This is functionally no different from ISIS types telling radicalized people they need to martyr themselves

something that's cool with this admin is basically anyone can say whatever about anything because there is no coherent messaging control and so you get the Treasury Secretary undercutting Article 5 while SECSTATE/APNSA talks about economic policy and the commerce secretary announces new visas

And as in the original case, it mostly becomes a problem when people are being bribed by the Russians.

Liberum veto baby

And this isn't to say that the EU is bad but like bro the call is coming from inside your house too and your institutional arrangements can be as fucky as ours

Like it's not great the international system depends on swing voters in Wisconsin every four years but uh the European Council depends on Orban not being an asshole or any one of a number euroskeptics HoG/HoS not torpedoing everything, it's the 60-vote senate on steroids

yeah man great optics. just keep standing in front of that armored van that you're using to disappear people and say the word 'Nazi' as many times as possible.

i have engraved my entire manifesto on a series of bullet casings, but then i dropped the ammo box and they're all jumbled up in order wise and i don't have it in me to sort it out again

keep in mind when thune says this shit that he couldn’t even get a simple majority for his party’s own CR

I am willing to believe one basically-left-aligned shooter wrote clues to his ideology on a bullet, because that clearly happened I am not suddenly willing to believe that there is a surge of left wing violence in which everyone is conveniently labeling their ammunition

there is gonna be a point real soon here where bongo and kash fuck up an investigation so badly that it’ll throw the trial for some high profile crime. (it’s already sort of happening in the mangione case, but i don’t think he will get off)

If euros want to actually want to take over global guarantor ship they could do that but that would require them to actually spend money that isn't a loan from a common fund that take 19 years to figure out and then you're at the mercy of the council veto

Like say what you will about the first two sentences but the last two are insane, because even if we aren't very interested in foreign affairs are very interested in us and much more important global leadership comes to those who actually put up the cash to underwrite the international system

Like, we probably won’t honor our treaty commitments to our allies but also you bump against us funny in Syria and we will salt the earth and burn the sky but also both those are and are not your dudes because funny hot dog man who did a coup but changed his mind then exploded.

Oh hey cool, we switched sides again. Ironically, this makes war with Russia more likely because neither they nor we know where our red lines are and therefore we are more likely to do Bumblefuck 1914.

a rules based international order that ignores the differences in capabilities between its member states is also doomed, because at a certain point legal obligations will conflict with “what they actually will do” and you delegitimate the whole exercise

If we’re going to assess the future of American hegemony, I think it’s worth considering that we’ve been setup to function as a kind of global sin eater because of our capabilities and population, and that nobody’s particularly excited to try and replace that. We’re massive, and inertia is real.

Relatedly, one thing I *am* quite sure of is that the crass hedonism of the average American is a major advantage in preventing authoritarian consolidation, and that this has been a constant throughout US history. Americans will not put up w/ having their fav trashy comedian unpersoned by El Jefe.

It's both symptomatic and causal. Trump's consolidation of authoritarian rule depends on the perception of total power, and the Jimmy Kimmel rehiring gave the lie to that image.

Trump in the presidency is also like this, so I guess the question is why did we give the keys to the orange baby that handed them to that other, more feral baby

RFK at HHS is like if a baby crashed a car in to a crowd of people. Sure I'm mad at the baby, if not particularly surprised by the outcome - but my bigger concern is all the adults who handed the baby the car keys and insisted it'd be fine.

A thing that political commentators regularly do that drives me insane is to conflate coalition negotiations with extant, powerful constituencies and lobbies with preemptive and indiscriminate concessions in order to try and *create* those forces to negotiate with. Entirely separate things!

doesn’t necessarily have to be delivered by a b2 spirit either. Spooky bois throwing GRU hackers out of windows is also acceptable

“You can’t just unilaterally blow up foreign heads of state” actually when those states commit acts of war against the United States by joining a conspiracy to usurp her laws & the constitutional rights of her citizens, the US has not only the right but the obligation to engage in superpower shit.

