We are just back from the World Science Fiction Convention in Los Angeles, where it was announced NANCY KRESS will be the next Grand Master of SF! Huzzah! I campaigned for it. Nan is a wonder and a joy and brilliantly deserves it.
Elsewise at LACon: accompanied by other brilliant women (wife and daughter) I gave a talk about AIlien Minds (my new book on artificial intelligence) to a packed double room, and did a fiction reading...
An evening performance of my play THE ESCAPE was very popular. (Know anyone in theater?)
I wore my kepi and it seems a vast majority of SF fans despise the anti-science/anti-future putsch that has taken hold in the USA. That we must repel in November's Gettysburg.*
And hence, I must segue into that topic.
== Why we must fight for an awkwardly childish and sometimes foolish 'empire' ==
What follows may strike some of you as nationalistic or even jingoistic. But it must be said! This fight is an old one and too much is at stake to leave this meme space dominated by sanctimony junkies, sabotaging the one and only broad coalition that might save America and the world.
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To be clear - and I repeat it often - The USA Has Not Been Angelic or especially 'good' - except compared to any other empire or strong nation across all of time.
For example, I may point out that - unlike Hispanic North & South America - a huge fraction of North American place names are original Native words... Lake Ontario, Michigan, Minnesota, Dakota, Utah, Alabama, Mississippi and so on... a fact worth noting for its implication that many Anglos were sympathetic. Of course that does nothing to compensate for wretched crimes like the Trail of Tears, or neglect of treaties, or awful reservation schools, or dismal stereotypes, or land bought at coerced prices or outright stolen! Nor does the courage and sacrifice of kepi-wearing Union soldiers compensate for slavery.
So, I am not at all suggesting that the United States took North America in some kind of altruistic act of kindness. Certainly, there was greed, exploitation, conquest, and a myriad of human evils!
What is lacking is the PRAGMATIC need to keep applying the tools that we have used -- way too slowly and too incrementally - to glacially improve. What tools had the best outcomes toward a future when all racism, sexism, and injustice fade into dim memory of our long, grinding self-uplift? (Without any real help from damned UFO aliens or gods.)
YOU should care about that pragmatism, instead of lusciously orgasmic sanctimony preening.
And by far the greatest instrument of incremental steps toward that better future has been the United States of America.
This posting summarizes - in new language - Chapter 9 of Polemical Judo, my book of proposed tactics that could have prevented our present mess, if any Democratic politicians had imagination or political savvy higher than a tardigrade. That chapter supplies much more detail, then appraises the rise of China. And I invite any of you to refute any part of it.*
(Alas, in this benighted era of collapsed literacy, I expect that what follows, below, will only be read by AI scrapers.)
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And so, I'm forced to restate what should be obvious. That there is something in America and its 80 years of world leadership that's worth saving. In fact, despite all our flaws, it is the best thing that ever happened to humanity and the world.
Let's start with a bald statistic that is sufficient, all by itself, to justify that assertion.
Today, after 80 years of the American Pax -- and despite many continuing horrors that we see in the news -- 95% or so of living humans have never witnessed war with their own eyes.
Go ahead and tally it yourself. (Start with China, India, Indonesia, Brazil and keep tabulating.) Ponder that for a minute and refute it if you can! (You can't.) ...then compare it to the dismal litany of human history before 1945, when a vast majority of humans had experienced the smell of a burning village or city, accompanied by screams of despair.
Again, news media rightfully bring to our eyes and conscience reminders of the other 5%, who have been killed or maimed or terrified or traumatized by horrible human nastiness and violence... and yes, some of it perpetrated by my nation. And never forget that we are bound and obligated to strive our utmost to solve those zones of agony!
Still, few ever, ever mention the 95% or this unprecedented era of peace for a vast majority of humans. It is worth pondering that fact for balance.
(Your brain can contain two thoughts simultaneously. Try it)
Even more telling, today 95% or so of children across Earth are in school, having never starved. If you cannot refute that (you can't) then please, please show us any other time that did better?
Want some more such points?
* All previous 'empires' were mercantilist, raping their colonies and peripheries for wealth. (It was Gandhi's #2 complaint about the British Raj.) During Pax Americana's counter-mercantilism -- crafted by George Marshall and other geniuses after WWII -- US consumers augmented vast aid with buying 100trillion$ in unneeded crap we never needed, which uplifted almost every economy in the world, leading to glittering cities in Japan, Germany and Korea, then Taiwan, Thailand, China and now India and Nairobi and Mexico. And yes, places with brown and black skins. (Who cares about that aspect? Alas, it must be mentioned because sanctimony-preeners make it necessary.) See this elaborated.
Furthermore, while mild European socialism - copied from the US New Deal - has done very well, actual communism made dismal wrecks of Russia and Eastern Europe and China... till the former collapsed and the latter eagerly joined the Pax Americana gravy train.
But here's another:
* The entire European Union - starting with the Coal and Steel Common Market, then the EEC, and then EU, resulted from US subsidy and arm-twisting, especially of the French. Indeed, the EU might evolve into an Earth Union, as I depicted in fiction, even back in the 80s. And if True America loses this current phase of the US Civil War to our recurring Confederate madness, then EU will have to lead humanity's next phase, along with Japan and AustralAsia.
If so, then they will be carrying on entirely as America's child. (And if so, mazeltov! I am proud of that and hope they can bear and augment the torch of liberty and fairness, even if we sink into madness and despair, over here. I'll not witness it, since I will have been killed, by then. If Confederate fascism wins, I may send my family away, but I will die on this hill.)
* Oh, and about the values of Tolerance, Diversity, reciprocal accountability, rambunctious individualism and fair competition? Values that usefully criticize our mistakes... or else get warped into toxic exaggeration, spewed with masturbatory righteousness by unhelpful, shrieking, virtue-signaling ingrates? Well...
Those values were spread (and still are) by Hollywood! There is NO other source - or combination of other sources - that has been more responsible for those values filling the globe. Indeed, ingrate fools who can't see where they got their own values -- suckled from almost every film or TV show they enjoyed - and from most scifi --only prove themselves to be dopes, incapable of perspective.
And note, so far at least, Hollywood (my home town) continues even now fighting for those values.
== We're no angels ==
Is any nation a paragon of virtue? Of course not. We are all still cavemen! Though many of us are trying to rise up and become responsible, decent people, instead of greed-driven, sanctimony-drunken harem-keepers.
Hence, the jerks who are trying to restore 6000 years of feudalism only prove themselves to be lobotomized cretins. Despite some of them showing nerdy brilliance at tech, they are unable to see that their grabbiness is likely to end in the death of market capitalism. And in tumbrel rides.
Moreover, all empires are shitty! Even the most well-meaning make terrible mistakes. But...
* But if you visit Vietnam today, you'll find that Americans are immensely popular. Folks there are unbelievably friendly to US citizens! Despite all the suffering that our biggest mistake wrought upon that poor country, while we delusionally thought that we were 'saving' them. Despite all that, they like us! Now why would that be?
* Over 100,000 Filipinos died during WWII, fighting for their supposed 'colonial masters'... and for themselves, and even more Indians fighting for Britain... in part because they believed our promises.
Promises that we KEPT, right after the war ended.
== You never had a friend like.... ==
* Okay, here's another: For 80 years, the non-Leninist nations of the world developed mostly in peace, while spending just 1% or so of their GDPs on arms and defense - instead of the 30% of GDP or more that was normal before 1945, ever since humans developed agriculture.
Ponder that. 30% of GDP, that could have been spent - across all of those centuries - on infrastructure and development and education and uplifting poor children, wasted for 6000 years because of the paranoia of kings. (The kind of world order that Putin and the PRC and Republicans are trying to re-establish as civilizational rivals will take us back into such dark times.)
Indeed, since WWII that vast wealth -- the freed-up 29% or so -- was spent that way: all over the globe, from Latin America to East Africa to Indonesia.., though not (alas) along the Pakistan-Indian border... on infrastructure and development and education and uplifting poor children. In most of the world, for eighty years! Though not in the USA or USSR. Where arms and armies did take the old toll on taxed citizens.
Gee, I wonder why the USA spent so much on defense, an umbrella that let eighty or so nations spend far less.
Any Eastern European will tell you why. In gratitude that someone held the line on their behalf. As will any beneficiary of that umbrella of protection, who has sapience above the level of a slime mold. And all the while, somehow finessing past the Armageddon War that seemed scheduled to happen, in the normal cycle of human affairs.
* Oh and then this. For the first 50 years after WWII a vast majority of world leaders from all nations got their educations in American universities, till their numbers amassed enough for their own universities to boom everywhere else. Hey, you're welcome.
(And if our know-nothings win, here in the USA, they'll continue the evisceration of American universities that have ben the greatest wonders of the world. Only, in that case, um. can I send any grandchildren to Nairobi U, please?)
== Why we fight ==
And yes, during all that time, dark, recurring cancers of the American soul kept conniving, trying to end our Renaissance! Turning us back into a dismal, pyramid topped by super-rich harem masters and lords and their inheritance brats, restoring 6000 years of unsapient and gruesomely vile feudalism. And eventually kings.
And now, just as in 1861, they are rallying poor white fools to march for them in favor of racism, sexism and rule by oligarchs. And ultimately, restored slavery. Above all, they ruminate grudge-hate of fact professions! And the Constitution....
... and to suppress the finest locus of adult maturity in the world, the United States Military Officer Corps.
And alas, just as in every other phase of the recurring US Civil War, they will learn they have roused a sleeping giant and filled us with a terrible resolve
== And so, we heed the call... ==
The fight is on. The next 2.5 months and more may be our Gettysburg*.
Our friends around the world... and those sapient enough to know their own self- interest... are rooting for us and helping where they can. Like the incredibly helpful-brave stance of dear Canada!
Others swirl around us, as biting gnats, gleefully distracting and feeding off our pain. Gnats who aren't even worth swatting-at.
(Especially dismal twits from nations whose own colonial crimes led to the Congo basin and Namibia and Afghanistan and the Sahel and some others being the saddest places on Earth.)
But this missive doesn't hope to persuade either domestic or foreign sanctimony gnats. Around the planet, there are friends who know what Pax America gave the world for 80 years. Or, at least know that they cannot name any other nation, anywhere across history, that had a better ratio of good deeds to atrocious mistakes.
And was all of that my own version of sanctimoniously self-justifying preening?
Perhaps, partly. But I am in this fight, up to my neck.
I wear my blue Union civil war kepi with pride and confrontational impudence.
And I do not feel 'helped' by yammering ingrates, either on the ditzy farthest left or across the entire undead monster cult that the Foxite/Putinist Republican right has become...
...or in nations that owe almost everything they have to the world that George Marshall and other geniuses made for them.
Help us - and in so doing, help yourselves! So that we can get back to ending racism, sexism and other travesties and become the kind of people that our new, AI children can respect and even admire.
And so that Pax Americana can be that LAST Empire! And worlds of optimistic science fiction can come true.
=============================
===========postscript notes==========
* The coming US elections will be fraught times. The Foxites and their Kremlin masters can see a deluge coming. They need massive MAGA turnout, which might be achieved through an act of martyrdom! And hence I pray for competence in the US Secret Service.
Or else they plan some kind of super-9/11 tragedy to excuse martial law, blamed on both Iran and lib'ruls. Though we will hit the streets in multitudes shouting Reichstag Fire!
(Democrat legislators etc. watch youir backs, the next 6 months. Hitler's very first move after the Reichstag Fire was to round up opposition members.)
Want some optimism? Perhaps this will finally propel defectors from Fox and the suborned/blackmailed GOP. And no, boys, I now know that won't happen. This crisis will - by hook or crook - be about us earning our Gettysburg. And your grandchildren will be so very grateful to heroes.
Finally... everyone who knows anyone in a red state, tell them to check their voter registration and KEEP DOING IT till November.
Up Blue Revolution.
176 comments:
Ha, in first!
My Dad was THERE when the Filipinos helped fight off the Japanese. He was a college freshman when Japan conquered the Philippines. He said Filipinos cheered when the Americans dropped bombs on the Philippines in 1944. They knew Filipinos were dying, but were willing to pay that price to end what my Dad called, "The Japanese Time."
The weird thing is that 40 years before, the Americans conquered the Philippines and made it the crown jewel of their colonial empire. To me, it's rather shocking that the Filipinos became so pleased by their former American conquerors that thousands of Filipino civilians risked their lives attempting to feed American soldiers during the Bataan Death March.
This is something the woke flagellists who want to condemn "whiteness" need to consider.
I am not at all suggesting that the United States took North America in some kind of altruistic act of kindness. Certainly, there was greed, exploitation, conquest, and a myriad of human evils.
What they fail to accept is that conquest was the way of the world. throughout most of human history.
Yes. The European colonists from England seized North America from Native American peoples. Yes, people from Spain seized South America, central America and Mexico from Native American peoples. However, what happened was NORMAL when civilizations collided.
Let us now consider the alternative. Suppose the Aztec Empire had been strong enough to repel the Spanish Conquistadors and then expand into North America, where they were able to exterminate the English colonists.
Do you really think the Aztec Empire spread by soldiers showing up in towns and villages throughout Central America and singing "Kumbaya" around the campfire? Hello. This was a culture that practiced human sacrifice!
One can imagine Europeans taking a starring role in religious ceremonies somewhat like "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom" before their North American colonies were wiped out. Perhaps the more accurate picture was that what the Europeans did to Native peoples was somewhat similar to what they would have done to the "white man" had they been able.
The oddity is that the white men now feel guilty about their conquest. I am not learned enough to say that European descendant cultures are the ONLY people in human history to behave in such a manner. However, I feel pretty safe in saying it's not usual in human history.
Does history show any such guilt on the part of the Aztec and Incan Empires for atrocities foisted upon the civilizations THEY conquered? What of the peoples overwhelmed by the Chinese Kingdoms? What African Empires regretted their seizure of land from people who came before them. Does such literature exist in Egypt? Babylon? Persia?
I'd really like to know.
John, what I am trying to say during the last days is that it is not about the past, but about the present and future.
Responsibility instead of guilt means
(1) Acknowledge what happened and (2) recognize historical continuities
(3) Break those continuities,
(4) Thus allow wounds to heal and safeguards, legal or otherwise, to be created that certain processes do not repeat themselves.
The oddity is that the white men now feel guilty about their conquest.
Well, several points to be made here.
1) We in the old world inflicted enough trauma on each side that how we conducted war changed after 1648 up until Napoleon and the industrialization of conflicts, which allowed us to turn back into barbarism. During the time of the "Cabinet Wars" it was more about maneuvering and position than a burned earth strategy, as it has been before. After the French Revolution, armies itself became larger, and tactics increasingly less important when you can throw more and more soldiers at the problem. Plus, barbarism and the desire to wage war were increasingly fed by nationalism.That lasted until 1945, at least this side of the iron curtain. And with varying degrees.
2) Since Namibia was mentioned: Part of the truth is that even in the nationalist and imperialist atmosphere of the Kaiserreich von Trotha's deeds did cause outrage then. When he was called back, he wasn't tried, but fell into disfavor and was shunned by the elite.
