Left Defense
981 posts
Left Defense
@LeftDefense
I started this account to follow Soccer. Oops.
All over Katılım Nisan 2011
2.3K Takip Edilen292 Takipçiler
@elonmusk That stupid movie “The Woman King,” where she’s fighting against European “oppressors.” The real woman king of Dahomey was fighting for the “right” to slavery and engage in the slave trade.
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@JackPosobiec No need for a plenipotentiary when you have real time comms with the sovereign.
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Idiotic. The idea that President Trump would be completely cut off from negotiations with Iran is ridiculous. That isn’t how this ever works. It's the same on the Iranian side
Ehsan Taghadosi@demokracy
It seems that Vance arrived in Islamabad without the full authority to reach an agreement with Iran, unlike Ghalibaf. According to his own account, he called Trump more than 12 times during 21 hours of negotiations to discuss the issues. And according to Araghchi, he spoke with Netanyahu at least once during the Islamabad talks. The US needs a negotiator who can reach an agreement on the spot, not someone who keeps a phone in hand and, like a child, has to check everything with daddy or uncle.
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@wil_da_beast630 Everyone buys oil from us. Iran loses virtually all revenue.
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@GrayConnolly @ArthurLHerman Read it at your recommendation. Have just come across a discarded copy of his air commander’s memoir. Will be an interesting read I think.
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Noting the anniversary, everyone here should have @ArthurLHerman 's book
Gray Connolly@GrayConnolly
Strongly recommend @ArthurLHerman 's excellent recent biography of MacArthur. It is very detailed and yet briskly written for the interested lay reader. What MacArthur warned in 1950-1951 of what China would do, based on its historic ambitions & needs, has proved prophetic.
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@FischerKing64 Those houses are 40-50 miles away, but yes, there are closer ones that would have a rough day.
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Technically Mt. Rainier is an active volcano. One day all those lovely homes crawling up the hill will be smashed to pieces. This is what Mt. Saint Helens looked like in the 1970s - before it blew apart in 1980. A beautiful, almost perfectly symmetrical mountain.
AirWaterLand Photography@airwaterlandcom
Happy Friday from Steilacoom Wa!
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Not a standard primary in California. All parties are in the same primary. Top 2 go on to the general. Usually the top 2 are both Ds. This year, D vote is diluted-6 or so candidates-while there are only 2 Rs. Kneecapping Swallwell consolidates the D vote enough to get Porter (or Steyer) into the general.
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@LeftDefense Those R votes won't transfer to the primary winner? It's hard for me to believe two Rs are even leading the polls, but...
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I mean, giving timing and Roger Stone, almost certainly.
But, why are the Dems plotting vs him?
New York Post@nypost
Eric Swalwell alleges Dem plot behind sexual misconduct claims trib.al/vILZIXv
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@rruetigger Because a sizeable portion of Swallwell’s votes would end up going to her, pushing her into the top 2. Then she probably wins the general easily.
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@LeftDefense @wil_da_beast630 Why would she likely win in a run off if two Rs lead polls? I don't doubt you, just trying to understand.
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@wil_da_beast630 @chadfelixg It’s tactical.
What my friend does or wants to do: Euphemism. (Equity, democratize)
What my enemy does or wants to do: Dysphemism (extract, genocide)
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Almost literally every important left wing take - "Gaza genocide," "the war crime of killing enemies," "trans women," "systemic white supremacy," "heterosexual sex is rape," "asylum seekers," "undocumented migrants," "the modern Patriarchy," "my breeding kink as a female bottom" - is just based on twisting words into meaninglessness.
This^ is a common right wing point, but it is 120% accurate and always worth remembering. The great weakness of the post-modernist is that wordplay does NOT actually change reality. You can call a wolf or a pitbull ex- fighting dog a "lab mix" all you want; it will still eat your kid.
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@Cernovich And the other side thinks they’re stopping Hitler. Not a good dynamic.
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Yes. I’m watching people fail an IQ test. Losing these voters doesn’t mean they flip Democrat. It means they stay home. Disastrous. But you have to earn every vote.
Brian Piccolo@TheBrianPiccolo
@Cernovich Yes issues like Epstein, Iran & amnesty STILL probably aren’t enough to make the a lot of the fringe Trump coalition vote for Democrats but it sure is plenty enough to make them stay home !
