Hey! I did it! I wrote about national security! The thing I allegedly write about! othermeans.substack.com/p/going-down...

Inverted Clausewitz, too. The strategy emerges from gunfights, strategy serves the gunfight. If you succeed in war, it is a result of gunfight. If you achieve your objectives, it is because gunfight. If you fail at gunfight, strategy fails with it.

Because AirPower is feminine, real men attack without air based fires

like the other day argued with people who thought that it was bad to bring the US flag to protests. I think that’s kinda stupid and wrong, but it’s more fun to engage with than people who just say “everyone at those protests is a [slur]-lover”

god A-10 fanboys are the funniest

dark woke is coming

guys Trump won the popular vote ‘some Trump supporters need to be persuaded’ is like trivially true, this a dumb sentiment to get upset about

“Letter from Birmingham Jail” is actually a very strong endorsement of nonviolent protest and electoralism, and it’s striking how few people seem to have actually read it given that it’s a) one of the most influential political texts since WWII and b) it isn’t very long

so much of this shit "should you register for protests", "is it good to have the US flag at them" is just people wanting to be given some kind of deference as Protest Elders\Veterans in a little subculture of people who enjoy doing this shit, and for the most part..no. Can't gatekeep mass politics

It became a given because we won so substantially that most people who live in a liberal state don't know it exists. Us talking in this "public sphere," liberal. Being able to move within your own country, liberal. Until Maria Theresa, poor people in what is now Austria couldn't get married.

@uticaeric.bsky.social just talked about this on the second breakfast pod but Rhodes is the epitome of the briefcase carrier. Dude with an MFA in creative writing has an editor of foreign policy introduces him to Lee Hamilton➡️iraq study group➡️Obama campaign➡️Obama White House➡️deputy NSA

“The law” as a concept has a lot of psychological power. Willingness to violate it consistently is not easy to manufacture. Obedience to the law is something deeply engrained in many people, such that even if certain criminal acts are normalized, others will retain the taboo.

Unexpected @defunctland.bsky.social reference in the middle of my political crisis.

Periodic Reminder: That's our flag, not MAGA's. And we should damn well fly it.

The sign on the ground really completes this incredible photo.

What I’ve always found very troubling about it is the total disregard for reason as something that is valued. You can’t have a liberal society with an epistemology of vibes.

Arrgh repeat after me: the *character* of war changes but the *nature* of war does not!!!! (Rant over)

again, as somebody who has actually lived in a dictatorship and worked with dissidents from across the world, this kind of whiny cosplaying by academics pretending they have some secret knowledge of resistance is very annoying.

“They are teaming with platitudes, banalities, and tedious, self-importance of all kinds. For a faithful illustration, read [this] extract from a fire regulation:” If a house is burning then one must, before all else, protect the right wall of the house that stands to the left and, 1/

Chronically online leftists after registering for a No Kings protest

“how do you feel about the foreign policy and defense debates of your life being shams with no domestic political grounding, ae?” in all truth its hard to feel much at all

It’s such a good deal, I get paid by Soros to promote the protests and by the Feds to make them suck, by the DNC to stunt on communists and by the CCP to undermine American unity, and I don’t know why the Illuminati keep mailing those checks but I sure as shit keep cashing them.

Hearken ye unworthy to the prophet and tribune of the oppressed!

To turn this around: telling someone to do something irrational and, when they raise natural objections, saying “why not? don’t you trust me?” is textbook abusive behavior.

Total @sodrock.bsky.social vindication. The only enemies Republicans care about are liberals.

ELBRIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGE

one of the worst ways in which academia has overlapped with activist circles is that stuff that sounds sexy and provocative in seminar is expected to be messaging to actual normal people who aren't going to do the reading. "abolish the family", etc.

Be thankful it wasn’t the other Jimmy

I can’t believe I have to care about Jimmy Kimmel. This is the worst thing Trump has ever inflicted on the American people.

It’s interesting to see AI taking a role similar to Wikipedia in the sense that while it’s acknowledged not to be entirely accurate, is considered somewhat authoritative. I’m not entirely surprised that it’s superior to pure intuition given the general aversion to research.

Bluesky is wild man...

Very military professionalism, very apolitical

the event was so monumental, that there must be a proportional injustice behind. Liberals, Berman argued, wanted things to even out. He argued (convincingly, to me) that too many liberals were not taking Al-Qaeda and other extremists seriously for their stated aims and beliefs, looking instead at/

Tapping the sign

'Liberalism is always doomed to failure' is just a very odd thing to say after roughly 250 years of liberalism being on the march. In 1750 there were between 0 and 1 liberal countries on Earth, depending on the line you want to cut the line on the Dutch Republic. Today there are ~80 of them.

Firing Kimmel is impotent and scary. We win by playing those facts against each other

No one has been more vindicated than normie resistance Dems, women’s marchers and never-Trump Republicans. They were right all along about the threat. The anti-anti-Trump Republicans and reactionary centrists, and the far left “it’s always been this bad” folks have been proved wrong over and over.

Nobody’s ready for the MAGA breakup of Yugoslavia

READ (my) THEORY

Sometimes it's nice to remember that even Marcus Aurelius was like "you don't have to comment on everything bro"

I thought it was worth expanding on my last piece, “the final evolution of the GOP China Hawk frauds” and recapping the last 9 months of the administration’s China policy. Spoiler alert, the GOP China hawks are still frauds. My latest⬇️

This emphasis of pluralism would also tie in well with the party holding more community engaging events—people won’t go if they expect to feel out of place. It’s a lot easier to convince them if it’s well established that “there are all kinds of Democrats.”

Look do the centrist donor money vacuums have the right idea how to revive electoral fortunes for Dems? No! Do politics posters on this website have the right idea how to revive electoral fortunes for Dems? Also, no!

I think we should emphasis this as part of the Democratic brand. Hold televised debates and make a big show about how “we might disagree on a lot, but we all agree those other guys can’t be trusted with power.” Make it easier for people to see themselves as Democrats who wouldn’t traditionally

This is what I mean when I talk about journalism resembling a cargo cult. Journalists have an idea of what a “good journalist” looks like—savvy, adversarial, provocative, aloof—and perform that without asking what the larger purpose is (sticking with platitudes like “truth”)

It was an extremely blackpilling moment when people got furious at the idea of democrats paying influencers. everyone on the side of democracy thinks they’re too good to be a party hack, everyone opposed to it embraces the role with glee.

Like a huge percent of going the political effect to a protest that is getting nasty is being photographed as a normal person getting fucking rocked by the cops for just standing there with a sign and chanting.