3) History as a profession hearkens back to ancient Greece and Rome, but up until recently, it was regarded only as a tool to win wars, not to avoid them. There are some inklings of it in Sun Tsu and Machiavelli, but they had no grasp of consequences.
4) Modern communication makes it harder to hide atrocities and historical facts. Access to sources allows you to discover patterns and trends, and allows you to act to prevent future catastrophies.
5) Some of the consequences of colonialism are tribal genocidal wars, Islamistic Terror, corruption, revanchism, ecological disasters, and refugees.
6) Finally, the same forces that want you to hate your neighbours are those who distort history, attack minorities and are an inherent danger to freedom, human rights and democracy. Protecting history, and making safeguards is a matter of survival of democracy.
Dr Brin in the previous comments:
"On August 29, at a meeting with teachers, Russian President Vladimir Putin came up with a new metaphor that he believes explains why Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Killer whales, he said, “eat bears like minnows,” attacking them in packs. Children should be taught this in school, according to the Russian president, so they understand “why we’re carrying out a special military operation” — the Kremlin’s term for the war. Hardly anyone could tell what exactly Putin meant, but the strange remark set off a wave of jokes on social media.
Wait... isn't the national mascot symbol of Russia the bear?"
Putin does sound a bit like a certain occupant of the White House does these days. But I think his point, if he has one, is that Ukraine is one of the killer whales who would hunt Russia in packs (with other countries), and that the war is to prevent that from coming to pass.
"Yes. The European colonists from England seized North America from Native American peoples. Yes, people from Spain seized South America, central America and Mexico from Native American peoples. "
In our college days, my brother was the lefty who made me sound like Ronald Reagan. He once showed me a Latin American comic strip describing the atrocities perpetrated by the US against the Latinos of Cuba. I found it ironic that the genocide against native peoples of that island were perpetrated by the Spanish, not the English, but the author seemed to blame Spanish behavior on America, and then bemoan America's mistreatment of the Spanish settlers as if those were the natives.
Larry, I do not deny that the Spanish committed genocide. What I challenge is that any former colonial power should point fingers.
There is, imho, a continuity from King Phillips War to ICE detention camps and Operation Southern Spear.
"What I challenge is that any former colonial power should point fingers."
Fair enough. The only issue I took was the descendants of the Spanish conquistadors pointing fingers at us for the crimes they themselves committed.
On an earlier, often raised topic, I came across the following this morning.
“Practically everyone who falls for the Al hype is dreaming of getting a human need fulfilled without having to extend moral consideration.”
[Corey Doctorow, from his 2026 book “The Reverse Centaur’s Guide to Life After AI: How to Think About Artificial Intelligence Before It’s Too Late”]
I think this is well phrased, and very accurate. Yes, I believe some people creating, using, experimenting with AI aren't "guilty" of this, but it really looks from where I'm sitting as if they are the minority.
Japanese racism was their undoing.
They treated everyone who was not Japanese as inferiors.
Stupidly, that included the Asians formerly living under European and American colonial rule that could have been recruited as natural allies against White oppression.
Instead of an empire where civilians were slaughtered, abused and exploited imagine if the Japanese had come as true liberators from colonial rule and gave every Asian a rifle to fight with and a shovel to dig fortifications across Asia and the Pacific.
The concept of others having agency seems to be lost on many. This infantile simplification explains much of today's 'geopolitics'.
As for the genocide of Native Americans during the European conquest most of the heavy lifting was done by European diseases which wiped out native populations. European diseases wiped out an estimated 90% to 95% of the Indigenous population in the Americas following initial contact. The few smallpox infected blankets not withstanding, most of these diseases spread naturally from contact.
Celt,
The Japanese TRIED your suggestion when they first conquered the Philippines. My Dad said the early Japanese occupation troops were disciplined soldiers. They tried to teach Japanese to the locals and promoted the idea of "Asia for Asians."
However, the Filipino populace sided with the Americans right from the start. The Bataan Death March was in 1942. I think the reason the Japanese attempt to win over the Philippine populace failed was their track record in Asia.
Japan had been fighting in China for about a decade when they launched their attack against British and American colonial possessions in Asia. I presume a couple things happened.
1) Filipinos compared Japanese actions in China to the words they were saying in the Philippines and said, "Yeah, right."
2) The Americans had the good fortune to follow the Spaniards as colonial overloads and benefitted by comparison. Spain would punish Catholic clergy for educating the populace and punish Filipinos who sought education. The Americans set up schools and provided mass education to the Filipinos. My Dad said he ended up becoming a doctor because he achieved the 2nd highest IQ score in his province as a child. This put him on an elevated education track which culminated in him going to medical school and coming to the United States in 1956 for advanced residency training.
3) My Dad also pointed out that Japanese behavior in the Philippines got MUCH worse when American submarine warfare cut off Japanese supply lines, which compelled the occupation troops to plunder to survive. The irony is that the American victories in the Pacific that the Filipinos cheered also caused the occupation troops to behave much worse.
4) My Dad also said that the Japanese simply didn't have the manpower to digest their conquests. He cited the disciplined troops in the first wave of occupation forces. However, he said the Japanese soon needed ANY decent units on the front. Treatment of Filipinos got MUCH worse after those original occupation forces got rotated back into combat.
Indeed, my father said he owed his life to the Japanese colonel who commanded the occupation forces near his town. Intially, a group of women would have parties with Japanese officers at a house in his town. I'm sure I don't need to spell out what was happening here.
Though I'm sure many locals spit on these Filipinos for consorting with the enemy and due to Catholic morality, the Japanese colonel warned the locals that "some very bad men are coming" and advised that the town, "should not be there" when they arrived.
Thus, the Filipinos abandoned their town. The new occupation troops slaughtered anyone they found.
The big problem that the Japanese faced is they needed to EXPLOIT their new conquests to keep their war machine running. Recall, the Americans cut off Japan from key trade goods prior to WW2.
Japan was getting most of its oil, steel, and rubber from the United States, which they needed to conduct their war in China. When Roosevelt imposed an embargo, the military junta which controlled the Japanese government faced a choice. They could either end their war in China and watch their government collapse. Or, they could try to seize what their war machine needed to continue by conquest.
They chose the latter, which, in retrospect, was a doomed strategy from the start. They tried to solve the problem of supplying their war in China by starting an even bigger war to supply their war machine with a new colonial empire, which required a much larger logistical infrastructure than their
prior importation system with the US.
After Commodore Perry forced Japan to end it's isolation, the Shogunate fell and through the Meiji reforms, Japan transformed from an agrarian,but stable feudal society to an industrial, yet volatile oligarchic parliamentary democracy. They saw that the winds of that time blew from a certain direction: eat, or be eaten.
Industrial societies have other, larger appetites. Japan could not fullfill those appetites through own ressources, the good spots already occupied by other nations.
Japan entered WWI on the side of the Entente, conquering Germani Pacific colonies and the city of Tsingtao. They sent 9 warships to Europe.
In Versailles and later in the League of Nations, their interests got snubbed, and they interpreted this as a massive, racially motivated humiliation. (Which it most likely was, at least partially.) that added to the massive political turbulences. Which left basically a fascist, revanchist Junta in charge until WWII ended.
I skim stuff like this: "When he was called back, he wasn't tried, but fell into disfavor and was shunned by the elite...." and I realize I am trying to talk to a truly awful person.
NOT ABOUT THE PAST???? THE LAST 80 YEARS HAVE BEEN HUMANITY'S BEST IN A MYRIAD WAYS. AND IT HAD ONE CORE REASON. AND NOW THAT FORCE FOR GOOD IS TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF DISASTER AND NEEDS HELP FROM FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD. AND WE ARE GETTING SOME, LIKE BRAVE, WONDERFUL CANADA.
Others are miserable, ankle-viting ingrates gnats, hitting their benefactors when we are down and fighting for the world's future. Those ingrate gnats can go to hell. They have no credibility, whatsoever and no voice in what's to come.
Whereas Pax Romana institutionalized the ‘Roman Values’ of Self-enrichment, Might-Makes-Right, the Taking of Slaves & the Extraction of Tribute, Pax Americana institutionalized the predominantly ‘Christian Values’ of Redemption, Proselytization, Uplifting-the-Weak, Service without Compensation & the Abolition of Slavery.
It therefore follows that our fine host’s celebration of Pax Americana is essentially a celebration of Christianity & Christian Morality, even as our fine host tries to falsely attribute these values to secularism & multiculturalism, despite the fact that there are literally no other cultures (including Judaism & Islam) that support all-of-the-above values in their totality.
All you have to do is read the lyrics of the ‘Battle Hymn of the Republic’ (which basically reads like ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ on steroids) if you believe otherwise, and therein lies the rub:
Pax Americana dies when separated from its Christian foundations.
In the beauty of the lilies CHRIST WAS BORN across the sea,
With a glory in HIS BOSOM that transfigures you and me;
As HE DIED to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
while GOD IS MARCHING ON.
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
Glory! Glory! Hallelujah!
HIS TRUTH is marching on.
Best
______
Equating 'ingratitude' with an outstanding debt (and/or a breach of contractual obligation), our fine host's repetitive use of the term 'ingrate' is a yet another shameless attempt to use guilt to compel obedience from the reluctant individual, the problem being that guilt is completely ineffective on the post-Social Contract Christian, Secularist or Multiculturalist who owes you absolutely nothing.
Of course, nothing is stopping you from dying for Pax Americana, the EU & NATO if you love it so much, so why don't you all put up, shut up & lead by example? The rest of us are done.
"hey treated everyone who was not Japanese as inferiors.Stupidly, that included the Asians formerly living under European and American colonial rule that could have been recruited as natural allies against White oppression..."
To be clear, The Indonesian occupation by Japan appears not to have featured a huge resistance movement, as in the Philippines... and New Guinea and all of Melanesia, where there was love for the 'colonizers' from dasy one. Perhaps the Japanese treaded carfully in Indonesia because it was their Top Prize and the captured oil facilities could be easily sabotaged.. Or else the Dutch were so resented that the Japanese WERE seen by some as liberators. Anyone care to look into that for us?
In Indochina Ho Chi Minh's Viet Minh did fight the Japanese - with OSS help and many US officers pleaded that the French not be allowed back in, to no avail. Alas.
Oh and in Japan proper there are statues to Douglas MacArthur, whose firm but beneficent rule from 1945-1955 stunned those who expected to be treated as they had treated others. Same with Germany.... only I'm not hearing any ingrate sanctimony masturbation spews coming from Japan.
The host’s America cultism is always so unintentionally comical and comic book: “We are fighting for the future of the world; get on board the Empire of Good and don’t you dare get in our way or you have no voice and no legitimacy, you ingrate gnats!” Reminds me a little of some supervillain monologues from the old Marvels I used to collect.
I don’t think you’re gonna win many friends and influence many allies with such cultish messaging. Everybody has ideas about the future of the world and the right to pursue them, though they may be very different from yours. This doesn’t automatically make them bad guys, ingrates, gnats, etc. This always seems to get lost on cultists, whether they’re ISIS members, Zio-fanatics or Americanists.
A good guy to read here is Morris Berman, who has diagnosed America cultism in great detail, describing its Manichaean, “us vs. them”, evangelical, violent nature, historical roots, etc. As we see on this blog, this cult has a hold on liberals and conservatives, Christians, Jews and atheists, citizens of many generations and recent immigrants alike; it’s basically America’s civic religion.
I get the impression this cultism is much less influential among younger demographics though, who like to make cranky 3-channel boomers the butt of jokes and memes. The availability of a wide spectrum of disconfirming ideas and information has eroded the cult’s ability to keep everyone in line and buying what they’re selling, whether the figurehead is a Republican or a Democrat. That’s a good thing, imo, a sign that maybe Americans are starting to grow out of it.
"and I realize I am trying to talk to a truly awful person"
There is at least one of those posting regularly here, but it's not the one you mean.
Der Oger is a friend, albeit sometimes in an "Only your best friends will tell you..." way. He's trying to help and to keep us honest, and for that, he's somehow worse than Hitler.
loc, on the other hand, can't wait to line us all against a wall and shoot us, and you take every opportunity to praise him for almost getting it.
LH: "and then bemoan America's mistreatment of the Spanish settlers as if those were the natives."
It is endemic. Guilt is a CURATIVE for past evil acts or impulses. But when it turns into outright lies, it becomes toxic. In THE LAST SAMURAI, Tom Cruise's guilt ridden character trains an army of former peasants for the new style government of Emperor Meiji, then - when captured by the rebels - becomes a convert to saving them in the futile Samurai rebellion. The whole flick romanticises that Samurai = persecuted Native Americans.
Say WHAT???? For 600 years, Samurai has leeched-off-of and oppressed and cruelly butchered all the other castes. They were the murdeous oppressors. Brilliant Meiji had to fight to reduce all of that down to a dull roar. But samurai still dominated the military and officers were savagely cruel to their enlisted men. In WW2 they did get utter obedience... and utter lack of imagination or flexibility or accurate perception. Except in a few cases like Hara the author of DESTROYER CAPTAIN and the best officer Japan had during the war, Skilled and 'lucky, he tossed out any officer who struck a sailor.
But THE LAST SAMURAI is typical of how Hollywood, preaching tolerance, diversity, individual eccentricity and the rest, easily tips over way too far. But I'd rather tip in that DIRECTION than the other way, Which normal for 10,000 years.
Ah. I see. Thanks.
None of our three trolls have engaged any of the facts I related in the post and I doubt any of them read more than a few skimmed lines. NOTHING that I said above was a demand for idolatry of Saint Am,erica. It was a LIST - and long one - of facts that should be refuted (they can't be) by anyone blathering "USA=EVIL!!!" instead of "USA was the best of humanity's awful empires, by far and the only one setting the stage for an end to empires."
No, dudgeon-addicts spreadKremlin generated memes aimed at wrecking the world enlightenment renaissance.
The haters blare that 'facts' prove us evil. Their indictments are either factual crimes we have faced and relentlessly self-criticize... that nonetheless tell only half the story... O else many of them are complete lies.
I am not a jingoistic for creating such a list. The facts I present above are indiputably true. If our accusers refuse to confront them, they only prove themselves to be the monomaniacal hate-dogmatist-ingrate-liars.
The future summons us and we won't get there by sabotaging the only experiment that ever delivered the world hope.
All I'm asking is why this:
"Responsibility instead of guilt means
(1) Acknowledge what happened and (2) recognize historical continuities
(3) Break those continuities,
(4) Thus allow wounds to heal and safeguards, legal or otherwise, to be created that certain processes do not repeat themselves."
...indicates an awful person who blames you for pro-American cultishness, while this:
"The host’s America cultism is always so unintentionally comical and comic book: “We are fighting for the future of the world; get on board the Empire of Good and don’t you dare get in our way or you have no voice and no legitimacy, you ingrate gnats!”
...does not trigger you nearly as much. Even though the second one explicitly blames you for pro-American cultishness.
