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Saturday, July 31, 2021

Enemies of Democracy... and (worse) traitors to democracy.

First, above and beyond mere politics… if you seriously want to help civilization be resilient against shocks the future might bring, consider (in the U.S.) taking training for CERT – your local Community Emergency Response Team. It’s a really interesting and fun 20 hour course given by your local fire department and you get cool green equipment and a badge! And once a decade maybe some light duties to help keep your family and neighbors safe.  

== Explicit: Haters of Democracy ==

It’s baaack. One of the top propaganda memes used by oligarchs to foment chanting dopes to pour hatred upon…democracy. 

They must!  Everyone can see that the Republican base is in freefall demographic collapse, not just from the growth of cities or the rise of minorities but from defection by their own children, the smarter half of them who continued educating and learning into their twenties. The wave of voter suppression bills across Red America are desperation measures, justified by same-old ancient ravings against ‘mob rule.' Despite the fact that average levels of education and knowledge among Democrats is now much higher than for Republicans. (And I do offer counter-tactics.)

So how do they justify direct and open attacks against democracy itself?  

There is a standard catechism that takes many forms. 

Recently on "PenceNews” there spread a supposed quote from Karl Marx: 


"Democracy is the road to socialism… Socialism leads to communism." 

Hence why voting needs to be restricted. 


Except, of course, that Marx said no such thing! In fact it is an almost direct quote from Adolf Hitler. Way to choose your sources, guys.


Indeed, Marx also despised democracy, but for very different reasons, calling it a "bourgeoise indulgence that beguiles the workers" into imagining they can win justice through peaceful means. 

And yes, in fact, the most vigorous anti-communists have been Democrats and especially the U.S. labor movement, e.g. the AFL-CIO, while Republicans have perpetually oscillated between isolationism and kneeling accommodation with Moscow (except for just the term of Ronald Reagan, a former Democrat). Today they are absolutely kissy-face with "ex" Stalinist Vlad Putin and his mafia of "ex" commissars and the "former" KGB.

The mantra that democracy leads to socialism, then communism, is another version of the "fatal sequence" mantra that has infested the U.S. right for all my life, and before that all the way back to when plantation lords got poor whites to despise the very revolution their forebears had won. The refined version is the "Tytler Calumny," which I dissect in this linked article.


Though MAGAs and other styles of confederate recite it as one of their many masturbatory incantations, they flee the instant you offer a wager over it, or any part of the scenario, ever having happened, even once, in the history of human civilization. (Damn inconvenient facts!). YOU should read and be armed against this magical mantra, which your uncles are doubtless reciting, which justifies treason against the very same democratic republic that gave these ingrates everything.


 As for Marx saying that democracy beguiled workers into thinking they could lead fine, middle class lives... well he was right! FDR and the Greatest Generation, after smashing the Nazis and containing the Stalinists, proceeded to promote an empowered middle class that kept drawing in wave after wave and caste after caste of the formerly underprivileged. Call it 'beguiling' away revolutionary fervor, if you like. 


Or else recognize that Marx simply never imagined a great industrial nation behaving fairly, with decency, flattened wealth disparities and gradually improving justice. But that's exactly what was happening...


...until the empire struck back, stealing from working folks under "Supply Side Theory" and using Fox+KGB agitprop to restart the American civil war. And thus they seem bent on resurrecting Marx's scenario from its well-deserved grave. 


If that zombie (Marxism) is back, shambling across every college campus on Earth, it is your fault, you wretched-stupid inheritance brats and other parasites out there. Wake up and fire your sycophants. Or else learn how to ride a tumbrel.


== The one tactic ==


Alas, no one has the guts or imagination to confront these imbeciles with wager demands, with large escrowed stakes over falsifiable assertions, testable by facts. (And I offer the bets to be judged by panels of retired, senior military officers; watch the yammerers blanch!) When so confronted, they always flee. 

But here are challenges specific to this imbecilic malarkey:


- Name one advanced, liberal democracy, including socialist Scandinavian ones, that ever turned communist. Um, one.


- Show us where Marx said that!


- Vladimir Putin called the fall of the USSR "history's greatest tragedy" and while dropping all the hammer-and-sickle symbols, he installed all former KGB agents and commissars as Russia's new oligarchy, while the renamed KGB uses all the same methods toward the same goal: our downfall, including Trump and blackmailing most of the GOP political caste. 


So who are the commies now? 

Whatever, Ivan.


== A fifth column ==


MAGAsphere is abuzz with the latest lunacy. If the Republicans win back the House in 2022, then choosing Donald Trump as Speaker and 2nd in line for the presidency. Oh, please, make that your platform, GOP?  “As a reminder, by the time Trump left office in January, he had the lowest approval rating of any President "since scientific polling began," at 34%, with a 61% disapproval. Plus, a Quinnipiac poll released after the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol found that 59% of Americans believe Trump should not be allowed to hold office ever again.” But a majority of the shrinking GOP minority is growing crazier and more frothing rabid by the minute.


== Politiclly redolent Miscellany ==


They did a huge 4-year test in Iceland, with 2,500 workers (1% of the labor force) where they paid the workers the same amount for about 36 hours of work (9 hours a day) just 4 days a week and, surprise!, productivity remained the same or even improved in the majority of workplaces.  The trials led unions to renegotiate working patterns, and now 86% of Iceland's workforce have either moved to shorter hours for the same pay, or will gain the right to, the researchers said.  Of course this means some will have two jobs. Or work on their own startups, or. dive into amateur avocations – some targeting excellence. 


With Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon, Mia Bloom and Sophia Moskalenko track QAnon's leap from the darkest corners of the Internet to a frenzy fed by the COVID-19 pandemic that supercharged conspiracy theories and spurred a fresh wave of Q-inspired violence, showing how a conspiracy theory with its roots in centuries-old anti-Semitic hate has adapted to encompass local grievances and has metastasized around the globe―appealing to a wide range of alienated people who feel that something is not quite right in the world around them. While QAnon claims to hate Hollywood, the book demonstrates how much of Q's mythology is ripped from movie and television plot lines. 


(Note the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was concocted in the very same Kremlin basements that are now foisting QAnon upon us.) 


What most critics fail to point out should be the most obvious thing… that the mad right’s central theme is to accuse their opponents of doing what they do far more. For example, rates of proved pedophilia and predatory sexual perversion among prominent Republican politicians, pundits or backers – proved or blatant – are vastly higher than rates among prominent Democrats.  Provably twice or three times the rate and anecdotally as much as six times! Likewise rates of moral turpitude in red states (excluding Utah) vs. blue states in everything from domestic violence, STDs, teen sex/pregnancy/abortion, gambling, drug use and so on. And especially the confederate right’s close relationship with casino moguls, mafiosi, petro sheiks, inheritance brats and “ex”communist “former” KGB agents.


A top judo move in politics - seldom done - is to show how your opponents hypocritically harm the things they claim to value. Accuse a confed of racism or ignoring climate calamities or the poor or science? He'll shrug you off as a smug-patronizing, free-spending, smartypants nerd-lib who prefers the poor be our 'clients' than empowered capitalists. 


So, instead (or in addition) show how the right is far more wasteful and the worst enemies of the market competition they claim to love! Far worse on deficits. Pals of monopoly and oligarchic market cheating. And traitors to the supply chain health on which the entire economy depends. Who is addressing these national emergencies? Made far worse by GOP neglect & sabotage, these underpinnings of the economy are being saved by Democrats.


Finally, we need constant reminding the axiom on propaganda most often attributed to Joseph Goebbels:  


“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”   


That's from the only book Trump used to keep by his bed.


128 comments:

  1. I wonder if something like this persuaded "Drumph!" to get vaccinated?
    https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/bdsm-dommes-subs-vaccination-covid19-1201121/

    ReplyDelete
  2. Treebeard7:29 PM

    Of course you have your own version of Qanon/Elders of Zion paranoia, which blames all the problems of the world on a nebulous conspiracy of Kremlin operatives and assorted feudal oligarchs. And a version of the Big Lie re: Trump being a Putin puppet, etc. Most of these claims being asserted evidence-free, with innuendo or debunked information traced to intelligence operatives, Saddam-had-WMDs-types, etc.

    See, this may be the real reason the people you’re so concerned about shrug off people like you: not because you’re smartypants, but because you’re hypocrites, who do exactly what you accuse your enemies of doing. Which is pretty dumb, really.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Meanwhile, in Australia, the Government has taken to absolutely *insisting* that tax funds be allocated to maintaining and expanding gas and coal fired stations, because the free market wants to go with renewables, and everybody regards the 'gas led recovery' as a sick joke.

    Suggesting the free market is laudable, until its aims cease to be aligned with yours.

    When your PM is having to have sense talked into them (unsuccessfully) by *Boris Johnson*...!!!

    Oh well, I suppose this is what elections are about (dubiously eyeing the 2019 outcome)

    I'll end my rant with the latest announcement from the Australien Government

    OK. folks, enjoy the rest of your Sunday morning.

    ReplyDelete
  4. What a whining ent! Dig it fellah. I offer WAGERS over things I can prove. I also assert some things I cannot yet prove, but am damn sure about from both circumstantial evidence and spectacularly consistent patterns. Generally, these two areas are pretty distinct, though okay, I'll accept as a crit that I oughta make it clearer sometimes.

    But look at YOU! You scabble and claw for some place to stand as every polemical position of the US right is revealed as a clear and demonstrable outright lie. You cannot stand on any of them, nor accept any of my wager demands. And so you must howl "THOSE ones... those assertion way over there are NOT proved! Conjectures no better than... than... WMD lies! (The irony of that choice!)

    What capering fizzing looniness. I make tons of testable wagerable statements, including the pure fact that your mad cult wages all out war vs every fact-centered profession. Or that rates of moral turpitude are far higher in non-Utah red states than the average for non-Illinois blues. Or rates of child predation of perversion among GOP office holders. STEP UP WITH CASH STAKES! On those or ocean acidification or the rest of climate change, you planet murdering complicit!

    Wanna demand my evidence for the blackmail thing? Well, its pretty circumstantial so far... but... try being a man and betting on the vast sea of incredible wrongs your cult has done to us... always wrong on Smog, McCarthy, burning rivers, lead in gas, ozone, civil rights, all the way to our present troubles. Then, once I've collected on those, let's do a TEN YEAR bet on the blackmail thing. If I don't collect big time, through truth revelations, I'll likely no longer be alive, because it means your cult has won.

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  5. Trump to DOJ: "Just say that the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. Congressmen." This accusation of corruption is itself corrupt. How elegant!

    I call it "weaponized projection". It's three things in one: accusation, commission, and confession. It accuses others of a crime; it commits the crime; and it confesses to the crime. How compact! How efficient! What a time-saver!

    ReplyDelete
  6. The Marxian Paradox:
    When the oligarchs listen to Marx's predictions, they take steps to create a stable, prosperous, non-revolutionary middle class, and thus negate Marx's predictions; but when the oligarchs do not listen to Marx's predictions, they impoverish the middle class, in obedience to Marx's predictions. So from the oligarch's point of view, Marx's predictions are as true as they are false.

    Of course this is an example of Seldon's Paradox of Prediction.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Paul451, (from last thread)

    Rather I mean a more general tendency for humans to be drawn to leaders, to someone slightly better than ourselves (and I intentionally didn't define "better".)

