that’s exactly how everyone in the US government sees it, too. That’s how it was in 2017. Is that how it is in 2025? Even I can admit the early signs are very encouraging, but we shall see.
The big difference from 2017, is that in 2017, Trump staffed the cabinet with his enemies. This time around, he has learned. If an enemy puts his head above the parapets, he finds he is facing a big gang with a clear leader.
Huh. Is it possible this is what the push for annexing Canada may actually be about? More administrative control to root out these faggy demon cocksuckers?
> I fear, and the left noisily and frequently hopes for, a split in Thermidor,
> during which the left will attempt a massive counter attack.
The two main attack vectors at the moment are:
1. the Supreme Court special election in Wisconsin on April 1st, whose downstream consequence if the Democrat is elected include redistricting to give the left (hard, not Thermidor, led by AOC or equivalent) a majority in Congress in 2026; and
2. blackmailing John Roberts to poz on the imminent SCOTUS cases on executive authority to fire personnel.
It would be helpful if the Trumpists in Wisconsin take (1) very seriously as it would be a massive Schelling point for the left if they can rig it.
In the 1936 election, FDR won Mississippi and South Carolina 97.06 and 98.57 percent of the vote. Putin was accused of rigged elections for taking 88% of the vote.
I found these #s kinda unbelievable so I checked them. Wikipedia reports the same:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1936_United_States_presidential_election#Results
98.6% of the vote?! Just for perspective, a survey of Americans about 10 years ago found that 4% affirmed that alien lizardmen control the US. That 98.6% would agree on a Presidential candidate is obvious evidence of fraud.
The Lizard Man constant in surveys (originally via Slate Star Codex):
https://gwern.net/note/lizardman
Thought crime goes first. I watched Jim’s post all the way back to Usenet and generally thought you were a nut. I do not know if that is thoughty crimey enough for you. Yes, I do agree that certain ethnicities do cause a majority of violence in the USSA, but that is fact.
Ok, they are called Reptilians. I did “notice” when Zuckersmuck denied being a lizard person but not a Reptilian. They don’t exist of course, but most of our infotainment is complete crap.
Not a thought crime. Still on moderation.
What is impressive is the 4 counties with 100% Democrat. The top 5 democrat and top 5 republican are both Southern (the Republican are less wipe outs).
FDR didn’t do that the South did that for every Democrat until basically Nixon. I don’t know why they bothered to keep blacks from voting when all the votes were turbo rigged rigged back then anyway.
This circumstance was pre-cooked between Zelensky and the UK/EU and the Democrats. They wanted a public break with Trump so they could go around him. The UK thinks it can do an end run: commit troops to Ukraine, get fired upon by the Russians, and invoke Article 5. The Dems then get to tar him as some kind of coward/treaty breaker and will show us all grim footage of the deaths of sympathetic looking Tommies gunned down in their prime trying to save the cruelly invaded Ukrainians.
This allows GAE to put Trump on the defensive and pick up some momentum by saying “Look how terrible Trump is. Our long time allies, the British, are dying on the battlefiled while cowardly Trump is letting it happen by violating our NATO treaty commitments. For shame! You’d better vote for someone who will stop this terrible bloodshed from happening in the mid-terms.” At present there have been reasons not to show how bad things are in Ukraine because they have been trying to maintain the narrative that the plucky Ukrainians can win! But expect a whole new level of war porn on the nightly news. I don’t think it will move the needle but they will try.
Trump can get around all of this by pre-emptively withdrawing from NATO. Issuing an executive order to that effect would bleed the EU/UK of their enthusiasm to rush into war knowing as they would that the U.S. is absolutely not coming.
Arguments could be made that because the NATO treaty was ratified by 2/3 vote of the Senate that it would require the same to withdraw. Trump should do it anyway and make them fight it in court.
Trump’s constitutional role as the commander in chief, gives him the ability to blunt even a congressional declaration of war. He can simply order U.S. troops to remain on base rather than deploy. Congress can declare war and fund it but without soldiers to fight it there’s not much they can do.