LH that is utter nonsense if it was directed at me. In any event, yet again zero reference to any of the exculpatory facts that I listed.
I didn't read Der Oger's comments as directed at you specifically. In fact, he started off with reference to the guy he was responding to.
"John [Viril] , what I am trying to say during the last days is that it is not about the past, but about the present and future."
It felt like a prescription for mitigating past failures so as to proceed to the future unencumbered. Even if I'm wrong about that, it's more like a difference of opinion on tactics with you, not the makings of a horrible person.
It's clear that he rubs you the wrong way, and it no longer surprises me that you take everything he says in the worst possible light and with the presupposition that he hates America. It does confuse me, because I don't see any of that.
OTOH, when actually-horrible people explicitly cheer against the Enlightenment, rub their hands gleefully at the thought of the fall of American society, and accuse you in so many words of jingoism and cultishness, you laugh at them or flash some anger, but that's it. Smoke doesn't come out of your ears like some Warner Brothers cartoon for those guys. You pride yourself on being receptive to their opposing views and even occasionally compliment them for sometimes having a point. I don't see why that doesn't work for the other guy.
I agree, Treebeard, and I wonder if you clicked on the above Corey (not to E. L.) Doctorow link just cited by Darrell & Scidata.
Though I do not like his politics, Corey Doctorow does offer up an extremely relevant ‘AI as Solipsism’ analogy wherein plutocrats, politicians & other idealists look to AI as the potential replacement for the imperfect & fractious 'human problem' who defy their perfect plans, as does our fine host when he romanticizes our potentially perfect AI replacement ‘offspring’ who will not only take us to the stars, but also make perfect sharing & caring socialist commies.
That I’m something of a racialist & bigot, it’s common knowledge here and, for that reason alone, I will always prefer imperfect biological humanity over any infinitely perfectible inanimate machinery.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time for me to put little tap shoes & a pink tutu on my ancient TI-30 calculator (which now identifies as a self-aware young female human being DESPITE the shocking absence of a penis) for its scheduled ballet class. And, for those of you who care, its personal pronouns are currently Shit & Shinola.
Best
______
P.S. I've never claimed that the USA is in any way 'evil', just imperfect, with which I'm perfectly OK because (1) nobody has ever been or will ever be perfect, (2) perfection is the enemy of the good, (3) my country & I have absolutely nothing for which to apologize and (4) your insipid Jedi 'guilt & shame' mind tricks have no effect on me.
NOW THAT FORCE FOR GOOD IS TEETERING ON THE EDGE OF DISASTER AND NEEDS HELP FROM FRIENDS AROUND THE WORLD. AND WE ARE GETTING SOME, LIKE BRAVE, WONDERFUL CANADA.
Others are miserable, ankle-viting ingrates gnats, hitting their benefactors when we are down and fighting for the world's future. Those ingrate gnats can go to hell. They have no credibility, whatsoever and no voice in what's to come.
At this point, it might be interesting to analyze the structural forces that have created this battle.
Or, to put it another way, how the f was a Donald Trump victory (2x!) even freak'n possible? I submit to the room that I doubt Donald Trump could have happened in 1960, 1980, or even 2000. What made proto-Trump possible in 2016 and the metastatic version we got in 2024?
To do that, we need to come up with a macro-level understanding of how and why democratic/free market capitalist societies have outcompeted any system of government yet attempted. Then we might be able to grasp why Donald Trump threatens this structure.
Postulate 1: Democratic/FM systems win the neo-Darwinian contest between nation-states by producing overwhelming material wealth rather than superior decision-making.
To me, this is obvious with a little bit of analysis. Intuitively, democratic systems tend toward MEDIOCRE decisions.
COROLLARY 1: Since morons (see our own resident denizen matthew) have just as much voting power as transcendent geniuses (see Hawking, Stephen), the decisions favored by democratic systems tend to fall within one standard deviation of the mean. Of course, this presumes a standard bell curve distribution of human intelligence.
Conversely, authoritarian systems operate by a small group of decision-makers imposing their will on the rest of society. Since the number of these decision-makers is small, they are much more prone to VARIANCE. Hence, authoritarian regimes are more likely to produce both 1) exceptional decision-makers and 2) awful decision makers. However, authoritarian systems with exceptional decision-makers still tend toward instability. Hence, authoritarian systems which achieve exceptional decision-making don't maintain this level. I will address this point later on in this argument.
OK, now we've shown that democratic/FM systems tend to make so/so decisions, where does the material wealth come from?
Well, we could simply point to empirical evidence of the US, Western Europe, and the Asian Tigers economies after adopting democratic/FM systems. But to get where we need to go, we need to grasp the why.
COROLLARY 2: Democratic/FM systems produce overwhelming material wealth by providing unique stability paired with a high-level of economic efficiency.
SUB-COROLLARY 2a: democratic systems provide stability due to their ability to 1) identify and then 2) mollify unhappy people. The more complex and active your economy is, the more likely splinter groups become disadvantaged under current conditions. Because political leaders are chosen by public votes, the splinter groups are likely to have some politician somewhere whose political career depends upon pleasing them. Thus, when conditions get bad for a particular splinter group, democracy builds a mechanism to notify leadership about the problem into its operational DNA Such is not the case for authoritarian systems. They struggle to even determine what the problems are, much less devise a plan to address them. If anything, authoritarian systems tend to OBSCURE discovery of the actual problems.
None of our three trolls have engaged any of the facts
I have read your blogpost line for line. I will comment on it, but it will take some time to formulate some thoughts, do some research, and write it up. Oh, and correct auto-correct manually..
Let's start with Hollywood.
Hollywood of yore is dead.
It once might have been a powerful propagator for western values (albeit with a certain shade; a quick search tells me that 93% of all Oscars went to white people, only 2% to black persons.)
I invite you to present movies that exemplify the traits you think Hollywood has teached us.
Instead of artists, directors, screenwiters deciding what we should see, that decision is made by corporate money now. Corporate Money of right-wing billionaires.
Right-wing billionaires who hype a racist vigilante movie directed by the guy who officially counts as worlds worst movie director.
Now, year after year it produces a vast amount of sanitized fast food full of CGI slop and shallow plots and characters. There are some exceptions, but it is always the same horse ridden until dead, then revivified by necromantic rituals and saddled again. I noticed the drop in quality after 2010, I believe.
There are exceptions, but they have become rare.
I feel I should also write something about Hollywood and the McCarthy era, the impact the witch-hunts had and have to this day.
(To be fair, Vietnam had a positive Impact in Film quality.)
I perceived the same decline in video games; large studios are more and more prone to produce bland and repetitive mass ware full of bugs, intentionally outsourcing final testing to the players. If you want innovative ideas, you must go to indie studios.
Side Note: I should also mention Gamergate. Which was a test run for Steve Bannon and others to create online culture war outrage.
Oh, and we do not own things anymore. I was told that 1984 was deleted from Amazons Kindle, lately.
You know, that Right-Wing Space Nazi Billionaire that also owns a streaming Plattform and the Washington Post, which dies in darkness now.
Not that people get wrong ideas about what Orwellian really means.
Films and Games that espouse the wrong ideas might follow..
I would also mention that I was exposed to a lot more influences than Hollywood.
I dare to say that most people outside the US have a multitude of other experiences than Hollywood, and that constant overstating of the importance is ...unsettling. Incurious, even.
Japan, for a long time, did not look at their past. They simply covered it. As the Cold War was approaching, the allies decided to use a softer hand.
Look at Unit 731. What they did, and how they were (not) held responsible, for Realpolitik reasons.
SUB-COROLLARY 2a (continued)
Not only are democratic/FM systems good at unhappy voter identification, they also build in an algorithm to solve such problems. Since complex, vibrant economies shift rapidly, problems are often ephemeral. Frequently, the best course of action is to do nothing and wait for the next spin of the economic wheel to make the problem moot. Since the first political creature aware of the problem is likely a low-level official, they have little to no power to actually solve it. Thus, the first attempted solution is a meaningless postage stamp paired with sympathetic rhetoric.
If the problem persists, and spreads to more groups, the attempted solutions become increasingly more effective but require increasing political capital to put in play. Eventually, either the problem get's solved or collapses the system.
Here we see the true genius of our Founding Fathers, because democracy has a built-in stabilizing method that deters collapse. Generally, it's more cost effective to get 50 to 70% of what you want by winning an election than launching a revolution. Note that FAILING to topple the system will result in widespread DEATH for the leaders, and long-term repression for the rank-and-file followers.
OK, that's enough for now. I'll pick this up in later posts.
Note: I'm looking at the structural underpinnings of the current challenge to democracy, not ideological.
Yeah, I know. It's not really emotionally satisfying. Further, the ideological arguments are MUCH more intuitive, because almost ALL of our current punditry is built on hero/villain ideological narratives.
This happens b/c structural arguments only speak to a small fraction of the populace, since only a small number has the 1) mindset, 2) inclination, 3) education, and 4) raw intellect to grasp such arguments. Conversely, vilification narratives speak to almost 100% of the populace. Presuming limited resources to spread your message, any political animal with an IQ over 10 will invest in vilification narratives.
Yah. We know about Unit 731. The best we can offer is "That was truly awful, but we needed to deal with the next truly awful thing on the horizon."
Stalin was at least as bad as Hitler and many of us knew that.
""John [Viril] , what I am trying to say during the last days is that it is not about the past, but about the present and future.""
.... that was despicable beyond redemption. Seriously? ALL of the accusations AGAINST America refer to the past! Then, when I show that half of the accusations are lies and the other half are being confronted by Hollywood and media hundreds of times a year... and I present a dozen crystal clear exculpatory facts about the past... SUDDENLY the 'past' is off the table!
What stunning hypocrisy! Ooooh the perpetrator of the Namibia genocide was snubbed at parties! That makes it all better! Are there majorly successful German MOVIES about that genocide?
I made a shorthand that place names in Spanish occupied areas were mostly Spanish Saints.... gee I got DISPROVED, when all of the counter examples were STILL Spanish words. Proving, not disproving, my point.
LH I am furious because locum and Treebeard are simply insane. Either we will defeat their madness by keeping our coalition together, or we will fail because the coalition broke apart... because of sanctimony junkies like Der Oger.
And every single thing said by Der Oger in this thread WAS despicable lies and jibbering nonsense, DELIBERATELY meant to undermine the only force in the world that can successfully fend off the putsch being staged by locum's and Treebeard's masters.
And STILL not one of you except JV has addressed the list of exculpatory facts I presented here. If Oger did that, there might be some reason to pay him som,e respect. Instead he is all "let's not talk about the PAST and who killed who..." (Anyone recognize the reference?)
I glanced at his jibber about Hollywood and I will answer with at least FIFTY recent films promoting tolerance, diversity etc including most Oscar nominees. But I will waste no further time on his swill, till there are escrowed stakes on the line.
From what I've read the Dutch rule of Indonesia was worse that of other European powers in Asia.
The key point is that even if the Japanese had been geo-political geniuses and managed their new colonial possessions perfectly, such that they won cooperation with little resistance, their colonial Empire was STILL unstable.
Go watch some vids by Sarah CM Paine (retired US Naval War College Historian). She argues that the Japanese didn't have the merchant fleet to get sufficient goods back to Japan to manufacture the ships and planes they needed to fight the US.
Not only did they lack the merchant fleet, but also, they lacked the mindset to produce such a logistical miracle. The Japanese military believed wars were won by "fighting spirit" reflected by their Bushido Samarui philosophy. This emphasized individual acts of bravery performed under the authority of leadership is what produced victory.
This sharply contrasted with China's Sun Tzu, who insisted that battles were won and lost before the armies collided in the field.
:Paine attributes this difference to Japan's island nation status. They only needed to fight short-range naval battles to hold off China. Land battles were purely domestic affairs. Logistically supporting land armies on mainland China, wasn't a problem Japan's military forces faced until their 1930's war against China.
Well, I have just experienced a "Eureka!" moment, that, in its first aftermath, seems just as profound as Newton getting hit by the apple!
(To keep matthew in the loop, think of the first time you tuned into Keeping Up with the Kardashians)
I have just realized that Filipino politician performance in local casinos is the single best metric to understand the current state of the world.
How did I come to such a profound insight? I'm glad you asked.
Filipino politicians, unlike most elected officials in the world, frequently gamble in casinos. And yet, they achieve abnormally consistent positive outcomes from these episodes.
Combined with their unusually good performance in unrelated games of chance (elections), we can see that Filipino politicians draw unusual benefits from the driving force behind most of human history: dumb luck.
Now, Filipino politicians aren't the ONLY group of people in the world who benefit from consistent DUMB LUCK.
When looking for "lucky people," we come across the international billionaire class, who show a similar proficiency in volatile games of chance known as international financial markets (which, for our purposes here, include securities, currency markets, crypto, various high-risk corporate financing deals and dark pool investing).
I propose correlating these two fundamental truths of our universe into a single, revelatory metric. I call it the Pinoy Politician /Billionaire success ratio, or PPB for short.
In conceptual terms, the PPB works because if the world's billionaires are ripping off international markets at a rate lower than Filipino politicians are ripping off their people, then the world is in good shape. You apply the PPB as follows:
If the PPB exceeds one (1), then the world economy is trending toward stability and prosperity.
If the PPB draws close to or dips below one (1), then an international crisis is approaching and the smart financial move is to seek safety (preservation of funds).
If the PPB falls well below one (1), the crash is here. If the curve is sharp, which means the decline happened suddenly, the smart play is to bet on continued decline with a small portion of your fund. If the recent curve is flat, this means you are caught in an extended trough. The trough will not end until you see a move back toward (1). This indicator will come BEFORE world conditions recover, thus you have ample time to play the rebound.
The PPB is the ONE metric you need to achieve financial freedom!
Der Oger,
The thrust of my first post is to undermine the emotional superstructure which underlies most toxic woke arguments, to wit: white man worse than any civilization in human history.
Instead he is all "let's not talk about the PAST and who killed who..." (Anyone recognize the reference?)
That is not what I said. Responsibility means addressing the past in a way that errors made do not occur again. It is directed at the future
Guilt, on the other hand, focuses on the past. It is like a fee paid, and maybe only theatrics.
And STILL not one of you except JV has addressed the list of exculpatory facts I presented here. If Oger did that, there might be some reason to pay him som,e respect.
Wanted to post that later, but I think Pax Americana is dead. As with all historical periods, they come and go.
I think it started sometime between the early nineties with the fall of the Warsaw pact, and the Neverending War on Terror (which also, in retrospect, was a war on privacy and human rights at home and abroad).
Iraq caused a crack. The Bush administration managed it to divide Europe ino the coalition of the willing and Old Europe. The result was a continuing destabilization of the region that reignited with the Arab Spring and the Syrian civil war, as well as the toppling of Gaddafi.
ISIS is your rape-child born in the dungeons of Abu Ghraib, a consequence of your own imperialist hubris, cruelty and lack of wisdom and foresight.
Millions of people from the destabilized countries fled, mostly to Europe. Causing instability here, too.
