Trump is like that friend from middle school or high school who would say an unfunny joke or something distasteful in an attempt to always be the center of attention. Most times people around them just laugh it off, and move on.
I think the men's hockey team got caught in that kind of moment. Some of them might have felt a momentary ping of discomfort. But no one wants to be the buzz killer who stops conversation dead just to draw attention to it, esp at a moment like that.
Let's be graceful to the men's hockey team and not make too much of this.
"NHL Players are Independents". FTFY. You say that NFL has the most unaffiliated but the chart says NHL has more by percentage. While the NHL is undoubtedly more Republican than other leagues, it seems to take a partisan-colored lens to call it Republican.
I've seen a lot of tech guys asking around about where they can donate anti-trump money. Now might be a good time to run a fresh guide for underfunded moderate candidates
I hope that it all works out. Sincerely. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad and so is nuclear proliferation.
Years ago, there was a deal in place — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had a lot of downsides from the standpoint of Iran’s regional adversaries but which did a good job of ensuring a non-nuclear Iran. A set of hawks in the United States did not like JCPOA, criticized it at the time, worked to undermine its implementation, and then in Trump’s first term tore it up in a way that made renewed diplomacy under Biden essentially impossible.
During these debates, the pro-JCPOA side always maintained that the other option was war.
The opponents could have said, “that’s true, the likely alternative to JCPOA is war.” That would have been an interesting debate. But they did not say that. In fact, they loudly denied it. They would get extremely angry if you suggested their real alternative was not a better deal but war. I witnessed these arguments. I participated in them. They were vicious and they continued for years.
War is an inherently uncertain thing. Civilian outsiders are not privy to everything that is going on. The known unknowns are everywhere. Political leaders are asking their citizens to trust them, to trust that they are acting on good information and using sound judgment.
In this case, the arc of the past decade+ of arguing about Iran and JCPOA is either that the hawks have displayed terrible judgment about the real alternatives to JCPOA or else that they have been lying to us all along and trying to manipulate the situation to this end. Most likely, it is some of both.
I hope that it all works out. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad. Nuclear proliferation is bad. But war is an uncertain enterprise and I am not comfortable being led into war by a group of people who specifically assured us — over a period of over ten years — that their approach to Iran was not going to lead to lead to war when their opponents on the other side saw this much more clearly.
In general, I wish that people on both the right- and left-wing sides of debates about the Middle East paid more genuine attention to global humanitarian issues. We donate 10% of our Slow Boring revenue to GiveWell’s curated list of highly effective global public health charities and lead an annual Give Directly fundraiser that drives hundreds of thousands of dollars to desperately poor people in Africa. It is very possible to do things to help people in the world that do not involve military force or trying to tackle the least-tractable geopolitical conflicts in the world.
It would be nice to see American foreign policy made by people with integrity and a solid track record of accurate statements and epistemic humility. We do not have that and I fear for the worst, but hope it will work out despite the obvious problems."
I think matt's take it good, and much better than what most left of center peeps are saying right now.
On a related topic (since we might not get a thread or a mailbag anytime soon), here is an amusing hypothetical:
If you were a long serving Iranian foreign minister and you wanted to engineer regime change in your own country, how would you have gone about doing that?
So, what is Trump's plan for Iran? I know that he wants a regime change, but wanting isn't getting. From reading Brett Devereaux's ACOUP blog (excellent, highly recommended) I understand that it's very hard/impossible to achieve regime change with bombing/missile strikes only; you need boots on the ground. Trump isn't going to deploy boots on the ground in Iran, is he? He'll wreck a bunch of stuff/kill some people with missiles, declare "Mission Accomplished," and move on to a new shiny object. Am I wrong?
I've met several Iranian immigrants and US citizens of Iranian ancestry during my time in academia, and I feel really bad for them.
Chaos and bloodshed seem to be the most likely short term outcomes. The Iranian regime was not a single person focus like Saddam, Bashad, Gaddafi, etc. It is a system with shared power and a controlling substructure in the form of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. You can't "decapitate" that system, it needs to be dug out, root and branch, and the idea those guys go down peacefully seems farcical.
I think his desire for regime change is secondary to his desire for domestic political success. So I don't think he will deploy boots on the ground, but he may or may not declare Mission Accomplished if the regime hasn't in fact collapsed. He may just keeping bombing indefinitely, and try to use the ongoing conflict to own the libs.
Second regime decapitated this year (an Israeli office told Reuters they found his body, FWIW). Turning into a monthly thing. This seems more targeted at the regime than an individual (like in Maduro's) case, but we'll see what happens. Maybe Israel will be the occupying ground force? Getting enmeshed in a quagmire with Bibi seems highly questionable, but we'll see what happens.
