Joe Biden, Senator from Citibank (oops, DELAWARE), to Run for President

here's my wild, ted talk style idea:

what if we spend our time thinking about ways in which the united states can support people in india and china who are becoming less poor, rather than being asked to replicate my dna via fucking to overwhelm them like starcraft zergs? i don't want to compete against people! jfc

Good post, Aimless, and one that resonates more with me.

what if we spend our time thinking about ways in which the united states can support people in india and china who are becoming less poor, rather than being asked to replicate my dna via fucking to overwhelm them like starcraft zergs? i don't want to compete against people! jfc

Our declining standard of living has been propped up by exploitation of the 'developing' world - Yglesias can't countenance cooperation over subjugation because you have to start answering questions about how you maintain that consumer choice economy.

Karl otm, why is the language always about winning in a zero-sum way that entails others losing?

On the other hand, fucking is pretty enjoyable, let's not knock it

Fucking: arguably even more enjoyable when you don't think about all the diapers you might be changing down the road.

or whether your grandchildren will enjoy economic dominance over some other country's grandchildren while the skies are on fire

if the extra 650 million came from immigration/open borders, great.

tbf yglesias is very into this, he doesn't think we can fuck our way to 10^9

damn he really is dumb as a rock.

Bacharach's review is good; also, congrats on having the chutzpah to open a book review with the question "what is a book?" (though he might have taken the gag slightly further with a "Webster's defines a 'book' as..." followup)

i'm sticking with "interesting, if frought" in that it suggests an america with universal childcare, open borders, broad infrastructure and housing expansion... all wrapped in heavily patriotic, pro-fucking, populist, MAGA friendly (and as noted, generally absurd) rhetoric. Why a billion? because a billion is a big number that sticks in people's heads! As jiu-jitsu op-eds go, i think the piece has got some worth.

that said, on review, i thought the entirety of his argument was encompassed in that article and didn't catch that it was a book excerpt... I can't imagine what this would look like or even what more he could add over 250 pages.

Look, he just wants to make messy creampies in as many women as possible, and the book will serve as entree to the sort of fucking he desires.

xp i think you mean fraught!

(i say this only because in years of your posts you rarely misspell anything, so i figure you'd appreciate it)

frawt

Let us not discuss frotteurs (in this, of all threads)

On second thought, I am pretty sure frotting should not be a major topic in any politics thread

Lmao I clicked on the Biden thread and only saw table’s post

well now i know how to spell fraught! thank you for catching me!

Yglesias has been hyping the book on Twitter for at least a month (gotta respect the hustle), so I've had some time to consider the thesis. He's often good at reframing topics in provocative ways, and so this seems like an interesting thought experiment in that vein. Given his trollish tendencies, I think it's meant to be somewhat outlandish, to spur debate and force people to question their assumptions. That said, I can't imagine actually reading a book-length version of the argument.

lol rob

jesus fucking christ table

Corn pop, cream pie, come on Jack!

Joe Biden on U.S. military budget: “I’ve met with a number of my advisors and some have suggested in certain areas the budget is going to have to be increased.” The military budget is already up as much as $2 trillion/10 years under Trump https://t.co/PTBDfGR0el

— Jeff Stein (@JStein_WaPo) September 10, 2020

He also said he does not foresee major reductions in the U.S. defense budget as the military refocuses its attention to potential threats from “near-peer” powers such as China and Russia.

coolcool

whatever, don't care, as long as spending also increases everywhere else

I don’t think it works that way

Biden’s transition team leader, two weeks ago:
"When we get in, the pantry is going to be bare," he said. "When you see what Trump’s done to the deficit … forget about COVID-19, all the deficits that he built with the incredible tax cuts. So we’re going to be limited."

i'm shocked, shocked that biden turned out not to be an isolationist

Why have a new WPA to perhaps offset 14% unemployment, when you can pump money into a Cold War with China?

I’ll take the bait again.

If the left in the USA wants to have any effect on foreign policy, it has to develop a set of positions that preserve American national security while accomplishing left progressive goals. This means recognizing the incumbency of the military and the intelligence community and building a roster of left (ish) policy professionals who have the national security background to lead the departments of State and Defense and serve in the NSC and the ODNI. This means establishing sophisticated foreign policy planks that withstand scrutiny by cranky old hawks. It means compromise. There is not a light switch in the American foreign policy apparatus - diplomatic, informational, military, and economic - that anyone can just flip from “hegemonic capitalism” to “switzerland.”

We also actually owe things to other countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Defense_pact - those are set, no matter what the current asshole in the oval office thinks. If the US left wants to bring the troops back home and end American “imperialism” (bullshit abuse of the term, but let the kids have their fun), it will have to put in the effort to create the infrastructure of an alternative. This has yet to even begin, as far as I can see.

btw if that came across like an Aimless post, well, fuck y’all Aimless haters

I won't take the bait because I don't think you're reachable on any of that. The issue with Biden's quote, though, isn't about 'left foreign policy' or 'national security,' it's about the further expansion of the bloated defense budget. A warning shot that we're getting austerity except for F-35s and refurbed secret bases in central Asia should terrify everyone, being both bad policy and bad politics - it never works out that 'spending also increases everywhere else.'

Obama took office in 2009 with official unemployment half of what Biden's going to be looking at. The 2022 midterms are going to come fast.