    Okay. I was taking you too literally. We ARE drawn to people we think are better than us, but I suspect that isn't exactly a trap. It CAN be, but it is also a core learning method. We imitate. Apprentices become Journeymen and then Masters.

    Some would love to be that leader, of course.

    … and we do. See?

    I DO see a potential trap that requires the delusional followers many of us are. No doubt if I do as a billionaire does, I can become one, right? Heh. Heck… probably all I have to do is rub elbows with one. Or be supportive of their agenda. Oops. Why is my wallet empty and my vote meaningless? Where's my pitchfork!

    And yet here we are, gathered around our Big Man writer, competing for praise. Hell even the trolls are here to target the Big Man, not the rest of us.

    Ha! I know that's not his aim *, but I do see it in us. It's not so much 'praise' though. It is attention. He has no ditto.

    Also, the trolls do target some of the others here. My blog's rug needed fecal removal for a while, but the reward for dumping on it instead of here proved far less interesting very quickly.


    Anyway, I do respect your concern about a Big Man trap. The community here isn't as immune as we like to believe we are. What we all do reasonably well, though, is disagree with Big Man. As long as your slightly better future AI doesn't dish out death for disagreeing with it, I don't think much will change. We will remain rowdy and liberated… at least as much as we currently are. If it does dish out death… well… the peasants are revolting. Even us.

    But much less often, "Why should anyone?"

    Yes. I get it. That is a MUCH more interesting question.

    The next best option is for us to disagree on who does deserve it by strongly opposing each other's choices. In the limit of individualism, no one gets much power that way. Divide. Set factions in opposition. The American Way. (tm)

    * [The aim is clearly stated in Existence. Crystal clear. SO clear that any troll who hasn't read the book is missing a huge opportunity.]

    ReplyDelete
  8. Larry,

    ANY movie taking its creative core guidance from a comic is a barely disguised vehicle for S&M porn. The layer of self and imposed censorship that prevents explicit stories does essentially nothing to prevent the implied stories. Dip into fan generated stories and art even briefly and it's all there. Flash Gordon just made it terribly obvious. Peril much? 8)

    I don't think it was really a connection to Flash Gordon, though. It's Lynch. My wife didn't just like his variation of Dune. She likes his other material too. She can identify his work in fractions of a second like others can identify songs from a couple of notes. I don't knock it, though. Happy wife and all that.


    Speaking of Hamilton, I WOULD be amused to see a rap version of Dune. I'd pay money for that no matter how critics dealt with it. I'd pay just to say I saw it. I'd pay double.


    … other than that, I think it is non-filmable too.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Pappenheimer,

    Nearly all the uprisings were doomed…

    99.9999% +

    I suspect revolts were about as common as famine winters and plagues, though correlation coefficient might be negative.


    That's what makes it SO interesting how the Dutch managed to keep out the Hapsburgs. Not exactly a peasant revolt. Not exactly a conflict among aristos. Half of the Lowlands managed it. The other half didn't. Antwerp sacked. Amsterdam not. The modern nation-state born as part of a broad peace treaty ending that mess AND the 30 Years war. Neat.

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  10. Treebeard:

    because you’re hypocrites, who do exactly what you accuse your enemies of doing. Which is pretty dumb, really.


    Words fail me.

    ReplyDelete
  11. Maybe Treebeard would be happier in South Korea.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/30/opinion/international-world/korea-emoji-feminism-misogyny.html

    ...
    What happened to the woman was the latest salvo in South Korea’s war against feminists. It seems that men here need merely to express an affront to their male sensibilities, and businesses will bend over backward to soothe them. In recent months, the mob has dredged up all sorts of unrelated ads and howled “misandry!” In each instance, the ad has contained a depiction of fingers pinching some innocuous item — a credit card, a can of Starbucks espresso, even a Covid-19 vaccine. In many cases, the accused — including the national police agency and the defense ministry — removed the offending image and expressed regret for hurting men’s feelings.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  12. presented without further comment...

    https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2021/07/the-trumpist-right-wants-to-emasculate.html

    ...
    On his Fox "news" entertainment program, Tucker Carlson, who always looks like he's wondering if it's wrong to have the dog lick peanut butter off his balls while the dog is licking peanut butter off his balls, played a clip of Fanone saying, "I’ve been left with the psychological trauma and the emotional anxiety of having survived such a horrific event." Carlson, who should be called "the worst human being" to his stupid face every fucking time he steps foot in public, snickered at Fanone's pain and then asked why Fanone didn't say he was traumatized by BLM protests in DC, as if Carlson gets to decide what is traumatic and what isn't. I'm guessing that Fanone wasn't dragged on the ground, beaten unconscious, tasered multiple times in his neck, and threatened to be killed with his own gun by the BLM marchers as he was by the savage incels at the Capitol. Tuckfuck went on to accuse Dunn and Gonell of lying about what happened to them, which I assume is what Carlson would do if any non-white people accused white people of crimes.
    ...

    ReplyDelete
  13. Treebeard,

    You might watch this in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBtsNNXjBPw I'd call it very compelling, EVIDENCE to repute your "big lie" assertion.

    Consistent with the above, and more recently, there is this: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/15/kremlin-papers-appear-to-show-putins-plot-to-put-trump-in-white-house

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  14. Robert7:56 AM

    Except, of course, that Marx said no such thing! In fact it is an almost direct quote from Adolf Hitler. Way to choose your sources, guys.

    Do you have a reference of the Hitler connection? I've tried looking online but haven't found it. (Not doubting, just that my search skills suck and I'm curious.)

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  15. Has anyone else noticed that the republicans are terrified that the general populace won't starve. Why us poor democrats might even want medical care without building a new wing on the local hospital. We might even have the moxie to want to be paid for working instead of for flipping stocks.

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  16. @Dr. Brin:
    ... including socialist Scandinavian ones...

    Minor nitpick here:

    The Scandinavian states aren't exactly socialist, they are social-capitalist. Three of them are monarchies.

    Also, see Denmarks answer to Fox News' Trish Regan.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Alfred Differ:

    … other than that, I think it ["Dune"]is non-filmable too


    Most people who react negatively to such an assertion think that I'm saying that no director is good enough to know how to film it. Which is not at all what I mean. Books and movies are distinct art forms, each with their own strengths and weaknesses, and the experience of the novel Dune doesn't lend itself to the characteristics of a movie. If I said that a poem or a painting could not be made into a movie, I think most people would understand. Unless the poem in question was narrative in structure, the whole idea would be nonsensical. The same applies to attempting to make certain books into movies.

    The play "Deathtrap" isn't filmable either, because part of the experience of watching it is that you come to realize that you are watching the very play that the characters are writing within the play. A movie about the characters writing a play (which was actually produced in the early 80s) can't be the play. It doesn't work. For another example, the sci-fi play "Warp" isn't filmable, even though I wouldn't be surprised to find out that there is such film. But an essential part of the fun of the play was the ridiculous lengths they had to go to in order to simulate some special effects on a live stage. A movie could do it much better with CGI, but where's the fun in that?

    Some wit (Oscar Wilde? Maybe George Bernard Shaw?) once said that "Writing about art is like dancing about architecture." He was spoofing the idea of literary criticism, but the wording of the line applies here in a different way. Filming a novel is like dancing about architecture.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Der Oger:

    ".. including socialist Scandinavian ones..."

    The Scandinavian states aren't exactly socialist, they are social-capitalist. Three of them are monarchies.


    Dr Brin is using the right-wing terminology to emphasize the point that even if one accepts that negative framing, one still cannot come up with an example of a democracy which voted itself communist. He's choosing to forego arguing over the characterization of Sweden and Denmark in order to stick to the point.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Treebeard11:21 AM

    If the evidence for your claims about Trump and Russia are circumstantial, why do you make them repeatedly as if they are settled fact? I recall you calling Trump a “Siberian Candidate” and a puppet on numerous occasions, whose strings are being pulled directly by Putin. How is this rational and empirical, as opposed to hysterical propaganda?

    For the record I’m not a member of any cult. I don’t deny “climate change” and I’ve never voted for a Republican in my life. I will compare carbon footprints if you’re into that, because I mostly get around by foot and pedals. But spare me the “be a man and bet me” stuff. Don’t you think people can see through that? Condescending manipulation is not a winning tactic, and nobody settles arguments on the internet by betting. And again you overestimate yourself by suggesting that someone might take you out if “my cult” wins. It reminds me of the time you suggested that you might be targeted by Putin on your visit to Russia. Your rhetoric is embarrassing; the sort of thing you’d expect from a delusional old crank.

    On a friendlier note, I do agree that Lynch’s Dune was a good film; the cast was excellent and it captured the weirdness of the Dune universe pretty well, I thought.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Robert11:48 AM

    Filming a novel is like dancing about architecture.

    I give you… dancing about architecture:

    https://www.nowness.com/series/dancing-about-architecture/

    I think it's kinda neat, actually.

    But then I like The Hu, too.

    https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCs6vRDdkZ8bP8Xt6WHbvrwA

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  21. Ent: blah blah blah. There may be a minuscule correct crit. A mountain of circumstantial evidence, like the Trumps' endless lies about their Russian connections and the fact the Deutsche Bank "financed" them the very month after Moscow oligarchs deposited billions to be laundered... and the list goes on and on... does not primly justify portraying the blatantly obvious notion that DT is a KGB lackey as "proved fact" in a jury trial.

    Nor the secret meetings with an "ex" commie "ex" commissar "ex" KGB agent Russian president with no US witnesses present... or the gleeful gloating by top Kremlin guys, or Manafort's PROVED and CONVICTED status as a Russian agent (DT's campaign manager)... or... I could go on forever. But yes, PRIMLY it's not-jury-proved.

    But this is hialrious! You are desperate to avoid owning up to the pure fact that your cult is nearly always PROVED to be at best insanely denialist and hostile to science and every fact profession, and at-worst traitors. And you won't grapple with any of that, thus implicitly conceding ALL of it.

    An Everest of crimes against humanity and our nation by your cult. But LOOK! Brin claims a skyscraper of circumstantial evidence is PROOF! Gotcha!

    Dig it fellah. If it's about convicting to prison in a jury trial, that standard works. When it comes to national security, we got more than enough already to point at Trump and Trumpists and say "enemy agent."

    ReplyDelete
  22. I might add that "proof" fit for a jury is hard to come by when the gang boss won't answer subpoenas for records, can't be arrested or questioned and he maintains a vast criminal enterprise protected by the fact that he leads a sovereign nation with nuclear weapons and hit squads roaming the globe killing witnesses and blackmailing politicians.

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  23. Looks like Apple is aiming for seven seasons for their FOUNDATION series. I'm hoping that it becomes almost immortal*, like the Simpsons, and eventually gets around to a discussion of modern computation and AI. Prime Radiant and Visi-Sonor Christmas toys would be good too. Anything to snap civilization out of its myopic, infantile, romanticist, bobble-gazing, stultifying news cycle.


    * I don't overly care how 'good' it is. It's Asimovian** thinking, which is the key.


    ** Rational, humanistic, skeptical, optimistic, limitless, brave

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  24. Treebeard:

    If the evidence for your claims about Trump and Russia are circumstantial, why do you make them repeatedly as if they are settled fact?