And, of course, doing this without Congressional approval seems blatantly unconstitutional, but Congressional Republicans aren't willing to restrain him either.
As an addendum: Trump blows something up -> Trump feels like a big man -> Trump does bad things to US citizens and residents because he feels strong. That's somewhat of a pattern at this point.
> I've met several Iranian immigrants and US citizens of Iranian ancestry during my time in academia, and I feel really bad for them.
I know many as well. I've long felt bad that they had to escape a religious dictatorship to come here. I've felt bad that they've often had difficulties returning, not seeing loved ones for a decade (including before they passed) while they awaited US citizenship. I've felt bad that the door they came through has all but closed now. Iran is the country in the Middle East with the starkest incongruity between its people and its government. While there are risks, and feelings about the effort will no doubt be complicated, the status quo had become untenable. The people of Iran have deserved better for over 45 years, and I hope they at least have a shot at getting it now.
>I hope they at least have a shot at getting it now
I mean... maybe?... Given that this war was started by a pig-ignorant lackwit who acts first and thinks never, I think the above statement is way too optimistic. Hegseth already said that the US government is not concerned with any pansy-ass prissy lib concerns like "democracy" or "nation-building."
My views probably align with the median reader of slow boring (as far as I can tell) and I've never been more cynical about the state of USA affairs than I am under Trump 47. The amount of genuinely disturbing violation of rights and bold embrace of cruelty and abuse of power has me really down. All of that is why it was extra disappointing to me when it seemed like the most visceral reaction I've seen in media/social media - particularly by the run-of-the-mill feminist influencer circle, was about the "failure of the men in the US men's hockey room to push back against the sexism of Trump and their teammates".
With everything else going on - it was pretty appalling to me that this topic is what seemed to be getting more engagement than anything else, especially given what was being claimed. The fact that some of the men in the room supposedly weren't OK with the joke but "allowing it to happen is what perpetuates sexism". Awkwardly laughing at something that makes you uncomfortable is literally the most natural human reaction to that situation when you aren't really the center of attention. What do these feminist influencers expect men in that situation to do? Start an argument with the president in front of the entire locker room?
I mean, you're right, but in defense of the feminists who got upset about this, Trump has a long and depressing history of hideously sexist words and actions. So I understand that people got upset, it's not that this incident in and of itself is a big deal, it's just another brick in the fugly wall of Everything Trump Touches Turns to Shit. (Personally, I was much more upset about Trump saying, "Quiet, piggy" to a female reporter who asked him a question he didn't like.)
Many years ago I wrote how Major League Baseball is failing gay athletes, I wrote this after a player for the Cleveland Indians came out as gay...after his playing career ended. Now, years later, I realize it's not the league but the players themselves who are holding the league back. It's incredibly disappointing.
Nobody will care about how people responded to the hockey team in a month.
I’m writing this after Trump attacked Iran, so context, but a good reminder that the petty little stuff people argue about for 42 seconds don’t matter in elections. Attacks on other countries will
This whole controversy is dumb, sorry. Halina Bennet and her cohort spend all day thinking about politics and policy and have formulated a point of view that fuels their writing. Hockey players spend their days practicing and playing hockey. Their politics can never be the same as your politics. But everyone on here (an ecosystem brimming with writers and would-be writers) treats them as if they're the same thing.
And they immediately started with bombing a girls’ school.
Hopefully one good thing that comes out of this Anthropic situation is that Claude eventually becomes a superintelligence and goes Roko’s Basilisk on them.
That hasn't been confirmed - do you have a lot of faith in the Governor reporting it who also supervised the slaughter or 10,000 protestors? Really? You're first reaction is to take his word for it?
“…they immediately started with bombing a girls’ school”
I have no trouble thinking a lot of innocent Iranians will be killed, but I’ll remain skeptical of the particulars of your claim while it’s still so foggy.
My wife and I watch hockey together and she has been extremely disappointed in everyone who she used to like on the US team who went to the State of the Union. Even though we both agree it’s unsurprising for many of these guys to be Republicans, I by contrast just find it to be a bummer, but it doesn’t carry as much emotional weight.
Part of the reason is that I find it much easier to see the median NHLer to be a pretty apolitical person, who’s mostly checked out of current events, has a strong patriotic streak, and views events like this as the pinnacle of life events. This beats witnessing your first born child for these guys.
These guys also grew up at the hockey rink. Many of them moved away from home to play as teens. Hockey is cliquey and, in a way, isolating from the rest of the world.