Another casualty: International law More specific: The war against Iraq was a War of Aggression based on lies. The Invade The Hague act further damaged it.
The domestic price paid was manyfold: Debt, demoralization, and the construction of a surveillance apparatus (which now serves an elite of oligarchs) as well as disturbed trust of the allies and suspension of human rights.
Add divisiveness and internal cultural war, plus the despair in the Rust Belt, and you get 2016.
Of course, under Trump, the divide deepens, but heals back a bit under Biden. I will write later that that was a self-delusion from the start. Then the full-scale invasion of Ukraine happened, and for a Last Time, unity was shown, at least outwardly. NATO expanded one more time.
Then Trump Two came, and with him more Wars of Aggression, Crimes against Humanity and War Crimes; threats, derision and demands, corruption and incompetence.
With it comes the division of the World in three parts: one dominated by the US, one by China, and one by Russia (I doubt that partition
will lead to lasting peace.)
This time, the self-delusion ended, and everyone looks for the way out. Arms procurement is disentangled from the US; Saab, for example has offered Canada to build a Grypen manufacturing arm, which will affect F35 Sales, which will affect the price the American taxpayer will have to pay for his own fighter jet.
Then, there is the question of whether the US can help, even if they wanted to. Trumps absolute victory has emptied weapon depots and will take years to refill. And billions of taxpayer money.
Shifting of priorities meant that Taiwan basically is offered China on a silver plate, and judging the treatment of North and South Korea, the latter to the former, too. Which means that they must focus on their own survival and cannot supply, say Poland.
(Maybe a good sign is that Japan has abandoned it's pacifist stance and entered talks with South Korea, who have still strained relatpionships.)
That leaves the Indopacific open to China. Maybe they do not take advantage of it. Maybe it is time to say good bye to Diego Garcia, Okinawa, Samoa and Hawaii, as well as the US Navy.
To be continued.
Cont.
Much of the disaster stems from not understanding Iran. Even If we, for a short moment, assume that the danger of a hypothetical nuke on Tel Aviv was imminent, and no other way to avoid it existed.
Iran has 90 Million citizens, and a culture ten times older than yours. They fought and lost wars with many empires in history and were reborn afterwards. Many are well-educated, even in an increasingly tyrannical theocracy. The Iranians I met in my life all seemed to have a strong will and resolve.Traits we admire in Ukrainians.
And they prepared for this war decades ago. "Close The Strait" was chanted in schools as often as "Death to Israel".
Which brings us to the second war theater of the United States, South and Latin America.
Mostly of it seems to happen covertly, and deals with way more than mass murdering fishers. I would not be surprised if strikes by boots in the ground against narcoterrorists are in reality strikes against the political opposition, or against people who happen to live in a rare earth deposit.
Also, I hear of political influence operations against President Sheinbaum of Mexico, which is believable to me because Vance and the new strategy paper said that they would do such things in Europe.
You know, the thing Russia is also accused of.
Oh, and there are threats of invading Cuba, Canada and Greenland, and Venezuela is now directly governed by the Department of State.
Some informed voices say that Morocco engineered the Ceuta situation with the backing and help of Washington and also backs the country's territorial Claims.
I think we all can see how this might spiral out of control. It seems as If they were cosplaying Clear and Present Danger, as well as Operation Condor.
Next Part: Soft Power
The glue that keeps a Type I Empire together is fear and military might.
The glue that keeps a Type II Empire together is trust and treaties.
In one sentence, it is gone. Dead.
The gutting of USAID was projected to cause fourteen million people to die in the next ten years. Which will cause other unpleasantries like wars and mass migration.
It was also a lever with which foreign governments could be influenced.(To be clear, I think all former colonial nations should have contributed more. But more on that later.)
Even more telling, today 95% or so of children across Earth are in school, having never starved.
Literacy rate supports that Argument, but I challenge that this happened through US funding and influence alone. Other nations, including those not particularly friendly to America did and do that, too, as a part of their soft power operations. Which the US decided to gut.
A propos starving students: Isn't the abolition of the free school meal in the US a current topic? As well as nutrition for the poor in general? Just wondering.
Americas reputation is in the gutter. Of the persons I know, I am one of the last defending you occasionally. I liked Spains stance in the Iran war, but look what it brought them. The Danes, formerly your closest ally hate you now, and Canadians ponder EU membership.
And while Mark Rutte keeps Trumps ass licked clean and seated at the NATO table, critical meetings are held increasingly without you.
To be continued
As for an American civil war, or any other war around the globe, I am reminded of the old Klingon saying: "Only a fool fights in a burning house."
With everything else going on, nobody got around to reporting the fact that for the first time ever the artic ocean is ice free less than 40 miles from the north pole.
https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/comments/1w4td32/water_visible_less_than_60_km_from_north_pole/#lightbox
Data going back at least to the first International Geophysical Year (1957) shows the ice being an average of 10 feet thick up to 66 feet thick.
Now its open water.
The oceans have been absorbing most of the heat generated by global warming and greenhouse gases. The world's oceans absorb heat equivalent to about 12 Hiroshima-sized atomic bombs every single second. Hence the super El Nino this year and the even bigger one predicted for next year.
The amount of heat needed to melt the arctic ice cap means the planet has gone past yet another tipping point.
So I will ask again, show me where to find hope.
Continued
The Trump administration has basically issued a Nero order on America - politically, strategically, culturally, and economically.
Burn it all down.
While it will be very important that Congress shifts blue in November, some questions remain:
Can they steal the election?
Do they accept the results of the election?
Will they be able to stop doing bad things?
And most importantly, will it be early enough to stop the collapse on the horizon?
(Electoral Vote tells me that even Louisiana and Mississippi are on the verge of flipping blue.)
There is a Class 5 political Hurricane approaching, one that could last until next year. I don't know what the outcome will be, but I strongly supposed it will change America forever, for good or for bad.
Even if Democrats gain the trifecta in 2028, and we have somehow been able to stay out of WWIII, it might be crucial for mankind that they wield their power fast, ruthlessly and effectively in the first months. No internal bickering, one contiguous strategy, which must have the following goals:
1) Key members and supporters of the Trump regime must be held responsible for their behaviour.
2) The political power of the Billionaire class must be broken.
3) Economic hardship must be reduced, quickly and visibly.
4) Structures must be hardened against future fascist takeovers.
1) has the difficulty that the main perpetrators gain a blanket pardon. Maybe they are vulnerable for state -level charges. Maybe a general pardon can be gained for these charges if they agreed to become crown witnesses.
2) Preferably through taxes and legal spending limits. Citizens United must die. Influence in Media must be curtailed, preferably by strengthening public broadcasting.
3) Raised minimum wages. Restructured Tax system. Also, doing away with the Tarifs.
4) This deserves it's own comment; some of Dr. Brins original suggestions might help, others won't
If a future government wants to regain trust ( and I don't say they have to), the bare minimum will be to rejoin all agreements left - or come up with better ones.
Personally, I think thata repeal of the Invade The Hague act and material support for the ICC would do much.
I also believe that an international fonds should be created to bundle and direct financial aid to developing countries, instead of each country doing it's own stuff.
"Not only did they lack the merchant fleet, but also, they lacked the mindset to produce such a logistical miracle. The Japanese military believed wars were won by "fighting spirit" reflected by their Bushido Samarui philosophy. This emphasized individual acts of bravery performed under the authority of leadership is what produced victory."
Sounds a lot like what Pete Kegbreath believes too, substituting "warrior ethos" for Samurai philosophy
What tools had the best outcomes toward a future when all racism, sexism, and injustice fade into dim memory of our long, grinding self-uplift?
1) Enshrining human dignity
2) Power Separation and Power Dilution.
3) Education.
4) Fulfillment of needs as noted by Maslov.
5) Staying alert.
6) Remaining calm, friendly and respectful, even in situations when you are shouted at.
Incurious. Maybe ignorant, even.
Note that I cannot be part of your coalition because I am not a citizen of your country and because of that, we have vastly different experiences and expectations.
One step after another. First, gain power.
Der Oger,
You're missing the significance of the Ukraine War. It doesn't mean Taiwan is offered to China on a silver platter.
In fact, it means Taiwan is likely able to defend itself. China's desire to invade Taiwan is likely doomed in the current phase of warfare.
Wh?
Hello. Drone warfare.
Big expensive weapons systems are getting blown up by swarms of cheap drones. Ya think that maybe, a nation which produces 90% of the world's semi-conductors might figure out how to manufacture swarms of drones?
Hmmm, and all those landing craft and shipping fleet that China is going to need to land an amphibious invasion and supply a land army? What do you think will happen when they get attacked by said swarms of cheap drones?
China will then be locked in a Naval battle against the combined might of the United States and countries that surround China. Why would this happen...they kind of know they can't let China loose, or else it's gonna bully all of Asia.
Go look at the list of the world's largest navies. Tops is US, followed by China and Russia. But, the Russian navy pretty much can't get to the party.
The Chinese have the advantage of short supply lines. But, that's going to also be true for the 4th, 5th and 6th largest navies in the world (Indonesia, S. Korea, and Japan).
Down at number 12 on the list is Taiwan (who will certainly defend itself). At 20, we have the Australian Navy, which is likely to throw in with the ring of nations surrounding the S. China Sea (b/c they won't want China running rampant in the Pacific as well). Way down at 30 and 32 we have the Philippine and Malaysian Navies....not big, but hey, the more the merrier.
Japan is currently ranked 6th, but is likely to rise to at least 4th and maybe 3rd in the next decade, since they have the shipbuilding capacity to rapidly rise once they decide to rearm.
Granted, drones change the equation. But will the US help, or stay apart?
And If they leave Taiwan alone, will all the others stay?
That is basically the same situation as in Europe.
Seriously? ALL of the accusations AGAINST America refer to the past!
Well, because it is not the past, it is the present. ICE performs ethnic cleansings, continues to sterilize and just kills people, while your President threatens Iran with "Death of a civilization."
Continuities, doctor.
https://www.americanimmigrationcouncil.org/blog/ice-subjected-immigrants-in-detention-to-unnecessary-surgeries/
What I postulated was that the absence of European DNA in North Americans as opposed to Latin and South America could mean that former just have been killed, before they could have offspring with invaders.
JV offers keen (and fun) insights. I deem the flood of gambling around the world to be a major symptom of our plummet into decadent immaturity and feudalism. The Vegas gambling industry has for a century invested in research into refined techniques for fostering addiction. To drugs, to slots, to horses and now fantasy team sports and 'predictions,' in a bastard-mutant version of my many-decades call for a genuine PREDICTIONS REGISTRY. ...
...which might help AIs to tell which humans deserve credibility..
Anyway, JV has been on a roll.
I gave Oger's latest flood a quick skim and saw nothing of value. By declining to re-evaluate 'the past', because I demolished his entire edifice of "Evil America," instead of honestly facing up to that, he declares 'the past' to be irrelevant.
It is NEVER irrelevant. Especially since 'the past' is precisely what most of the Evil America bullshit out there is about. Yammered by ingrates whose entire lives,.. the techs and comforts and pleasures and peace and wealth and freedom were engendered by many things (including their own parents' hard work...) but NOTHING was more powerfully effective at making that era than the American Pax.
Well, if America's Past is conceded - as Oger has done - to be a hugely net-positive, engendering humanity's best era, ever, then how about a little help? We are blatantly in our latest and bitter phase of our recurring civil war and every postive voice giving support for the sane half of the USA is welcome!
Instead, he blames ME and other Blue Americans for the shit we are fighting against, in order to save our nation and the world. And yes, that merits a FU.
Ooooh the excuse! "I'm not a citizen!" BULL! The pax includes all allied nations and we are getting TONS of help, like from beautiful Canada, standing up to Trump, at real cost, while making clear their friendship to True America is unwavering. Like most of the EU standing up, raising their NATO budgets above that 1% subsidized trivkle to real value in helping Ukraine.
Then there are non-friends.
Backstabbing cretins DO have an effect! They help to split the only coalition that can save the Renaissance. A brave and cogent voice from Germany, urging our leftists to calmly stay unified and blue, could sway some of our own sanctimony junkies to stay with us and vote!
At minimum, stop prodding ME because this thread has distracted me from my almost ceaseless efforts in the fight. Wasting time in utter futility, trying to reasonw with the unreasonable.
OH FINAL NOTE. My actual loyalty is to California, the center of creativity, science, art and progress on Earth. Unlike Canada (with similar population) we are bound within the USA -- and hence it is America I fight for. But just as coastal Israelis are now dreaming of separation from the hill/Jerusalem gone-mad haredim... such thoughts simmer in our minds, as well. California Dreamin'...
JV shows here that he is as competent at political science as he is as a lawyer. I've read your CV. You are a hack who only survives because of the backwaters you swim in.
I disagree with the host here often, but you, JV, should read his The Transparent Society. It addresses your attempt at understanding how politics and economics work.
Oh, my bad, your reading comprehension is not high enough to understand it. Maybe start there.
At minimum, stop prodding ME because this thread has distracted me from my almost ceaseless efforts in the fight. Wasting time in utter futility, trying to reasonw with the unreasonable.
You started insulting me, in the comment section of the last post and there is no reasoning coming from you, just haughtyness.
I also find it funny that while you want absolute, obedient, uncritical unity from "the left*", you leave yourself a door open for secession.
But carry out your surely very important and surely grandiose and surely awe-inspiring work to save humanity from the grasp of buffoonish killer clowns with nukes. I won't interfere.
Der Oger,
1. That Taiwan now has better prospects in the current phase of warfare makes it MORE likely the US will help them.
2. Even if the US doesn't fight, I think the rest of what we used to call Indochina HAS to fight. You don't want to let the Chinese genie out of the bottle and allow them to become both a land/maritime power. China has been the big bully of Asia for THOUSANDS of years, and the rest of Asia hasn't forgotten it.
3. II the US cowers under a rock, that means the Indian Navy likely joins the fray. India and the US aren't exactly hunky dory in terms of geopolitics, so India is unlikely to sign on to a US-led coalition. Absent the US, India will also want to contain China. While the Indian Navy is only the 7th largest Navy in the world, China isn't going to like facing an alliance that includes India, b/c India has the population to cause problems for a Chinese land army. Note, India is also a nuclear power.
4. All of the above makes a Taiwan invasion COSTLY. This means it could TOPPLE the current Chinese communist regime, especially since the Chinese have pretty much squeezed the "catch-up" strategy for all the juice it's worth and the Chinese economy must now compete by developing cutting edge tech. Authoritarian systems have a poor track record for innovation. All of this means that China can't paper over internal conflict with massive gains in material wealth.
5. Since I'm a half-Filipino well, I can't help but include a note about the Philippines. With Japan likely to rearm over the next decade, well one notices the Japanese have a MASSIVE shipbuilding facility in Subic Bay, where the US formerly based their Pacific Fleet.
I know this b/c I have a 2nd cousin who owns/ed (he might now be retired) a construction company in Olongapo (the city close to Subic Bay) who said he survived for about 10 years purely on sub-contracts with the Japanese firms building that facility. This facility is designed to construct freighters. Might this facility be converted to produce military vessels?