    Because it is so blindingly obvious even to the most obtuse by now? I believe it because I have working eyes and a brain.

    He owes money to Dutsche Bank, which does Putin's bidding. He wants to build Trump Tower Moscow. He had secret meetings with Russian ministers in the Oval Office at which no US officials (only Russian officials) were present.

    As Caiaphas put it, "There you have it, gentlemen. What more evidence do we need?"

    Trump is either an enemy agent or a willing dupe. If you deny such an obvious conclusion, it's on you to show evidence of your position, not just to dismiss it with hand-waving, "How can you possibly believe such an outrageous claim?" against someone whose modus operandi his entire life has been to act outrageously. I've been pointing out for years now that an active Republican strategy is to act so beyond the pale that the ones who call them on what they're actually doing are the ones who seem hysterical and lacking in decorum. Apparently, committing treason is not nearly as over the top as having the nerve to call someone a traitor.




    I recall you calling Trump a “Siberian Candidate” and a puppet on numerous occasions, whose strings are being pulled directly by Putin. How is this rational and empirical, as opposed to hysterical propaganda?


    How is it not rational and empirical? No other theory fits the facts of how we've seen Trump and his misbegotten family behave.

    ReplyDelete
  25. scidata:

    Anything to snap civilization out of its myopic, infantile, romanticist, bobble-gazing, stultifying news cycle.


    For that to be possible, it would have to reach a wider audience than just Apple TV.

    ReplyDelete
  26. Putin OPENLY called the fall of the USSR "hotory's worst tragedy" and made sure leninist commissars retained control (as 'billionaires" of the same State companies and orgs. He declared lurid vengeansce upon Obama for heping the Ukrainian pople vote out Russian puppets... And vengeance was what Trump vowed after Obama jokingly teased him at an event.

    Birthers... YOU (Treebeard) dare demand PROOF from... from US? Whence this "born in Kenya" crap you guys spewed? When every year somebody on Oahu cleaning an old garage finds another copy of a 1962 issue of the Honolulu Advertiser with Obama's birth announcement in it? And you lecture us?

    Name a major Kremlin interest Trump stymied while in office. Bets at least half of all QAnon crap isn't Kremlin generated? But first. wagers - escrowed cash - on ocean acidification, on the Foxite war on science and every other fact profession and now the officer corps that won the Cold War and the War on Terror.

    ReplyDelete
  27. Larry Hart:

    Apple is the biggest company in the world, they have billions in their content warchest, the FOUNDATION production crew is 500, and they want to dominate the world. I've never been a big Apple fan, possibly my biggest single mistake.

    ReplyDelete
  28. I recently stumbled across old episodes of the Lynda Carter version of Wonder Woman, the one which aired in the late 70s and was set during WWII. As a sixteen-year-old boy, I loved that show for the obvious reason, but also because, unlike some previous attempts at a movie/tv portrayal, Lynda Carter really did seem to have been born to play Wonder Woman, much as Christopher Reeve was perfect for the role of Superman a few years later.

    Anyway, I hadn't realized what a big thing that show must have been at the time, with big name actors wanting to appear on it, similar to the Adam West Batman a decade earlier. The series pilot guest stars such luminaries as Henry Gibson and Fannie Flagg (from Laugh In), Red Buttons, Kenneth Mars, and Cloris Leachman, mostly in bit parts.

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  29. Robert5:45 PM

    It's Asimovian** thinking, which is the key.

    Will it be, though?

    A great many promising books have been thoroughly mangled on the way to the screen, sometimes turned into the opposite of what they began as.

    ReplyDelete

  30. Hello all.

    From the privileged pit of posh retirement, I rise at thee, summoned by a veritable black mass of wagers, near-truths & logical fallacy, to declare in no uncertain terms that it was V Lenin who coined the following phrases that were erroneously attributed to K Marx, including (1) "The goal of socialism is communism", (2) "Democracy is indispensable to socialism", (3) "A lie told often enough becomes the truth" and (4) "the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task".

    And, yes, it was those exact same grandiose over-simplifications that were later repeated often enough by other self-serving historical luminaries -- A Hitler, J Goebbels, E Bernays, Mao Zedong & Joe McCarthy, as a matter of example -- in order to justify a century of behavioural modification, political extremism & the hypocrisy of blaming 'The Other' for all of our own projected flaws, failures and foibles.

    Enter the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', a vicious 'Big Lie' that was first published in 1905 but later repurposed as anti-Bolshevik propaganda by White Russians, Nazis, Capitalists, Stalinists & even the founder of the FORD Motor Company, even though -- according to The Jerusalem Post & by remarkable coincidence -- "Jews featured disproportionately among the leaders of communist uprisings that swept Europe after (WW1)".

    https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion

    https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/of-jews-and-bolsheviks-592445

    Thankfully, such hateful & fallacious reasoning is a thing of the very distant past, as no contemporary educated or enlightened westerner would ever think of slandering their political & ideological opponents with accusations of pedophilia and predatory sexual perversion or, god forbid, world dominating schemes, as this would be hypocritical, dehumanising & provocative to an extreme.

    Here's to good fellowship and an end to binary thinking in this Happy Haven where (1) we can all celebrate the triumph of Fukuyama's liberal democracy and the 'end of history', (2) everyone rejects progress because history has achieved perfection with history-ending liberal democracy, (3) everyone loves, respects & sings hosannahs to their venerable opposition and (4) men of good faith can delegate atheism & communism to last century's dustbin of failed ideas.


    Best
    ___

    In reference to Frank Herbert's 'Dune':

    It was an messianic masterpiece, a paean to eugenics, selective breeding, aristocratic bloodlines & the deliberate creation of a transcendently cheesy god (a contraction of cheddar & hardtack, perhaps?).

    And, to those who enjoyed Dune (1984), I say 'saaa' as you have dishonoured your gene lines. The Israeli SyFy channel miniseries is superior in all respects, true to Herbert's vision, plus gratuitous nudity.

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  31. locumranch:

    Enter the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion', a vicious 'Big Lie' that was first published in 1905 but later repurposed as anti-Bolshevik propaganda by White Russians, Nazis, Capitalists, Stalinists & even the founder of the FORD Motor Company, even though -- according to The Jerusalem Post & by remarkable coincidence -- "Jews featured disproportionately among the leaders of communist uprisings that swept Europe after (WW1)".


    Not sure what you're trying to prove here. I see no contradiction between "Jews were slandered by tsarist Russians" and "Jews featured prominently in the communist party which overthrew tsarist Russia". And when right-wingers refer derogatorily to "globalists" or "intellectual elites" or "George Soros", they are at least making dog-whistles toward scapegoating of Jews, even while simultaneously portraying themselves as friends and defenders of Israel.


    Thankfully, such hateful & fallacious reasoning is a thing of the very distant past, as no contemporary educated or enlightened westerner would ever think of slandering their political & ideological opponents with accusations of pedophilia and predatory sexual perversion or, god forbid, world dominating schemes, as this would be hypocritical, dehumanising & provocative to an extreme.


    You make the point I was asserting to Treebeard. You apparently have no problem with Republican politicians who are pedophiles or insurrectionists, but heaven forfend that someone has the ill breeding to actually point such things out.


    And, to those who enjoyed Dune (1984), I say 'saaa' as you have dishonoured your gene lines. The Israeli SyFy channel miniseries is superior in all respects, true to Herbert's vision, plus gratuitous nudity.


    Wow. While I am not familiar with the later miniseries, I can't argue against any of that, including (especially) gratuitous nudity as a good thing.

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  32. The John Birchers and their political descendents spent decades chanting "America is a republic, not a democracy" In fact, it's both. But they wanted to delegitimize the notion that sovereign power resided with the people, not corporations and churches.

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  33. @Robert

    The purest, most original and brilliant work on the personal computer was done at PARC by Xerox. Apple (and subsequently Microsoft) stole it, gave it style and mass appeal, and dramatically changed the world. Asimov created a beautiful dream, but maybe that's not enough. "We'll see what happens" as the Orange One often said.

    As I said, I've never been a big Apple fan, so I'm conflicted.

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  34. I roll my eyes over the polysyllabic idiocy and try to be efficient answering the dismally dishonest fool. Just couple though.

    Lenin did say: "The goal of socialism is communism", but he was speaking of SOVIET/leninist 'socialism,' dominated by a ruthless communist party while forbidding markets. The communism he spoke of was Marx’s ideal of the word with no coercion whatsoever. Hence the sentence does not remotely mean what you think it means, ignorant person. So while this one is real, Lenin's 'socialism' bears no relation to Sweden or Rooseveltism, under which we had by far our greatest growth, best entrepreneurship and greatest successes fighting Soviet Communist Party socialism.

    Bet me on any of that, coward.

    Lenin din NOT say “"Democracy is indispensable to socialism", an absolute lie.

    Goebbels said "A lie told often enough becomes the truth”. But so did Rupert Murdoch.

    Even if Lenin said: “"the dissemination of atheist views is our chief task”… so? And your point is?

    "Jews featured disproportionately among the leaders of communist uprisings that swept Europe after (WW1)". Yes and every other movement, including Swiss banking. If your point was to say that Jews often want to sacrifice to help heal the world (under “Tikkun Olam”) and often choose whatever looks like a method that might work, fine.

    If you aim to connect that to the 'lesson' taught by the Protocols, then fuck you, asshole.

    Your effort to deflect the pure fact that there are VASTLY more sexual predators and enablers, among GOP officeholders, along with tools of casino moguls spreading gambling addiction and VD and every other moral turpitude in “moral” red states (save Utah), is flat out evil. My assertion and offer of proof and wager stakes on all of that would elicit curiosity and then shame from a decent man. Or retraction of 90 years of "shucks, we country boys is far more moral than city folk, yep!"
    But not from you.

    I know Francis Fukayama, you are no Fukayama… but neither am I. He has spent decades living that down. In EARTH I predicted much of what we see, including the restart of our civil war. What I never expected was that imbeciles among our neighbors would not rebel when they realized their cult was waging open war against every single fact using profession and against democracy itself while on their knees servicing the “ex” commie, “ex” KGB agent in the Kremlin.

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  35. "Dancing about architecture"

    Heh. Okay. That makes a point similar to one Hofstadter points out in the 'Surfaces and Essences' book that I DID decide to accept. What we 'mean' by a term has a nebula of related meanings around it. What applies depends on context and how sharply one probes the nebula. Reminds me a great deal of renormalization in physics, but that is probably getting too mathematical.

    What exactly is 'Dune'? Well… At the core we all know the book. In the next layer out there are our interpretations of what we've read. In another layer there are interpretations we make about other's interpretations and this is where the movies come in.

    In Hofstadter's book, he went into great detail about the meaning of 'coffee'. Bean, drink, smell, candy, etc. By the time one got to the outer layer, though, we might be talking about things that had nothing to do with actual coffee beans. Out in the fringe, it's that drink that's served after dinner, right? Some people order tea, but it's still the 'coffee' serving in a multi-course meal.

    So… I accept Lynch's version of Dune as being near Herbert's book. I think the SciFi mini-series was closer, but the great thing about language meaning nets is we don't have to agree on distances. They aren't really metric spaces. All that is necessary is for a discussion of Herbert's book to tug at your mental location of Lynch's movie. Like James Burke's connection web, tap one spot and a twang ripples outward. The memescape is fibrous.

