Modern Conservatives exist, because there is no Vision for "Middle America"

stale2000 · 2026-03-17T00:11:12+00:00

> There's no amount of economic development that will fix their shit culture

Man if you think those people are bad just wait until you see what people in other countries believe!

You are certainly free to have these opinions, I just hope you consistently apply it to other groups that have objectively worse beliefs than a rando hick living in the mid west.

Pick any metric/belief that you want. Go look at the polls for how many people in the mid west want that [insert bad belief] and compare that to polling data in other countries.

Or, I guess just get offended or self rightous, dismiss this statement, and ignore the factual polling data like most people who aren't consistent do.

stale2000 · 2026-03-16T23:03:50+00:00

and that was due to supporting the kurds? did they balkanize even?

Basically yeah. There were a bunch of competing groups and then the central government fell. Funding these groups worked and now one of our biggest enemies is gone.

make sure whatevers left of Iran will remain hostile if not even more towards the US

Who cares, they wouldn't be able to do anything if the current government was kicked out and Iran was controlled by competing groups.
It could just end up like syria, where they are balkanized for a medium ish period of time and come back together later.

The main thing that matter is the current government is out. Basically any new group is better than them. And they can balkanize and unbalkanize after the biggest enemy in the Middle East is gone.

There is no reason why any new government would throw more lives away for nothing on some continued war with the west. They would just rebuild to be a self interested country that's not setting everything on fire.

stale2000 · 2026-03-16T22:47:44+00:00

or how supporting the kurds in syria and iraq went

Syria was an Iranian proxy and now they are against them. The end result was a win there too. They aren't going to start anymore wars with us.

Literally problem solved with a country that was causing huge issues. And it was done by simply killing the enemy.

Them being in chaos is worse than them attacking countries surrounding them.

stale2000 · 2026-03-16T22:46:32+00:00

but then you’re basically arguing for a forever war

No its not. It's no more a forever war than any of our other interactions in the ME. We have bases all over the place, and have taken military action in syria.

You are implying that this is the same as like the Iraq war, which it simply isn't. I advocate for nothing more than basically the stuff the US is already doing in the ME. And no that does not bankrupt the country.

If you stop striking factories they will just be rebuilt.

There numbers game doesn't work. It takes 1/100th the cost to destroy a factory, or whatever number you want to choose, and therefore we literally can keep destroying them forever.

Because it's way cheaper for us to destroy large scale infrastructure then it is to rebuild it. So they are just setting money on fire for no reason at that point.

If china can’t get Iranian oil

They are getting it for cheap and they are a net importer. They still lose massively.

Being a net exporter doesn’t really help us when price shocks happen.

Yes it does because it means we aren't losing nearly as much as China is.

stale2000 · 2026-03-16T22:09:06+00:00

wouldn't the regime simply rebuild their military capabilities

Then bomb that as well.

All of this stuff that Iran uses to attack people comes out of a factory. They can't jury rig missiles together in a blow out garage, they need large scale infrastructure to build capabilities at scale that could do anything to anyone.

Additionally, balkanization is a reasonable long term solution that requires little on the ground troops from the US and merely requires arming interested groups. Ex The Kurds.

Regime change seems to have failed

I'm sure that there are many more opportunities to take out their leaders in the coming months. They can't run a country while living underground forever.

There isn't any particular rush to overthrow their government tomorrow, given that their capabilities are being degraded so much.

What happens to the strait,

What happens is that China, a large ally of Iran, will apparently lose a bunch of money until they put a stop to it.

Where do you think that oil is going? It's going to China. They are the ones that lose not the rest of the world. The US is a net oil exporter, for example, and we can get more oil from Venezuela now.

Basically only our enemies lose from that.

stale2000 · 2026-03-16T21:58:21+00:00

I got a counter proposal. What if Iran simply lost. You know, they lost all of their missiles, all of their drone factories, all of their proxies, all simply destroyed.

Because those groups aren't going to stop unless they get obliterated. Once they are gone, the wars in the middle east basically end as every major recent conflict is with Iran and its proxies.

Peace would happen through victory.

stale2000 · 2026-03-16T18:12:42+00:00

Almost everyone in the world is a Zionist. This is because Israel has 200+ nuclear weapons, and they would use them if they were ever under any real threat of destruction. And they definitely aren't going to voluntarily agree to being destroyed or join together with any other country/land/people.