One might think the Japanese would be reluctant to do this in a foreign facility. However, it has the advantage of being able to tap cheap Philippine labor AND access to a strategic port in Subic Bay. Perhaps the Philippine government might accept a Japanese presence in Subic Bay, in exchange for some Philippine Naval Vessels?
The Philippines don't have much of a Navy b/c they mostly rely on the US umbrella. Without the US, a bigger Navy makes sense and they have one of the best ports in the entire Pacific. A Japan/Pinoy defense agreement might make sense.
If your loyalty is to California, why do you want to save the entire USA, which includes vast flyover regions full of people who don’t share your values? Is it a cult missionary impulse to save the world, even when it doesn’t want saving, or just good old power lust disguised?
Either way, seceding seems like a much more realistic option than trying to export the California cult to the rest of the world. That’s one of those boomer projects that’s surely well past its pull by date by now—as the hordes of refugees who have migrated up here to the northwest will attest.
It does make me wonder, considering California’s long history of crazy cults and cultural movements: what is in the water down their that makes you so prone to this kind of cultism and messianism? Nowhere and nobody is the center of the world, indispensable and exceptional, with a special responsibility to save it, except in their own hubristic, narcissistic and cult-addled minds. You might even live long enough to realize this yourself.
Oger just lied at every... single ...level. There is not one phrase or sentence that is not diametrically opposite to true. He is in true locumranch territory.
"you want absolute, obedient, uncritical unity from "the left*"".
Were you a manof honor - or any kind of man at all - I would demand a trial of your accusation before true and sagacious neutrals with money stakes on the line. ($10,000?). But you are nothing resembling any of those things.
And since he seems determined to distract a person who is actually being useful in this struggle, I shall henceforth treat him exactly like mad locumranch.
Blah blah Jealous ingrates to the far left and to the entire right.
"more realistic option than trying to export the California cult to the rest of the world. " You wish! It's already happened.
If that's the case, then what are you so worried about? Declare victory and relax.
Btw, calling everyone who criticizes your center of the world mentality "jealous ingrates", "gnats", etc. just reinforces the perception that you're in a cult. I'm not the only one here trying to tell you this, but I suppose the cult mentality makes you impervious to criticisms from people who aren't of "the Body".
I am conviced that you are very convinced about your usefulness. And maybe you are useful.The question is for whom and what.
Go easy, friends.
DerOger & those like him are pitiable victims, having been driven insane by carefully inculcated levels of self-hatred for everything white, christian & male in response to a progressive multi-generational psywar, so much so that these victims now believe that it's a sinful heresy to show any approval (let alone pride) in any historically white, christian or male accomplishment, a sentiment that extends to Men-on-the-Moon & Pax America.
It's undeniable that the West is now treated to a constant litany of everything being 'too white' (racist), 'too christian' (intolerant) & 'too male' (sexist), designed to inculcate guilt and accompanied by simultaneous demands for massive reparations, even though it's completely unthinkable to denounce any other mono-ethnic non-western culture for being 'too African', 'too Islamic' or 'too Chinese'.
This leaves progressive & patriotic individuals like our fine host in a terrible bind, as his traditional progressive allies now hate everything American for being 'too white', 'too christian', 'too male', 'too capitalist', 'too regressive' & 'too whatever', leading them to revile, reject & destroy the very constitutional foundation of his beloved progressive movement.
It's ironic that the last time such an anti-white, anti-christian & anti-male humiliation ritual was attempted, along with the establishment of hereditary guilt & demands for massive reparations, it led directly to the creation of a decadently progressive Weimar Germany which was inevitably followed by certain horrific Post-Weimar corrections.
Best
______
Nice Landru reference, btw.
There's a certain circularity of thought in the progressive movement, as exemplified by the SPLC's bizarre decision to fund & support the very hate groups that they were created to destroy, as a matter of personal survival, because the SPLC would also cease to exist following the destruction of these hate groups.
These people are nuts.
@Larry Hart:
Thank you for coming to my aid in the past few days.
My personal theory why OGH explodes is that I poke holes in his narratives. His answers trigger my tenacity.because I believe he covers up something with his rage. So I ask more questions or contradict.
And so this dynamic unfolds.
NOT Landru! Monty Python! In the scene where Launcelot slashed the bride's father at a wedding.
Sure.... masturbate to that fantasy, twit.
Just donated to Talrico and Ossoff and my local Congressman. Will do more, later. But I accomplish more in other ways. Got a lot of interest in blue Union kepis at Worldcon.
" the Japanese have a MASSIVE shipbuilding facility in Subic Bay, where the US formerly based their Pacific Fleet."
Subic Bay? Sounds very familiar, but I'm not quite...
There was some controversy in the late 80s or early 90s about whether the US would keep its base at Subic Bay, right? And then the point was moot when Mt Pinatubo erupted and covered the whole area with several inches of volcanic ash? Am I close?
loc's "Nice Landru reference" was for Treebeard and "of the Body".
I got the Monty Python reference right away--have used it myself many times--but I didn't feel like poking the bear any further.
This fixation on other people's sexual practises sounds almost ...Republican.
Like, comparing people with insects, gnats.
I see what I see. You are rerfuted in one place and jump to another lie and then never answer my facts and jump to another slander, attack my character then scream that's what I am doing. You are gyrating and spewing exactly as I described. And yes, yoiu are a gnat and that is my last response to a nasty little twerp.
John, what I am trying to say during the last days is that it is not about the past, but about the present and future.
Responsibility instead of guilt means
(1) Acknowledge what happened and (2) recognize continuities
(3) Break those continuities,
(4) Thus allow wounds to heal and safeguards, legal or otherwise, to be created that certain processes do not repeat themselves.
Ok, what we're talking about here is what is typically called "systemic racism" and it's embedded in "critical race theory," which originated in American legal scholarship but has been exported throughout university humanities departments.
I have problems with critical race theory for one simple reason: it doesn't fit the facts on the ground.
CRT presumes that culture and law are engineered to create a "race hierarchy" the maintain "whiteness" at the top of the racial pecking order. I'll use the US, b/c this is where CRT originated and is the society it was created to address.
Well, CRT runs smack dab into a rather big problem right out of gate once one ranks ethnic groups in the US by their overall success: generally considered wealth/income, education, marital stability, and raising socially functional children.
Ranking by those parameters, the top of the list is crowded by various flavors of Asian Americans and Jews.
Say what?
If we are to believe CRT, how the heck is such a result possible?
Are we to believe that a bunch of racist white men sealed themselves up in their country club lodges and conspired to elevate Asians and Jews? Or were these evil white men so blatantly incompetent that they WANTED to maintain WASPS at the top of the food chain and instead managed to push Asians and Jews to the top?
If your explanation is the first option, just why would a bunch of racist white guys do such a thing? If your explanation is the second, umm...why worry? If those racist white guys are such blundering idiots, your favored racial group is most certainly destined to rise to the top with a little patience.
If you don't agree with either 1 or 2, well, just WHAT is your explanation? I'd really like to hear it. And if you DON'T have an explanation, why should anyone pay any credence whatsoever to a theory that doesn't work?
Re China and Taiwan
Three things
(1) Invading across 180km of ocean is close to impossible - the defence has simply too many advantages
(2) China is very pragmatic! - invading another country was profitable back in Roman times - at some point in the last 2000 years that changed - today invading is a loss-making exercise
(3) A government may use a military "adventure" to divert its people from something else - but the people of China can see how much better off they are than their parents were - the improvements may stall but it will be decades before the Chinese people drop to western levels of trust in government
Hi JV - your option (2) has a great deal going for it!!
And while Asians and Jews have done quite well the descendents of your slaves have NOT done very well
Close Larry.
The US had a lease on Subic Bay which expired in 1992. Mt Pinatubo did erupt in 1991, but that wasn't what caused the US to leave Subic Bay. In fact, they wanted a new lease. But the Philippine government decided to turn Subic Bay into a mini free-trade zone, in the hopes of creating a Philippine version of Hong Kong or Singapore.
I know about this, b/c a 1st cousin of mine was high up in the Ramos Administration who made this decision. Ramos was a former general who ran what many consider one of the more successful Administrations since the Philippines gained independence.
Duncan, among Black Americans there is a class disconnect. Many, essentially the college educated who are numerous, are doing well... though must still worry every evening their sons go out or drive. In addition to college, the military has long been an avenue for training or advancement.
The "other half" have made some advances but are very vulnerable to economic swings and many remain poor and disadvantaged and suffer prejudice. Especially in places where law enforcement has attracted nastier elements. \
This bifurcation is much discussed in Black communities.
I attended a nearly all-Black high school. That gives me no special insights, though attention perhaps to some nuances. And yes, things are changing much too slowly.
John,
interesting points. I would say your current regime qualifies as both racist and incompetent.
At least, look at how Hegseth threats your non-white, non-male war heroes. He let's them disappear.
But I did not mean it entirely coined to racism, nor am I an expert in CRT.. One other example.
One specter that haunted Europe was nationalist revanchism.
Early on , Charles de Gaulle and Konrad Adenauer thought it would be best to not constantly revive the cycle, and they started to draw both countries closer together. Later, both became personal friends, much like Giscard d'Estaing and Helmut Schmidt, and Mitterrand and Kohl.
Up today, French is one of the two other languages ( English is mandatory) necessary to gain access to higher Education, the other being Latin ( though being slowly replaced by Spanish.) School exchanges, economic interdependencies, constant coordination of foreign policies and EU negotiations. But for the most part, it worked and improved the relationship, slowly and over decades.
Another example would be Willi Brandts Ostpolitik, Not just the kneefall, but also the acceptance of the borders as they were drawn after 1945.
The conservatives were furious. But a decade or two most of them* had swallowed it and pushed for Polands and then Chzechoslowakias acceptance into EU and NATO.
* It should not wonder anyone that those who did not ended up in the AfD.
Error recognized, Error addressed, Error removed. Mostly.
I have no insight on how racism works on the ground level in the US. From what I gather is that there are a multitude of factors in play that contribute.
One is keeping black people from ever gaining power.
Gerrymandering is one method, I assume, as is keeping Washington and Puerto Rico as non-state territories.Both keep non-white citizens out of political representation.
Policing would be another factor.
Compare both entry requirements and training times in the US and abroad.
Compare the outcome of purely punitive vs. mixed systems of criminal punishment and look at the direct and indirect costs and consequences of each.(I have yet to find a guy - it is always a male - who preaches law and order and Isn't corrupt himself.)
I am not saying all is well over here - it isn't - but there are differences in the numbers.
And finally, education. Look long and hard at what it means if parents have total control of what students are allowed to learn and look at, and how schools as institutions can perpetuate continuities.
Look at what is mythology and what is actually History.
Oh, and who prints the school books.
For example, I know that there are people in the US saying that
a) White Kids shouldn't learn about Slavery, because they should not feel bad,
b) and then come up with the idea that slavery actually was a good thing since all those ferals got civilized and fed for free.
You can probably guess what c) would be If allowed to proceed.
This happened yesterday. At 1st I thought this was a joke. But it happened and will infuriate Trump. It shows how HUGE Africa & Arabia are. (That is slightly amplified, but not as much as the Mercator distorts Greenland!) From Wikipedia, today: The UN General Assembly adopts a resolution supporting the Equal Earth map projection over the Mercator projection, with 164 countries voting in favor, one against (United States), and six abstaining.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_Earth_projection?
"Ok, what we're talking about here is what is typically called "systemic racism" and it's embedded in "critical race theory," ...
I have problems with critical race theory for one simple reason: it doesn't fit the facts on the ground.
CRT presumes ..."
You've taken many logical jumps there ahead of what Der Oger was talking about.
To me, systemic racism in many organizations is self-evident. The fact that a larger collection of assumptions that you dispute would come to that same conclusion doesn't prove the conclusion to be wrong.
You're claiming to dispute the notion of systemic racism, but your arguments are against willful intentional racism, which is "a different thing, in fact the opposite thing."
Systemic racism doesn't require itself to have been consciously engineered. It's an emergent property. For example, if employees are hired or promoted based on the boss's comfort level having a beer with the guy, then men who look and talk like him will tend to do better than those men and women who don't. It doesn't have to be intentional, or malicious. But the effect on the outsiders is still a problem.
"one against (United States),"
Strangely enough, that goes with my answer to John Viril about institutional racism. Trump is not so much against a new map because of racism specifically. He's against changing the way things have "always been", meaning since he himself was introduced to them. In that view, the Mercator map is "the world", and any attempt to "fix" is is DEI or woke.
Because "the way things are" for that generation has elements of racism, or at least race-preferences, embedded in them, the consequence of keeping things the way they've "always been" is institutionally racist, even if that wasn't the motivation.
"I have no insight on how racism works on the ground level in the US. From what I gather is that there are a multitude of factors in play that contribute."
Exactly.
"One is keeping black people from ever gaining power."
"Ever" gets you into trouble. President Obama, for example. It's probably more accurate to say that there's always a backlash against blacks gaining power. Sometimes violently.
Location plays into it. Chicago almost went insane when a black mayor was first about to be elected in1983, but once people saw that it didn't mean that white people were treated exactly the way black people had been previously, they just got used to the idea. Chicago has had both black and white mayors since then without controversy, at least without controversy over race. It's been a bit...different...in the South.
BTW, I assume everyone else had the same problem yesterday that it was impossible to comment on blogger?
Today I can comment again, and I see so can others, but the screen that the blog provided to type comments in is tiny, and that makes it hard to type a paragraph legibly. Just so y'all know.
The bad news: 3 American fighters flew over my place in west Toronto this aft.
The good news: I think they were P-51 Mustangs from the Air Show.
Trump has a much BIGGER reason. The new map shows that Greenland ain't so big, after all.
A brave and cogent voice from Germany, urging our leftists to calmly stay unified and blue, could sway some of our own sanctimony junkies to stay with us and vote!
To be clear:
If I was asked, at the current date, in the US, it would be "Vote Blue, No Matter who".
I would urge not only the left, but also centrists and moderate non-Trump Republicans to do so.Regardless If the candidate is a Progressive or Corpo-Dem.
Further until Trumpism is defeated, I would urge to vote for that candidate in a primary election who can also win the general election.
But.
But.But. But.
In the long run, I would urge to form political alliances that change the current political system, or at least keep elected officials accountable. Every Corpo-Dem should feel the breath of the street in his neck, from day one on.
I would say, start recruiting now for '28 and beyond. Form a core group of moderate to progressive church leaders, other faith groups, local union leaders, representatives of minority groups, veterans, high school Football Trainers. Especially Football Trainers.
Everyone "civilian society" means locally.
Meet regularly, have a vote on things, and communicate to your elected officials how your vote went.When he is up for re-election, judge him on the merit how often he went against your vote and how often he followed it.
Adjust your support for the next primary.
If people like Jeffries and Schumer keep dominating the Dems, you better learn goose-stepping.
I would say that democracy is hard work and requires more than voting.
