The point is the endgame.
If it is to strike back to stop the aggression even taking out the leadership… That’s one thing that can end a conflict.
If you say it most go as far against the citizens of Israel as the IDF has gone against the citizens of Gaza, that degree of vengeance back and forth can never be reasonably resolved. Assuming the entire citizenry must be made to pay for the sins of the leadership is a road to ever escalating violence.
Eye for an eye and the world goes blind
At multiple government offices I have seen them bring out someone to match the language spoken when someone has no or poor English.
It is far easier to speak English because practically speaking English is most prevalent, but it’s not like inability to speak English is a crime (though with this administration…)
“Our gods are dead. Ancient Klingon warriors slew them a millennia ago. They were more trouble than they were worth.” -Worf
Just talked to someone here on business and he was unfair to have been sent here and his family had wanted to go to American amusement parks for a vacation and he said absolutely no way with this administration.
If they draft near-revolutionary people they get access to military equipment and incleases likelihood of actual revolution. If you concentrate them then they can coalesce as a group. If you spread them out then a lot of units will be dragged down.
Using ICE to round up dissenters avoids the risk of arming the would-be revolutionaries with credible military equipment.
Yeah, I thought if anything, Vietnam tought the lesson that the draft is a terrible idea for overseas deployment.
Of course, learning from history is not exactly the style of this administration.
To split hairs, I think it can be conceivable, but just not possible to assign a viable probability to.
Some one could have conceived a black swan, but since it had never ever happened, there was no data to drive a percent chance of finding one
Some virus that instead of killing anyone just manages to somehow make everyone compulsively tell the truth. Could be imagined, but it would be ridiculous to ask how that possibility is accommodated for in someones financial model.
Even if someone could somehow define a probability for that event, no way of really modeling the outcome since the ability to lie has been always part of the economy.
I think the lens of “conservative” versus “liberal” is a fairly narrow and contextual one in general anyway… It’s ‘good enough’ in American politics but even then…
Ah, ok. I do wonder if at least the general divide between people opting to stay out of Tehran verus in the city is there with respect to being against or for the government. I could believe a bunch of people just want to make a living, but of those that support or reject the government, is there a divide between rural and urban?
Even without free elections, you are going to have that same dynamic present.
I don’t know if Hegseth would be inclined to do this, but I could imagine there being a subculture among some commanders that would manifest this way.
They wouldn’t be interested in penalizing the ‘right’ people, they would be more interested in maximizing damage… Which means the blue areas will likely bear most of the fallout.
Broadly an “everyone is shit here” scenario.
Because it’s not a very compelling theory that people particularly say this one out over various reasons. The turnout was actually above average by a few percent. It also assumes that most of those non voters would have gone against Trump. Which is far from assured
Yes, in competitive states, they when by playing the reasonable centrist that swears they are willing to stand up to their party…
Never actually doing so when it could actually matter.
This was my thought as well. Perhaps the best way to step back from tariffs without looking like chickening out, and about the right time for campaign season to ramp up.
If his admin has any sense of strategy, they’ll take the out and then brag about price reductions in summer.
My belief has been they had to totally screw up 2025 to make people feel like 2026 would be getting better. I anticipate too many folks will just see year to year improvement and not reflect on why 2025 was a particularly rough year.
If their costs went up by 3%, they could hold prices level by taking the credit card fee out and making it an explicit surcharge.
The repercussions will be at worst felt by the grunts on the ground, and those repercussions will be used as an excuse to somehow disregard contentious voting site results…
Well, also, strategically any pain for Iran is good for Ukraine, since Iran supplies Russia.