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This is presumably my last Open Thread on Russian Reaction (posted on on A123’s request).

As I said in the previous thread, after 7 years of blogging, I will be leaving The Unz Review. Though my original intention was to focus on other, non-blogging related projects, there was such a large outpouring of demand for me to continue producing content from my loyal readership that I became increasingly uncomfortable with disappointing you and letting the diverse, vibrant, and multicultural community that has coalesced here over the years just wither away. So I decided to make an earnest effort at keeping it alive.

You’ll be able to continue reading me at Substack.

Weekly Open Threads + longreads, as often as I can manage. I won’t spam your inbox with short/Tweet like posts. For that, there’s… Twitter?

Some of you such as Dmitry and A123 have asked how we can keep the “broad” discussions we see in these Open Threads going. Substack’s main problem is that its commenting system leaves much to be desired, so I’m now sure if equivalent Open Takes there can replicate the effect. As such, it might eventually be best to find an alternative for such “free-wheeling” discussions. I notice that Scott Alexander has a forum, a Discord, and a subreddit. I am too lazy and pressed for time to run a forum, and I don’t want to mix too much with plebbitors, but perhaps Discord could be an option. Discord is often used for gaming and crypto discussions, so there’s some good intersections there, but it’s also a rather SJW platform, so not the most stable foundation to built on. More speculatively, I hear that urbit should be ready for mass adoption by early 2022. (Joining now requires jumping through hoops that will be unrealistic for most people). Let me know your thoughts in the comments. If I do decide that Substack comment-threads are insufficient, I will eventually announce it at the Substack. But this is very low priority and I can’t 100% guarantee it will even happen. Maybe Substack will suffice.

Otherwise, feel free to discuss whatever in this Open Thread. I will not be actively moderating it and will stop checking up on it after a week or two.

 

 
• Tags: Blogging, Open Thread 
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  1. This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

    Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.

    • Replies: @Mike in Boston
    @Anatoly Karlin

    Could it be coincidence that Karlin retires from this blog and all of a sudden the sovok blue pillers notch a big win, claiming the scalp of "мужское государство"?

    https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/72920/

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    , @Che Guava
    @Anatoly Karlin

    I am sorry to hear it Anatoly. Not that I have been a noteworthy on the open threads.

    Have watched for the first times, the BBC's old version, teleplay from 1954.

    The Anglo-USA version from 1956. Crap.

    There is no film of We, but I will give rough rankings to versions of 1984.

    1. Gilliam's Brazil

    2. BBC teleplay from 1954

    3. Never made take of We

    4. Electro-pop version from 1984, to say the least, as O'Brien, it was the last great role by Richard Burton.

    5. Useless 1956 Anglo-American version

  2. I personally don’t understand why you can’t just continue blogging here on Unz given its superior commenting system. I understand your decision to “retire” from full time blogging but is there any real reason to migrate to substack for your newsletter?

    Anyway, I quite enjoy your open thread posts with their collection of material that piqued your interest, and the subsequent comments threads on those topics.

    • Replies: @RadicalCenter
    @Kuru

    How about regular Open Threads here on UR if Ron’s up for it, with AK’s longer work (“Effortposts”) at Substack as announced?

    I subscribed right away to AK on Substack. We may butt heads, but the guy is a unique talent, perspective, and personality, and he’s gotta make a living. (Just don’t make it all transhumanism and video games, alright Anatoly?)

    But I would very much like the Open Threads to continue. Both to still have the AK style here and to look into the topics/links he finds and throws out to the waiting audience. Equally important, the ensuing comments section is the single best thing on UR for me. I have learned a lot about social, cultural, religious, and economic developments in the RF and former Soviet space, as well on foreign policy. AK’s columns and the commenters together have intensified my interest in Russia and in getting to know the cultures of that part of the world much more in depth.

    Several of our children have started learning Russian — dropping another language to do so — and we will be looking into high school and college student-exchange programs in Russia for them. Or more. Some of that is from the interest kindled by AK and his Merry Band of Slavs and Wanna-Be Slavs. Thanks to Ron and Anatoly.

    , @Dacian Julien Soros
    @Kuru

    He is not maintaining a blog, so that I can shitpost in the comments section. A few years ago, he wanted to be a vlogger on Youtube. He still hopes to make some money, so let the man follow his dream. I am not going to forecast anything this time.

    Replies: @Yevardian

  3. AK — Many thanks.

    There we’re a couple of interesting items related to China that did not fit in your “goodbye” thread.
    ____

    The Pacific Container Shipping issue gets more complex: (1)

    The number of container ships at anchor or drifting at one of the busiest ports in China has jumped to the highest level since August, indicating supply chain disruptions will continue into the holiday season. Right now is the critical period where US importers build inventory for Christmas shopping. If they fail to do so, expect shortages of popular consumer goods.

    China’s Yantian port in Shenzhen has had its fair share of issues this past summer, primarily due to a COVID outbreak forcing one of its terminals to shutter operations. Since then, the terminal has reopened.

    But now, the port has ceased container handling operations after the Chinese weather authorities issued cyclone alerts. Bloomberg’s vessel tracking data shows at least 67 ships are currently queued outside Yantian, the highest since 26 August.

    Part of the overall problems seems to be that container owners are trying to rush TEU’s back to China to capture the currently very high China to US pricing. They placed their empty containers on the fastest option available.

    As a consequence, U.S. export goods in train cars and truck trailers are still occupying those as temporary storage. These full transport options are thus:
        • Unavailable to hold new unloaded cargo.
        • Fully occupied limited Western holding space.
    As more vehicle transport becomes “storage” the lack of transport capacity becomes worse. It feels like we have already reached a tipping point due to the lack of empty containers in the U.S.

    Backlog off Long Beach / Los Angeles will continue to rise, because there is no way to get unloaded containers out of the port… Because there are no empty containers to free up vehicles for that cargo.
    ____

    At the same time China has a separate problem with property developers going into full financial contagion: (2)

    China property firms bonds were hit with another wrecking ball on Monday as Evergrande was set to miss its third round of (offshore) bond payments in as many weeks and rival Modern Land became the latest scrambling to delay deadlines.

    Having already suffered the fastest drop on record, Chinese junk bond markets – where property developer issuers dominate – were routed once again as fears about fast-spreading contagion in the \$5 trillion sector, which drives a sizable chunk of the Chinese economy, continued to savage sentiment. Meanwhile, China Evergrande Group’s offshore bondholders still had not received interest payment by a Monday deadline Asia time, Reuters reported citing sources.


    Yields on Chinese junk-rated dollar bonds surged 291 basis points to 17.54% last week, the highest level in about a decade, according to a Bloomberg index.


    “Evergrande’s contagion risk is now spreading across other issuers and sectors,” JPMorgan’s analysts said, demonstrating a rare talent for observing the obvious.

    And while today may have been “disastrous” it could get far, far worse if the market loses faith that Beijing will bail out the bond market.

    Other massive losers include:
        • Xinyuan Real Estate
        • China Aoyuan Group
        • Kaisa Group
    ___

    While property is by definition domestic. How many impacted firms are actually conglomerates that depend in part on exports? Firms that may have been able to use product diversity to de-risk are stuck with two bad plays in hand.

    There do not seem to be any good options on either side of the Pacific. Each individual decision may have made sense by itself, but they are combining badly. All of the synergy from wielding Chinese Coronavirus as a tool of politics is now piling up in an incredibly dangerous way.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/top-chinese-port-slammed-worst-traffic-jam-august-amid-tropical-cyclones

    (2) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/its-disastrous-day-all-hell-breaks-loose-chinas-bond-markets

     

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @A123

    First, I’d like to thank you for suggesting an open thread, and thank AK for starting the thread.

    I remember reading a few years ago about there being a glut of shipping containers, and ports and other logistics hubs running out of space to cram unclaimed containers.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.

    Replies: @A123

    , @Almost Missouri
    @A123

    Thanks.


    How many impacted firms are actually conglomerates that depend in part on exports?
     
    Rumors are that a big chunk of Tether coin market cap is directly or indirectly in the Chinese property market, so might there be a crypto contagion from the Evergrande implosion too?

    Replies: @A123

  4. AK,

    Could you start comment threads here to leave comments about specific Substack entries, tweets, interesting items from your blog roll, etc.?

    I would image that it would only take a few minutes to start each tread here, and would require a lot less work than maintaining a discord, forum, etc.

    Would Ron be ok with you starting comment threads here occasionally?

    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @Not Raul

    Thanks for the idea.

    But I don't really see how this would be in the interests of either myself (less traffic and commenting at my Substack), or to The Unz Review (parasitizing on its commenting system for content located elsewhere).

    That said, if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I'd be perfectly happy with that.


    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.
     
    I agree. I also think all these logistical problems are sooner bullish than bearish. Pent up demand bursting through so strongly that infrastructure of c.2019 is struggling to cope.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Weaver

  5. @A123
    AK -- Many thanks.

    There we're a couple of interesting items related to China that did not fit in your "goodbye" thread.
    ____

    The Pacific Container Shipping issue gets more complex: (1)


    The number of container ships at anchor or drifting at one of the busiest ports in China has jumped to the highest level since August, indicating supply chain disruptions will continue into the holiday season. Right now is the critical period where US importers build inventory for Christmas shopping. If they fail to do so, expect shortages of popular consumer goods.

    China's Yantian port in Shenzhen has had its fair share of issues this past summer, primarily due to a COVID outbreak forcing one of its terminals to shutter operations. Since then, the terminal has reopened.

    But now, the port has ceased container handling operations after the Chinese weather authorities issued cyclone alerts. Bloomberg's vessel tracking data shows at least 67 ships are currently queued outside Yantian, the highest since 26 August.
     

    Part of the overall problems seems to be that container owners are trying to rush TEU's back to China to capture the currently very high China to US pricing. They placed their empty containers on the fastest option available.

    As a consequence, U.S. export goods in train cars and truck trailers are still occupying those as temporary storage. These full transport options are thus:
        • Unavailable to hold new unloaded cargo.
        • Fully occupied limited Western holding space.
    As more vehicle transport becomes "storage" the lack of transport capacity becomes worse. It feels like we have already reached a tipping point due to the lack of empty containers in the U.S.

    Backlog off Long Beach / Los Angeles will continue to rise, because there is no way to get unloaded containers out of the port... Because there are no empty containers to free up vehicles for that cargo.
    ____

    At the same time China has a separate problem with property developers going into full financial contagion: (2)


    China property firms bonds were hit with another wrecking ball on Monday as Evergrande was set to miss its third round of (offshore) bond payments in as many weeks and rival Modern Land became the latest scrambling to delay deadlines.

    Having already suffered the fastest drop on record, Chinese junk bond markets - where property developer issuers dominate - were routed once again as fears about fast-spreading contagion in the $5 trillion sector, which drives a sizable chunk of the Chinese economy, continued to savage sentiment. Meanwhile, China Evergrande Group's offshore bondholders still had not received interest payment by a Monday deadline Asia time, Reuters reported citing sources.

    ...
    Yields on Chinese junk-rated dollar bonds surged 291 basis points to 17.54% last week, the highest level in about a decade, according to a Bloomberg index.

    ...
    "Evergrande's contagion risk is now spreading across other issuers and sectors," JPMorgan's analysts said, demonstrating a rare talent for observing the obvious.

    And while today may have been "disastrous" it could get far, far worse if the market loses faith that Beijing will bail out the bond market.
     

    Other massive losers include:
        • Xinyuan Real Estate
        • China Aoyuan Group
        • Kaisa Group
    ___

    While property is by definition domestic. How many impacted firms are actually conglomerates that depend in part on exports? Firms that may have been able to use product diversity to de-risk are stuck with two bad plays in hand.

    There do not seem to be any good options on either side of the Pacific. Each individual decision may have made sense by itself, but they are combining badly. All of the synergy from wielding Chinese Coronavirus as a tool of politics is now piling up in an incredibly dangerous way.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/top-chinese-port-slammed-worst-traffic-jam-august-amid-tropical-cyclones

    (2) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/its-disastrous-day-all-hell-breaks-loose-chinas-bond-markets

     
    https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/chinajunk%20bond%20index.jpg

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Almost Missouri

    First, I’d like to thank you for suggesting an open thread, and thank AK for starting the thread.

    I remember reading a few years ago about there being a glut of shipping containers, and ports and other logistics hubs running out of space to cram unclaimed containers.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Not Raul


    I remember reading a few years ago about there being a glut of shipping containers, and ports and other logistics hubs running out of space to cram unclaimed containers.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.
     

    You can find out of the way places to stash empty containers. Also, every year has deceased containers due to accident or simple wear & tear. Wait, and market forces will eventually fix a glut.
    ___

    This problem more vexing. It is more akin to downtown vehicle gridlock. Each component task needs to unload before it can load.

    Because the U.S. runs a trade deficit the overall system 'slack' was always a large number of lightly loaded containers available on the West Coast. Volume was so available, scrap for recycling shipped overseas.

    20/20 hindsight, no one was monitoring the 'slack'. Everyone made the same, financially sound, call at the same time. All of the 'slack' left the U.S. as 'empty' containers. When the 'empty' containers come back from China they will be 'full', join the gridlocked queue, and multiply gridlock pressure on the nonexistent 'slack'.
    ____

    There is no standard market force to break the gridlock.

    Conceptually, the solution is to refuse lucrative contracts, and instead eat giant losses to move empty containers to the U.S. West Coast thus recreating the 'slack' pool. However, the problem is diffuse. There is no obvious responsible party to pay for 'slack' replenishment.

    Fairly solid rumor has it that the U.S. railroad consortium looked at moving empty, theoretically Atlantic, containers to the West Coast. However, they could not make it work:
    --A-- U.S. Domestic rail asset owners, such as GATX, have their own contracts and there is no pool of containers to lease.
    --B-- So many full loads are stuck at Western terminals, goods for Pacific export would have to reverse flow East to free up space.

    Fixing the Problem is in everyone's best interest.
    Paying to fix the Problem is in no one's interest.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Not Raul

  6. Any longstanding commenters want to take this opportunity to let the mask drop, to stop the charade, and admit that they were really Indians the whole time?

    [MORE]

    “Polish” Perspective? “Thulean” Friend? Enoch Powell? Dmitry? Reiner_tor? “German”_reader? Hyperborean? “Swedish” Family? “Blinky” Bill? “Yellowface” Anon? “Kent” Nationalist? (Sorry, if I missed anyone.)

    Okay, last time I will make that joke!

    • Thanks: Blinky Bill, mal
    • LOL: Anatoly Karlin
    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @songbird

    It's worse than you imagined.


    https://youtu.be/39eUSRVDsdU?t=22

    , @Anatoly Karlin
    @songbird

    UR debates about crypto-Indians:

    https://torako.wakarimasen.moe/file/torako/biz/image/1614/18/1614184518694.jpg

    Replies: @Twinkie

    , @Yevardian
    @songbird

    Guilty, another typically self-hating pajeet here. Some of my fondest memories involve squatting together on a busy street with the boys, answering to the call of nature, enjoying my homeland's natural smells.

    Replies: @Kuru

    , @sher singh
    @songbird


    (Joining now requires jumping through hoops that will be unrealistic for most people)
     
    Not anymore, you just install the Port application (Fag Os, Linux & Win 10) & it handles the rest||

    https://urbit.org/getting-started#port

    Substack comment is easier to create threads ie N-Towers. Discord u can just remake when it bans.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ
  7. Pretty crazy that California has banned the sale of small gas engines.

    Can only suppose it is a case of legislators not using or understanding tools. Many are undoubtedly female and/or hire Mexicans to do anything involving sweat.

    Probably will increase the exodus. Maybe, by design?

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @songbird

    My grandpa worked as a groundskeeper, and I never saw him use a blower. Real men use rakes.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Barbarossa, @songbird

    , @Barbarossa
    @songbird

    I just read an article on that. Thanks for the heads up on that, as I missed it. That's truly crazy.

    I've tried some really good battery powered chainsaws (Makita has an excellent one, which matched the power of gas with a sharp chain and a small bar.), but there you aren't going to go logging with them. Now all the poor bastard loggers are going to have to go out of state to buy their saws (shipping in will be prohibited?).

    I especially like the prohibition on generators. Since when the power goes out...Oh shoot.
    That's also going to be killer for any remote or off-grid situations. I have solar off-grid but I'm quite reliant on my generator to keep my batteries topped off through the cloudy winter.

    Perhaps they can implement a green solution. Mexicans turning huge flywheels powering electrical dynamos!

    , @SafeNow
    @songbird

    Newsom’s ban on gas leaf blowers will be effective in 2024, or later, if the air resources board determines that such a target date is not feasible. In other words, Newsom left himself enough room for the ban to never go into effect. I live in California.

    Replies: @songbird

  8. Disinformation

    Re: https://www.calvertjournal.com/articles/show/13173/russian-american-jewish-identity-diaspora-immigrant-literature

    Excerpt –

    Later, in the USSR, Russian Jews had their Russianness erased, with their passports describing them exclusively as Jews.

    *****

    Elsewhere, there’re accounts of some Soviet Jews listing a different nationality for reasons probably not so radically different from how some Jews in the West decided to distance themselves from a Jewish identity.

    I’m not pro-Soviet. That said, the USSR offered the option of a Jewish identity on the census. Had this not been made available, there would be outcries of denying a people’s existence.

    In the USSR, having a Jewish identity made it easier for people to leave that country c/o Jackson-Vanik. A friend of a friend was a Jewish INS case attorney, who said that a number of Soviet applicants told stories, which likely over-hyped a Jewish background and experiences of prejudice, in order to stand a better chance of gaining US citizenship.

    Socioeconomically, Soviet Jews did comparatively well. With greater freedoms, post-Soviet Russia has a noticeable Jewish presence.

  9. @Not Raul
    AK,

    Could you start comment threads here to leave comments about specific Substack entries, tweets, interesting items from your blog roll, etc.?

    I would image that it would only take a few minutes to start each tread here, and would require a lot less work than maintaining a discord, forum, etc.

    Would Ron be ok with you starting comment threads here occasionally?

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Thanks for the idea.

    But I don’t really see how this would be in the interests of either myself (less traffic and commenting at my Substack), or to The Unz Review (parasitizing on its commenting system for content located elsewhere).

    That said, if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I’d be perfectly happy with that.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.

    I agree. I also think all these logistical problems are sooner bullish than bearish. Pent up demand bursting through so strongly that infrastructure of c.2019 is struggling to cope.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Anatoly Karlin


    if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I’d be perfectly happy with that.
     
    This ought to make almost everybody happy!

    The Karlin comment section is high value and life-support for it would be great. Zombie Russian reactionaries. You could use a cartoon Rasputin who is most famous in Hollywood for refusing to die after being poisoned, shot, and tossed off a bridge into an icy river.

    Replies: @Archimedes, @A123

    , @Weaver
    @Anatoly Karlin

    There is a benefit to your posting here: Rednecks like me, German supporters of Hitler, East Europeans, Jews, and Russians all talking together.

    Usually we split up on the Internet. At least a few of the posters here seem to not be alphabet agents or other fakes. Furthermore, if Europe continues collapsing, and if Putin can’t find a worthy successor, Europeans in the world might one day find ourselves all in a common situation.

    It’s like Genghis Khan uniting his people to be strong. Europeans might not like one another, but things might become bad enough that Europeans have to communicate a bit more.

    -

    Regarding shipping containers, partly there are ships waiting on California ports, ships full of containers. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/heres-truth-behind-247-port-operations-pledge

    And there’s a trucker shortage in the US to take goods from the ports, but that wouldn’t impact containers.

  10. It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi

    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) “In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?” (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) “In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?” (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    • Disagree: YetAnotherAnon
    • Troll: RadicalCenter
    • Replies: @Yevardian
    @Thomm


    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi
     

    Thank you for making the effort to post such an exhaustive, valuable and *powerful* list.

    I don't recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles. But be sure to keep up your survey!

    I suppose one could make a 'case' that the long-term consequences of the latter is much more harmful than the other. If one assumes the frequency of pedophilia the same in homosexuals as heterosexuals.

    Replies: @Thomm, @iffen

    , @AKAHorace
    @Thomm


    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.
     
    There is so little support for the far right and you are worrying about this ? If the alt right gets the support of anyone, gay socialists included, so what ?

    Replies: @Pericles

    , @Pericles
    @Thomm

    Lol, speaking of the secretly Indian, here he is. Well, not so secretly to be sure.

    Above we can, by fortuitous chance, view the deliverable that Priyeet has assembled for his minimum wage employers at the ADL. Looks like you will have to type it into Excel yourself though, Heidi. Enjoy!

    Please do the needful and move my name to top of list, by the way.

    Replies: @Thomm

    , @Barbarossa
    @Thomm

    I think we need an "EWWW!" button...

    Replies: @Thomm

    , @Truth
    @Thomm

    Uh, Oh, Big Thomm is Callin' names. You can't ignore the questions now!

    Replies: @Thomm

    , @Tor597
    @Thomm

    lol

    This is the most Indian comment ever.

    Replies: @Thomm

  11. @songbird
    Any longstanding commenters want to take this opportunity to let the mask drop, to stop the charade, and admit that they were really Indians the whole time?

    "Polish" Perspective? "Thulean" Friend? Enoch Powell? Dmitry? Reiner_tor? "German"_reader? Hyperborean? "Swedish" Family? "Blinky" Bill? "Yellowface" Anon? "Kent" Nationalist? (Sorry, if I missed anyone.)


    Okay, last time I will make that joke!

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @Anatoly Karlin, @Yevardian, @sher singh

    It’s worse than you imagined.

    [MORE]

    • LOL: songbird
  12. @songbird
    Pretty crazy that California has banned the sale of small gas engines.

    Can only suppose it is a case of legislators not using or understanding tools. Many are undoubtedly female and/or hire Mexicans to do anything involving sweat.

    Probably will increase the exodus. Maybe, by design?

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Barbarossa, @SafeNow

    My grandpa worked as a groundskeeper, and I never saw him use a blower. Real men use rakes.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Not Raul

    The gas exhaust can't be healthy.

    , @Barbarossa
    @Not Raul

    Yeah, leaf blowers turn an inoffensive and healthful activity into something as obnoxious as possible...because engine.
    And I build for a living, so it's not like I'm against power tools.

    , @songbird
    @Not Raul

    I could live without leaf blowers, but a general ban on small gas motors seems insane to me. (Especially chainsaws and generators.) A lot of Amish allow gas motors - if whatever it is doesn't have powered wheels.

    I've speculated that the design of gas mowers has gotten worse over the years. Now suspect that is due to previous CA laws.

  13. @A123
    AK -- Many thanks.

    There we're a couple of interesting items related to China that did not fit in your "goodbye" thread.
    ____

    The Pacific Container Shipping issue gets more complex: (1)


    The number of container ships at anchor or drifting at one of the busiest ports in China has jumped to the highest level since August, indicating supply chain disruptions will continue into the holiday season. Right now is the critical period where US importers build inventory for Christmas shopping. If they fail to do so, expect shortages of popular consumer goods.

    China's Yantian port in Shenzhen has had its fair share of issues this past summer, primarily due to a COVID outbreak forcing one of its terminals to shutter operations. Since then, the terminal has reopened.

    But now, the port has ceased container handling operations after the Chinese weather authorities issued cyclone alerts. Bloomberg's vessel tracking data shows at least 67 ships are currently queued outside Yantian, the highest since 26 August.
     

    Part of the overall problems seems to be that container owners are trying to rush TEU's back to China to capture the currently very high China to US pricing. They placed their empty containers on the fastest option available.

    As a consequence, U.S. export goods in train cars and truck trailers are still occupying those as temporary storage. These full transport options are thus:
        • Unavailable to hold new unloaded cargo.
        • Fully occupied limited Western holding space.
    As more vehicle transport becomes "storage" the lack of transport capacity becomes worse. It feels like we have already reached a tipping point due to the lack of empty containers in the U.S.

    Backlog off Long Beach / Los Angeles will continue to rise, because there is no way to get unloaded containers out of the port... Because there are no empty containers to free up vehicles for that cargo.
    ____

    At the same time China has a separate problem with property developers going into full financial contagion: (2)


    China property firms bonds were hit with another wrecking ball on Monday as Evergrande was set to miss its third round of (offshore) bond payments in as many weeks and rival Modern Land became the latest scrambling to delay deadlines.

    Having already suffered the fastest drop on record, Chinese junk bond markets - where property developer issuers dominate - were routed once again as fears about fast-spreading contagion in the $5 trillion sector, which drives a sizable chunk of the Chinese economy, continued to savage sentiment. Meanwhile, China Evergrande Group's offshore bondholders still had not received interest payment by a Monday deadline Asia time, Reuters reported citing sources.

    ...
    Yields on Chinese junk-rated dollar bonds surged 291 basis points to 17.54% last week, the highest level in about a decade, according to a Bloomberg index.

    ...
    "Evergrande's contagion risk is now spreading across other issuers and sectors," JPMorgan's analysts said, demonstrating a rare talent for observing the obvious.

    And while today may have been "disastrous" it could get far, far worse if the market loses faith that Beijing will bail out the bond market.
     

    Other massive losers include:
        • Xinyuan Real Estate
        • China Aoyuan Group
        • Kaisa Group
    ___

    While property is by definition domestic. How many impacted firms are actually conglomerates that depend in part on exports? Firms that may have been able to use product diversity to de-risk are stuck with two bad plays in hand.

    There do not seem to be any good options on either side of the Pacific. Each individual decision may have made sense by itself, but they are combining badly. All of the synergy from wielding Chinese Coronavirus as a tool of politics is now piling up in an incredibly dangerous way.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/top-chinese-port-slammed-worst-traffic-jam-august-amid-tropical-cyclones

    (2) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/its-disastrous-day-all-hell-breaks-loose-chinas-bond-markets

     
    https://www.zerohedge.com/s3/files/inline-images/chinajunk%20bond%20index.jpg

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Almost Missouri

    Thanks.

    How many impacted firms are actually conglomerates that depend in part on exports?

    Rumors are that a big chunk of Tether coin market cap is directly or indirectly in the Chinese property market, so might there be a crypto contagion from the Evergrande implosion too?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    Rumors are that a big chunk of Tether coin market cap is directly or indirectly in the Chinese property market, so might there be a crypto contagion from the Evergrande implosion too?
     
    I defer to those tracking the Crypto market.

    Instinctively, the CCP cutoff of Crypto to save energy already pulled the handle. Secondary or Tertiary effects from holders of already illiquid assets do not immediately spring to my mind as a key risk.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

  14. @Not Raul
    @songbird

    My grandpa worked as a groundskeeper, and I never saw him use a blower. Real men use rakes.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Barbarossa, @songbird

    The gas exhaust can’t be healthy.

    • Agree: Not Raul, RadicalCenter
  15. This Powerful Take from the other side deserves to be reposted here.

    [MORE]

    Maoist Race Denialist

    I deal with these Chinese and Korean ship yards and module yards as part of my current day job.

    My experiences with the Scots are from working on the mega LNG & Iron ore/coal jobs in Australia, while I also worked in the US, Canada & Japan so I am also familiar with American and Japanese engineers/mod yard workers. My experiences are at a project manager/construction manager/engineering manager level so I think my views/insights are pretty unique and realistic, especially as there isn’t many Chinese speaking expats at my level in this industry at this scale (20mil+ man hours, 100,000 ton+ steel, 3+years from FEED to handover).

    I am fortunate enough to work around the time when China started to evolve into this industrial behemoth that she is now, here is how I saw its yard capability and capacity grow over my career so far. When this whole modularization thing started in the early/mid 2000s, the industry was still like the good old days where we stick built everything. The most we would do previously was pre fabricate steel sections or get pipes spooled and get them blasted and primed and then sent to site for erection. In Australia, lots of small pre fab shops were thriving at this time due to the resources boom, and attracted a lot of UK talents down under. Lots of these Scottish engineers and welders were from the naval yards, or the north sea and yeah their standards were pretty high on the higher end stuff like bisalloy or HY80 etc. The Chinese at that time were pretty ordinary, I would say inferior to other Asian yards such as Philippines or Indonesia/Thailand, let alone South Korea. The first big modules I could remember of were from South Korea, 2000 ton pieces going to Gove for the Alcan Alumina refinery in Northern Territory in around 2005/2006.

    Around 2007/2008, we started exploring using China as a low cost center for steel fabrication. We didn’t even consider modularization because the infrastructure just wasn’t there at the time. We started off in Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin and Guangzhou cause that were the only ones that ticked the boxes. The Chinese yards were also importing other Western know how at around that time, such as Conoco Philips etc to set up module yards to service the offshore rigs in Bohai bay (Tianjin) and South China Sea (Shekou). Pretty much at the start we were using the Chinese as purely labor, and staffed every supervision/management position with expats, especially QA/QC. Funny how even running it that way we still managed to keep costs to less than 50% of doing that in Australia. When we received the steel at the other end, we usually have to spend another 30% extra to fix the defects from China, so the overall savings were around 20%, but 20% of a \$300mil package was still a lot of money!

    By 2011/2012, we started rolling bigger modules out of China, and had more locations to operate out of, significantly increasing capacity. We got to couple thousand tons modules/ bins for WICET in Gladstone and the BHP jobs in the Pilbara, and the defects were beginning to reduce to around 20% of their package cost. Kind of around this time, local fab shops in the western world started dying due to being uncompetitive cost wise. Only a few niche ones or ones dedicated to maintenance/ preassembly survived (plus subsidized ones).

    Come 2013/2014, with LNG all the rage, yard capacity around Asia got stretched, and around this time the Chinese yard got a go. The likes of Bomesc and COOEC yards in Tianjin and Qingdao got a piece of the pie on the Wheatstone and Ichthys LNG, with the rest going to Philippines / Thailand and Indonesia. I think this really spurt the Chinese ship yard competency. With these megaprojects, there is no way you could staff them all with expats, and so you ended up hiring some of the local engineers and supervisors at the front line level, overseen by expats. Also, with the contract model, its no longer foreign companies hiring the Chinese yards space and labor, but contracting to these yards directly, hence training the front line and middle management of these Chinese yard. You also have these global QA/QC firms that started growing in scale in China, like BV/Caltrop etc, and hiring/developing/training local inspectors. All these enabled massive improvements in quality and management of projects within China, and significantly increased the talent pool.

    All the while at the same time, the power plant and chemical plant boom is also happening within China in those inland coal provinces, so you now have a huge talent pool of ASME/API/AWE coded welders with an essentially non stop conveyor of projects to hone their skills on. Especially these power projects ones, the exotics welding on the HP steam and the HRSG lines are all transferable back to marine ship/off shore rig construction. Those HUGE pressure vessels in the chemical plants also helps. (submarine hulls) With so much work, lots of mini yards also popped up all over the place. They could be building plate girders one month, or wind turbine towers the next, further developing the supplier network.

    The likes of Sany and Xugong also took advantage of these market space and expanded/developed in the space normally occupied by Liebherr or Manitowoc, offering far cheaper domestic crane and construction equipment.

    Chinese SPMT were especially cool, terminating Mammoet’s dominance in this space. So by the time these LNG module projects ended, circa 2016, I would say Chinese yard have progressed beyond the other South East Asian yards in terms of quality, and absolutely kills them in price. Still not up to Korean standards in terms of quality and efficiency though. Safety aspects has also improved in these times, due to the type of clients they have. Back in the likes of Australia, US, the labor quality started to deteriorate (old hands retiring, militant unionism), project management competencies/culture became more accounting/contractual rather than building the work on time/budget, to the detriment of most of the project, as we can see in those project cost overruns everywhere.

    The next wave kind of hit with the rise of private module yards in China. (2016-) They been around a while before, but with the order books increasing, the scraps started to fall out of the likes of COOEC and CSSC’s mouth and into these private firms, and these guys with their new operating models really started hitting it out of the park. The operational management in these yards are more efficient, and innovations aren’t stifled as these guys tend to bend over backwards for their client and accepts using client systems. They usually end up adopting what works for the next projects. It is kind of scary what can be achieved with competent, hard working Chinese craft workers, being managed under contemporary western management org structures (i.e. not rigid top down hierarchal, nor siloed like the Japanese), and with the QA/QC and logistics being managed by the latest systems. My last couple in China has been absolutely textbook success especially when compared with its contemporary. (Italian/ Mexican/South Korean). The rework was minimal, (0.1%!). No one will ever be competitive against the Chinese unless the tariffs goes up.

    Traditional bottlenecks such as labor or material shortages can be resolved much much quicker than in any other country. I can bring on thousands of qualified welders within months just by tapping other labor pools from the neighboring city, or province if need be. If I have enough tonnages, I can even get the mill to do a batch just for my project if its super urgent and I have the \$, that is of course after exhausting my existing supply network! Of course there are still bottle necks in some specialist areas but those are becoming far and few between. Also, just like in other countries, there are lots of useless people in management positions, so there are many poor ship yards/ module yards. Just that China is so huge that when you put the cream of the crops together, there is still more of them than the rest of the world combined…..

    When dealing with Chinese ship yard construction competency, the changes are just so rapid. From mediocre to what we have now kind of happened only in the last decade, and it happened due to a combination of factors that probably won’t happen in any other country again. Its kind of hard to get used to and will take a while for the perception to change. The fact that there are so many potential locations to build all the sub modules, the supply network, the logistics and hardware for bigger modules, the huge modern yard facilities and spaces and the surge capability for both labor and plant, there is just no competition.

    • Thanks: YetAnotherAnon
    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @Blinky Bill

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSgf-1vJummD5JlSP2kKE05DM5fnCKpgk4x8A&usqp.jpg

    See you guys on the other side!

  16. @Not Raul
    @A123

    First, I’d like to thank you for suggesting an open thread, and thank AK for starting the thread.

    I remember reading a few years ago about there being a glut of shipping containers, and ports and other logistics hubs running out of space to cram unclaimed containers.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.

    Replies: @A123

    I remember reading a few years ago about there being a glut of shipping containers, and ports and other logistics hubs running out of space to cram unclaimed containers.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.

    You can find out of the way places to stash empty containers. Also, every year has deceased containers due to accident or simple wear & tear. Wait, and market forces will eventually fix a glut.
    ___

    This problem more vexing. It is more akin to downtown vehicle gridlock. Each component task needs to unload before it can load.

    Because the U.S. runs a trade deficit the overall system ‘slack’ was always a large number of lightly loaded containers available on the West Coast. Volume was so available, scrap for recycling shipped overseas.

    20/20 hindsight, no one was monitoring the ‘slack’. Everyone made the same, financially sound, call at the same time. All of the ‘slack’ left the U.S. as ’empty’ containers. When the ’empty’ containers come back from China they will be ‘full’, join the gridlocked queue, and multiply gridlock pressure on the nonexistent ‘slack’.
    ____

    There is no standard market force to break the gridlock.

    Conceptually, the solution is to refuse lucrative contracts, and instead eat giant losses to move empty containers to the U.S. West Coast thus recreating the ‘slack’ pool. However, the problem is diffuse. There is no obvious responsible party to pay for ‘slack’ replenishment.

    Fairly solid rumor has it that the U.S. railroad consortium looked at moving empty, theoretically Atlantic, containers to the West Coast. However, they could not make it work:
    –A– U.S. Domestic rail asset owners, such as GATX, have their own contracts and there is no pool of containers to lease.
    –B– So many full loads are stuck at Western terminals, goods for Pacific export would have to reverse flow East to free up space.

    Fixing the Problem is in everyone’s best interest.
    Paying to fix the Problem is in no one’s interest.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @A123

    If I need containers, and I don’t have any available, I’ll buy new containers. Someone must be manufacturing new containers.

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @A123

  17. @Blinky Bill
    This Powerful Take from the other side deserves to be reposted here.

    Maoist Race Denialist

    I deal with these Chinese and Korean ship yards and module yards as part of my current day job.

    My experiences with the Scots are from working on the mega LNG & Iron ore/coal jobs in Australia, while I also worked in the US, Canada & Japan so I am also familiar with American and Japanese engineers/mod yard workers. My experiences are at a project manager/construction manager/engineering manager level so I think my views/insights are pretty unique and realistic, especially as there isn't many Chinese speaking expats at my level in this industry at this scale (20mil+ man hours, 100,000 ton+ steel, 3+years from FEED to handover).

    I am fortunate enough to work around the time when China started to evolve into this industrial behemoth that she is now, here is how I saw its yard capability and capacity grow over my career so far. When this whole modularization thing started in the early/mid 2000s, the industry was still like the good old days where we stick built everything. The most we would do previously was pre fabricate steel sections or get pipes spooled and get them blasted and primed and then sent to site for erection. In Australia, lots of small pre fab shops were thriving at this time due to the resources boom, and attracted a lot of UK talents down under. Lots of these Scottish engineers and welders were from the naval yards, or the north sea and yeah their standards were pretty high on the higher end stuff like bisalloy or HY80 etc. The Chinese at that time were pretty ordinary, I would say inferior to other Asian yards such as Philippines or Indonesia/Thailand, let alone South Korea. The first big modules I could remember of were from South Korea, 2000 ton pieces going to Gove for the Alcan Alumina refinery in Northern Territory in around 2005/2006.

    Around 2007/2008, we started exploring using China as a low cost center for steel fabrication. We didn't even consider modularization because the infrastructure just wasn't there at the time. We started off in Qingdao, Dalian, Tianjin and Guangzhou cause that were the only ones that ticked the boxes. The Chinese yards were also importing other Western know how at around that time, such as Conoco Philips etc to set up module yards to service the offshore rigs in Bohai bay (Tianjin) and South China Sea (Shekou). Pretty much at the start we were using the Chinese as purely labor, and staffed every supervision/management position with expats, especially QA/QC. Funny how even running it that way we still managed to keep costs to less than 50% of doing that in Australia. When we received the steel at the other end, we usually have to spend another 30% extra to fix the defects from China, so the overall savings were around 20%, but 20% of a $300mil package was still a lot of money!

    By 2011/2012, we started rolling bigger modules out of China, and had more locations to operate out of, significantly increasing capacity. We got to couple thousand tons modules/ bins for WICET in Gladstone and the BHP jobs in the Pilbara, and the defects were beginning to reduce to around 20% of their package cost. Kind of around this time, local fab shops in the western world started dying due to being uncompetitive cost wise. Only a few niche ones or ones dedicated to maintenance/ preassembly survived (plus subsidized ones).

    Come 2013/2014, with LNG all the rage, yard capacity around Asia got stretched, and around this time the Chinese yard got a go. The likes of Bomesc and COOEC yards in Tianjin and Qingdao got a piece of the pie on the Wheatstone and Ichthys LNG, with the rest going to Philippines / Thailand and Indonesia. I think this really spurt the Chinese ship yard competency. With these megaprojects, there is no way you could staff them all with expats, and so you ended up hiring some of the local engineers and supervisors at the front line level, overseen by expats. Also, with the contract model, its no longer foreign companies hiring the Chinese yards space and labor, but contracting to these yards directly, hence training the front line and middle management of these Chinese yard. You also have these global QA/QC firms that started growing in scale in China, like BV/Caltrop etc, and hiring/developing/training local inspectors. All these enabled massive improvements in quality and management of projects within China, and significantly increased the talent pool.

    All the while at the same time, the power plant and chemical plant boom is also happening within China in those inland coal provinces, so you now have a huge talent pool of ASME/API/AWE coded welders with an essentially non stop conveyor of projects to hone their skills on. Especially these power projects ones, the exotics welding on the HP steam and the HRSG lines are all transferable back to marine ship/off shore rig construction. Those HUGE pressure vessels in the chemical plants also helps. (submarine hulls) With so much work, lots of mini yards also popped up all over the place. They could be building plate girders one month, or wind turbine towers the next, further developing the supplier network.

    The likes of Sany and Xugong also took advantage of these market space and expanded/developed in the space normally occupied by Liebherr or Manitowoc, offering far cheaper domestic crane and construction equipment.

    Chinese SPMT were especially cool, terminating Mammoet's dominance in this space. So by the time these LNG module projects ended, circa 2016, I would say Chinese yard have progressed beyond the other South East Asian yards in terms of quality, and absolutely kills them in price. Still not up to Korean standards in terms of quality and efficiency though. Safety aspects has also improved in these times, due to the type of clients they have. Back in the likes of Australia, US, the labor quality started to deteriorate (old hands retiring, militant unionism), project management competencies/culture became more accounting/contractual rather than building the work on time/budget, to the detriment of most of the project, as we can see in those project cost overruns everywhere.

    The next wave kind of hit with the rise of private module yards in China. (2016-) They been around a while before, but with the order books increasing, the scraps started to fall out of the likes of COOEC and CSSC's mouth and into these private firms, and these guys with their new operating models really started hitting it out of the park. The operational management in these yards are more efficient, and innovations aren't stifled as these guys tend to bend over backwards for their client and accepts using client systems. They usually end up adopting what works for the next projects. It is kind of scary what can be achieved with competent, hard working Chinese craft workers, being managed under contemporary western management org structures (i.e. not rigid top down hierarchal, nor siloed like the Japanese), and with the QA/QC and logistics being managed by the latest systems. My last couple in China has been absolutely textbook success especially when compared with its contemporary. (Italian/ Mexican/South Korean). The rework was minimal, (0.1%!). No one will ever be competitive against the Chinese unless the tariffs goes up.

    Traditional bottlenecks such as labor or material shortages can be resolved much much quicker than in any other country. I can bring on thousands of qualified welders within months just by tapping other labor pools from the neighboring city, or province if need be. If I have enough tonnages, I can even get the mill to do a batch just for my project if its super urgent and I have the $, that is of course after exhausting my existing supply network! Of course there are still bottle necks in some specialist areas but those are becoming far and few between. Also, just like in other countries, there are lots of useless people in management positions, so there are many poor ship yards/ module yards. Just that China is so huge that when you put the cream of the crops together, there is still more of them than the rest of the world combined.....

    When dealing with Chinese ship yard construction competency, the changes are just so rapid. From mediocre to what we have now kind of happened only in the last decade, and it happened due to a combination of factors that probably won't happen in any other country again. Its kind of hard to get used to and will take a while for the perception to change. The fact that there are so many potential locations to build all the sub modules, the supply network, the logistics and hardware for bigger modules, the huge modern yard facilities and spaces and the surge capability for both labor and plant, there is just no competition.
     

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

    See you guys on the other side!

  18. @songbird
    Any longstanding commenters want to take this opportunity to let the mask drop, to stop the charade, and admit that they were really Indians the whole time?

    "Polish" Perspective? "Thulean" Friend? Enoch Powell? Dmitry? Reiner_tor? "German"_reader? Hyperborean? "Swedish" Family? "Blinky" Bill? "Yellowface" Anon? "Kent" Nationalist? (Sorry, if I missed anyone.)


    Okay, last time I will make that joke!

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @Anatoly Karlin, @Yevardian, @sher singh

    UR debates about crypto-Indians:

    • Replies: @Twinkie
    @Anatoly Karlin

    1. Thanks for the laugh and 2. I am really going to laugh for a good while if it turned out that you were Indian (and not Jewish as some commenters seem to obsess).

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Daniel Chieh

  19. @A123
    @Not Raul


    I remember reading a few years ago about there being a glut of shipping containers, and ports and other logistics hubs running out of space to cram unclaimed containers.

    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.
     

    You can find out of the way places to stash empty containers. Also, every year has deceased containers due to accident or simple wear & tear. Wait, and market forces will eventually fix a glut.
    ___

    This problem more vexing. It is more akin to downtown vehicle gridlock. Each component task needs to unload before it can load.

    Because the U.S. runs a trade deficit the overall system 'slack' was always a large number of lightly loaded containers available on the West Coast. Volume was so available, scrap for recycling shipped overseas.

    20/20 hindsight, no one was monitoring the 'slack'. Everyone made the same, financially sound, call at the same time. All of the 'slack' left the U.S. as 'empty' containers. When the 'empty' containers come back from China they will be 'full', join the gridlocked queue, and multiply gridlock pressure on the nonexistent 'slack'.
    ____

    There is no standard market force to break the gridlock.

    Conceptually, the solution is to refuse lucrative contracts, and instead eat giant losses to move empty containers to the U.S. West Coast thus recreating the 'slack' pool. However, the problem is diffuse. There is no obvious responsible party to pay for 'slack' replenishment.

    Fairly solid rumor has it that the U.S. railroad consortium looked at moving empty, theoretically Atlantic, containers to the West Coast. However, they could not make it work:
    --A-- U.S. Domestic rail asset owners, such as GATX, have their own contracts and there is no pool of containers to lease.
    --B-- So many full loads are stuck at Western terminals, goods for Pacific export would have to reverse flow East to free up space.

    Fixing the Problem is in everyone's best interest.
    Paying to fix the Problem is in no one's interest.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Not Raul

    If I need containers, and I don’t have any available, I’ll buy new containers. Someone must be manufacturing new containers.

    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @Not Raul

    Chinese companies currently top the list of the biggest shipping container manufacturers. They are about 85% of the world’s total production of shipping containers and have been making a record 500,000 containers a month, up from 200,000 previously.

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTtkhPhjJBrUagdmAvMP-x6QI8EjSRRDqVORg&usqp.jpg

    Replies: @A123

    , @A123
    @Not Raul


    If I need containers, and I don’t have any available, I’ll buy new containers. Someone must be manufacturing new containers.
     
    The manufacturers for new containers are scaled to primarily replacement. Adding an extra shift would be expensive. Obtaining steel, primer, coatings, etc., also expensive. A new 40' standard container will be $5,000+ and potentially have significant lead time depending on raw material on hand. A container without door hinges is useless.

    If you build new containers anywhere but the West Coast, how are you going to get them to the bottleneck? You want to deliver them by truck? Would that be a truck that already has a load? Or, one that is broken and cannot be fixed for lack of parts (see below).