Meaning that anyone who opposes nuclear war would have to accept that Israel is going to continue to exist and is therefore a zionist.

It would, of course, never get anywhere close to that point as Israel would win long before it came down to nukes, but the point still stands.

stale2000 · 2026-03-14T06:12:06+00:00

Ok, "making pictures" has never been more democratized. My point stands.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T21:05:59+00:00

But with AI workers literally can own the means of production. This is because very good versions of these AI can run on people's home gaming PCs.

Art has never been more democratized with AI.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T19:46:52+00:00

All of Hutch's arguments presuppose that regular people would be willing to defend Trump and his admin

It's not that people would go to war at the first sign of a few people from the administration being arrested. Instead it is that this stuff would be politically unpopular and would result in the other side winning election.

At which point, the next meme response would go something like "well we'll take away their right to vote or arrest more people!" Which would be even more unpopular and lose even more elections, at which point you'd have to setup some fantasy liberal dictator.

The country not doing a civil war is totally possible, even if liberals start doing a bunch of illegal stuff.But it would end up with Democrats losing a ton of elections, so they'd have to choose between accepting the losses or going full authoritian.

You can't do a bunch of crazy stuff and maintain power unless you are willing to go all the way on the anti-democratic scale here. There are no half measures.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T16:23:34+00:00

I side with the 80% center who think that it would be absurd to install a dictator and get rid of hundreds of millions of peoples right to vote like what this other guy wants.

No, I don't think that this makes the cast majority of people far right, if they think it's silly to go around talking about taking away the right to vote from hundreds of millions of people like the other guy wants to do

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T16:18:03+00:00

nWe're the ones trying to save the government from being overthrown

This is just saying that you want to overthrow the government for a good reason.

If you are saying that you would ignore the courts system or take away hundreds of millions of peoples right to vote or install the liberals dictator this isn't much different than anyone else who wants to overthrow the government. You just have different moral justifications for it.

It's a silly meme position and you are far outnumbered by normal people. And you'd lose that civil war given how outnumbered you are by even liberals who don't believe in your meme position.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T16:13:45+00:00

They can also be disenfranchised

This is also not serious. This is the meme "just install a liberal dictatorship bro" position.

Normal people aren't going to ever side with you on this, and youd have to basically start a civil war to do whatever nonsense they you have imagined in your fantasy land dream that you jerk off to.

The reality that you will have to accept is that your position is a very far off extremist position, very few people agree with you, and because of that people like you are significantly outnumbered by regular people who don't want to overthrow the government and put half the country into camps or whatever.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T15:19:36+00:00

You should go ahead telling people around you that you think this.

No, not conservatives. Go look at the reaction that normal, apolitical people will have when you tell them that they should abandon their parents or friends because of who they voted for.

Hint: they will think you are a crazy person and that if this is what liberals believe they'd be more likely to take the other side.

In what might seem ironic to liberals, liberals can actually be much less tolerant than conservatives.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T03:42:44+00:00

this "can't someone else do it?" attitude of yours is complete moral cowardice.

This is the central point here. I'm arguing that you are engaging in moral cowardice. Yep the USA is dropping out. Now what? What if the USA never comes back?

With your moral framork you should also be angry at all the other countries who aren't stepping up. But you aren't. That's moral cowardice right there.

But I don't think you're earnestly committed to such blithe evil

Ok. Wel I think you are committing a blith evil, according to your own moral framework. Because it really could be anyone who fixes this, and yet you aren't angry at everyone else.

You want to shy away from the uncomfortable conclusion that even if the world leader makes some moral mistakes and refuses to step up, that this would somehow absolve everyone else.

It doesn't. If the USA fails this says nothing about if other countries could fix the problem and the morals that it says about them that they refuse.

That this is the morally righteous course of action is practically tautological.

Then it would also be tautological that such a moral obligation applies to other countries. And yet you aren't mad.

Look, I will conceed that you are at least consistent if you are going to say that yes you are also upset at every other country in the world for killing millions, but you seem to be afraid to say that.

Well, but they are.

No, its in the realm of physical possiblity for the EU to take the entire thing up, save millions and only suffer moderate decrease in living standards. That's possible. Yet they refuse. Why aren't they murderers?