Trump has already covered his ass for this one. European troops in the Ukraine will not be covered by article five. Any Nato power that goes into the Ukraine is on its own.
But I don’t think they are going in. Most of Europe only has pretend armies.
They don’t seem to know that. They’re counting all the lunchladies and came up with a large number of fighters, Jim. They’ll show Pootin what the west is made of.
Looks like it’s the GAE in exile against the US now. Difficult situation, guys.
That’s a wild perspective. Ukraine-Russia as proxy war between Trumpidor and “GAE in exile”. Like the White Russians fighting the Bolsheviks from Moscow, then from Omsk, then from Belgrade, then from…
And why not? We have vestigial Nazis fighting vestigial Soviets from freaking Canada now. When Trudeau honored that Ukrainian SS Bandarist dude in Ottawa, I was like what the fuck is this.
I think we can be sure the Russians have zero interest in bits of paper with Ukrainian and Western signatures on them. Putin is just humoring Trump. At this point, agreements with the West might as well be written in sharpie on toilet paper.
The Russians have suffered far fewer casualties than the West thinks, which can be reliably inferred by their massive and long-sustained artillery overmatch, and even more significantly by the ease with which the Russian government has been recruiting volunteer soldiers for the last two years. These guys aren’t signing up to fight without talking to returned veterans first – contrast this with Ukrainian “recruitment” scenes that look like something out of that Liam Neeson movie.
The slow pace is simply what attrition warfare with minimal risk and casualties looks like in the modern day. This war ends with Russian tanks in Kiev and a whole lot of Ukrainian girls turning out in tight skirts.
Excruciatingly slow as measured by land. Seems fast enough as measured by the manifest shrinkage of the Ukrainian army.
The Ukraine fires generals for losing turf, so no one ever orders a retreat until it is far too late. The Russians cheerfully yield land when they have more defensible positions behind them, but fire generals for losing men.
The observed behavior of the Pentagon is that it cannot impose a no-fly zone over Ukraine or garrison troops openly in Kiev. Most people think that this is because of the fear of Russian nukes, but I think it must be that they fear Russian conventional capabilities. It would do terrible damage to the American psyche to have even a token number of F-35s shot down or even one barracks smashed to bits.
This is not to overstate Russian capabilities – this war has shown that advancing weapons technology has had an equalizing effect between states. The loss of the Moskva to two subsonic cruise missiles (allegedly) still traumatizes me.
The reason the barking Chihuahuas are so fierce, is that now that they are running out of Ukrainians, they expect to feed in Americans.
Pentagon unenthusiastic about this plan.
Do you think that it’s the threat of nuclear retaliation that deters them, even if it’s just tactical nukes delivered by Iskander? I sometimes wonder if open conflict between nuclear superpowers outside both their national territories is a lot more possible and lower risk than the political theorists think. I’m just an amateur, though – maybe there’s a whole academic literature on this I don’t know about?
Strictly speaking, it must be possible for nuke-armed adversaries to go to war in remote or colonial locations without launching nukes at each other’s capitals. After all, the Americans and Chinese clashed openly in Korea without Truman authorizing McArthur’s nuke plan – even though it could’ve been decisive, and this was before the Chinese could retaliate in kind.
Actual invasions of home territories would be another matter entirely, of course.
Nuclear retaliation, empty weapon stockpiles, world war III, a conflict at the other side of the world, mouth frothing of their ‘allies’… A great many reasons that would deter any sane man.
Harry Turtledove has an interesting trilogy based on the scenario of nukes being used there by McArthur, and how things spiral from then on, since Stalin is still an ally of Mao. The first book in the series is called Bombs Away.
OK, so latest(I think) news is that the US won’t give any more targetting information to ukraine. In reality the US has been bombing Russia and now according to the neocon propaganda outlets they will “stop” or change modus operandi a bit. I wonder if there’s any truth in there at all.
Sounds like the US has run out of missiles.
Yeah I see that a lot as well, and it makes little sense. There is constant talk about how bad the military-industrial-complex is doing, how inept they are, they can’t even produce bullets, etc. Which is hard to believe.
So, I have to regard that as propaganda meant to further increase military spending. Or it is something else I can’t figure out.