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  36. scidata,

    I suspect Xerox was as likely to pursue PARC's brilliant ideas as Kodak was with their digital cameras.

    Stole? Well… Yah.

    Here is a stat to ponder, though. Originators of brilliant innovations properly patented and brought to market collect about 2% of the value of what the create at best. Once the idea is in print (patented), other brilliant people can often find a way to do something similar… and do… if it is worth the effort. For a valuable, brilliant innovation, imitators are highly motivated and well funded and capture a bit more that the originators. Maybe 5%. Not much more. The vast majority of the value created by stunningly useful innovations is captured by those of us who use them, but in ways that are really hard to track economically. Innovations at this level change what is possible for us to do making the value we receive including everything that was once formerly impossible.

    Consider heavier-than-air flight. The Wright brothers tried hard to defend their patent and benefited only a little from what wound up happening. What would the world look like without airplanes, though? MUCH value in our lives would simply vanish without them. HUGE amounts of GDP depend at least indirectly on flight. How much? Heh. Well… this is an exaggeration, right? If there were no airplanes, we would have substituted some other method for transportation, right? Maybe? It's hard to imagine what, though. It's even harder to imagine where to draw a line for what counts as value created by what the Wright brothers did. What isn't hard to see is the world is a very different place for average Joe. Flight is a huge benefit to Joe.


    Apple and Microsoft recognized value where Xerox did not, but is is WE who benefited the most. I can forgive them their 'theft' for the most practical of reasons. I benefited.


    As for investments, I think Apple is still pretty good at spotting value and damn good at creating it. Since that tends to adjust what people think a company is worth, I own shares. it's not just Apple, though. They have a supply chain that is worth watching.

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  37. Dr Brin:

    What I never expected was that imbeciles among our neighbors would not rebel when they realized their cult was waging open war against every single fact using profession and against democracy itself while on their knees servicing the “ex” commie, “ex” KGB agent in the Kremlin.


    An early Marvel "Avengers" story had the cosmic Grand Master (he showed up as a character in one of the movies) challenge Kang The Conqueror to a great game of sorts. The set-up was that the object of Kang's affection, Princess Ravonna had been hanging in a near-death coma, and the Grand Master offered Kang the power of life and death if he won the game. If he lost, the GM would obliterate the earth.

    The game itself was ridiculous and not worth detailing, but the point is this: Due to an idiot-plot device, Kang does win the game, but not entirely fairly, so the GM says he will grant the power of life or death, but not both. Kang has to choose which he wants more--reviving his true love or killing the Avengers. He chooses the latter.

    For all kinds of reasons, that choice was stupid, but I used to think that no one in real life would actually go that way. Once again, Republicans have now spent decades proving me wrong.

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  38. Democracy dies to thunderous applause...

    https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Senate/Maps/Aug02.html#item-7

    Arizona Republicans are going after the ballots. Georgia Republicans are going after the ballot counters. On Friday, the Republican-controlled Georgia state legislature voted to conduct a performance review of election officials in Fulton County (Atlanta) to see if they did a good job. If the reviewers conclude they did not (which they probably will, no matter what the facts are), the legislature will step in and take away some of their authority in future elections, as allowed in the new Georgia voting law. If the legislature gets to run the election and count the ballots, voter suppression won't even be needed.

    Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (R) has repeatedly said that the election results are accurate and state county officials did their jobs correctly. But this is not what the legislature wants to hear, hence its own "performance review."

    Prof. Edward Foley, a constitutional law and elections expert at Ohio State University, said that having a partisan legislature take over local elections is deeply troubling. He said: "That's the warning bell—it can lead to the corruption of the process and the undermining of the will of the people." Needless to say, the legislature sees this as a feature, not a bug.

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  39. scidata:

    Apple is the biggest company in the world, they have billions in their content warchest, the FOUNDATION production crew is 500, and they want to dominate the world.


    Nonetheless, if the Foundation series is only available on a particular streaming service, it can only reach that niche audience. It doesn't have a chance of doing what Roots (for example) did in the 70s when anybody who heard about it by word of mouth could see it.

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  40. Robert6:14 AM

    The John Birchers and their political descendents spent decades chanting "America is a republic, not a democracy" In fact, it's both

    The way people who use that expression define "democracy" is apparently Athenian-style direct democracy where voters vote on everything. They exclude representative democracy, so by their definition there are no democracies in the world at all.

    I suspect the real reason they keep using that line is that it lines up nicely with the name of their chosen political party…

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  41. The Right seems to believe that *everybody* is corrupt and basically selfish. It's human nature.

    So its choice is *their* corrupt politicians or our corrupt politicians.

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  42. The obvious...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/01/opinion/republicans-threat-america.html

    ...
    What do you call members of a party who, from top to bottom, from elected officials to voters, largely believe a lie and a liar determined to undermine, corrupt and even destroy our democracy? What do you call a party whose leaders use that lie as a pretext to suppress the votes and voices of Americans with whom they disagree? What do you call a party slavishly devoted to a cult over the stability and prosperity of a country?

    What do you call a party where many of its members have worked against a lifesaving, society-freeing vaccine in the middle of a pandemic, exposing many of their own followers to the deadly virus, all for the sake of being contrarian, anti-establishment and anti-science?

    I call that party a national security threat and a cancer on our democracy.

    Now, I am an unabashed liberal, and coming from me that will sound like naked partisanship. I understand that. Sometimes people prefer criticism of this Republican Party to come from disaffected Republicans. I get it. It feels more authentic, I guess.

    But as Malcolm X once put it, “I’m for truth, no matter who tells it.”
    ...

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  43. Minor point re birtherism as mentioned above: Obama was born at St. Elizabeth's hospital in Honolulu in 1962. My mother worked there between 1966 and 1969 as a RN. I PERSONALLY remember he telling me in 1966 about his birth. See, when she started working there the other nurses told her about many funny, weird, or unusual things that had occurred there in (then) recent years. She subsequently related some of these to me. One, which, apparently everyone at the hospital found amusing was the time when "Stanley had a baby." Obama's mother's first name was Stanley, hence the general amusement about "Stanley had a baby." This 1962 event, was still a recent event in 1966. So, although I didn't realize it at the time, I KNEW in 1966 that Obama was born in Honolulu in 1962.

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  44. Pappenheimer8:44 AM

    Alfred,

    I know I'm beating a dead thread here, but the Dutch revolt was by bourgeoisie, not peasantry alone. That's a key factor in its success; they had money, ties to foreign credit, defensible towns, an arms industry, literate commanders, and BUILT A NAVY - for the Dutch, the 30 years war was the end stage of their 80 years war, just as the Chinese count WWII as starting in 1936. I did a paper on the 'military revolution' of that period, and the Dutch innovated more effective gunpowder armies than their enemies, necessity being a mother and all that. It wasn't pikes against shot, like the Rising of the Moon. For in-depth military study of the period I recommend Geoffrey Parker; for period immersion, read Piccolomini, who lived it. There's also a Spanish-language movie, Capitan Alatriste (title character played by Aragorn), about a long-serving Spanish officer, which starts on the front lines in Holland and ends in one of the greatest French victories nobody's ever heard of - Rocroi.

    (Also I stole my nym from the period.)

    Regarding the current discussion, the Young Republican I spoke to 1.5 years ago about Trump's obvious subservience to Putin (exemplified in that cringing press conference) stated "My grandpa and I watched that, and we can't figure out the President's angle." Since they can't imagine betrayal, there must be a PLAN, which, if not comprehended, must be ineffable. The same reaction occurred with another GQPer when I asked about TFG's short-lived blather about buying Greenland. It is important to the mark not to feel like a mark.



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  45. Zepp Jamieson:

    The John Birchers and their political descendents spent decades chanting "America is a republic, not a democracy" In fact, it's both. But they wanted to delegitimize the notion that sovereign power resided with the people, not corporations and churches.


    They're being disingenuous with the term in any case. Our republican (small-r) form of government doesn't have the population voting directly on issues, but does have the people electing the representatives who do vote on such things.

    What the right-wingers are trying to assert without using the terms is that we are a theocracy or a fascist oligarchy. Either of which is about as un-American is it gets.

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  46. LH everywhere - mostly in the west - that the 1900s Progressive Movement gave the people true democracy via direct ballot initiatives, they've proceded to over-rule politicians by enacting nonpartisan rediistricting. So democracy exists and is often sensible and fair.

    Mikye Byron - a good point from my oughta-be congressman!

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  47. Papenheimer you might enjoy the 1632 series of alternate histories (based on a wild gimmick, but plausible after that) in which Piccolomini is a character! I wrote one of the stories, incorporating Moliere and Cyrano de Bergerac!

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  48. Robert10:07 AM

    In Hofstadter's book, he went into great detail about the meaning of 'coffee'.

    That was in Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. Some well reasoned arguments, with excellent grounds :-)

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  49. Robert10:19 AM

    What would the world look like without airplanes, though?

    No bombing. Rockets were an established technology so maybe ICBMs, but would we have developed nuclear weapons (the first ones barely fitting in a bomber)? (Once you have nukes then there are lots of other ways to deliver them — I'm wondering if they would have been developed without the Bomber War ethos.)

    No aerial reconnaissance. Might not have changed WWI that much, but major changes to WWII. Colonial wars like Vietnam war would be very different.

    Harbour cities retain their importance — everyone travelling overseas has to pass through them to get onto a boat.

    Easy international tourism doesn't happen — you need time to be able to travel overseas, which many workers don't have.

    More of the world is unknown or poorly known. Much easier for 'undiscovered valleys' to remain undiscovered.

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  50. Pappenheimer10:24 AM

    Dr. Brin,

    I've read and enjoyed the earlier ones...and am glad the authors left Breitenfeld alone, and reinstated Shakespeare as the author of his own plays.

    Cyrano - it's difficult to imagine an author inventing Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac. It would be too hard on the reader's suspension of disbelief. (Which, I understand, is a problem in fiction - Joseph Conrad wrote that he personally witnessed a chain of events on a dock in some port that was so hysterically unbelievable that it could never be incorporated into his works.) Cyrano's duel with Sir Richard Burton on the sinking Riverboat is probably some of Farmer's most enjoyable writing. and Heinlein has Oscar defeat an unnamed but obvious Cyrano on the way to retrieve the Egg of the Phoenix. I think Cyrano would have enjoyed knowing that he is still being written about 366 years after his death, but would complain about losing to Scar and being shot in the back by Burton's main squeeze before he could defeat the gallant Englishman. I hope you treated him better.

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  51. I had to include further comment from the Charles Blow column I already linked to before. Waiting until other posts showed up so that I'm not completely monopolizing the blog.

    Emphasis is mine:

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/01/opinion/republicans-threat-america.html

    ...
    I don’t see how we continue to pretend that this is politics as usual, that it’s normal squabbling between ideological opposites. No, something is deeply, dangerously wrong here. This is not the same as it has always been.

    This Republican Party is a menace to society. That must be said. That is the truth.

    And when one of the country’s two major parties is so close to the brink of the falls, it threatens to pull the entire country over.

    So I have no intention of treating this Republican Party the way I treated it just 10 years or 20 years ago. That party doesn’t exist anymore. It died. This thing we have now is its zombie. Zombies can’t be reasoned with.