    The inability to deliver goods is directly eroding the systematic capability to deliver goods.
    ____

    How many containers are needed to replenish the 'slack'? A good question. A single freighter is ~16,000 TEU = 8,000 standard 40' containers. Providing enough empty containers to fully load one freighter is $5,000 x 8,000 = $4,000,000.

    Gridlock is a tricky operational issue. Are 8,000 containers enough?

    I honestly do not know the answer. But, 8,000 seems far too tiny to replace the missing 'slack'.
    ____

    Despite everything I just said. You may have part of the answer that will eventually work.

    The cost to move one container from Asia to the U.S. is over $7,000 and the cost of a new container made in the U.S. is less at $5,000. Will highly motivated exporters obtain and somehow move new containers to the West Coast so they can unload trapped goods off of truck tractors and rail cars?

    That does align to a market mechanism. However it is not a fast solution and needs tens of millions of dollars on new containers... that will inevitably become the next glut.

    PEACE 😇


    https://twitter.com/K1NGRK9/status/1441762543165345800?s=20
  20. @Anatoly Karlin
    @Not Raul

    Thanks for the idea.

    But I don't really see how this would be in the interests of either myself (less traffic and commenting at my Substack), or to The Unz Review (parasitizing on its commenting system for content located elsewhere).

    That said, if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I'd be perfectly happy with that.


    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.
     
    I agree. I also think all these logistical problems are sooner bullish than bearish. Pent up demand bursting through so strongly that infrastructure of c.2019 is struggling to cope.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Weaver

    if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I’d be perfectly happy with that.

    This ought to make almost everybody happy!

    The Karlin comment section is high value and life-support for it would be great. Zombie Russian reactionaries. You could use a cartoon Rasputin who is most famous in Hollywood for refusing to die after being poisoned, shot, and tossed off a bridge into an icy river.

    • Replies: @Archimedes
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I was thinking Ron can move Karlin to the "Columnists" section and the posts will go to regular mods. Therefore there is no need for Karlin to do any up-keep on the site. The re-post probably can be automated. In a way this also creates an "air-gap" in case he fears of getting cancelled/hassled in Russia.

    , @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    You could use a cartoon Rasputin who is most famous in Hollywood for refusing to die after being poisoned, shot, and tossed off a bridge into an icy river.
     
    I recommend Rasputin Imperial Stout.

    Whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger!

    PEACE 😇

     

    https://i1.wp.com/absolutebeer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/2017_0531_Old_Rasputin_Russian_Imperial_Stout_OG.jpg
  21. @Almost Missouri
    @A123

    Thanks.


    How many impacted firms are actually conglomerates that depend in part on exports?
     
    Rumors are that a big chunk of Tether coin market cap is directly or indirectly in the Chinese property market, so might there be a crypto contagion from the Evergrande implosion too?

    Replies: @A123

    Rumors are that a big chunk of Tether coin market cap is directly or indirectly in the Chinese property market, so might there be a crypto contagion from the Evergrande implosion too?

    I defer to those tracking the Crypto market.

    Instinctively, the CCP cutoff of Crypto to save energy already pulled the handle. Secondary or Tertiary effects from holders of already illiquid assets do not immediately spring to my mind as a key risk.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @A123

    Tether FUD is gay (don't know if fake... maybe?... who cares - everything is a Ponzi now). It was around in force since last year, listening to it would have been a guaranteed road to the poorhouse.

    China banning crypto is unironically bullish. Stranded customers, unable to cash out, converted to Bitcoin and moved them from the exchanges. They're now forced hodlers. Weak hands shaken out at $41k by the China FUD, strong hands held to $56k.

  22. @Not Raul
    @A123

    If I need containers, and I don’t have any available, I’ll buy new containers. Someone must be manufacturing new containers.

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @A123

    Chinese companies currently top the list of the biggest shipping container manufacturers. They are about 85% of the world’s total production of shipping containers and have been making a record 500,000 containers a month, up from 200,000 previously.

    • Thanks: Anatoly Karlin, Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @Blinky Bill


    Chinese companies currently top the list of the biggest shipping container manufacturers. They are about 85% of the world’s total production of shipping containers and have been making a record 500,000 containers a month, up from 200,000 previously.
     
    Interesting, but the need is:

    'Empty' containers on the 'West Coast'.

    A Chinese container at $3,000 (60% of U.S.) plus the cost to move it to the U.S. over $7,000 runs net $10,000. This is twice the effective $5,000 cost of a U.S. built new container.

    Even if double cost 'empty' containers were routed to the U.S., how would they be unloaded to alleviate the bottleneck?
    -- Limited numbers mixed in with full containers would join the 'full' queue for weeks.
    -- It is hard to see how a 75%+ full freighter of 'empty' containers could be arranged.
    ___

    This does speak to the need for MAGA Reindustrialization. Making more real goods, such as containers, is a vital national security interest for the U.S. Only North American made containers can reach the congestion via ground to potentially cure the issue. Mexico and/or Canada might help, but I do not think either of them makes many shipping containers.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @David Davenport

  23. @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    Rumors are that a big chunk of Tether coin market cap is directly or indirectly in the Chinese property market, so might there be a crypto contagion from the Evergrande implosion too?
     
    I defer to those tracking the Crypto market.

    Instinctively, the CCP cutoff of Crypto to save energy already pulled the handle. Secondary or Tertiary effects from holders of already illiquid assets do not immediately spring to my mind as a key risk.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Tether FUD is gay (don’t know if fake… maybe?… who cares – everything is a Ponzi now). It was around in force since last year, listening to it would have been a guaranteed road to the poorhouse.

    China banning crypto is unironically bullish. Stranded customers, unable to cash out, converted to Bitcoin and moved them from the exchanges. They’re now forced hodlers. Weak hands shaken out at \$41k by the China FUD, strong hands held to \$56k.

    • Thanks: A123
  24. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Anatoly Karlin


    if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I’d be perfectly happy with that.
     
    This ought to make almost everybody happy!

    The Karlin comment section is high value and life-support for it would be great. Zombie Russian reactionaries. You could use a cartoon Rasputin who is most famous in Hollywood for refusing to die after being poisoned, shot, and tossed off a bridge into an icy river.

    Replies: @Archimedes, @A123

    I was thinking Ron can move Karlin to the “Columnists” section and the posts will go to regular mods. Therefore there is no need for Karlin to do any up-keep on the site. The re-post probably can be automated. In a way this also creates an “air-gap” in case he fears of getting cancelled/hassled in Russia.

    • Agree: RadicalCenter, Not Raul
  25. @Not Raul
    @A123

    If I need containers, and I don’t have any available, I’ll buy new containers. Someone must be manufacturing new containers.

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @A123

    If I need containers, and I don’t have any available, I’ll buy new containers. Someone must be manufacturing new containers.

    The manufacturers for new containers are scaled to primarily replacement. Adding an extra shift would be expensive. Obtaining steel, primer, coatings, etc., also expensive. A new 40′ standard container will be \$5,000+ and potentially have significant lead time depending on raw material on hand. A container without door hinges is useless.

    If you build new containers anywhere but the West Coast, how are you going to get them to the bottleneck? You want to deliver them by truck? Would that be a truck that already has a load? Or, one that is broken and cannot be fixed for lack of parts (see below).

    The inability to deliver goods is directly eroding the systematic capability to deliver goods.
    ____

    How many containers are needed to replenish the ‘slack’? A good question. A single freighter is ~16,000 TEU = 8,000 standard 40′ containers. Providing enough empty containers to fully load one freighter is \$5,000 x 8,000 = \$4,000,000.

    Gridlock is a tricky operational issue. Are 8,000 containers enough?

    I honestly do not know the answer. But, 8,000 seems far too tiny to replace the missing ‘slack’.
    ____

    Despite everything I just said. You may have part of the answer that will eventually work.

    The cost to move one container from Asia to the U.S. is over \$7,000 and the cost of a new container made in the U.S. is less at \$5,000. Will highly motivated exporters obtain and somehow move new containers to the West Coast so they can unload trapped goods off of truck tractors and rail cars?

    That does align to a market mechanism. However it is not a fast solution and needs tens of millions of dollars on new containers… that will inevitably become the next glut.

    PEACE 😇

  26. This home is now unaffordable for the majority of the World’s population!

    [MORE]

    The cost of a 40-foot container declined modestly from \$10,377 the previous week to \$10,360 last week, or 0.2%.

    There’s still hope 😂😂😂

    • Replies: @A123
    @Blinky Bill


    The cost of a 40-foot container declined modestly from $10,377 the previous week to $10,360 last week, or 0.2%.
     
    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?

    I used rule-of-thumb numbers for 40' standard containers ($5,000 US / $3,000 China -- delivery at manufacturer's dock) that were bang on before the WUHAN-19 virus. However, I do not want to be unnecessarily out-of-date. $10K does work as China built plus $7,000 delivery to America at current Asia to U.S. shipping charges.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

  27. @Kuru
    I personally don't understand why you can't just continue blogging here on Unz given its superior commenting system. I understand your decision to "retire" from full time blogging but is there any real reason to migrate to substack for your newsletter?

    Anyway, I quite enjoy your open thread posts with their collection of material that piqued your interest, and the subsequent comments threads on those topics.

    Replies: @RadicalCenter, @Dacian Julien Soros

    How about regular Open Threads here on UR if Ron’s up for it, with AK’s longer work (“Effortposts”) at Substack as announced?

    I subscribed right away to AK on Substack. We may butt heads, but the guy is a unique talent, perspective, and personality, and he’s gotta make a living. (Just don’t make it all transhumanism and video games, alright Anatoly?)

    But I would very much like the Open Threads to continue. Both to still have the AK style here and to look into the topics/links he finds and throws out to the waiting audience. Equally important, the ensuing comments section is the single best thing on UR for me. I have learned a lot about social, cultural, religious, and economic developments in the RF and former Soviet space, as well on foreign policy. AK’s columns and the commenters together have intensified my interest in Russia and in getting to know the cultures of that part of the world much more in depth.

    Several of our children have started learning Russian — dropping another language to do so — and we will be looking into high school and college student-exchange programs in Russia for them. Or more. Some of that is from the interest kindled by AK and his Merry Band of Slavs and Wanna-Be Slavs. Thanks to Ron and Anatoly.

  28. @Not Raul
    @songbird

    My grandpa worked as a groundskeeper, and I never saw him use a blower. Real men use rakes.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Barbarossa, @songbird

    Yeah, leaf blowers turn an inoffensive and healthful activity into something as obnoxious as possible…because engine.
    And I build for a living, so it’s not like I’m against power tools.

    • Agree: Not Raul
  29. @songbird
    Pretty crazy that California has banned the sale of small gas engines.

    Can only suppose it is a case of legislators not using or understanding tools. Many are undoubtedly female and/or hire Mexicans to do anything involving sweat.

    Probably will increase the exodus. Maybe, by design?

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Barbarossa, @SafeNow

    I just read an article on that. Thanks for the heads up on that, as I missed it. That’s truly crazy.

    I’ve tried some really good battery powered chainsaws (Makita has an excellent one, which matched the power of gas with a sharp chain and a small bar.), but there you aren’t going to go logging with them. Now all the poor bastard loggers are going to have to go out of state to buy their saws (shipping in will be prohibited?).

    I especially like the prohibition on generators. Since when the power goes out…Oh shoot.
    That’s also going to be killer for any remote or off-grid situations. I have solar off-grid but I’m quite reliant on my generator to keep my batteries topped off through the cloudy winter.

    Perhaps they can implement a green solution. Mexicans turning huge flywheels powering electrical dynamos!

    • LOL: songbird
  30. @Blinky Bill
    @Not Raul

    Chinese companies currently top the list of the biggest shipping container manufacturers. They are about 85% of the world’s total production of shipping containers and have been making a record 500,000 containers a month, up from 200,000 previously.

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTtkhPhjJBrUagdmAvMP-x6QI8EjSRRDqVORg&usqp.jpg

    Replies: @A123

    Chinese companies currently top the list of the biggest shipping container manufacturers. They are about 85% of the world’s total production of shipping containers and have been making a record 500,000 containers a month, up from 200,000 previously.

    Interesting, but the need is:

    ‘Empty’ containers on the ‘West Coast’.

    A Chinese container at \$3,000 (60% of U.S.) plus the cost to move it to the U.S. over \$7,000 runs net \$10,000. This is twice the effective \$5,000 cost of a U.S. built new container.

    Even if double cost ’empty’ containers were routed to the U.S., how would they be unloaded to alleviate the bottleneck?
    — Limited numbers mixed in with full containers would join the ‘full’ queue for weeks.
    — It is hard to see how a 75%+ full freighter of ’empty’ containers could be arranged.
    ___

    This does speak to the need for MAGA Reindustrialization. Making more real goods, such as containers, is a vital national security interest for the U.S. Only North American made containers can reach the congestion via ground to potentially cure the issue. Mexico and/or Canada might help, but I do not think either of them makes many shipping containers.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @David Davenport
    @A123

    This does speak to the need for MAGA Reindustrialization.

    But importing less of anything from China is part of the MAGA agenda for American reindustrialization.

  31. The immediate question is of course whether any U.S. producers of shipping containers are already operating at capacity. I would suspect that they are and that by the time this crunch passes, the Chinese option will be expedient once again.
    I agree with your broad point, but there are a lot of things in our modern economy which make no empirical sense, only financial sense.

  32. @Blinky Bill
    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgzIZrwT3jXizt64UWce019cXIStj7bsMaiQ&usqp.jpg


    This home is now unaffordable for the majority of the World's population!


    The cost of a 40-foot container declined modestly from $10,377 the previous week to $10,360 last week, or 0.2%.

    There's still hope 😂😂😂

    Replies: @A123

    The cost of a 40-foot container declined modestly from \$10,377 the previous week to \$10,360 last week, or 0.2%.

    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?

    I used rule-of-thumb numbers for 40′ standard containers (\$5,000 US / \$3,000 China — delivery at manufacturer’s dock) that were bang on before the WUHAN-19 virus. However, I do not want to be unnecessarily out-of-date. \$10K does work as China built plus \$7,000 delivery to America at current Asia to U.S. shipping charges.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @A123


    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?
     
    Yeah sure, it's the bottom right quadrant of this graphic.


    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pkw2Ksg_rzA/X-FRrE_O3gI/AAAAAAAAHFQ/_KW2pGnnC0kTuVnT5WI-k9rbSq1HvRFFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/unzcommenters.jpg


    A123 says:
    March 31, 2021 at 4:21 pm GMT • 6.5 months ago ↑
    @Blinky Bill
    Blinky the TROLL,

    Thank you for confirming you surrender with more off point drivel.

    You are now added to my Blocked Commenters list for TROLLING. Your pathetic dribbling is not worthy of any further time or attention.

    PEACE 😇
     

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561909

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561939

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561954


    A123 says:
    April 18, 2021 at 2:00 am GMT • 5.9 months ago • 100 Words ↑
    @anon
    The “Commenters to Ignore” feature is one of the most useful UR site capabilities.

    Most of the gibberish can be wiped out by a modest ANTI-TROLL blocking. Racist Supply and No Demand should be on everyone’s ignore list.

    PEACE 😇
    _________

    My current BLOCKED TROLLS if anyone needs a starting place:

    Alexander Turok
    Art
    Blinky Bill
    Corvinus
    Daniel Chieh
    Druid
    Dr. Doom
    FB
    HeebHunter
    Iris
    JohnPlywood
    Kratic
    Majority of One
    Mulga Mumblebrain
    Nokangaroos
    obwandiyag
    Pat Kittle
    Rev. Spooner
    Schuetze
    Supply and Demand
    Talha

    There are a couple of known TROLLS, “AnonStarter” and “Colin Wright” that I leave unblocked because their pathetic, low-IQ flailing is genuinely comedic. I enjoy laughing at them.
     

    https://www.unz.com/anepigone/woke-capital-wins-loser-labor-loses/#comment-4597846

    I will never block you!

    😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @A123

  33. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Anatoly Karlin


    if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I’d be perfectly happy with that.
     
    This ought to make almost everybody happy!

    The Karlin comment section is high value and life-support for it would be great. Zombie Russian reactionaries. You could use a cartoon Rasputin who is most famous in Hollywood for refusing to die after being poisoned, shot, and tossed off a bridge into an icy river.

    Replies: @Archimedes, @A123

    You could use a cartoon Rasputin who is most famous in Hollywood for refusing to die after being poisoned, shot, and tossed off a bridge into an icy river.

    I recommend Rasputin Imperial Stout.

    Whatever does not kill you, makes you stronger!

    PEACE 😇

     

  34. School Board Cranked

    Half asleep, this took a short bit to figure out. Refer to comments section below.

  35. @Thomm
    It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi


    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?" (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?" (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Replies: @Yevardian, @AKAHorace, @Pericles, @Barbarossa, @Truth, @Tor597

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi

    Thank you for making the effort to post such an exhaustive, valuable and *powerful* list.

    I don’t recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles. But be sure to keep up your survey!

    I suppose one could make a ‘case’ that the long-term consequences of the latter is much more harmful than the other. If one assumes the frequency of pedophilia the same in homosexuals as heterosexuals.

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Yevardian


    I don’t recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles.
     
    Most of those names have over 200,000 words of comment history on TUR as can be verified in two seconds. TUR is a pretty big site, so that is why you might not know some of them if you mainly reside on AK's threads (which are not drenched in WN homosexuality like those of some other columnists).

    But the point is, 'far right' is anything but. About half of all WNs are gay, or at least bisexual. This is why they are kept out of normal, heterosexual white society.

    , @iffen
    @Yevardian

    I don’t recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles.

    Damn, I don't get no respect.

    Even if I show up as a WN homo.

  36. @songbird
    Any longstanding commenters want to take this opportunity to let the mask drop, to stop the charade, and admit that they were really Indians the whole time?

    "Polish" Perspective? "Thulean" Friend? Enoch Powell? Dmitry? Reiner_tor? "German"_reader? Hyperborean? "Swedish" Family? "Blinky" Bill? "Yellowface" Anon? "Kent" Nationalist? (Sorry, if I missed anyone.)


    Okay, last time I will make that joke!

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @Anatoly Karlin, @Yevardian, @sher singh

    Guilty, another typically self-hating pajeet here. Some of my fondest memories involve squatting together on a busy street with the boys, answering to the call of nature, enjoying my homeland’s natural smells.

    • Replies: @Kuru
    @Yevardian

    What caused your online antagonism against us poor Indians? Were you scammed by an Indian or something?

    Replies: @A123

  37. @Yevardian
    @Thomm


    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi
     

    Thank you for making the effort to post such an exhaustive, valuable and *powerful* list.

    I don't recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles. But be sure to keep up your survey!

    I suppose one could make a 'case' that the long-term consequences of the latter is much more harmful than the other. If one assumes the frequency of pedophilia the same in homosexuals as heterosexuals.

    Replies: @Thomm, @iffen

    I don’t recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles.

    Most of those names have over 200,000 words of comment history on TUR as can be verified in two seconds. TUR is a pretty big site, so that is why you might not know some of them if you mainly reside on AK’s threads (which are not drenched in WN homosexuality like those of some other columnists).

    But the point is, ‘far right’ is anything but. About half of all WNs are gay, or at least bisexual. This is why they are kept out of normal, heterosexual white society.

    • Troll: YetAnotherAnon
  38. I really hope I get to visit Russia someday.
    Life is complicated.
    I would love to go somewhere with 1000 years history.
    And somewhere NO FAG.
    Thanks for many of the travel pieces.
    best

  39. @Thomm
    It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi


    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?" (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?" (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Replies: @Yevardian, @AKAHorace, @Pericles, @Barbarossa, @Truth, @Tor597

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    There is so little support for the far right and you are worrying about this ? If the alt right gets the support of anyone, gay socialists included, so what ?

    • Replies: @Pericles
    @AKAHorace

    (Please note that that is a Corvinus-tier commenter.)

  40. sher singh says:
    @songbird
    Any longstanding commenters want to take this opportunity to let the mask drop, to stop the charade, and admit that they were really Indians the whole time?

    "Polish" Perspective? "Thulean" Friend? Enoch Powell? Dmitry? Reiner_tor? "German"_reader? Hyperborean? "Swedish" Family? "Blinky" Bill? "Yellowface" Anon? "Kent" Nationalist? (Sorry, if I missed anyone.)


    Okay, last time I will make that joke!

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @Anatoly Karlin, @Yevardian, @sher singh

    (Joining now requires jumping through hoops that will be unrealistic for most people)

    Not anymore, you just install the Port application (Fag Os, Linux & Win 10) & it handles the rest||

    https://urbit.org/getting-started#port

    Substack comment is easier to create threads ie N-Towers. Discord u can just remake when it bans.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  41. Mahabharat & Sri Guru Dasam Granth Sahib:

    [MORE]

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  42. @A123
    @Blinky Bill


    The cost of a 40-foot container declined modestly from $10,377 the previous week to $10,360 last week, or 0.2%.
     
    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?

    I used rule-of-thumb numbers for 40' standard containers ($5,000 US / $3,000 China -- delivery at manufacturer's dock) that were bang on before the WUHAN-19 virus. However, I do not want to be unnecessarily out-of-date. $10K does work as China built plus $7,000 delivery to America at current Asia to U.S. shipping charges.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?

    Yeah sure, it’s the bottom right quadrant of this graphic.

    [MORE]

    A123 says:
    March 31, 2021 at 4:21 pm GMT • 6.5 months ago ↑

    Blinky the TROLL,

    Thank you for confirming you surrender with more off point drivel.

    You are now added to my Blocked Commenters list for TROLLING. Your pathetic dribbling is not worthy of any further time or attention.

    PEACE 😇

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561909

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561939

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561954

    A123 says:
    April 18, 2021 at 2:00 am GMT • 5.9 months ago • 100 Words ↑
    @anon
    The “Commenters to Ignore” feature is one of the most useful UR site capabilities.

    Most of the gibberish can be wiped out by a modest ANTI-TROLL blocking. Racist Supply and No Demand should be on everyone’s ignore list.

    PEACE 😇
    _________

    My current BLOCKED TROLLS if anyone needs a starting place:

    Alexander Turok
    Art
    Blinky Bill
    Corvinus
    Daniel Chieh
    Druid
    Dr. Doom
    FB
    HeebHunter
    Iris
    JohnPlywood
    Kratic
    Majority of One
    Mulga Mumblebrain
    Nokangaroos
    obwandiyag
    Pat Kittle
    Rev. Spooner
    Schuetze
    Supply and Demand
    Talha

    There are a couple of known TROLLS, “AnonStarter” and “Colin Wright” that I leave unblocked because their pathetic, low-IQ flailing is genuinely comedic. I enjoy laughing at them.

    https://www.unz.com/anepigone/woke-capital-wins-loser-labor-loses/#comment-4597846

    I will never block you!

    😇

    • Troll: A123
    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @Blinky Bill

    When many people share the same account it's hard to keep track of whose comments your suppose to pretend you haven't read.

    , @A123
    @Blinky Bill

    As part of AK's closing act here, I lifted blocks as a gesture of goodwill. Sadly, you disrespect & spit on AK'S legacy.

    I have re-added you to my blocked commenters list for TROLLING.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

  43. @Blinky Bill
    @A123


    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?
     
    Yeah sure, it's the bottom right quadrant of this graphic.


    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pkw2Ksg_rzA/X-FRrE_O3gI/AAAAAAAAHFQ/_KW2pGnnC0kTuVnT5WI-k9rbSq1HvRFFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/unzcommenters.jpg


    A123 says:
    March 31, 2021 at 4:21 pm GMT • 6.5 months ago ↑
    @Blinky Bill
    Blinky the TROLL,

    Thank you for confirming you surrender with more off point drivel.

    You are now added to my Blocked Commenters list for TROLLING. Your pathetic dribbling is not worthy of any further time or attention.

    PEACE 😇
     

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561909

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561939

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561954


    A123 says:
    April 18, 2021 at 2:00 am GMT • 5.9 months ago • 100 Words ↑
    @anon
    The “Commenters to Ignore” feature is one of the most useful UR site capabilities.

    Most of the gibberish can be wiped out by a modest ANTI-TROLL blocking. Racist Supply and No Demand should be on everyone’s ignore list.

    PEACE 😇
    _________

    My current BLOCKED TROLLS if anyone needs a starting place:

    Alexander Turok
    Art
    Blinky Bill
    Corvinus
    Daniel Chieh
    Druid
    Dr. Doom
    FB
    HeebHunter
    Iris
    JohnPlywood
    Kratic
    Majority of One
    Mulga Mumblebrain
    Nokangaroos
    obwandiyag
    Pat Kittle
    Rev. Spooner
    Schuetze
    Supply and Demand
    Talha

    There are a couple of known TROLLS, “AnonStarter” and “Colin Wright” that I leave unblocked because their pathetic, low-IQ flailing is genuinely comedic. I enjoy laughing at them.
     

    https://www.unz.com/anepigone/woke-capital-wins-loser-labor-loses/#comment-4597846

    I will never block you!

    😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @A123

    When many people share the same account it’s hard to keep track of whose comments your suppose to pretend you haven’t read.

  44. @Thomm
    It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi


    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?" (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?" (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Replies: @Yevardian, @AKAHorace, @Pericles, @Barbarossa, @Truth, @Tor597

    Lol, speaking of the secretly Indian, here he is. Well, not so secretly to be sure.

    Above we can, by fortuitous chance, view the deliverable that Priyeet has assembled for his minimum wage employers at the ADL. Looks like you will have to type it into Excel yourself though, Heidi. Enjoy!

    Please do the needful and move my name to top of list, by the way.

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Pericles

    So, Pericles, in the past you have already answered that question with a preference of race over gender in sexual liaisons. This is confirmed how you actually requested to be moved to the top of the list (i.e. be recognized as the most gay of all WN wiggers). I remind you that heterosexuals have a low opinion of individuals who are on a list like this.


    Hence, with this response, you have just volunteered for the next phase, and thus the next question :

    If these were the only two choices available and you had to choose one, would you rather have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?

    Answer the question without dodging and obfuscation. That way, everyone can see your answer.

    It is quite a simple question.

    P.S. I am not a ‘South Asian’, btw. No one with an IQ above 70 thinks that, but are just desperate to believe anything the resident media Jew tells you to. Not to mention that on this very thread, others have made fun of idiots like you who see a 'South Asian' around every corner (see Comment #18, although you probably can't recognize the location that the map signifies).

    You just used that clumsy tactic to unsuccessfully dodge the real question here.

    Quit dodging, and answer the question that is in bold.

    Replies: @Twinkie

  45. @AKAHorace
    @Thomm


    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.
     
    There is so little support for the far right and you are worrying about this ? If the alt right gets the support of anyone, gay socialists included, so what ?

    Replies: @Pericles

    (Please note that that is a Corvinus-tier commenter.)

  46. @Blinky Bill
    @A123


    Can you share the source & terms for that price, including build location & delivery location?
     
    Yeah sure, it's the bottom right quadrant of this graphic.


    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Pkw2Ksg_rzA/X-FRrE_O3gI/AAAAAAAAHFQ/_KW2pGnnC0kTuVnT5WI-k9rbSq1HvRFFgCLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/unzcommenters.jpg


    A123 says:
    March 31, 2021 at 4:21 pm GMT • 6.5 months ago ↑
    @Blinky Bill
    Blinky the TROLL,

    Thank you for confirming you surrender with more off point drivel.

    You are now added to my Blocked Commenters list for TROLLING. Your pathetic dribbling is not worthy of any further time or attention.

    PEACE 😇
     

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561909

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561939

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/cmp-2021/#comment-4561954


    A123 says:
    April 18, 2021 at 2:00 am GMT • 5.9 months ago • 100 Words ↑
    @anon
    The “Commenters to Ignore” feature is one of the most useful UR site capabilities.

    Most of the gibberish can be wiped out by a modest ANTI-TROLL blocking. Racist Supply and No Demand should be on everyone’s ignore list.

    PEACE 😇
    _________

    My current BLOCKED TROLLS if anyone needs a starting place:

    Alexander Turok
    Art
    Blinky Bill
    Corvinus
    Daniel Chieh
    Druid
    Dr. Doom
    FB
    HeebHunter
    Iris
    JohnPlywood
    Kratic
    Majority of One
    Mulga Mumblebrain
    Nokangaroos
    obwandiyag
    Pat Kittle
    Rev. Spooner
    Schuetze
    Supply and Demand
    Talha

    There are a couple of known TROLLS, “AnonStarter” and “Colin Wright” that I leave unblocked because their pathetic, low-IQ flailing is genuinely comedic. I enjoy laughing at them.
     

    https://www.unz.com/anepigone/woke-capital-wins-loser-labor-loses/#comment-4597846

    I will never block you!

    😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill, @A123

    As part of AK’s closing act here, I lifted blocks as a gesture of goodwill. Sadly, you disrespect & spit on AK’S legacy.

    I have re-added you to my blocked commenters list for TROLLING.

    PEACE 😇

    • Thanks: Blinky Bill
    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @A123


    I have re-added you to my blocked commenters list for TROLLING.
     
    It's all good, as long as you keep reading my comments, I don't mind if you block me.

    I just wish we could be good friends like Merkel and Xi.


    https://twitter.com/shen_shiwei/status/1448308198990127108?s=20



    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E-3BaRFXMAQdQax.jpg


    PEACE 😇
  47. @Kuru
    I personally don't understand why you can't just continue blogging here on Unz given its superior commenting system. I understand your decision to "retire" from full time blogging but is there any real reason to migrate to substack for your newsletter?

    Anyway, I quite enjoy your open thread posts with their collection of material that piqued your interest, and the subsequent comments threads on those topics.

    Replies: @RadicalCenter, @Dacian Julien Soros

    He is not maintaining a blog, so that I can shitpost in the comments section. A few years ago, he wanted to be a vlogger on Youtube. He still hopes to make some money, so let the man follow his dream. I am not going to forecast anything this time.

    • Replies: @Yevardian
    @Dacian Julien Soros

    Congratulations on being the only commenter more spiteful than utu.
    I mean that sincerely.

  48. • Thanks: mal, Voltarde, Blinky Bill
    • Replies: @mal
    @Aedib

    Russia should consider converting those budget surpluses into GDP growth.

    Also, I disagree with them about lending being a limited source for growth - Russia is currently experiencing some inflation due to supply chain disruption, just like everybody else. But I don't think it's sustainable. Deflation will win out in the end unless drastic measures are taken. This means lower rates are coming to Russia in a year or two down the road, which will enable them to refinance quite profitably.

    Russian inflation rate runs about 2% above US, not bad at all. Lower rates are coming and that should be supportive for growth.

    Replies: @Aedib

    , @Blinky Bill
    @Aedib

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBgEkWUVgAA0xgv.jpg

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

  49. Anatoly,

    Any new crypto advice to give?

  50. I suppose there were too many contradictions, so it is time to move on. This is the time before things happen and that creates a lot of tension, I just wish people would enjoy it more.

    The difference between a saint and a criminal is often only luck and there are different ways to describe reality. AK had a certain flair and tolerance for dissent. On the other hand, as we go ever more existential (look around!), those who refuse to be controlled by the people who cannot even control themselves – looking at you, scared, unhealthy fatsos out there – must stand our ground.

    The jabbers brigade and the quasi-nazi-quasi-royal-worship contingent is amusing, but a sign that things are really out of whack. Right, the solution is to replace the current assh-le boomer narcissists with nostalgia brown-nosing to the long dead princes. And conformist unthinking obedience with an occasional self-mutilation.

    It all smells of dead-enders fears.

  51. @songbird
    Pretty crazy that California has banned the sale of small gas engines.

    Can only suppose it is a case of legislators not using or understanding tools. Many are undoubtedly female and/or hire Mexicans to do anything involving sweat.

    Probably will increase the exodus. Maybe, by design?

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Barbarossa, @SafeNow

    Newsom’s ban on gas leaf blowers will be effective in 2024, or later, if the air resources board determines that such a target date is not feasible. In other words, Newsom left himself enough room for the ban to never go into effect. I live in California.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @SafeNow

    Perhaps, there will be a ballot initiative to block it.

  52. @Yevardian
    @Thomm


    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi
     

    Thank you for making the effort to post such an exhaustive, valuable and *powerful* list.

    I don't recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles. But be sure to keep up your survey!

    I suppose one could make a 'case' that the long-term consequences of the latter is much more harmful than the other. If one assumes the frequency of pedophilia the same in homosexuals as heterosexuals.

    Replies: @Thomm, @iffen

    I don’t recognise a single one of them except utu, maybe Pericles.

    Damn, I don’t get no respect.

    Even if I show up as a WN homo.

    • LOL: Barbarossa
  53. @Not Raul
    @songbird

    My grandpa worked as a groundskeeper, and I never saw him use a blower. Real men use rakes.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @Barbarossa, @songbird

    I could live without leaf blowers, but a general ban on small gas motors seems insane to me. (Especially chainsaws and generators.) A lot of Amish allow gas motors – if whatever it is doesn’t have powered wheels.

    I’ve speculated that the design of gas mowers has gotten worse over the years. Now suspect that is due to previous CA laws.

  54. @SafeNow
    @songbird

    Newsom’s ban on gas leaf blowers will be effective in 2024, or later, if the air resources board determines that such a target date is not feasible. In other words, Newsom left himself enough room for the ban to never go into effect. I live in California.

    Replies: @songbird

    Perhaps, there will be a ballot initiative to block it.

  55. @Aedib
    On Russian macroeconomic data.

    https://think.ing.com/articles/russian-budget-consolidation-may-face-obstacles-in-2022/

    It looks very strong.

    Replies: @mal, @Blinky Bill

    Russia should consider converting those budget surpluses into GDP growth.

    Also, I disagree with them about lending being a limited source for growth – Russia is currently experiencing some inflation due to supply chain disruption, just like everybody else. But I don’t think it’s sustainable. Deflation will win out in the end unless drastic measures are taken. This means lower rates are coming to Russia in a year or two down the road, which will enable them to refinance quite profitably.

    Russian inflation rate runs about 2% above US, not bad at all. Lower rates are coming and that should be supportive for growth.

    • Thanks: Blinky Bill
    • Replies: @Aedib
    @mal

    Budget surplus should be advisable for a couple of years more for replenish reserve funds. After that a 0 deficit/surplus will be OK. Also it should take some funds from the extraordinary gas/oil pricess to make a fund for financing strategic projects like Power of Siberia 2 (Trans-Mongolian pipeline). Once the Trans-Mongolian start to operate, the coercion capability of Eurocrats over Russia will be dead and the exposition of Chinese to American interdiction in the seas will suffer a big blow. This will be the last screw in the coffin of Western geo-economic dominance.

    Replies: @mal

  56. @Anatoly Karlin
    @songbird

    UR debates about crypto-Indians:

    https://torako.wakarimasen.moe/file/torako/biz/image/1614/18/1614184518694.jpg

    Replies: @Twinkie

    1. Thanks for the laugh and 2. I am really going to laugh for a good while if it turned out that you were Indian (and not Jewish as some commenters seem to obsess).

    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @Twinkie

    Haha, but no, you're quite safe from such a revelation: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-7/

    Replies: @Twinkie, @Not Raul

    , @Daniel Chieh
    @Twinkie


    that you were Indian
     
    This is a rumor that I have to advance, along with the "Karlin was a member of PLAN."
  57. @A123
    @Blinky Bill

    As part of AK's closing act here, I lifted blocks as a gesture of goodwill. Sadly, you disrespect & spit on AK'S legacy.

    I have re-added you to my blocked commenters list for TROLLING.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

    I have re-added you to my blocked commenters list for TROLLING.

    It’s all good, as long as you keep reading my comments, I don’t mind if you block me.

    I just wish we could be good friends like Merkel and Xi.

    [MORE]

    PEACE 😇

  58. @Aedib
    On Russian macroeconomic data.

    https://think.ing.com/articles/russian-budget-consolidation-may-face-obstacles-in-2022/

    It looks very strong.

    Replies: @mal, @Blinky Bill

    • Agree: Aedib
    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @Blinky Bill

    https://tass.ru/ekonomika/12645817

  59. @Blinky Bill
    @Aedib

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FBgEkWUVgAA0xgv.jpg

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

  60. @Pericles
    @Thomm

    Lol, speaking of the secretly Indian, here he is. Well, not so secretly to be sure.

    Above we can, by fortuitous chance, view the deliverable that Priyeet has assembled for his minimum wage employers at the ADL. Looks like you will have to type it into Excel yourself though, Heidi. Enjoy!

    Please do the needful and move my name to top of list, by the way.

    Replies: @Thomm

    So, Pericles, in the past you have already answered that question with a preference of race over gender in sexual liaisons. This is confirmed how you actually requested to be moved to the top of the list (i.e. be recognized as the most gay of all WN wiggers). I remind you that heterosexuals have a low opinion of individuals who are on a list like this.

    Hence, with this response, you have just volunteered for the next phase, and thus the next question :

    If these were the only two choices available and you had to choose one, would you rather have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?

    Answer the question without dodging and obfuscation. That way, everyone can see your answer.

    It is quite a simple question.

    P.S. I am not a ‘South Asian’, btw. No one with an IQ above 70 thinks that, but are just desperate to believe anything the resident media Jew tells you to. Not to mention that on this very thread, others have made fun of idiots like you who see a ‘South Asian’ around every corner (see Comment #18, although you probably can’t recognize the location that the map signifies).

    You just used that clumsy tactic to unsuccessfully dodge the real question here.

    Quit dodging, and answer the question that is in bold.

    • Replies: @Twinkie
    @Thomm

    A small subset of your critics dismisses you as an "Indian" the same way you dismiss downscale white Americans routinely and insultingly as "wiggers" or "waste matter." So you have more in common with them than you realize.

    The rest of us just find you extremely annoying, because you keep repeating those same unintelligent insults. And just for that, if we all ever find ourselves in a squid game, I am going to make sure you fail out of the game first. ;)

  61. @Dacian Julien Soros
    @Kuru

    He is not maintaining a blog, so that I can shitpost in the comments section. A few years ago, he wanted to be a vlogger on Youtube. He still hopes to make some money, so let the man follow his dream. I am not going to forecast anything this time.

    Replies: @Yevardian

    Congratulations on being the only commenter more spiteful than utu.
    I mean that sincerely.

  62. @Thomm
    @Pericles

    So, Pericles, in the past you have already answered that question with a preference of race over gender in sexual liaisons. This is confirmed how you actually requested to be moved to the top of the list (i.e. be recognized as the most gay of all WN wiggers). I remind you that heterosexuals have a low opinion of individuals who are on a list like this.


    Hence, with this response, you have just volunteered for the next phase, and thus the next question :

    If these were the only two choices available and you had to choose one, would you rather have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?

    Answer the question without dodging and obfuscation. That way, everyone can see your answer.

    It is quite a simple question.

    P.S. I am not a ‘South Asian’, btw. No one with an IQ above 70 thinks that, but are just desperate to believe anything the resident media Jew tells you to. Not to mention that on this very thread, others have made fun of idiots like you who see a 'South Asian' around every corner (see Comment #18, although you probably can't recognize the location that the map signifies).

    You just used that clumsy tactic to unsuccessfully dodge the real question here.

    Quit dodging, and answer the question that is in bold.

    Replies: @Twinkie

    A small subset of your critics dismisses you as an “Indian” the same way you dismiss downscale white Americans routinely and insultingly as “wiggers” or “waste matter.” So you have more in common with them than you realize.

    The rest of us just find you extremely annoying, because you keep repeating those same unintelligent insults. And just for that, if we all ever find ourselves in a squid game, I am going to make sure you fail out of the game first. 😉

  63. I don’t blame you for leaving.

    Perhaps Twitter is now filling the same niche that you once enjoyed here.

    Or the little spoken fact that more people are aware of the topics discussed here than 10 years ago and therefore no longer a rarity to find like-minded people.

    Maybe it’s the fact you’re published and want to distance yourself from cosplayers posting pictures of their ISIL-beards and decorative made-in-China toy swords (next to authors who post twirling swastikas and dancing elephants).

    It takes no effort to maintain this “community” of sniper-lurkers, shitposters, European gays, drunken Slav commies (gays & commies bro….), butter knife-wielding Indians, geezers-with-no-clue, and paid-trolls. A simple post with 3 links to mildly interesting topics is all it takes. A paywall will fracture this group, as a pirate paying for anything goes against my fundamental beliefs. As someone who openly shared scihub and library genesis I can’t help but wonder if it’s just a plan to shift gears away from writing online altogether.

    You’ve harvested all the younger blood on Unz Review and gathered them here. The rest of Unz Review is “muh white genocide” or “white nationals uber alles”. Even Ronald wrote a piece about how his website turned into White Nationalist malarkey.

    You focused a small corner of it into transhumanism, games (don’t listen to that queer that says those are bad, he probably uses an Apple), Russia, politics, the search for truth, crypto-rumors, “HBD” (this is a gay useless term), contrarian analysis………..

    I’m astonished how many people here are Indian. I told my brother I suspect the majority of engaged/commentating traffic on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are from places like India, Eastern Europe, and China e-stalking whites/Westerners. I’m starting to believe they constitute the largest portion of users who live more online than off.

    To Ron Unz:

    When is this….

    Going to look like a real forum like this:
    https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/
    An old 1999 game forum STILL ACTIVE (Jagged Alliance 2)

    • LOL: Anatoly Karlin
    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @Max Payne

    Almost all texts I write on my Substack will be publicly accessible.

    , @sher singh
    @Max Payne

    You talk a lot of shit for a Canadian..

    https://twitter.com/GSD1699/status/1447312447493181440

    You're free to find out whether it's China made or a butter knife..

    You're a North American white, the Native blood means you have no beard||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    , @mal
    @Max Payne

    Hey, I still play Jagged Alliance 2, the 1.13 mod. The only game I know that lets you pick how racist and sexist you want to be and lets you choose which nationalities to hate.

    If you like turn based squad strategy games, 1.13 is a must play. I would recommend dialing disease options down though. While yes, espionage and covert biological warfare are a real deal in the game, managing reinfection rates for your teams can get overwhelming fast, even with proper medical tools and food/water disposal protocols.

  64. @Twinkie
    @Anatoly Karlin

    1. Thanks for the laugh and 2. I am really going to laugh for a good while if it turned out that you were Indian (and not Jewish as some commenters seem to obsess).

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Daniel Chieh

    Haha, but no, you’re quite safe from such a revelation: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-7/

    • Replies: @Twinkie
    @Anatoly Karlin


    Haha, but no, you’re quite safe from such a revelation: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-7/
     
    23andme results and pictures of "yourself" can be faked!

    I don't believe anything on the internet. ;)
    , @Not Raul
    @Anatoly Karlin

    You’re part Italian?

    I suppose they had Italians in Odessa, like the architect Boffo.

    Did Togliatti father any children in Russia?

  65. @Max Payne
    I don't blame you for leaving.

    Perhaps Twitter is now filling the same niche that you once enjoyed here.

    Or the little spoken fact that more people are aware of the topics discussed here than 10 years ago and therefore no longer a rarity to find like-minded people.

    Maybe it's the fact you're published and want to distance yourself from cosplayers posting pictures of their ISIL-beards and decorative made-in-China toy swords (next to authors who post twirling swastikas and dancing elephants).


    It takes no effort to maintain this "community" of sniper-lurkers, shitposters, European gays, drunken Slav commies (gays & commies bro....), butter knife-wielding Indians, geezers-with-no-clue, and paid-trolls. A simple post with 3 links to mildly interesting topics is all it takes. A paywall will fracture this group, as a pirate paying for anything goes against my fundamental beliefs. As someone who openly shared scihub and library genesis I can't help but wonder if it's just a plan to shift gears away from writing online altogether.

    You've harvested all the younger blood on Unz Review and gathered them here. The rest of Unz Review is "muh white genocide" or "white nationals uber alles". Even Ronald wrote a piece about how his website turned into White Nationalist malarkey.

    You focused a small corner of it into transhumanism, games (don't listen to that queer that says those are bad, he probably uses an Apple), Russia, politics, the search for truth, crypto-rumors, "HBD" (this is a gay useless term), contrarian analysis...........

    I'm astonished how many people here are Indian. I told my brother I suspect the majority of engaged/commentating traffic on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are from places like India, Eastern Europe, and China e-stalking whites/Westerners. I'm starting to believe they constitute the largest portion of users who live more online than off.


    To Ron Unz:

    When is this....

    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_SgGZPyWYI/YWfVWhublAI/AAAAAAAAHcA/T7cgaFND-L4RtmulAtyD4uVc9QAfeMh6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Screenshot8.jpg

    Going to look like a real forum like this:
    https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/
    An old 1999 game forum STILL ACTIVE (Jagged Alliance 2)

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @sher singh, @mal

    Almost all texts I write on my Substack will be publicly accessible.

  66. @Max Payne
    I don't blame you for leaving.

    Perhaps Twitter is now filling the same niche that you once enjoyed here.

    Or the little spoken fact that more people are aware of the topics discussed here than 10 years ago and therefore no longer a rarity to find like-minded people.

    Maybe it's the fact you're published and want to distance yourself from cosplayers posting pictures of their ISIL-beards and decorative made-in-China toy swords (next to authors who post twirling swastikas and dancing elephants).


    It takes no effort to maintain this "community" of sniper-lurkers, shitposters, European gays, drunken Slav commies (gays & commies bro....), butter knife-wielding Indians, geezers-with-no-clue, and paid-trolls. A simple post with 3 links to mildly interesting topics is all it takes. A paywall will fracture this group, as a pirate paying for anything goes against my fundamental beliefs. As someone who openly shared scihub and library genesis I can't help but wonder if it's just a plan to shift gears away from writing online altogether.