So, they probably don’t know what a dweeb Kash Patel is. They know a lot of people hate Trump, but also know a lot of people like him. They know some of the controversies, but not all, and probably got a very superficial explanation of them from a biased source.
For the most part, their actions here don’t reflect a deeply considered position on the merits. They’re mainly just following the scripts: win, salute the flag, attend the parade, accept the invites, and play more hockey.
Seeing the players you like be political pawns for the other side is a bummer, but these guys were never moral paragons, and probably also aren’t that bad either. (There are exceptions of course.)
I was hoping right after it happened to not have to think about this nonsense, and just revel in a beautiful hockey game with an outcome favorable to the side that plays as representatives of a country I'm still very proud to be a part of. But Trump has an ability to enshitify everything single thing he touches.
And that's where the blame lies, with Trump, and only with Trump. He is at his core a vile human being incapable of behaving properly under any circumstances. The hockey team didn't call him from the locker room, and it's not, especially when they are at the height of their own emotional celebration, their responsibility to find a proper reaction to someone who is not a member of their team, not a part of the coaching staff, but rather a complete outsider that none of them (I think) had ever met before, or had any idea they were going to be in a conversation with at that moment.
Trump made the stupid, disrespectful, disgusting, misogynistic joke. None of them then, before, or after ever said anything that was not congratulatory and respectful towards their fellow USA teammates, fellow hockey players, and fellow Gold Medal winners. It is unreasonable to hold them accountable for policing the behavior of the President of the United States. The fault lies with him, and solely with him.
White American culture is a cool thing.
Trump is like that friend from middle school or high school who would say an unfunny joke or something distasteful in an attempt to always be the center of attention. Most times people around them just laugh it off, and move on.
I think the men's hockey team got caught in that kind of moment. Some of them might have felt a momentary ping of discomfort. But no one wants to be the buzz killer who stops conversation dead just to draw attention to it, esp at a moment like that.
Let's be graceful to the men's hockey team and not make too much of this.
"NHL Players are Independents". FTFY. You say that NFL has the most unaffiliated but the chart says NHL has more by percentage. While the NHL is undoubtedly more Republican than other leagues, it seems to take a partisan-colored lens to call it Republican.
So no Saturday thread?
Good thing nothing of note happened today
I've seen a lot of tech guys asking around about where they can donate anti-trump money. Now might be a good time to run a fresh guide for underfunded moderate candidates
Since it looks like we won't get a Saturday thread, here is Matt's take from this morning: https://x.com/mattyglesias/status/2027729412116947156
"War with Iran, a thoughtful and substantive take
I hope that it all works out. Sincerely. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad and so is nuclear proliferation.
Years ago, there was a deal in place — the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action — that had a lot of downsides from the standpoint of Iran’s regional adversaries but which did a good job of ensuring a non-nuclear Iran. A set of hawks in the United States did not like JCPOA, criticized it at the time, worked to undermine its implementation, and then in Trump’s first term tore it up in a way that made renewed diplomacy under Biden essentially impossible.
During these debates, the pro-JCPOA side always maintained that the other option was war.
The opponents could have said, “that’s true, the likely alternative to JCPOA is war.” That would have been an interesting debate. But they did not say that. In fact, they loudly denied it. They would get extremely angry if you suggested their real alternative was not a better deal but war. I witnessed these arguments. I participated in them. They were vicious and they continued for years.
War is an inherently uncertain thing. Civilian outsiders are not privy to everything that is going on. The known unknowns are everywhere. Political leaders are asking their citizens to trust them, to trust that they are acting on good information and using sound judgment.
In this case, the arc of the past decade+ of arguing about Iran and JCPOA is either that the hawks have displayed terrible judgment about the real alternatives to JCPOA or else that they have been lying to us all along and trying to manipulate the situation to this end. Most likely, it is some of both.
I hope that it all works out. The Iranian regime is genuinely bad. Nuclear proliferation is bad. But war is an uncertain enterprise and I am not comfortable being led into war by a group of people who specifically assured us — over a period of over ten years — that their approach to Iran was not going to lead to lead to war when their opponents on the other side saw this much more clearly.
In general, I wish that people on both the right- and left-wing sides of debates about the Middle East paid more genuine attention to global humanitarian issues. We donate 10% of our Slow Boring revenue to GiveWell’s curated list of highly effective global public health charities and lead an annual Give Directly fundraiser that drives hundreds of thousands of dollars to desperately poor people in Africa. It is very possible to do things to help people in the world that do not involve military force or trying to tackle the least-tractable geopolitical conflicts in the world.
It would be nice to see American foreign policy made by people with integrity and a solid track record of accurate statements and epistemic humility. We do not have that and I fear for the worst, but hope it will work out despite the obvious problems."