    We have to stop making people who call this Republican Party out for what it is feel like extremists, reactionaries and alarmists, rather than truth tellers. It is not extreme to tell the truth, but it is delusional to twist yourself into a knot to not tell the unvarnished truth because you believe your tone of conciliation will lead to rehabilitation.
    ...

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  52. Pappenheimer:

    another GQPer


    Heh. I'm going to steal...I mean use that from now on.

    ReplyDelete
  53. Michael Byron:

    I KNEW in 1966 that Obama was born in Honolulu in 1962.


    Not 1961? I could have sworn he was one year younger than I am.

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  54. Pappenheimer10:31 AM

    ..Actually, I wouldn't mind a scene in the 1632 series wherein Cyrano reads these works in the Grantville library and rants about this to the librarian!

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  55. Michael Byron:

    You might watch this in its entirety: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBtsNNXjBPw I'd call it very compelling, EVIDENCE to repute your "big lie" assertion.


    Unfortunately, those of Treebeard's ilk don't need evidence-based convincing that Trump is a puppet of Putin or that he fomented an insurrection. They already know, and furthermore like those things about him. They just don't want people saying them out loud, except behind closed doors inside of which it is understood that those are good things.

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  56. Pappenheimer, in 1635 Cyrano is a 16 year old apprentice at GALAXY the sci fi magazine being published in Grantville, wondering why no one belivees his false name, till he reads up on his other self. His roommate Moliere is just 12. You’d like the story! It’s in RING OF FIRE IV

    In fact he's an observer character, the real story within the story is about the NEXT time snatch.

    Yeah GQPer is fun.

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  57. Dr Brin:

    in 1635 Cyrano is a 16 year old apprentice at GALAXY the sci fi magazine being published in Grantville, wondering why no one belivees his false name, till he reads up on his other self.


    Something similar was done in the 70s movie Time After Time, in which a time-traveling HG Wells chases after a time-traveling Jack the Ripper. Having traveled forward to our time, the HG Wells character thinks it would look suspicious if he gave his real name, so he gives the police an assumed name of an obscure fictional character--Sherlock Holmes.

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  58. Pappenheimer12:00 PM

    Larry,

    re: GQPer

    Go right ahead. I've no idea who I stole it from.

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  59. Robert12:07 PM

    and furthermore like those things about him

    That is the thesis for much of Serwers's The Cruelty Is the Point.

    https://www.harvard.com/book/the_cruelty_is_the_point/

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  60. Larry Hart: Barak Obama was born in 1961, not 1962 as I recalled.

    ReplyDelete
  61. Found this: https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/the-audacity-of-malingering-doubt/amp/

    Not all of them are "birthers," but the notion that the president was not born in the United States remains at the epicenter of the anti-Obama mythology. Here is the conspiracy that would have had to exist if Barack Hussein Obama II were not born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961: First, the local newspapers would have had to have been in on the scheme, because they ran notices of his birth among all the other local births that week. Second, the Immigration and Naturalization Service would have had to have been covering something up, because INS officials were closely tracking Barack Obama Sr. when he was at the University of Hawaii on a student visa from Kenya. They thought that he was a bigamist - which he was, having married a woman in Kenya before coming to the states - and a womanizer, which he also was. INS documents in the weeks and months before and after the son's birth clearly establish the father's whereabouts and the birth of his son. Finally, the name of Obama's mother, Stanley Ann, was unusual enough that doctors and nurses in Honolulu remembered it and her giving birth. One prominent doctor was asked by a young journalist if anything interesting had happened in the medical world that week, and he responded, "Well, Stanley had a baby!"""

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  62. Michael Byron:

    Here is the conspiracy that would have had to exist if Barack Hussein Obama II were not born in Honolulu, Hawaii, on Aug. 4, 1961


    And even if we accept the ridiculous lengths of the conspiracy by all of those deep-state and media actors, one would have to assume that all this was done in the service of making a specific black child eligible to some day be elected president of the United States--in 1961.

    Seriously, would such a possibility have been on anybody's mind at the time?

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  63. LH and MB... my variant on wager cornering the Obama birth announcement planting scenario would be "I offer $1000 in stakes... NT over this being true or not, but over whether YOU are diagnosably insane on account of this, as adjudged by a council of mental health professionals and non-artisan Christian pastors and military officers."

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  64. I always file away stories like the Nauka 'software glitch' for when high-powered engineering types ridicule me for my UML/pseudocode predilection. Understanding code is orders of magnitude more important than fancy metrics. Swarms of devops can never substitute for first principles.

    "Do not refer to your toy-books, and say you have seen that before. Answer me rather, if I ask you, have you understood it before?"
    - Michael Faraday

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  65. Alfred Differ: Okay. I was taking you too literally. We ARE drawn to people we think are better than us, but I suspect that isn't exactly a trap. It CAN be, but it is also a core learning method. We imitate. Apprentices become Journeymen and then Masters.

    Even the anarchists concur that the bootmaker is the authority concerning boots.

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  66. Pappenheimer4:42 PM

    I don't know if it's political judo or not, but the one thing I said that stopped conservatives in my unit in 2002-2003 from ranting about 9/11 and the Warren Terra was:

    "So, this (invading Iraq, fighting Al Quaeda) is something that must be done, and it's vital to the safety of the USA to do it - but it's not worth raising taxes for?"

    There may be a way to apply that framing nowadays...

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  67. I don't normally approve of arguing from dictionary definitions, but on occasion it's enlightening.

    So the Republicans love to say "We live in a republic, not a democracy." We do? Really? And where does that word come from? It's from Latin. Res publica, meaning 'a public thing.' In the res publica, the government is a matter of public interest. It is not the private property of a king, as it so explicitly is in a monarchy (there's a bit in the first season of Outlander where the time-slipped heroine Claire brings suspicion on herself by saying "It's the Scots' land" and a British army officer says "It is the King's land." In the 1740's, the King owns Scotland, the Scots merely live there.)

    The republic is not some sort of country club of land owners nor any sort of oligarch's playground. It is by definition a public thing. The government is that thing which is controlled by the public.

    And that only happens by some form of democracy.

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  68. In the 1740's the King was a figurehead!
    Since Charles got a bad haircut in 1649

    The King in England used to "own" the country - the old Feudal system but that never applied to Scotland

    In Scotland the Ard Ri - High King - was first amongst equals - which is probably why there was ALWAYS some part of Scotland in rebellion

    The Declaration of Arbroath in 1320 declares that the Scottish people will choose their king - a primitive form of Democracy - which is why the Scots went through so many kings

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  69. Larry feigns misunderstanding, asserting "no contradiction" between "Jews were slandered by tsarist (anti-Bolshevik) Russians" and "Jews featured prominently in the communist (Bolshevik) party which overthrew tsarist Russia".

    Allow me to clarify:

    To whit, there was neither contradiction nor slander when tsarist (anti-bolshevik) Russians accused prominent jewish bolshevik communists of attempting to overthrow tsarist Russia & achieve global communist world domination.

    This was a fact, the stated intent of the Bolshevik Revolution with its declared goal being the creation of world-wide communist rule, the only slander here being one of logical fallacy which projected the properties of a non-representative sample to the properties of a population as a whole.

    The 'Protocols' slander wasn't that a few bolshevik jews were plotting world domination. That specific was true. The slanderous falsehood was to ascribe the bolshevik plot for world domination to ALL jews. That was an unforgivably malicious & false generalisation.

    The 'big lie' was to attribute the malice of a few non-representative individuals to an entire (and largely innocent) identity group, even though this is exactly the kind of rhetorical construct that Larry & David use in the attempt to slander ALL political conservatives as racists, liars, insurrectionists, pedophiles, predators & perverts.

    That this blog tends to project 'Hastert' to all things Republican and conservative, while simultaneously condemning the projection of 'Epstein' to all things Clinton, Democrat and progressive, this is the very 'hypocrisy' that Treebeard has called out.

    And, finally, a few wagers:

    The legend is that Lenin spoke the english language with a quaint Irish accent, but this cannot be confirmed, so it may be technically true that Lenin never said "Democracy is indispensable to socialism" in those exact english words, so I concede that point to our fine host, even though the english language translations of Lenin at https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/ argue otherwise.

    That I am "no Fukayama", this I also concede, as Fukuyama was a rationalist who touted the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy over the discredited communist delusion (aka the 'end of history), but failed to anticipate a resurgence of communism (aka the 'Great Reset') at the hands of irrational 'tikkun olam' chanting progressives hellbent on false utopia.

    Sigh. What else can I say?

    Progressives are (1) well-intentioned irrational idealists (2) who are guided more by ideals than by practical considerations and (3) whose hearts are full of promise but heads are full of fallacies, foibles, sins & tapioca.


    Best

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  70. Larry Hart, quoting Charles Blow,
    "So I have no intention of treating this Republican Party the way I treated it just 10 years or 20 years ago. That party doesn’t exist anymore. It died. This thing we have now is its zombie. Zombies can’t be reasoned with."

    It's always amazing to see the shock/horror reaction of people waking up to the consequences of the political culture others were warning about decades ago, as if it's a sudden change. "The Republican party of 10 years ago" is the same as it is today. Did we forget the 2008 election, the subsequent treatment of Obama? Did we forget the Bush administration's lies and torture? Did we forget the treatment of the Clinton administration in the 1990s? Did we forget about Reagan/Bush cocaine smuggling?...

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  71. Alfred Differ,
    "The Wright brothers tried hard to defend their patent and benefited only a little from what wound up happening. [...] It's hard to imagine what, though. It's even harder to imagine where to draw a line for what counts as value created by what the Wright brothers did."

    The Wright Bros mostly stiffled US aviation development. After one breakthrough (their 3-axis control system,) they did little else accept to hold others back.

    Glenn Curtiss did more to advance aviation than the Wright Bros did, inventing (or at least perfecting) ailerons, rear-tails, all-in-one flight controls (unlike the less useful Wright controls) and a bunch of manufacturing breakthroughs that made aircraft more mass-producable and reliable. Essentially, nothing in the Wright aircraft is recognised today. Whereas everything in Curtiss' is what we would consider standard.

    But just as Curtis was ramping up, they shut him down in legal disputes while themselves making no further advances to aviation. As a result, US aviation was crippled for over a decade, forcing the US government to intervene and... ahem, strongly recommend that everyone puts into a common patent pool and gets out of the way.

    The irony is that the Wrights, like everyone else in the field, benefited greatly from the previously open nature of aviation research. This irony is especially evident in their treatment of the engineer and aviation nut Octave Chanute, who personally collected research from around the world and (at his own expense) travelled to any would-be aviation inventors to share his collection and his knowledge with them. Including the Wrights. They happily milked his knowledge: everyone used Chanute's wings, the Wright's glider was essentially a copy of his own design and their 3-axis control system might have been Chanute's suggestion. Yet they refused to give him any credit, nor share their own knowledge with his other "children".

    So...

    "What would the world look like without airplanes"

    Had the Wrights fallen into a printing press in 1890, aviation history as we know it wouldn't have so much as hiccuped.

    (That said, I enjoyed Robert's riffing on the "what if". And I'll add airships. Without heavier-than-air flight, we still have lighter-than-air. Plus more focus on high-speed rail.)

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  72. Stating the obvious...