    You've harvested all the younger blood on Unz Review and gathered them here. The rest of Unz Review is "muh white genocide" or "white nationals uber alles". Even Ronald wrote a piece about how his website turned into White Nationalist malarkey.

    You focused a small corner of it into transhumanism, games (don't listen to that queer that says those are bad, he probably uses an Apple), Russia, politics, the search for truth, crypto-rumors, "HBD" (this is a gay useless term), contrarian analysis...........

    I'm astonished how many people here are Indian. I told my brother I suspect the majority of engaged/commentating traffic on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are from places like India, Eastern Europe, and China e-stalking whites/Westerners. I'm starting to believe they constitute the largest portion of users who live more online than off.


    To Ron Unz:

    When is this....

    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_SgGZPyWYI/YWfVWhublAI/AAAAAAAAHcA/T7cgaFND-L4RtmulAtyD4uVc9QAfeMh6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Screenshot8.jpg

    Going to look like a real forum like this:
    https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/
    An old 1999 game forum STILL ACTIVE (Jagged Alliance 2)

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @sher singh, @mal

    You talk a lot of shit for a Canadian..

    You’re free to find out whether it’s China made or a butter knife..

    You’re a North American white, the Native blood means you have no beard||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  67. https://occidentaldissent.com/2021/10/12/the-triumph-and-terror-of-wang-huning/

    Interesting article, Tldr Chinaman writes anti America book in 91, Jinping a fan।।

    Wonder what qin_duke thinks if he still around here

    Comments say big Pentagon Ai researcher quits due to ethics fags।।

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  68. Science Denial achieves new milestone: (1)

    OH PLEASE! Climate Crazies Claim Global Stilling At Fault For Wind Turbines Not Producing Energy

    The far-left Gaia worshippers say that the “Climate Crisis” is responsible for floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. A longer list of crazy things blamed on climate change is at the end of this post. Their latest crazy belief is that their unproven hypothesis caused the slowing of global wind speeds.

    Long labelled as a saviour of the energy industry, wind farms have cropped up across the continent in recent years and have been billed a low-cost, renewable and dependable source of power…

    Experts are blaming a growing phenomenon known as ‘global stilling’ – whereby measurable wind speeds across the world’s continental surfaces have decreased by as much as 15 per cent since 1980.

    Q: When will Science Deniers give up their unsupportable push for Wind and Solar?

    A: My prediction… When Globalists Elites can no longer line their pockets via Wind and Solar scams.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://lidblog.com/global-stilling/

     

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    It's all the fat people increasing the angular momentum and slowing the rotation. Go on a diet you cretins you are killing the earth. Also: the graphics could be Greta Therber in yoga pants.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @A123

  69. @Yevardian
    @songbird

    Guilty, another typically self-hating pajeet here. Some of my fondest memories involve squatting together on a busy street with the boys, answering to the call of nature, enjoying my homeland's natural smells.

    Replies: @Kuru

    What caused your online antagonism against us poor Indians? Were you scammed by an Indian or something?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Kuru

    I do not understand the concern about Indians.

    Your people make excellent Corn (sorry... Maize) products.

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/8o4RDeHJe-iFez204QvSfFw0NCE=/0x0:1266x712/1600x900/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/51760019/Screen_Shot_2016-11-09_at_5.06.54_PM.0.0.png

    https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5UsYQxUuqxo/Vwu3slFHy_I/AAAAAAAAYGs/25LV_Pr0Lq4gnBt0jQ8W27h6tTIrgzlAg/s1600/Apache-Indian-tribe-corn-farming-color-picture-house-camp.jpg

  70. @Twinkie
    @Anatoly Karlin

    1. Thanks for the laugh and 2. I am really going to laugh for a good while if it turned out that you were Indian (and not Jewish as some commenters seem to obsess).

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @Daniel Chieh

    that you were Indian

    This is a rumor that I have to advance, along with the “Karlin was a member of PLAN.”

  71. @Kuru
    @Yevardian

    What caused your online antagonism against us poor Indians? Were you scammed by an Indian or something?

    Replies: @A123

    I do not understand the concern about Indians.

    Your people make excellent Corn (sorry… Maize) products.

    PEACE 😇

     

    [MORE]

  72. @A123
    Science Denial achieves new milestone: (1)

    OH PLEASE! Climate Crazies Claim Global Stilling At Fault For Wind Turbines Not Producing Energy

    The far-left Gaia worshippers say that the “Climate Crisis” is responsible for floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, tsunamis, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions. A longer list of crazy things blamed on climate change is at the end of this post. Their latest crazy belief is that their unproven hypothesis caused the slowing of global wind speeds.

    Long labelled as a saviour of the energy industry, wind farms have cropped up across the continent in recent years and have been billed a low-cost, renewable and dependable source of power…

    Experts are blaming a growing phenomenon known as ‘global stilling’ – whereby measurable wind speeds across the world’s continental surfaces have decreased by as much as 15 per cent since 1980.
     

     
    Q: When will Science Deniers give up their unsupportable push for Wind and Solar?

    A: My prediction... When Globalists Elites can no longer line their pockets via Wind and Solar scams.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://lidblog.com/global-stilling/

     
    https://lidblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/5qbwt9.jpeg

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    It’s all the fat people increasing the angular momentum and slowing the rotation. Go on a diet you cretins you are killing the earth. Also: the graphics could be Greta Therber in yoga pants.

    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    It’s all the fat people increasing the angular momentum and slowing the rotation. Go on a diet you cretins you are killing the earth. Also: the graphics could be Greta Therber in yoga pants.

     

    https://www.rt.com/news/537178-candace-owens-fat-vaccine-covid19/
    , @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Greta Therber in yoga pants.
     
    Do you mean Saint Greta Thunberg? In yoga pants?

    I now 100% agree with Barbarossa -- we need an “EWWW!” button…

    And, even if you take away the yoga pants -- We STILL need an “EWWW!” button…


    PEACE 😇

     
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8Ehc7AX4AAm1SG.jpg

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  73. @Thomm
    It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi


    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?" (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?" (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Replies: @Yevardian, @AKAHorace, @Pericles, @Barbarossa, @Truth, @Tor597

    I think we need an “EWWW!” button…

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    I think we need an “EWWW!” button…
     
    Perhaps. "EWWWW!" is correct because it is becoming more evident how pervasive the practice of homosexuality is within contemporary White Nationalism. I mean, the list I presented is of people here who are unable to indicate that they prefer a mulatto woman over a white man for sex. Even though this is an anonymous forum.

    This is also why they have no problem with transgenderism, since the race of the person did not change. The gender 'transition' is an unimportant detail to WNs, since the race did not change.

    This is why we don't allow these degenerates into normal, heterosexual society. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but virtually zero are found in WN circles. The few that are happen to be age 70 or older.

    I don't approve of these Trashionalists. No one of any merit does.

    Replies: @Thorfinnsson, @Barbarossa

  74. I didn’t get the chance to comment in the previous post (The Last Reaction), so I’ll post my parting shot here.

    First and foremost, a standing ovation for Anatoly Karlin. I have been reading him for many years (long before he was picked up by Ron), and unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.

    You could compare and contrast him with some of the other writers here. The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I’m not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking that AK evolved beyond. If you compare to Steve Sailer, well Steve has been more or less saying the same thing for the past twenty years. No disrespect to Steve Sailer of course without whom many of us wouldn’t even be here. And admittedly the distinction with Steve may have more to do with age than anything else.

    The content of AK’s posts in combination with his wise choice not to moderate comments also led to an unusually excellent community. Wade elsewhere on the Unz Review and you get bombarded by anti-vax morons, low quality WW2 “revisionists”, and weirdos like Thomm (who somehow made his way into this thread–guess he got lost searching for “white trashionalist” homo-sexuals to hit on). AK’s commenters stand head and shoulders above them and nearly all others on the internet. Probably the worst regular commenters on AK’s pieces are A123 and AaronB, who are really not that bad.

    As for me, I do intend to make the transition to Substack and thus you’ll be able to keep up with me there. Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    See you all on Substack, though I will retain a presence on the Unz Review as well.

    • Agree: Yevardian, Blinky Bill
    • Thanks: Anatoly Karlin, mal
    • Replies: @Twinkie
    @Thorfinnsson


    That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.
     
    Sincere congratulations! I know it sounds hackneyed, but fatherhood really changes things, doesn't it?

    Also - and without meaning to sound patronizing at all - I must acknowledge too that your commenting quality has increased dramatically since I first encountered you on Unz. Please know that, while I do not necessarily agree with what you write, I do find your comments thought-stimulating and interesting, and hope to read more of them.

    Best regards,

    Twinkie

    P.S. About AE...

    The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I’m not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking
     
    Setting aside what you call his "financial doomerist thinking," which always puzzled me, was there really anything deficient in AE's modus operandi that needed improvement?

    Replies: @Thorfinnsson, @A123

    , @AP
    @Thorfinnsson


    Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.
     
    Thank you for sharing this excellent news!

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

    , @sher singh
    @Thorfinnsson

    Grats, also Swedes are the Gujjus of Europe||

    Had a 7/10 squat session, since I was under-recovered but I'll pretend it was something else:

    So, I reviewed this again & it's pretty good.

    https://www.elitefts.com/education/dave-tates-free-squat-manual/

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    , @BlackFlag
    @Thorfinnsson


    unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.
     
    He's one of the most realistic, i.e. doesn't let personal leanings cloud his analysis.
  75. @Anatoly Karlin
    @Twinkie

    Haha, but no, you're quite safe from such a revelation: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-7/

    Replies: @Twinkie, @Not Raul

    Haha, but no, you’re quite safe from such a revelation: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-7/

    23andme results and pictures of “yourself” can be faked!

    I don’t believe anything on the internet. 😉

    • LOL: Anatoly Karlin
  76. @Thorfinnsson
    I didn't get the chance to comment in the previous post (The Last Reaction), so I'll post my parting shot here.

    First and foremost, a standing ovation for Anatoly Karlin. I have been reading him for many years (long before he was picked up by Ron), and unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.

    You could compare and contrast him with some of the other writers here. The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I'm not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking that AK evolved beyond. If you compare to Steve Sailer, well Steve has been more or less saying the same thing for the past twenty years. No disrespect to Steve Sailer of course without whom many of us wouldn't even be here. And admittedly the distinction with Steve may have more to do with age than anything else.

    The content of AK's posts in combination with his wise choice not to moderate comments also led to an unusually excellent community. Wade elsewhere on the Unz Review and you get bombarded by anti-vax morons, low quality WW2 "revisionists", and weirdos like Thomm (who somehow made his way into this thread--guess he got lost searching for "white trashionalist" homo-sexuals to hit on). AK's commenters stand head and shoulders above them and nearly all others on the internet. Probably the worst regular commenters on AK's pieces are A123 and AaronB, who are really not that bad.

    As for me, I do intend to make the transition to Substack and thus you'll be able to keep up with me there. Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    See you all on Substack, though I will retain a presence on the Unz Review as well.

    Replies: @Twinkie, @AP, @sher singh, @BlackFlag

    That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    Sincere congratulations! I know it sounds hackneyed, but fatherhood really changes things, doesn’t it?

    Also – and without meaning to sound patronizing at all – I must acknowledge too that your commenting quality has increased dramatically since I first encountered you on Unz. Please know that, while I do not necessarily agree with what you write, I do find your comments thought-stimulating and interesting, and hope to read more of them.

    Best regards,

    Twinkie

    P.S. About AE…

    The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I’m not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking

    Setting aside what you call his “financial doomerist thinking,” which always puzzled me, was there really anything deficient in AE’s modus operandi that needed improvement?

    • Replies: @Thorfinnsson
    @Twinkie

    Fatherhood changes priorities and the way you relate to both the world and other people, but for me I suspect less has changed than the usual new father. I have near complete scheduling freedom, a very good housewife, economic security, and had already abandoned most vices prior to fatherhood. As such my routine was less changed than most.

    On a mundane level the greatest change (other than the obvious) is being able to relate to and talk to other parents, as well as being interested in children and babies in general. Prior to becoming a father I related to parents from the perspective of a child and was not much interested in other people's children and babies. Now it's a topic of great interest.

    Audacious Epigone had a very specific focus in his blog. He did one thing and did it very well. So no, there was no need for him to improve, but improvement is always welcome. And in any case it was highlighted precisely to point out AK's unusual positive evolution, since being mentioned in the same conversation as AE is high praise indeed.

    Replies: @Twinkie

    , @A123
    @Twinkie


    Setting aside what you call his “financial doomerist thinking,” which always puzzled me, was there really anything deficient in AE’s modus operandi that needed improvement?
     
    There were minor things he could have done better. That being said he did things much better than I could. Sometimes I felt a bit odd tossing comments in from the peanut gallery.

    Posting graphs of data was an incredibly useful tool. However, AE occasionally over looked interesting outliers in the data he presented. Or, left things in a less than intuitive format. For example, he had an excellent piece on SCOTUS that implied grouping of Justices, yet the accompanying graph showed the Justices in chronological order rather than the groups he was implying.

    I guess the best way to sum it up is, "AE was very effective, but there are periodically options to improve on the high standard that he set."

    PEACE 😇
  77. @Twinkie
    @Thorfinnsson


    That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.
     
    Sincere congratulations! I know it sounds hackneyed, but fatherhood really changes things, doesn't it?

    Also - and without meaning to sound patronizing at all - I must acknowledge too that your commenting quality has increased dramatically since I first encountered you on Unz. Please know that, while I do not necessarily agree with what you write, I do find your comments thought-stimulating and interesting, and hope to read more of them.

    Best regards,

    Twinkie

    P.S. About AE...

    The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I’m not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking
     
    Setting aside what you call his "financial doomerist thinking," which always puzzled me, was there really anything deficient in AE's modus operandi that needed improvement?

    Replies: @Thorfinnsson, @A123

    Fatherhood changes priorities and the way you relate to both the world and other people, but for me I suspect less has changed than the usual new father. I have near complete scheduling freedom, a very good housewife, economic security, and had already abandoned most vices prior to fatherhood. As such my routine was less changed than most.

    On a mundane level the greatest change (other than the obvious) is being able to relate to and talk to other parents, as well as being interested in children and babies in general. Prior to becoming a father I related to parents from the perspective of a child and was not much interested in other people’s children and babies. Now it’s a topic of great interest.

    Audacious Epigone had a very specific focus in his blog. He did one thing and did it very well. So no, there was no need for him to improve, but improvement is always welcome. And in any case it was highlighted precisely to point out AK’s unusual positive evolution, since being mentioned in the same conversation as AE is high praise indeed.

    • Thanks: Twinkie
    • Replies: @Twinkie
    @Thorfinnsson


    Prior to becoming a father I related to parents from the perspective of a child and was not much interested in other people’s children and babies. Now it’s a topic of great interest.
     
    I think I am older than you are in this journey (and I also have many more children), but I think for many men, including me to be sure, one big change fatherhood brings is one's orientation toward the community at large.

    There is a reason why single men tend to be more violent, anarchic, and, to put more positively, "ruggedly individualist." Having a woman, and more saliently, children tends to focus the attention more on community and all that it entails. One becomes aware of the necessity of civilization at a more personal and visceral level.

    And for a little fun:

    https://youtu.be/_nk3wBuvM-U?t=319

    Start at 5:19 mark. It's stereotypically Western couple vs. Chinese couple on having a baby, but might as well apply to couples who have parents nearby and those who don't.

  78. @Thorfinnsson
    @Twinkie

    Fatherhood changes priorities and the way you relate to both the world and other people, but for me I suspect less has changed than the usual new father. I have near complete scheduling freedom, a very good housewife, economic security, and had already abandoned most vices prior to fatherhood. As such my routine was less changed than most.

    On a mundane level the greatest change (other than the obvious) is being able to relate to and talk to other parents, as well as being interested in children and babies in general. Prior to becoming a father I related to parents from the perspective of a child and was not much interested in other people's children and babies. Now it's a topic of great interest.

    Audacious Epigone had a very specific focus in his blog. He did one thing and did it very well. So no, there was no need for him to improve, but improvement is always welcome. And in any case it was highlighted precisely to point out AK's unusual positive evolution, since being mentioned in the same conversation as AE is high praise indeed.

    Replies: @Twinkie

    Prior to becoming a father I related to parents from the perspective of a child and was not much interested in other people’s children and babies. Now it’s a topic of great interest.

    I think I am older than you are in this journey (and I also have many more children), but I think for many men, including me to be sure, one big change fatherhood brings is one’s orientation toward the community at large.

    There is a reason why single men tend to be more violent, anarchic, and, to put more positively, “ruggedly individualist.” Having a woman, and more saliently, children tends to focus the attention more on community and all that it entails. One becomes aware of the necessity of civilization at a more personal and visceral level.

    And for a little fun:

    Start at 5:19 mark. It’s stereotypically Western couple vs. Chinese couple on having a baby, but might as well apply to couples who have parents nearby and those who don’t.

  79. @Twinkie
    @Thorfinnsson


    That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.
     
    Sincere congratulations! I know it sounds hackneyed, but fatherhood really changes things, doesn't it?

    Also - and without meaning to sound patronizing at all - I must acknowledge too that your commenting quality has increased dramatically since I first encountered you on Unz. Please know that, while I do not necessarily agree with what you write, I do find your comments thought-stimulating and interesting, and hope to read more of them.

    Best regards,

    Twinkie

    P.S. About AE...

    The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I’m not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking
     
    Setting aside what you call his "financial doomerist thinking," which always puzzled me, was there really anything deficient in AE's modus operandi that needed improvement?

    Replies: @Thorfinnsson, @A123

    Setting aside what you call his “financial doomerist thinking,” which always puzzled me, was there really anything deficient in AE’s modus operandi that needed improvement?

    There were minor things he could have done better. That being said he did things much better than I could. Sometimes I felt a bit odd tossing comments in from the peanut gallery.

    Posting graphs of data was an incredibly useful tool. However, AE occasionally over looked interesting outliers in the data he presented. Or, left things in a less than intuitive format. For example, he had an excellent piece on SCOTUS that implied grouping of Justices, yet the accompanying graph showed the Justices in chronological order rather than the groups he was implying.

    I guess the best way to sum it up is, “AE was very effective, but there are periodically options to improve on the high standard that he set.”

    PEACE 😇

  80. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    It's all the fat people increasing the angular momentum and slowing the rotation. Go on a diet you cretins you are killing the earth. Also: the graphics could be Greta Therber in yoga pants.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @A123

    It’s all the fat people increasing the angular momentum and slowing the rotation. Go on a diet you cretins you are killing the earth. Also: the graphics could be Greta Therber in yoga pants.

    https://www.rt.com/news/537178-candace-owens-fat-vaccine-covid19/

  81. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @A123

    It's all the fat people increasing the angular momentum and slowing the rotation. Go on a diet you cretins you are killing the earth. Also: the graphics could be Greta Therber in yoga pants.

    Replies: @Mikhail, @A123

    Greta Therber in yoga pants.

    Do you mean Saint Greta Thunberg? In yoga pants?

    I now 100% agree with Barbarossa — we need an “EWWW!” button…

    And, even if you take away the yoga pants — We STILL need an “EWWW!” button…

    PEACE 😇

     

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    You could make something of that comment?!
    I'm still trying to figure out what looked like Greta "Thurber" in yoga pants...the windmills?

    Replies: @A123

  82. @Thorfinnsson
    I didn't get the chance to comment in the previous post (The Last Reaction), so I'll post my parting shot here.

    First and foremost, a standing ovation for Anatoly Karlin. I have been reading him for many years (long before he was picked up by Ron), and unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.

    You could compare and contrast him with some of the other writers here. The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I'm not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking that AK evolved beyond. If you compare to Steve Sailer, well Steve has been more or less saying the same thing for the past twenty years. No disrespect to Steve Sailer of course without whom many of us wouldn't even be here. And admittedly the distinction with Steve may have more to do with age than anything else.

    The content of AK's posts in combination with his wise choice not to moderate comments also led to an unusually excellent community. Wade elsewhere on the Unz Review and you get bombarded by anti-vax morons, low quality WW2 "revisionists", and weirdos like Thomm (who somehow made his way into this thread--guess he got lost searching for "white trashionalist" homo-sexuals to hit on). AK's commenters stand head and shoulders above them and nearly all others on the internet. Probably the worst regular commenters on AK's pieces are A123 and AaronB, who are really not that bad.

    As for me, I do intend to make the transition to Substack and thus you'll be able to keep up with me there. Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    See you all on Substack, though I will retain a presence on the Unz Review as well.

    Replies: @Twinkie, @AP, @sher singh, @BlackFlag

    Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    Thank you for sharing this excellent news!

    • Replies: @Blinky Bill
    @AP


    I am now married
     
    I knew it! 😉


    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQJFNg7vON2ijZQkH86n53HkvTMZJ2ZXJ1t9g&usqp.jpg
  83. @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Greta Therber in yoga pants.
     
    Do you mean Saint Greta Thunberg? In yoga pants?

    I now 100% agree with Barbarossa -- we need an “EWWW!” button…

    And, even if you take away the yoga pants -- We STILL need an “EWWW!” button…


    PEACE 😇

     
    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/D8Ehc7AX4AAm1SG.jpg

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    You could make something of that comment?!
    I’m still trying to figure out what looked like Greta “Thurber” in yoga pants…the windmills?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa


    You could make something of that comment?!
    I’m still trying to figure out what looked like Greta “Thurber” in yoga pants…the windmills?
     
    Intent as a humor post was quite clear. Mass is neither created nor destroyed by 'fatness', so the physics was an intentional joke.

    I am frequently a victim of Autocorrect and proper names are particularly bad. Thunberg is a guess, but I am 90% confident that is what he was going for.

    I concede, I am not sure how he got to placing her in yoga pants. Any visual of Thunberg is distressing and does not need such embellishment.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  84. @Max Payne
    I don't blame you for leaving.

    Perhaps Twitter is now filling the same niche that you once enjoyed here.

    Or the little spoken fact that more people are aware of the topics discussed here than 10 years ago and therefore no longer a rarity to find like-minded people.

    Maybe it's the fact you're published and want to distance yourself from cosplayers posting pictures of their ISIL-beards and decorative made-in-China toy swords (next to authors who post twirling swastikas and dancing elephants).


    It takes no effort to maintain this "community" of sniper-lurkers, shitposters, European gays, drunken Slav commies (gays & commies bro....), butter knife-wielding Indians, geezers-with-no-clue, and paid-trolls. A simple post with 3 links to mildly interesting topics is all it takes. A paywall will fracture this group, as a pirate paying for anything goes against my fundamental beliefs. As someone who openly shared scihub and library genesis I can't help but wonder if it's just a plan to shift gears away from writing online altogether.

    You've harvested all the younger blood on Unz Review and gathered them here. The rest of Unz Review is "muh white genocide" or "white nationals uber alles". Even Ronald wrote a piece about how his website turned into White Nationalist malarkey.

    You focused a small corner of it into transhumanism, games (don't listen to that queer that says those are bad, he probably uses an Apple), Russia, politics, the search for truth, crypto-rumors, "HBD" (this is a gay useless term), contrarian analysis...........

    I'm astonished how many people here are Indian. I told my brother I suspect the majority of engaged/commentating traffic on Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are from places like India, Eastern Europe, and China e-stalking whites/Westerners. I'm starting to believe they constitute the largest portion of users who live more online than off.


    To Ron Unz:

    When is this....

    https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-x_SgGZPyWYI/YWfVWhublAI/AAAAAAAAHcA/T7cgaFND-L4RtmulAtyD4uVc9QAfeMh6ACLcBGAsYHQ/s16000/Screenshot8.jpg

    Going to look like a real forum like this:
    https://thepit.ja-galaxy-forum.com/
    An old 1999 game forum STILL ACTIVE (Jagged Alliance 2)

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin, @sher singh, @mal

    Hey, I still play Jagged Alliance 2, the 1.13 mod. The only game I know that lets you pick how racist and sexist you want to be and lets you choose which nationalities to hate.

    If you like turn based squad strategy games, 1.13 is a must play. I would recommend dialing disease options down though. While yes, espionage and covert biological warfare are a real deal in the game, managing reinfection rates for your teams can get overwhelming fast, even with proper medical tools and food/water disposal protocols.

    • Thanks: songbird
  85. Happy Dussehra (day of Warriors)

    [MORE]

    Much better w/o Paracord layer||
    Logitech Z263 review: 10/10 (prayers & war ballad songs mostly)

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  86. @Thorfinnsson
    I didn't get the chance to comment in the previous post (The Last Reaction), so I'll post my parting shot here.

    First and foremost, a standing ovation for Anatoly Karlin. I have been reading him for many years (long before he was picked up by Ron), and unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.

    You could compare and contrast him with some of the other writers here. The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I'm not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking that AK evolved beyond. If you compare to Steve Sailer, well Steve has been more or less saying the same thing for the past twenty years. No disrespect to Steve Sailer of course without whom many of us wouldn't even be here. And admittedly the distinction with Steve may have more to do with age than anything else.

    The content of AK's posts in combination with his wise choice not to moderate comments also led to an unusually excellent community. Wade elsewhere on the Unz Review and you get bombarded by anti-vax morons, low quality WW2 "revisionists", and weirdos like Thomm (who somehow made his way into this thread--guess he got lost searching for "white trashionalist" homo-sexuals to hit on). AK's commenters stand head and shoulders above them and nearly all others on the internet. Probably the worst regular commenters on AK's pieces are A123 and AaronB, who are really not that bad.

    As for me, I do intend to make the transition to Substack and thus you'll be able to keep up with me there. Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    See you all on Substack, though I will retain a presence on the Unz Review as well.

    Replies: @Twinkie, @AP, @sher singh, @BlackFlag

    Grats, also Swedes are the Gujjus of Europe||

    Had a 7/10 squat session, since I was under-recovered but I’ll pretend it was something else:

    So, I reviewed this again & it’s pretty good.

    https://www.elitefts.com/education/dave-tates-free-squat-manual/

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  87. I hope I don’t lose track of Anatoly Karlin. The trouble is, I’m elderly and have too many sources for reading and now I’m drifting away towards Youtube. I sponsor a couple of dozen sources through Patreon and two at Substack, so adding that all up, I’d like to be setting my own contribution to Anatoly, more than zero and less than \$6.

    My science links http://sep.stanford.edu/sep/jon/ScienceChannels.pdf

    My political/sport links: http://sep.stanford.edu/sep/jon/SwingVotersCount.pdf

    • Thanks: Anatoly Karlin
    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @Jon Claerbout

    Much appreciated! I comped you a membership for a year - looking forwards to having you around!

  88. @Anatoly Karlin
    @Twinkie

    Haha, but no, you're quite safe from such a revelation: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-7/

    Replies: @Twinkie, @Not Raul

    You’re part Italian?

    I suppose they had Italians in Odessa, like the architect Boffo.

    Did Togliatti father any children in Russia?

  89. @AP
    @Thorfinnsson


    Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.
     
    Thank you for sharing this excellent news!

    Replies: @Blinky Bill

    I am now married

    I knew it! 😉

    [MORE]

  90. Kashmiri Pandit Sikh

    Also:

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  91. Hindu tried to dress up as a Sikh & tear up Sikh scripture at Tractor/Farmer protest.
    Singhs cut off his arm & leg, and let him bleed out on cam||

    Singhs said we’ll cremate him alongside PM||
    https://twitter.com/TheAngryLord – kvetching Hindu handle not posting vids here||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  92. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    You could make something of that comment?!
    I'm still trying to figure out what looked like Greta "Thurber" in yoga pants...the windmills?

    Replies: @A123

    You could make something of that comment?!
    I’m still trying to figure out what looked like Greta “Thurber” in yoga pants…the windmills?

    Intent as a humor post was quite clear. Mass is neither created nor destroyed by ‘fatness’, so the physics was an intentional joke.

    I am frequently a victim of Autocorrect and proper names are particularly bad. Thunberg is a guess, but I am 90% confident that is what he was going for.

    I concede, I am not sure how he got to placing her in yoga pants. Any visual of Thunberg is distressing and does not need such embellishment.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I got the joke on that half. The other half was mystery, wrapped in enigma, wrapped in bacon. It just didn't follow from your comment he replied to.

  93. @Jon Claerbout
    I hope I don't lose track of Anatoly Karlin. The trouble is, I'm elderly and have too many sources for reading and now I'm drifting away towards Youtube. I sponsor a couple of dozen sources through Patreon and two at Substack, so adding that all up, I'd like to be setting my own contribution to Anatoly, more than zero and less than $6.

    My science links http://sep.stanford.edu/sep/jon/ScienceChannels.pdf

    My political/sport links: http://sep.stanford.edu/sep/jon/SwingVotersCount.pdf

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Much appreciated! I comped you a membership for a year – looking forwards to having you around!

  94. @Barbarossa
    @Thomm

    I think we need an "EWWW!" button...

    Replies: @Thomm

    I think we need an “EWWW!” button…

    Perhaps. “EWWWW!” is correct because it is becoming more evident how pervasive the practice of homosexuality is within contemporary White Nationalism. I mean, the list I presented is of people here who are unable to indicate that they prefer a mulatto woman over a white man for sex. Even though this is an anonymous forum.

    This is also why they have no problem with transgenderism, since the race of the person did not change. The gender ‘transition’ is an unimportant detail to WNs, since the race did not change.

    This is why we don’t allow these degenerates into normal, heterosexual society. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but virtually zero are found in WN circles. The few that are happen to be age 70 or older.

    I don’t approve of these Trashionalists. No one of any merit does.

    • Replies: @Thorfinnsson
    @Thomm

    Would you say it's better to fuck a bitch (female dog) or a white man (hairless if required for erection)?

    No question dodging!

    Replies: @mal, @nebulafox

    , @Barbarossa
    @Thomm

    The real question is where they stand on trans-racialism?!

    Should Michael Jackson be considered as a candidate and how should he be classified?

    Would those commenters in question rather have sex with Michael Jackson (if theoretically raised from the dead) or a mulatto woman?

    I think there is a lot of unplumbed nuance to this whole question...

    Replies: @iffen

  95. @mal
    @Aedib

    Russia should consider converting those budget surpluses into GDP growth.

    Also, I disagree with them about lending being a limited source for growth - Russia is currently experiencing some inflation due to supply chain disruption, just like everybody else. But I don't think it's sustainable. Deflation will win out in the end unless drastic measures are taken. This means lower rates are coming to Russia in a year or two down the road, which will enable them to refinance quite profitably.

    Russian inflation rate runs about 2% above US, not bad at all. Lower rates are coming and that should be supportive for growth.

    Replies: @Aedib

    Budget surplus should be advisable for a couple of years more for replenish reserve funds. After that a 0 deficit/surplus will be OK. Also it should take some funds from the extraordinary gas/oil pricess to make a fund for financing strategic projects like Power of Siberia 2 (Trans-Mongolian pipeline). Once the Trans-Mongolian start to operate, the coercion capability of Eurocrats over Russia will be dead and the exposition of Chinese to American interdiction in the seas will suffer a big blow. This will be the last screw in the coffin of Western geo-economic dominance.

    • Agree: mal
    • Replies: @mal
    @Aedib

    Agree on the pipeline stuff and avoiding seas for your critical supply chain needs.

    On budget policy, the thing is, all our money, be it euros, dollars (including Zimbabwean), or rubles, come from exactly the same place - thin air. All money today is fiat currency so the origin is exactly the same. And as global interest rates (current adventure notwithstanding) converge to zero, the risk premium will disappear as well.

    So for countries, it will come down to "who will finance my development"? For the developed world (US, EU, Japan), the answer is obvious - state managed private credit markets. And Chinese are desperately trying to recreate the same thing because they are not stupid/suicidal.

    But Russia doesn't really have a well developed private credit sector, even though they are making great progress in that area (in no small measure thanks to Nabiulina).

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it's full potential. Of which Russia has plenty.

    Granted, there are concerns around excessive inflation but Nabiullina has my full confidence there - she has been able to manage those extremely well before and her banking cartelization reform is a thing of beauty. She literally made Russia into a developed country with that.

    Anyway, TLDR - all money is fiat and comes from thin air, so the only real question is who gets to print it. Russia doesn't have well developed private banking sector yet, though they are making great progress. So by default, the job of printing money must fall to the state. (Budget deficit as long as inflation allows it to be productive).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  96. Lebanon is not just a failed state, but one which is divided by tribes.

    After the Nasrallah-shima blast, repairing the prior tenuous compromise is almost certainly impossible. The Maronite Christians and Druze would be foolish to trust the side directly responsible for The Port of Beirut’s devastation.

    The obvious & inevitable solution is the creation of separate nations.

    Alas, the tribal distribution within Lebanon is unfavourable. Muslims are concentrated both North and South. Partition based on current population would yield a non-viable Muslim enclave in the south. A viable partition would require significant relocation North to avoid the creation of a Southern “Bantustan”.

    Unfortunately, there does not yet appear to be the will for such a drastic, but effective, solution. The will probably be several futile, EU led, attempts to repair the original French construct before the Lebanese people embrace the concept of a difficult break-up.

    PEACE 😇

  97. @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    I think we need an “EWWW!” button…
     
    Perhaps. "EWWWW!" is correct because it is becoming more evident how pervasive the practice of homosexuality is within contemporary White Nationalism. I mean, the list I presented is of people here who are unable to indicate that they prefer a mulatto woman over a white man for sex. Even though this is an anonymous forum.

    This is also why they have no problem with transgenderism, since the race of the person did not change. The gender 'transition' is an unimportant detail to WNs, since the race did not change.

    This is why we don't allow these degenerates into normal, heterosexual society. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but virtually zero are found in WN circles. The few that are happen to be age 70 or older.

    I don't approve of these Trashionalists. No one of any merit does.

    Replies: @Thorfinnsson, @Barbarossa

    Would you say it’s better to fuck a bitch (female dog) or a white man (hairless if required for erection)?

    No question dodging!

    • Replies: @mal
    @Thorfinnsson

    What's the breed of the bitch?

    Is the white man more like one of them Thai ladyboys (they look really white with makeup) or more Norwegian?

    Those would be important considerations.

    , @nebulafox
    @Thorfinnsson

    That depends. Is he as excellent company as Metrobius?

    Replies: @songbird

  98. @A123
    @Barbarossa


    You could make something of that comment?!
    I’m still trying to figure out what looked like Greta “Thurber” in yoga pants…the windmills?
     
    Intent as a humor post was quite clear. Mass is neither created nor destroyed by 'fatness', so the physics was an intentional joke.

    I am frequently a victim of Autocorrect and proper names are particularly bad. Thunberg is a guess, but I am 90% confident that is what he was going for.

    I concede, I am not sure how he got to placing her in yoga pants. Any visual of Thunberg is distressing and does not need such embellishment.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    I got the joke on that half. The other half was mystery, wrapped in enigma, wrapped in bacon. It just didn’t follow from your comment he replied to.

  99. @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    I think we need an “EWWW!” button…
     
    Perhaps. "EWWWW!" is correct because it is becoming more evident how pervasive the practice of homosexuality is within contemporary White Nationalism. I mean, the list I presented is of people here who are unable to indicate that they prefer a mulatto woman over a white man for sex. Even though this is an anonymous forum.

    This is also why they have no problem with transgenderism, since the race of the person did not change. The gender 'transition' is an unimportant detail to WNs, since the race did not change.

    This is why we don't allow these degenerates into normal, heterosexual society. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but virtually zero are found in WN circles. The few that are happen to be age 70 or older.

    I don't approve of these Trashionalists. No one of any merit does.

    Replies: @Thorfinnsson, @Barbarossa

    The real question is where they stand on trans-racialism?!

    Should Michael Jackson be considered as a candidate and how should he be classified?

    Would those commenters in question rather have sex with Michael Jackson (if theoretically raised from the dead) or a mulatto woman?

    I think there is a lot of unplumbed nuance to this whole question…

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Barbarossa

    there is a lot of unplumbed nuance

    I'm not sure that Thomm not-a-dot is up for nuance, plumbed or not.

  100. @Barbarossa
    @Thomm

    The real question is where they stand on trans-racialism?!

    Should Michael Jackson be considered as a candidate and how should he be classified?

    Would those commenters in question rather have sex with Michael Jackson (if theoretically raised from the dead) or a mulatto woman?

    I think there is a lot of unplumbed nuance to this whole question...

    Replies: @iffen

    there is a lot of unplumbed nuance

    I’m not sure that Thomm not-a-dot is up for nuance, plumbed or not.

  101. @Thomm
    It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi


    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?" (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?" (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Replies: @Yevardian, @AKAHorace, @Pericles, @Barbarossa, @Truth, @Tor597

    Uh, Oh, Big Thomm is Callin’ names. You can’t ignore the questions now!

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Truth


    Uh, Oh, Big Thomm is Callin’ names. You can’t ignore the questions now!
     
    Look at how many of them are happy to say or at least confirm via omission that they would rather have sex with a white man than a mulatto woman. They already rank a black woman lower, but now even a mulatto woman is below a white man in terms of their preferred sexual partner.

    In a choice between Michael Moore and Halle Berry, they choose Michael Moore.

    I am glad that the true nature of these faggots is being revealed to the light of day.
  102. @Aedib
    @mal

    Budget surplus should be advisable for a couple of years more for replenish reserve funds. After that a 0 deficit/surplus will be OK. Also it should take some funds from the extraordinary gas/oil pricess to make a fund for financing strategic projects like Power of Siberia 2 (Trans-Mongolian pipeline). Once the Trans-Mongolian start to operate, the coercion capability of Eurocrats over Russia will be dead and the exposition of Chinese to American interdiction in the seas will suffer a big blow. This will be the last screw in the coffin of Western geo-economic dominance.

    Replies: @mal

    Agree on the pipeline stuff and avoiding seas for your critical supply chain needs.

    On budget policy, the thing is, all our money, be it euros, dollars (including Zimbabwean), or rubles, come from exactly the same place – thin air. All money today is fiat currency so the origin is exactly the same. And as global interest rates (current adventure notwithstanding) converge to zero, the risk premium will disappear as well.

    So for countries, it will come down to “who will finance my development”? For the developed world (US, EU, Japan), the answer is obvious – state managed private credit markets. And Chinese are desperately trying to recreate the same thing because they are not stupid/suicidal.

    But Russia doesn’t really have a well developed private credit sector, even though they are making great progress in that area (in no small measure thanks to Nabiulina).

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential. Of which Russia has plenty.

    Granted, there are concerns around excessive inflation but Nabiullina has my full confidence there – she has been able to manage those extremely well before and her banking cartelization reform is a thing of beauty. She literally made Russia into a developed country with that.

    Anyway, TLDR – all money is fiat and comes from thin air, so the only real question is who gets to print it. Russia doesn’t have well developed private banking sector yet, though they are making great progress. So by default, the job of printing money must fall to the state. (Budget deficit as long as inflation allows it to be productive).

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    Is that actually how it goes? Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency. By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else. If the government is somewhat sober about this (giving money to semi-productive parties, not diluting everyone else too much), it can appear to be functioning like a real bank with lending standards, credit limits, ROI, etc., but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.

    It may also happen that the private banking sector is not developed enough (i.e., insufficient capital) to finance all the creditworthy opportunities that a given economy presents, but that doesn't mean that whatever the government does as a "remedy" actually is a remedy. And if the government doesn't do too much "remedying", the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.

    Replies: @mal

  103. There is some signs of the coronavirus pandemic ending at least in the psychological space.

    Islamist terrorists finally “returning to the office” after a couple years remote.

    Norway bow-and-arrow attack ‘appears to be act of terror’

    “Police said the suspect, who they identified as 37-year-old Espen Andersen Bråthen, was a Muslim convert with previous criminal convictions who had previously been flagged as a possible Islamic extremist. ”

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/14/norway-bow-arrow-attack-suspect-muslim-convert-police-radicalisation

    Counter-terrorism probe into fatal stabbing of UK MP David Amess

    “UK Conservative Party MP David Amess has died after he was stabbed several times at a constituency meeting in his Southend West constituency. A 25-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder. The investigation is being led by counter-terrorism police. PA sources said the man is believed to be a British national with Somali heritage.”

    https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2021/1015/1253959-uk-mp-stabbed/

    Meanwhile Taliban was already activating in Russia a couple weeks ago
    https://t.me/bazabazon/8201

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @Dmitry

    At least the fellow with the bow was socially distanced. Knife attacks could spread Covid and are NOT socially responsible in these times. Kudos to Espen Andersen Bråthen for his consideration. Not really surprising since Norwegians are generally more conscientious than Brits.

    Good on them. All workers are essential workers.

    On a serious note, how credible is that last one on Taliban activating in Russia? I can't imagine that the Afghan Taliban would be remotely interested in being associated with that since it would alienate not only Russia but also China. The Taliban can't really afford to go slamming doors when they are in a worse position then when they were an insurgent force.
    I did an internet search and I couldn't find anything to corroborate the idea.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  104. I think Thomm asked a very insightful question:

    2) “In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?” (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Who is the first Jewish Woman who comes to mind (in this context)? Gal Gadot, the actress who portrays Wonder Woman. I have helpfully included a few pictures of her below [MORE].

    Any “NO” responses from male WN’s affirms the “WN’s are Homos” hypothesis.

    PEACE 😇

    [MORE]

     

     

     

    &nbsp

    • Thanks: mal
    • Replies: @Truth
    @A123

    LMFAO!,

    Well, that IS a dude. It's a whole new Forking world, Old Sport, but I digress...

    https://archive.org/details/BitChute-MaU52o38ph9Q

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqQFcvnQt6Q

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  105. @A123
    I think Thomm asked a very insightful question:

    2) “In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?” (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).
     
    Who is the first Jewish Woman who comes to mind (in this context)? Gal Gadot, the actress who portrays Wonder Woman. I have helpfully included a few pictures of her below [MORE].

    Any "NO" responses from male WN's affirms the "WN's are Homos" hypothesis.

    PEACE 😇



     
    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/9f/34/81/9f348137a6af93577fe61273f85e1a46.gif

     
    https://bestofcomicbooks.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/27-15.jpg

     
    https://www.hawtcelebs.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/gal-gadot-in-bikini-for-blazer-magazine-2007-11.jpg

    &nbsp
    https://i.pinimg.com/736x/e4/ec/62/e4ec62843a0a0682b273714c965c3ade.jpg

    Replies: @Truth

    LMFAO!,

    Well, that IS a dude. It’s a whole new Forking world, Old Sport, but I digress…

    https://archive.org/details/BitChute-MaU52o38ph9Q

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @Truth


    Well, that IS a dude
     
    Huh. As soon as I saw that you replied to A123 I KNEW you were going to say that. Must be that the old ESP is gettin' strong these days...

    I suppose that adds a whole extra wrinkle to Thomm's line of questioning. Does Gal Godot then represent a kind of... cutting of the Gordian knot in your mind?

    Replies: @A123

  106. @Truth
    @Thomm

    Uh, Oh, Big Thomm is Callin' names. You can't ignore the questions now!

    Replies: @Thomm

    Uh, Oh, Big Thomm is Callin’ names. You can’t ignore the questions now!

    Look at how many of them are happy to say or at least confirm via omission that they would rather have sex with a white man than a mulatto woman. They already rank a black woman lower, but now even a mulatto woman is below a white man in terms of their preferred sexual partner.

    In a choice between Michael Moore and Halle Berry, they choose Michael Moore.

    I am glad that the true nature of these faggots is being revealed to the light of day.

  107. @Thorfinnsson
    @Thomm

    Would you say it's better to fuck a bitch (female dog) or a white man (hairless if required for erection)?

    No question dodging!

    Replies: @mal, @nebulafox

    What’s the breed of the bitch?

    Is the white man more like one of them Thai ladyboys (they look really white with makeup) or more Norwegian?

    Those would be important considerations.

  108. @Truth
    @A123

    LMFAO!,

    Well, that IS a dude. It's a whole new Forking world, Old Sport, but I digress...

    https://archive.org/details/BitChute-MaU52o38ph9Q

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqQFcvnQt6Q

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    Well, that IS a dude

    Huh. As soon as I saw that you replied to A123 I KNEW you were going to say that. Must be that the old ESP is gettin’ strong these days…

    I suppose that adds a whole extra wrinkle to Thomm’s line of questioning. Does Gal Godot then represent a kind of… cutting of the Gordian knot in your mind?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa

    Given that there are photos of Gal Gadot in yoga pants [MORE].

    Hip structure definitely female. No place to hide the proverbial "meat & two veg". Etcetera.

    Raising questions about Michelle Obama (no pictures provided) is one thing.

    But Gal Gadot? I am not seeing it. If you force me to keep reexamining her pictures, I guess I will have to suffer through repeated viewing.... For science... Not enjoyment... Really, I am not enjoying this....

    OK... I can not tell a lie... I am enjoying this....

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/1f/f9/ff1ff9a44aa8d5e12ac3aa0a62cc8139.png

     
    https://static1.therichestimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/gal-gadot-2-e1495833513252.jpg

     
    https://celebjihad.com/celeb-jihad/images/gal_gadot_pussy_abs_bikini.jpg

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Truth

  109. @mal
    @Aedib

    Agree on the pipeline stuff and avoiding seas for your critical supply chain needs.

    On budget policy, the thing is, all our money, be it euros, dollars (including Zimbabwean), or rubles, come from exactly the same place - thin air. All money today is fiat currency so the origin is exactly the same. And as global interest rates (current adventure notwithstanding) converge to zero, the risk premium will disappear as well.

    So for countries, it will come down to "who will finance my development"? For the developed world (US, EU, Japan), the answer is obvious - state managed private credit markets. And Chinese are desperately trying to recreate the same thing because they are not stupid/suicidal.

    But Russia doesn't really have a well developed private credit sector, even though they are making great progress in that area (in no small measure thanks to Nabiulina).

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it's full potential. Of which Russia has plenty.