Bullets not a big problem.
Shells, artillery barrels, and missiles, big problem.
If they could do it, would have done it. So yes, the military industrial complex really is that inept. We need someone to do for drones, shells, artillery barrels, and rockets, what Musk has done for access to space.
Well if the US substantially increased missile production, and used them to attack Russia we would most likely get nuclear WWIII.
The sense is no one is responsible for anything so nothing gets done. When a colonel sells off tires for money in the Russian Army, Putin has them thrown out a window. When any system isn’t working in the west, more money is poured in.
No doubt corruption is off the charts and every time the state fails they blame taxpayers and demand more money, which is insane. But I also think that arms manufacturers must be getting some things done, despite massive corruption.
Maybe, maybe not.
Has Disney been getting things done? Has Jaguar? What about Sony, or EA Games?
Yes, they are getting things done, if you don’t really care about the particulars of the “things”. The money keeps flowing, and some sort of output is being produced. It is just that the output isn’t anything that anyone would want, and the costs are vastly disproportionate to what is being produced, by multiple orders of magnitude.
Defense industry has been producing a whole lot of vaporware lately, and the stuff that isn’t vaporware is notoriously defective and horrendously overpriced.
Regarding the military, I think your picture is correct to a not small degree but it would still be possible for a fraction of the system to produce acceptable stuff, I assume. But maybe my assumption is wrong. I guess we’ll have to wait some more to learn where the war is going.
As to something like disney, apparently they are losing money with their fucking tranny propaganda, but they can still subsidize it to some degree.
It is clear that some good stuff is still being produced, both by the military industrial complex, and by Disney. But very little, and at vast expense.
There is an attempt to start a new MIC with startup values and tech bro staff, which is an implicit admission that the majors are dead. It’s easier to start new companies than to dig the Prog priests out of the management and administration of those old companies.
Himars and atacms have been propaganda darlings for the puppet regime for a good while, but you pretty much never hear about them anymore.
Similarly, they like talking about how ‘great’ the patriot system is, but the last time there was word of its use with operationally significant impact was over a year ago.
The way warfare has developed recently is that everything on the front which is:
– bigger than a car
– more expensive than a car
– less nimble than a car
is one imminent drone attack away from being blown up. Am I saying that right?
Pretty close to right. If it’s bigger than a hog and you can’t drive it 99 miles an hour over rutted terrain like a trophy truck, it’s not fit for doctrine. If it’s slow then it needs to go all the way to rolling shed mode, which there is usecases for in smoking out enemy positions in assaults.
Shit, guys, what does “the US” even mean in sentences like these anymore?
Trump and Musk are equally smart but in very different ways. Trump has maximum charisma and a perfect political instinct; Musk has first-principles thinking and the loyalty of the world’s best computer nerdcels.
What is the basis for confidence that there is any part of Thermidor that is not loony imperial? Isn’t it possible it’s all just coalition-building feints, like it was the last time Jews made a coalition with Amerikaners? What if Trump is, again, the only man with power who wants to dismantle the empire even a little, and he’s ready to compromise on it anyway?
2023 Vivek indicated a significant part of the elite, aligned with Thiel, really did want to defund significant other parts of the elite. Did Vivek also indicate they wanted to divest the empire? I don’t remember. If he did, can we make any inferences about how serious they are? Has Vance said anything noteworthy that changes that picture, besides the Munich speech which has already been dissected here?
Some here seem to have hope in Vance personally, beyond hope in the interests behind him. What is the basis for that? Even more than Vivek did, he behaves like he’s not ultimately in control of his own political career or platform, or personal identity for that matter.
He came out personally defending the DoGE employee who got doxxed on a crimethink alt account.
He is on record saying the universities are corrupt and we should seize their funds.
Even if Trump is the only man, and he’s not, he knows his entire family is on the line. Musk also repeatedly has said that he knows that joining the Trump coalition was a one way door, and his life is currently at stake.
I think you are right that the coalition has a lot of people in it at cross odds to each other, let alone what we stand for and discuss here. I also think that we now are at ‘do or die’ and Trump and Musk know who will actually fight and die for them, and it’s not the globalist types.