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/02/opinion/Covid-Florida-vaccines.html

    ...when people on the right talk about “freedom” what they actually mean is closer to “defense of privilege” — specifically the right of certain people (generally white male Christians) to do whatever they want.

    Not incidentally, if you go back to the roots of modern conservatism, you find people like Barry Goldwater defending the right of businesses to discriminate against Black Americans. In the name of freedom, of course. A lot, though not all, of the recent panic about “cancel culture” is about protecting the right of powerful men to mistreat women. And so on.

    Once you understand that the rhetoric of freedom is actually about privilege, things that look on the surface like gross inconsistency and hypocrisy start to make sense.
    ...

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  73. Robert6:39 AM

    And that only happens by some form of democracy.

    Some form of limited democracy, anyway.

    Republic of Rome, limited franchise, elite class (patricians).

    Republic of Venice, limited franchise, elite class (patricians again).

    Republic of Florence, limited franchise, elite class (guild members, one requirement for holding elective office was your family had to have held elective office previously).

    I suspect that "Republic" is also being used as code for "limited franchise".

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  74. "Had the Wrights fallen into a printing press in 1890, aviation history as we know it wouldn't have so much as hiccuped."

    Not sure I agree. They leaped upon the advances in engines and the CONCEPT of birdlike control surfaces. Curtis got nowhere till he snuck under a tent to examine a Wright flyer and slapped his forehead a dozen times, almost shouting "Of Course!" And then muttering "Of course that's not how to do it ...(w)right!"

    ---------
    Typically vile, but skating this side of bannable, Locum tries for high moral ground by claiming that ALL Jews should not be judged by the pro-communist actions of a few... and therefore (implicitly) that ALL Jews should not be tarred with the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. How charitable and decent of you...

    You evil, evil somonabitch! The answer to the "Protocols" is NOT "it doesn't apply to all Jews." Th answer is that it applies to NO Jews whatsoever. It was a slander concocted in a Kremlin basement, which you know damned well, you eager swallower and spewer of Kremlin basement agitprop.

    Further, no other Bolshevik activists than Jews are picked out and pointed at by their ethnicity, and the IMPLIED association is right there in your Goebbelsian screech. And if you had been around in those days, you'd see that many of the best people thought there was no other way to escape 6000 years of feudal nastiness, which was accelerating toward exactly the brutalization of all workers described by Marx.
    Oh, and when Sovietism turned murderous instead of democratic, it was mostly the Jews who got pointed at and killed.

    Many MORE Jews saw through Marx's incantations and worked with liberal democracy to help devise the Rooseveltean alternative to Marxism, an alternative that prevented the rich from becoming the murderous oligarchy Marx predicted, WHILE maintaining the get-rich incentives that made competitive capitalism to cornucopia of productivity and creativity. It saved the West and rdrove Marx into irrelevanc (until the US right revived him.)
    But their ethnicity was not an issue.

    Alas, locum's choice idiocy is re US Conservatism. While the movement as a whole has gone insane and craven-treasonous, throwing itself behind masturbatory incantations that are universally disproved, and almost universally treasonous, still, many US conservatives are groping to find their balls and murmuring among themselves to create a new party for sane ones. They are talking, though only a dozen or so have yet stood up, like men.

    "hat I am "no Fukayama", this I also concede, as Fukuyama was a rationalist who touted the inevitable triumph of liberal democracy over the discredited communist delusion (aka the 'end of history), but failed to anticipate a resurgence of communism (aka the 'Great Reset') at the hands of irrational 'tikkun olam' chanting progressives hellbent on false utopia."

    You utter insane person. Communism's revival is entirely on the right and you know it. "ex" commissars who grew up daily reciting leninist catechisms are using the "ex" KGB to do what Russian secret services always do, undermining the West, led by an "ex" KGB agent who called the fall of the USSR "history's worst tragedy..." And you are on your knees before them.

    Careful. Stay loose. Vlad goes deep.

    --
    WHY did I spend the time on this SOB? Because I am watching a Roger Penrose lecture about wonderful physics and my angry, polemical side had nothing at all to do. And yes, you can see the symptoms of divided attention, including lack of adult restraint while the adult is paying attention elsewhere.

    But of course I am also typing for the rest of you. There are lines. And when the line of deeply evil-person is clearly crossed, we must denounce.

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  75. The necessity of having particular inventors for big steps forward in technology is an interesting debate. I've been on both sides of this one. I often say that Turing moved the world forward at least half a century. In grade school, I gave a speech on the Wright brothers' genius mainly because I wanted to impress an American girl whose family had just been relocated to our neck of the woods. This piece asks the question: was Hertz's confirmation of radio waves a fluke? with obviously huge implications for SETI:
    https://www.forbes.com/sites/brucedorminey/2021/07/31/why-et-may-have-never-discovered-radio/?sh=3309c37555f2

    This debate, Larry Hart's thoughts on the Obama 'conspiracy' timeline, and the Nauka scare nudged me into thinking about psychohistory once more...
    Psychohistory is essentially a systems architecture project, with iterative development from gas laws to agent-based models.
    To learn about enterprise systems architecture, listen to Grady Booch.
    To learn about natural systems architecture, study evolution
    To learn about bootstrapped systems architecture, study FORTH, or maybe embryo ontology, which is well above my paygrade.

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  76. The Wright brother's 3 axis control was a brilliant insight, poorly executed. Glenn Curtis, with Alexander Graham Bell greatly improved it, using a rigid wing and a hinged control surface. It carries a French name because one of them thought to hinge a portion of the trailing edge of the wing. Would that the Wrights had handled that as (Comparatively) gracefully as XEROX did when Apple paid for a tour of PARC and improved on their work.

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  77. Thre greatest stoopid-miss in history was not Xerox Parc but SEARS... The dropped their mail order business and catalogue in 1992! The very year the Web took off and Bezos began stuffing books into boxes.

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  78. locumranch:

    That this blog tends to project 'Hastert' to all things Republican and conservative,


    loc feigns misunderstanding, asserting that we project the predilections of a small subset of Republicans onto the whole. He conveniently whitewashes over the sheer number of Republicans who end up actually doing the same bad things. There's a world of difference between "All Republicans, because they're Republicans, are guilty of Hastert's crimes" vs "Gee, did you ever notice how many Republicans are guilty of Hastert's crimes?"

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  79. Robert:

    I suspect that "Republic" is also being used as code for "limited franchise".


    I suspect that they think that's what the word means.

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  80. If Republicans weren't aware of Hastert's extracurricular behaviors when they made him Speaker, 3rd highest officer in the US and head of their party, then they are guitly of willful blindness and utter hypocrisy. But of course they did know, explicitly McConnell and Jim Jordan and Ryan. And about SCORES of other GOP perverts.

    But to stand back and complicitly help spread QANON outright Kremlin lies that DEMOCRATS were doing those things? Utter monsters. Again, let's bet on turpiutude rates of non-Utah red states vs. Blue. Or whether GQPpers have EVER been more fiscally responsible. Or who is in bed with communists right now. Or over what we'll know about Lindsey Graham 10 years from now.

    Were he an honest person (even slightly) locum would see all this and the rest as reason to shift and maybe help save US conservatism. But all he can do is scramble to twist out some kind of polemical contortion to deflect.

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  81. Pappenheimer2:42 PM

    I composed an essay comparing Sparta's ending Athen's democracy in 404 BC - only to have it return in 403 - to the GQP's state-level attempt to restrict voting and and control ballot outcomes, and pointing out that such actions would cause reactions. Then I erased it.

    They aren't comparable - Athens didn't do it to itself, and it appears dangerously easy to retain the forms of democracy while securing political power.

    As an amateur historian, I don't know where this is going, but as an ex-weatherman I do know that we do not have TIME for this crap.

    Paul - I went to weather school at Chanute AFB, before it was BRACed. The USAF remembered him, at least.

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  82. Dr. Brin & all make excellent points, and I agree with all their assessments whole-heartedly. I apologise as it was hatefully foolish of me to reject the logical fallacy which projects the properties of a non-representative sample on to the properties of an entire identity group. My eyes are opened. Finally.

    It therefore follows that the answer to the 'Hastert Maneuver' is NOT "it doesn't apply to all Republicans" (but rather) The answer is that it applies to NO non-Republicans whatsoever, as it is especially inappropriate to apply such an acceptable argument to any bolshevik, progressive or proper identity group. You know, like Cuomo?

    I also realise that Communism was NOT a humanitarian failure with a +100 Million body count -- even though this was Fukuyama's most rational assertion -- but rather that Communism was and is a rousing success, as long as we apply a generous helping of the 'No True Communism' fallacy, a maneuver which consists of declaring that all prior communist regimes (ie. Stalin, Mao & Pol Pot) were 'No True Communisms'.

    To echo Larry, it is NOT incidental, if you are to belong to modern progressivism, that you will find people like Nancy Pelosi & Joe Biden defending the right of businesses to discriminate against unvaccinated (aka 'un-American') identity groups, by requiring vaccine passports if 'they/them/those' ever wish to access public services again. In the name of freedom, of course. Because equality means legislated inequality between identity groups.

    With my eyes wide open -- and, with absolutely no apologies to Kubrick -- I welcome the ongoing collapse of each & every western institution, consoled by the certitude that those failed western institutions were 'No True Western Institutions' anyway because they either (1) never worked from the get-go or (2) were irredeemably corrupted by incorrect beliefs, systemic racism or the soup d'jour.

    Remember that your much admired Communism is a Kremlin-adjacent product, too, just like your much prized Kremlin-adjacent Prussian educational system.


    Best.

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  83. Pappenheimer, Athens certainly did it to itself! Democracy is tunningly creative and agile and they terrified the oligarchies. But democracies can fall into dissension and zealotry traps, which they did and we are doing. Without Pericles to keep everyone calm, they made so many errors, amid the brilliance, that it finally came to roost.

    But yes, the NEXT year (!) Thrasabulus climbed the back of the Acropolis and captured the Spartan garrison and re-established... not the empire, but democracy and leadership in all the arts.

    --

    The raving continues. But when I answered before it was with a snarky corner I assigned to locum while 90% of my attention was on Roger Penrose. Talk about opposites!

    True colors, railing that our Athens should fail and bring back the feudal lords!. Kibble. Claiming I said there are no Democrat perverts is just you being laughable goombah. BET NOW whether they are 3 to 6 times more numerous and worse among GQP pols. Coward. Worse, you are boring.

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  84. Pappenheimer:

    Paul - I went to weather school at Chanute AFB, before it was BRACed. The USAF remembered him, at least.


    Hey, small world. I went to the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, just down the road.

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  85. I'm going back to ignoring locumranch again. Nothing to see here except outright lies and slander.

    ReplyDelete

  86. How the GOP Became the Party of Putin
    https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/07/18/how-the-gop-became-the-party-of-putin-215387/

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  87. Good news from InSight data analysis papers - Mars has a molten core (not surprising, but useful). So 'Aresthermal' power might be an option (would take a mighty drill). There sure is a lot of good stuff out there. I'm hoping that greed overtakes nihilism :)

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  88. Paul451,

    The Wright Bros mostly stifled US aviation development.