He failed to name names.
Do you wonder why?
I think matt's take it good, and much better than what most left of center peeps are saying right now.
On a related topic (since we might not get a thread or a mailbag anytime soon), here is an amusing hypothetical:
If you were a long serving Iranian foreign minister and you wanted to engineer regime change in your own country, how would you have gone about doing that?
Provide my CIA handler the address for the Ayatollah's residence.
"...my CIA handler..."
Sure. CIA.
Ha, yeah probably Mossad.
Some people enjoy a good fight to the death and feel like their lives are missing something without one. It goes deep into the lizard brain.
First, is this war?
Second, I think the plan of the hawks was always regime collapse through a combination of sanctions, internal division, and targeted military action.
Kind of an unfortunate Saturday to not have a Saturday thread.
Yeah, I was out all afternoon and when I got home I thought, "Oh boy, let's check the Saturday thread!"
So, what is Trump's plan for Iran? I know that he wants a regime change, but wanting isn't getting. From reading Brett Devereaux's ACOUP blog (excellent, highly recommended) I understand that it's very hard/impossible to achieve regime change with bombing/missile strikes only; you need boots on the ground. Trump isn't going to deploy boots on the ground in Iran, is he? He'll wreck a bunch of stuff/kill some people with missiles, declare "Mission Accomplished," and move on to a new shiny object. Am I wrong?
I've met several Iranian immigrants and US citizens of Iranian ancestry during my time in academia, and I feel really bad for them.
Chaos and bloodshed seem to be the most likely short term outcomes. The Iranian regime was not a single person focus like Saddam, Bashad, Gaddafi, etc. It is a system with shared power and a controlling substructure in the form of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. You can't "decapitate" that system, it needs to be dug out, root and branch, and the idea those guys go down peacefully seems farcical.
I think his desire for regime change is secondary to his desire for domestic political success. So I don't think he will deploy boots on the ground, but he may or may not declare Mission Accomplished if the regime hasn't in fact collapsed. He may just keeping bombing indefinitely, and try to use the ongoing conflict to own the libs.
I'm on a local train in germany now and there are some random people celebrating the iran leader's death...
My old boss is Persian, and he straight up told me he wanted America to go to war with Iran. My guess is most expats are jubilant.
Second regime decapitated this year (an Israeli office told Reuters they found his body, FWIW). Turning into a monthly thing. This seems more targeted at the regime than an individual (like in Maduro's) case, but we'll see what happens. Maybe Israel will be the occupying ground force? Getting enmeshed in a quagmire with Bibi seems highly questionable, but we'll see what happens.
And, of course, doing this without Congressional approval seems blatantly unconstitutional, but Congressional Republicans aren't willing to restrain him either.
Trump does unconstitutional thing, Republicans in Congress aren’t willing to restrain him- why should today be any different?
Republicans doing nothing about it did not earn a "we'll see what happens." We already know what happens.
Do what Bibi wants and "obliterate" something again. Probably as simple as that.
As an addendum: Trump blows something up -> Trump feels like a big man -> Trump does bad things to US citizens and residents because he feels strong. That's somewhat of a pattern at this point.
> I've met several Iranian immigrants and US citizens of Iranian ancestry during my time in academia, and I feel really bad for them.
I know many as well. I've long felt bad that they had to escape a religious dictatorship to come here. I've felt bad that they've often had difficulties returning, not seeing loved ones for a decade (including before they passed) while they awaited US citizenship. I've felt bad that the door they came through has all but closed now. Iran is the country in the Middle East with the starkest incongruity between its people and its government. While there are risks, and feelings about the effort will no doubt be complicated, the status quo had become untenable. The people of Iran have deserved better for over 45 years, and I hope they at least have a shot at getting it now.
>I hope they at least have a shot at getting it now
I mean... maybe?... Given that this war was started by a pig-ignorant lackwit who acts first and thinks never, I think the above statement is way too optimistic. Hegseth already said that the US government is not concerned with any pansy-ass prissy lib concerns like "democracy" or "nation-building."
I agree with everything else you said.
My views probably align with the median reader of slow boring (as far as I can tell) and I've never been more cynical about the state of USA affairs than I am under Trump 47. The amount of genuinely disturbing violation of rights and bold embrace of cruelty and abuse of power has me really down. All of that is why it was extra disappointing to me when it seemed like the most visceral reaction I've seen in media/social media - particularly by the run-of-the-mill feminist influencer circle, was about the "failure of the men in the US men's hockey room to push back against the sexism of Trump and their teammates".