    Granted, there are concerns around excessive inflation but Nabiullina has my full confidence there - she has been able to manage those extremely well before and her banking cartelization reform is a thing of beauty. She literally made Russia into a developed country with that.

    Anyway, TLDR - all money is fiat and comes from thin air, so the only real question is who gets to print it. Russia doesn't have well developed private banking sector yet, though they are making great progress. So by default, the job of printing money must fall to the state. (Budget deficit as long as inflation allows it to be productive).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.

    Is that actually how it goes? Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency. By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else. If the government is somewhat sober about this (giving money to semi-productive parties, not diluting everyone else too much), it can appear to be functioning like a real bank with lending standards, credit limits, ROI, etc., but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.

    It may also happen that the private banking sector is not developed enough (i.e., insufficient capital) to finance all the creditworthy opportunities that a given economy presents, but that doesn’t mean that whatever the government does as a “remedy” actually is a remedy. And if the government doesn’t do too much “remedying”, the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.

    • Agree: Aedib
    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Is that actually how it goes?
     
    This is precisely and exactly how it goes. In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don't live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes. Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that's who. I guess they don't teach this in econ classes, but that's the fundamental truth of life.

    Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency.
     
    LOL no. They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That's what "fiat" means, by definition. There is no such thing as "solvency". You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.

    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?

    You are not wrong though. What you are saying - "neoliberalism is superior to socialism because private commercial banking system enriching the rich and corporations is better for optimizing corporate efficiency and thus the output" is absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.

    Well, we are up to that debt level now, and sure, I fully support private sector initiative, but it's up to government now to step up and provide demand support. Like it has always done. Hopefully, without killing millions this time around.


    but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.
     
    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.

    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.

    And if the government doesn’t do too much “remedying”, the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.
     
    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?

    In the past, when banks were used to measure risk, sure. But today, why? Why should banks enjoy high interest rate? They most certainly don't measure risk anymore (they get bailed out). So why? Why have high cost of money that is an imaginary product? Why?

    Inflation is one reason, but I really don't see any other, and government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Emil Nikola Richard, @GLT

  110. @Dmitry
    There is some signs of the coronavirus pandemic ending at least in the psychological space.

    Islamist terrorists finally "returning to the office" after a couple years remote.

    Norway bow-and-arrow attack ‘appears to be act of terror’


    "Police said the suspect, who they identified as 37-year-old Espen Andersen Bråthen, was a Muslim convert with previous criminal convictions who had previously been flagged as a possible Islamic extremist. "

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/oct/14/norway-bow-arrow-attack-suspect-muslim-convert-police-radicalisation

    Counter-terrorism probe into fatal stabbing of UK MP David Amess


    "UK Conservative Party MP David Amess has died after he was stabbed several times at a constituency meeting in his Southend West constituency. A 25-year-old man was arrested at the scene on suspicion of murder. The investigation is being led by counter-terrorism police. PA sources said the man is believed to be a British national with Somali heritage."

    https://www.rte.ie/news/uk/2021/1015/1253959-uk-mp-stabbed/


    Meanwhile Taliban was already activating in Russia a couple weeks ago
    https://t.me/bazabazon/8201

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    At least the fellow with the bow was socially distanced. Knife attacks could spread Covid and are NOT socially responsible in these times. Kudos to Espen Andersen Bråthen for his consideration. Not really surprising since Norwegians are generally more conscientious than Brits.

    Good on them. All workers are essential workers.

    On a serious note, how credible is that last one on Taliban activating in Russia? I can’t imagine that the Afghan Taliban would be remotely interested in being associated with that since it would alienate not only Russia but also China. The Taliban can’t really afford to go slamming doors when they are in a worse position then when they were an insurgent force.
    I did an internet search and I couldn’t find anything to corroborate the idea.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Barbarossa

    In terms of nationality they are Tajiks and a Muslim convert, but they are described as Taliban members, and they were preparing IED attacks. So we can call them "Ekaterinburg Taliban".

    A surprising aspect of the Taliban, is they have been living quite centrally in the city.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXc1iq3UQ54

    Last year there was also the Islamic State in Ekaterinburg, that were all killed by the FSB, living in edges in South city.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkb9mWaSynU

    Within Ekaterinburg, apparently the Taliban are more fussy about real estate than ISIS.

    Replies: @mal

  111. Natalya Poklonskaya has been appointed as an ambassador in Cape Verde, which the media in Russia and Ukraine is joking about as a kind of “luxurious tropical exile”, as she was too independent in the parliament and voted against raising the pension age.

    This is a cute young woman prosecutor who was in Ukraine in 2014, and resigned during Euromaidan, went to Crimea, and then because of photogenic abilities was promoted or astroturfed a lot by the Russian media and internet in Surkov style, and eventually promoted in the parliament for United Russia.

    After she was promoted into the parliament, she originally fell into some religious cult thinking, and more recently became liberal, supporter of free speech, with moderate views about Russia-Ukraine relations. (She nowadays talks a little confused https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBJFTiFAI1c.)

    But even with her new moderate views and liberalism, Ukraine does not forgive – and is saying it wants to extradite her from Cape Verde. https://ria.ru/20211016/ekstraditsiya-1754833224.html

  112. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    Is that actually how it goes? Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency. By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else. If the government is somewhat sober about this (giving money to semi-productive parties, not diluting everyone else too much), it can appear to be functioning like a real bank with lending standards, credit limits, ROI, etc., but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.

    It may also happen that the private banking sector is not developed enough (i.e., insufficient capital) to finance all the creditworthy opportunities that a given economy presents, but that doesn't mean that whatever the government does as a "remedy" actually is a remedy. And if the government doesn't do too much "remedying", the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.

    Replies: @mal

    Is that actually how it goes?

    This is precisely and exactly how it goes. In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes. Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who. I guess they don’t teach this in econ classes, but that’s the fundamental truth of life.

    Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency.

    LOL no. They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition. There is no such thing as “solvency”. You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.

    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.

    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?

    You are not wrong though. What you are saying – “neoliberalism is superior to socialism because private commercial banking system enriching the rich and corporations is better for optimizing corporate efficiency and thus the output” is absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.

    Well, we are up to that debt level now, and sure, I fully support private sector initiative, but it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support. Like it has always done. Hopefully, without killing millions this time around.

    but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.

    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.

    And if the government doesn’t do too much “remedying”, the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?

    In the past, when banks were used to measure risk, sure. But today, why? Why should banks enjoy high interest rate? They most certainly don’t measure risk anymore (they get bailed out). So why? Why have high cost of money that is an imaginary product? Why?

    Inflation is one reason, but I really don’t see any other, and government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes.
     
    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who.
     
    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition.
     
    Right, but that's the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    There is no such thing as “solvency”.
     
    If you're not on the government's gravy train, there is. There's also it's obverse, insolvency.

    You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.
     
    Again, true for the politically connected. For everyone else, enjoy the the dilution (a.k.a., "inflation").


    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?
     
    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.
     
    Obviously, I don't disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you've reached it?

    it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support.
     
    By ... printing more money? And giving it to ... whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    without killing millions this time around.
     
    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.
     
    That's an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe "smartly get out of" by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?
     
    They shouldn't. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.
     
    Isn't monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    Anyhow, fun as all this is, it's not the original reason I replied to your comment, which was to clarify this:

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    Replies: @mal, @mal, @mal, @Levtraro

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @mal


    I guess they don’t teach this in econ classes, but that’s the fundamental truth of life.
     
    1. when I was a college freshman our economics professor told us this at first class. His phrase was fixed in all our minds and I can still recall his voice intonation

    "Do you know what money is? It is marks in bankers' books."

    He was almost the most entertaining lecturer ever and the TA was a Marxist and confided to us that all the TA's hated the prof. Years later he had a soundbite joke on NPR.

    "Do you know how a doctor describes a healthy patient? One who hasn't gotten a complete workup yet."

    The topology of those jokes appears isomorphic to me but comedy defies analysis so we can't be too confident.

    2. college debt may be a factor. I used to play tennis with a fellow who was a medical student and he said every single one of them borrowed the max amount. And he told me the number that the max amount was for that year and it was one of the most shocking bits of information I ever heard. I don't even want to look at what the number is now. If the first medical student hasn't accumulated a million dollar debt yet they probably are going to get there by 2030.
    , @GLT
    @mal


    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.
     
    But they were specified in gold backed currency. Am I missing something?

    Replies: @mal

  113. @Barbarossa
    @Dmitry

    At least the fellow with the bow was socially distanced. Knife attacks could spread Covid and are NOT socially responsible in these times. Kudos to Espen Andersen Bråthen for his consideration. Not really surprising since Norwegians are generally more conscientious than Brits.

    Good on them. All workers are essential workers.

    On a serious note, how credible is that last one on Taliban activating in Russia? I can't imagine that the Afghan Taliban would be remotely interested in being associated with that since it would alienate not only Russia but also China. The Taliban can't really afford to go slamming doors when they are in a worse position then when they were an insurgent force.
    I did an internet search and I couldn't find anything to corroborate the idea.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    In terms of nationality they are Tajiks and a Muslim convert, but they are described as Taliban members, and they were preparing IED attacks. So we can call them “Ekaterinburg Taliban”.

    A surprising aspect of the Taliban, is they have been living quite centrally in the city.

    Last year there was also the Islamic State in Ekaterinburg, that were all killed by the FSB, living in edges in South city.

    Within Ekaterinburg, apparently the Taliban are more fussy about real estate than ISIS.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Dmitry

    ISIS had bad experience with real estate during Mosul bombings etc, so can you really blame them?

  114. @Dmitry
    @Barbarossa

    In terms of nationality they are Tajiks and a Muslim convert, but they are described as Taliban members, and they were preparing IED attacks. So we can call them "Ekaterinburg Taliban".

    A surprising aspect of the Taliban, is they have been living quite centrally in the city.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXc1iq3UQ54

    Last year there was also the Islamic State in Ekaterinburg, that were all killed by the FSB, living in edges in South city.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tkb9mWaSynU

    Within Ekaterinburg, apparently the Taliban are more fussy about real estate than ISIS.

    Replies: @mal

    ISIS had bad experience with real estate during Mosul bombings etc, so can you really blame them?

  115. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Is that actually how it goes?
     
    This is precisely and exactly how it goes. In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don't live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes. Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that's who. I guess they don't teach this in econ classes, but that's the fundamental truth of life.

    Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency.
     
    LOL no. They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That's what "fiat" means, by definition. There is no such thing as "solvency". You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.

    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?

    You are not wrong though. What you are saying - "neoliberalism is superior to socialism because private commercial banking system enriching the rich and corporations is better for optimizing corporate efficiency and thus the output" is absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.

    Well, we are up to that debt level now, and sure, I fully support private sector initiative, but it's up to government now to step up and provide demand support. Like it has always done. Hopefully, without killing millions this time around.


    but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.
     
    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.

    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.

    And if the government doesn’t do too much “remedying”, the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.
     
    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?

    In the past, when banks were used to measure risk, sure. But today, why? Why should banks enjoy high interest rate? They most certainly don't measure risk anymore (they get bailed out). So why? Why have high cost of money that is an imaginary product? Why?

    Inflation is one reason, but I really don't see any other, and government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Emil Nikola Richard, @GLT

    In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes.

    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who.

    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition.

    Right, but that’s the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    There is no such thing as “solvency”.

    If you’re not on the government’s gravy train, there is. There’s also it’s obverse, insolvency.

    You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.

    Again, true for the politically connected. For everyone else, enjoy the the dilution (a.k.a., “inflation”).

    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.

    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?

    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.

    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?

    it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support.

    By … printing more money? And giving it to … whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    without killing millions this time around.

    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.

    That’s an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?

    They shouldn’t. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.

    Isn’t monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    Anyhow, fun as all this is, it’s not the original reason I replied to your comment, which was to clarify this:

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.

    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.
     
    Yep. Always has been. Welcome to the real world :)

    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.
     
    Again, absolutely correct. Now you can see why economics is easy when you strip it from bullshit.

    Right, but that’s the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.
     
    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector - they get to create whatever money they want. The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards. State, or banker fat cats? Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.

    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?
     
    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.

    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?
     
    I watch credit markets as a hobby, and 100% private debt to GDP is when I start making noises for state intervention. At 300% private sector debt to GDP, the need for state intervention becomes obvious to anybody with IQ above room temperature, and we are going to vastly higher ratios than that. By 2050, 500% private sector debt to GDP ratio will be perfectly normal. And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem. But state will have to be a part of the equation. Its inevitable.

    By … printing more money? And giving it to … whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

     

    Yep. Government has a duty to maintain corporate sales aka aggregate demand so that asset prices don't deviate too much from revenues. This means Universal Basic Income for the poors. Not to benefit the poors, but to maintain asset prices. That's how asset price mechanics work.

    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?
     
    WW2 definitely was. And so was WW1, and all other wars in history. Soldiers are simply Basic Income recipients, and government in wartime provides demand. Which is why war is so popular throughout history, but we really can do better once we are honest about the mechanism.

    That’s an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.
     
    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and "international investment community". Just like Weimar Germans did. Food farms are an entirely different question. In the real world, you seriously don't want to be a slave forever to "investment community", with infinite debt repayments. Both Zimbabweans and Germans understood that correctly.

    They shouldn’t. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    Welcome to the real world, that's how it has always been. State is always a part of the equation.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Barbarossa

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?
     
    It will drive demand and investment in the service sector which is the most important sector in developed economies.

    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that's like 80% of the entire economy. Russia is seriously underperforming in this respect, and budget deficit will help to close the gap.

    Replies: @utu, @Almost Missouri

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Isn’t monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?
     
    So sorry for multiple quotes, entirely my fault. New phone and so on.

    But thats an important point. Yes, monetary policy is a type of government power.

    And LOL you just lived through "other" power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -$40/barrel.

    That's the power the government can use to control inflation.

    This was a test run for WW3 preparations (so is current "energy shortage"), but generally, government has more tools than mere monetary policy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @Levtraro
    @Almost Missouri


    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?
     
    I am working on that question, it is a sideshow though, so it's progressing slowly.
  116. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes.
     
    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who.
     
    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition.
     
    Right, but that's the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    There is no such thing as “solvency”.
     
    If you're not on the government's gravy train, there is. There's also it's obverse, insolvency.

    You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.
     
    Again, true for the politically connected. For everyone else, enjoy the the dilution (a.k.a., "inflation").


    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?
     
    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.
     
    Obviously, I don't disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you've reached it?

    it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support.
     
    By ... printing more money? And giving it to ... whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    without killing millions this time around.
     
    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.
     
    That's an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe "smartly get out of" by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?
     
    They shouldn't. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.
     
    Isn't monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    Anyhow, fun as all this is, it's not the original reason I replied to your comment, which was to clarify this:

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    Replies: @mal, @mal, @mal, @Levtraro

    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Yep. Always has been. Welcome to the real world 🙂

    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    Again, absolutely correct. Now you can see why economics is easy when you strip it from bullshit.

    Right, but that’s the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector – they get to create whatever money they want. The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards. State, or banker fat cats? Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.

    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.

    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?

    I watch credit markets as a hobby, and 100% private debt to GDP is when I start making noises for state intervention. At 300% private sector debt to GDP, the need for state intervention becomes obvious to anybody with IQ above room temperature, and we are going to vastly higher ratios than that. By 2050, 500% private sector debt to GDP ratio will be perfectly normal. And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem. But state will have to be a part of the equation. Its inevitable.

    By … printing more money? And giving it to … whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    Yep. Government has a duty to maintain corporate sales aka aggregate demand so that asset prices don’t deviate too much from revenues. This means Universal Basic Income for the poors. Not to benefit the poors, but to maintain asset prices. That’s how asset price mechanics work.

    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    WW2 definitely was. And so was WW1, and all other wars in history. Soldiers are simply Basic Income recipients, and government in wartime provides demand. Which is why war is so popular throughout history, but we really can do better once we are honest about the mechanism.

    That’s an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and “international investment community”. Just like Weimar Germans did. Food farms are an entirely different question. In the real world, you seriously don’t want to be a slave forever to “investment community”, with infinite debt repayments. Both Zimbabweans and Germans understood that correctly.

    They shouldn’t. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    Welcome to the real world, that’s how it has always been. State is always a part of the equation.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.
     
    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector – they get to create whatever money they want.
     
    But if they give it to someone who doesn't pay it back, then they're effed. If the fiat government pisses away its money, though, it can just print more.

    The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards.
     
    Do we want the goal to be productive investment or infinite cronyism? Hmm.

    Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.
     
    The answer is easy for me, but for anyone who is a government crony, they might answer differently. But I agree that it is fundamental, so fundamental that it could form the basis of a civil war.


    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?
     
    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.
     
    Just a note on nomenclature, since I gather we are using slightly different terminology: when I say "banking cartel", I am referring to the crony pseudo-banks that exist off government fiat money, as opposed to (increasingly rare) real banks that have to balance their books, make productive loans, etc. The banking cartel get their money from the government fiat (i.e., mass dilution) operations. (Yes, they often have some legitimate banking operations as well, but let us not be deceived by their window dressing into mistaking their main activity.)

    And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem.
     
    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?

    But currently, the only macro-significant negative interest rates I am aware of is the negative interest rates that depositors "get" (i.e., pay) at the European central banks (i.e., crony fiat money presses).


    But state will have to be a part of the equation.
     
    The state already is a big part of the equation. Indeed, that's arguably why inflation is such a problem.

    Its inevitable.
     
    I don't know if it is or not, but it certainly is something of a self-licking ice-cream cone: demand government intervention to fix the distortions caused by government intervention.


    what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating?
     
    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and “international investment community”.
     
    Maybe they thought they would, but they didn't. They're still in debt, and begging for more. Their creditors are smart enough to demand repayment in real currency, not Zimbabwe dollars. Zimbabwe only hyperinflated their way out of having their own currency. The Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist.

    Just like Weimar Germans did.
     
    Eh, they didn't get out of it either. They were levied in gold. Germany only finished paying off the "reparations" in 2010, 91 years after they were levied.

    Brennus may have been a hard man, but he was much more honest than the Allied victors in the Word Wars.

    P.S. No worries about the separate replies. It's actually easier than one big reply.

    Replies: @mal

    , @Barbarossa
    @mal

    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.

    Considering that we have to have perpetual growth for the party to continue, it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.
    It seems a worthwhile point that the dynamics of the post industrial revolution world are a complete historical anomaly and not guaranteed to continue on a linear progressive track.
    I suppose some of this comes down to how much faith one has in the ability of technological progress to save our bacon. AK would doubtless have high faith, but I am much more skeptical.

    Replies: @mal

  117. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes.
     
    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who.
     
    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition.
     
    Right, but that's the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    There is no such thing as “solvency”.
     
    If you're not on the government's gravy train, there is. There's also it's obverse, insolvency.

    You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.
     
    Again, true for the politically connected. For everyone else, enjoy the the dilution (a.k.a., "inflation").


    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?
     
    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.
     
    Obviously, I don't disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you've reached it?

    it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support.
     
    By ... printing more money? And giving it to ... whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    without killing millions this time around.
     
    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.
     
    That's an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe "smartly get out of" by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?
     
    They shouldn't. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.
     
    Isn't monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    Anyhow, fun as all this is, it's not the original reason I replied to your comment, which was to clarify this:

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    Replies: @mal, @mal, @mal, @Levtraro

    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    It will drive demand and investment in the service sector which is the most important sector in developed economies.

    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that’s like 80% of the entire economy. Russia is seriously underperforming in this respect, and budget deficit will help to close the gap.

    • Replies: @utu
    @mal


    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders.
     
    Do you really want to put a middle man between this consumer and his bottle? What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?

    https://i.ibb.co/dkc3fnh/Jobcreation.png

    Replies: @mal

    , @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that’s like 80% of the entire economy.
     
    That may be true, but it is not necessarily commendable. If 80% of your economy is bureaucrats buying toxic drinks to piss them out a few hours later, then 80% of your economy is bullsh*t, and you would be no worse off if that 80% disappeared.

    I recognize that on paper this kind of thing drives up the all-holy GDP, but such GDP fetishism is as deluded as a car owner saying, "my engine RPMs are way up, so I must be reaching my destinations much faster" while his transmission is slipping, or a homeowner saying, "My house is freezing! If I could just make the reading on this thermometer be higher then everything would be fine!" while breathing on the thermometer bulb to raise the "temperature".

    It is entirely possible to log transactions that create no value or even destroy value. But this obvious fact at micro-scale is somehow lost at macro-scale because in GDP-universe everything is recorded at |absolute value| so macroeconomists are congenitally unable to distinguish between value creation and value destruction. It is almost a form of psychosis.

    "GDP just doubled because everyone bought poison to kill their neighbor. Things are great!"
    —Macroeconomists

    If Russia is wise, it will not follow the West down the shaded path of GDP worship.

    Replies: @mal

  118. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?
     
    It will drive demand and investment in the service sector which is the most important sector in developed economies.

    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that's like 80% of the entire economy. Russia is seriously underperforming in this respect, and budget deficit will help to close the gap.

    Replies: @utu, @Almost Missouri

    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders.

    Do you really want to put a middle man between this consumer and his bottle? What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?

    • Replies: @mal
    @utu


    What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?
     
    No such thing. State of course must encourage private initiative but fundamentally in a nation, we are all in this together, and so the state has the duty to the less fortunate. And of course, in return, state has the right to request certain services from the less fortunate. Nothing evil or impossible, but if the state provides for your well being, it is well within state's right to ask for a modest service in return. Like clean your street or something. Basically, we don't want the poors starving, but we don't want to end up with Camden, New Jersey everywhere either.

    I respect libertarian worldview, but it ultimately covers the >100 IQ crowd. Which is fine, but those people will always be OK. The biggest problem for any society is what to do with <100 IQ citizens. And no, we are not going to genocide them. Both the smart people and the stupid people need to know that their real allegiance and duty is to the state. And that the state knows it has both duties and privileges, clearly outlined, with respect to the people. Basically, state must work to maximize both corporate freedom and comfort levels for the less fortunate. And in return, of course, state has the right to demand modest services from the people.

    Again, remember, we are all in this together, with our duties and privileges as it befits a nation, nobody should be excluded, for better or worse. None of this "self sufficiency" nonsense.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Triteleia Laxa

  119. @utu
    @mal


    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders.
     
    Do you really want to put a middle man between this consumer and his bottle? What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?

    https://i.ibb.co/dkc3fnh/Jobcreation.png

    Replies: @mal

    What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?

    No such thing. State of course must encourage private initiative but fundamentally in a nation, we are all in this together, and so the state has the duty to the less fortunate. And of course, in return, state has the right to request certain services from the less fortunate. Nothing evil or impossible, but if the state provides for your well being, it is well within state’s right to ask for a modest service in return. Like clean your street or something. Basically, we don’t want the poors starving, but we don’t want to end up with Camden, New Jersey everywhere either.

    I respect libertarian worldview, but it ultimately covers the >100 IQ crowd. Which is fine, but those people will always be OK. The biggest problem for any society is what to do with <100 IQ citizens. And no, we are not going to genocide them. Both the smart people and the stupid people need to know that their real allegiance and duty is to the state. And that the state knows it has both duties and privileges, clearly outlined, with respect to the people. Basically, state must work to maximize both corporate freedom and comfort levels for the less fortunate. And in return, of course, state has the right to demand modest services from the people.

    Again, remember, we are all in this together, with our duties and privileges as it befits a nation, nobody should be excluded, for better or worse. None of this "self sufficiency" nonsense.

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @mal

    So, basically the state is your God & you're condemning yourself to be defeated by any religious people
    Whether, Catholics, SJW, Islam etc.

    Did you know the 17th C is over??
    Nationalism is fake & gay, also dead.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    , @Triteleia Laxa
    @mal

    Your comments on this thread are really good. People should try their best to understand them. The observations on money and the economy are spot on, while noticing that "in the real world" everyone was always in it together in a way, and that there will be no genocide of the less able, is critical to understanding. I particularly like your point that we should be honest about the previous purpose of the big wars and therefore find a way to achieve the same thing, but with far less suffering.

    I always liked libertarian economics. Partly because I have no reason nor desire to take from others, but, just as importantly, because things like the non-aggression principle would assert my own boundaries when I was loathe to do so directly and more generally. My attachment to such definitions of right and wrong weakened as I learned to not always accept other people's burdens.

    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?

    Also thanks.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

  120. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes.
     
    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who.
     
    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition.
     
    Right, but that's the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    There is no such thing as “solvency”.
     
    If you're not on the government's gravy train, there is. There's also it's obverse, insolvency.

    You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.
     
    Again, true for the politically connected. For everyone else, enjoy the the dilution (a.k.a., "inflation").


    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?
     
    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.
     
    Obviously, I don't disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you've reached it?

    it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support.
     
    By ... printing more money? And giving it to ... whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    without killing millions this time around.
     
    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.
     
    That's an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe "smartly get out of" by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?
     
    They shouldn't. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.
     
    Isn't monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    Anyhow, fun as all this is, it's not the original reason I replied to your comment, which was to clarify this:

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    Replies: @mal, @mal, @mal, @Levtraro

    Isn’t monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    So sorry for multiple quotes, entirely my fault. New phone and so on.

    But thats an important point. Yes, monetary policy is a type of government power.

    And LOL you just lived through “other” power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -\$40/barrel.

    That’s the power the government can use to control inflation.

    This was a test run for WW3 preparations (so is current “energy shortage”), but generally, government has more tools than mere monetary policy.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    you just lived through “other” power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -$40/barrel.
     
    Okay, but

    1) governments didn't "shut down the economy" (more accurately, restrict certain types of commerce) to control inflation. They did it to control a virus.

    2) The restrictions' effects on prices were varied. Some prices went down (oil). Some prices went up (construction materials).

    3) Among the commodities whose prices went down, they soon went back up, and typically higher than they were before, so even if the restrictions were intended to control inflation, their "success" was only very scattered and only very temporary, which is to say, they didn't really work.

    4) Meanwhile, whatever happened in the early months of 2020, prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy (in this case, incontinent money printing), so it still looks like money printing is the main thing—and perhaps only thing—that matters for inflation, which shouldn't be too surprising since "inflation" literally means that the money supply has outstripped the assets that it is supposed to represent.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

  121. @mal
    @utu


    What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?
     
    No such thing. State of course must encourage private initiative but fundamentally in a nation, we are all in this together, and so the state has the duty to the less fortunate. And of course, in return, state has the right to request certain services from the less fortunate. Nothing evil or impossible, but if the state provides for your well being, it is well within state's right to ask for a modest service in return. Like clean your street or something. Basically, we don't want the poors starving, but we don't want to end up with Camden, New Jersey everywhere either.

    I respect libertarian worldview, but it ultimately covers the >100 IQ crowd. Which is fine, but those people will always be OK. The biggest problem for any society is what to do with <100 IQ citizens. And no, we are not going to genocide them. Both the smart people and the stupid people need to know that their real allegiance and duty is to the state. And that the state knows it has both duties and privileges, clearly outlined, with respect to the people. Basically, state must work to maximize both corporate freedom and comfort levels for the less fortunate. And in return, of course, state has the right to demand modest services from the people.

    Again, remember, we are all in this together, with our duties and privileges as it befits a nation, nobody should be excluded, for better or worse. None of this "self sufficiency" nonsense.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Triteleia Laxa

    So, basically the state is your God & you’re condemning yourself to be defeated by any religious people
    Whether, Catholics, SJW, Islam etc.

    Did you know the 17th C is over??
    Nationalism is fake & gay, also dead.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  122. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don’t live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes.
     
    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.

    Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that’s who.
     
    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.

    They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That’s what “fiat” means, by definition.
     
    Right, but that's the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    There is no such thing as “solvency”.
     
    If you're not on the government's gravy train, there is. There's also it's obverse, insolvency.

    You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.
     
    Again, true for the politically connected. For everyone else, enjoy the the dilution (a.k.a., "inflation").


    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?
     
    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.
     
    Obviously, I don't disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you've reached it?

    it’s up to government now to step up and provide demand support.
     
    By ... printing more money? And giving it to ... whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

    without killing millions this time around.
     
    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?

    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.
     
    That's an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe "smartly get out of" by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.

    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?
     
    They shouldn't. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.
     
    Isn't monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?

    Anyhow, fun as all this is, it's not the original reason I replied to your comment, which was to clarify this:

    So without state providing credit (via budget deficit) to the private sector, Russia will be doomed to suboptimal GDP growth rate, and state will not be able to realize it’s full potential.
     
    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?

    Replies: @mal, @mal, @mal, @Levtraro

    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?

    I am working on that question, it is a sideshow though, so it’s progressing slowly.

  123. Discord is absolutely the best option imho. Been using it for anime-related stuff.

    • Disagree: Yevardian
  124. @Ron Unz

    Mr. Unz,

    Response here to avoid unnecessary clutter in AK’s “goodbye” thread.

    how easily bioweapons can get out of hand in unexpected ways,

    Why believe the behaviour is unexpected?

    — It is much more likely that world wide spread was a FEATURE, not a bug.
    — Selecting a highly mutable virus that can justify BigPharma booster shots… Also, a FEATURE, not a bug.

    One can listen to the wind and hear the impending BigPharma Establishment marketing campaign — Have you had this year’s Corona-λ booster? Do not worry, medical professionals are already working on boosters for Corona-µ, Corona-ʊ, Corona-θ… to keep you safe and frequently injected.

    Under my analysis, Covid epidemic was probably released by faction of the right-Neocons, who really aren’t that distant from the left-Neocons current running our government. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have our government run by the same sort of people who unleashed Covid

    Why believe that the Anti-American rogue operation was limited to U.S. residents?

    An array of much simpler options becomes available when the goal is, “attacking both Trump2020 and China”. Trump had many enemies in Europe and Asia as well as America. It is not unreasonable to believe that China-based Trump enemies were also involved. This makes an intentional release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] highly plausible.

    There are documented ties between:
        • U.S. based Trump haters
        • NIH sponsored Coronavirus research
        • China’s WIV

    Why insist on an elusive, complex, shadowy conspiracy when an openly admitted conspiracy can fill the role?

    America seems headed straight off a cliff right now, in numerous different ways. … We’ve suffered around a million dead from Covid

    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions. Their premature departure while sad is Largely an acceleration of the inevitable.

    We cannot know for sure until after well after the fact. However, I feel comfortable predicting a survival bonus “Death Deficit” over the next 3-5 years that will mathematically net has out almost all of the “Excess Deaths”.

    a total disruption of our society.

    Scientific reality shows that most of the disruption is unnecessary.

    Children rarely catch WUHAN-19. And, recover quickly. Forcing children to wear masks is intentional & malicious disruption to bolster science denial and fear mongering.

    The extremist “Manda-Vaxxers” have run head long in to scientifically well grounded “Vaxx-Realism”. Why take an experimental vaccine, when there are scientifically sound reasons not to? Examples include (but are not limited to):

    -1- Near zero death rate for those who are younger and have no pre-existing conditions.
    -2- Having lived through the disease, already have near total resistance from immune system function.
    -3- Can usually be effectively treated using inexpensive, over the counter medicines such as HCQ and “horse paste” Ivermectin.
    ___

    Disruption is made much worse by government insistence on “Manda-vaxx” science denial. Firing high quality staff, who are science realists, makes no economic sense. It further cripples & disrupts the economy in already short staffed fields.

    Serious crime, especially homicides, have increased at the highest rate ever recorded. Last year, 200 of our cities suffered unprecedented waves of rioting, looting, and burning, the worst in at least two generations. Ideological conflict has almost never been this bitter in the past, with a substantial fraction of the population believing that the last election was stolen.

    All of a which is 100% caused by the SJW Globalist DNC.

    Before MAGA, the American people were genuinely stuck. Their options were SJW/DNC versus Globalist/GOP. Which is worse, racial agitators versus MegaCorporations?

    The political realignment that Trump brought is a 100+ year magnitude event. The MAGA GOP is now “The Workers Party”.. Admittedly, it is still work in progress to make it stick. Swamp critters like Liz Cheney still need to be sent home in shame & disrepute.

    Even more important — All of the plagues targeting Worker Citizens are lining up with the DNC. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now supporting Democrats. NeoCons, like Bill Kristol, have returned to their roots as NeoConDemocrats. And, of course enemies of traditional Judeo-Christian values remain DNC.

    MAGA GOP candidates get to run against Wall Street Rainbows.
      

    The correct emblem for MAGA is not the Lion. MAGA is the PHOENIX rising from the ashes that the DNC have created by burning cities.

      

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1)
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2020/08/28/the-bloom-is-off-the-ruse-tom-donohue-and-u-s-chamber-of-commerce-announce-support-for-far-left-democrats-in-2020/

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @A123


    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions. .
     
    Also they were mostly white and Republican.

    Their premature departure while sad is Largely an acceleration of the inevitable.
     
    ...largely acceleration of inevitable white christian voter replacement - truly stable genius idea of killing your own voters faster while having relatively razor thin election margins in some crucial places ;)

    Replies: @A123

  125. I find it remarkable that Tyson Fury is 6’9″.

    Would not have thought Irish Travellers have a big enough genepool to catch all those variants, or that they could be found among an endogamous, low class people.

  126. @Barbarossa
    @Truth


    Well, that IS a dude
     
    Huh. As soon as I saw that you replied to A123 I KNEW you were going to say that. Must be that the old ESP is gettin' strong these days...

    I suppose that adds a whole extra wrinkle to Thomm's line of questioning. Does Gal Godot then represent a kind of... cutting of the Gordian knot in your mind?

    Replies: @A123

    Given that there are photos of Gal Gadot in yoga pants [MORE].

    Hip structure definitely female. No place to hide the proverbial “meat & two veg”. Etcetera.

    Raising questions about Michelle Obama (no pictures provided) is one thing.

    But Gal Gadot? I am not seeing it. If you force me to keep reexamining her pictures, I guess I will have to suffer through repeated viewing…. For science… Not enjoyment… Really, I am not enjoying this….

    OK… I can not tell a lie… I am enjoying this….

    PEACE 😇

    [MORE]

     
     
     

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    No worries. I don't think that Gal Godot is a man in the least.

    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I'm not sure there are any non tranny women. Also tying into Thomm's rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
    It was intended satirically.

    Replies: @A123, @Truth

    , @Truth
    @A123


    Hip structure definitely female. No place to hide the proverbial “meat & two veg”. Etcetera.
     
    LMAO, that's because they've been removed before he ever hit puberty, Old Sport. The more things change...

    - A castrati promised fame and fortune for a family. Parents sought out surgeons or completed the procedure themselves; at the height of the castrati in the early 18th century, around 4,000 boys were castrated each year (Pleasants, 38).

     

    Effects & Physical Marks
    "The castrato represented a theatrical Imitation of the erotically charged boy" (Freitas, 214).

    -Retained high boyish voice; a boy's larynx inside a man's body
    -Did not develop an Adam's apple
    - Grew unnaturally tall; very long arms and legs

    -Enlarged chest cavity: "his lung capacity and diaphragmatic support would b augmented to an extraordinary degree, enabling him to sustain the emission of breath in the projection of tone up to a minute or more...beyond the ability of most normal adult singers" (Pleasants, 42).
    -Pale complexion
    -Beardless

    -Soft, feminine body due to abnormal fat disposition in the breasts, hips and thighs

     

    https://bodyofthecastrati.weebly.com/il-castrato.html
  127. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Is that actually how it goes?
     
    This is precisely and exactly how it goes. In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don't live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes. Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that's who. I guess they don't teach this in econ classes, but that's the fundamental truth of life.

    Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency.
     
    LOL no. They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That's what "fiat" means, by definition. There is no such thing as "solvency". You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.

    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?

    You are not wrong though. What you are saying - "neoliberalism is superior to socialism because private commercial banking system enriching the rich and corporations is better for optimizing corporate efficiency and thus the output" is absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.

    Well, we are up to that debt level now, and sure, I fully support private sector initiative, but it's up to government now to step up and provide demand support. Like it has always done. Hopefully, without killing millions this time around.


    but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.
     
    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.

    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.

    And if the government doesn’t do too much “remedying”, the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.
     
    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?

    In the past, when banks were used to measure risk, sure. But today, why? Why should banks enjoy high interest rate? They most certainly don't measure risk anymore (they get bailed out). So why? Why have high cost of money that is an imaginary product? Why?

    Inflation is one reason, but I really don't see any other, and government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Emil Nikola Richard, @GLT

    I guess they don’t teach this in econ classes, but that’s the fundamental truth of life.

    1. when I was a college freshman our economics professor told us this at first class. His phrase was fixed in all our minds and I can still recall his voice intonation

    “Do you know what money is? It is marks in bankers’ books.”

    He was almost the most entertaining lecturer ever and the TA was a Marxist and confided to us that all the TA’s hated the prof. Years later he had a soundbite joke on NPR.

    “Do you know how a doctor describes a healthy patient? One who hasn’t gotten a complete workup yet.”

    The topology of those jokes appears isomorphic to me but comedy defies analysis so we can’t be too confident.

    2. college debt may be a factor. I used to play tennis with a fellow who was a medical student and he said every single one of them borrowed the max amount. And he told me the number that the max amount was for that year and it was one of the most shocking bits of information I ever heard. I don’t even want to look at what the number is now. If the first medical student hasn’t accumulated a million dollar debt yet they probably are going to get there by 2030.

    • Agree: mal
  128. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    Given that there are photos of Gal Gadot in yoga pants [MORE].

    Hip structure definitely female. No place to hide the proverbial "meat & two veg". Etcetera.

    Raising questions about Michelle Obama (no pictures provided) is one thing.

    But Gal Gadot? I am not seeing it. If you force me to keep reexamining her pictures, I guess I will have to suffer through repeated viewing.... For science... Not enjoyment... Really, I am not enjoying this....

    OK... I can not tell a lie... I am enjoying this....

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/1f/f9/ff1ff9a44aa8d5e12ac3aa0a62cc8139.png

     
    https://static1.therichestimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/gal-gadot-2-e1495833513252.jpg

     
    https://celebjihad.com/celeb-jihad/images/gal_gadot_pussy_abs_bikini.jpg

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Truth

    No worries. I don’t think that Gal Godot is a man in the least.

    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I’m not sure there are any non tranny women. Also tying into Thomm’s rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
    It was intended satirically.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa

    I probably should have replied to Thomm, not you.

    I am a trifle perplexed. How can he post a question about Jewish woman while denying they exist?

    PEACE 😇

    , @Truth
    @Barbarossa


    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I’m not sure there are any non tranny women.
     
    Poke me? LOL, I'm not the one lusting after dudes.

    Also tying into Thomm’s rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
     
    You still didn't answer the question, Old Sport; Plate of raw oysters and a stack of porn in a beautiful hotel room, who are you inviting up for an amorous evening, Matt Damon or Candace Owens?

    Replies: @A123, @Barbarossa

  129. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    No worries. I don't think that Gal Godot is a man in the least.

    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I'm not sure there are any non tranny women. Also tying into Thomm's rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
    It was intended satirically.

    Replies: @A123, @Truth

    I probably should have replied to Thomm, not you.

    I am a trifle perplexed. How can he post a question about Jewish woman while denying they exist?

    PEACE 😇

  130. Would like to see the PSAT/SAT/LSAT/GMAT etc., etc. taken over and put under more benevelant leadership.

    First of all, force them to include TFR stats about women completing different degrees. Then include info about dysgenics and fertility drop off. Hit the high percentile achievers with the message that they should have more kids, and more schooling isn’t necessarily the right way to achieve that.

    Bring back analogies and use them for propaganda.

    Hit high performing immigrants with messages about brain drain and how they should assist in developing their native countries.

  131. 😂 Open Thread Humor 😁

    As we have been granted a reprieve….

    [MORE] funnies.

    PEACE 😇

     
     

    [MORE]

     
     
     
     
     
     

  132. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    Given that there are photos of Gal Gadot in yoga pants [MORE].

    Hip structure definitely female. No place to hide the proverbial "meat & two veg". Etcetera.

    Raising questions about Michelle Obama (no pictures provided) is one thing.

    But Gal Gadot? I am not seeing it. If you force me to keep reexamining her pictures, I guess I will have to suffer through repeated viewing.... For science... Not enjoyment... Really, I am not enjoying this....

    OK... I can not tell a lie... I am enjoying this....

    PEACE 😇

     
    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ff/1f/f9/ff1ff9a44aa8d5e12ac3aa0a62cc8139.png

     
    https://static1.therichestimages.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/gal-gadot-2-e1495833513252.jpg

     
    https://celebjihad.com/celeb-jihad/images/gal_gadot_pussy_abs_bikini.jpg

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Truth

    Hip structure definitely female. No place to hide the proverbial “meat & two veg”. Etcetera.

    LMAO, that’s because they’ve been removed before he ever hit puberty, Old Sport. The more things change…

    – A castrati promised fame and fortune for a family. Parents sought out surgeons or completed the procedure themselves; at the height of the castrati in the early 18th century, around 4,000 boys were castrated each year (Pleasants, 38).

    Effects & Physical Marks
    “The castrato represented a theatrical Imitation of the erotically charged boy” (Freitas, 214).

    -Retained high boyish voice; a boy’s larynx inside a man’s body
    -Did not develop an Adam’s apple
    – Grew unnaturally tall; very long arms and legs

    -Enlarged chest cavity: “his lung capacity and diaphragmatic support would b augmented to an extraordinary degree, enabling him to sustain the emission of breath in the projection of tone up to a minute or more…beyond the ability of most normal adult singers” (Pleasants, 42).
    -Pale complexion
    -Beardless

    -Soft, feminine body due to abnormal fat disposition in the breasts, hips and thighs

    https://bodyofthecastrati.weebly.com/il-castrato.html

  133. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    No worries. I don't think that Gal Godot is a man in the least.

    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I'm not sure there are any non tranny women. Also tying into Thomm's rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
    It was intended satirically.

    Replies: @A123, @Truth

    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I’m not sure there are any non tranny women.

    Poke me? LOL, I’m not the one lusting after dudes.

    Also tying into Thomm’s rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.

    You still didn’t answer the question, Old Sport; Plate of raw oysters and a stack of porn in a beautiful hotel room, who are you inviting up for an amorous evening, Matt Damon or Candace Owens?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Truth

    Candace Owens? Why use her as an example?

    If you want to pose the question, spread the reach a little wider and you can find 1/2 African, Emanuela De Paula from Brazil.

    I would try to say that I will not enjoy adding Emanuela De Paula pictures under [MORE] -- But it would be a lie.
    ____

    The most interest looking actress I can think of (from ~10 years ago) is Dichen Lachman. Born in Kathmandu, Nepal, to a Tibetan mother and Australian father.

     
    https://healthyceleb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dichen-Lachman-as-seen-in-September-2020.jpg



    Emanuela De Paula

     
    https://media.giphy.com/media/10HOXSpviXOKOc/giphy.gif

     
    https://www.12thblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Emanuela-de-Paula-36.jpg

     
    https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/5795710/740full-emanuela-de-paula.jpg

    Replies: @Truth

    , @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    -adjusts monocle-
    Look here Old Sport, while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, "dusky races" as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
    Good Lord!

    Replies: @Thomm, @Truth, @Truth

  134. Singapore is doomed to be an IQ shredder, until they fully harness the power of the atom.

  135. One of my posts in this thread was still not approved, and disappeared in the spam folder.

    AK has provided such an excellent moderation all these years.

    Sadly I guess he is in moving office stage, and the new moderation will go much more slow?

    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @Dmitry

    Checked, not in spam or deleted. There was a site update earlier today; that might have eaten the comment, unfortunately.

    Replies: @Max Demian

  136. @Truth
    @Barbarossa


    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I’m not sure there are any non tranny women.
     
    Poke me? LOL, I'm not the one lusting after dudes.

    Also tying into Thomm’s rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
     
    You still didn't answer the question, Old Sport; Plate of raw oysters and a stack of porn in a beautiful hotel room, who are you inviting up for an amorous evening, Matt Damon or Candace Owens?

    Replies: @A123, @Barbarossa

    Candace Owens? Why use her as an example?

    If you want to pose the question, spread the reach a little wider and you can find 1/2 African, Emanuela De Paula from Brazil.

    I would try to say that I will not enjoy adding Emanuela De Paula pictures under [MORE] — But it would be a lie.
    ____

    The most interest looking actress I can think of (from ~10 years ago) is Dichen Lachman. Born in Kathmandu, Nepal, to a Tibetan mother and Australian father.

     

    [MORE]

    Emanuela De Paula

     

     

     

    • Replies: @Truth
    @A123

    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I'd have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.

    I mean, I don't find Rosie O'donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, "Rosie, turn off all of the lights so I can think about someone else and I hope you know how to give head to get me started."

    Replies: @Thomm, @nebulafox, @A123

  137. @A123
    @Ron Unz

    Mr. Unz,

    Response here to avoid unnecessary clutter in AK's "goodbye" thread.


    how easily bioweapons can get out of hand in unexpected ways,

     

    Why believe the behaviour is unexpected?

    -- It is much more likely that world wide spread was a FEATURE, not a bug.
    -- Selecting a highly mutable virus that can justify BigPharma booster shots... Also, a FEATURE, not a bug.

    One can listen to the wind and hear the impending BigPharma Establishment marketing campaign -- Have you had this year's Corona-λ booster? Do not worry, medical professionals are already working on boosters for Corona-µ, Corona-ʊ, Corona-θ... to keep you safe and frequently injected.


    Under my analysis, Covid epidemic was probably released by faction of the right-Neocons, who really aren’t that distant from the left-Neocons current running our government. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to have our government run by the same sort of people who unleashed Covid
     
    Why believe that the Anti-American rogue operation was limited to U.S. residents?