    I mostly agree… after their initial work. I'm not a big fan of an over-vigorous defense of patents. This is an attitude I check with any potential business partner. I'm more inclined to license than monopolize, but that's in big part to my belief that everyone else is better off if I do. On top of that, 1% of a lot can easily be more than 2% of a little making it a mistake to defend my interests in the belief I'm doubling my winnings.

    Had the Wrights fallen into a printing press in 1890, aviation history as we know it wouldn't have so much as hiccuped.

    I suspect so. I've been on innovative teams. When everybody and the janitor get that bit between their teeth, shit happens fast.

    This just helps make the point I like to make, though. We don't get innovation races like this unless a lot of someone's see a lot of something's to fatten their wallets. Those something's don't get handed over to innovators unless a whole lot more someone's think they'll get more value. The vast majority of the value generated by any innovation winds up with Joe and Jane Public. Patent holders get a piddly 2% of something potentially vast IF they play their cards exactly right. Usually they get less and the knock-off innovators get more.

    And I'll add airships.

    I love airships. Tried to build them. Would have agreed with you back then, but I don't anymore. They are a real PITA anywhere there is unstable weather which is pretty much anywhere near the ground. Seriously! PITA! Regular airplanes are hard enough to fly through unstable weather. Airships?! Argh.

    One demo flight for a team I was on almost got one of our line handlers killed and DID get another injured. Damn sneaky vortex swept across the tarmac at the airport and was on us unseen while we were filling the load envelope. [Our way to spot problems wasn't good enough.] No dust to make the vortex visible. Spun and lifted the ENTIRE structure and dragged tangled people upward. [Most people have no clue how powerful moving air can be when you give it enough surface area to grab.] Scared the piss out of us.

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  89. Robert,

    I admit I didn't get all the way through GEB. I'll take a look at my copy, though. I made it through Strange Loop and Surfaces & Essences, most of GEB, but the other books are sitting on my shelf reminding me occasionally I don't have enough time. 8(



    As a college student I got to take a math class where the prof realized he couldn't find a text that did NOT leave all his students in the dust. He wound up picking GEB because it didn't use the traditional 'list of proofs' approach. We still did proofs, but he worked that in AFTER we began building our intuitions. Best way to teach the stuff, I think. Formal systems just made sense. The intellectual path to Gödel's work was intricate, but followed. Just figure out how to encode it all numerically!

    Learning that one COULD encode statements made understanding compression techniques a whole lot easier later when I encountered them. Not that the tricks shown in GEB were anything like compression, but it's the same idea. Over and over and over.

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  90. Pappenheimer,

    Not dead to me. The 'Dutch' revolt is VERY interesting.

    I paid no attention to the period as a student. Boring I thought. Wars of religion? Ugh. [Not that they were really that simple.]

    A friend at work introduced me to Flint's 1632 series, though, and we kinda geeked out on it the way fans do. I was interested in what tech could be brought up fastest. Wasn't sure I agreed with the other fans that vacuum tubes were as hard as some suggested. I argued for plywood production as a composite materials replacement. I've SEEN home-built airplanes being built and plywood is kinda important. Anyway… geeked out for a while.


    THEN I encountered Deirdre McCloskey's work describing the 'Great Enrichment'. Mostly economics. Nothing to do with alt-history fiction. Ah… but if you read much of the big three volume monster she wrote, you'll see she accuses people of writing alt-history fiction and calling it history and especially economic history. She's nicer about her accusations than I would be, but still argues that everyone is wrong about how we managed to create the miracle that is today's wealthy world.

    What's the tie-in? The Dutch did something during that period that made them ALL wealthier WHILE fighting a war against a European Power. Spain was no second-tier power back then. It's not unusual for some people to get rich when wars happen, but it's kinda rare for entire populations to see growth in their real income while immersed in a fight with a super power.

    I don't want to spoil the fun for you in case you want to read any of her material, but after I did I couldn't agree with some of the things I saw the other 1632-niverse authors writing anymore when their plots began to touch on possible economic changes. Some of it I did and some of it I thought was fantasy. THAT got me reading more stuff and expanding my time horizon a bit to include the demise of the Stuarts across the channel a couple generations later. THAT got me thinking about the Enlightenment in a non-standard way. THAT got me thinking about Enlightenment variations that aren't really discussed in the history of that philosophical movement. THAT got me…


    It's funny where geeky thinking goes at times.

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  91. Chanute AFB amuses me because it's not based on his work in aviation. While doing civil engineering in the region, he suggested that three towns that had individually failed to get a railway should incorporate as a "city" and essentially bluff the railroad company. It worked, so the people named their "city" in his honour. The USAF base is just named after the city.

    ---

    Re: Athens.

    I feel like the failure of Athenian democracy is reflected in same fears of being demographically bypassed that is used to manipulate white men into supporting modern oligarchs. Athenian men were so afraid of the oligarchs, they didn't expand their democracy to include others, ironically making it vastly more fragile. For eg, when they conquered rival territories, they didn't introduce local democracy, instead acting like any other empire. So for the local populous, what's the difference between Athens and anyone else? OTOH, had they provided a path towards popular self-rule in those client-states, they would have ended up surrounded by a buffer of states that would have given Athens breathing room. Instead of prizes to be won from Athens, they would have been burdens.

    Of course, it's easy to forgive Athens. They had no history to draw from. We, otoh, have no excuse.

    (Spent a few hours watching Dem centrists hooting and crowing over the defeat of a progressive candidate in the Ohio special election. Not over their candidate winning, they barely know her, just over keeping "them" out. They missed that GOP donors were giving to the supposed Democratic superpac that flooded the media with attack ads. Or maybe they didn't miss it, maybe that's this much touted "bipartisanship" that they keep looking for.)

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  92. Re: Mars' molten core.

    Wonder why no magnetic field then?

    ReplyDelete
  93. Paul451:

    Chanute AFB amuses me because it's not based on his work in aviation. While doing civil engineering in the region, he suggested that three towns that had individually failed to get a railway should incorporate as a "city" and essentially bluff the railroad company. It worked, so the people named their "city" in his honour. The USAF base is just named after the city.


    Ok, now I'm confused. Chanute Air Force Base was in Rantoul. So are you saying the base was named after a different city?

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  94. Paul451:

    Wonder why no magnetic field then?


    Aluminum?

    ReplyDelete
  95. Larry,
    Re: When is a Chanute, not a Chanute.

    Sorry, I jumbled up two different stories in my head.

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  96. @ Alfred Differ, it took me 18 months to read GEB the first time, and that was when my brain was young and limber.

    For my money the most stunning part of the whole book was the story in Contracrostipunctus about the record that broke record players, and how even the self-reassembling record player was vulnerable to a record that attacked the reassembly apparatus itself.

    I realized with a jolt that the human immune system and the Constitution both worked a lot like that record player and the concept could be generalized to any system complex enough resemble them. When the medical researchers figured out a few years later that HIV attacks the immune system, I instantly thought "Of course it does."

    Computer malware, HIV and COVID, seditionists and hostile hackers of any sort, will always find the flaws in a complex system, and there will always be flaws. Godel's observation about Principia Mathematica and other formal systems applies to systems that on the surface don't seem to have much to do with mathematics... but they are indeed formal systems of a sort, and you cannot ever make them complex enough to be sure there is not a vuln somewhere. It's an arms race and you can never rest on yesterday's victory. Eternal vigilance is indeed the price of freedom.

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  97. Re: No Mars magnetic field

    This is why we explore space. Another example is the weirdness of exoplanets. It questions our solar system model that basically goes back to Laplace. Geoscience too.

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  98. TCB: Just so. Godel's insight is broadly applicable because it's simple at the core. "This sentence is false": that can be said in many contexts, it is not boolean, therefore those contexts are not boolean; they will have grey areas. Godel rephrased the paradox as "This sentence is not provable"; all he required is for provability to be well-defined enough to be made into a statement about integers. The very precision of the logistic program doomed it to encountering Godel's Paradox.

    I think that the way forward is to allow paradox into our systems. That means accepting vagueness, uncertainty, and unpredictability as fundamental. Absolutists need not apply. I think of Godel's Theorems as a refutation of totalitarian thought.

    Here's another psychohistorical theorem to chew on: Arrow's Impossibility Theorem, which states that any social choice function (i.e. political system) must at times display one of these four flaws: Unfairness (some voter has more power than others) or Indecision (the system reaches no conclusion) or Illogic (shifting coalitions yield mutually inconsistent decisions) or Perversity (the system yields results nobody wants). Thus we critique four forms of government, respectively monarchy, tradition, democracy, and chaos.


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  99. Pappenheimer2:00 PM

    Alfred,

    One of the key differences between 1550-1650 AD armies and those of prior centuries is the increased capital that had been developed in Europe, allowing larger, better-equipped forces to operate in wealthier countrysides that grew more food. What had not changed was that most armies still 'foraged for' - stole - a lot of their food, and demanded pay in hard currency. One of the William of Orange's proudest boasts was that he paid his soldiers monthly, while the Army of Flanders that opposed him had at least one lengthy mutiny (basically a sit-down strike) over back pay - the Spanish Crown declared bankruptcy 6 times between 1550 and 1650. I agree that Dutch economic strength was key to their victory.

    (I do remember reading, though, that the Dutch 'military month' could be up to 100 days long.)

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  100. Forgot to comment on the CERT program. I find it to be a great idea training people to help themselves in emergency situations, being them environmental or medical.

    Besides the obvious effect of having people with the necessary skills for such times, groups of volunteers that train and coordinate each other can help a community to grow together, provide useful social integration for youths, and even help foreigners to find a place in their new society.

    And they throw good parties (when they will be allowed again, that is).

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  101. Paradoctor: I think that the way forward is to allow paradox into our systems

    For a long time, I've said the true Turing test is whether it can digest a double-bind dilemma. Christopher Hitchens considered irony to be the essence of humanity.

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  102. In EXISTENCE a brief scene that no one ever commented on... that one of the virtual aliens comes up with a better and convincing definition for the human word "irony."

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  103. Our state does not allow employees time off or pay for training programs such as CERT or CPR; if we want them, we are expected to foot the bill ourselves. Doesn't inspire much interest when, in turn, we are volunteered in emergencies. Sigh.

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  104. scidata:
    Is there intelligent life in the Universe, including planet Earth? Inspection of Earth's radio output confirms that there is life there, and it can manipulate electromagnetism; but as for intelligent life, that radio output gives strong evidence both for and against. In any case, we are not qualified to judge our own intelligence, for Godelian reasons. Therefore I conclude that the only intelligent answer to the question:
    "Is there intelligent life on Earth?"
    is
    "I don't know."

    Brin:
    What was the virtual alien's definition of irony?

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  105. Brin:
    What was the virtual alien's definition of irony?

    Carumba! One of our tricks in SciFi is IMPLYING or referring to something outside our ability to describe, and thus giving a creepy sense of alien. Hey, it worked (just now) on YOU! ;-)

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  106. Re: US-CERT

    In Australia, the closest we have would be the SES. State Emergency Services.

    They're almost entirely voluntary, but they are an ongoing commitment rather than a "once per decade" thing. They handle the proverbial cat-in-a-tree things instead of the fire service. The idea is that doing small jobs (tree smashes your roof in a storm, missing toddler in woodland, car in a creek, etc) keeps their training up-to-date in preparation for major natural and man-made disasters.

    I've wondered if it would help the SES recruit volunteers if they had something like CERT as a gateway drug.