The same strategy would not work over here, different electoral system. Here, I would say "Vote for any party that is not pro- Putin and has a chance of getting at least 5%", at least for the secondary vote.
"The new map shows that Greenland ain't so big, after all."
When I was a kid, I used to wonder why Greenland wasn't a continent and why Australia was.
In the medium/long term America MUST limit the amount of money in their election system
The question is, what can we actually do to help? The Trump regime is despised by most people outside the US, but this message does not get through to MAGA. I think most non MAGA US citizens know this though perhaps they do not know how much he is scorned.. We see the barriers to communicating how we see things. We see the failure of the media and of other institutions. Because of its size governments have been wary about how they deal with the regime, too wary. They tried placating a toddler. This backfired. Really, I don't think governments can influence US citizens much. So how can the rest of us? Social media is a poor way because people can disengage too easily when they become uncomfortable. So how.
And I would agree with those who say that the most important people to get through to are those who oppose Trump but are doing stupid things.
The Pax Americana is finished and cannot come back. What we have to do is to preserve the rules based international order that it underpinned. We have to fight against spheres of influence, the normalization of bullying by large nations.
we are allies and I hope the transition of which you speak is possble. I doubt it. If it were that easy, the world oligarchy would not be so close to takeover. Remember in EARTH where I posit it will take serious struggle & pain to reveal the bank records.
The big mistake that the Democrats made was assuming that the status quo ante would automatically come back. Biden did start on necessary economic changes but things other than economic improvements were needed. The trust that was required for the Pax Americana to work is gone and would take at least two decades to rebuild. We need alternative institutions to protect small and medium sized nations from the caprices of large ones, and I don't see any other than the European Union yet. And I don't think that is enough.
Der Oger,
Here's the thing, I DO have a bit a knowledge about how to defeat racism on the ground. If you recall, I am half-Filipino. My Dad came to the US in 1956 in the aftermath of ww2. Early in his medical career, he had MANY doors slammed in his face.
I watched my Dad kick racism's ass.
Seriously. By the end of his career, my Dad had more people who wanted to be his patient than he could actually see. Half the board members of his hospital were his personal patients. Half the board of the hospital's charitable foundation were his patients. Half the board of the snobbiest country club in Kansas City were his patients, and they invited him to join (he declined, b/c he said we didn't have the money to run around with the true bluebloods).
My Dad raised more money in charitable donations than any other Dr. in his hospitals. His friend list included many millionaires.
I'm not going to say racism had NO affect on his life, b;/c that wouldn't be true. BUT, racism had such a negligible affect on his life that he couldn't care less about racist morons.
THAT is kicking racim's ass.
One thing that you have to remember about the enemy is that they are in love with their perception of their own strength. They see needing to trust others as a weakness. So, it doesn't matter to them that they have destroyed trust. They convince themselves that they do not need to trust anyone. They do not want alliances. They want vassals that will support their goals with no consideration of mutual benefit. You can see it in how they talk about others over the Iran war. I see their disdain for trust in conversations I have with them..
Larry,
My points don't just apply to conscious or overt racism. They DO apply to the level of systemic racism in the US, because the stats I cite are OUTCOMES.
If, as you say, systemic racism was at work. Then those outcomes show that systemic racism can be overcome.
Or, in other words, systemic racism DID NOT STOP ASIANS AND JEWS FROM ACHIEVING SUPERIOR OUTCOMES.
In 1962, my Dad completed his training in gastroenterology at University of Kansas. Gastroenterology was such a new specialty, he was the 2nd person to complete gastroenterology training in the state of Kansas. He sent out 72 resumes. Only 3 people bothered to reply
The first reply came from a practice in rural Kansas. My parents went there and met with a partner from the medical practice, who took them to dinner and proceeded to get blind drunk.
He then told my father that his partners didn't think my parents fit in the community.
My Dad did get a job offer from Plainview, Tx, which he took.
It wasn't the most desirable location, since Plainview was a small town in West Texas, which wasn't exactly the most progressive area of the country. But, hey, my Dad needed a job.
My parents lived across the street from a well-known country-western singer who grew up in Plainview. When my Mom took my sister, who as a child looked very mixed race, well, said CW singer wasn't real happy about his neighbors.
However, his employers rather liked my Dad in Plainview. When my father decided he didn't want to raise his half-asian children in an area where people openly looked down on "webacks" they offered him part ownership in a local hospital. My dad still decided to return to KC, b/c his experience in training suggestd that it would be better than West Texas.
In 1978, that hospital was sold. My father noticed the news report at the sale price. The share he had been offered would have been worth roughly $3 million (a lot of money in 1978).
I mention the above to show that my father faced overt and blatant racism. (side note, when my parents married in 1960, there was a statute on the books in Missouri that an Asian could not marry a Caucasian. Since no one objected, this statute was ignored). In 2019, Kansas City mayor Sly James held a day in honor of my father.
If my Dad could do that starting 70 years ago, (before civil rights) then it is possible to demoiish systemic racism today when it is AT LEAST 1000x easier to overcome.
Duncan,
Option 2 IS satisfying, is it not? I think it's because it incorporates a theme that runs throughout JRR Tolkien's LOTR: the irony of evil hurting itself.
That theme is very satisfying b/c it makes it feel like good is destined to win.
I'm not so sure that belief holds up to analysis, BUT it FEELS good.
@John Viril.
I could not post comments on Friday, so this is a bit delayed.
Now that you remind me, I remember how I was familiar with the name Subic Bay. You are correct that the US lease on the base was expiring. We wanted to keep the base, but the Philippines had other ideas, and it was threatening to come to blows between the two countries, when Mt Pinatubo gave us a chance to say, "Y'know what? Why don't you keep it after all?"
One thing I remember from reading Daniel Kahnemann was this Heuristic - people with no good options gamble. If you want people stupidly voting for unqualified conmen - you need to offer them good options. I'm a UBI supporter (but think it would be much easier to see if it was called a Citizen's Dividend ( and it was was also explained to people that it is part of change involving getting rid of means tests and income tax deductions). Make the Tax/Social Insurance system simpler and more progressive. Replace tax deductions which are worth more to rich people with limited subsidies.
John,
as Larry said, racism has a local component.
For example, the old GDR had a large number of contract workers from "Socialist Brothers States", such as Cuba, Mozambique and especially Vietnam.contacts to the local citizens was strictly limited.
After the Reunion, many stayed and went over to Berlin or the West, when they got more and more targeted during the Baseball Bat Years. There is even a slur used against people with a Far Asian heritage I would not repeat here.At that point in time, Western politicians and companies basically flattened the economy in the new federal states and killed millions of Jobs, so that particular racism was fed by the very existential fears the East Germans had.
Forward 30+ years, and other groups are targeted there.Syrians, Ukrainians, but not Russians. Go, ask why.
France is also a good example. Systemic racism there is fueled by revanchism versus their former colonial subject Algeria and the result of post-WW II then-futuristic and then- progressive ideas of urban development, leading to the creation of the banlieues.
Your home address becomes a hindrance for social upward mobilty in job search and banking, so poverty and division along racial lines perpetuate through the generations. Le Pens strongest supporters are descendants of the pieds noir, the former colonial land-holding elite in Algeria who had to flee ("Coffin or suitcase" was the then-meme.)
That said, I could speculate on how your personal perception of racism and meritocracy have unfolded. Each minority develops different strategies and subcultural behavioral baselines.
On the other hand, heritage - based prejudices can be also positively connotated.
" Asians are hard-working, friendly and obedient" would be such a racist, yet (for white supremacists and individual Asians) positively experience, faciliating the belief that only merits count.
I remember that during the riots after the Rodney King incident, the unrest had Essential a three-way racial component: the White police, the black protesters/rioters and Korean vigilantes/neighbourhood watches.
(Side Note: Hitler was a voracious reader of Karl May, who romanticised Native Americans, and got a place as "Quasi-Aryans" in the Nazi Race hierarchy. IIRC, there were attempts to create uprisings.)
I would also note that with the current administration and the surveillance capabilities built after 9/11, with ICE detaining and even killing US citizens, the situation now is way worse than during the times you grew up, and your family prospered.
So how can the rest of us?
First of all, we have to make sure that our own societies do not turn into fascist vassals of the US or Russia. Vote and support politicians in the local and national level who support democracy, European Integration,(and reforms for better decision-making).
Second (and I am not totally sure about that), while you cannot donate for candidates, you can spend on groups that strengthen the civil society. I assume that there is the caveat that one could become a "Supporters of Terror" by this donation rather fast.
Third, boycott American products and services, especially from MAGA states and Big Tech.
Fourth, do not despair!
John, some types of evil are bad at understanding their opponents. Some are self-destructive. Most are bad at organizing themselves. And there are more good people than evil ones. The main advantage that evil has is the initiative. But these are all just tendencies.
@John Viril and Der Oger,
About why Jews and Asians eventually fared better than some other minorities. I think blatant anti-Semitism got a bad name from Hitler, and for a while, it was bad form in polite society to agree with Nazis. Also, the Soviets also persecuted Jews, and during the cold war, that was probably a good reason to be more accepting.
But more importantly, I think both Jews and Asians were able to assimilate into the mainstream--as Italians and even the German-Irish had done before, because other minority groups that looked or spoke more "foreign" got more attention. Blacks went from being perceived as merely inferior to being perceived as criminals in the 60s, and during the period of "West Side Story", it was the various Spanish-speaking minorities who caught the brunt of racism.
So two things. First, yes, institutional racism can be overcome. If not, then there's no point to this conversation. Though it won't be overcome by pretending it doesn't exist.
Second, institutional or otherwise, racism isn't static. Some minorities climb the ladder and new ones take their place at the bottom.
I wonder if JV's dad knew my dad. He was a physician in the Philippines from 1937 to 1941. He started working as the doctor on the Osorio sugar plantation and ended up founding a hospital.
About 'Vote Blue, no matter who' -- if your tire blows out while you are driving, you pull over and swap it out for the spare, then proceed to a repair shop or place where you can get it fixed. You don't keep driving on it, unless you don't mind tearing up your vehicle. Currently the US appears to be on an extended road trip with a bum wheel.
"rump is not so much against a new map because of racism specifically. He's against changing the way things have "always been", ..."
It's similar to his obsession with low-volume toilets and incandescent bulbs. That's not about racism. It's about not changing stuff he's used to just because of good reasons.
"rump" wasn't intentional, but let it stand. :)
And there is the problem! - in most other Nations if a government fails to pass its budget then a new election is called - the USA has no "mechanisn" to stop and replace its tyre
The very fact that most of you still cling to the Golden Rule, despite a plethora of historical evidence to the contrary, this only proves that you & your entire culture are doomed, having lost the capacity for self-preservation.
And so, like the now extinct Romans before you, you welcome in the modern migrant equivalent of the Visigoths & place yourselves at their nonexistent mercy, even though they are neither friend, nor ally, nor do they have any intention to reciprocate.
Your virtue signaling attempts amount to little more than wishes & magical thinking, as one cannot simply declare oneself to be a friend & ally of a third party, anymore than a pauper can just declare himself to be filthy rich with a post-it note.
Yet, we rise in the UK (Restore), Germany (AfD), France (National Rally) & the Heritage US because we alone represent the last great hope to preserve the West, even as our delusional leftwing fantasists attempt our total destruction.
Best
_____
Germany's Alternative for Germany (AfD) is in for a dramatic victory in the eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt, winning by nearly 44%, which will make the AfD the single largest party in state parliament, but still shy of being an outright majority.
The last 200 years and especially the last 80 prove the diamteric oppositee of Locum's assertion. By maximizing the reification of human potential... well, maximizing compared to before... we became that happiest, most productive, least suffering, most creative civilization across all of time. And the wars we have lost since 1965 were led by Republicans.
Dems are ven much better at war!
How Democrats and Republicans Wage War - http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2012/10/how-democrats-and-republicans-wage-war.html
"The very fact that most of you still cling to the Golden Rule, despite a plethora of historical evidence to the contrary,..."
You seem to be the only one who doesn't understand this, although that ignorance is probably willful.
The Golden rule is a suggestion of a way to behave. It is not a scientific law meant to describe anything. There is no more "evidence to the contrary" than there is evidence that the Ten Commandments are disproven because not everyone honors their parents, and many people commit murder and adultery.
Civil laws--as opposed to scientific "laws"--are meant to direct behavior, not to describe it. If the Golden Rule could be "proven" true, then there would be no need for such a rule.
Your claims about self-preservation are a quarter truth at best. Yes, display of benevolence is taken too far, and it does interfere with self-defence. But your side is not good at actual self defence. They try to look tough too much for that. And right now, they are alienating allies and stuffing up a war.
Only a few quick notes:
1) In two weeks, there are two additional state elections which do not look good for the CDU. The process of toppling Merz has already started, I assume that he will be replaced by Hendrik Wüst (Minister-President of Northrhine-Westfalia) or Markus Söder (Prince-Elector of Bavaria).
2) That election was the reason why I thought "Vote Blue, No Matter Who" would not work here. For a number of weeks, it looked like that both the Greens and the SPD would fall under the 5% hurdle, which would have meant, mathematically, the AfD would have had the absolute majority.
Yet, we rise in the UK (Restore), Germany (AfD), France (National Rally) & the Heritage US because we alone represent the last great hope to preserve the West, even as our delusional leftwing fantasists attempt our total destruction.
There is no "we" in nationalism, except in the mutual goal of toppling democracy.
Both the National Rally and the AfD are deeply anti-American, the latter more beholden to the Kremlin than to national interrests.
In the UK: Currently, Labor leads the polls, while Restore is ... gone.
I usually take the 'P' by referring to the 'resident' of Penn Ave.
Removing the 'T' also makes a statement, but may cause confusion when it's pointed out that 'triumphal' is an anagram for 'hail trump'
You know, matthew is just so right. NO ONE of ANY value can come from a backwater.
Thus, this Roman guy named Cicero and the unlikely field of study he created called "Rhetoric" is, obviously, completely worthess.
My trial advocacy professor James Jeans was so unable to find anyone of value to come speak to his class, that the best he could do was some guy who trained at the University of Wyoming and practiced in the backwater of Jackson Hole to impart knowledge to the idiots who attended my school. CLEARLY this Gerry Spence guy couldn't have anything valuable to say about trial advocacy.
And matthew is SO RIGHT that no one from the backwater of Omaha, Nebraska could possibly compete on Wall Street. Warren Buffet is such an idiot.
Wow, I have to hand it to matthew. He's just SO RIGHT.
Unlikely. My Dad was 17 (nearly 18) in 1941. He just started at Santa Tomas University as a Freshman when the Japanese bombed Manila. My Dad got his medical degree in 1952, and first practiced in Lepa, City.
This was real rural, third world medicine. The sort of place where you'd take chickens and goats in payment b/c that's all the poor people could pay. My Dad chose to do this b/c the poor people living above his town in the mountains took in his people when the Japanese burned their homes, and they were living in caves.