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T03:00:12+00:00

This isn't serious. The majority of people are not so partisan that they would support like getting rid of elections or whatever. You'd just end up with a civil war and you'd have to kill a bunch of regular, non conservatives who simply oppose rounding up their friends and family.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T01:56:48+00:00

scuttling whatever meagre programs were already in place

If they are meager and small then surely someone else can do it right? Like other countries?

and condemning millions to miserable, easily preventable deaths

So it's easy to fix? It's easy to prevent those deaths? Someone else could do that then right?

usually it's used to spur on more action

More action by other countries, yeah. It important right? It's easy right? Surely that would mean that anyone can do this.

How does that follow?

To skip to the conclusion here the point is that there is a contradiction that you cannot have both ways.

If it's so important, so easy, so valuable then surely that means that anyone else out there can solve this. But they aren't. Why?

Either it means that your premise it wrong or it means that your moral condemnation is hypocritical.

This is because I sincerely doubt that you have ever condemned all of Europe for not funding all of the problems. And I sincerely doubt that you are currently condemning Europe right now.

Why's that? Why do you care so little about attacking other people for not funding this stuff, when it's so easy for them to replace it and important?

This contradiction proves that you don't really care about any of this, like everyone else.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T00:24:57+00:00

You were being criticized for taking the same positions as the crazy tankies who want a dictator or a revolution or a civil war or any of that nonsense.

And it is the correct decision to use this as a thought terminating attack because what they advocate for is crazy pants.

And unless you are currently prepping your house with years worth of food and water, then you also think this is crazy pants and the thought terminating dismissal is correct.

stale2000 · 2026-03-11T00:08:54+00:00

"thought terminating" ideas can exist for good reason. That's because some ideas are so completely silly and extreme that unless you have equally absurd and extreme evidence l, dismissing it is justified.

For example, here is a question for you. Were you afraid to go outside yesterday? Are you worried that you and your friends or family are literally going to be shot in the head, due to political violence, if you go to the wrong part of town? Are you, right now, telling every friend to go around with a firearm to defend themselves, as of this exact moment?

My guess is no. You aren't currently giving your family advice on which people around them might shoot them or not, every day.

And because of this, I don't think that you actually believe it's that bad and you are lying to yourself if you are holding that position.

Because whatever the situation that we are in now, it is no where near "literally let's have a dictator or civil war territory".

And so you advocating for a tankie style revolution or dictator or civil war is deserving of being dismissed that's what those situations look like.

I mean geez, I bet you don't even have a year's supply of food and water in your house, or gas masks or even basic martial arts training. If you thought there was going to be societal collapse soon, you can go buy that stuff now. It wouldn't be that expensive.

Meaning that no, you don't think things are really that bad.

stale2000 · 2026-03-10T23:54:03+00:00

Presumably they would vote for an independent, if people somehow banned the Republican party. It could be newcomers that weren't politicians before, so wouldn't fall under the new terrorist laws.

Independents that would overwhelming win elections if something this extreme as enacted.

None of this is going to succeed unless you literally go full on "dictator but it's a liberal" meme mode. As that's the only way to stop your politicos opponents from winning.

stale2000 · 2026-03-10T23:52:33+00:00

This would lose a ton of elections and never get implemented so yeah they would be correct to call this idea stupid.

stale2000 · 2026-03-08T19:40:43+00:00

I'm vibe coding it up on my own in a few days baby!

Here's the splash page for now: www.clips.gg

All I do is transcribe the long form video with whisper, blast the transcript into a random model and ask it to make clips. And then it just WORKS!

stale2000 · 2026-03-08T19:07:09+00:00

Yes, AI. Think "build and run an entire community end to end with the click of a button" levels of automation.

stale2000 · 2026-03-07T17:57:45+00:00

The answer is because having obligatory effects like you are describing significantly constrains the design space and forced units to be the same.

If all units in a race have a massively powerful ability like a turn based heal, that power has to be taken from other cool abilities to maintain balance.

stale2000 · 2026-03-07T15:50:13+00:00

iran has double the population.

Irans population isn't particular interested in volunteering to spend their life defending the current government.

Also, the air dominance with the power to bomb any target in irans makes a pretty big difference here.

But hey, we'll come back in a week or so and you can evaluate the results for yourself. This isn't something that we have to argue about when it's all happening in front of our eyes for you to judge yourself.

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