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  107. "In EXISTENCE a brief scene that no one ever commented on... that one of the virtual aliens comes up with a better and convincing definition for the human word 'irony.'"

    Mars' molten but non-magnetic core?

    "And isn't it ironic?"

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  108. Pappenheimer4:26 PM

    If a felon commits a felony and a burglar commits burglary, then committing irony makes you an....

    To misquote Spider Robinson, God is an Iron and we are a pair of pants with a hole burned in the ass.

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  109. Ahcuah:

    Mars' molten but non-magnetic core?

    "And isn't it ironic?"


    No, if it was ironic, it would be magnetic. :)

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  110. I like Americans because they have an easy, whimsical, ironic nature.
    The best examples come from the movies, perhaps someone like Ferrous Bueller.

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  111. Scidata... some of us do/

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  112. Pappenheimer:

    If a felon commits a felony and a burglar commits burglary, then committing irony makes you an....


    An Iron Man?

    Or perhaps a Fe male.

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  113. A while back, I heard a radio news story concerning one of the billionaires in the Trump/Putin orbit. The story mentioned that the man in question was an aluminum magnate.

    My immediate thought was that I didn't know such an object was possible.

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  114. John Fugelsang on Stephanie Miller's show, discussing Republican inconsistency:

    "We have to anticipate mutations in Republican talking points just like mutations in COVID. Both will kill us."

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  115. Stonekettle on Twitter. The top comment is the funny part:

    This tweet may be the single most perfectly written short story ever penned.

    Trump supporter enraged by Biden's victory attacked elderly couple with golf club — and now he can't vote again
    https://rawstory.com/mark-ulsaker-barred-from-voting/

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  116. TCB,

    …the most stunning part of the whole book was the story in Contracrostipunctus about the record that broke record players…

    Yah. I didn't see the connection with the immune system when I first read that part, but I was just a college student. We think we are immortal at that age. 8)

    My take away in later years was that formal systems are wonderfully useful… when they are useful. Otherwise they are fragile. We 'create them like tools' instead of 'create them like children.'


    Paradoctor,

    I think that the way forward is to allow paradox into our systems.

    I don't see it as 'paradox' as such. It's more like 'constraint'. Number Theory is very useful, but can't make a ham sandwich. Oh well. Formal systems can't do everything we thought they could back in the day.

    Also, since we CAN make a ham sandwich, we aren't a formal system? Maybe? Heh. Kinda hard for us to know about our own constraints. Number Theory can't express its own provably, so our conjectures about ourselves may remain just that.

    What I fully accept as implied by Hofstadter's work is we best remain fairly humble about ourselves, what we are, and what we can do. Universal statements about us should get the 'raised eyebrow' expression. While we ARE pretty amazing, time proves things about us better than we do.

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  117. Pappenheimer,

    …is the increased capital…

    Yah, even though wars tend to chew up capital. I think that is THE most interesting thing about the period. Where was the excess income coming from? How is it that the Spanish Crown could keep borrowing ANYTHING?

    The short-sighted answer is that Spain was pulling wealth out of Central and South America. However, I don't think the treasure fleet is enough to explain how the Dutch were wading in the stuff too. Spain was getting access to local money too, but the Dutch had to be generating most of their income (colonies did NOT supply enough) in such excess that they could build ships, guns, etc. How? Why? That's where McCloskey thinks she has an answer big enough to supply the numbers. That matters to us today because THAT'S what the English really copied after 1689. Stealing the Dutch empire was a relative pittance compared to what they copied.

    I have to wonder if Flanders couldn't have participated in this too if Antwerp hadn't been sacked a bit earlier. Reserve banks appear to be important and that's one of the 1632-niverse stories I think Flint and friends got right for Amsterdam.

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  118. I don't know how many of you are familiar with the comic Watchmen and the surprisingly good 2019 tv miniseries which serves as a sequel.

    Knowing that the miniseries aired in 2019--i.e., before COVID--it's eerily weird to see the right-wing senator defend his policy of hiding the identities of police officers by insisting, "Masks save lives."

    How much longer can I go on being an atheist?

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  119. The gold and silver mines of Spanish America did not benefit Spain much because it was not spent on capitalizing new productive capacity (factories, infrastructure, an educated populace) either in Spain or its colonies. Rather, it was spent on fripperies like art, palaces and arms for rampaging armies. Who wound up getting the gold and spending it on working capital? Artisans in Holland and their neighbors wh sold stuff to Spain...

    ...exactly as China is doing with us.

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  120. I just saw this video of bar graphs showing the 13 largest exporting nations in the world, in billions of dollars, from 1970 to 2019. In 1970 the US is by far the number one exporter at almost $60 billion, with Germany at second place with $34 billion. Most of the list is Europe or North America. China is not on the list. Hong Kong appears at the bottom of the list in 1984 (still free under British control). Hong Kong spends the next decade working its way toward the mid-list and Communist China makes its debut in 1995.

    At this point China begins its march to the top of the chart, and remember that Hong Kong, still on the list, really ought to be added to China's total after 1999. All the exporters above China start to stagnate and shrink, it's obvious where their vitality is being drained to. In 2009 China dethrones Germany from its long-held No. 2 slot and if we add Hong Kong, China's true total passes the US about this time also. But China takes the top spot in 2012 and the Trump years see the US position collapse like a sand castle. By 2019 we are barely ahead of Germany. Adding in Hong Kong puts China's true total at nearly TWICE the US exports for 2019, or about equal to the US and Germany combined. Chinese export dominance in 2019 looks a lot like US export dominance almost 50 years earlier.

    https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/oz70a4/the_worlds_largest_exporters/

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  121. If we had a way to track it I'd bet serious money a lot of the gold and silver sent to Spain on the treasure fleets wound up fueling corruption. So it wasn't just that they weren't investing, they were wasting it. Not spending it on productive uses? Yah. Quite the opposite. Kinda goes with the times, though, so that's not saying much. Aristocrats do what aristocrats do.

    The fraction of it captured by the Dutch combined with the income derived from Dutch colonies isn't enough to explain what the Dutch did, though. Wisely investing (thrift + prudence) that combination still isn't enough. Real incomes for average dutchmen increase between 2-3x over the period. Incoming wealth DOES explain why certain dutchmen grew rich, but not the general population. Even if a 17th century version of trickle-down worked (as likely as getting struck by lightning while hiding underground), it's not enough. Money was flowing every which way and they unintentionally documented the fact of it in their writing and possessions many of which survive today.

    McCloskey spent an entire book addressing each of the ideas people offer as explanations. Investment? Colonial theft? Thrift? Industry? Etc. Contributions from these options aren't zero or trivially small, but they aren't gigantic enough to explain what happened. Imagine encountering someone loading a musket, not seeing the first few steps, and the trying to explain why the bullet comes out of the muzzle so fast. Must be all the energy packed into the wadding when the bullet is rammed home, right? What else could it be? We didn't see anything else happen! "Bougeois Dignity" after the first hundred pages (which are mostly set-up) attempts to demolish every other explanation. Roughly 300 pages of that. 8)

    What the Dutch actually did that survives counter-arguments gets discussed in "Bougeois Equality"… after another hundred pages of set up… and it goes on almost 500 pages. Heh. IF you can slog through it, though, it makes an Enlightenment fan proud to include the Dutch from this era. Though they were strongly inclined to be mercantilists, they improved their lot anyway… while at war with Spain… as a republic… in the middle of nations/crowns that despised republics… and made the English envious enough to copy (with errors) the whole system. It's the English errors that eventually broke the mercantilist approach and left us with what we have today.

    The first book in the series addresses the old theory for ethics that modern readers often don't know. Virtue Ethics. McCloskey wanted to point out that it is still in use no matter where philosophy professors went in their research. Commoners used it whether we knew the terms or not. With it we have a way to make sense of economic behaviors engaged in by the common man. Details form the first book (another 500 pages!) get re-used in the third.



    So… history is no longer a dry subject for me. Took me decades to understand that, but understanding what might happen in the future benefits from understanding what happened in the past. Sounds trite? Trivial? Yah. Still took a while to grok.

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  122. I tend to see the world in terms of per capita impact. That would be something like a 'Foundation Index', made up of exports, education, and democracy. Germany and Canada would probably dominate that list for most of the 21st century.

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  123. Alfred you leave out the flow of gold to Dutch ARTISANS, who supplied most of the art and luxuries bought by Spanish courts.

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  124. Robert4:59 AM

    Chinese export dominance in 2019 looks a lot like US export dominance almost 50 years earlier.

    You should properly include internal economic activity to get an idea of economic strength as well. America spent many years building its economy (behind trade barriers) before exports started booming. Likewise Britain (going a lot further back). One motivation for the EU was creating a large internal economy to balance America.

    Significant exports without a lot of domestic strength makes you an economic colony, vulnerable to decisions taken elsewhere. (Canadian here, speaking from experience.)

    China's internal economy is large enough that it doesn't need exports anymore.

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  125. The gold and silver mines of Spanish America did not benefit Spain much because monies are NOT real 'wealth' per se, but rather false symbolic representations of wealth, much in the same way the trillions & trillions of magically-generated COVID stimulus dollars do not actually create an increased supply of real milk, eggs, healthcare or affordable housing.

    In fact, any sudden and/or arbitrary increase in monetary supply tends to generate a scarcity of wealth -- through the supply & demand process of inflation -- and this non-magical turn_of_events remains as true today in the USA, EU, Saudi Arabia & PRC as it did in Imperial Spain when it became flush with looted gold but possessed little actual material wealth.

    Indeed, it is a sad state of affairs when the acknowledgement of said fact becomes an unwelcome & anti-social act, so I withdraw yet again.

    You have my best wishes because wishes is all you will soon have.


    Best

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  126. Vitamins! Locum does this now and then. Contributes something to a discussion. This time an assertion that contains some true aspects... while ignoring the fact that stimulus to the working class results in demand for efficient production of actual things, plus generation of creative entrepreneurial startups, while all of those Supply Side carotid-sucks by his masters truly did accomplish nothing of value.

    But then he finishes up with another dyspeptic snarl of futility. So those were short-acting vitamins.

    whatever.... zzzzzzzz

    onward

    onward

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  127. Pappenheimer1:10 PM

    If I recall my reading correctly, a lot of the au/ag looted from the Americas went directly from the Spanish galleon fleets into German banking vaults to cover the huge loans the Spanish crown repeatedly took out to cover the Armada and other Imperial endeavors, pausing only briefly in the Spanish exchequer (Wiki says that Spain owed 20 million ducats from the war with England alone). Enough stuck around to cause inflation in Spain rather than increasing its economy. (Spain's wars also left a social component of disbanded/deserted soldiers, called picaros [literally pikemen] who preferred to live by the rules of their trade - looting and moving on - rather than return to civilian life, a lot like ex-Confederate raiders post US Civil War - only imagine men who had literally been born and grown up during the war(s), and who knew no other trade. Grimmelhausen's Simplicius Simplicissimus is a period novel describing such a life, set in the Germanies. The word picaresque came into English from this lifestyle.)

    I had a Dutch friend who loaned me a book about Holland's startling rise to superpowerdom, and the catastrophic decline of the Republic was described too. While I concede that the origins of Dutch success are hard to parse, one word can explain the failure - Hubris.

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