Solving the problem of Iran

The international situation has somewhat updated since I responded to Daisy Cousins with a Darkest Timeline video, some changes for the better, some for the worse. Biden was willing to keep the Ukraine war going to the last Ukrainian, but fortunately didn’t put any U.S. troops (that we know of) into the fray. Trump has cut them off pretty harshly, which is good. The situation with China and Taiwan isn’t better, but it isn’t exactly worse either. However, the Middle East is in horrible shape right now.

This isn’t the fault of Trump or Biden, really. It is the fault of Hamas. From what I have gathered, the Palestinians were fed up with Hamas, and were ready to act against them, so Hamas attacked Israel as a way to divert all attention. Israel, predictably, retaliated against Hamas. As a result, tensions are escalating between the United States and Iran, again. Trump, unfortunately, is reacting to Iran about the same way that all other Presidents have. This is particularly unfortunate because he is supposed to be the president who isn’t interested in foreign policy. Now he’s authorizing bombings in Yemen for reasons no reasonable person can understand. Warmongers can understand it, but reasonable people can’t.

So now the leaders of the United States and Iran are blustering at each other. Neither wants to back down, neither wants to lose face.

The sad part is there is a very - absurdly - simple solution to the problem of Iran.

If you want peace, then the solution is for the US to drop all sanctions against Iran. All of them, unconditionally. This may sound counter-intuitive, but that’s because it is. The best solution actually is to forget about saving face and to do the right thing.

Problematic governments usually are able to maintain their grip on power by focusing their population on an external foe. The leadership of Iran blames their problems on the United States, and also on Israel to a lesser extent. There are actual grounds for them to blame the US, because the sanctions are real and have been since the 1979 revolution. Those sanctions have been bad for Iran, but as usual sanctions are ineffective at convincing a people to overthrow a bad government. The sanctions hurt the common people, and the government blames the country imposing sanctions.

If the United States were to drop all sanctions, that would remove the enemy that the Iranian government relies on to maintain power.

Now that does not mean the Iranian government would automatically fall. It just means that in order to avoid falling they would be too busy on internal restructuring to interact strongly in international relations. Without an external enemy to distract the people, the people will not be as easily distracted. Yes, the Iranian government may try to focus the people on Israel, but that is silly. Israel isn’t nearly as powerful as the United States, even after the nuclear arsenal is accounted for.

The people of Iran, from what I understand, aren’t exactly fond of their own government. Expats from Iran feel very free to criticize that government, and even internally there are protests against the strictness of their government. Many people seem unhappy with the religious rule, and would like something different.

Some would say this move would embolden Iran. It does seem it might do so, but I think it would be only a temporary boost. Of course the current Iranian government is a result of revolt against the previous Iranian government, and the previous Iranian government was heavily backed by the CIA. There will be a few rounds of celebration that “the great Satan” was defeated. Sooner or later the people will notice that the justification for their oppression has disappeared.

At that point the belligerence of that government would crumble. They would be forced to reform whether they want to or not, because otherwise they would be tossed out of power the way the previous government was. Once that happens, the lack of sanctions will push Iran to become more like the country that the sanctions are meant to force them to become.

As such, the improbable move of normalizing relations with Iran will have two beneficial results. First the Iranian government would be forced by their own people to improve. Second, one of the danger spots of the world is resolved and the world becomes a much safer place.

Republican Collectivism Follow Up

In my previous video “Republican Collectivism is different from Democrat Collectivism” I made three basic points. First, Democrats make collective judgments based on A, B, and C. Second, Republicans make collective judgments based on D, E, and F. Third, Democrats refuse to believe that anyone has different standards than they do and insist Republicans secretly believe A, B, and C and only use D, E, and F as cover.

I got reactions in my comments (and also my like-dislike ratio) essentially saying that I’m wrong and that Republicans do actually use A, B, and C, just like Democrats do, but don’t admit it.

To those telling me that I’m wrong, thank you for showing that I am right.

On an internet forum one time I was challenged to say something negative about the party and candidates I support. This was in response to trying to get major party supporters to do the same about their own candidates. I think I disappointed the person who gave me the challenge because I responded with my opinion about the last several Libertarian Party candidates for President, when he was hoping I’d talk about the Republican Party. He was forced to concede that I had followed through on his request though.

So I pointed out that in my opinion, the Barr/Root ticket was the worst we had ever run. I also stated that I wasn’t thrilled with the two times Gary Johnson ran. The most controversial part of my post was when I wrote that Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen were (to that point) the most successful campaign the Libertarian Party had run in many years.

One of the other forum participants was flummoxed by the idea that I would call the Jorgensen campaign successful, because she didn’t win, and only a winning campaign could be called successful.