Yes, even if you are for robust national security and defense treaties, that all should still be achievable with a leaner defense budget. It has grown out of control continuously since WW2 and needs to be reined in and redirected towards dozens of other government programs that have been bled dry.

to me, the fact that politicians across the spectrum constantly play at this idea that there's no funding for so many critical items is the bigger scandal here, while the defense budget is this massive untouchable object that we can't dare imagine shrinking even a little

let’s talk about all those winning politicians who’ve campaigned on reducing the size of the annual NDAA. let’s talk about the ones who made it a big part of their platform and so we personally donated to them, and then they won.

it’s like “Hey, this sucks!!!” has been the entire argument for how long?

Just got back from the centrist rally. Amazing turnout. Thousands of people holding hands and chanting “Better things aren’t possible”

— internet h*ppo (@InternetHippo) July 1, 2017

https://media.nationalpriorities.org/uploads/trump2019_discpie_unbranded_large.png

the fuck outta here

There is not a light switch in the American foreign policy apparatus - diplomatic, informational, military, and economic - that anyone can just flip from “hegemonic capitalism” to “switzerland.”

This is a joke argument, right?

https://content.gallup.com/origin/gallupinc/GallupSpaces/Production/Cms/POLL/joscppgqj0-hpt5qrxb3ua.png

Better to wait a little longer and drive that 17% down, it's only at a 30-year low.

If you don't have the guts to even brook the conversation about even a minor reallocation of defense spending—during a pandemic with congress deadlocked on food and housing assistance—you don't deserve to be in charge of this country.

"deserve" I don't even know what that means

The shareholders agree, milo

This is a joke argument, right?

― error prone wolf syndicate (Hadrian VIII), Friday, 11 September 2020 bookmarkflaglink

If this is what the adults are coming up with I'm with the kids

"deserve" I don't even know what that means

The guy publicly advocating for increasing the budget of what is already by many orders of magnitude the largest amount spent on the biggest and most draconian military industrial complex on the face of the Earth doesn't either. He is a public mouthpiece and puppet of the interests that have gotten him into this position of power in his political career and little else at this point in his life. Being insulated from any opportunity of ever being confronted about who he is and what he "deserves" as a human being is part of the job.

If the left in the USA wants to have any effect on foreign policy, it has to develop a set of positions that preserve American national security while accomplishing left progressive goals. This means recognizing the incumbency of the military and the intelligence community and building a roster of left (ish) policy professionals who have the national security background to lead the departments of State and Defense and serve in the NSC and the ODNI.

The #1 threat to "American national security" is, and for the past ~50 years, always has been the intentional and unlawful destabilization of foreign nations and governments by those very military and intelligence apparatuses. If the Left wants to have any meaningful impact on foreign policy and global stability, it must be actively combating the endless, draconian and unilateral expansion of these institutions and their hazardous influence on our governance. Cozying up to and training people to be swallowed up into the churn of these bureaucracies in some hope of "bipartisan" reform from the inside is as hopeless and misguided as similar attempts to "reform" our corrupt police forces (who share an ideological and functional influence from if not direct link to these military and intelligence communities) from "good cops on the inside" have been.

Oh, and we've HAD progressive voices deeply embedded into these communities throughout history already; the filth they encounter in their line of work has driven many of them, from Ellsberg to McGehee to Snowden and others, to outright defection and subsequent whistleblowing of the corruption, unlawful acts, and abuses of power they've encountered first hand in those environments. We should take their advice and listen to what they've had to say about how the insides of these institutions operate, instead of smearing them as stooges, spies, or Russian assets as many self professed "progressives" have had a sad tendency to do throughout the years.

I'm not even saying Biden needs to make reductions to the defense budget part of his campaign, but running on massive increases is the kind of 6th dimensional nonsense that is totally unnecessary.

Tombot, to me your post reads very weird because it seems obvious to me that a Left critique of the military *starts* with unpacking the sacrosanct concept of "national security" which is a shibboleth for the entire package of violent imperial policy, the reification of a fictitious "nation" invented by settler colonialism, the insistence upon "borders," AND the eternal funnelling-away of the lion's share of discretionary spending from all the things the Left cares about. "national security" has to be redefined, discredited, and/or discarded, not accepted as the first move. even the Right understands this, hence the substitution of fascist "homeland" for the apparently too-vague "nation."

also, biden not being a left candidate anyway, Moodles otm

Ok scoffing at American "imperialism" while arguing that the left can only gain leverage over foreign policy not by getting elected but by joining & appeasing the military, intelligence, and diplomatic apparatus made me chuckle.

Doctor C otm. Deluded to be talking about needing to spend trillions on 'national security' when people are protesting over systemic oppression and other domestic issues on a daily basis while armed counterprotestors are showing up to try to intimidate them into silence.

that we are debating on ilx the wisdom—politically or practially—of an incremental change to this grotesque, immoral budget really bums me out

Cosign with Hadrian, and esp. with Trevor phillips. The idea that the US must be a 'force for good' in the world is an absolute nonsensical farce for anyone who has studied the 'good' that the US MIC has wrought on the world. I mean, here we are on the anniversary of 9/11, and what do we have to show for the war on terror? Millions dead and tens of millions displaced, precipitating supposedly more of a need to beef up the MIC. It's a recursive cycle and it has to stop.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/08/magazine/displaced-war-on-terror.html