    An array of much simpler options becomes available when the goal is, "attacking both Trump2020 and China". Trump had many enemies in Europe and Asia as well as America. It is not unreasonable to believe that China-based Trump enemies were also involved. This makes an intentional release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology [WIV] highly plausible.

    There are documented ties between:
        • U.S. based Trump haters
        • NIH sponsored Coronavirus research
        • China's WIV

    Why insist on an elusive, complex, shadowy conspiracy when an openly admitted conspiracy can fill the role?


    America seems headed straight off a cliff right now, in numerous different ways. ... We’ve suffered around a million dead from Covid
     
    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions. Their premature departure while sad is Largely an acceleration of the inevitable.

    We cannot know for sure until after well after the fact. However, I feel comfortable predicting a survival bonus "Death Deficit" over the next 3-5 years that will mathematically net has out almost all of the "Excess Deaths".


    a total disruption of our society.
     
    Scientific reality shows that most of the disruption is unnecessary.

    Children rarely catch WUHAN-19. And, recover quickly. Forcing children to wear masks is intentional & malicious disruption to bolster science denial and fear mongering.

    The extremist "Manda-Vaxxers" have run head long in to scientifically well grounded "Vaxx-Realism". Why take an experimental vaccine, when there are scientifically sound reasons not to? Examples include (but are not limited to):

    -1- Near zero death rate for those who are younger and have no pre-existing conditions.
    -2- Having lived through the disease, already have near total resistance from immune system function.
    -3- Can usually be effectively treated using inexpensive, over the counter medicines such as HCQ and "horse paste" Ivermectin.
    ___

    Disruption is made much worse by government insistence on "Manda-vaxx" science denial. Firing high quality staff, who are science realists, makes no economic sense. It further cripples & disrupts the economy in already short staffed fields.


    Serious crime, especially homicides, have increased at the highest rate ever recorded. Last year, 200 of our cities suffered unprecedented waves of rioting, looting, and burning, the worst in at least two generations. Ideological conflict has almost never been this bitter in the past, with a substantial fraction of the population believing that the last election was stolen.
     
    All of a which is 100% caused by the SJW Globalist DNC.

    Before MAGA, the American people were genuinely stuck. Their options were SJW/DNC versus Globalist/GOP. Which is worse, racial agitators versus MegaCorporations?

    The political realignment that Trump brought is a 100+ year magnitude event. The MAGA GOP is now "The Workers Party".. Admittedly, it is still work in progress to make it stick. Swamp critters like Liz Cheney still need to be sent home in shame & disrepute.

    Even more important -- All of the plagues targeting Worker Citizens are lining up with the DNC. The U.S. Chamber of Commerce is now supporting Democrats. NeoCons, like Bill Kristol, have returned to their roots as NeoConDemocrats. And, of course enemies of traditional Judeo-Christian values remain DNC.

    MAGA GOP candidates get to run against Wall Street Rainbows.
     
    https://gaycitynews.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/ChasePrideIS.jpg
     

    The correct emblem for MAGA is not the Lion. MAGA is the PHOENIX rising from the ashes that the DNC have created by burning cities.

     
    http://dreamstop.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/phoenix-dreams.jpg
     

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1)
    https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2020/08/28/the-bloom-is-off-the-ruse-tom-donohue-and-u-s-chamber-of-commerce-announce-support-for-far-left-democrats-in-2020/

    Replies: @sudden death

    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions. .

    Also they were mostly white and Republican.

    Their premature departure while sad is Largely an acceleration of the inevitable.

    …largely acceleration of inevitable white christian voter replacement – truly stable genius idea of killing your own voters faster while having relatively razor thin election margins in some crucial places 😉

    • Replies: @A123
    @sudden death



    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions.
     
    Also they were mostly white and Republican.
     
    ROTFL,

    Thank you for your unhinged, #NeverTrump, pro-Biden, Leftoid fantasy rant.

    Now for the facts. "African-Americans" are the:
        • Least vaccinated community
        • Highest preexisting conditions community

    Total Leftoid detachment from science & fact, presages massive MAGA victories in the future.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

  138. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Is that actually how it goes?
     
    This is precisely and exactly how it goes. In all economies based on fiat currency which is the entire real world. Yes, in libertarian fantasies of sound money this arithmetic breaks down, but we don't live in sound currency world (for good reasons), so in reality, this is exactly how it goes. Money has no meaning beyond faith (aka credit) people assign to it. And who assigns meaning to life? Credit markets, that's who. I guess they don't teach this in econ classes, but that's the fundamental truth of life.

    Any bank can provide credit (up to its fractional reserve limit). The catch is that the credit has to go the actually creditworthy, or else the bank loses money, reputation, and ultimately solvency.
     
    LOL no. They just lower interest rates if insolvent are politically important. And there is no limit, they can make it all up as they go along, as long as you believe it. That's what "fiat" means, by definition. There is no such thing as "solvency". You get bailed out with more fiat if you run into trouble. Again, just print it, no worries, its all about politics and power anyway.

    By contrast, government fiat money is essentially a credit counterfeiting operation disguised as something necessary. It just arbitrarily enriches whomever the government gives the fresh money to by diluting everyone else.
     
    LOL, as opposed to private commercial banking cartel enriching their cronies?

    You are not wrong though. What you are saying - "neoliberalism is superior to socialism because private commercial banking system enriching the rich and corporations is better for optimizing corporate efficiency and thus the output" is absolutely true.. up to a certain private sector debt to GDP level.

    Well, we are up to that debt level now, and sure, I fully support private sector initiative, but it's up to government now to step up and provide demand support. Like it has always done. Hopefully, without killing millions this time around.


    but if it goes full Zimbabwe it not only fails to enrich its cronies, it destroys the larger economy as well.
     
    Zimbabwe did nothing wrong. Well, hyperinflation wise. They did do wrong like a decade prior when they wrecked their supply chains by confiscating white farmer land, but that was a different error. Once that (confiscation) error was made, hyperinflation was the only smart way out.

    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.

    And if the government doesn’t do too much “remedying”, the real banks should enjoy high interest rates, which will imminently solve their lack of capital problem.
     
    In the modern world, can somebody please explain to me why banks should enjoy high levels of interest income relative to the general economy?

    In the past, when banks were used to measure risk, sure. But today, why? Why should banks enjoy high interest rate? They most certainly don't measure risk anymore (they get bailed out). So why? Why have high cost of money that is an imaginary product? Why?

    Inflation is one reason, but I really don't see any other, and government power is a far better inflationary control mechanism than monetary policy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Emil Nikola Richard, @GLT

    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.

    But they were specified in gold backed currency. Am I missing something?

    • Replies: @mal
    @GLT

    They were printing money to buy gold and whatever other hard assets they could on the open market. And then used that to make payments to the "Allies".

    The "Allies", the British and and French, were then forced to pay back the loans that the American Banks made to help British and French fund weapons purchases during the war. This wasn't very nice or even "ally" thing to do as usually those loans were restructured and/or forgiven.

    At the time when even Soviet Russia was under gold standard, losing your gold meant losing your economy. Net result was:

    1. Germans lost their gold and hyperinflated.
    2. British and French Empires received a backstabbing mortal blow from the Americans from which they never recovered. That was the end of European supremacy in global affairs.
    3. Americans literally made a killing and became a superpower with all that gold. The amount of gold on deposit in the newly minted Federal Reserve system increased from like 500 tons in 1913 to something like 3000 tons by 1923. And keep in mind in 1913, America was not a poor country. Basically, that money is what got "Roaring 20's" party started in the US.

  139. Gave Peter F. Hamilton another shot. Quickly ran into this line, describing the first two characters introduced:

    Peter was thirty-five, a metre eighty tall, with skin actually darker than her own deep ebony. He worked in the university mathematics department…

    Which is the exact sort of stuff that caused me to quit the last sci-fi book that I read. Don’t read many genres, but I suspect modern sci-fi has the most intense color signaling, by far. Exactly, why that is, is an interesting question.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird

    Which Peter F. Hamilton book? All three (4?) "Greg Mandel" series books are universally regarded as awful.

    Much of Hamilton's universe encompasses extremely advanced TransHuman technology. Gold is not a euphemism for yellow. Gold is metallic gold.


    Gore knelt in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms. His eyes peered out intently from the gold skin mask that was his face. 'You have to get to Makkathran.'
     
    If someone is described as having black skin. That normally means true obsidion or onyx. It is a fashion choice, not an implied ethnicity. Any individual who is "Higher" goes through total physiological & neurological reprofiling and optimisation. (1)

    2872 -- Start of human Higher culture, biononic enrichment allowing a society of slow-paced long life, rejection of commercial economics and old political ideologies.
    2880 -- Development of weapons biononics.
    2913 -- Earth begins absorption of 'mature' humans into ANA, the inward migration begins.
    2934 -- Knights Guardian adopt Higher biononic technology.
     
    For the most part it genuinely is post-racial. Not to make a racial statement. Advanced bionic/nanonic TransHuman technology has overwhelmed and crushed the concept of race.

    While a bit grim, the Night's Dawn series is more accessible. [MORE]

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://peterfhamilton.fandom.com/wiki/Commonwealth_Universe_Timeline

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VO4J0I

    Replies: @songbird

  140. @sudden death
    @A123


    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions. .
     
    Also they were mostly white and Republican.

    Their premature departure while sad is Largely an acceleration of the inevitable.
     
    ...largely acceleration of inevitable white christian voter replacement - truly stable genius idea of killing your own voters faster while having relatively razor thin election margins in some crucial places ;)

    Replies: @A123

    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions.

    Also they were mostly white and Republican.

    ROTFL,

    Thank you for your unhinged, #NeverTrump, pro-Biden, Leftoid fantasy rant.

    Now for the facts. “African-Americans” are the:
        • Least vaccinated community
        • Highest preexisting conditions community

    Total Leftoid detachment from science & fact, presages massive MAGA victories in the future.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @A123


    Now for the facts. “African-Americans” are the:
    • Least vaccinated community
    • Highest preexisting conditions community
     
    haha, you just managed quietly to miss the fact what percentage of all voting "retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions" in USA are African Americans ;)

    ...but the very fact of mentioning low vaccination rate as a negative fact from a MAGA fan is quite encouraging.

    Replies: @A123

  141. Rev Louis Farakan has been quoted in press as calling the vaccination whitey’s death shot for you–don’t take it.

    • LOL: Barbarossa
  142. @Thorfinnsson
    @Thomm

    Would you say it's better to fuck a bitch (female dog) or a white man (hairless if required for erection)?

    No question dodging!

    Replies: @mal, @nebulafox

    That depends. Is he as excellent company as Metrobius?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @nebulafox

    I have always been mystified by Razib's strange fixation on Sulla.

    Replies: @nebulafox, @German_reader

  143. @A123
    @sudden death



    Most of whom were retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions.
     
    Also they were mostly white and Republican.
     
    ROTFL,

    Thank you for your unhinged, #NeverTrump, pro-Biden, Leftoid fantasy rant.

    Now for the facts. "African-Americans" are the:
        • Least vaccinated community
        • Highest preexisting conditions community

    Total Leftoid detachment from science & fact, presages massive MAGA victories in the future.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

    Now for the facts. “African-Americans” are the:
    • Least vaccinated community
    • Highest preexisting conditions community

    haha, you just managed quietly to miss the fact what percentage of all voting “retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions” in USA are African Americans 😉

    …but the very fact of mentioning low vaccination rate as a negative fact from a MAGA fan is quite encouraging.

    • Replies: @A123
    @sudden death

    As a #NeverTrump Leftoid, I have to believe that you are entirely missing the point. On eugenics basis, your preferred SJW ethnic group is expiring faster than MAGA voters. Your government Manda-Vaxx science denial? Also, brutal to your preferred #NeverTrump sheeple.

    My Vaxx-realism is statistically counter to my MAGA political objectives. (Shrug) My hope is that standing up against your Lord Fauci & BigPharma will encourage DNC to MAGA conversions.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

  144. @songbird
    Gave Peter F. Hamilton another shot. Quickly ran into this line, describing the first two characters introduced:

    Peter was thirty-five, a metre eighty tall, with skin actually darker than her own deep ebony. He worked in the university mathematics department...

    Which is the exact sort of stuff that caused me to quit the last sci-fi book that I read. Don't read many genres, but I suspect modern sci-fi has the most intense color signaling, by far. Exactly, why that is, is an interesting question.

    Replies: @A123

    Which Peter F. Hamilton book? All three (4?) “Greg Mandel” series books are universally regarded as awful.

    Much of Hamilton’s universe encompasses extremely advanced TransHuman technology. Gold is not a euphemism for yellow. Gold is metallic gold.

    Gore knelt in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms. His eyes peered out intently from the gold skin mask that was his face. ‘You have to get to Makkathran.’

    If someone is described as having black skin. That normally means true obsidion or onyx. It is a fashion choice, not an implied ethnicity. Any individual who is “Higher” goes through total physiological & neurological reprofiling and optimisation. (1)

    2872 — Start of human Higher culture, biononic enrichment allowing a society of slow-paced long life, rejection of commercial economics and old political ideologies.
    2880 — Development of weapons biononics.
    2913 — Earth begins absorption of ‘mature’ humans into ANA, the inward migration begins.
    2934 — Knights Guardian adopt Higher biononic technology.

    For the most part it genuinely is post-racial. Not to make a racial statement. Advanced bionic/nanonic TransHuman technology has overwhelmed and crushed the concept of race.

    While a bit grim, the Night’s Dawn series is more accessible. [MORE]

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://peterfhamilton.fandom.com/wiki/Commonwealth_Universe_Timeline

    [MORE]

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123

    Reality Dysfunction.

    To a certain extent, I think there is a history within scifi of transhumanism being used as a shield to rationalize color signaling, maybe, since as early as the '50s.

    Early attempts were explained by space rays turning people darker, or some planets having high UV, leaving to one's imagination whether it was a new, gain of function mutation (similar to the darker Indians) or explained by them being Africans. Later came pills that could turn a person black or fashionable body paint.

    I say "shield" because there are simultaneous, non-sequitor signals of universalism. Not to mention many authors like Clarke didn't even bother dressing up there vision of a future Earth where everyone was black, with the darkest being the most admired.

    I'm not sure if there has been an author since the '50s who didn't signal universalism.

    Replies: @A123

  145. @A123
    @songbird

    Which Peter F. Hamilton book? All three (4?) "Greg Mandel" series books are universally regarded as awful.

    Much of Hamilton's universe encompasses extremely advanced TransHuman technology. Gold is not a euphemism for yellow. Gold is metallic gold.


    Gore knelt in front of her, his hands gripping her upper arms. His eyes peered out intently from the gold skin mask that was his face. 'You have to get to Makkathran.'
     
    If someone is described as having black skin. That normally means true obsidion or onyx. It is a fashion choice, not an implied ethnicity. Any individual who is "Higher" goes through total physiological & neurological reprofiling and optimisation. (1)

    2872 -- Start of human Higher culture, biononic enrichment allowing a society of slow-paced long life, rejection of commercial economics and old political ideologies.
    2880 -- Development of weapons biononics.
    2913 -- Earth begins absorption of 'mature' humans into ANA, the inward migration begins.
    2934 -- Knights Guardian adopt Higher biononic technology.
     
    For the most part it genuinely is post-racial. Not to make a racial statement. Advanced bionic/nanonic TransHuman technology has overwhelmed and crushed the concept of race.

    While a bit grim, the Night's Dawn series is more accessible. [MORE]

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://peterfhamilton.fandom.com/wiki/Commonwealth_Universe_Timeline

    https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B004VO4J0I

    Replies: @songbird

    Reality Dysfunction.

    To a certain extent, I think there is a history within scifi of transhumanism being used as a shield to rationalize color signaling, maybe, since as early as the ’50s.

    Early attempts were explained by space rays turning people darker, or some planets having high UV, leaving to one’s imagination whether it was a new, gain of function mutation (similar to the darker Indians) or explained by them being Africans. Later came pills that could turn a person black or fashionable body paint.

    I say “shield” because there are simultaneous, non-sequitor signals of universalism. Not to mention many authors like Clarke didn’t even bother dressing up there vision of a future Earth where everyone was black, with the darkest being the most admired.

    I’m not sure if there has been an author since the ’50s who didn’t signal universalism.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    To a certain extent, I think there is a history within scifi of transhumanism being used as a shield to rationalize color signaling, maybe, since as early as the ’50s.
     
    Hmmmm... I think we are now down to unprovable assumptions.

    My assumption is the HBD race ±5-10 IQ points is legitimately swamped by TransHuman neural reengineering at least +30 IQ points. In my experience, reading science fiction under that assumption works 90%+. The exceptions mostly being poorly written political short fiction with faux science cobbled on at the last second.

    If one arrives at a piece looking for racial charge, one can find it.

    Heinlein's Starship Troopers featured high school attraction between Johnny Rico and Carmen Ibanez. Do you think that the novel (dear God *Not* the movie) had an intentional Hispanic racial message?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

  146. @nebulafox
    @Thorfinnsson

    That depends. Is he as excellent company as Metrobius?

    Replies: @songbird

    I have always been mystified by Razib’s strange fixation on Sulla.

    • Replies: @nebulafox
    @songbird

    I don't think it is strange at all. He was if nothing else a very fascinating man. One who never stomped on those who were kind when he was at the bottom, just as he humiliated and crushed the idiots who would have spat on him then, when he was alone and abused, but fawned all over him when he was on top.

    Yeah. I *get* that. Better an honorable Metrobius, male or female, than some spoiled, preening hypocritical bougie slut.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @German_reader
    @songbird

    imo it's just part of Razib's pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it's pretty silly. I'm not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a "true populist" who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today, and if anything Sulla was an anti-populist whose main goal was to restore the traditional authority of the senate. So not a very enlightening comparison.

    Replies: @songbird, @Almost Missouri

  147. @sudden death
    @A123


    Now for the facts. “African-Americans” are the:
    • Least vaccinated community
    • Highest preexisting conditions community
     
    haha, you just managed quietly to miss the fact what percentage of all voting "retirees with multiple pre-existing conditions" in USA are African Americans ;)

    ...but the very fact of mentioning low vaccination rate as a negative fact from a MAGA fan is quite encouraging.

    Replies: @A123

    As a #NeverTrump Leftoid, I have to believe that you are entirely missing the point. On eugenics basis, your preferred SJW ethnic group is expiring faster than MAGA voters. Your government Manda-Vaxx science denial? Also, brutal to your preferred #NeverTrump sheeple.

    My Vaxx-realism is statistically counter to my MAGA political objectives. (Shrug) My hope is that standing up against your Lord Fauci & BigPharma will encourage DNC to MAGA conversions.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @A123

    If not for the fact that unchecked viral replication so far only increased both virulence&infectivity of Covid, would not have any objection to all kinds and colours of antivaxers and/or virus denialists dying at increased rates, as getting rid of ignoramuses, no mater black or white, would make America truly great.

    btw, Trump voters are way below black vax rate, so MAGA expiry rates certainly are not slower, to say the least:

    https://i.redd.it/nen2xn491jl71.png

    Replies: @A123

  148. @songbird
    @A123

    Reality Dysfunction.

    To a certain extent, I think there is a history within scifi of transhumanism being used as a shield to rationalize color signaling, maybe, since as early as the '50s.

    Early attempts were explained by space rays turning people darker, or some planets having high UV, leaving to one's imagination whether it was a new, gain of function mutation (similar to the darker Indians) or explained by them being Africans. Later came pills that could turn a person black or fashionable body paint.

    I say "shield" because there are simultaneous, non-sequitor signals of universalism. Not to mention many authors like Clarke didn't even bother dressing up there vision of a future Earth where everyone was black, with the darkest being the most admired.

    I'm not sure if there has been an author since the '50s who didn't signal universalism.

    Replies: @A123

    To a certain extent, I think there is a history within scifi of transhumanism being used as a shield to rationalize color signaling, maybe, since as early as the ’50s.

    Hmmmm… I think we are now down to unprovable assumptions.

    My assumption is the HBD race ±5-10 IQ points is legitimately swamped by TransHuman neural reengineering at least +30 IQ points. In my experience, reading science fiction under that assumption works 90%+. The exceptions mostly being poorly written political short fiction with faux science cobbled on at the last second.

    If one arrives at a piece looking for racial charge, one can find it.

    Heinlein’s Starship Troopers featured high school attraction between Johnny Rico and Carmen Ibanez. Do you think that the novel (dear God *Not* the movie) had an intentional Hispanic racial message?

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123

    Well, I believe Heinlein wasn't above color signaling. For best example, see his "This, I Believe" speech, which I think coinincided with his political ambitions. Wasn't the protagonist in "Tunnel in the Sky" black? (Though subtley stated.)

    Been quite a while since I read "Starship Troopers." The initial message that I took from it race-wise was that the future belongs to those who show up. Seen in that light, it could even be an exhortation to action. But that was when I wasn't very familiar with Heinlein.

    Pretty sure that he wasn't a blank-slatist at heart. IIRC, he and Campbell once taunted Asimov about blacks. But, in many ways, he was quite liberal. Probably, it had something to do with the fact he was living in California. Beyond that, I'm not sure what meaning it had.

    Though, that said, I don't find color-signaling that annoying (if he was), when it does not involve blacks (makes it less obvious), though it usually does.

    Replies: @A123

  149. @songbird
    @nebulafox

    I have always been mystified by Razib's strange fixation on Sulla.

    Replies: @nebulafox, @German_reader

    I don’t think it is strange at all. He was if nothing else a very fascinating man. One who never stomped on those who were kind when he was at the bottom, just as he humiliated and crushed the idiots who would have spat on him then, when he was alone and abused, but fawned all over him when he was on top.

    Yeah. I *get* that. Better an honorable Metrobius, male or female, than some spoiled, preening hypocritical bougie slut.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @nebulafox

    I'm too much of an amateur to judge Sulla confidently, according to the context of his time, and the limited sources that we have.

    But what seems inescapable strange is Khan's belief in a modern parallelism with the Roman Republic - I should think it would at least be late Empire, if anything - and his belief that Sulla will inevitably have a second coming and help us.

  150. @A123
    @songbird


    To a certain extent, I think there is a history within scifi of transhumanism being used as a shield to rationalize color signaling, maybe, since as early as the ’50s.
     
    Hmmmm... I think we are now down to unprovable assumptions.

    My assumption is the HBD race ±5-10 IQ points is legitimately swamped by TransHuman neural reengineering at least +30 IQ points. In my experience, reading science fiction under that assumption works 90%+. The exceptions mostly being poorly written political short fiction with faux science cobbled on at the last second.

    If one arrives at a piece looking for racial charge, one can find it.

    Heinlein's Starship Troopers featured high school attraction between Johnny Rico and Carmen Ibanez. Do you think that the novel (dear God *Not* the movie) had an intentional Hispanic racial message?

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    Well, I believe Heinlein wasn’t above color signaling. For best example, see his “This, I Believe” speech, which I think coinincided with his political ambitions. Wasn’t the protagonist in “Tunnel in the Sky” black? (Though subtley stated.)

    Been quite a while since I read “Starship Troopers.” The initial message that I took from it race-wise was that the future belongs to those who show up. Seen in that light, it could even be an exhortation to action. But that was when I wasn’t very familiar with Heinlein.

    Pretty sure that he wasn’t a blank-slatist at heart. IIRC, he and Campbell once taunted Asimov about blacks. But, in many ways, he was quite liberal. Probably, it had something to do with the fact he was living in California. Beyond that, I’m not sure what meaning it had.

    Though, that said, I don’t find color-signaling that annoying (if he was), when it does not involve blacks (makes it less obvious), though it usually does.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird

    Heinlein's original publisher/editor for most of his YA works was left leaning. I believe it was Starship Troopers that ended that relationship. So, earlier works may have features that were not truly his own but sold well).

    Having a minority character us not inherently color signaling, it is simply character. Drawing a distinction that defines color as important is signalling.

    If you go out of your way to carefully trace the race of characters (actual or perceived) and then search extensively for a signal... Have you considered that you may find something:
    -- unintended?
    -- no one else sees?

    This is similar to one of the most aggravating behaviours of SJW Islamic Globalists. Any display, such as wearing a star or cross, is a "micro aggression" requiring a response.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

  151. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @nebulafox

    I have always been mystified by Razib's strange fixation on Sulla.

    Replies: @nebulafox, @German_reader

    imo it’s just part of Razib’s pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it’s pretty silly. I’m not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a “true populist” who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today, and if anything Sulla was an anti-populist whose main goal was to restore the traditional authority of the senate. So not a very enlightening comparison.

    • Agree: Yevardian
    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    My previous theory was that a bust of Sulla fell on him, while he was experiencing a state of euphoria.

    But I think you are right.

    , @Almost Missouri
    @German_reader


    it’s just part of Razib’s pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it’s pretty silly. I’m not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a “true populist” who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today,
     
    Razib used to do a genomics podcast with baizuo Spencer Wells, before they got distracted by 2020 and the podcast veered off into leftwing conspiracy theories. But before it completely cratered, Spencer persuaded Razib to whip out his powerful Sulla take for the audience. It was embarrassing: like hearing a college Sophomore expound what he supposes is a great and novel intellectual breakthrough when in fact he is just retreading an already tired trope with so many flaws that a better educated person wouldn't touch it. Mercifully, people stopped listening and they discontinued the podcast shortly thereafter.

    ---------

    One of the 0ther comments implied you have a Substack. Care to drop the address? I'd read it.

    Replies: @German_reader

  152. Was it? Sulla completely rehauled everything to be based in written law rather than unstated mos maiorum. This was a departure from everything the Roman Republic was at that point. Sulla was many things, but an arch-conservative, he wasn’t-he created something new guised in the old.

    I think Khan’s point was that he was the living embodiment of a new order, guised in the garments of the old. And it took a man of impeccable patrician birth who nevertheless was molded in the Sabura, that straddled all worlds while being fully a part of none. Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Antony, Augustus. They wouldn’t have been possible without Sulla. He was the genesis.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @nebulafox


    Sulla completely rehauled everything to be based in writtren law rather than unstated mos maiorum.
     
    I don't remember that tbh. But iirc one of his most controversial measures was his attempt to bring the courts under senatorial control again and reduce the power of the equites in them, which seems quite reactionary to me (of course it's difficult to evaluate, the extant sources about Sulla's time are rather limited after all).
    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today's issues is just silly, issues are too different.

    Replies: @nebulafox, @iffen

  153. German_reader says:
    @nebulafox
    Was it? Sulla completely rehauled everything to be based in written law rather than unstated mos maiorum. This was a departure from everything the Roman Republic was at that point. Sulla was many things, but an arch-conservative, he wasn't-he created something new guised in the old.

    I think Khan's point was that he was the living embodiment of a new order, guised in the garments of the old. And it took a man of impeccable patrician birth who nevertheless was molded in the Sabura, that straddled all worlds while being fully a part of none. Caesar, Pompey, Cicero, Antony, Augustus. They wouldn't have been possible without Sulla. He was the genesis.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Sulla completely rehauled everything to be based in writtren law rather than unstated mos maiorum.

    I don’t remember that tbh. But iirc one of his most controversial measures was his attempt to bring the courts under senatorial control again and reduce the power of the equites in them, which seems quite reactionary to me (of course it’s difficult to evaluate, the extant sources about Sulla’s time are rather limited after all).
    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today’s issues is just silly, issues are too different.

    • Replies: @nebulafox
    @German_reader

    It's hard to to tell. 2/3 of our primary sources hated him, after all. But packing the courts with your less than aristocratic allies and basing their fundamental MO on written law was a departure, if anything else. I've never bought the notion that Sulla wanted to reverse the clock, whatever his ideological garments shower. His whole record screams against it.

    (For the record, it failed, to say the least. Sulla was a beautiful failure. But ideologically, Sulla had more in common with Augustus than his adoptive father did, and I think some of that showed in his policies.)

    Your broader point: to a certain extent, I agree. Ancient and medieval world was so different from ours that comparisons aren't useful in any field other than human nature. Everything has changed so immensely that it's not useful beyond that. But human nature, moral lessons: that's where it is useful. Humans have not changed all that much, for better or for ill, equally.

    , @iffen
    @German_reader

    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today’s issues is just silly, issues are too different

    You don't see the West as being the progeny of Greco-Roman culture? You don't see the waning of the power and competence of the last hegemon as an end to that tradition?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  154. @German_reader
    @nebulafox


    Sulla completely rehauled everything to be based in writtren law rather than unstated mos maiorum.
     
    I don't remember that tbh. But iirc one of his most controversial measures was his attempt to bring the courts under senatorial control again and reduce the power of the equites in them, which seems quite reactionary to me (of course it's difficult to evaluate, the extant sources about Sulla's time are rather limited after all).
    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today's issues is just silly, issues are too different.

    Replies: @nebulafox, @iffen

    It’s hard to to tell. 2/3 of our primary sources hated him, after all. But packing the courts with your less than aristocratic allies and basing their fundamental MO on written law was a departure, if anything else. I’ve never bought the notion that Sulla wanted to reverse the clock, whatever his ideological garments shower. His whole record screams against it.

    (For the record, it failed, to say the least. Sulla was a beautiful failure. But ideologically, Sulla had more in common with Augustus than his adoptive father did, and I think some of that showed in his policies.)

    Your broader point: to a certain extent, I agree. Ancient and medieval world was so different from ours that comparisons aren’t useful in any field other than human nature. Everything has changed so immensely that it’s not useful beyond that. But human nature, moral lessons: that’s where it is useful. Humans have not changed all that much, for better or for ill, equally.

  155. @A123
    @sudden death

    As a #NeverTrump Leftoid, I have to believe that you are entirely missing the point. On eugenics basis, your preferred SJW ethnic group is expiring faster than MAGA voters. Your government Manda-Vaxx science denial? Also, brutal to your preferred #NeverTrump sheeple.

    My Vaxx-realism is statistically counter to my MAGA political objectives. (Shrug) My hope is that standing up against your Lord Fauci & BigPharma will encourage DNC to MAGA conversions.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

    If not for the fact that unchecked viral replication so far only increased both virulence&infectivity of Covid, would not have any objection to all kinds and colours of antivaxers and/or virus denialists dying at increased rates, as getting rid of ignoramuses, no mater black or white, would make America truly great.

    btw, Trump voters are way below black vax rate, so MAGA expiry rates certainly are not slower, to say the least:

    • Replies: @A123
    @sudden death

    So you personally trust numbers from NBC.

    Trust...

    NBC....

    Ummm.... Trusting NBC is so far beyond the pale, I am almost speechless.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

  156. @sudden death
    @A123

    If not for the fact that unchecked viral replication so far only increased both virulence&infectivity of Covid, would not have any objection to all kinds and colours of antivaxers and/or virus denialists dying at increased rates, as getting rid of ignoramuses, no mater black or white, would make America truly great.

    btw, Trump voters are way below black vax rate, so MAGA expiry rates certainly are not slower, to say the least:

    https://i.redd.it/nen2xn491jl71.png

    Replies: @A123

    So you personally trust numbers from NBC.

    Trust…

    NBC….

    Ummm…. Trusting NBC is so far beyond the pale, I am almost speechless.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @A123

    Trusted or not, those are sourced data numbers instead of just empty declarations without providing any ;)

    Replies: @A123, @A123

  157. @Anatoly Karlin
    @Not Raul

    Thanks for the idea.

    But I don't really see how this would be in the interests of either myself (less traffic and commenting at my Substack), or to The Unz Review (parasitizing on its commenting system for content located elsewhere).

    That said, if Ron wishes to republish anything of mine that piques his interest, I'd be perfectly happy with that.


    I suspect that the shortage of shipping containers is short term, and will be much less of a problem by Q2 2022.
     
    I agree. I also think all these logistical problems are sooner bullish than bearish. Pent up demand bursting through so strongly that infrastructure of c.2019 is struggling to cope.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @Weaver

    There is a benefit to your posting here: Rednecks like me, German supporters of Hitler, East Europeans, Jews, and Russians all talking together.

    Usually we split up on the Internet. At least a few of the posters here seem to not be alphabet agents or other fakes. Furthermore, if Europe continues collapsing, and if Putin can’t find a worthy successor, Europeans in the world might one day find ourselves all in a common situation.

    It’s like Genghis Khan uniting his people to be strong. Europeans might not like one another, but things might become bad enough that Europeans have to communicate a bit more.

    Regarding shipping containers, partly there are ships waiting on California ports, ships full of containers. https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/heres-truth-behind-247-port-operations-pledge

    And there’s a trucker shortage in the US to take goods from the ports, but that wouldn’t impact containers.

  158. @A123
    @sudden death

    So you personally trust numbers from NBC.

    Trust...

    NBC....

    Ummm.... Trusting NBC is so far beyond the pale, I am almost speechless.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

    Trusted or not, those are sourced data numbers instead of just empty declarations without providing any 😉

    • Replies: @A123
    @sudden death

    So you think that NBC, mortal enemy of Trump is honest?

    If NBC had a fake number story about "Excess Trump Deaths", do you think they would have hesitated A milli-nano-pico second (a.k.a. A horse paste second) before running it?
    ___

    A real look at the data would require a reliable party to perform a 4-way analysis of:
    -1- Age
    -2- Preexisting conditions
    -3- Politics
    -4- Race

    In the actual world, Trump supporters are Vaxx-realists exhibiting personal responsibility. Those who are:
    -- Elderly with pre-existing conditions, rationally looked at the risk versus reward and got the shots.
    -- Young and healthy followed the science and refused the experimental risk.

    Notice NBC's disingenuous bias. They did not provide a correlation between the experimental jab and outcome for the young & healthy.

    Could it be that there is no correlation for the young & healthy?
    A MegaCorporation covering for BigPharma?
    Impossible you say?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    Grand Moff Tarkin: You are far too trusting
    ___________

    I Find Your Trust in the SJW Establishment Disturbing
    -- Not a Star Wars Quote, But It Should Be One --


    Mildly NSFW below more.

    https://imgix.bustle.com/uploads/image/2019/11/21/4fe3eec3-3f70-4ae0-8fc1-9115bc504e0d-ejn11zouwaajwc6.jpeg

    , @A123
    @sudden death

    As you lack trust in me here is an objective source:

    https://fee.org/articles/vaccination-rates-not-linked-to-lower-covid-rates-epidemiology-paper-finds/

    Trusting anything Fake Stream Media [FSM] outlets, like NBC, provide is inherently very risky. The fascist Lügenpresse in the U.S. Exists for a single purpose -- SJW MegaCorporation deception.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

  159. @nebulafox
    @songbird

    I don't think it is strange at all. He was if nothing else a very fascinating man. One who never stomped on those who were kind when he was at the bottom, just as he humiliated and crushed the idiots who would have spat on him then, when he was alone and abused, but fawned all over him when he was on top.

    Yeah. I *get* that. Better an honorable Metrobius, male or female, than some spoiled, preening hypocritical bougie slut.

    Replies: @songbird

    I’m too much of an amateur to judge Sulla confidently, according to the context of his time, and the limited sources that we have.

    But what seems inescapable strange is Khan’s belief in a modern parallelism with the Roman Republic – I should think it would at least be late Empire, if anything – and his belief that Sulla will inevitably have a second coming and help us.

  160. @German_reader
    @songbird

    imo it's just part of Razib's pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it's pretty silly. I'm not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a "true populist" who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today, and if anything Sulla was an anti-populist whose main goal was to restore the traditional authority of the senate. So not a very enlightening comparison.

    Replies: @songbird, @Almost Missouri

    My previous theory was that a bust of Sulla fell on him, while he was experiencing a state of euphoria.

    But I think you are right.

  161. @songbird
    @A123

    Well, I believe Heinlein wasn't above color signaling. For best example, see his "This, I Believe" speech, which I think coinincided with his political ambitions. Wasn't the protagonist in "Tunnel in the Sky" black? (Though subtley stated.)

    Been quite a while since I read "Starship Troopers." The initial message that I took from it race-wise was that the future belongs to those who show up. Seen in that light, it could even be an exhortation to action. But that was when I wasn't very familiar with Heinlein.

    Pretty sure that he wasn't a blank-slatist at heart. IIRC, he and Campbell once taunted Asimov about blacks. But, in many ways, he was quite liberal. Probably, it had something to do with the fact he was living in California. Beyond that, I'm not sure what meaning it had.

    Though, that said, I don't find color-signaling that annoying (if he was), when it does not involve blacks (makes it less obvious), though it usually does.

    Replies: @A123

    Heinlein’s original publisher/editor for most of his YA works was left leaning. I believe it was Starship Troopers that ended that relationship. So, earlier works may have features that were not truly his own but sold well).

    Having a minority character us not inherently color signaling, it is simply character. Drawing a distinction that defines color as important is signalling.

    If you go out of your way to carefully trace the race of characters (actual or perceived) and then search extensively for a signal… Have you considered that you may find something:
    — unintended?
    — no one else sees?

    This is similar to one of the most aggravating behaviours of SJW Islamic Globalists. Any display, such as wearing a star or cross, is a “micro aggression” requiring a response.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123

    Oddly enough, I think Heinlein's juveniles make him seem a bit more rightward-leaning and traditional than he really was. IMO, it was good that he had an editor. Chained Heinlein is better than unchained.

    In nature, it is easy to see many forms of color signaling. Since we see in color, I think we are not immune to it. Further, I think that any impartial attempt at quantification would show that in many movies, we see black faces (strongest color signal) out of proportion to what we would expect. And we would see the same in scifi novels.

    Was Heinlein color signaling with Johnny Rico? Put it in the demographic context of the '50s, and consider that Hispanics typically don't do a lot of reading (so not much of a market, even externally). And I think he was color signaling. But in a very subtle way, as we would expect from Heinlein who was by all accounts a very intelligent man.

    Replies: @Aedib

  162. @sudden death
    @A123

    Trusted or not, those are sourced data numbers instead of just empty declarations without providing any ;)

    Replies: @A123, @A123

    So you think that NBC, mortal enemy of Trump is honest?

    If NBC had a fake number story about “Excess Trump Deaths”, do you think they would have hesitated A milli-nano-pico second (a.k.a. A horse paste second) before running it?
    ___

    A real look at the data would require a reliable party to perform a 4-way analysis of:
    -1- Age
    -2- Preexisting conditions
    -3- Politics
    -4- Race

    In the actual world, Trump supporters are Vaxx-realists exhibiting personal responsibility. Those who are:
    — Elderly with pre-existing conditions, rationally looked at the risk versus reward and got the shots.
    — Young and healthy followed the science and refused the experimental risk.

    Notice NBC’s disingenuous bias. They did not provide a correlation between the experimental jab and outcome for the young & healthy.

    Could it be that there is no correlation for the young & healthy?
    A MegaCorporation covering for BigPharma?
    Impossible you say?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    Grand Moff Tarkin: You are far too trusting
    ___________

    I Find Your Trust in the SJW Establishment Disturbing
    — Not a Star Wars Quote, But It Should Be One —

    Mildly NSFW below more.

    [MORE]

  163. @A123
    @songbird

    Heinlein's original publisher/editor for most of his YA works was left leaning. I believe it was Starship Troopers that ended that relationship. So, earlier works may have features that were not truly his own but sold well).

    Having a minority character us not inherently color signaling, it is simply character. Drawing a distinction that defines color as important is signalling.

    If you go out of your way to carefully trace the race of characters (actual or perceived) and then search extensively for a signal... Have you considered that you may find something:
    -- unintended?
    -- no one else sees?

    This is similar to one of the most aggravating behaviours of SJW Islamic Globalists. Any display, such as wearing a star or cross, is a "micro aggression" requiring a response.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    Oddly enough, I think Heinlein’s juveniles make him seem a bit more rightward-leaning and traditional than he really was. IMO, it was good that he had an editor. Chained Heinlein is better than unchained.

    In nature, it is easy to see many forms of color signaling. Since we see in color, I think we are not immune to it. Further, I think that any impartial attempt at quantification would show that in many movies, we see black faces (strongest color signal) out of proportion to what we would expect. And we would see the same in scifi novels.

    Was Heinlein color signaling with Johnny Rico? Put it in the demographic context of the ’50s, and consider that Hispanics typically don’t do a lot of reading (so not much of a market, even externally). And I think he was color signaling. But in a very subtle way, as we would expect from Heinlein who was by all accounts a very intelligent man.

    • Replies: @Aedib
    @songbird


    Was Heinlein color signaling with Johnny Rico? Put it in the demographic context of the ’50s, and consider that Hispanics typically don’t do a lot of reading (so not much of a market, even externally).
     
    I don’t think so. These endless discussions about Johny Rico ethnicity (Was he a brown Filipino or a white Argentine?) are irrelevant because the world of Starship Troopers was already globalized. But it was in the opposite direction of current trends.
  164. @Dmitry
    One of my posts in this thread was still not approved, and disappeared in the spam folder.

    AK has provided such an excellent moderation all these years.

    Sadly I guess he is in moving office stage, and the new moderation will go much more slow?

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Checked, not in spam or deleted. There was a site update earlier today; that might have eaten the comment, unfortunately.

    • Replies: @Max Demian
    @Anatoly Karlin

    Mr. Karlin,

    Within the past hour or so, I have made numerous attempts to post a detailed reply to one of Dmitry's comments in this thread. Each time, the page refreshed with no trace of the comment I had submitted, and no message that would inform me of its fate. (I note my complete confidence that any minimally objective and reasonable reader of the comment of mine in question would surely concur that it was entirely civil, substantative, falling well within both your own as well as Mr. Unz's stated rules and guidelines.)

    Using Tor Browser, I suspected that the problem may have been my exit nodes. I also considered the possibility that my pseudonymic handle/ fake email combination had somewhow gotten blacklisted. Neither of those possibile explanations appear to apply, however, as I was able to succesfully post (and subsequently delete) at least two brief test posts.

    Perhaps you could check any spam or other folders that may submitted comments may have landed-in? I would greatly appreciate that. If you are able to retrieve and post the first of my vanished submissions, all of the subsequent ones may (and indeed should) be discarded.

    Let me take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your work, my regret upon learning of your announced departure, and my best wishes for your future endeavors.

  165. @A123
    @Truth

    Candace Owens? Why use her as an example?

    If you want to pose the question, spread the reach a little wider and you can find 1/2 African, Emanuela De Paula from Brazil.

    I would try to say that I will not enjoy adding Emanuela De Paula pictures under [MORE] -- But it would be a lie.
    ____

    The most interest looking actress I can think of (from ~10 years ago) is Dichen Lachman. Born in Kathmandu, Nepal, to a Tibetan mother and Australian father.

     
    https://healthyceleb.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/Dichen-Lachman-as-seen-in-September-2020.jpg



    Emanuela De Paula

     
    https://media.giphy.com/media/10HOXSpviXOKOc/giphy.gif

     
    https://www.12thblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Emanuela-de-Paula-36.jpg

     
    https://ilarge.lisimg.com/image/5795710/740full-emanuela-de-paula.jpg

    Replies: @Truth

    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I’d have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.

    I mean, I don’t find Rosie O’donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, “Rosie, turn off all of the lights so I can think about someone else and I hope you know how to give head to get me started.”

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Truth


    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I’d have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.
     
    Because 40% of White Trashionalists are homosexuals, at least to the extent that they would prefer a white man over a mulatto woman (forget Candace Owens, we are up to mulattos now; they don't even want Halle Berry if Michael Moore is available). I suspect that even a Quatroon woman, Mexican mestizo woman, and Jewish would would similarly be passed over in favor of a white man in terms of their sexual preferences.

    When you get down to the true basics of HBD, it is not surprising that White Trashionalists are faggots, since :

    i) They represent the bottom 10% in all worthwhile genetic traits among the white race (the females of this subrace become the fat bluehaired feminists).
    ii) Homosexuality is how nature ensures defective genes are filtered out. One of the mechanisms at least. There is no other scientific explanation for it.
    iii) They believe they can package their homosexuality into a demonstration of undying loyalty to the white race. Except that they are so incapable of grasping how heterosexual people think, that they are baffled when those of us in normal, heterosexual white society go to great lengths to keep them from mooching off of us.
    iv) Always remember that politics is a circle, and far-left and 'far right' have much more in common than either has with normal people. Andrew Anglin was far-left antifa before becoming WN, but that wasn't some large ideological distance to traverse at all. Hence, there should be no surprise that what is called 'far right' has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    55% of white women voted for Trump, while almost zero under the age of 70 are found in WN circles. This is no mystery when one understands what I have explained above.

    Part of the reason I want more people to know that WNs are homosexuals is so that everyone can rest assured that they will never be able to infiltrate normal, heterosexual white society. The additional reason I am revulsed is that as a white man, I am actually the object of their unwanted lust (heavy emphasis on the word unwanted). That is why it sometimes preferable that they think I am a 'South Asian', even if I am obviously not one.

    From a scientific perspective, it is fascinating to watch evolution happen before our eyes, and the very process of genetic waste filtration manifest from their very words and actions.

    , @nebulafox
    @Truth

    Alcohol is a miracle drug in that situation. Turns out you really can close your eyes and pretend she's someone else.

    , @A123
    @Truth


    I mean, I don’t find Rosie O’donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, “Rosie, turn off all of the lights
     
    You omit the always present option number three. If the options were:

    -1- Rosie O'Donnell
    -2- Gérard Depardieu
    -3- Chewing your man bits off with your own teeth.

    I would give strong consideration to #3. Once anything has been inside of Rosie, do you really want to keep it?

    (shudder)

    PEACE 😇

  166. @Truth
    @A123

    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I'd have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.

    I mean, I don't find Rosie O'donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, "Rosie, turn off all of the lights so I can think about someone else and I hope you know how to give head to get me started."

    Replies: @Thomm, @nebulafox, @A123

    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I’d have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.

