Trump has fallen into Thucydides Trap.

[Reggae156]

Trump has fallen into Thucydides Trap and dragged america down the hole with him.
Despite trumps lies, Iran is conducting an effective campaign in the needles war trump started and doing it at less than a tenth the cost.
Thus far the big winner is Putin, he's the guy trump looks up and adores with China quietly (for now) lurking in the background.
Trump and his idiot brigade has put himself and america in a corner, he's just a braggadocios unintelligent coward driving america down the road of ruin!

 

[Bray123]

The President Nelson Muntz has decided that if Iran is going to blockade the Gulf, he's going to as well.

Na na nananana. Who is advising him, the Secretary of Education, a wrestling personality who has been posting AI images thinking they were real?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2026/04/11/linda-mcmahon-fake-ida-b-wells-photo/

 

[SebastianHolt]

Trump has fallen into Thucydides Trap and dragged america down the hole with him.
Despite trumps lies, Iran is conducting an effective campaign in the needles war trump started and doing it at less than a tenth the cost.
Thus far the big winner is Putin, he's the guy trump looks up and adores with China quietly (for now) lurking in the background.
Trump and his idiot brigade has put himself and america in a corner, he's just a braggadocios unintelligent coward driving america down the road of ruin!

yeah....ah...er...nope

 

[Wilson23]

Thucydides was a historian, not a general. What is the "Thucydides Trap"?

 

[Saint_Ann]

Triglycerides?

 

[Wilson23]

I presume "Thucydides" is a reference to the Peloponnesian War, which Athens lost by getting overextended -- is that the message here?

 

[SimonDoom]

I presume "Thucydides" is a reference to the Peloponnesian War, which Athens lost by getting overextended -- is that the message here?

I can't speak for Reggae, but that's how I would see it. As a country we keep getting seduced into ruinous and unjustified foreign interventions. Trump was pretty good about avoiding them in his first term, but it seems that in his second term he can't help himself. Presidents get frustrated by their inability to achieve their domestic agenda, so they turn to foreign events as a way of achieving a legacy. It usually turns out badly.

 

[MajorRewrite]

Trump was pretty good about avoiding them in his first term

Except, of course, that he campaigned on the promise to get the US troops out of Afghanistan and never did.

But agreed that foreign adventures are counterproductive for everyone concerned (except military contractors ).

 

[icanhelp1]

yeah....ah...er...nope

Yet another bash Trump thread.

 

[Wilson23]

There IS a striking parallel here between Iran and Syracuse.

 

[SimonDoom]

There IS a striking parallel here between Iran and Syracuse.

This is what I worry about for the country in general. We have so much going for us and so many advantages. If we just follow a policy of "don't fuck it up" we should be OK. But it seems like we can't help ourselves and get drawn into things we don't have to do. Athens has lessons to teach us.

 

[Wilson23]

Yet another bash Trump thread.

The sitting POTUS, no matter who he is or what his party, will ALWAYS be the primary target on a politics board.

 

[Rightguide]

Trump has fallen into Thucydides Trap and dragged america down the hole with him.
Despite trumps lies, Iran is conducting an effective campaign in the needles war trump started and doing it at less than a tenth the cost.
Thus far the big winner is Putin, he's the guy trump looks up and adores with China quietly (for now) lurking in the background.
Trump and his idiot brigade has put himself and america in a corner, he's just a braggadocios unintelligent coward driving america down the road of ruin!

I would observe that certainty is the refuge of those who cannot be bothered with probability, and apocalypse, the favored punctuation of those who have mistaken tone for evidence. As for Allison's “Thucydides Trap,” which has become one of those fashionable historical talismans, like invoking Machiavelli without having read past the jacket flap. It is invoked not to illuminate events, but to dignify foregone conclusions with the incense of antiquity. But here we see it presented as historical law rather than a statistical trend.

 

[Wilson23]

I would observe that certainty is the refuge of those who cannot be bothered with probability, and apocalypse, the favored punctuation of those who have mistaken tone for evidence. As for Allison's “Thucydides Trap,” which has become one of those fashionable historical talismans, like invoking Machiavelli without having read past the jacket flap. It is invoked not to illuminate events, but to dignify foregone conclusions with the incense of antiquity. But here we see it presented as historical law rather than a statistical trend.

That does not make it any less relevant at all.

 

[Rightguide]

That does not make it any less relevant at all.

It couldn't be more irrelevent.

 

[Wilson23]

It couldn't be more irrelevent.