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@omriceren @KurtSchlichter The DC reporters’ think tankers’ objective is not to be clear or correct, but to push an agenda. Their tactics are simple:
Something my friend does: Euphemism.
Something my enemy does: Dysphemism.
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One problem we're having in our foreign policy discourse is that DC reporters and think tankers have no idea what they're talking about and just write random words.
Here's the Pentagon's Law of War Manual: "Electric power stations are generally recognized to be of sufficient importance to a State's capacity to meet its wartime needs of communication, transport, and industry so as usually to qualify as military objectives during armed conflicts."
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@StefanMolyneux They start with “what would I do in their shoes,” and then figure something truly horrible would have to happen to get them to do it. For all their talk of empathy they cannot grasp that someone else does it because they like it.
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So many women cannot think of criminals as adults who made choices.
"You're just like me when I killed my sister accidentally when I was six"
MAZE@mazemoore
Gavin Newsom's wife recalls telling prisoners at San Quentin about running over and killing her sister with a golf cart. She said that she wasn't punished because it was an accident but that the prisoners are doing life even though theirs was "probably an accident too."
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@wil_da_beast630 Dysphemisms for things your opponents do. Euphemisms for things you do. Rinse, repeat.
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At some obvious level, it just......clearly is not true that all or most destruction of enemy infrastructure during hot wars constitutes "war crime."
No war would ever be possible if "bridges, roads, cities, and the grid" - space earlier today - were off limits.
It often seems like we have a secondary pseudo-elite - made up reporters, activists, "minority leaders" and such - which has been taught a few magic words and mostly engages in the parrot-like recitation of these as mantras.
"Racism"
"White supremacy"
"Patriarchy"
"War crime"
"Genocide"
"Settler colonialism"
"Resistance"
"Indigenous"
"Cishet"
Etc.
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If a man’s wife is expecting, he, too, is allowed to stay home from combat, right?
Right?
Left Defense@LeftDefense
@JoshuaLisec Fully 50% of the women in my brigade became pregnant between receiving orders or Iraq and the deployment itself a couple of months later in 2003.
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@JoshuaLisec Fully 50% of the women in my brigade became pregnant between receiving orders or Iraq and the deployment itself a couple of months later in 2003.
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It's a known strategy to get out of combat deployments. Male GWOT veterans have told me for more than a decade they observed female deployees suddenly finding themselves off the front lines and safe...
Honey Fish@keycrosser
@JoshuaLisec Deeply disturbed take of extorting offspring...
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The partisan lean on Reddit is much worse than this. I guess an ecosystem is only "broken" when the red side can be heard
Nate Silver@NateSilver538
These are the Twitter/X accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026. I suppose I had some intuition for how bad it was, but jeez, this is what you get when the ecosystem is broken.
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More viewpoint diversity would be better, but that's impossible to create when one side actively rejects it.
Before Elon bought Twitter, the right created alternative platforms out of necessity because the left severely censored right-wing views. When Elon bought Twitter, the left voluntarily created alternative platforms specifically to avoid contact with right-wing views, not because they were being censored.
So when leftists criticize X for its users skewing right, that's their own fault. They could always just... start posting on X to balance things out.
Bluesky is even more ideologically skewed than X, but to the left. But the right isn't able to meaningfully increase viewpoint diversity there because they get banned for uttering basic facts.
Nate Silver@NateSilver538
These are the Twitter/X accounts with the most engagement so far in 2026. I suppose I had some intuition for how bad it was, but jeez, this is what you get when the ecosystem is broken.
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This internal bloc of open traitors - the which we just let live and talk - is a real problem for the USA.
Caitlin Johnstone@caitoz
At this point if you're in the US military you have a moral obligation to start refusing orders. Desert. Become a conscientious objector. Ideally, get everyone together and launch a full-scale military coup. We're in "Mad King" territory. Someone's gotta do what needs to be done.
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@EzraACohen @JoshuaSteinman We will risk our lives and equipment to bring back our dead for burial.
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So many basement dwellers, kooks, and “experts” out this morning opining on the reported costs of the operation to rescue the downed Air Force crew.
Get out of your hole and live one day in America. There never was another option. We don’t leave Americans behind.
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