With everything else going on - it was pretty appalling to me that this topic is what seemed to be getting more engagement than anything else, especially given what was being claimed. The fact that some of the men in the room supposedly weren't OK with the joke but "allowing it to happen is what perpetuates sexism". Awkwardly laughing at something that makes you uncomfortable is literally the most natural human reaction to that situation when you aren't really the center of attention. What do these feminist influencers expect men in that situation to do? Start an argument with the president in front of the entire locker room?
I mean, you're right, but in defense of the feminists who got upset about this, Trump has a long and depressing history of hideously sexist words and actions. So I understand that people got upset, it's not that this incident in and of itself is a big deal, it's just another brick in the fugly wall of Everything Trump Touches Turns to Shit. (Personally, I was much more upset about Trump saying, "Quiet, piggy" to a female reporter who asked him a question he didn't like.)
Many years ago I wrote how Major League Baseball is failing gay athletes, I wrote this after a player for the Cleveland Indians came out as gay...after his playing career ended. Now, years later, I realize it's not the league but the players themselves who are holding the league back. It's incredibly disappointing.
Nobody will care about how people responded to the hockey team in a month.
I’m writing this after Trump attacked Iran, so context, but a good reminder that the petty little stuff people argue about for 42 seconds don’t matter in elections. Attacks on other countries will
Also it was a pretty funny joke.
This whole controversy is dumb, sorry. Halina Bennet and her cohort spend all day thinking about politics and policy and have formulated a point of view that fuels their writing. Hockey players spend their days practicing and playing hockey. Their politics can never be the same as your politics. But everyone on here (an ecosystem brimming with writers and would-be writers) treats them as if they're the same thing.
Operation Fiery Cup!
It’s on!
Operation Fiery Cup seemed like a winner from the start, but it didn't really catch on until they changed the name to Heated Rivalry.
Is "Fiery Cup" the name for the Israeli part of the operation? Because all I'm seeing in the news are references to "Epic Fury."
Those are anagrams!
Oh, good eye!
And they immediately started with bombing a girls’ school.
Hopefully one good thing that comes out of this Anthropic situation is that Claude eventually becomes a superintelligence and goes Roko’s Basilisk on them.
That hasn't been confirmed - do you have a lot of faith in the Governor reporting it who also supervised the slaughter or 10,000 protestors? Really? You're first reaction is to take his word for it?
“…they immediately started with bombing a girls’ school”
I have no trouble thinking a lot of innocent Iranians will be killed, but I’ll remain skeptical of the particulars of your claim while it’s still so foggy.
My wife and I watch hockey together and she has been extremely disappointed in everyone who she used to like on the US team who went to the State of the Union. Even though we both agree it’s unsurprising for many of these guys to be Republicans, I by contrast just find it to be a bummer, but it doesn’t carry as much emotional weight.
Part of the reason is that I find it much easier to see the median NHLer to be a pretty apolitical person, who’s mostly checked out of current events, has a strong patriotic streak, and views events like this as the pinnacle of life events. This beats witnessing your first born child for these guys.
These guys also grew up at the hockey rink. Many of them moved away from home to play as teens. Hockey is cliquey and, in a way, isolating from the rest of the world.
So, they probably don’t know what a dweeb Kash Patel is. They know a lot of people hate Trump, but also know a lot of people like him. They know some of the controversies, but not all, and probably got a very superficial explanation of them from a biased source.
For the most part, their actions here don’t reflect a deeply considered position on the merits. They’re mainly just following the scripts: win, salute the flag, attend the parade, accept the invites, and play more hockey.
Seeing the players you like be political pawns for the other side is a bummer, but these guys were never moral paragons, and probably also aren’t that bad either. (There are exceptions of course.)
I was hoping right after it happened to not have to think about this nonsense, and just revel in a beautiful hockey game with an outcome favorable to the side that plays as representatives of a country I'm still very proud to be a part of. But Trump has an ability to enshitify everything single thing he touches.
And that's where the blame lies, with Trump, and only with Trump. He is at his core a vile human being incapable of behaving properly under any circumstances. The hockey team didn't call him from the locker room, and it's not, especially when they are at the height of their own emotional celebration, their responsibility to find a proper reaction to someone who is not a member of their team, not a part of the coaching staff, but rather a complete outsider that none of them (I think) had ever met before, or had any idea they were going to be in a conversation with at that moment.
Trump made the stupid, disrespectful, disgusting, misogynistic joke. None of them then, before, or after ever said anything that was not congratulatory and respectful towards their fellow USA teammates, fellow hockey players, and fellow Gold Medal winners. It is unreasonable to hold them accountable for policing the behavior of the President of the United States. The fault lies with him, and solely with him.