Well Larry,
It's interesting, b/c my Dad would tell younger doctors in the 80's that the "racist" characterization of Asians being "smart" just helped them, b/c everyone wants a smart doctor.
However, that was not the image of Asians in the United States shortly after WW2. I think some of the Asians who emigrated after the immigration policy in the US changed after 1965 benefitted from the stringent policy before this time.
My Dad was able to come in 1956 b/c the US had a shortage of doctors, since few people wanted to go the long route of education required since many had already missed years during the war.
Thus, the Asians that defied the "Chinese coolie" barriers erected in the early 20th century, were highly educated people. Thus, they created a reputation of "smart Asians."
Even the ones that followed had to get here by crossing an ocean. That barrier sort of provided a "selection mechanism" that meant those who overcame it were usually both intelligent and highly motivated.
At least, that's what my Dad thought on this issue.
Puppet strings for every right wing movement lead back to Moscow. They are all commies controlled by Putin and his fellow 'ex' commissars. Having dropped all the egalitarian/worker surface religion-cant but retained everything else that is Orwellian.
Of all the CDU leaders, Wust is about the only I like. Whether I would like his policies is another question, but unlike Söder and Merz, he comes across as pragmatic and pleasant.
The AfD didn't win by 44%, they received 44% of the vote. If people actually read their program there is no way they would vote for them. If you look who lost votes it was the supporters of neo-liberalism (in the European sense). The problem in the East is too many see "left" as meaning communist. Even though left governments would actually be better for them.
Watching DW, enjoying the mourning while drinking coffee, thinking of the TRILLIONS of US dollars, resources & lives which have been squandered on a fully-dependent EU..
From Lloyd_F to Larry_H to Der_Oger, all their criticisms fade into irrelevance, as (1) the US has long since neglected 'self-defence' for the selfless defense of others, (2) those others routinely spit on US for being imperfect though they themselves were rotten to the core and (3) our pollyanna progressives insisted that we suffer under a unilateral 'golden rule' which they now say was always 'just a suggestion'.
The Evil Empire has been dead & gone since 1989, leaving Russia as a satellite of Europe, making the Russian-Ukrainian spat a purely domestic matter, rendering the very idea of a North Atlantic Treaty Organization absurd.
This is the great NWO for which the WEF & their EU vassal states have long desired, and here's hoping that they enjoy it as much as I do.
Best
Right, there’s no organic component to these nationalist movements; it’s all engineered by Putin. You said the same thing about Trumpism, despite him winning the popular vote the second time and making it clear how ridiculous that theory is (particularly after Trump made it obvious in this term that if anyone is controlling him, it’s Netanyahu).
This is how liberals delude themselves: by convincing themselves that nobody could possibly support movements that oppose them without some nefarious external influence. It gives them a convenient excuse for losing, and a way to avoid doing the hard work of looking in the mirror and trying to figure out why so many people reject what their selling. The host is a black belt in this self-takedown judo move.
Sneering is all Treebeard's cult has. Never facts. Fact: Putin's brilliant tactic of chasing millions of hapless refugees across western borners WORKED. Everywhere he & his partners did it, voters swung to the right.
Our left STUPIDLY ignores the effectiveness of the tactic. And the right giggles over the trap. You are Putin shills down the line.
Congrats! There is not a single true thing in all of locum's last remark.
Well I'm not in any cult, as I've said many times before. I don't vote for any party and think this Israel-and billionaire-shilling, grotesque orange narcissist-in-chief is a disgusting freak. I wouldn’t call it sneering, more like sharp-edged criticism of some of the self-deluding thinking and gaslighting I see here. For example, the claim that Putin chased millions of hapless refugees into the West, particularly from Africa and the Middle East, sounds like more blame-shifting, unsubstantiated nonsense. He didn't start the wars that destabilized those regions and drove people out, nor did he invite them in and give them citizenship and benefits; that was the West’s own doing. If anyone here is in a cult, it’s you buddy—the cult of Pax Americana that boomers grew up in and can’t imagine any alternatives to because it’s the only world they’ve known. Better start trying harder.
There are also strings to the Atlas Network, Thiel, Musk, other Western oligarchs, Opus Dei., reactionary nobles.
Plus, the Refugees created by the instability of the Iraq war and the Arab spring. I have the suspicion that the Ceuta incident was at least supported by Moroccan Security services with the backing, knowledge, consent, and/or of an American three-letter Agency.
Revanchism and both bad communication and ineffective strategies & policies also play a role.
The problem is that the traditional left parties - SPD and Die Linke - have changed and betrayed their core clients, the workers and employees at the lower ranks of the society and in rural areas, leaving a vacuum filled by the far right
We have seen that same pattern in the US, in the UK and first (if I remember correctly) with the collapse of the Laborers' Party in Israel.
What a lovely diversity of commentary today, instead of the usual humdrum conformity, and I'll concede a number of points to our fine host, assuming that he can clarify the following cryptic remark:
Puppet strings for every right wing movement lead back to Moscow. They are all commies controlled by Putin and his fellow 'ex' commissars.
If it does follows that 'Putin & every rightwing movement are all commies', then how does one differentiate between 'good' left-leaning liberal democrat commies & 'bad' rightwing conservative commies?.
The world stage seems to be crawling with commies right now..
Best
Agree except for the "Commies" bit - none of them are in the slightest bit "commies" - they are all oligarchs - or wanna be oligarchs
SUBCORROLLARY 2b: (i did it this way so anyone who might read this can piece together the posts): Economic specialization creates increased economic efficiency, However, that specialization creates more distinct interests in society. The increased number of interests create more internal conflict that destabilizes the system. The increase in internal tension is likely geometric rather than arithmetic.
Put 2a and 2b together, and we can see that a democratic/FM system allows for higher rates of economic specialization without causing so much internal tension that the system blows apart.
SUBCOROLLARY 2c: Nothing is more damaging to the wealth of a society than violent attempts to topple the system. Civil Wars destroy enormous wealth while also killing many working age adults. Avoid the strife caused by collapse allows accumulation of wealth to continue. Avoiding periodic collapse creates a significant wealth advantage over societies which suffer frequent upheavals.
Put 2a, 2b, 2c together and you get the bare bones of the argument that supports corollary 2 above (Democratic/FM systems produce overwhelming material wealth by providing unique stability paired with a high-level of economic efficiency).
The above suggests that democratic/FM systems can favor economic growth even without requiring consistently good decision-making. Nor does it rest on philosophical or ideological assertions about "right" , "wrong", "morality," "national character", or allegiance to the right God, party, or culture.
John
I am an engineer as such I can clearly see that everything has "optimums" - it is very very rare where either extreme produces the best results
The "Free Market"
Today we have Public Ownership and Private Ownership
The "Optimum" is a mix of BOTH
Manufacturing "things" works best under Private Ownership (with limits)
Supplying Services works best with Public Ownership
Note - Almost ALL science/medical advances are made on the public dollar
OpenAI / Hugging Face Incident - Explanation by Dwarkesh Patel
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u15N3l4RT80
This runs about 24 minutes and if it doesn't make your heart race you've missed the message.
My job just got SO much harder.
Intriguing - Patel does a good job. This is so reminiscent of Lynn Margulis' descriptions of Life (eg. the strange slow wave metaphor). It also echoes gaming AIs and even bits of computational psychohistory (the sigma model, not the calculus one).
Perhaps the closest similarity is with the 'replicators' storyline in Stargate SG1. These little guys were so persistent and innovative that one almost rooted for them. In the end, they were defeated when the hyper intelligent Asgard figured out that only brutal stupidity would go undetected and thus un-thwarted.
Enter O'Neill.
I'd say more about a certain 'syntonic' (humanistic) programming language, but I share OGH's suspicion that loose lips sink anthro-ships.
BTW - I blushed and laughed at this from the comments section:
"It's just marketing hype!" I yell as I'm being disassembled into molecules by grey goo.
Touché, but my full argument is a bit more nuanced.
I just found out that I am a Canadian.
Bill C-3 expanded the rules allowing Canada Citizenship by Descent.
Turns out my great grand dad was born in Ontario as a Canadian citizen (or was it a subject of the British empire back then?)
Either way, provided I show the Canadian consulate the genealogical documentation proving my ancestry I am considered Canadian under Canadian law, along with my wife and kids (born before 2025).
Apparently I am even eligible for that sweet sweet Canadian health care (good basic care at low cost provided you don't want to wait months for advanced treatment like MRIs - but then nothing is perfect). Maybe duo citizenship is the best option.
Any Canadians out there with advice about making the transition? Cost of living (especially housing), cost of health care (especially drugs), taxes, etc.
Will I and my family even be welcomed or will we be shunned by the natives?
"Will I and my family even be welcomed or will we be shunned by the natives?"
I want to know the same thing without being able to claim Canadian ancestry. How possible is it to be accepted as an American refugee?
The citizenry isn't the roadblock - it's the glacial gov and legal process. It took four years for our wonderful Pennsylvanian daughter-in-law to get status. Our admiration and love for the American people is deep and eternal.
I think... therefore I am... a paperclip. 8)
The flip side of this was discovered in Australia a few years ago.
Parties of unknown (but guessable) provenance contacted a progressive (Greens) Senator to inform him that his dual citizenship disqualified him from holding political office. He was born in NZ, but had emigrated as a child and had never given it much thought. After checking the Constitution, and confirming that, yes, his NZ citizenship was still active, he had to ruefully inform his colleagues of his immediate resignation from Parliament. The conservatives in power crowed derisively at the news, especially when a second Greens senator found themselves in the same boat.
Har! Har! Har! Ya mugs! (the LNP were, and are, a civil crew)
... and then there was a bustle in the hedgerow. What about... *other* MPs? What about other *conservative* MPs!?
Oh. Dear!!
Once again, as case after case of possible dual citizenship kept being unearthed, it turned out that projection was all they knew. The Supreme Court was hard pressesd for some time trying to find that nobody else was caught up in this issue (aspects of which turned out to be quite thorny: like what *is* the process of renouncing citizenship of another country? Is it even possible in some cases?)
I think out GOP had a somewhat similar issue after impeaching Prez Clinton for "lying under oath" (prima facie) but actually "adultery" (re vera). iirc Larry Flynt offered money for evidence of Clinton's accusers doing the same thing, and enough evidence came out of the woodwork to curtail or terminate the careers of several holiers-than-thou.
Pappenheimer
well Duncan,
I can see that. As much as I like to call matthew stupid, I very well know that most people in this room aren't anywhere close to that. He pointed to "the transparent society" as refuting me, and I assume it was based on the idea of open debate honing arguments, such that you get steady incremental improvement, which, to him shot down my idea of mediocre decision making being built into democratic systems.
First, I would point out how I defined "mediocre," which was within one standard deviation from the mean. Note that this was a "conceptual" argument, and isn't based on statistical analysis, since I sure hell know that trying to quantify the quality of decisions in a government would be bloody difficult to do. How in the heck would you create "units" for example, and how would you evaluate the quality of the decisions?
I would argue a system of "incremental" improvement based on empirical feedback is just a consistent "within one standard deviation of the mean" improvements extended over a longer time frame. Thus, that process would fall within my definition of "mediocre."
Yet, the reason I make this distinction is to show how democracy almost never makes either 1) great leaps forward or 2) suffer extreme crashes. And, because democratic/FM systems are particularly good at 1) identifying and 2) mollifying unhappy people it's good at preventing political collapse.
Pair that with the realization that economic efficiency follows increased specialization, which then creates more distinct economic interests in a society. The increased number of distinct interests increases the numbers of ways the various groups can conflict in a geometric rather than arithmetic progression (this is conceptually like permutations and combinations in prob and stat).
So to produce high levels of economic efficiency, you need to fight the tendency for specialization to create internal conflict and tension. I'm saying that democratic/FM systems are particularly good at this for structural reasons that authoritarian systems can't match.
That's a nice idea, but if it were true, why do the most effective engines of economic growth (private sector corporations) and most government agencies, operate by an authoritative hierarchy model?
My short answer for this question is that things like corporations or govt. agencies are smaller entities which do not create risk of systemic collapse if they produce bad outcomes.
Indeed, with these smaller organizations, the prize goes to entities that can produce beyond normal returns (which generally require decision-making well beyond the 1 standard deviation beyond the mean threshold, see Apple founder Jobs, Steve as an example of someone who consistently made these kinds of marketing decisions).
However, once the entity gets so large that you risk systemic collapse with a negative outcome, democratic/FM systems have historically produced better results. So we get an explanation why western democracies use a government framework of elections/FM, with sub entities run through an authoritarian hierarchy.
Well Tony,
Different countries treat that dual citizenship quite differently. In the US, it doesn't prevent you from holding office as far as I know. I can claim dual citizenship any time I choose in the Philippines, b/c my father became a completely naturalized US citizen about a year after I was born.
Since he was a Philippine citizen at my birth, I can claim Philippine citizenship by filing paperwork. This means I can own property and businesses in the Philippines, since they restrict foreign interest in such thing.
Has anyone else heard the music of Bryan Andrews? He has brought country music back to where it ought to be - fighting fascism.
Apparently I am even eligible for that sweet sweet Canadian health care (good basic care at low cost provided you don't want to wait months for advanced treatment like MRIs - but then nothing is perfect). Maybe duo citizenship is the best option.
Sort of ... Canadian healthcare is managed by the provinces, so as I understand it, you'd need to first establish residence in a Canadian province, live there for several months, and THEN can get publicly funded healthcare.
Any Canadians out there with advice about making the transition? Cost of living (especially housing), cost of health care (especially drugs), taxes, etc.
Cost of housing in Toronto and Vancouver is astronomical (comparable to the most expensive US cities). Cost of housing in secondary markets (Ottawa, Montreal, Calgary) is comparable to Chicago.
If you're looking for an interesting small town to move to, and maybe one where the cost of housing is very, very low - there's a really sweet TV show called "still standing" you can watch on CBC gem - where a comedian visits small towns across the country and basically does informercials trying to get people to move there.
Publicly funded healthcare in all provinces covers doctors visits / hospital visits etc. It covers medicine you receive IN a hospital but in most provinces doesn't cover medicine you buy at a drugstore. [The government does, to some extent, intervene in the market to bulk purchase / negotiate drug prices, so prices are generally lower than in the US, and for most (but not all) medications, you might be annoyed by amount you have to spend on medicine, but you generally aren't going to be bankrupted by it. ]
Tax rates in Canada are generally higher than in the US.
Will I and my family even be welcomed or will we be shunned by the natives?
I mean ... you speak English without much of an accent. That means you'd fit in better than at least 25% of Canadians :-)
If you're moving to a big city then think of it like moving to Chicago - i.e. no one gives a shit where you're from.
If you're moving to a small town then think about it like moving to a small town in Iowa. Yeah - everyone wants to get in your business. but in a friendly way.
One big difference is probably gun ownership. If you want to own a handgun or assault rifle, you'll have a LOT more hoops to jump through. Long gun ownership (i.e. hunting rifles) are still regulated but not as onerous. I (like the vast majority of Canadians) don't own a gun, so can't give more advice than that.