Vance is the best insurance Trump can buy. He knows exactly who the enemies are and exactly what needs to be done. He is legit and to become Vice President of the US at his age from where he started, GNON obviously smiles on him.
Vivek is in favor of American empire, and believes that Russia will submit if offered terms slightly more generous than “Bend over and take it up the ass”. Indeed, that was Putin’s 2022 offer. After what has gone down pretty sure he wants a considerably better offer now.
JD Vance sees that in the end, he is going to have to destroy the globalists, or they will destroy him.
Trump sees the empire as a business that is running a loss, and needs to spin off some of its money losing ventures. He favors empire, if it yields net revenue. Which it does not.
“Trump Gaza” is a demand that Israel pay up for imperial backing.
Today’s neocon newspapers claim :
“U.S. to Resume Military Aid to Ukraine as Kyiv Says It’s Open to Cease-Fire”
“U.S. to lift pause on Ukraine aid as Kyiv agrees to 30-day ceasefire proposal”
I’m not sure if that’s complete misinformation or in fact trump keeps chaning his mind every day. I’ve seen trump say some pretty stupid things about Russia during the last month so I don’t rule out the possibility that trump think he’s the master of the universe, “dealing” with the Russians by pretending they are idiots.
(I realize that paying attention to the so called news every day is a mistake, but this issue seems somewhat important)
I pay no attention to the news of the day — well actually I pay great attention to the news of the day, but dismiss ninety nine percent of it without thinking about it. If Trump does end up doing something stupid on the Ukraine regime, I will then look back and see what those news articles really meant in the context of what eventually happened.
But right now it looks like resumption of aid is conditional on a Ukrainian coup that installs someone committed to an election.
Of course an election under the conditions of terror that have prevailed since the Maidan coup would be meaningless as a demonstration of popular support, but meaningful in that it demonstrates that the new regime really is in control and has enough authority that its agreement to a peace deal is likely to stick — demonstrates that it can in fact control the instruments of the terror. If the terror is its own independent powerbase, then any deal depends on the agreement of that powerbase. The question that is at present unclear is whether the instruments of terror powerbase answers to Global American Empire in Exile, or to Trump’s John Ratcliffe. They do not want to answer to John Ratcliffe, and what I assume is happening is “Answer to John Ratcliffe, or we will let the Russians knock on your door.”
We will not know if this is the case for quite some time. But obviously Trump is applying the stick, and Trump being Trump, is promising the carrot.
You are rightly worried that the carrot will be supplied while the mule is still refusing to answer to John Ratcliffe. We shall see.
Hello
Trump genuinely wants peace, end the brother war, and establish some restored and indeed newfound US-RU relationship and partnership between the two govts and peoples, etc.
This is possible because both, are at their core, old white-type christian-type kingly-types. And that is good to establish now that the SocComMarxBolsh colour invasion of RU is over.
Trump probably also wants the newfound bits to be set in forever forward moving cultural stone, by Putin and himself, before either he or Putin dies or leaves office, which in the case of RU might become anti brother-partnership or say pro-Chinese or MidEast or exclusively perma-BRICS in Kremlin, or in case of US might fall to resurgence of Leftism Colour.
To effect ending a variety of colours, Trump is playing hard with Zelensky.
Neocons in white house, and in Intel, State, and NGO thinktank, are seen still playing games.
Posit that they are craftily pushing Trump too hard on Zelensky
1) to alienate and disconnect Trump and Zelensky ability to settle
2) thus pushing Zelensky into control of Neocon EU
Which to US Neo’s, conveniently gives Trump and the US an early escape… “Well, look, Zelly didn’t want peace, so fuck him, he can talk with RU on his own, and we exited our involvement, we’re done here, it’s between you all now”
Which conveniently lets the Neocons fight the RU-CN connection via Euro-RU war, but without US as first order supplier and commander of the proxy.
Question is, how long will the Neocon subterfuge as the secret second order behind the EU-wargasm last.
Trump needs to shut down the US Neocons first, then the EU, then Zelly will quit.