My reply was simple. I said “Since everyone judges by the exact same standards you do, then of course it wasn’t successful. Oh, but I called it successful. Maybe I’m using different standards.”

Even after that he still couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that I would call her campaign successful, because in his mind there is only one standard. He insists that a successful campaign is one that wins, and that everyone agrees with his definition of a successful campaign.

He couldn’t believe that other people judge things differently from how he does. This guy isn’t stupid, but he does hold a position that I think is stupid. I quickly realized there was no way I could ever convince him that I held a different standard and dropped the discussion with him.

In the comments to my previous video, we see people who cannot understand that there are people who hold different standards than they do. They came in to my comments to tell me that I’m wrong, that the Republicans really do judge by standards A, B, and C.

The reason Republicans do indeed judge by standards A, B, and C? Because the people telling me that I’m wrong judge by A, B, and C, and therefore everyone else does as well.

When I point out that they generally judge by D, E, an F, they did exactly what I described before, and insisted those were just cover stories to prevent people from knowing that the evil Republicans are evil for judging by A, B, and C, just like those making the comments do.

It seems a bit of a farce.

Okay, so the standard in particular that I said Democrats use and Republicans don’t use is race. Of course not all Democrats do this, but a lot of the rhetoric put out by those who are arguing on behalf of the party or the ideals is very racially focused. The so-called Progressive Stack makes a big deal about race. Also sex, gender, orientation, and to a certain extent religion.

I pointed out that Republicans generally prefer to use citizen versus legal alien versus illegal alien, and also law abiding versus criminal.

At the start of this video, I said my third point in the previous video was that Democrats refuse to believe that anyone has different standards than they do and insist Republicans secretly believe A, B, and C and only use D, E, and F as cover. So to tie it together, Democrats say “Republicans secretly make it about race just like we do, but they use law abiding versus criminal as a cover, and they use citizen versus legal alien versus illegal alien as a cover.”

I had people coming in to the comments to say “Republicans do so make it about race, just using the other stuff as a cover.”

So, to those angry commenters, thank you for proving my point. You are living demonstrations of everything I was talking about.

To everyone else who can understand the concept of “they judge by a different standard than I do,” let us all point and laugh at those commenters. They are so sadly desperate for attention anyway.

Republican Collectivism is different from Democrat Collectivism

It is well known that the Democrats divide people into collective groups by which to judge them, categorize them, determine their amount of oppression or privilege, and so on. They divide people by race, by sex, by gender, by sexual orientation, by religion to a certain extent, and other categories as well. That is why others who are outside the Democratic Party consider them to be racist, sexist, et cetera, because they obsessively judge people into increasingly minute racial categories. In the past it was white or non-white, now it is BIPOC. In addition to racial categories, with B and I in one group, POC in a second group, and white in a third group, they do use gender based and sex based classification.

What isn’t seen as much is that Republicans also create their collective groups, but they don’t do so based on race. Their primary division is citizen and non-citizen. There are sub-divisions, such as legal aliens and illegal aliens. They have their hierarchy, based not on race but on citizenship. They also have a hierarchy based on law abiding and criminal, but for some crimes people can be redeemed because of the religious nature of many Republicans that allows them to accept repentance and give forgiveness.

Based on that, the Republican drive to close the border and remove illegal aliens makes some sense, from within their paradigm. They see those who are legally here, those who are illegally here, and want to remove the latter. The former includes citizens and legal aliens. The latter includes non-citizens and criminals.

What results is a very interesting consequence. Some people are able to say “they are judging by a different standard than I am”. Other people are not. Democrats are very bad at that, and have shown themselves to be so on very many issues. Since for them, race is a primary issue, they assume for everyone else that race is a primary issue. Therefore they assume that Republicans are using citizenship and legality as code words for race.

Meanwhile Republicans think Democrats are making a confession, thinking that criminal equals non-white.

If only it were that simple.

When Republicans accuse Democrats of saying “oh you think non-citizen and criminal describe minorities” the Democrats see that as Republicans saying “you’ve caught us and are trying to shift the blame.” Neither side is talking the language of the other.

Democrats probably don’t automatically equate non-citizen and criminal with minorities. They just think that since Republicans “obviously” think the same way they do that it must be code words to disguise the exact same classification. Meanwhile Republicans don’t care about the race of the law-abiding citizen, they care that the person is a law-abiding citizen.

I tried to explain this once to some Democrats and people farther left. I described small town Americana, a place they are convinced is full of backwards deplorable racists clinging to their bibles and guns.

