Patrick "Inverted Vibe Curve" Blanchfield

that's what might be the key difference in the end: the idea that they could actually protect "us" - let alone care to try - is laughable

oh yeah no question or disagreement - all this nonsense about calling it war/uncalling it war is exactly what to expect two decades plus after the AUMF for example

it's not like this isn't an approach and appeal that has served various figures in the history of Israeli politics dependably in the past and present

I suspect there are Americans in power for whom making the world less safe for Americans synergizes nicely with claims that the US - authoritarian and unsafe - is the only place for Americans to be safe, the only thing providing ANY safety for Americans anywhere, etc.

I wonder about that, though

and to be even clearer I have a strong suspicion that counting on that inevitability may even be part of the plan, for some! but doubtless even some in the most cynical and self-interested military circles must be leery of what this exposes them and theirs to

I also have no doubt that when the pushback and blowback happen we'll have zero compunctions about calling those who do it terrorists, threats to international law, etc. and hypocrisy is a meaningless analytic. I am just trying to clock pace of change and degree of blatancy

please don't misunderstand: I have zero illusions about US history both recent and deep with all these things and worse (IE Iran Air 655). but I am trying to recall a prior time when all these ostensible norms were transgressed simultaneously and with such proud glee

am I correct in thinking the US no longer has any pretense about even pretending RE: norms RE: how heads of state can be assassinated, diplomatic negotiations can be ruses for preemptive attacks (or targets outright), ships flying foreign flags can be ambushed and sunk in international waters, etc?

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polymarket on if we'll learn a lesson after 9/11 III

omg

@patblanchfield.bsky.social. vindication of your thesis of COD series over and over and over. Hate to see it.

Sunny boys selling gas out of plastic garbage cans.

You laughed at these men, who's laughing now?

while you were gambling on cryptocurrencies and online prediction markets I was preparing for the future by filling every container in my household with premium gasoline. my trunk sloshes to the brim. kiddie pools fill my basement. its called accquiring liquid assets

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Mockery as Trump glitches during Medal of Honor ceremony: 'Brain is plaque and grease' People had sharp reactions Monday after President Donald Trump dropped a confusing remark during a Medal of Honor speech in Washington, D.C. Trump spoke during the ceremony — his first time speaking l...

lmao www.rawstory.com/donald-trump...

Think hard Pete, doe anyone else pay the price?

eldritch boys who think and live and aeons. when they go they sleep and dream and never die

the boys are back in town but that town is omelas

the "boys are back in town" may be a happy anthem but its very pleasure also depends on sorrow. for while we celebrate the boys return we also know they must leave. even now the hour of their departure draws close. perhaps we ourselves will be the ones who drive them away

This is a phenomenal book. Pick it up if you can!

its a funny parapraxis on trumps part but also: we suckers are all gonna have pay PT barnum in the end

You Can Just Do Things | Patrick Blanchfield As ever, the horrors Trump embodies implicate more than just his singular odious person. His “habit of abusing power to force his will upon an uncooperative world”—in David Frum’s formulation over the...

What differentiates Trump from his predecessors is his total inability to conjure the pretense of at least pretending to publicly care about pretense. www.nplusonemag.com/online-only/...

I’ll take it!

can try to take heart in the need for such disconnection being rooted in soulless loneliness. No other way to maintain that level of aloof

like, much as it was so hard to overcome being raised to believe in the existence of hell, and thus all the more dysphoric to now find myself wishing so many people could go rot there, it's really queasy to find myself - despite myself - envying trumps utterly unflappable lazy indifference

alongside the corrosive buildup of richly deserved but fruitless rage at so many powerful and shameless people another cumulative toll of these years is the dysphoric experience of simultaneously envying yet reeling from the ability of stone cold monsters to give so few fucks about anything

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"No matter how crude or clumsy Trump may be in forcing his will upon the world, his grandiose and murderous entitlement is directly continuous with his predecessors’."