    Because 40% of White Trashionalists are homosexuals, at least to the extent that they would prefer a white man over a mulatto woman (forget Candace Owens, we are up to mulattos now; they don’t even want Halle Berry if Michael Moore is available). I suspect that even a Quatroon woman, Mexican mestizo woman, and Jewish would would similarly be passed over in favor of a white man in terms of their sexual preferences.

    When you get down to the true basics of HBD, it is not surprising that White Trashionalists are faggots, since :

    i) They represent the bottom 10% in all worthwhile genetic traits among the white race (the females of this subrace become the fat bluehaired feminists).
    ii) Homosexuality is how nature ensures defective genes are filtered out. One of the mechanisms at least. There is no other scientific explanation for it.
    iii) They believe they can package their homosexuality into a demonstration of undying loyalty to the white race. Except that they are so incapable of grasping how heterosexual people think, that they are baffled when those of us in normal, heterosexual white society go to great lengths to keep them from mooching off of us.
    iv) Always remember that politics is a circle, and far-left and ‘far right’ have much more in common than either has with normal people. Andrew Anglin was far-left antifa before becoming WN, but that wasn’t some large ideological distance to traverse at all. Hence, there should be no surprise that what is called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    55% of white women voted for Trump, while almost zero under the age of 70 are found in WN circles. This is no mystery when one understands what I have explained above.

    Part of the reason I want more people to know that WNs are homosexuals is so that everyone can rest assured that they will never be able to infiltrate normal, heterosexual white society. The additional reason I am revulsed is that as a white man, I am actually the object of their unwanted lust (heavy emphasis on the word unwanted). That is why it sometimes preferable that they think I am a ‘South Asian’, even if I am obviously not one.

    From a scientific perspective, it is fascinating to watch evolution happen before our eyes, and the very process of genetic waste filtration manifest from their very words and actions.

  167. @Truth
    @Barbarossa


    My response was intended to poke Truth a bit, since in his mind I’m not sure there are any non tranny women.
     
    Poke me? LOL, I'm not the one lusting after dudes.

    Also tying into Thomm’s rather silly list of supposedly homo WN list of Unz commenters.
     
    You still didn't answer the question, Old Sport; Plate of raw oysters and a stack of porn in a beautiful hotel room, who are you inviting up for an amorous evening, Matt Damon or Candace Owens?

    Replies: @A123, @Barbarossa

    -adjusts monocle-
    Look here Old Sport, while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, “dusky races” as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
    Good Lord!

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, “dusky races” as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
     
    Which is why YOU are not named on that list in Comment #10.

    The individuals on that list I posted have either openly said that they would prefer a white man over a black woman (and in some cases even a mulatto woman), or at least refused to say what you just said. They filibustered for comment after comment, but refused to say that they prefer even the most attractive black woman over the fattest, ugliest white man. Some of them have also said that they don't mind an MtF transgender sexual partner, since the race of the person did not change. Hence, we have discovered something quite revealing about contemporary WNs.

    They can always write what you just did, but refuse to do that. Hence, they aren't quite what you assume them to be.

    I don't add names to that list lightly. They have all either said that they prefer a white man over a black woman, or at least failed to say that even the most attractive black woman is the less-unappealing choice of the two, when asked two or more times. A heterosexual would have no problem saying what you just did.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @schnellandine

    , @Truth
    @Barbarossa

    LOL, Raw oysters are an aphrodisiac.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    , @Truth
    @Barbarossa

    Well half-point, you did almost answer the question by osmosis. That puts you WAY above your contemporaries.

    Literally, since Thomm has been posting this question, I think ONE dude has given the no-nonsense, no insinuation, normal (to my way of thinking) heterosexual answer.

    I find that quite strange, but maybe it's just me, I mean, when I was a kid, GAY dudes would have given the normal heterosexual answer.

    Times change.

  168. @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    -adjusts monocle-
    Look here Old Sport, while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, "dusky races" as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
    Good Lord!

    Replies: @Thomm, @Truth, @Truth

    while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, “dusky races” as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.

    Which is why YOU are not named on that list in Comment #10.

    The individuals on that list I posted have either openly said that they would prefer a white man over a black woman (and in some cases even a mulatto woman), or at least refused to say what you just said. They filibustered for comment after comment, but refused to say that they prefer even the most attractive black woman over the fattest, ugliest white man. Some of them have also said that they don’t mind an MtF transgender sexual partner, since the race of the person did not change. Hence, we have discovered something quite revealing about contemporary WNs.

    They can always write what you just did, but refuse to do that. Hence, they aren’t quite what you assume them to be.

    I don’t add names to that list lightly. They have all either said that they prefer a white man over a black woman, or at least failed to say that even the most attractive black woman is the less-unappealing choice of the two, when asked two or more times. A heterosexual would have no problem saying what you just did.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @Thomm

    I actually agree with you that any guy who would prefer a white man over a black woman to appease some WN fear of race mixing has their priorities all messed up.
    However, I find it odd that you are so exercised about the whole thing.
    I tend to avoid parts of UNZ which are prominently WN since the topic frequently devolves into stupidification.

    I also kind of assume that there is a fair bit of shit-posting, trolling, and general obfuscation in a decent amount of internet comment sections, besides the fact that a free speech forum like UNZ is likely to attract a certain number of misanthropes, nuts, and degenerates. The fact that there might be people on UNZ who fit your description is not surprising to me, but I don't attach much significance to it.
    UNZ is sometimes a strange and wonderful gutter of the internet...

    Replies: @Thomm

    , @schnellandine
    @Thomm

    You are the modern instance of The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade; anyone not replying to your latest queerfest is a queer. Simply to ignore you is evidence of gay butt fealty.

    See a psych.

    Replies: @Thomm

  169. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Isn’t monetary policy a type of government power? What other power should the government use to control inflation that is not monetary policy?
     
    So sorry for multiple quotes, entirely my fault. New phone and so on.

    But thats an important point. Yes, monetary policy is a type of government power.

    And LOL you just lived through "other" power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -$40/barrel.

    That's the power the government can use to control inflation.

    This was a test run for WW3 preparations (so is current "energy shortage"), but generally, government has more tools than mere monetary policy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    you just lived through “other” power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -\$40/barrel.

    Okay, but

    1) governments didn’t “shut down the economy” (more accurately, restrict certain types of commerce) to control inflation. They did it to control a virus.

    2) The restrictions’ effects on prices were varied. Some prices went down (oil). Some prices went up (construction materials).

    3) Among the commodities whose prices went down, they soon went back up, and typically higher than they were before, so even if the restrictions were intended to control inflation, their “success” was only very scattered and only very temporary, which is to say, they didn’t really work.

    4) Meanwhile, whatever happened in the early months of 2020, prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy (in this case, incontinent money printing), so it still looks like money printing is the main thing—and perhaps only thing—that matters for inflation, which shouldn’t be too surprising since “inflation” literally means that the money supply has outstripped the assets that it is supposed to represent.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy
     
    The core driver of inflation is demand higher than supply. And, supply in almost all categories is still restricted. While USD monetary policy is unhelpful. Every nation on the globe is experiencing inflation.

    There is one silver lining to all of this. What U.S. citizens perceive as "foreign trade" inflation, provides overwhelming momentum for the ideas of MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement. Whether you (or I) believe it is econometricially true or false... MAGA can easily and convincingly sell this as "China, China, China". And, that explanation will ring immediately true based on the current massive port backlog imagery.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

     
    https://i.imgflip.com/5qhiwa.jpg

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    What A123 said.

    Also, inflation is still rather low considering the epic sale of supply chain disruption we are experiencing.

    If I were a war planner, here's how my ledger would look like:

    1. National ability of the medical sector to deal with mass casualty event - Fail.
    2. Ability of supply chain to adapt to challenges such as port slowdowns and energy crunch - Actually, not bad, so far. Could be worse.

    People are just spoiled. So we went from 2% inflation to 5% inflation. The horror! In the 90's, we ran at 3-4% inflation and that was a good thing. Even Russia, a country that hyperinflates when a fly sneezes, is at 7%. Which is their normal range even a decade ago.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical and is highly undesirable because it means we are in an economic depression.

    So I would say, government is controlling the inflation just fine. We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  170. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    How does Russia government money printing improve GDP growth? Yes, it improves nominal GDP through sheer ruble increase, but how can it improve real GDP?
     
    It will drive demand and investment in the service sector which is the most important sector in developed economies.

    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that's like 80% of the entire economy. Russia is seriously underperforming in this respect, and budget deficit will help to close the gap.

    Replies: @utu, @Almost Missouri

    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that’s like 80% of the entire economy.

    That may be true, but it is not necessarily commendable. If 80% of your economy is bureaucrats buying toxic drinks to piss them out a few hours later, then 80% of your economy is bullsh*t, and you would be no worse off if that 80% disappeared.

    I recognize that on paper this kind of thing drives up the all-holy GDP, but such GDP fetishism is as deluded as a car owner saying, “my engine RPMs are way up, so I must be reaching my destinations much faster” while his transmission is slipping, or a homeowner saying, “My house is freezing! If I could just make the reading on this thermometer be higher then everything would be fine!” while breathing on the thermometer bulb to raise the “temperature”.

    It is entirely possible to log transactions that create no value or even destroy value. But this obvious fact at micro-scale is somehow lost at macro-scale because in GDP-universe everything is recorded at |absolute value| so macroeconomists are congenitally unable to distinguish between value creation and value destruction. It is almost a form of psychosis.

    “GDP just doubled because everyone bought poison to kill their neighbor. Things are great!”
    —Macroeconomists

    If Russia is wise, it will not follow the West down the shaded path of GDP worship.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    True, GDP is a largely made up number, exactly for the reasons you describe (the best way to grow real GDP in the US is to give everyone cancer because medical payments will skyrocket and the sector is already huge, so it can absorb a lot of new demand).

    However, it's not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that's their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people. And no, they wouldn't all become brilliant rocket scientists once the bars closed - that's not really how it works.

    So true, GDP level doesn't really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Yellowface Anon

  171. @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    -adjusts monocle-
    Look here Old Sport, while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, "dusky races" as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
    Good Lord!

    Replies: @Thomm, @Truth, @Truth

    LOL, Raw oysters are an aphrodisiac.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    Certainly. But since everyone in the thread is throwing out the plausible rankings of sex with most anything and everything, why leave out the mollusks?
    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent, I promise it will be much more amusing.

    Replies: @A123, @schnellandine

  172. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.
     
    Yep. Always has been. Welcome to the real world :)

    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.
     
    Again, absolutely correct. Now you can see why economics is easy when you strip it from bullshit.

    Right, but that’s the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.
     
    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector - they get to create whatever money they want. The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards. State, or banker fat cats? Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.

    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?
     
    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.

    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?
     
    I watch credit markets as a hobby, and 100% private debt to GDP is when I start making noises for state intervention. At 300% private sector debt to GDP, the need for state intervention becomes obvious to anybody with IQ above room temperature, and we are going to vastly higher ratios than that. By 2050, 500% private sector debt to GDP ratio will be perfectly normal. And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem. But state will have to be a part of the equation. Its inevitable.

    By … printing more money? And giving it to … whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

     

    Yep. Government has a duty to maintain corporate sales aka aggregate demand so that asset prices don't deviate too much from revenues. This means Universal Basic Income for the poors. Not to benefit the poors, but to maintain asset prices. That's how asset price mechanics work.

    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?
     
    WW2 definitely was. And so was WW1, and all other wars in history. Soldiers are simply Basic Income recipients, and government in wartime provides demand. Which is why war is so popular throughout history, but we really can do better once we are honest about the mechanism.

    That’s an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.
     
    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and "international investment community". Just like Weimar Germans did. Food farms are an entirely different question. In the real world, you seriously don't want to be a slave forever to "investment community", with infinite debt repayments. Both Zimbabweans and Germans understood that correctly.

    They shouldn’t. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    Welcome to the real world, that's how it has always been. State is always a part of the equation.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Barbarossa

    the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.

    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector – they get to create whatever money they want.

    But if they give it to someone who doesn’t pay it back, then they’re effed. If the fiat government pisses away its money, though, it can just print more.

    The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards.

    Do we want the goal to be productive investment or infinite cronyism? Hmm.

    Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.

    The answer is easy for me, but for anyone who is a government crony, they might answer differently. But I agree that it is fundamental, so fundamental that it could form the basis of a civil war.

    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?

    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.

    Just a note on nomenclature, since I gather we are using slightly different terminology: when I say “banking cartel”, I am referring to the crony pseudo-banks that exist off government fiat money, as opposed to (increasingly rare) real banks that have to balance their books, make productive loans, etc. The banking cartel get their money from the government fiat (i.e., mass dilution) operations. (Yes, they often have some legitimate banking operations as well, but let us not be deceived by their window dressing into mistaking their main activity.)

    And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem.

    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?

    But currently, the only macro-significant negative interest rates I am aware of is the negative interest rates that depositors “get” (i.e., pay) at the European central banks (i.e., crony fiat money presses).

    But state will have to be a part of the equation.

    The state already is a big part of the equation. Indeed, that’s arguably why inflation is such a problem.

    Its inevitable.

    I don’t know if it is or not, but it certainly is something of a self-licking ice-cream cone: demand government intervention to fix the distortions caused by government intervention.

    what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating?

    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and “international investment community”.

    Maybe they thought they would, but they didn’t. They’re still in debt, and begging for more. Their creditors are smart enough to demand repayment in real currency, not Zimbabwe dollars. Zimbabwe only hyperinflated their way out of having their own currency. The Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist.

    Just like Weimar Germans did.

    Eh, they didn’t get out of it either. They were levied in gold. Germany only finished paying off the “reparations” in 2010, 91 years after they were levied.

    Brennus may have been a hard man, but he was much more honest than the Allied victors in the Word Wars.

    P.S. No worries about the separate replies. It’s actually easier than one big reply.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    But if they give it to someone who doesn’t pay it back, then they’re effed. If the fiat government pisses away its money, though, it can just print more.
     
    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out. Also, banks create money. So it's pretty hard to go broke with this arrangement (there are interbank loans and Federal Reserve discount window etc). You have to screw up really bad.

    It would be like fish in the ocean running out of water. And not even that, the fish doesn't just swim in the water, it has been provided with its own water making machine and has the license to print water. You literally have to be dumber than a brick to run out of water. No offense to bricks. But it does happen occasionally, unfortunately.

    Do we want the goal to be productive investment or infinite cronyism? Hmm.
     
    Private sector doesn't always fund productive investment (actually, it generally prefers asset price speculation to real investment), and government doesn't always waste money. Government and private sector generally work better together when they complement each other.


    The answer is easy for me, but for anyone who is a government crony, they might answer differently. But I agree that it is fundamental, so fundamental that it could form the basis of a civil war.
     
    Well, government at all levels is the largest employer in the country. Once you account for welfare spend (as well as Social Security and Medicare) and subcontractors (Lockheed Martin, healthcare corporations etc), you are looking at at least 50% of the population who are government cronies in one form or another. And the rest depending on on them for paychecks.

    People can fight the civil war against the government only for as long as Medicare will pay for their diabetes medication. This will be the fastest civil war in history.

    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?
     
    We are getting there, on a quite well defined schedule.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

    The state already is a big part of the equation. Indeed, that’s arguably why inflation is such a problem.
     
    For who? The only time we didn't have inflation was in 2008, and that was really bad. Economic collapse, millions unemployed etc. We really don't want 0% inflation. Or even 2% inflation. Inflation is like body temperature - nobody wants to be at room temperature. Sure, too high is problematic, it means your body/economy is struggling with something, but generally, too high is better than too low.

    Maybe they thought they would, but they didn’t. They’re still in debt, and begging for more. Their creditors are smart enough to demand repayment in real currency, not Zimbabwe dollars.
     
    What's a "real currency"? The US dollar and Zimbabwe dollar are all created similarly. They are traded differently, but not because they are fundamentally different. US dollar is as real a currency as Zimbabwean dollar.

    Zimbabwe debt to GDP was like 240% prior to hyperinflation.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/government-debt-to-gdp

    They were also in a decade long economic depression.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/gdp-growth-annual

    Post hyperinflation, they returned to growth, and slashed their debt to GDP to like 70%. Their debt to GDP became lower than US lol. It was the right move. And sure, they want more money (who doesn't), and they will have to pay something after restructuring. But it won't be 250% of their entire GDP.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  173. @mal
    @utu


    What about the self-sufficiency and self-reliance aspect of economy?
     
    No such thing. State of course must encourage private initiative but fundamentally in a nation, we are all in this together, and so the state has the duty to the less fortunate. And of course, in return, state has the right to request certain services from the less fortunate. Nothing evil or impossible, but if the state provides for your well being, it is well within state's right to ask for a modest service in return. Like clean your street or something. Basically, we don't want the poors starving, but we don't want to end up with Camden, New Jersey everywhere either.

    I respect libertarian worldview, but it ultimately covers the >100 IQ crowd. Which is fine, but those people will always be OK. The biggest problem for any society is what to do with <100 IQ citizens. And no, we are not going to genocide them. Both the smart people and the stupid people need to know that their real allegiance and duty is to the state. And that the state knows it has both duties and privileges, clearly outlined, with respect to the people. Basically, state must work to maximize both corporate freedom and comfort levels for the less fortunate. And in return, of course, state has the right to demand modest services from the people.

    Again, remember, we are all in this together, with our duties and privileges as it befits a nation, nobody should be excluded, for better or worse. None of this "self sufficiency" nonsense.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Triteleia Laxa

    Your comments on this thread are really good. People should try their best to understand them. The observations on money and the economy are spot on, while noticing that “in the real world” everyone was always in it together in a way, and that there will be no genocide of the less able, is critical to understanding. I particularly like your point that we should be honest about the previous purpose of the big wars and therefore find a way to achieve the same thing, but with far less suffering.

    I always liked libertarian economics. Partly because I have no reason nor desire to take from others, but, just as importantly, because things like the non-aggression principle would assert my own boundaries when I was loathe to do so directly and more generally. My attachment to such definitions of right and wrong weakened as I learned to not always accept other people’s burdens.

    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?

    Also thanks.

    • Thanks: mal
    • Replies: @A123
    @Triteleia Laxa

    The closure of "mental hospitals" in the U.S. was a mistake. There are those that need permanently supervised residency.

    Others, have limited capability and income potential that works best in a semi-controlled environment adjacent to such facilities. While places ordinary people are likely to avoid, they would be both cheaper and much more humane than the current status quo. Incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional facilities makes their mental problems worse.

    PEACE 😇

    , @mal
    @Triteleia Laxa


    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?
     
    So sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you, but its a rather complex subject. You don't really learn by reading stuff about it. You learn by reading criticism of the stuff you want to learn and then weeding out the fluff.

    So for criticism of the state, I found Hayek rather convincing. And for criticism of financial imperialism as it rules today, your will find no better critic than Vladimir Lenin circa 1900-1910. And for Keynesisan take on things, Mike Hudson is a good resource.

    Once you have good background, go to Zero Hedge. Their doomer takes are worthless, but they do post good research letters from Bank of America and Goldman Sachs and other power players. With good historical grounding, you will be able to see what the overlords want other people to see. This will at least get you started.

    Replies: @Yevardian

  174. @Truth
    @A123

    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I'd have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.

    I mean, I don't find Rosie O'donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, "Rosie, turn off all of the lights so I can think about someone else and I hope you know how to give head to get me started."

    Replies: @Thomm, @nebulafox, @A123

    Alcohol is a miracle drug in that situation. Turns out you really can close your eyes and pretend she’s someone else.

    • LOL: iffen
  175. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    you just lived through “other” power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -$40/barrel.
     
    Okay, but

    1) governments didn't "shut down the economy" (more accurately, restrict certain types of commerce) to control inflation. They did it to control a virus.

    2) The restrictions' effects on prices were varied. Some prices went down (oil). Some prices went up (construction materials).

    3) Among the commodities whose prices went down, they soon went back up, and typically higher than they were before, so even if the restrictions were intended to control inflation, their "success" was only very scattered and only very temporary, which is to say, they didn't really work.

    4) Meanwhile, whatever happened in the early months of 2020, prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy (in this case, incontinent money printing), so it still looks like money printing is the main thing—and perhaps only thing—that matters for inflation, which shouldn't be too surprising since "inflation" literally means that the money supply has outstripped the assets that it is supposed to represent.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

    prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy

    The core driver of inflation is demand higher than supply. And, supply in almost all categories is still restricted. While USD monetary policy is unhelpful. Every nation on the globe is experiencing inflation.

    There is one silver lining to all of this. What U.S. citizens perceive as “foreign trade” inflation, provides overwhelming momentum for the ideas of MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement. Whether you (or I) believe it is econometricially true or false… MAGA can easily and convincingly sell this as “China, China, China”. And, that explanation will ring immediately true based on the current massive port backlog imagery.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

     

    • Agree: mal
    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @A123


    The core driver of inflation is demand higher than supply.
     
    In theory. But as prices rise, demand abates, so it also self-limiting. In practice, inflation is almost always from governments futzing with their currencies. Indeed, I would argue that so-called demand-driven "inflation" isn't really inflation at all but simply the normal rebalancing between the three legs of supply, demand, and price that perpetually occurs always and everywhere. Economists thinking that any time prices go up or down is a distortion ("inflation" or "deflation") while if supply or demand go up or down it's just a normal thing, is another of the peculiar psychoses that afflict modern macroeconomists. In reality, all three are in constant motion, constantly rebalancing each other.

    True inflation—inflation from excess currency—really is a distortion since it is warping the natural link between supply, demand, and prices by spewing extra measuring units into the system without creating any concomitant value.

    The current global inflation is obviously the result of global money printing.

    Every nation on the globe is experiencing inflation.
     
    Because every nation is also printing excess currency. In some cases they can't help it. Every country that has dollarized it's currency or whose currency is pegged to the dollar (e.g., China, Saudi Arabia) is automatically getting inflated whenever the dollar inflates. They might not be happy about that and may move or remove their dollar pegs if the dollar inflates too much. (Indeed, if you start hearing talk of other countries removing their dollar pegs, it will be a sign that we are on the verge of a serious financial crisis.) There are other countries that depend on exports, especially to US Dollar markets (e.g., Germany [i.e., ECB], Switzerland, most of East Asia), so even if they dislike inflation, they are obliged to tag along with it lest their currencies rise too much and their export earnings suffer. For other countries, it's just pure opportunism. Governments always like looting via their currency, and the fact that the US government is doing so with gusto now provides them with the perfect cover to do what they always want to do. Still others may be doing it for the same reason the Fed claims to be doing it: a Keynesian stimulation of demand stunted by lockdown restrictions. In any case, the Fed likes the other major world currencies to follow suit with whatever the Fed does in order to keep relative prices stable, and generally they do mostly follow suit, probably with a little behind-the-scenes encouragement at times.

    There is one silver lining to all of this.
     
    I agree it would be a silver lining (for everyone) if the result of all this would be less globalism and more self-reliance. I'm not sure that's the way to bet though.

    Replies: @A123

  176. @Triteleia Laxa
    @mal

    Your comments on this thread are really good. People should try their best to understand them. The observations on money and the economy are spot on, while noticing that "in the real world" everyone was always in it together in a way, and that there will be no genocide of the less able, is critical to understanding. I particularly like your point that we should be honest about the previous purpose of the big wars and therefore find a way to achieve the same thing, but with far less suffering.

    I always liked libertarian economics. Partly because I have no reason nor desire to take from others, but, just as importantly, because things like the non-aggression principle would assert my own boundaries when I was loathe to do so directly and more generally. My attachment to such definitions of right and wrong weakened as I learned to not always accept other people's burdens.

    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?

    Also thanks.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

    The closure of “mental hospitals” in the U.S. was a mistake. There are those that need permanently supervised residency.

    Others, have limited capability and income potential that works best in a semi-controlled environment adjacent to such facilities. While places ordinary people are likely to avoid, they would be both cheaper and much more humane than the current status quo. Incarcerating the mentally ill in correctional facilities makes their mental problems worse.

    PEACE 😇

    • Agree: Barbarossa
  177. @Truth
    @A123

    Old Sport, seriously, I have asked this question no less than 100x now because I when Thomm started here, I thought he was nuts. But I am having a hard time understanding, why is it hard for a man to say, I'd have sex with a woman I was not attracted to, before I had sex with a man.

    I mean, I don't find Rosie O'donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, "Rosie, turn off all of the lights so I can think about someone else and I hope you know how to give head to get me started."

    Replies: @Thomm, @nebulafox, @A123

    I mean, I don’t find Rosie O’donnel attractive, but if it came down to her and Denzel, I would say, “Rosie, turn off all of the lights

    You omit the always present option number three. If the options were:

    -1- Rosie O’Donnell
    -2- Gérard Depardieu
    -3- Chewing your man bits off with your own teeth.

    I would give strong consideration to #3. Once anything has been inside of Rosie, do you really want to keep it?

    (shudder)

    PEACE 😇

  178. @Truth
    @Barbarossa

    LOL, Raw oysters are an aphrodisiac.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    Certainly. But since everyone in the thread is throwing out the plausible rankings of sex with most anything and everything, why leave out the mollusks?
    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent, I promise it will be much more amusing.

    • Agree: A123
    • LOL: Truth
    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa


    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent, I promise it will be much more amusing.
     
    But I didn't even eat salmon.
    -- What about the mollusks?

    I do not know if eat is the right word for the mollusks
    -- (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more)

    PEACE 😇

     
    http://i1.kym-cdn.com/photos/images/original/001/052/199/94e.gif

    , @schnellandine
    @Barbarossa


    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent,
     
    A cruel suggestion for Troof, who even with his regular speech runs daily the risk of tripping over his lips.
  179. @GLT
    @mal


    Same with Weimar Germans. Their mistake was losing WW1, not hyperinflating to get out of reparations afterwards.
     
    But they were specified in gold backed currency. Am I missing something?

    Replies: @mal

    They were printing money to buy gold and whatever other hard assets they could on the open market. And then used that to make payments to the “Allies”.

    The “Allies”, the British and and French, were then forced to pay back the loans that the American Banks made to help British and French fund weapons purchases during the war. This wasn’t very nice or even “ally” thing to do as usually those loans were restructured and/or forgiven.

    At the time when even Soviet Russia was under gold standard, losing your gold meant losing your economy. Net result was:

    1. Germans lost their gold and hyperinflated.
    2. British and French Empires received a backstabbing mortal blow from the Americans from which they never recovered. That was the end of European supremacy in global affairs.
    3. Americans literally made a killing and became a superpower with all that gold. The amount of gold on deposit in the newly minted Federal Reserve system increased from like 500 tons in 1913 to something like 3000 tons by 1923. And keep in mind in 1913, America was not a poor country. Basically, that money is what got “Roaring 20’s” party started in the US.

  180. @songbird
    @A123

    Oddly enough, I think Heinlein's juveniles make him seem a bit more rightward-leaning and traditional than he really was. IMO, it was good that he had an editor. Chained Heinlein is better than unchained.

    In nature, it is easy to see many forms of color signaling. Since we see in color, I think we are not immune to it. Further, I think that any impartial attempt at quantification would show that in many movies, we see black faces (strongest color signal) out of proportion to what we would expect. And we would see the same in scifi novels.

    Was Heinlein color signaling with Johnny Rico? Put it in the demographic context of the '50s, and consider that Hispanics typically don't do a lot of reading (so not much of a market, even externally). And I think he was color signaling. But in a very subtle way, as we would expect from Heinlein who was by all accounts a very intelligent man.

    Replies: @Aedib

    Was Heinlein color signaling with Johnny Rico? Put it in the demographic context of the ’50s, and consider that Hispanics typically don’t do a lot of reading (so not much of a market, even externally).

    I don’t think so. These endless discussions about Johny Rico ethnicity (Was he a brown Filipino or a white Argentine?) are irrelevant because the world of Starship Troopers was already globalized. But it was in the opposite direction of current trends.

  181. @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    Certainly. But since everyone in the thread is throwing out the plausible rankings of sex with most anything and everything, why leave out the mollusks?
    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent, I promise it will be much more amusing.

    Replies: @A123, @schnellandine

    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent, I promise it will be much more amusing.

    But I didn’t even eat salmon.
    — What about the mollusks?

    I do not know if eat is the right word for the mollusks
    — (nudge, nudge, wink, wink, say no more)

    PEACE 😇

     

  182. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    you just lived through “other” power that government has to control the inflation. Just last year. Government shut down the economy due to pandemic and oil price dropped to -$40/barrel.
     
    Okay, but

    1) governments didn't "shut down the economy" (more accurately, restrict certain types of commerce) to control inflation. They did it to control a virus.

    2) The restrictions' effects on prices were varied. Some prices went down (oil). Some prices went up (construction materials).

    3) Among the commodities whose prices went down, they soon went back up, and typically higher than they were before, so even if the restrictions were intended to control inflation, their "success" was only very scattered and only very temporary, which is to say, they didn't really work.

    4) Meanwhile, whatever happened in the early months of 2020, prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy (in this case, incontinent money printing), so it still looks like money printing is the main thing—and perhaps only thing—that matters for inflation, which shouldn't be too surprising since "inflation" literally means that the money supply has outstripped the assets that it is supposed to represent.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

    What A123 said.

    Also, inflation is still rather low considering the epic sale of supply chain disruption we are experiencing.

    If I were a war planner, here’s how my ledger would look like:

    1. National ability of the medical sector to deal with mass casualty event – Fail.
    2. Ability of supply chain to adapt to challenges such as port slowdowns and energy crunch – Actually, not bad, so far. Could be worse.

    People are just spoiled. So we went from 2% inflation to 5% inflation. The horror! In the 90’s, we ran at 3-4% inflation and that was a good thing. Even Russia, a country that hyperinflates when a fly sneezes, is at 7%. Which is their normal range even a decade ago.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical and is highly undesirable because it means we are in an economic depression.

    So I would say, government is controlling the inflation just fine. We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.

    • LOL: schnellandine
    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    What A123 said.
     
    What I said to A123.

    Also, inflation is still rather low
     
    It's true it could be worse. OTOH, wait a few more months and it probably will be.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical
     
    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries. But this isn't surprising since it couldn't fiat spew until about WWI. At which point, just by coincidence, the currency suddenly started inflating and hasn't stopped since. Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous. You had to debase them while convincing everyone that they weren't really debased. Most traders saw through that and as a result we had things like Gresham's Law.

    We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.
     
    Yes, there was a school of thought that modest and steady inflation served as a kind of stealth slow-motion debt jubilee. Whether this is a good thing or not, I'll let others decide. But it doesn't matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn't like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was. And that is beside the fact that most inflation is created by currency authorities handing fresh currency to the banking cartels (i.e., creditors), which obviously does nothing to help debtors in the first place.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123, @mal

  183. @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    Certainly. But since everyone in the thread is throwing out the plausible rankings of sex with most anything and everything, why leave out the mollusks?
    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent, I promise it will be much more amusing.

    Replies: @A123, @schnellandine

    If you read my comment aloud in a supercilious English accent,

    A cruel suggestion for Troof, who even with his regular speech runs daily the risk of tripping over his lips.

  184. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Basically, government workers will spend their money in bars which will create paychecks for bartenders. In US, that’s like 80% of the entire economy.
     
    That may be true, but it is not necessarily commendable. If 80% of your economy is bureaucrats buying toxic drinks to piss them out a few hours later, then 80% of your economy is bullsh*t, and you would be no worse off if that 80% disappeared.

    I recognize that on paper this kind of thing drives up the all-holy GDP, but such GDP fetishism is as deluded as a car owner saying, "my engine RPMs are way up, so I must be reaching my destinations much faster" while his transmission is slipping, or a homeowner saying, "My house is freezing! If I could just make the reading on this thermometer be higher then everything would be fine!" while breathing on the thermometer bulb to raise the "temperature".

    It is entirely possible to log transactions that create no value or even destroy value. But this obvious fact at micro-scale is somehow lost at macro-scale because in GDP-universe everything is recorded at |absolute value| so macroeconomists are congenitally unable to distinguish between value creation and value destruction. It is almost a form of psychosis.

    "GDP just doubled because everyone bought poison to kill their neighbor. Things are great!"
    —Macroeconomists

    If Russia is wise, it will not follow the West down the shaded path of GDP worship.

    Replies: @mal

    True, GDP is a largely made up number, exactly for the reasons you describe (the best way to grow real GDP in the US is to give everyone cancer because medical payments will skyrocket and the sector is already huge, so it can absorb a lot of new demand).

    However, it’s not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that’s their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people. And no, they wouldn’t all become brilliant rocket scientists once the bars closed – that’s not really how it works.

    So true, GDP level doesn’t really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that’s their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people.
     
    Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had said that ending valueless/value-destroying activity would make us no worse off economically. Politically, or even socially, legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars may indeed be preferable to legions of scheming revolutionaries in the streets, but that's not an economic argument, it's a political one. (Also one I'm not sure I agree with at this point. Not that I expect anyone to care about my political opinion.)

    Replies: @mal

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @mal


    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical and is highly undesirable because it means we are in an economic depression.

    So I would say, government is controlling the inflation just fine.
     
    It's actually about whether trust in existing economic institutions can be sustained. If not, even if objective indicators are OK, people will still see lots of things crumbling.

    However, it’s not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

     

    Investment comes from savings where their real value isn't adequately captured by GDP. Read the Austrians. You can obviously say "money printer go brrrrr", but in fact that is about diluting the existing monetary supply and take a little chunk out of all existing savings & transactions.

    GDP level doesn’t really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
     
    How about the other way around? Common sense says so. GDP is just a number.

    Replies: @mal

  185. @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    prices are now up across the board and have been for a while, as a clear and obvious result of monetary policy
     
    The core driver of inflation is demand higher than supply. And, supply in almost all categories is still restricted. While USD monetary policy is unhelpful. Every nation on the globe is experiencing inflation.

    There is one silver lining to all of this. What U.S. citizens perceive as "foreign trade" inflation, provides overwhelming momentum for the ideas of MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement. Whether you (or I) believe it is econometricially true or false... MAGA can easily and convincingly sell this as "China, China, China". And, that explanation will ring immediately true based on the current massive port backlog imagery.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

     
    https://i.imgflip.com/5qhiwa.jpg

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    The core driver of inflation is demand higher than supply.

    In theory. But as prices rise, demand abates, so it also self-limiting. In practice, inflation is almost always from governments futzing with their currencies. Indeed, I would argue that so-called demand-driven “inflation” isn’t really inflation at all but simply the normal rebalancing between the three legs of supply, demand, and price that perpetually occurs always and everywhere. Economists thinking that any time prices go up or down is a distortion (“inflation” or “deflation”) while if supply or demand go up or down it’s just a normal thing, is another of the peculiar psychoses that afflict modern macroeconomists. In reality, all three are in constant motion, constantly rebalancing each other.

    True inflation—inflation from excess currency—really is a distortion since it is warping the natural link between supply, demand, and prices by spewing extra measuring units into the system without creating any concomitant value.

    The current global inflation is obviously the result of global money printing.

    Every nation on the globe is experiencing inflation.

    Because every nation is also printing excess currency. In some cases they can’t help it. Every country that has dollarized it’s currency or whose currency is pegged to the dollar (e.g., China, Saudi Arabia) is automatically getting inflated whenever the dollar inflates. They might not be happy about that and may move or remove their dollar pegs if the dollar inflates too much. (Indeed, if you start hearing talk of other countries removing their dollar pegs, it will be a sign that we are on the verge of a serious financial crisis.) There are other countries that depend on exports, especially to US Dollar markets (e.g., Germany [i.e., ECB], Switzerland, most of East Asia), so even if they dislike inflation, they are obliged to tag along with it lest their currencies rise too much and their export earnings suffer. For other countries, it’s just pure opportunism. Governments always like looting via their currency, and the fact that the US government is doing so with gusto now provides them with the perfect cover to do what they always want to do. Still others may be doing it for the same reason the Fed claims to be doing it: a Keynesian stimulation of demand stunted by lockdown restrictions. In any case, the Fed likes the other major world currencies to follow suit with whatever the Fed does in order to keep relative prices stable, and generally they do mostly follow suit, probably with a little behind-the-scenes encouragement at times.

    There is one silver lining to all of this.

    I agree it would be a silver lining (for everyone) if the result of all this would be less globalism and more self-reliance. I’m not sure that’s the way to bet though.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    Germany [i.e., ECB], Switzerland, most of East Asia), so even if they dislike inflation, they are obliged to tag along with it lest their currencies rise too much and their export earnings suffer
     
    Let me repeat/rephrase one of my prior quotes:

    All trade is managed trade. If a nation does not manage trade when everyone else does... That nation is a guaranteed looser.
    ___

    Germany is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) and created negative rates, dragging everyone else along.

    China is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) via various mechanisms "A" vs. "B" shares, investment restrictions, etc.

    If the U.S. refused to follow the China/Germany manipulation lead... Americans would be guaranteed losers. Blaming the Fed does not make sense. They are doing what they can in a world trade & currency system intentionally broken by others.
    ___

    Any long term solution requires MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement. Reducing interaction with manipulative Germany and World #1 manipulator The CCP, is the minimum starting point towards resolving the USD currency mess.

    Once the influence of malicious currency manipulators is diminished. A high tariff will provides the resources necessary to begin unwinding the USD currency situation in a manner that does not unnecessarily burden average Americans.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  186. @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    True, GDP is a largely made up number, exactly for the reasons you describe (the best way to grow real GDP in the US is to give everyone cancer because medical payments will skyrocket and the sector is already huge, so it can absorb a lot of new demand).

    However, it's not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that's their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people. And no, they wouldn't all become brilliant rocket scientists once the bars closed - that's not really how it works.

    So true, GDP level doesn't really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Yellowface Anon

    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that’s their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people.

    Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had said that ending valueless/value-destroying activity would make us no worse off economically. Politically, or even socially, legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars may indeed be preferable to legions of scheming revolutionaries in the streets, but that’s not an economic argument, it’s a political one. (Also one I’m not sure I agree with at this point. Not that I expect anyone to care about my political opinion.)

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    Ah, but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place.

    "I increased my bar profit margin by 10% by skipping payoff to the police! Too bad I got shot in the head by a roving street gang the next day."

    So keep those legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars, I say.

    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day. Red beads on an island. Can't ignore those power verticals which always develop whenever there are more than 1 human around. Even if they cause loss of economic efficiency. Economic efficiency does no good to dead people.

    Anyway, a dollar from a woozy bureaucrat spends just as well as the dollar from anybody else, so bar owners and bartenders don't complain.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Mikel

  187. I’ve been feeling (inspired by the horseshoe woke/WN posts) that there exists a bipartisan consensus in the US to:
    1) Consolidate the dominance, up to quasi-one-party rule, of their own party
    2) Elimination of oppositional groups with possible violent means (e.g. threats of deportation or detention)
    Only that everyone see things in the exclusive benefit of their own party.
    It shows us one of the ways a bipartisan republican political system can devolve into disequilibrium, both parties being the spitting image of each other. This would appear to be a perfect explanation of the American political impasse if the UN & WEF didn’t exist.

  188. @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    What A123 said.

    Also, inflation is still rather low considering the epic sale of supply chain disruption we are experiencing.

    If I were a war planner, here's how my ledger would look like:

    1. National ability of the medical sector to deal with mass casualty event - Fail.
    2. Ability of supply chain to adapt to challenges such as port slowdowns and energy crunch - Actually, not bad, so far. Could be worse.

    People are just spoiled. So we went from 2% inflation to 5% inflation. The horror! In the 90's, we ran at 3-4% inflation and that was a good thing. Even Russia, a country that hyperinflates when a fly sneezes, is at 7%. Which is their normal range even a decade ago.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical and is highly undesirable because it means we are in an economic depression.

    So I would say, government is controlling the inflation just fine. We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    What A123 said.

    What I said to A123.

    Also, inflation is still rather low

    It’s true it could be worse. OTOH, wait a few more months and it probably will be.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical

    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries. But this isn’t surprising since it couldn’t fiat spew until about WWI. At which point, just by coincidence, the currency suddenly started inflating and hasn’t stopped since. Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous. You had to debase them while convincing everyone that they weren’t really debased. Most traders saw through that and as a result we had things like Gresham’s Law.

    We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.

    Yes, there was a school of thought that modest and steady inflation served as a kind of stealth slow-motion debt jubilee. Whether this is a good thing or not, I’ll let others decide. But it doesn’t matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn’t like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was. And that is beside the fact that most inflation is created by currency authorities handing fresh currency to the banking cartels (i.e., creditors), which obviously does nothing to help debtors in the first place.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    I agree it would be a silver lining (for everyone) if the result of all this would be less globalism and more self-reliance.
     
    It will be brutal and and result far less "advanced" & complex. But I'd assume it's the outcome of a new, post-liberal order.

    Everything else is in fact the symptoms of how much trust is there in the economic institutions - if you believe a little bit of inflation is alright, like frog-boiling, then it appears fine in the short or medium term. But if you believe the institutions are problematic, then wealth will start being diverted into substantial assets, and the value of currencies will start dropping. Hyperinflation is more social than economic. Fiat is credit, is the trust in the ability at first to redeem commodity money, then not to tamper seriously with the money supply.
    , @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was.
     
    LIBOR is in its final death throes and the replacement is going to be a very short-term rate on most contracts (1)

    Benchmark Replacement Waterfall
    Step 1: Forward-Looking Term SOFR and Adjustment
    Step 2: Daily Simple Average SOFR and Adjustment
    Step 3: Lender Selected Rate and Adjustment

    As of the date of this writing, the Forward-Looking Term SOFR rate does not yet exist and will need to be derived from transactions in the SOFR derivatives market. The indexes will be published by a third-party administrator under an approved/endorsed calculation methodology. However, on March 23, 2021, the ARRC stated they will not be able to recommend forward-looking SOFR Term indexes by mid-2021. Additionally, the ARRC also stated they cannot guarantee that it will be able to recommend an administrator that can produce robust Term index by the end of 2021.
     

    Commitment to forward looking SOFR has been sparse. Almost everything is headed towards the "Step 2" daily benchmark that has no forward looking capability.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.agloan.com/libor-transition/

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries.
     
    Yea, but that's not really a good thing. I would rather live in a modern hyperinflating Zimbabwe than medieval England. Growing population and technological progress require money supply that can keep up. Otherwise, we would just have constant wars over money, which is a rather silly reason for war. Land, population, or resources? Sure. But fighting over a made up medium of exchange is like kindergarten level.

    Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous.
     
    Yes, and the only way to get more money was to organize a raid on Spanish Treasure Fleets. How many people today even know how to board a galleon properly?

    But it doesn’t matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn’t like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was.
     
    Echoing A123's sentiment here, this looks at the short end mostly. But at the long end, US Treasury 10 year benchmark is happily trading at 1.5%, and 30 year at around 2%.

    Basically, bond markets are telling us "no inflation for next 30 years". And no, it's not all Fed games. Subpar economic growth rather than inflation will be the main issue going forward.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  189. @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    True, GDP is a largely made up number, exactly for the reasons you describe (the best way to grow real GDP in the US is to give everyone cancer because medical payments will skyrocket and the sector is already huge, so it can absorb a lot of new demand).

    However, it's not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that's their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people. And no, they wouldn't all become brilliant rocket scientists once the bars closed - that's not really how it works.

    So true, GDP level doesn't really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Yellowface Anon

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical and is highly undesirable because it means we are in an economic depression.

    So I would say, government is controlling the inflation just fine.

    It’s actually about whether trust in existing economic institutions can be sustained. If not, even if objective indicators are OK, people will still see lots of things crumbling.

    However, it’s not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

    Investment comes from savings where their real value isn’t adequately captured by GDP. Read the Austrians. You can obviously say “money printer go brrrrr”, but in fact that is about diluting the existing monetary supply and take a little chunk out of all existing savings & transactions.

    GDP level doesn’t really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

    How about the other way around? Common sense says so. GDP is just a number.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yea yea yea, savings and the Austrians. That world went away in 2008. For better or worse, but its not possible to bring it back.

    Let's take our MAGA friend here, A123. Now, we may have different perspectives, but if there is one thing that we hopefully will learn from our current adventure is that placing all your supply chain eggs in one Asian basket may not be a smart idea.

    And that's kinda where MAGA is going with American reindustrialization. While I don't share the whole "hate China" thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains. I don't see Asia being reliable going forward, for a variety of reasons.

    So how to do this? How to industrialize America? Free market? Free market only cares that it's cheap which means Asia. Free market doesn't care about national security or even reliability five years down the road.

    Market driven interest rates will be higher than what they are currently being managed to. How do you finance $billion dollar factories at high rates if you have to send $100 million every year to the bank in interest expense? (Say, 10% annual interest). How do you have any hope of being competitive after making such usurous payments? And why? What did bank exactly do for you to justify such $100 million income? Entered two numbers in a spreadsheet? That's some very expensive key strokes.

    Which is why I don't really see the reasoning for the "abolish the Fed" crowd. And savings argument doesn't fly either - its not like there's a warehouse of factories just sitting out there, saved from the good times. It's all built to order. There is no factory unless you order it. Then it gets designed and built.

    So the mechanics of real economy, not just financial one, is quite different from Austrians' description, as far as I can see.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

  190. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    What A123 said.
     
    What I said to A123.

    Also, inflation is still rather low
     
    It's true it could be worse. OTOH, wait a few more months and it probably will be.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical
     
    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries. But this isn't surprising since it couldn't fiat spew until about WWI. At which point, just by coincidence, the currency suddenly started inflating and hasn't stopped since. Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous. You had to debase them while convincing everyone that they weren't really debased. Most traders saw through that and as a result we had things like Gresham's Law.

    We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.
     