Regarding bukele and his acts of war against the People of the United States, given the mercy of the new restrictionist government, we’d of course be willing to accept a full refund and repatriation of all prisoners Should he not accept that offer, R9X the fuck and send in the Marines.

We are in a global war against fascism, not of our choosing, and we need to win it. That means destroying it everywhere it reigns.

we ran, still run in fact, a global assasination program to deal with an ideology with far fewer bodies to it and far less of a threat to our way of life

Yes, we should repair USAID as best we can, stand up for human rights when possible, honor our treaties, and so forth. No, the USA is never going to be viewed as reliable a security guarantor as it once was.

One thing Mamdani really reveals is that a certain kind of centrist commentator hates candidates that people broadly like. I'm not going to argue that Staten Island is much like Iowa, but I will argue that triangulation without values is unpopular in both. This isn't the 90s anymore

the correct response to the authoritarian internationale is not isolationism--whether of the "america first" or "hair shirt" varieties--but the founding of a counterforce liberal internationale

US hegemony was expensive but you can't put a price on "not having world wars"

the question is not "will the US take precisely the same leadership role as before." we can't. but there is no longer a stable democratic core beyond the reach of authoritarian consolidation, and if we break free of it ourselves we cannot simply retreat from the world while we return to sanity.

we are dealing with a fascist internationale and we have not even started talking about how to stop it.

You do in fact have to justify yourself to the public and you do in fact have to change if that justification fails to persuade. I use don’t know what else to say this is the basis of politics.

“The plebes don’t know we’re doing the best we can.” Well the plebes are your boss, so.

It’s amazing that Dems don’t see that their base has totally lost confidence in leadership and therefore some heads need to roll in leadership to restore confidence *even if* behavior does not significantly change. It’s genuinely elitism.

we need leaders, Lula says, who understand that international politics is not a zero-sum game. international relations professors around the world rush to bookmark the clip.

I'm willing to extend some grace for varying interpretations but this is straightforward wrecker shit from Sharlet and he should feel bad about it.

Nintendo I will go out and pay $600 for a Switch 2 tomorrow if you let your copyright lawyers go feral on the US government the way they go after someone doing a fanmade Mario game.

Trump is a principled politician who never puts his own political fortunes ahead of his goal of doing as much damage to the United States and the world as possible

Mildly annoyed the rapture didn’t occur because Republican Evangelicals want God to take them away from us and so do we, so it would have been a real win-win for all involved.

today i am challenging democratic politicians, for the rest of the week, to pick one (1) horrifying thing republicans are doing and pretend its as bad as jimmy kimmel being indefinitely suspended id suggest tom homan taking bribes, but theres a few things to pick from if they want

Underrated scenario is that the Russians get a guarantee from Trump he won’t intervene if they attack NATO, the Europeans win anyway, and the next American president looks vaguely baffled when the Euros don’t clap like trained seals when he flies over to do the Leader Of The Free World (tm) act.

During elections you should hit where your enemy is weakest, but outside of them you should attack them everywhere so all their hands are weak

Conservatives love to darkly say stuff like “you aren’t prepared for what’s next, we’re not going to be moderate anymore, you have no idea what you’ve unleashed” and then cry like babies when you call them fascists

gotta save that Autism Announcement banner for any time Paradox releases something

RFK told him "they give babies too many vaccines" and Trump said "got it, because the babies are so small they can't fit all the shots in 'em, of course" and stopped listening

Oh god, RFK was looking for the medical cathedral but instead of the magic place that astroturfs liberals, he was looking for the thing that causes autism. And like the cathedral, it never fucking existed

the most extreme anti-democratic outcome they can realistically manage is to voter intimidation on e-day and declaring the results fraudulent. but neither of those actually means much - Americans are not going to be intimidated like that and his declaration would be meaningless legally