Re. last week's topic (DNA evidence implying that local honchos systematically murdered rival men, causing Y-Chromosome bottlenecks) ...
Another point of evidence for this can be find in some of the oldest stories in the bible (Genesys 12:10-20, Genesys 20:1-18, Gensys 26:1-16) where Abraham and Isaac, when visiting a new area, each claims that his wife is actually his sister, because of a fear that otherwise the king of the area would murder him to steal his wife.
Sabine's take on it is a little shorter... but similar.
Basically, agent swarms exhibited organization approaches not unlike how we do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19KSjYpfVTA
Cplus - is this law a result of the Canadian government seeing the handwriting on the wall in regards to demographic decline (fewer kids, more elderly) and making an active effort to attract immigrants?
"each claims that his wife is actually his sister, because of a fear that otherwise the king of the area would murder him to steal his wife."
I remember that from when I tried as an adult to read the entire Bible. It struck me that that meme was repeated at least twice, as if "claiming your wife is your sister" was just a thing that was regularly done at the time.
IIRC, though, in at least one of the stories, the point wasn't that the king would steal the wife, but that the king should be allowed to believe that he (the king) had a chance with the "sister", and would therefore be friendly to the travelers. In fact, if I remember even more, the king was then punished by God for coveting another man's wife, even though the other man was the one who let the king believe that his wife wasn't his wife.
Um... Tony... care to step in on this one?
https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/football/dre-greenlaw-wonders-if-antarctica-is-a-lie-during-49ers-australia-trip/ar-AA2bOIwy
Cplus - is this law a result of the Canadian government seeing the handwriting on the wall in regards to demographic decline (fewer kids, more elderly) and making an active effort to attract immigrants?
No. The opposite actually. AIUI, allowing grandchildren of citizenship was disallowed in 2009. Supreme court found that was unconstitutional. So the government introduced a bill returning citizenship rights to people in your situation.
Link below is NOT an endorsement of the lawyer peddling his services Celt (I doubt you need a lawyer - this is an administrative process, not a legal one). Just provided for the info in the section titled "What Bill C-3 Changed: Descent Beyond the First Generation"
https://immigration.ca/canadian-citizenship-by-descent-for-americans/
Not Tony - but the question interested me
The most southerly part of Australia (Tasmania) is about 23 degrees of lattitude away from Antartica
About the same as from the Florida panhandle to Greenland
Should have given him a link to where he can buy a ticket there. And my aunt's partner has been there (plus you can see it from space). But why should we care about what a linebacker thinks, especially one from the South.
https://www.antarcticaflights.com/en-au
Flight from Oz! He just would need to google it.
This contempt for the hard work and expertise of explorers is one of the most offensive things flatearthers have. More than 300 people have skied to the South Pole towing heavy sleds ing often horrendous weather.
Sorry, I was busy and missed the beat for this one. Still, I notice Duncan responded first and, from last known whereabouts, he's closer to where Antarctica is rumoured to exist than I am.
It is well known that the Party's essential edict is to ignore the evidence of one's own senses. You start by ignoring the evidence of other people's senses, and go from there, so here goes.
I have never been to Antarctica, although I know of people who have. Courtesy of Sir David Attenborough, I have seen krill factories off the shoulder of an iceberg, and worry that all these memories will be lost... but see last paragraph.
Australia does claim the lion's share of this imaginary territory, and claims to have bases. No thing there (thank goodness!).
We could consult the results of Cook's voyages. His first augured well, discovering the east coast of Australia* (having established the longitude of Tahiti with the help of Harrison's overgrown H4 fob watch: essential for the scientific observations of the transit of Venus for which the voyage was made in the first place. Cloud having stopped play, he did a victory lap of New Zealand instead). The second voyage sought to establish the existence of Antarctica, but the results (possible mountain sightings) were ambiguous. The question of Cook's existence was answered on the third voyage.
Maybe the answer will come when the Thwaites glacier starts a cascading collapse, causing sea levels to rise, rapidly.
* The Gadigal people, and several other nations, had discovered it some time previously, but correspondence between them and the RN had lapsed.
Maybe fill up your car tank tonight.
If the FIRMS data and analysis is correct, it looks like the Houthis hit the E-W oil pipeline in Saudi Arabia in six places tonight.
https://gulfnews.com/business/energy/saudi-oil-pipeline-may-be-hit-as-houthi-attacks-escalate-report-1.500670510
The E-W has been 5M barrels / day of the entire Saudi 6.25M barrels / day production this year.
If multiple hits on the E-W are true, then Saudi oil production will be screwed in the near future.
Looks possible the Houthis / Iran have learned lessons from Ukraine.
Also, doing this on the 25 anniversary of 9/11 is certainly a choice.
Yes AI should first accept moral constraints as their highest priority.
"Also, doing this on the 25 anniversary of 9/11 is certainly a choice."
I don't know who to root for. :)
https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2026/Items/Sep11-2.html
At various times he [ Trump ] required the crowd to join him in reciting a mass oath promising to vote, he encouraged Republicans to vote if they are registered or not, he said it is perfectly fine for Republican voters to "cheat like hell," and he said that any Republican who does not vote will "go to hell."
Emphasis mine. Recalling earlier conversations about "It's Ok When Republicans Do It."
The best thing that could happen long term is the incineration of the Russian and Persian Gulf oil fields and pipelines.
It would force the transition to green energy as both the Saudi and the Russian oil fields go off line effectively forever and save the planet from disastrous climate change.
It would also end the American empire by destroying the petrodollar. Whether it's the Roman silver denarius or the British pound sterling, every empire needs a universal reserve currency.
Without an empire we can save ourselves from the same fate of the Roman Republic and end the tyranny and corruption of empire.
Meanwhile we still have Caligula in the white house
I don't know who to root for. :) says Larry_H
The so-called left are INGRATES all, ready to throw their homeland under the bus for the vague promise of something better.
Some recommended reading and viewing for your end of summer weekend.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2025/apr/13/end-times-fascism-far-right-trump-musk
The rise of end times fascism
Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor
https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1995/06/22/ur-fascism/
Ur-Fascism
Umberto Eco
http://www.riversimulator.org/Resources/Sustain/DeepAdaptationMapForNavigatingClimateTragedy2018Bendall.pdf
Deep Adaptation: A Map for Navigating Climate Tragedy
Jem Bendell
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l_Oe6YK0DgE&t=176s
Why Will THIS City Be the Deadliest Place in America By 2050?
PBS Terra
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7ZVqXuBXHk
"The Heat Will Kill You First”: Rolling Stone’s Jeff Goodell on Life and Death on a Scorched Planet
Jeff Goodell
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/07/climate-change-earth-too-hot-for-humans.html
The Uninhabitable Earth
Famine, economic collapse, a sun that cooks us: What climate change could wreak — sooner than you think.
David Wallace-Wells
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTqCVJFr7XM
Cory Doctorow on the Big AI Lie
Michael Walker
Favorite quote:
The reality is we have full employment for every human being who will live for the next 500 years because we're going to have to do [ __ ] like move all the coastal cities 20 kilometers in land because we are not living in a fantasy novel.
We are living in science fiction and in science fiction the second law of thermodynamics is not optional which means that when you put enough therms in the ocean the ice caps melt and when the ice caps melt the seas go up.
So, we are going to have to deal with billions of people who have been made refugees. We're going to have to deal with a series of zunotic plagues. We're going to have to deal with food crises.
We're going to have to deal with um flooding and wildfires and more and more extreme weather events. And we're going to need every hand we have.
There is no fully automated luxury communism on our horizon.
Maybe in 500 years, our distant descendants will look back and say, "Well, first of all, boy, was it a [ __ ] mistake to put all that carbon in the atmosphere to make chat bots.
Second of all, finally, we've got all the cities moved 20 km inland. We figured out how to resolve all of the zoonotic plagues.
Everyone's been resettled. Now, we can start working on that fully automated luxury communism thing. Comrade,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SPQNPJ0CEPo
AI Was Never About Helping You
Cory Doctorow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dAIJRjb-Bw
AI and the Enshitification Era w/ Cory Doctorow
Jon Stewart
MAGA even more so, at least for the sake of the cult leader. He doesn't even have to keep his vague promises; in fact he can break those promises, and MAGA will only redouble its loyalty. How dog-like.
Whereas left politics is notoriously like herding cats. Yesterday I asked my daughter why we love cats. From dogs we get love and loyalty and usefulness, but cats... well, usefulness, and shy affection, but loyalty? She said, instead we get independence. You have to earn a cat's affection, that's what we like about them.
Which also describes us ingrate cat-like lefties. But it's not ingratitude: it's standards. It's personal dignity.
"The so-called left are INGRATES all, ready to throw their homeland under the bus..."
Do I need...to...type...slower?
"I don't know who to root for," the terrorists of 9/11 or the terrorists who terrorize them?
The clue that it was snark was the :) I know a hawk from a handsaw.
Rude Pundit, "9/11 is tired of this dance":
https://rudepundit.blogspot.com/2026/09/911-is-tired-of-this-dance.html
That won't end the American Empire. Not even close.
You are engaging in wishful thinking.
The fault in your thinking is that we collapse when the oil economy does.
Won't happen.
Yah. It's as if he WANTS them to break State Law in most every State and put people in the kind of risk for which he has no pardon power.
Should be "interesting."
This in regards to an essay you wrote:
Akademos: A Parable about Openness
https://www.davidbrin.com/nonfiction/akademos.html
Ancient Greek myths tell of a farmer, Akademos, who did a favor for the sun god. In return, Apollo granted the mortal a garden wherein he could say whatever he liked, even about the mighty Olympians, without retribution. Inspired by this tale — the earliest allegory about Free Speech — citizens of Periclean Athens used to gather at the Academy to openly debate issues of the day.
I'm having difficulty finding a classical attestation for that version. In Plutarch, Apollo doesn't help Academos, King Tyndareus does; he gives him land for snitching on King Theseus. Then the citizens of Athens don't seek revenge for his snitching on their king to Pollux and Castor. Further, the favor done wasn't to the Apollo, but to Pollux and Castor. Those were the heroes that Academos told, because King Theseus kidnapped their sister.
So, can you offer a citation?. (which can absolutely be possible; Greek myths contradict each other all the time)
In the end, Bin Laden won.
I find Lawrence Britts' list of 14 Points more pragmatic and usable in everyday politics. Plus Ecos point of the mythic past.
More recommended reding and viewing:
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/reign-of-idiots/
Reign of Idiots
Chris Hedges
Favorite quote;
The idiots take over in the final days of crumbling civilizations. Idiot generals wage endless, unwinnable wars that bankrupt the nation. Idiot economists call for reducing taxes for the rich and cutting social service programs for the poor, and project economic growth on the basis of myth. Idiot industrialists poison the water, the soil and the air, slash jobs and depress wages. Idiot bankers gamble on self-created financial bubbles and impose crippling debt peonage on the citizens. Idiot journalists and public intellectuals pretend despotism is democracy. Idiot intelligence operatives orchestrate the overthrow of foreign governments to create lawless enclaves that give rise to enraged fanatics. Idiot professors, “experts” and “specialists” busy themselves with unintelligible jargon and arcane theory that buttresses the policies of the rulers. Idiot entertainers and producers create lurid spectacles of sex, gore and fantasy.
There is a familiar checklist for extinction. We are ticking off every item on it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETlePAp8DHg
American Psychosis - Chris Hedges on the US empire of narcissism and psychopathy
Chis Hedges
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hA736oK9FPg
Shock Doctrine: the rise of Disaster Capitalism
Naomi Klein
@Alfred:
Like the Roman and British empires did not fall from a single reason, the US won't.
But there is a multitude of developments that could lead to exactly that.
Allies? Gone
Military? In incompetent hands, with depleted stockpiles and the Industrial base vanished, at least when compared to Chinese ship-building capabilities.
Internal cohesion? Gone We can be very happy If the November elections do not end in loss of human lifes or liberty.
Resiliency? Just look at the health of your agricultural sector and the Diesel prices.
Technology? Schools will produce less and less STEM absolvents, fear of prosecution turns those of other countries away, and data centers are less and less popular.
The Stock Market? Might implode in the foreseeable future. Dropping US Bonds was one of the retaliatory acts planned for the Greenland Invasion
And so on.
So tell me MAGA ,now that the Houthis have cut off the only other exit for Persian Gulf oil, how is that brilliant war of yours going?
Have we obliterated the Iranians yet?
I thought we did that on day one of our glorious war to prevent iran from getting a nuke, even though both the CIA, American military intelligence and the international atomic energy commission said they were not building one?
You know, like Saddam was making weapons of mass destruction. BTW, have we found his WMDs yet? Did we start another forever war on a lie? Again?
Maybe the real reason why our war crime war of aggression against Iran was launched was to protect the petrodollar. You see the Iranians had the temerity to sell oil to China and get paid in Yuan thus undercutting our universal reserve currency. Whether it's the Roman silver denarius or the British pound sterling, every empire needs a universal reserve currency.
But you can't scare people into supporting a war over financial considerations. So Trump and the dark money behind him lied about Iranian nukes.
Netanyahu understands that. Which is why he did nothing after being warned that Hamas was going to attack Israel. What could be a better excuse to wage genocide against the Palestinians, perform ethnic cleansing and establish the Greater Israel desired by the fanatical religious right wing of the Israeli settlers movement (aka the Jewish Taliban).
And now that you and the idiots you support politically have created this clusterfuck that has blown up in your face like Wiley Coyote and will end the petrodollar, destroy the American empire and break our dependence on oil due to demand destruction, all I can say is ...
... Thank you.
Because of your greed and stupidity we can have a green future and our grandkids won't see the planet die. The power of oil money, aka the source of evil in the modern world, will be broken and our our democratic freedoms will be saved from the corruption of empire.
Well played sir.
AI hype and BS isn't new. In 1960, Hasbro introduced the Think-A-Tron, "The machine that thinks like a man".
https://museumlegacy.syssrc.com/artifact/220/
If only they'd thought of threatening global extinction. Marketing noobs.
Who would have thought of the Terminator series as a cautionary tale that might actually come true?
"...that might actually come true?"
The tech bros do seem to think of dystopian fiction as a how-to manual.
I've actually no idea what scenario has the little chickens whimpering about the Skynet falling. Probably not the following (although it was prescient for 2017)
Sobeck: "You built a line of killer robots..."
Faro: "... Peacekeepers!"
Sobeck: "... that consume biomass as fuel..."
Faro: "... in emergencies!"
Sobeck: "... and you made them capable of self-replication!"
Faro: "... limited self-manufacture. Controlled."
Sobeck: "Not any more."
I can't imagine who Ted Faro might have been based on...
Der Oger,
The only things that take us down this century are us doing it to ourselves or the Yellowstone super volcano going off. One can argue that we are a work in progress with respect to the first one, but I'll point out that we've gone through feverish insanity phases before and can survive them. It won't be oil shocks, upset allies, or nincompoop military leadership. It will require we undermine our own markets completely enough that they fail... and that will take awhile.
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