    Yes, there was a school of thought that modest and steady inflation served as a kind of stealth slow-motion debt jubilee. Whether this is a good thing or not, I'll let others decide. But it doesn't matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn't like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was. And that is beside the fact that most inflation is created by currency authorities handing fresh currency to the banking cartels (i.e., creditors), which obviously does nothing to help debtors in the first place.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123, @mal

    I agree it would be a silver lining (for everyone) if the result of all this would be less globalism and more self-reliance.

    It will be brutal and and result far less “advanced” & complex. But I’d assume it’s the outcome of a new, post-liberal order.

    Everything else is in fact the symptoms of how much trust is there in the economic institutions – if you believe a little bit of inflation is alright, like frog-boiling, then it appears fine in the short or medium term. But if you believe the institutions are problematic, then wealth will start being diverted into substantial assets, and the value of currencies will start dropping. Hyperinflation is more social than economic. Fiat is credit, is the trust in the ability at first to redeem commodity money, then not to tamper seriously with the money supply.

  191. @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.
     
    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector – they get to create whatever money they want.
     
    But if they give it to someone who doesn't pay it back, then they're effed. If the fiat government pisses away its money, though, it can just print more.

    The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards.
     
    Do we want the goal to be productive investment or infinite cronyism? Hmm.

    Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.
     
    The answer is easy for me, but for anyone who is a government crony, they might answer differently. But I agree that it is fundamental, so fundamental that it could form the basis of a civil war.


    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?
     
    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.
     
    Just a note on nomenclature, since I gather we are using slightly different terminology: when I say "banking cartel", I am referring to the crony pseudo-banks that exist off government fiat money, as opposed to (increasingly rare) real banks that have to balance their books, make productive loans, etc. The banking cartel get their money from the government fiat (i.e., mass dilution) operations. (Yes, they often have some legitimate banking operations as well, but let us not be deceived by their window dressing into mistaking their main activity.)

    And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem.
     
    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?

    But currently, the only macro-significant negative interest rates I am aware of is the negative interest rates that depositors "get" (i.e., pay) at the European central banks (i.e., crony fiat money presses).


    But state will have to be a part of the equation.
     
    The state already is a big part of the equation. Indeed, that's arguably why inflation is such a problem.

    Its inevitable.
     
    I don't know if it is or not, but it certainly is something of a self-licking ice-cream cone: demand government intervention to fix the distortions caused by government intervention.


    what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating?
     
    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and “international investment community”.
     
    Maybe they thought they would, but they didn't. They're still in debt, and begging for more. Their creditors are smart enough to demand repayment in real currency, not Zimbabwe dollars. Zimbabwe only hyperinflated their way out of having their own currency. The Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist.

    Just like Weimar Germans did.
     
    Eh, they didn't get out of it either. They were levied in gold. Germany only finished paying off the "reparations" in 2010, 91 years after they were levied.

    Brennus may have been a hard man, but he was much more honest than the Allied victors in the Word Wars.

    P.S. No worries about the separate replies. It's actually easier than one big reply.

    Replies: @mal

    But if they give it to someone who doesn’t pay it back, then they’re effed. If the fiat government pisses away its money, though, it can just print more.

    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out. Also, banks create money. So it’s pretty hard to go broke with this arrangement (there are interbank loans and Federal Reserve discount window etc). You have to screw up really bad.

    It would be like fish in the ocean running out of water. And not even that, the fish doesn’t just swim in the water, it has been provided with its own water making machine and has the license to print water. You literally have to be dumber than a brick to run out of water. No offense to bricks. But it does happen occasionally, unfortunately.

    Do we want the goal to be productive investment or infinite cronyism? Hmm.

    Private sector doesn’t always fund productive investment (actually, it generally prefers asset price speculation to real investment), and government doesn’t always waste money. Government and private sector generally work better together when they complement each other.

    The answer is easy for me, but for anyone who is a government crony, they might answer differently. But I agree that it is fundamental, so fundamental that it could form the basis of a civil war.

    Well, government at all levels is the largest employer in the country. Once you account for welfare spend (as well as Social Security and Medicare) and subcontractors (Lockheed Martin, healthcare corporations etc), you are looking at at least 50% of the population who are government cronies in one form or another. And the rest depending on on them for paychecks.

    People can fight the civil war against the government only for as long as Medicare will pay for their diabetes medication. This will be the fastest civil war in history.

    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?

    We are getting there, on a quite well defined schedule.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

    [MORE]

    The state already is a big part of the equation. Indeed, that’s arguably why inflation is such a problem.

    For who? The only time we didn’t have inflation was in 2008, and that was really bad. Economic collapse, millions unemployed etc. We really don’t want 0% inflation. Or even 2% inflation. Inflation is like body temperature – nobody wants to be at room temperature. Sure, too high is problematic, it means your body/economy is struggling with something, but generally, too high is better than too low.

    Maybe they thought they would, but they didn’t. They’re still in debt, and begging for more. Their creditors are smart enough to demand repayment in real currency, not Zimbabwe dollars.

    What’s a “real currency”? The US dollar and Zimbabwe dollar are all created similarly. They are traded differently, but not because they are fundamentally different. US dollar is as real a currency as Zimbabwean dollar.

    Zimbabwe debt to GDP was like 240% prior to hyperinflation.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/government-debt-to-gdp

    They were also in a decade long economic depression.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/gdp-growth-annual

    Post hyperinflation, they returned to growth, and slashed their debt to GDP to like 70%. Their debt to GDP became lower than US lol. It was the right move. And sure, they want more money (who doesn’t), and they will have to pay something after restructuring. But it won’t be 250% of their entire GDP.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.
     
    "important enough" = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive

    Also, banks create money.
     
    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.

    Fake ("central") banks create money just by printing (i.e., counterfeiting) it. Unfortunately, the opportunities for this are infinite, or limited only by currency collapse.

    So it’s pretty hard to go broke with this arrangement...
     
    ...if you are a central (fake) bank. If you are a real bank that actually needs balanced books, it is all too easy to go broke.

    You have to screw up really bad.
     
    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.

    Private sector doesn’t always fund productive investment
     
    True, but it does so more than the governemtn does, which is the main alternative.

    (actually, it generally prefers asset price speculation to real investment)
     
    Lately, in the US, this is true. But that is an effect of so much of the banking sector being nothing more than a corrupt cartel snouting in the central bank's seigniorage (i.e., counterfeiting) process rather than doing anything actually productive.

    and government doesn’t always waste money.
     
    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today's government or the government of fifty years ago? Today's government or the government of twenty years hence?

    Well, government at all levels is the largest employer in the country. Once you account for welfare spend (as well as Social Security and Medicare) and subcontractors (Lockheed Martin, healthcare corporations etc), you are looking at at least 50% of the population who are government cronies in one form or another. And the rest depending on on them for paychecks.
     
    Again, this is a list of defects, not of virtues.

    People can fight the civil war against the government only for as long as Medicare will pay for their diabetes medication.
     
    If there is a civil war, expect the diabetes people to be mostly in government uniforms.


    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?
     
    We are getting there, on a quite well defined schedule.
     
    Yes, that was the point. But I don't know how well defined the schedule is.

    The only time we didn’t have inflation was in 2008, and that was really bad. Economic collapse, millions unemployed etc. We really don’t want 0% inflation. Or even 2% inflation.
     
    I'm not a zero-inflation zealot. I merely say lower inflation is better than higher inflation. From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth. It may not have been a libertarian paradise, but it was good enough for government work. That worked for three decades; I see no reason we can't do it for another three. Well there is one reason: the government prefers to play money printer games.

    Inflation is like body temperature – nobody wants to be at room temperature.
     
    I'd say a better metaphor is that inflation is like blood volume — if it grows faster than your body you're gonna die of hypertension.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you're doing it wrong.

    What’s a “real currency”? The US dollar and Zimbabwe dollar are all created similarly.
     
    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is "more" in a "per asset" sense.)

    US dollar is as real a currency as Zimbabwean dollar.
     
    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is ... amusing.

    Zimbabwe debt to GDP was like 240% prior to hyperinflation.
     
    Yeah ... I've always been skeptical of the utility of the debt-to-GDP yardstick, but I didn't get any more into it because we already had enough to discuss in these overlong comments.

    Replies: @mal

  192. @Almost Missouri
    @A123


    The core driver of inflation is demand higher than supply.
     
    In theory. But as prices rise, demand abates, so it also self-limiting. In practice, inflation is almost always from governments futzing with their currencies. Indeed, I would argue that so-called demand-driven "inflation" isn't really inflation at all but simply the normal rebalancing between the three legs of supply, demand, and price that perpetually occurs always and everywhere. Economists thinking that any time prices go up or down is a distortion ("inflation" or "deflation") while if supply or demand go up or down it's just a normal thing, is another of the peculiar psychoses that afflict modern macroeconomists. In reality, all three are in constant motion, constantly rebalancing each other.

    True inflation—inflation from excess currency—really is a distortion since it is warping the natural link between supply, demand, and prices by spewing extra measuring units into the system without creating any concomitant value.

    The current global inflation is obviously the result of global money printing.

    Every nation on the globe is experiencing inflation.
     
    Because every nation is also printing excess currency. In some cases they can't help it. Every country that has dollarized it's currency or whose currency is pegged to the dollar (e.g., China, Saudi Arabia) is automatically getting inflated whenever the dollar inflates. They might not be happy about that and may move or remove their dollar pegs if the dollar inflates too much. (Indeed, if you start hearing talk of other countries removing their dollar pegs, it will be a sign that we are on the verge of a serious financial crisis.) There are other countries that depend on exports, especially to US Dollar markets (e.g., Germany [i.e., ECB], Switzerland, most of East Asia), so even if they dislike inflation, they are obliged to tag along with it lest their currencies rise too much and their export earnings suffer. For other countries, it's just pure opportunism. Governments always like looting via their currency, and the fact that the US government is doing so with gusto now provides them with the perfect cover to do what they always want to do. Still others may be doing it for the same reason the Fed claims to be doing it: a Keynesian stimulation of demand stunted by lockdown restrictions. In any case, the Fed likes the other major world currencies to follow suit with whatever the Fed does in order to keep relative prices stable, and generally they do mostly follow suit, probably with a little behind-the-scenes encouragement at times.

    There is one silver lining to all of this.
     
    I agree it would be a silver lining (for everyone) if the result of all this would be less globalism and more self-reliance. I'm not sure that's the way to bet though.

    Replies: @A123

    Germany [i.e., ECB], Switzerland, most of East Asia), so even if they dislike inflation, they are obliged to tag along with it lest their currencies rise too much and their export earnings suffer

    Let me repeat/rephrase one of my prior quotes:

    All trade is managed trade. If a nation does not manage trade when everyone else does… That nation is a guaranteed looser.
    ___

    Germany is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) and created negative rates, dragging everyone else along.

    China is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) via various mechanisms “A” vs. “B” shares, investment restrictions, etc.

    If the U.S. refused to follow the China/Germany manipulation lead… Americans would be guaranteed losers. Blaming the Fed does not make sense. They are doing what they can in a world trade & currency system intentionally broken by others.
    ___

    Any long term solution requires MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement. Reducing interaction with manipulative Germany and World #1 manipulator The CCP, is the minimum starting point towards resolving the USD currency mess.

    Once the influence of malicious currency manipulators is diminished. A high tariff will provides the resources necessary to begin unwinding the USD currency situation in a manner that does not unnecessarily burden average Americans.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @A123


    Germany is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) and created negative rates, dragging everyone else along.
     
    If the US is the 800-pound gorilla, then Germany is a one hundred pound monkey, as measured by national wealth. Plus the US has thousands of troops on German soil, and numerous other influence levers Germany is powerless to resist. Germany can't drag the US anywhere it isn't already willing to go.

    China is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) via various mechanisms “A” vs. “B” shares, investment restrictions, etc.
     
    If by "currency manipulator" you mean "pegged their currency to US currency" then yes, I suppose they are. But again, pegging their currency to the dollar means that they are eating a big chunk of US inflation. China's bearing a cost too. Sadly, the benefit of this arrangement accrues mostly to the Fed and its crony cartel rather than to the average American.

    A high tariff will provides the resources necessary to begin unwinding the USD currency situation in a manner that does not unnecessarily burden average Americans.
     
    I think it's worth a try. Unfortunately, this seems to be the opposite of the current administration's approach.
  193. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    What A123 said.
     
    What I said to A123.

    Also, inflation is still rather low
     
    It's true it could be worse. OTOH, wait a few more months and it probably will be.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical
     
    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries. But this isn't surprising since it couldn't fiat spew until about WWI. At which point, just by coincidence, the currency suddenly started inflating and hasn't stopped since. Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous. You had to debase them while convincing everyone that they weren't really debased. Most traders saw through that and as a result we had things like Gresham's Law.

    We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.
     
    Yes, there was a school of thought that modest and steady inflation served as a kind of stealth slow-motion debt jubilee. Whether this is a good thing or not, I'll let others decide. But it doesn't matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn't like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was. And that is beside the fact that most inflation is created by currency authorities handing fresh currency to the banking cartels (i.e., creditors), which obviously does nothing to help debtors in the first place.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123, @mal

    most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was.

    LIBOR is in its final death throes and the replacement is going to be a very short-term rate on most contracts (1)

    Benchmark Replacement Waterfall
    Step 1: Forward-Looking Term SOFR and Adjustment
    Step 2: Daily Simple Average SOFR and Adjustment
    Step 3: Lender Selected Rate and Adjustment

    As of the date of this writing, the Forward-Looking Term SOFR rate does not yet exist and will need to be derived from transactions in the SOFR derivatives market. The indexes will be published by a third-party administrator under an approved/endorsed calculation methodology. However, on March 23, 2021, the ARRC stated they will not be able to recommend forward-looking SOFR Term indexes by mid-2021. Additionally, the ARRC also stated they cannot guarantee that it will be able to recommend an administrator that can produce robust Term index by the end of 2021.

    Commitment to forward looking SOFR has been sparse. Almost everything is headed towards the “Step 2” daily benchmark that has no forward looking capability.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.agloan.com/libor-transition/

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @A123


    LIBOR is in its final death throes and the replacement is going to be a very short-term rate on most contracts
     
    Yes, Libor is headed to obsolescence, which is why I said "or some other index". The point is that whatever is the specific mechanism last year, this year, or next year, creditors have gotten adept at insulating themselves from soft defaults via inflation, so the claimed "benefit" of slo-mo debt jubilees via inflation is overstated.

    Replies: @A123

  194. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    And yes, 80% of the economy is bullshit, but no, you would not be better off if it disappeared. I mean, people clearly want their drinks, that’s their preference. If the bars disappeared, you would just get millions of unemployed bartenders. And lots of grumpy people.
     
    Perhaps it would have been clearer if I had said that ending valueless/value-destroying activity would make us no worse off economically. Politically, or even socially, legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars may indeed be preferable to legions of scheming revolutionaries in the streets, but that's not an economic argument, it's a political one. (Also one I'm not sure I agree with at this point. Not that I expect anyone to care about my political opinion.)

    Replies: @mal

    Ah, but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place.

    “I increased my bar profit margin by 10% by skipping payoff to the police! Too bad I got shot in the head by a roving street gang the next day.”

    So keep those legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars, I say.

    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day. Red beads on an island. Can’t ignore those power verticals which always develop whenever there are more than 1 human around. Even if they cause loss of economic efficiency. Economic efficiency does no good to dead people.

    Anyway, a dollar from a woozy bureaucrat spends just as well as the dollar from anybody else, so bar owners and bartenders don’t complain.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place
     
    Okay, now we're getting more into philosophical space.

    I'll just sum up my view this way: to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off. After all, if every economic question is also political question, then we are basically back to the old Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out.

    Replies: @mal

    , @Mikel
    @mal


    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day.
     
    No. Sadly, we were very far from reaching any such point.

    Since you claim that printing unlimited amounts of money is beneficial or even necessary to achieve healthy levels of real production (you go much further away in your claims than even MMT theorists), I asked you to explain why increasing the supply of red pebbles in a primitive island society that used them as a means of exchange would (obviously) not increase the levels of physical production and how both situations are different.

    You claimed that even on that island assigning resources to collect large amounts of pebbles would indeed increase production of real goods and services, which is nonsense, and defended this bizarre idea with some weird assumption about someone killing someone if they didn't use red pebbles, which made no sense.

    So, thinking that on the topic of money and economics (unlike on chemistry, technology and space exploration, where you are very knowledgeable), you are a victim of some sort of magical thinking, I just gave up and left the debate.

    Contrary to what you told TL, there is of course a lot to learn by reading monetary theory books.

    For an introduction I would recommend these two:

    Kenneth Galbraith's "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went" is a very good source to get aquainted with the basics of what money is, how it evolved and what different theories and monetary experiments have been conducted over history. Well written, humorous at times and relatively easy to read.

    Huerta de Soto's "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles" is very easy to read and provides a simple but very good understanding of the Austrian vision on money and economic cycles.

    Replies: @mal

  195. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    What A123 said.
     
    What I said to A123.

    Also, inflation is still rather low
     
    It's true it could be worse. OTOH, wait a few more months and it probably will be.

    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical
     
    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries. But this isn't surprising since it couldn't fiat spew until about WWI. At which point, just by coincidence, the currency suddenly started inflating and hasn't stopped since. Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous. You had to debase them while convincing everyone that they weren't really debased. Most traders saw through that and as a result we had things like Gresham's Law.

    We want to guide it higher, 3-4% in the long term, not to zero. It helps with debt burdens etc.
     
    Yes, there was a school of thought that modest and steady inflation served as a kind of stealth slow-motion debt jubilee. Whether this is a good thing or not, I'll let others decide. But it doesn't matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn't like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was. And that is beside the fact that most inflation is created by currency authorities handing fresh currency to the banking cartels (i.e., creditors), which obviously does nothing to help debtors in the first place.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123, @mal

    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries.

    Yea, but that’s not really a good thing. I would rather live in a modern hyperinflating Zimbabwe than medieval England. Growing population and technological progress require money supply that can keep up. Otherwise, we would just have constant wars over money, which is a rather silly reason for war. Land, population, or resources? Sure. But fighting over a made up medium of exchange is like kindergarten level.

    Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous.

    Yes, and the only way to get more money was to organize a raid on Spanish Treasure Fleets. How many people today even know how to board a galleon properly?

    But it doesn’t matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn’t like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was.

    Echoing A123’s sentiment here, this looks at the short end mostly. But at the long end, US Treasury 10 year benchmark is happily trading at 1.5%, and 30 year at around 2%.

    Basically, bond markets are telling us “no inflation for next 30 years”. And no, it’s not all Fed games. Subpar economic growth rather than inflation will be the main issue going forward.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries.
     
    Yea, but that’s not really a good thing. ... Growing population and technological progress require money supply that can keep up
     
    But the money supply did keep up. How? By mining new metal out of the ground. And the rate of metal mining turned out to be a pretty good proxy for the rate of economic growth. Not perfect of course, but a far better proxy than the rate of self-restraint among greedy counterfeiting cartels, which is the proxy in fiat world.

    Replies: @mal

  196. @Yellowface Anon
    @mal


    People have this bizarre expectation of no inflation at all which is completely ahistorical and is highly undesirable because it means we are in an economic depression.

    So I would say, government is controlling the inflation just fine.
     
    It's actually about whether trust in existing economic institutions can be sustained. If not, even if objective indicators are OK, people will still see lots of things crumbling.

    However, it’s not all bad. Investment decisions are guided by this activity. In the bar example, if people want to spend their government paychecks drinking, it means we need more bars, and construction industry will make appropriate investment. That investment matters.

     

    Investment comes from savings where their real value isn't adequately captured by GDP. Read the Austrians. You can obviously say "money printer go brrrrr", but in fact that is about diluting the existing monetary supply and take a little chunk out of all existing savings & transactions.

    GDP level doesn’t really matter, but GDP growth does because it drives investment. Nobody wants to invest when GDP declines, which in turn becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.
     
    How about the other way around? Common sense says so. GDP is just a number.

    Replies: @mal

    Yea yea yea, savings and the Austrians. That world went away in 2008. For better or worse, but its not possible to bring it back.

    Let’s take our MAGA friend here, A123. Now, we may have different perspectives, but if there is one thing that we hopefully will learn from our current adventure is that placing all your supply chain eggs in one Asian basket may not be a smart idea.

    And that’s kinda where MAGA is going with American reindustrialization. While I don’t share the whole “hate China” thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains. I don’t see Asia being reliable going forward, for a variety of reasons.

    So how to do this? How to industrialize America? Free market? Free market only cares that it’s cheap which means Asia. Free market doesn’t care about national security or even reliability five years down the road.

    Market driven interest rates will be higher than what they are currently being managed to. How do you finance \$billion dollar factories at high rates if you have to send \$100 million every year to the bank in interest expense? (Say, 10% annual interest). How do you have any hope of being competitive after making such usurous payments? And why? What did bank exactly do for you to justify such \$100 million income? Entered two numbers in a spreadsheet? That’s some very expensive key strokes.

    Which is why I don’t really see the reasoning for the “abolish the Fed” crowd. And savings argument doesn’t fly either – its not like there’s a warehouse of factories just sitting out there, saved from the good times. It’s all built to order. There is no factory unless you order it. Then it gets designed and built.

    So the mechanics of real economy, not just financial one, is quite different from Austrians’ description, as far as I can see.

    • Agree: A123, Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @mal


    While I don’t share the whole “hate China” thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains.
     
    The requirements for MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement are driven by the needs of America First and American Citizens.

    I do not hate China or the Chinese people. I am not even sure that I hate CCP Elites, but I do understand that they are malicious. A destructive threat to American Citizens. They are not a picnic for heavily abused Chinese Workers either.

    I am willing to say that I hate Iranian Elites who despicably held defenseless American Civilians hostage for 444 Days in open defiance of Civilized Behaviour. The Iranian regime is Openly Satanic and Bigly Evil. However, I do not hate Iranian civilians. If anything, I pity them. They daily experience horrors inflicted by Lucifer's Iranian Elites.

    PEACE 😇

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @mal


    if there is one thing that we hopefully will learn from our current adventure is that placing all your supply chain eggs in one Asian basket may not be a smart idea.

    And that’s kinda where MAGA is going with American reindustrialization. While I don’t share the whole “hate China” thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains. I don’t see Asia being reliable going forward, for a variety of reasons.
     
    Totally agreed, and it's ultimately advantageous for both North America and East Asia to have a complete economic sphere for the same reasons the US & Soviets had ones in the Cold War.

    How do you finance $billion dollar factories at high rates if you have to send $100 million every year to the bank in interest expense? (Say, 10% annual interest). How do you have any hope of being competitive after making such usurous payments? And why? What did bank exactly do for you to justify such $100 million income? Entered two numbers in a spreadsheet? That’s some very expensive key strokes.
     
    Market-driven interest rates are meant to reflect differences in time preferences, in Austrians' imagination, and those are supposed to be paid largely to those whose time deposit is loaned under 100% reserves.

    And savings argument doesn’t fly either – its not like there’s a warehouse of factories just sitting out there, saved from the good times. It’s all built to order. There is no factory unless you order it. Then it gets designed and built.
     
    It still stands when there's a stash of money around to pay for fixed capital. But you will say the entire funding is lent under the very new monetary regime.
  197. The father of the alleged Islamist terrorist who has killed a United Kingdom member of parliament, is son of former top aide to Somali PM. (Although the house in the photo does not seem quite to be a London palace you would expect from third world politicians).

    https://news.sky.com/story/sir-david-amess-murder-terror-suspect-accused-of-killing-mp-is-son-of-former-top-aide-to-somali-pm-12436198

    This example, could remind of the situation in some Arab regions where Islamic terrorists are emerging from more prestigious families that average people. Although I cannot find the link now, I remember reading a study about suicide bombers in Israel, that the analysis of the data indicated they on average originated from comparatively more elite local families than expected from random sample in the general population. (I also recall Breivik, although from a non-rich family, was son of a diplomat – so his father could have been considered as having a somewhat prestigious government job, at least in non-pecuniary ways).

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    (Although the house in the photo does not seem quite to be a London palace
     
    Houses on his street are only UK £2,000000 ($3 million), which is not a fashionable area of London prices. https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/17/mp-murder-suspect-lives-on-street-with-2000000-houses-and-celeb-neighbours-15436194/

    Presumably with such finances, this family are only on the low level of Somalian politicians.

    , @iffen
    @Dmitry

    , could remind of the situation in some Arab regions where Islamic terrorists are emerging from more prestigious families that average people.

    Well D., you are smart. Just keep looking and thinking and I'm sure that you will find a way to blame it on the peons.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  198. @Dmitry
    The father of the alleged Islamist terrorist who has killed a United Kingdom member of parliament, is son of former top aide to Somali PM. (Although the house in the photo does not seem quite to be a London palace you would expect from third world politicians).

    https://news.sky.com/story/sir-david-amess-murder-terror-suspect-accused-of-killing-mp-is-son-of-former-top-aide-to-somali-pm-12436198

    -

    This example, could remind of the situation in some Arab regions where Islamic terrorists are emerging from more prestigious families that average people. Although I cannot find the link now, I remember reading a study about suicide bombers in Israel, that the analysis of the data indicated they on average originated from comparatively more elite local families than expected from random sample in the general population. (I also recall Breivik, although from a non-rich family, was son of a diplomat - so his father could have been considered as having a somewhat prestigious government job, at least in non-pecuniary ways).

    Replies: @Dmitry, @iffen

    (Although the house in the photo does not seem quite to be a London palace

    Houses on his street are only UK £2,000000 (\$3 million), which is not a fashionable area of London prices. https://metro.co.uk/2021/10/17/mp-murder-suspect-lives-on-street-with-2000000-houses-and-celeb-neighbours-15436194/

    Presumably with such finances, this family are only on the low level of Somalian politicians.

  199. @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yea yea yea, savings and the Austrians. That world went away in 2008. For better or worse, but its not possible to bring it back.

    Let's take our MAGA friend here, A123. Now, we may have different perspectives, but if there is one thing that we hopefully will learn from our current adventure is that placing all your supply chain eggs in one Asian basket may not be a smart idea.

    And that's kinda where MAGA is going with American reindustrialization. While I don't share the whole "hate China" thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains. I don't see Asia being reliable going forward, for a variety of reasons.

    So how to do this? How to industrialize America? Free market? Free market only cares that it's cheap which means Asia. Free market doesn't care about national security or even reliability five years down the road.

    Market driven interest rates will be higher than what they are currently being managed to. How do you finance $billion dollar factories at high rates if you have to send $100 million every year to the bank in interest expense? (Say, 10% annual interest). How do you have any hope of being competitive after making such usurous payments? And why? What did bank exactly do for you to justify such $100 million income? Entered two numbers in a spreadsheet? That's some very expensive key strokes.

    Which is why I don't really see the reasoning for the "abolish the Fed" crowd. And savings argument doesn't fly either - its not like there's a warehouse of factories just sitting out there, saved from the good times. It's all built to order. There is no factory unless you order it. Then it gets designed and built.

    So the mechanics of real economy, not just financial one, is quite different from Austrians' description, as far as I can see.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    While I don’t share the whole “hate China” thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains.

    The requirements for MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement are driven by the needs of America First and American Citizens.

    I do not hate China or the Chinese people. I am not even sure that I hate CCP Elites, but I do understand that they are malicious. A destructive threat to American Citizens. They are not a picnic for heavily abused Chinese Workers either.

    I am willing to say that I hate Iranian Elites who despicably held defenseless American Civilians hostage for 444 Days in open defiance of Civilized Behaviour. The Iranian regime is Openly Satanic and Bigly Evil. However, I do not hate Iranian civilians. If anything, I pity them. They daily experience horrors inflicted by Lucifer’s Iranian Elites.

    PEACE 😇

  200. @Dmitry
    The father of the alleged Islamist terrorist who has killed a United Kingdom member of parliament, is son of former top aide to Somali PM. (Although the house in the photo does not seem quite to be a London palace you would expect from third world politicians).

    https://news.sky.com/story/sir-david-amess-murder-terror-suspect-accused-of-killing-mp-is-son-of-former-top-aide-to-somali-pm-12436198

    -

    This example, could remind of the situation in some Arab regions where Islamic terrorists are emerging from more prestigious families that average people. Although I cannot find the link now, I remember reading a study about suicide bombers in Israel, that the analysis of the data indicated they on average originated from comparatively more elite local families than expected from random sample in the general population. (I also recall Breivik, although from a non-rich family, was son of a diplomat - so his father could have been considered as having a somewhat prestigious government job, at least in non-pecuniary ways).

    Replies: @Dmitry, @iffen

    , could remind of the situation in some Arab regions where Islamic terrorists are emerging from more prestigious families that average people.

    Well D., you are smart. Just keep looking and thinking and I’m sure that you will find a way to blame it on the peons.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @iffen

    I was going to say the father of Bin Laden as another example, but there was interference of arithmetic where you have 58 children and you might be more surprised if one of them didn't become "eminent" in some way. And the effects of nepotism of a son using father's money for their "startup".

  201. @sudden death
    @A123

    Trusted or not, those are sourced data numbers instead of just empty declarations without providing any ;)

    Replies: @A123, @A123

    As you lack trust in me here is an objective source:

    https://fee.org/articles/vaccination-rates-not-linked-to-lower-covid-rates-epidemiology-paper-finds/

    Trusting anything Fake Stream Media [FSM] outlets, like NBC, provide is inherently very risky. The fascist Lügenpresse in the U.S. Exists for a single purpose — SJW MegaCorporation deception.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @A123

    It is not exactly news, but yes, sadly, all the vaccines we have got now are non sterilizing, i.e. leaky ones, which do not prevent transmision in full, but from your own linked article:


    There is widespread agreement among scientists that COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at reducing the risk of developing severe COVID symptoms, which can result in hospitalization and death.
     
    As we were talking about voter population segment expiry, spread itself matters way less much now, than vax rates, especially with much more infectious and virulent Delta strain being dominant now, e.g. spread remains relatively high even in high vaxed UK, but deaths are subsided compared with previous waves prior mass vax campaign, meanwhile in low vaxed RF both spread&deaths are beating previous records.

    Replies: @sudden death, @Yellowface Anon

  202. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    But if they give it to someone who doesn’t pay it back, then they’re effed. If the fiat government pisses away its money, though, it can just print more.
     
    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out. Also, banks create money. So it's pretty hard to go broke with this arrangement (there are interbank loans and Federal Reserve discount window etc). You have to screw up really bad.

    It would be like fish in the ocean running out of water. And not even that, the fish doesn't just swim in the water, it has been provided with its own water making machine and has the license to print water. You literally have to be dumber than a brick to run out of water. No offense to bricks. But it does happen occasionally, unfortunately.

    Do we want the goal to be productive investment or infinite cronyism? Hmm.
     
    Private sector doesn't always fund productive investment (actually, it generally prefers asset price speculation to real investment), and government doesn't always waste money. Government and private sector generally work better together when they complement each other.


    The answer is easy for me, but for anyone who is a government crony, they might answer differently. But I agree that it is fundamental, so fundamental that it could form the basis of a civil war.
     
    Well, government at all levels is the largest employer in the country. Once you account for welfare spend (as well as Social Security and Medicare) and subcontractors (Lockheed Martin, healthcare corporations etc), you are looking at at least 50% of the population who are government cronies in one form or another. And the rest depending on on them for paychecks.

    People can fight the civil war against the government only for as long as Medicare will pay for their diabetes medication. This will be the fastest civil war in history.

    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?
     
    We are getting there, on a quite well defined schedule.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

    The state already is a big part of the equation. Indeed, that’s arguably why inflation is such a problem.
     
    For who? The only time we didn't have inflation was in 2008, and that was really bad. Economic collapse, millions unemployed etc. We really don't want 0% inflation. Or even 2% inflation. Inflation is like body temperature - nobody wants to be at room temperature. Sure, too high is problematic, it means your body/economy is struggling with something, but generally, too high is better than too low.

    Maybe they thought they would, but they didn’t. They’re still in debt, and begging for more. Their creditors are smart enough to demand repayment in real currency, not Zimbabwe dollars.
     
    What's a "real currency"? The US dollar and Zimbabwe dollar are all created similarly. They are traded differently, but not because they are fundamentally different. US dollar is as real a currency as Zimbabwean dollar.

    Zimbabwe debt to GDP was like 240% prior to hyperinflation.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/government-debt-to-gdp

    They were also in a decade long economic depression.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/gdp-growth-annual

    Post hyperinflation, they returned to growth, and slashed their debt to GDP to like 70%. Their debt to GDP became lower than US lol. It was the right move. And sure, they want more money (who doesn't), and they will have to pay something after restructuring. But it won't be 250% of their entire GDP.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.

    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive

    Also, banks create money.

    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.

    Fake (“central”) banks create money just by printing (i.e., counterfeiting) it. Unfortunately, the opportunities for this are infinite, or limited only by currency collapse.

    So it’s pretty hard to go broke with this arrangement…

    …if you are a central (fake) bank. If you are a real bank that actually needs balanced books, it is all too easy to go broke.

    You have to screw up really bad.

    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.

    Private sector doesn’t always fund productive investment

    True, but it does so more than the governemtn does, which is the main alternative.

    (actually, it generally prefers asset price speculation to real investment)

    Lately, in the US, this is true. But that is an effect of so much of the banking sector being nothing more than a corrupt cartel snouting in the central bank’s seigniorage (i.e., counterfeiting) process rather than doing anything actually productive.

    and government doesn’t always waste money.

    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today’s government or the government of fifty years ago? Today’s government or the government of twenty years hence?

    Well, government at all levels is the largest employer in the country. Once you account for welfare spend (as well as Social Security and Medicare) and subcontractors (Lockheed Martin, healthcare corporations etc), you are looking at at least 50% of the population who are government cronies in one form or another. And the rest depending on on them for paychecks.

    Again, this is a list of defects, not of virtues.

    People can fight the civil war against the government only for as long as Medicare will pay for their diabetes medication.

    If there is a civil war, expect the diabetes people to be mostly in government uniforms.

    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?

    We are getting there, on a quite well defined schedule.

    Yes, that was the point. But I don’t know how well defined the schedule is.

    The only time we didn’t have inflation was in 2008, and that was really bad. Economic collapse, millions unemployed etc. We really don’t want 0% inflation. Or even 2% inflation.

    I’m not a zero-inflation zealot. I merely say lower inflation is better than higher inflation. From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth. It may not have been a libertarian paradise, but it was good enough for government work. That worked for three decades; I see no reason we can’t do it for another three. Well there is one reason: the government prefers to play money printer games.

    Inflation is like body temperature – nobody wants to be at room temperature.

    I’d say a better metaphor is that inflation is like blood volume — if it grows faster than your body you’re gonna die of hypertension.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you’re doing it wrong.

    What’s a “real currency”? The US dollar and Zimbabwe dollar are all created similarly.

    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is “more” in a “per asset” sense.)

    US dollar is as real a currency as Zimbabwean dollar.

    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is … amusing.

    Zimbabwe debt to GDP was like 240% prior to hyperinflation.

    Yeah … I’ve always been skeptical of the utility of the debt-to-GDP yardstick, but I didn’t get any more into it because we already had enough to discuss in these overlong comments.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     
    Yeah, but it's not our decision to make. It's up to the markets. And right now markets love low interest rates and government management practices (else 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%). So the "free markets" have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give "free markets" everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.
     
    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven't. And our money supply rose up exactly as warranted.

    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.
     
    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all "developed" economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to "developed" countries during a lunch hour LOL.

    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today’s government or the government of fifty years ago? Today’s government or the government of twenty years hence?
     
    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money, otherwise, 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%. Markets have vastly more confidence in government than private sector. And no, its not all Fed games, not at long end of the curve. So we must give the markets what they crave most - long term government debt. Supply must meet demand, its only market economics.

    From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth.
     
    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that - Unions and EPA in the 70's started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90's and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn't matter what "free market" wants.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you’re doing it wrong.
     
    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can't have big wars doing it for us because it's politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.

    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is “more” in a “per asset” sense.)
     
    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.

    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is … amusing.
     
    Exactly, and that is why I will miss this blog. :).

    Just like I told Mikel before, I agree with your logic but disagree with assumptions.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can't separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn't. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren't, and they must unite for the national good.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri

  203. In Kazan where QR codes of vaccinated people were required (as a kind of half-effort anti-epidemic policy) for visiting the shopping centre, allegedly very few people are visiting the shopping centres. (https://realnoevremya.ru/news/228662-v-kazani-posle-vvedeniya-qr-kodov-opusteli-torgovye-centry)

    I won’t waste time to translate, but YouTube comments in these videos are too much..

    • Replies: @A123
    @Dmitry


    In Kazan where QR codes of vaccinated people were required (as a kind of half-effort anti-epidemic policy) for visiting the shopping centre, allegedly very few people are visiting the shopping centres.
     
    In any place where open market / street shopping is normal the idea of a mandate is inherently non-viable.

    In NYC you can buy a TV from a bodega. Anything too large for bodega is Amazon eligible. Groceries, Whole Foods = Amazon = Delivery.

    It us of course *inconceivable* that Amazob/WaPo lobbyists are involved in Manda-vaxx policy. A private company with the influence of Standard Oil. Unheard of!

    Standard Oil never existed, except it did......

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Dmitry

  204. @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    Germany [i.e., ECB], Switzerland, most of East Asia), so even if they dislike inflation, they are obliged to tag along with it lest their currencies rise too much and their export earnings suffer
     
    Let me repeat/rephrase one of my prior quotes:

    All trade is managed trade. If a nation does not manage trade when everyone else does... That nation is a guaranteed looser.
    ___

    Germany is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) and created negative rates, dragging everyone else along.

    China is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) via various mechanisms "A" vs. "B" shares, investment restrictions, etc.

    If the U.S. refused to follow the China/Germany manipulation lead... Americans would be guaranteed losers. Blaming the Fed does not make sense. They are doing what they can in a world trade & currency system intentionally broken by others.
    ___

    Any long term solution requires MAGA Reindustrialization and MAGA CCP Disengagement. Reducing interaction with manipulative Germany and World #1 manipulator The CCP, is the minimum starting point towards resolving the USD currency mess.

    Once the influence of malicious currency manipulators is diminished. A high tariff will provides the resources necessary to begin unwinding the USD currency situation in a manner that does not unnecessarily burden average Americans.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    Germany is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) and created negative rates, dragging everyone else along.

    If the US is the 800-pound gorilla, then Germany is a one hundred pound monkey, as measured by national wealth. Plus the US has thousands of troops on German soil, and numerous other influence levers Germany is powerless to resist. Germany can’t drag the US anywhere it isn’t already willing to go.

    China is a currency manipulator (to drive exports) via various mechanisms “A” vs. “B” shares, investment restrictions, etc.

    If by “currency manipulator” you mean “pegged their currency to US currency” then yes, I suppose they are. But again, pegging their currency to the dollar means that they are eating a big chunk of US inflation. China’s bearing a cost too. Sadly, the benefit of this arrangement accrues mostly to the Fed and its crony cartel rather than to the average American.

    A high tariff will provides the resources necessary to begin unwinding the USD currency situation in a manner that does not unnecessarily burden average Americans.

    I think it’s worth a try. Unfortunately, this seems to be the opposite of the current administration’s approach.

  205. @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was.
     
    LIBOR is in its final death throes and the replacement is going to be a very short-term rate on most contracts (1)

    Benchmark Replacement Waterfall
    Step 1: Forward-Looking Term SOFR and Adjustment
    Step 2: Daily Simple Average SOFR and Adjustment
    Step 3: Lender Selected Rate and Adjustment

    As of the date of this writing, the Forward-Looking Term SOFR rate does not yet exist and will need to be derived from transactions in the SOFR derivatives market. The indexes will be published by a third-party administrator under an approved/endorsed calculation methodology. However, on March 23, 2021, the ARRC stated they will not be able to recommend forward-looking SOFR Term indexes by mid-2021. Additionally, the ARRC also stated they cannot guarantee that it will be able to recommend an administrator that can produce robust Term index by the end of 2021.
     

    Commitment to forward looking SOFR has been sparse. Almost everything is headed towards the "Step 2" daily benchmark that has no forward looking capability.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.agloan.com/libor-transition/

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    LIBOR is in its final death throes and the replacement is going to be a very short-term rate on most contracts

    Yes, Libor is headed to obsolescence, which is why I said “or some other index”. The point is that whatever is the specific mechanism last year, this year, or next year, creditors have gotten adept at insulating themselves from soft defaults via inflation, so the claimed “benefit” of slo-mo debt jubilees via inflation is overstated.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    creditors have gotten adept at insulating themselves from soft defaults via inflation, so the claimed “benefit” of slo-mo debt jubilees via inflation is overstated.
     
    As someone with ties to Finance.... Sorry... You vastly overestimate average corporate finance capabilities. Everyone was counting on :
    -- ARRC delivering by year end
    -- A reprieve from the year end deadline

    The finance equivalent of a stampede is very bland and therefore difficult for outsiders to detect. The official statement:

    ARRC also stated they cannot guarantee that it will be able to recommend an administrator that can produce robust Term index by the end of 2021.
     
    Sounds innocuous. It is not.

    The only good news is that they threw in the towel ~9 Months before D-Day. Options are not good, but these who had resources and chose wisely have made best efforts at hedging with a poor selection of tools.

    The bad news is that firms with insufficient resources (or unwise leadership) will begin dying after both:
    -- January, and
    -- First unpredictable, significant move

    The problems are within 2nd and 3rd tier firms, so there are no general press stories. Bookmark this post so it is available about 2022-MAR-01. That will be the first available data point for scoring this concern (unless forward looking LIBOR is extended or credible 180-day SOFR launches).

    PEACE 😇
  206. @Dmitry
    In Kazan where QR codes of vaccinated people were required (as a kind of half-effort anti-epidemic policy) for visiting the shopping centre, allegedly very few people are visiting the shopping centres. (https://realnoevremya.ru/news/228662-v-kazani-posle-vvedeniya-qr-kodov-opusteli-torgovye-centry)

    I won't waste time to translate, but YouTube comments in these videos are too much..
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ki0kBjq4vao

    Replies: @A123

    In Kazan where QR codes of vaccinated people were required (as a kind of half-effort anti-epidemic policy) for visiting the shopping centre, allegedly very few people are visiting the shopping centres.

    In any place where open market / street shopping is normal the idea of a mandate is inherently non-viable.

    In NYC you can buy a TV from a bodega. Anything too large for bodega is Amazon eligible. Groceries, Whole Foods = Amazon = Delivery.

    It us of course *inconceivable* that Amazob/WaPo lobbyists are involved in Manda-vaxx policy. A private company with the influence of Standard Oil. Unheard of!

    Standard Oil never existed, except it did……

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @A123

    I'm still not vaccinated so I'd have to avoid Kazan's shopping centres just like that the Kazan people. Empathizing with this. At least where I live there is Amazon Prime. But the YouTube comments in this video were too "powerful", I hesitate even to translate them into international circulation.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

  207. @iffen
    @Dmitry

    , could remind of the situation in some Arab regions where Islamic terrorists are emerging from more prestigious families that average people.

    Well D., you are smart. Just keep looking and thinking and I'm sure that you will find a way to blame it on the peons.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I was going to say the father of Bin Laden as another example, but there was interference of arithmetic where you have 58 children and you might be more surprised if one of them didn’t become “eminent” in some way. And the effects of nepotism of a son using father’s money for their “startup”.

  208. @A123
    @Dmitry


    In Kazan where QR codes of vaccinated people were required (as a kind of half-effort anti-epidemic policy) for visiting the shopping centre, allegedly very few people are visiting the shopping centres.
     
    In any place where open market / street shopping is normal the idea of a mandate is inherently non-viable.

    In NYC you can buy a TV from a bodega. Anything too large for bodega is Amazon eligible. Groceries, Whole Foods = Amazon = Delivery.

    It us of course *inconceivable* that Amazob/WaPo lobbyists are involved in Manda-vaxx policy. A private company with the influence of Standard Oil. Unheard of!

    Standard Oil never existed, except it did......

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I’m still not vaccinated so I’d have to avoid Kazan’s shopping centres just like that the Kazan people. Empathizing with this. At least where I live there is Amazon Prime. But the YouTube comments in this video were too “powerful”, I hesitate even to translate them into international circulation.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Dmitry

    It is still better than San Francisco.

    With neither shoppers nor staff... Noble ethnic wealth redistribution would have taken hold. Ski mask wearing Robin Hoods would have claimed goods as reparations for the sins of slavery. Such wealth liberation would (theoretically) be shared with ethnic groups that arrived in the country after slavery ended.

    Observe the noble heroics against white rule below...

    PEACE 😇

    https://youtu.be/2jrnhaLzCqA

    Replies: @Truth

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    You can pretty much see it isn't as much a "anti-pandemic" policy as an economic one that is redistributing consumption & markets from brick-and-mortar businesses to digital ones that can be easily centralized in distribution under Amazon, Taobao, etc. 4IR!

    Replies: @Dmitry

  209. @Thomm
    It is unfortunate to see AK go. He was more committed to free speech than others.

    But this is also a good place to store the most up-to-date WN hall of shame.

    Remember that politics is a circle. What is falsely called ‘far right’ has a lot of gay socialists in it.

    It is relevant to this thread that what passes for WN today is being rapidly taken over by homosexuals. White Trashionalism is about 40% gay, and women like Rosie and Alden say it is a much higher percentage than that.

    This is why virtually no women are found in WN. 55% of white women voted for Trump, but zero are found in WN (aside from the aforementioned septugenarians).

