Expecting all the pundits crying about how Trump sold out his base to the warmongers, that he's owned by Israel, to memory hole that hysterical episode entirely! My feed this morning is even more full of TDS! It’s almost as if people are now pissed he didn’t go to war against Iran because it undermined their priors, and the cognitive dissonance is bothering them. Rip Trump all you want for the shitcoins, the free speech violations, the lack of accountability re Epstein and covid — those criticisms are deserved, But people wildly underestimate how propagandized they’ve been for the last 10 years and even longer — how someone like Trump (a man with gaudy taste, who openly boasts, who eats McDonalds and DGAF) is not of the class of people who should be president. The entire educational system has instructed you not to be like Trump, and a lot people went into debt to get the status boost, to learn the right way to be, and they fucking hate it that this dude, this perma-tanned asshole with the McMansion of all McMansions, the white gangsta-rapper of sorts, is now running the show and doing a better job than the self-deprecating, well-mannered “adults” in the room who they aspired to be. I suspect people will be even more pissed if there’s a lasting peace deal between Israel and Iran. People virtue signal their concern about the Iranian people or the Palestinians all the time, but that’s mostly just as fake as the missile exchanges we just saw the last couple days.

The narrative that Trump rugged his supporters before there’s been a single war casualty seems overeager. I can see on this protocol so many people badly want it to be the case. They badly want to believe that Israel owns Trump. Some love to rail about the JOOOOSSSSS, some just love that their TDS is validated, and he really is the bad guy. Maybe So. But also maybe not. And the more I see how badly they want it, the more I feel they’re going to be sorely disappointed, the more likely I believe it is there will be peace, and he might even get a prize for it. The world doesn’t conform to anyone’s preferences. So yes, while holding out hope for peace (and genuinely believing it’s the base case) might feel like “cope” in the face of so many people eager to point out how you’ve been rugged, I think it’s the other way around. The new narrative is the counter narrative. If Trump starts killing people, puts US boots and the ground and gets us in an Iraq-like quagmire, I’ll be the first to ditch him and admit I was wrong to have hoped for better. But until that happens, I think it’s less cope on my part, than dark wishful thinking on theirs that something bad happens so they can be right. Stay frosty af and doubt everything the news media are telling you. View quoted note →

Gonna speculate further here, based on something I experienced in my own life: Bombing Iran in a place that was evacuated was the easiest way to peace. You accede to the demands of the crazies in a nominal and inconsequential way, they let their guard down, then you do the opposite. When I used to host a show on Sirius XM, we had a program director who was always pushing cringey, shitty ideas on us. I used to argue with him, fight him over it all the time while everyone else was willing to comply. He just got more resolute in enforcing his retarded edicts, starting watching everything we did like a hawk. One day I realized that when you’re dealing with certain types of people, persusasion is not the way to go. Just yes them vaguely, give them the nominal version of what they want, then do your own thing. From that piont forward, he and I got along great, and he basically left us alone. The lesson I learned is that sometimes you can live up to your principles better by appearing to compromise than you can by standing on them and making noise. At 30, I wouldn’t have seen this, but in my 40s, I was able to manage it and take control back of the show. Obviously these situations are not the same, but I do think the sentiment is similar: “He bombed Iran when he promised to be the peace president!” Yes, he bombed them nominally, but unless he’s putting boots on the ground or bombing *people*, I don’t see this as especially significant. Might it lead to unforeseen consequences? Of course. Might I be wrong about his intentions? Of course. But sounds more like this is attack theater for a purpose other than war. That’s still my base case barring real escalation.

BTW I did vote for Trump, and I do think he’s doing a decent job under the circumstances, but (a) I could be wrong; and (b) I never attach myself to politicians and will throw him under the bus in two seconds if I think he deserves it. But I’m mostly posting in reaction to what IMO are some shockingly credulous takes about what’s happening right now.

What Trump is doing might now work out well for us or for Trump. That remains to be seen obviously. But this is a good example of what I consider an inadequate “theory of mind” re Trump. He “doesn’t know what strategy is”? You mean the guy who got elected president at least twice (probably three times) over the objections of the most powerful factions in the world including the entire corporate media? Trump might be in error, he might be a bad guy (I don’t think so, but I don’t know him, so I could be fooled), but he is definitely not stupid, inept or unstrategic. View quoted note →

Trump’s strategy seems so obvious to me, amazing so many still fall for it. It’s just a game of chicken over and over again. “I’m gonna crash into you, I’m crazy, I’ll do it, don’t make me crash into you and kill us both!, you better swerve!” That’s it. And the TDS crowd does him a huge favor by amplifying the idea that he’s an idiot, dangerous and crazy. "It’s WWIII! We’re all gonna die!" Even on nostr, the simpletons are like “see, he’s doing Netanyahu’s bidding! Regime change! The JOOOOOOOOOSSSSSS!!!!!!!” I’ll take the L and admit I’m wrong if this happens, but don’t see another Iraq or world war with him bombing sites with no one in them. Still think @EvanwritesonX on Twitter has it right — theater for the benefit of the warmongers ahead of a peace deal. But we’ll see.

not sure if this is a feature or a bug, but before something happens, I just believe what I think is true, and tune out almost everything that seems to contradict it. After it happens, if it turns out I was wrong, I obviously let go of that belief. But before it happens, I’d rather just trust my read completely and risk being wrong. Two examples: I really don’t think Trump will go to war with Iran. Of course, that could turn out to be wrong, but until it happens I’m tuning out all the Dave Smiths and Tucker Carlsons who are acting like it’s a done deal. Another is the bitcoin price. I have no idea why it’s not at 200K, but when I see anything less than a bullish prediction (even 150K) I dismiss it. Of course I could be wrong about that too, but I believe what I believe, and I don’t really care about what other people think.

Have a lot of respect for Christians, so many of them really held the line during the covid mania, might have been the difference between attempted and successful totalitarianism. Where I differ with them mostly is that I do not see the Kingdom of Heaven as a club for believers of a certain set of symbols and images. The path to Truth is individual, impossible to decree from outside.

The worm has already turned. The counter narratives are the new narratives. Stay frosty af.

Space may be the "final" frontier, but consciousness is the *only* frontier.

*Middle east theater, demonetizing everything, unsayable nature of reality* https://rumble.com/v6v1gul-simulation-theory.html