The lesson of Athens' defeat through overextension in Syracuse IS relevant to the U.S. and Iran right now.

The only thing that makes the present situation different is that Athens had one definite enemy in Sparta. We act like we're still LOOKING for one to replace the Soviet Union.

 

[Rightguide]

The lesson of Athens' defeat through overextension in Syracuse IS relevant to the U.S. and Iran right now.

Syracuse, the historian’s favorite vending machine for instant moral certainty, but here we have it dissolving every modern complexity into the same comforting lesson, overreach leads to ruin, therefore every act of ambition is a prelude to catastrophe, and therefore, by a chain of reasoning as elegant as Wilson contemplating a hangman’s knot, whatever one already dislikes must be strategically doomed.

It is a tidy philosophy, and like most tidy philosophies, it leaves out the small inconvenience that history is not a sermon but a cacophony of contingencies, accidents, and misread signals. Athens did not lose Syracuse because the Zeus whispered “overextension is bad”; it lost because of misjudgment, factional politics, logistics, and the charming human habit of confusing confidence with competence. To transpose that tragedy mechanically onto the United States and Iran is not sound analysis but your simplistic analogy drunk on its own reflection. It's your intellectual hobby that mistakes resemblance for identity and then congratulates itself on foresight. Because I feel generous, I'll just call it the solemn art of extracting inevitability from whatever happens after the fact, and disguising as wisdom for events that have not yet had the courtesy to introduce themselves.

RG

 

[Wilson23]

Syracuse, the historian’s favorite vending machine for instant moral certainty

It can be RELEVANT without CERTAINTY, and it is.

 

[Reggae156]

Syracuse, the historian’s favorite vending machine for instant moral certainty, but here we have it dissolving every modern complexity into the same comforting lesson, overreach leads to ruin, therefore every act of ambition is a prelude to catastrophe, and therefore, by a chain of reasoning as elegant as Wilson contemplating a hangman’s knot, whatever one already dislikes must be strategically doomed.

It is a tidy philosophy, and like most tidy philosophies, it leaves out the small inconvenience that history is not a sermon but a cacophony of contingencies, accidents, and misread signals. Athens did not lose Syracuse because the Zeus whispered “overextension is bad”; it lost because of misjudgment, factional politics, logistics, and the charming human habit of confusing confidence with competence. To transpose that tragedy mechanically onto the United States and Iran is not sound analysis but your simplistic analogy drunk on its own reflection. It's your intellectual hobby that mistakes resemblance for identity and then congratulates itself on foresight. Because I feel generous, I'll just call it the solemn art of extracting inevitability from whatever happens after the fact, and disguising as wisdom for events that have not yet had the courtesy to introduce themselves.

RG

Reichguide you dicksmoking brown shirt, I already dislike you so you must be doomed!

 

[Rightguide]

Reichguide you dicksmoking brown shirt, I already dislike you so you must be doomed!

Reggae156 (known butt bandito, dope smoking dirtbag, baggy wide-legged sagger) I don't give a shit what you like or dislike.

 

[Wilson23]

Trump IS dangerously overextending American resources to pursue a COMPLETELY NEEDLESS conflict with Iran.

 

[justawnnabewriter]

Trump has fallen into Thucydides Trap and dragged america down the hole with him.
Despite trumps lies, Iran is conducting an effective campaign in the needles war trump started and doing it at less than a tenth the cost.
Thus far the big winner is Putin, he's the guy trump looks up and adores with China quietly (for now) lurking in the background.
Trump and his idiot brigade has put himself and america in a corner, he's just a braggadocios unintelligent coward driving america down the road of ruin!rap

Hope you would agree with me but you could never tell this to Trump. First off he will stumble on "Thucydides" and spend 20 minutes trying to pronounce this word. a would come over his fast while seeing 'trap' and think there was something sexual about this

 

[Wilson23]

Hope you would agree with me but you could never tell this to Trump. First off he will stumble on "Thucydides" and spend 20 minutes trying to pronounce this word. a would come over his fast while seeing 'trap' and think there was something sexual about this

Don't even try him on "Peloponnesian."

 

[Reggae156]

Reggae156 (known butt bandito, dope smoking dirtbag, baggy wide-legged sagger) I don't give a shit what you like or dislike.

Good, then fuck off Reichguide you brown shirted, trump ass licking dicksmoker!

 

[justawnnabewriter]

Don't even try him on "Peloponnesian."

how Embarrassing that would be