In this stereotypical small town, most of the people work in the same one or two businesses. Some of them go to the Baptist church, others to the Methodist church. Their kids all go to the same High School, and most of them shop at the same stores. They don’t see each other as all that different, but they see people from outside their town as different. In particular they see people from the big cities as different.

And then the Democrats see that and misinterpret that collectivist view as racial again, trying to force-map white onto rural and black onto urban.

I don’t endorse either kind of collectivism. But I am doing better than the Democrats by at least noticing what collectivism people are using to make their own judgments instead of using different collectivisms. Republicans can see that Democrats see everything through a racial lens. Republican can see that Democrats don’t share the Republican lens of law abiding vs. criminal or citizen vs. non-citizen. Democrats cannot see that others don’t see everything through a racial lens.

The only explanation I can see is that the Republican distinction is more subtle, because it crosses racial and ethnic lines. And since it is more subtle even some libertarians fall for it, though they should know better. Most do know better, but a few fall for it. Then again, maybe the reason Democrats don’t see it is because it seems to be hard for Democrats to even see that other viewpoints can exist in the first place. They instead think that everyone agrees with their premises and choose different conclusions out of a desire to be evil.

The Scouts are okay

The Economy Matters, Stupid

I was watching some videos by a guy named “Jack Morgan RLM”. He’s okay, I enjoyed his videos. It also served to remind me of the street view of the economy. I often look at the economy from the point of view of an economist, tracking rates and statistics. It never hurts to actually talk to average people. To round out my point of view I also watch videos from people who work in real estate, car sales, and hiring. This guy speaks as an average guy. I needed to hear it. I know the economy is in bad shape, but watching him reminded me that a bad economy isn’t a bunch of bad numbers, it is actually people hurting from the effects of the bad economy.

I studied economics so I could understand why the economy does what it does. Not everyone does that, and that’s okay. Not everyone has the same interests. I could go on at length about symptoms and causes for economic phenomena, this guy can’t. But he can very clearly see the end result of everything I studied.

The automobile market is in shambles. New cars aren’t selling. They have been loaded up with options so that they would sell for more and make more profit for companies and dealers. The have been loaded up with so many options that regular people can no longer afford them. He shares stories about people who can’t afford to get a car.

The real estate market is heavily unbalanced. Housing prices are at a high right now, but even when they are low they are proportionally more expensive than they were a generation ago. Couple that with higher interest rates and that makes housing unaffordable. He shares stories about people who can’t afford housing.

Inflation has driven up food prices. Those who are poor spend a greater portion of their income on food than any other income bracket. I can talk about the money supply, the weight of food in the CPI, and other such matters. He shares stories about people who can’t afford food.

The cost of health care has risen far faster than inflation. Economists of various schools argue about why. I favor one side of the debate, and can talk about that at length. He shares stories about people who can’t afford health care.

I think every economist should find someone like him to listen to, to remind them that all of the numbers they watch are derived from real actual people who suffer the ill effects of those numbers.

Back in 1992, when Bill Clinton was running against George Bush, Clinton knew that foreign policy was where Bush was strongest, having just thrown a small country against the wall to remind the world that the USA was strong. So Clinton didn’t talk about foreign policy. One of the slogans of his campaign was “it’s the economy, stupid.” It worked. Bush had no good answer to that.

Now in the year 2024, we have another slogan in play. “The economy is actually good, stupid.” The economic indicators are all over the place, but no the economy isn’t in good shape. The people are being told that the economy is good, that they’re better off than they think they are, that anyone saying otherwise is wrong. Never mind the evidence of their own eyes. If people cannot afford food, housing, and transportation, that isn’t because there is anything wrong with the economy. They just have the wrong perspective.

Economists forgetting that they are talking about people is part of the problem, but deliberately forgetting is a political aspect of their job. There are economists whose declarations aren’t based on economic data but instead on political inclinations. In election years Republican economists and Democrat economists often make exactly opposite economic announcements in order to support their own candidate. The economy is either good or bad based on if that is good for their side.

Those people are an extra step removed from the people who are impacted by the economy. Not only are they the single step removed that all economists must be because they have to look at a bigger picture, they are an additional step of ignoring even that bigger picture to help their side. They slant all economic news to help their party, so they can’t even be called economists in the first place.

If economists are removed from the man on the street, these people are even more so. They not only don’t spend time with the man on the street, they actively denigrate him as unimportant.

“The economy is good, stupid.” If you pay attention to certain economic indicators, ignore others, and don’t do any of your own shopping because you are wealthy, then sure the economy is doing well. All you have to do is know nothing about how the regular people are doing and slant the economic news to help your side of the political divide.

SEC vs. Jarkesy

Potentially the most important SCOTUS case in decades.

The Current War is always different