    To keep a running roster, the full list of TUR WN commenters who have said they think that them, as males, having sex with a black woman is worse than having sex with a white man, is below :

    GeneralRimmer
    JohnnySmoggins
    utu
    AndrewR
    RegCaesar
    Svigor
    Mike Tre (aka MikeatMikedotMike)
    Tor597
    BenKenobi
    neutral
    iffen
    William Badwhite
    Pericles
    Lurker
    Cowtown Rebel
    Trinity
    JMcG
    kihowi


    If you doubt this, ask them yourself and see what they do.

    The next round of questioning posed to these WNs will be :

    1) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a mulatto woman?" (This is to see what percentage of black admixture is their threshold, since they already said a black {even an 80% black average African American) is worse than a white man.)

    Eventually, we will do a Quatroon version of the question as well.

    2) "In your view, would it be worse to have sex with a white man or a Jewish woman?" (This is because some of the Jew-hate here is so over-the-top, and the claims made are often genetic, that this question may yield some revealing responses).

    Replies: @Yevardian, @AKAHorace, @Pericles, @Barbarossa, @Truth, @Tor597

    lol

    This is the most Indian comment ever.

    • Agree: Yevardian
    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Tor597

    No it isn't. That pathetic smoke and mirrors attempt to change the subject away from your admitted homosexuality isn't going to work. See Comment #18 where AK himself makes fun of 70-IQ wiggers like you.

    Now, back to the topic.

    You, Tor597, have openly said that relative to your preferences having sex with a black woman, even a pretty one, is worse than having sex with a white man.

    The question now is whether a pretty mulatto like Halle Berry is preferable to you over a white man. I suspect you will not be able to say that you prefer Halle Berry over a white man, as a sexual partner.


    Now get off my lawn, faggot!

  210. @Almost Missouri
    @A123


    LIBOR is in its final death throes and the replacement is going to be a very short-term rate on most contracts
     
    Yes, Libor is headed to obsolescence, which is why I said "or some other index". The point is that whatever is the specific mechanism last year, this year, or next year, creditors have gotten adept at insulating themselves from soft defaults via inflation, so the claimed "benefit" of slo-mo debt jubilees via inflation is overstated.

    Replies: @A123

    creditors have gotten adept at insulating themselves from soft defaults via inflation, so the claimed “benefit” of slo-mo debt jubilees via inflation is overstated.

    As someone with ties to Finance…. Sorry… You vastly overestimate average corporate finance capabilities. Everyone was counting on :
    — ARRC delivering by year end
    — A reprieve from the year end deadline

    The finance equivalent of a stampede is very bland and therefore difficult for outsiders to detect. The official statement:

    ARRC also stated they cannot guarantee that it will be able to recommend an administrator that can produce robust Term index by the end of 2021.

    Sounds innocuous. It is not.

    The only good news is that they threw in the towel ~9 Months before D-Day. Options are not good, but these who had resources and chose wisely have made best efforts at hedging with a poor selection of tools.

    The bad news is that firms with insufficient resources (or unwise leadership) will begin dying after both:
    — January, and
    — First unpredictable, significant move

    The problems are within 2nd and 3rd tier firms, so there are no general press stories. Bookmark this post so it is available about 2022-MAR-01. That will be the first available data point for scoring this concern (unless forward looking LIBOR is extended or credible 180-day SOFR launches).

    PEACE 😇

  211. @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    Ah, but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place.

    "I increased my bar profit margin by 10% by skipping payoff to the police! Too bad I got shot in the head by a roving street gang the next day."

    So keep those legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars, I say.

    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day. Red beads on an island. Can't ignore those power verticals which always develop whenever there are more than 1 human around. Even if they cause loss of economic efficiency. Economic efficiency does no good to dead people.

    Anyway, a dollar from a woozy bureaucrat spends just as well as the dollar from anybody else, so bar owners and bartenders don't complain.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Mikel

    but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place

    Okay, now we’re getting more into philosophical space.

    I’ll just sum up my view this way: to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off. After all, if every economic question is also political question, then we are basically back to the old Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    I’ll just sum up my view this way: to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off.
     
    I agree with that, which is why I'm not a socialist. But unfortunately, powers that be don't see it that way, and they create our reality for us, so it must be taken into account. Any economic theory that doesn't account for men with guns is doomed to failure.

    After all, if every economic question is also political question, then we are basically back to the old Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out.
     
    I grew up in the Soviet Union, and frankly, I find it weird that people both over rate it and under rate it at the same time. That place was simply boring and stagnant. It wasn't a horror show that the Atlantic Council crowd strives to present, but it wasn't a some kind of hero land that some leftists try to show either.

    The chief Soviet problem was Gorbachev who was an idiot. A well meaning one, but still, a fool. There were many ways to do managed reforms, and he picked the worst one. If anything, it's a cautionary take against being too nice.

    I mean Chinese and Vietnamese are still ruled by Politbureau and North Korea is still standing, and may well end up being Best Korea, with South Korean fertility rate being what it is.

    I wouldn't bet my worldview on Gorbachev.

    Anyway, I think we can both agree that the true role of the state is to get us to a point where we think our economic decisions are not really influenced by the state. :) And I would totally agree with that.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  212. @Tor597
    @Thomm

    lol

    This is the most Indian comment ever.

    Replies: @Thomm

    No it isn’t. That pathetic smoke and mirrors attempt to change the subject away from your admitted homosexuality isn’t going to work. See Comment #18 where AK himself makes fun of 70-IQ wiggers like you.

    Now, back to the topic.

    You, Tor597, have openly said that relative to your preferences having sex with a black woman, even a pretty one, is worse than having sex with a white man.

    The question now is whether a pretty mulatto like Halle Berry is preferable to you over a white man. I suspect you will not be able to say that you prefer Halle Berry over a white man, as a sexual partner.

    Now get off my lawn, faggot!

  213. @Dmitry
    @A123

    I'm still not vaccinated so I'd have to avoid Kazan's shopping centres just like that the Kazan people. Empathizing with this. At least where I live there is Amazon Prime. But the YouTube comments in this video were too "powerful", I hesitate even to translate them into international circulation.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    It is still better than San Francisco.

    With neither shoppers nor staff… Noble ethnic wealth redistribution would have taken hold. Ski mask wearing Robin Hoods would have claimed goods as reparations for the sins of slavery. Such wealth liberation would (theoretically) be shared with ethnic groups that arrived in the country after slavery ended.

    Observe the noble heroics against white rule below…

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Truth
    @A123

    https://worldstarhiphop.com/videos/video.php?v=wshhTb1yt37ei5H4KF18


    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WO23WBji_Z0

  214. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries.
     
    Yea, but that's not really a good thing. I would rather live in a modern hyperinflating Zimbabwe than medieval England. Growing population and technological progress require money supply that can keep up. Otherwise, we would just have constant wars over money, which is a rather silly reason for war. Land, population, or resources? Sure. But fighting over a made up medium of exchange is like kindergarten level.

    Indeed, prior to the fiat era, most currencies were stable because they were simply weights of metal and so devaluing them was difficult and arduous.
     
    Yes, and the only way to get more money was to organize a raid on Spanish Treasure Fleets. How many people today even know how to board a galleon properly?

    But it doesn’t matter so much anymore since creditors decided they didn’t like being stealth debt-jubileed and so nowadays most debt interest is tied directly or indirectly to LIBOR, Ameribor, or some other index that front-runs inflation, which means that inflation is no longer the debt ameliorant it once was.
     
    Echoing A123's sentiment here, this looks at the short end mostly. But at the long end, US Treasury 10 year benchmark is happily trading at 1.5%, and 30 year at around 2%.

    Basically, bond markets are telling us "no inflation for next 30 years". And no, it's not all Fed games. Subpar economic growth rather than inflation will be the main issue going forward.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries.

    Yea, but that’s not really a good thing. … Growing population and technological progress require money supply that can keep up

    But the money supply did keep up. How? By mining new metal out of the ground. And the rate of metal mining turned out to be a pretty good proxy for the rate of economic growth. Not perfect of course, but a far better proxy than the rate of self-restraint among greedy counterfeiting cartels, which is the proxy in fiat world.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    How? By mining new metal out of the ground.
     
    Yea, by Native Indian slaves in Spanish Bolivian mines, and then they died out. And once they died we had to have two world wars to sort out who had to have most gold.

    And the rate of metal mining turned out to be a pretty good proxy for the rate of economic growth
     
    .

    LOL yes, but that's not really a good argument, at least not in a way you probably intend.

    You are absolutely right in a sense that medium of exchange throttles your rate of economic growth.

    So what has precisely happened was - some of the smarter overlords were like "WTF is this? Why is my rate of economic growth limited by some dead slaves in Bolivian mines? Can't we just print what we need to accelerate scientific and technological development?"

    And it turned out, that yes, you could. Your economic growth rate was no longer tethered to dead slaves in Bolivian mines. And that's why we live in the world we live in today. Which is a much better world compared to the alternative where we still would need Bolivian slaves to make our medium of exchange.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  215. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place
     
    Okay, now we're getting more into philosophical space.

    I'll just sum up my view this way: to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off. After all, if every economic question is also political question, then we are basically back to the old Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out.

    Replies: @mal

    I’ll just sum up my view this way: to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off.

    I agree with that, which is why I’m not a socialist. But unfortunately, powers that be don’t see it that way, and they create our reality for us, so it must be taken into account. Any economic theory that doesn’t account for men with guns is doomed to failure.

    After all, if every economic question is also political question, then we are basically back to the old Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out.

    I grew up in the Soviet Union, and frankly, I find it weird that people both over rate it and under rate it at the same time. That place was simply boring and stagnant. It wasn’t a horror show that the Atlantic Council crowd strives to present, but it wasn’t a some kind of hero land that some leftists try to show either.

    The chief Soviet problem was Gorbachev who was an idiot. A well meaning one, but still, a fool. There were many ways to do managed reforms, and he picked the worst one. If anything, it’s a cautionary take against being too nice.

    I mean Chinese and Vietnamese are still ruled by Politbureau and North Korea is still standing, and may well end up being Best Korea, with South Korean fertility rate being what it is.

    I wouldn’t bet my worldview on Gorbachev.

    Anyway, I think we can both agree that the true role of the state is to get us to a point where we think our economic decisions are not really influenced by the state. 🙂 And I would totally agree with that.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal

    I said "old Soviet Union" since I was thinking of the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s, when the more extreme forms of non-economic management of economic matters occurred: the abolition of prices, enterprise management by will (or whim) of commissars rather than supply and demand, etc. So "how it turned out" included things like mass famine, which I think is pretty hard to overrate.

    I suppose it still could apply to the later USSR, though my impression is that by then the government had bowed to necessity and there was more of a defacto market orientation, even if insufficient to stave off financial collapse.

    Yes, China and Vietnam are still governed by something we translate as "politburo", but nowadays they both have a much more independent economic sphere, arguably more free and independent than many western countries, so they are no longer a good example of what it is like when everything economic is subsumed in everything political.

    Replies: @mal

  216. @Barbarossa
    @Truth

    -adjusts monocle-
    Look here Old Sport, while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, "dusky races" as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
    Good Lord!

    Replies: @Thomm, @Truth, @Truth

    Well half-point, you did almost answer the question by osmosis. That puts you WAY above your contemporaries.

    Literally, since Thomm has been posting this question, I think ONE dude has given the no-nonsense, no insinuation, normal (to my way of thinking) heterosexual answer.

    I find that quite strange, but maybe it’s just me, I mean, when I was a kid, GAY dudes would have given the normal heterosexual answer.

    Times change.

  217. @A123
    @Dmitry

    It is still better than San Francisco.

    With neither shoppers nor staff... Noble ethnic wealth redistribution would have taken hold. Ski mask wearing Robin Hoods would have claimed goods as reparations for the sins of slavery. Such wealth liberation would (theoretically) be shared with ethnic groups that arrived in the country after slavery ended.

    Observe the noble heroics against white rule below...

    PEACE 😇

    https://youtu.be/2jrnhaLzCqA

    Replies: @Truth

  218. @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    Britain had a remarkably stable currency for centuries.
     
    Yea, but that’s not really a good thing. ... Growing population and technological progress require money supply that can keep up
     
    But the money supply did keep up. How? By mining new metal out of the ground. And the rate of metal mining turned out to be a pretty good proxy for the rate of economic growth. Not perfect of course, but a far better proxy than the rate of self-restraint among greedy counterfeiting cartels, which is the proxy in fiat world.

    Replies: @mal

    How? By mining new metal out of the ground.

    Yea, by Native Indian slaves in Spanish Bolivian mines, and then they died out. And once they died we had to have two world wars to sort out who had to have most gold.

    And the rate of metal mining turned out to be a pretty good proxy for the rate of economic growth

    .

    LOL yes, but that’s not really a good argument, at least not in a way you probably intend.

    You are absolutely right in a sense that medium of exchange throttles your rate of economic growth.

    So what has precisely happened was – some of the smarter overlords were like “WTF is this? Why is my rate of economic growth limited by some dead slaves in Bolivian mines? Can’t we just print what we need to accelerate scientific and technological development?”

    And it turned out, that yes, you could. Your economic growth rate was no longer tethered to dead slaves in Bolivian mines. And that’s why we live in the world we live in today. Which is a much better world compared to the alternative where we still would need Bolivian slaves to make our medium of exchange.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    How? By mining new metal out of the ground.
     
    Yea, by Native Indian slaves in Spanish Bolivian mines, and then they died out.
     
    I was thinking more of the Middle Ages, say 1000-15000 when new metal from European mines was a decent proxy for new economic activity, though I think it still applies fairly well in 1500-1900 too, in spite of the big influx of New World gold from Spanish colonization, which did create some inflation in the classic sense: currency outstripping the economic value it is supposed to represent. But again, this was mild by comparison to the extreme distortions of the fiat era.

    And once they died we had to have two world wars to sort out who had to have most gold.
     
    Now that I know you grew up in the Soviet Union, I understand why you keep casting the world wars as the result of capitalism, lol!

    Why the world wars happened is obviously a big topic we won't get to the bottom of in a few blog comments. The most concise meta-summation I can offer is that there was probably some inevitability to the conflict as different power blocs expanded up against the ceiling of the globe itself, but the conflict needn't have been as awful as it was. In other words, some sort of friction was unavoidable irrespective of whatever financial/economic system various power blocs had.

    (Also, a lot of other stuff happened in the four centuries between New World colonization in 1492 and world war in 1914, so positing Spanish gold -> Verdun and Tannenberg is ... highly abbreviated.)


    And it turned out, that yes, you could. Your economic growth rate was no longer tethered to dead slaves in Bolivian mines.
     
    Retro-monetarism is a peculiar creed for a son of the Soviet Union, lol! But in any case, since inflation followed from the influx of New World metal, a lack of currency could not have been holding back European development. Indeed, since the Iberian landing site of that New World metal became the most economically retarded part of Atlantic Europe in the centuries following the money storm, too much currency would appear to be economically damaging rather than economically liberating.

    And that’s why we live in the world we live in today. Which is a much better world compared to the alternative where we still would need Bolivian slaves to make our medium of exchange.
     
    Bolivian slaves is a red herring. More precious metal comes out the ground annually today than ever did in the time of the Spanish empire. So arguably, the rate of metal mining is still a good proxy for the rate of economic growth. After all, as measured in gold, the price of a meal or a suit of clothes has been fairly steady over the last two or three millennia. As measured in fiat currency, well ... it is to laugh.

    Nevertheless, I'm not even advocating for a return to the gold standard. Just restrained fiating would be good enough! I'm a monetary moderate and pragmatist.

  219. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.
     
    "important enough" = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive

    Also, banks create money.
     
    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.

    Fake ("central") banks create money just by printing (i.e., counterfeiting) it. Unfortunately, the opportunities for this are infinite, or limited only by currency collapse.

    So it’s pretty hard to go broke with this arrangement...
     
    ...if you are a central (fake) bank. If you are a real bank that actually needs balanced books, it is all too easy to go broke.

    You have to screw up really bad.
     
    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.

    Private sector doesn’t always fund productive investment
     
    True, but it does so more than the governemtn does, which is the main alternative.

    (actually, it generally prefers asset price speculation to real investment)
     
    Lately, in the US, this is true. But that is an effect of so much of the banking sector being nothing more than a corrupt cartel snouting in the central bank's seigniorage (i.e., counterfeiting) process rather than doing anything actually productive.

    and government doesn’t always waste money.
     
    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today's government or the government of fifty years ago? Today's government or the government of twenty years hence?

    Well, government at all levels is the largest employer in the country. Once you account for welfare spend (as well as Social Security and Medicare) and subcontractors (Lockheed Martin, healthcare corporations etc), you are looking at at least 50% of the population who are government cronies in one form or another. And the rest depending on on them for paychecks.
     
    Again, this is a list of defects, not of virtues.

    People can fight the civil war against the government only for as long as Medicare will pay for their diabetes medication.
     
    If there is a civil war, expect the diabetes people to be mostly in government uniforms.


    If you get paid for having debt, why not get an infinite amount of it?
     
    We are getting there, on a quite well defined schedule.
     
    Yes, that was the point. But I don't know how well defined the schedule is.

    The only time we didn’t have inflation was in 2008, and that was really bad. Economic collapse, millions unemployed etc. We really don’t want 0% inflation. Or even 2% inflation.
     
    I'm not a zero-inflation zealot. I merely say lower inflation is better than higher inflation. From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth. It may not have been a libertarian paradise, but it was good enough for government work. That worked for three decades; I see no reason we can't do it for another three. Well there is one reason: the government prefers to play money printer games.

    Inflation is like body temperature – nobody wants to be at room temperature.
     
    I'd say a better metaphor is that inflation is like blood volume — if it grows faster than your body you're gonna die of hypertension.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you're doing it wrong.

    What’s a “real currency”? The US dollar and Zimbabwe dollar are all created similarly.
     
    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is "more" in a "per asset" sense.)

    US dollar is as real a currency as Zimbabwean dollar.
     
    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is ... amusing.

    Zimbabwe debt to GDP was like 240% prior to hyperinflation.
     
    Yeah ... I've always been skeptical of the utility of the debt-to-GDP yardstick, but I didn't get any more into it because we already had enough to discuss in these overlong comments.

    Replies: @mal

    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive

    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets. And right now markets love low interest rates and government management practices (else 30 year Treasury wouldn’t trade at 2%). So the “free markets” have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give “free markets” everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.

    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven’t. And our money supply rose up exactly as warranted.

    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.

    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a \$billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.

    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today’s government or the government of fifty years ago? Today’s government or the government of twenty years hence?

    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money, otherwise, 30 year Treasury wouldn’t trade at 2%. Markets have vastly more confidence in government than private sector. And no, its not all Fed games, not at long end of the curve. So we must give the markets what they crave most – long term government debt. Supply must meet demand, its only market economics.

    From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth.

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that – Unions and EPA in the 70’s started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a \$trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn’t matter what “free market” wants.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you’re doing it wrong.

    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can’t have big wars doing it for us because it’s politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.

    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is “more” in a “per asset” sense.)

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.

    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is … amusing.

    Exactly, and that is why I will miss this blog. :).

    Just like I told Mikel before, I agree with your logic but disagree with assumptions.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can’t separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn’t. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @mal


    So the “free markets” have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give “free markets” everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

     

    Been distorted by 50 years of fiat currency printing. Go figure.

    I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven’t.
     
    Opportunities are infinite but resources are limited as far as we can identify, and they need to be prioritized to make the best of them before we can find more of them.

    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.
     
    See things structurally - what Zimbabwe had was Mugabe expropriating land from White cultivators and distributing them to both cronies and undertrained Black smallholders. The entire agricultural economy collapsed afterwards. Hyperinflation was just the symptom.

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that – Unions and EPA in the 70’s started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn’t matter what “free market” wants.
     
    Yep, this is a way better explanation than the regular "monetarist" one.

    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can’t have big wars doing it for us because it’s politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.
     
    We're going to approach the question of how to fundamentally arrange economic or social development very soon.

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them.
     
    You know what, gold coins were too. What matters is in whose control and benefit the tool is configured.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can’t separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn’t. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.
     
    Hopefully many more realize this, and how both comes downstream from culture. Culture is the basis for everything

    Replies: @mal

    , @Almost Missouri
    @mal




    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.
     
    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     

    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets.
     
    It ain't the markets who bail out cronies. It's the Lords of Fiat.


    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.
     
    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well.
     
    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.

    The are many things that can limit opportunities, but a major upspoken one is that there are only a certain number of genuinely productive people. Once you lend them all they can use, then it's just a question of which hole you're going to piss the rest of your money down. Indeed, that there still is money left after all the productive loans have been made is a pretty good indication that too much money was printed.


    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.
     
    I'm assuming you're making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is ... more fiat currency.

    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money
     
    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that
     
    Indeed. Though the high interest rates of the Volker era are still remembered, people seem to forget the serious disruptions that were being caused by the high inflation that preceded and spawned those interest rates. (People also forget that Volker was appointed and began his interest rate jihad under Carter, not Reagan, although Reagan didn't fire him either. Presidents typically eschew unnecessary disruption at the Fed.)

    90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars.
     
    Right. Since genuine economic opportunities are limited, all that excess currency the Fed prints has to go somewhere, and asset prices are it, especially real estate prices. So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.
     
    If by "they got any use out of it", you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did! And they have the Swiss bank accounts to prove it. If you mean ordinary Zimbabweans, then not so much.

    So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.
     
    When ice-cream and dogsh*t unite, you get ... dogsh*t.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get ... ______.

    Replies: @mal

  220. @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, “dusky races” as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
     
    Which is why YOU are not named on that list in Comment #10.

    The individuals on that list I posted have either openly said that they would prefer a white man over a black woman (and in some cases even a mulatto woman), or at least refused to say what you just said. They filibustered for comment after comment, but refused to say that they prefer even the most attractive black woman over the fattest, ugliest white man. Some of them have also said that they don't mind an MtF transgender sexual partner, since the race of the person did not change. Hence, we have discovered something quite revealing about contemporary WNs.

    They can always write what you just did, but refuse to do that. Hence, they aren't quite what you assume them to be.

    I don't add names to that list lightly. They have all either said that they prefer a white man over a black woman, or at least failed to say that even the most attractive black woman is the less-unappealing choice of the two, when asked two or more times. A heterosexual would have no problem saying what you just did.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @schnellandine

    I actually agree with you that any guy who would prefer a white man over a black woman to appease some WN fear of race mixing has their priorities all messed up.
    However, I find it odd that you are so exercised about the whole thing.
    I tend to avoid parts of UNZ which are prominently WN since the topic frequently devolves into stupidification.

    I also kind of assume that there is a fair bit of shit-posting, trolling, and general obfuscation in a decent amount of internet comment sections, besides the fact that a free speech forum like UNZ is likely to attract a certain number of misanthropes, nuts, and degenerates. The fact that there might be people on UNZ who fit your description is not surprising to me, but I don’t attach much significance to it.
    UNZ is sometimes a strange and wonderful gutter of the internet…

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    However, I find it odd that you are so exercised about the whole thing.
    I tend to avoid parts of UNZ which are prominently WN since the topic frequently devolves into stupidification.
     
    I am not 'exercised'. My reasons are threefold :

    i) It is a great source of humor, and I have written many funny poems and songs about it. I have made great comedy at their expense (and regarding the fat ones, their expAnse as well).

    ii) I want more of my fellow normal, heterosexual white people to be aware that these degenerates don't have their best interests at heart, and why we need to keep them out of respectable society. They just want a form of intra-white socialism, under the rationale that there are enough productive white people that these moochers can sustainably harvest us.

    iii) This is the frontier of HBD thought. The extremely high variance in white quality is not discussed sufficiently. The white race is actually two races : a near-flawless race (80%), and a 20% wastematter repository where all the unwanted genes go for rapid filtration from the reproducing gene pool. That is why the males of this wastematter subrace become these WN faggots, while the females become the fat bluehaired feminists.

    But point i), the humor, is a key reason. Come to think of it, I haven't posted some of my poems and songs in a while. I should repost them.

  221. @Triteleia Laxa
    @mal

    Your comments on this thread are really good. People should try their best to understand them. The observations on money and the economy are spot on, while noticing that "in the real world" everyone was always in it together in a way, and that there will be no genocide of the less able, is critical to understanding. I particularly like your point that we should be honest about the previous purpose of the big wars and therefore find a way to achieve the same thing, but with far less suffering.

    I always liked libertarian economics. Partly because I have no reason nor desire to take from others, but, just as importantly, because things like the non-aggression principle would assert my own boundaries when I was loathe to do so directly and more generally. My attachment to such definitions of right and wrong weakened as I learned to not always accept other people's burdens.

    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?

    Also thanks.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?

    So sorry, I didn’t mean to ignore you, but its a rather complex subject. You don’t really learn by reading stuff about it. You learn by reading criticism of the stuff you want to learn and then weeding out the fluff.

    So for criticism of the state, I found Hayek rather convincing. And for criticism of financial imperialism as it rules today, your will find no better critic than Vladimir Lenin circa 1900-1910. And for Keynesisan take on things, Mike Hudson is a good resource.

    Once you have good background, go to Zero Hedge. Their doomer takes are worthless, but they do post good research letters from Bank of America and Goldman Sachs and other power players. With good historical grounding, you will be able to see what the overlords want other people to see. This will at least get you started.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yevardian
    @mal


    So for criticism of the state, I found Hayek rather convincing. And for criticism of financial imperialism as it rules today, your will find no better critic than Vladimir Lenin circa 1900-1910. And for Keynesisan take on things, Mike Hudson is a good resource.
     
    Michael Hudson is excellent. Ironically, unlike most economists, he actually worked in the private sector for decades, in contrast to people like Milton Friedman who made their careers on attacking government-involvement in the economy... whilst living on government checks. Michael Hudson's specialty in fact happens to be debt, both as a concept and its history, dating back to the first urban civilisations in Mesopotamia.
    In a similar vein, I would recommend Karl Polanyi, especially for his keystone work "The Great Transformation". I'm not sure if Ron Unz is familiar with Polanyi's work (he does afterall, publish Hudson here), but the coda of the book goes into some fascinating background into the economic pressures that led to WWII (it was written in 1941, iirc). However, it does contradict the "Hitler Did Nothing Wrong" school of thinking (Though without making him a unique demon, either, think A.J.P Taylor), so I don't know if our benevolent overlord would still be interested in reading it, at his current Raches trajectory of political awakening.

    Who else? Saskia Sassen is very good, though unforunately her strong gallows humour isn't carried into her prose, which can be quite dry. She's especially good on European Union related topics.

    Once you have good background, go to Zero Hedge. Their [...]takes are worthless
     
    Should have stopped there. Speaking as somebody who formerly read Zero Hedge for years... at least it's a step up from The Economist, not that this is saying anything much. I mean, every column is anonymously headed by 'Tyler Durden' lol, its not a serious website.
  222. @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yea yea yea, savings and the Austrians. That world went away in 2008. For better or worse, but its not possible to bring it back.

    Let's take our MAGA friend here, A123. Now, we may have different perspectives, but if there is one thing that we hopefully will learn from our current adventure is that placing all your supply chain eggs in one Asian basket may not be a smart idea.

    And that's kinda where MAGA is going with American reindustrialization. While I don't share the whole "hate China" thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains. I don't see Asia being reliable going forward, for a variety of reasons.

    So how to do this? How to industrialize America? Free market? Free market only cares that it's cheap which means Asia. Free market doesn't care about national security or even reliability five years down the road.

    Market driven interest rates will be higher than what they are currently being managed to. How do you finance $billion dollar factories at high rates if you have to send $100 million every year to the bank in interest expense? (Say, 10% annual interest). How do you have any hope of being competitive after making such usurous payments? And why? What did bank exactly do for you to justify such $100 million income? Entered two numbers in a spreadsheet? That's some very expensive key strokes.

    Which is why I don't really see the reasoning for the "abolish the Fed" crowd. And savings argument doesn't fly either - its not like there's a warehouse of factories just sitting out there, saved from the good times. It's all built to order. There is no factory unless you order it. Then it gets designed and built.

    So the mechanics of real economy, not just financial one, is quite different from Austrians' description, as far as I can see.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    if there is one thing that we hopefully will learn from our current adventure is that placing all your supply chain eggs in one Asian basket may not be a smart idea.

    And that’s kinda where MAGA is going with American reindustrialization. While I don’t share the whole “hate China” thing, they do have a point about the need to regionalize our supply chains. I don’t see Asia being reliable going forward, for a variety of reasons.

    Totally agreed, and it’s ultimately advantageous for both North America and East Asia to have a complete economic sphere for the same reasons the US & Soviets had ones in the Cold War.

    How do you finance \$billion dollar factories at high rates if you have to send \$100 million every year to the bank in interest expense? (Say, 10% annual interest). How do you have any hope of being competitive after making such usurous payments? And why? What did bank exactly do for you to justify such \$100 million income? Entered two numbers in a spreadsheet? That’s some very expensive key strokes.

    Market-driven interest rates are meant to reflect differences in time preferences, in Austrians’ imagination, and those are supposed to be paid largely to those whose time deposit is loaned under 100% reserves.

    And savings argument doesn’t fly either – its not like there’s a warehouse of factories just sitting out there, saved from the good times. It’s all built to order. There is no factory unless you order it. Then it gets designed and built.

    It still stands when there’s a stash of money around to pay for fixed capital. But you will say the entire funding is lent under the very new monetary regime.

  223. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    So in other words, most of the world has already been semi-Zimbabwefied in slow motion.
     
    Yep. Always has been. Welcome to the real world :)

    Right. Tautological, but like all tautologies, correct by definition.
     
    Again, absolutely correct. Now you can see why economics is easy when you strip it from bullshit.

    Right, but that’s the same thing I said: the government can create as much money as it wants and give it to whomever it wants, which makes interest rates irrelevant for those receiving government beneficence.
     
    Yep, and same deal applies to private commercial banking sector - they get to create whatever money they want. The only difference is the goals that you want your resources working towards. State, or banker fat cats? Its not a easy answer, but fundamentally, its the only question.

    Where do you think the banking cartels get the money?
     
    They create it when they make loans aka create credit. Money is credit in modern economy.

    Obviously, I don’t disagree, but what is that level and how do you know when you’ve reached it?
     
    I watch credit markets as a hobby, and 100% private debt to GDP is when I start making noises for state intervention. At 300% private sector debt to GDP, the need for state intervention becomes obvious to anybody with IQ above room temperature, and we are going to vastly higher ratios than that. By 2050, 500% private sector debt to GDP ratio will be perfectly normal. And with negative interest rates, you will get paid for having that debt, so payment will not be a problem. But state will have to be a part of the equation. Its inevitable.

    By … printing more money? And giving it to … whom? The banking cartel again? Or the plebs this time to even out who is diluting whom a bit?

     

    Yep. Government has a duty to maintain corporate sales aka aggregate demand so that asset prices don't deviate too much from revenues. This means Universal Basic Income for the poors. Not to benefit the poors, but to maintain asset prices. That's how asset price mechanics work.

    Just to clarify, economically speaking, WWII and the Great Leap Forward were attempts at demand support?
     
    WW2 definitely was. And so was WW1, and all other wars in history. Soldiers are simply Basic Income recipients, and government in wartime provides demand. Which is why war is so popular throughout history, but we really can do better once we are honest about the mechanism.

    That’s an interesting comment. But what did Zimbabwe “smartly get out of” by hyperinflating? Food-wise, the badly run farms did not suddenly increase production when the currency became worthless, rather the reverse.
     
    They got out of insane debt to the IMF and "international investment community". Just like Weimar Germans did. Food farms are an entirely different question. In the real world, you seriously don't want to be a slave forever to "investment community", with infinite debt repayments. Both Zimbabweans and Germans understood that correctly.

    They shouldn’t. Their interest rates are the rates of the general economy. But obviously when the government massively interferes via money printing, it lays waste to the natural economic ecology.

    Welcome to the real world, that's how it has always been. State is always a part of the equation.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Barbarossa

    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.

    Considering that we have to have perpetual growth for the party to continue, it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.
    It seems a worthwhile point that the dynamics of the post industrial revolution world are a complete historical anomaly and not guaranteed to continue on a linear progressive track.
    I suppose some of this comes down to how much faith one has in the ability of technological progress to save our bacon. AK would doubtless have high faith, but I am much more skeptical.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @mal
    @Barbarossa


    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.
     
    Nah, if anything, we are far better at handling stress than at any point in history. Its just that famine and death were normal for people in the past, so they didn't complain about it too much.

    I mean, how many Irish did the British starve to death less than 200 years ago? Like a million, plus many more millions as refugees?

    But this sort of thing hardly happens anymore, at least in Ireland and other developed nations. Why? because supply chains can feed all the Irish and more.

    In the past, you would see mass famines due to a pandemic. Today, not so much. All because of improvement in supply chain.

    it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.
     
    We had major corrections in 2008 and 2020. Usually, major corrections occur once a decade, and they are perfectly normal. We then get up and keep on growing. So yes, major corrections are inevitable, and no, they won't stop us from growing. Its like falling off a bike. Sure, unpleasant, but so what? Who cares? You just get back up and keep riding. Major corrections are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Barbarossa

  224. @Thorfinnsson
    I didn't get the chance to comment in the previous post (The Last Reaction), so I'll post my parting shot here.

    First and foremost, a standing ovation for Anatoly Karlin. I have been reading him for many years (long before he was picked up by Ron), and unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.

    You could compare and contrast him with some of the other writers here. The other recent retiree, Audacious Epigone, is of course excellent. But I'm not sure that AE ever really improved, and he remained sadly mired in financial doomerist thinking that AK evolved beyond. If you compare to Steve Sailer, well Steve has been more or less saying the same thing for the past twenty years. No disrespect to Steve Sailer of course without whom many of us wouldn't even be here. And admittedly the distinction with Steve may have more to do with age than anything else.

    The content of AK's posts in combination with his wise choice not to moderate comments also led to an unusually excellent community. Wade elsewhere on the Unz Review and you get bombarded by anti-vax morons, low quality WW2 "revisionists", and weirdos like Thomm (who somehow made his way into this thread--guess he got lost searching for "white trashionalist" homo-sexuals to hit on). AK's commenters stand head and shoulders above them and nearly all others on the internet. Probably the worst regular commenters on AK's pieces are A123 and AaronB, who are really not that bad.

    As for me, I do intend to make the transition to Substack and thus you'll be able to keep up with me there. Another commenter, I think Yevardian, alluded to things perhaps having changed for me for the better. That is true. In addition to being sober (more than two years), I am now married and have a daughter. I have also returned to church, taken up strength training, and much else.

    See you all on Substack, though I will retain a presence on the Unz Review as well.

    Replies: @Twinkie, @AP, @sher singh, @BlackFlag

    unusually for public intellectuals not only has the quality of his writing improved but so has his thinking.

    He’s one of the most realistic, i.e. doesn’t let personal leanings cloud his analysis.

  225. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     
    Yeah, but it's not our decision to make. It's up to the markets. And right now markets love low interest rates and government management practices (else 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%). So the "free markets" have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give "free markets" everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.
     
    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven't. And our money supply rose up exactly as warranted.

    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.
     
    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all "developed" economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to "developed" countries during a lunch hour LOL.

    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today’s government or the government of fifty years ago? Today’s government or the government of twenty years hence?
     
    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money, otherwise, 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%. Markets have vastly more confidence in government than private sector. And no, its not all Fed games, not at long end of the curve. So we must give the markets what they crave most - long term government debt. Supply must meet demand, its only market economics.

    From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth.
     
    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that - Unions and EPA in the 70's started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90's and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn't matter what "free market" wants.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you’re doing it wrong.
     
    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can't have big wars doing it for us because it's politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.

    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is “more” in a “per asset” sense.)
     
    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.

    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is … amusing.
     
    Exactly, and that is why I will miss this blog. :).

    Just like I told Mikel before, I agree with your logic but disagree with assumptions.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can't separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn't. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren't, and they must unite for the national good.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri

    So the “free markets” have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give “free markets” everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

    Been distorted by 50 years of fiat currency printing. Go figure.

    I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven’t.

    Opportunities are infinite but resources are limited as far as we can identify, and they need to be prioritized to make the best of them before we can find more of them.

    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a \$billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.

    See things structurally – what Zimbabwe had was Mugabe expropriating land from White cultivators and distributing them to both cronies and undertrained Black smallholders. The entire agricultural economy collapsed afterwards. Hyperinflation was just the symptom.

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that – Unions and EPA in the 70’s started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a \$trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn’t matter what “free market” wants.

    Yep, this is a way better explanation than the regular “monetarist” one.

    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can’t have big wars doing it for us because it’s politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.

    We’re going to approach the question of how to fundamentally arrange economic or social development very soon.

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them.

    You know what, gold coins were too. What matters is in whose control and benefit the tool is configured.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can’t separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn’t. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.

    Hopefully many more realize this, and how both comes downstream from culture. Culture is the basis for everything

    • Replies: @mal
    @Yellowface Anon


    Opportunities are infinite but resources are limited as far as we can identify, and they need to be prioritized to make the best of them before we can find more of them
     
    Maybe, but it hasn't been the case historically. For example, current EU gas crisis is not caused by the physical shortage of gas - there's literally an infinite amount of gas out there for the taking and has always been. But they have political considerations that prevent them from using it.

    Same deal with all other resources - there's an infinite amount of energy and materials in the universe. That's a fact. But will the politics allow us to get it? I don't know. Political questions are far from certain.

    See things structurally – what Zimbabwe had was Mugabe expropriating land from White cultivators and distributing them to both cronies and undertrained Black smallholders. The entire agricultural economy collapsed afterwards. Hyperinflation was just the symptom.
     
    Agree.

    Hopefully many more realize this, and how both comes downstream from culture. Culture is the basis for everything
     
    There's a good case for that.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  226. @Dmitry
    @A123

    I'm still not vaccinated so I'd have to avoid Kazan's shopping centres just like that the Kazan people. Empathizing with this. At least where I live there is Amazon Prime. But the YouTube comments in this video were too "powerful", I hesitate even to translate them into international circulation.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    You can pretty much see it isn’t as much a “anti-pandemic” policy as an economic one that is redistributing consumption & markets from brick-and-mortar businesses to digital ones that can be easily centralized in distribution under Amazon, Taobao, etc. 4IR!

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon

    These modern shopping centres in Russia are usually owned by people with strong connections, i.e. owners will have connections to local elites, so I doubt there is any top down conspiracy to move people into online shopping.

    I think it's just another half-planned, half-measure.

    Although there is no malevolent conspiracy theory involved, the emphasis on QR codes might be seen as beginning of bad precedent.

    Instead of focusing on sensible policies, clear communication and engineering solutions (like they had in Japan of ventilating buildings) - there has been worship of the QR code, as if scanning something on your phone is a way to manage a pandemic.

    It's worship of a "cool" technology that allows an increase of state capacity to control peoples' movements, but probably little effect on the epidemiological situation. That is, it's easy to see alternative reasons why it might become popular with politicians.

    QR coding for only vaccinated people to enter in Ufa is supposedly resulting in the same underpopulated shopping malls like in Tatarstan.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxEZK7Ac-k0

    Ufa and Kazan are some of the more economically developed, successful cities in Russia, so if QR coding is not being accepted by much of the population there, it's probably not going to be too popular when introduced into other regions in the next weeks.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  227. @Barbarossa
    @mal

    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.

    Considering that we have to have perpetual growth for the party to continue, it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.
    It seems a worthwhile point that the dynamics of the post industrial revolution world are a complete historical anomaly and not guaranteed to continue on a linear progressive track.
    I suppose some of this comes down to how much faith one has in the ability of technological progress to save our bacon. AK would doubtless have high faith, but I am much more skeptical.

    Replies: @mal

    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.

    Nah, if anything, we are far better at handling stress than at any point in history. Its just that famine and death were normal for people in the past, so they didn’t complain about it too much.

    I mean, how many Irish did the British starve to death less than 200 years ago? Like a million, plus many more millions as refugees?

    But this sort of thing hardly happens anymore, at least in Ireland and other developed nations. Why? because supply chains can feed all the Irish and more.

    In the past, you would see mass famines due to a pandemic. Today, not so much. All because of improvement in supply chain.

    it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.

    We had major corrections in 2008 and 2020. Usually, major corrections occur once a decade, and they are perfectly normal. We then get up and keep on growing. So yes, major corrections are inevitable, and no, they won’t stop us from growing. Its like falling off a bike. Sure, unpleasant, but so what? Who cares? You just get back up and keep riding. Major corrections are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @mal


    Nah, if anything, we are far better at handling stress than at any point in history. Its just that famine and death were normal for people in the past, so they didn’t complain about it too much.
     
    It might just be my unease after reading so many conspiracy theories, but this might come into play again, not as a global-scale Irish Famine, but a global-scale Holodomor. Starving people to extract their resources for a new economy, rather than profiteering on a fragile economy reeling from natural disasters. (I need not to comment further on the nature of early Soviet economy)

    Usually, major corrections occur once a decade, and they are perfectly normal. We then get up and keep on growing. So yes, major corrections are inevitable, and no, they won’t stop us from growing.
     
    Past performances means nothing. The elites are taking us for a ride and we don't know where they're taking whenever they preach the virtues of the "Great Reset". It's so vacuous and open for tinfoil interpretations, and this usually is an ill omen.

    Brush this post off if you can come up with a more plausible scenario and assess its risks.

    , @Barbarossa
    @mal

    My point is more that in a very complex, centralized world everything works extremely well, until it doesn't. The interconnected and interdependent nature of our modern world mean that once a big enough disruption starts, the effects ripple through the entire structure.

    Most of the disasters of the past, like the Irish famine (the reason my family came to America) were relatively localized in their effects.

    If any significant crippling disruption happens in our modern system it really could conceivably take it all down. The resilience of a very complex system becomes dependent on increasingly refined conditions.

    To me, the lesson of Covid is how small a disruption it takes to set off major instabilities in the global system. These are still playing out with rising inflation and spiraling goods and services shortages, so we haven't seen the full extent yet. I own a business and know other people who do as well and it's incredible how backed up things are right now, with no real end in sight.

  228. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    I’ll just sum up my view this way: to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off.
     
    I agree with that, which is why I'm not a socialist. But unfortunately, powers that be don't see it that way, and they create our reality for us, so it must be taken into account. Any economic theory that doesn't account for men with guns is doomed to failure.

    After all, if every economic question is also political question, then we are basically back to the old Soviet Union, and we all know how that turned out.
     
    I grew up in the Soviet Union, and frankly, I find it weird that people both over rate it and under rate it at the same time. That place was simply boring and stagnant. It wasn't a horror show that the Atlantic Council crowd strives to present, but it wasn't a some kind of hero land that some leftists try to show either.

    The chief Soviet problem was Gorbachev who was an idiot. A well meaning one, but still, a fool. There were many ways to do managed reforms, and he picked the worst one. If anything, it's a cautionary take against being too nice.

    I mean Chinese and Vietnamese are still ruled by Politbureau and North Korea is still standing, and may well end up being Best Korea, with South Korean fertility rate being what it is.

    I wouldn't bet my worldview on Gorbachev.

    Anyway, I think we can both agree that the true role of the state is to get us to a point where we think our economic decisions are not really influenced by the state. :) And I would totally agree with that.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    I said “old Soviet Union” since I was thinking of the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s, when the more extreme forms of non-economic management of economic matters occurred: the abolition of prices, enterprise management by will (or whim) of commissars rather than supply and demand, etc. So “how it turned out” included things like mass famine, which I think is pretty hard to overrate.

    I suppose it still could apply to the later USSR, though my impression is that by then the government had bowed to necessity and there was more of a defacto market orientation, even if insufficient to stave off financial collapse.

    Yes, China and Vietnam are still governed by something we translate as “politburo”, but nowadays they both have a much more independent economic sphere, arguably more free and independent than many western countries, so they are no longer a good example of what it is like when everything economic is subsumed in everything political.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    I said “old Soviet Union” since I was thinking of the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s, when the more extreme forms of non-economic management of economic matters occurred: the abolition of prices, enterprise management by will (or whim) of commissars rather than supply and demand, etc. So “how it turned out” included things like mass famine, which I think is pretty hard to overrate.
     
    Hmm... in 1920' Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time) and Western corporations were begging to do business there. This makes Soviet Russia vastly more capitalist than any Western nation today. And in the 1930's Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale. Americans may have invented mass production, but Soviets were quick learners. Which is why USSR emerged as military production superpower during 1940's war time. That know how didn't appear by magic.

    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn't want to do business there. Americans were happy with both prices and commissar management.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that while famines were unfortunate, how exactly to classify Soviet Russia under New Economy Policy and subsequent Stalinist collectivization is more complicated.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  229. @Yellowface Anon
    @mal


    So the “free markets” have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give “free markets” everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

     

    Been distorted by 50 years of fiat currency printing. Go figure.

    I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven’t.
     
    Opportunities are infinite but resources are limited as far as we can identify, and they need to be prioritized to make the best of them before we can find more of them.

    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.
     
    See things structurally - what Zimbabwe had was Mugabe expropriating land from White cultivators and distributing them to both cronies and undertrained Black smallholders. The entire agricultural economy collapsed afterwards. Hyperinflation was just the symptom.

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that – Unions and EPA in the 70’s started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn’t matter what “free market” wants.
     
    Yep, this is a way better explanation than the regular "monetarist" one.

    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can’t have big wars doing it for us because it’s politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.
     
    We're going to approach the question of how to fundamentally arrange economic or social development very soon.

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them.
     
    You know what, gold coins were too. What matters is in whose control and benefit the tool is configured.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can’t separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn’t. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.
     
    Hopefully many more realize this, and how both comes downstream from culture. Culture is the basis for everything

    Replies: @mal

    Opportunities are infinite but resources are limited as far as we can identify, and they need to be prioritized to make the best of them before we can find more of them

    Maybe, but it hasn’t been the case historically. For example, current EU gas crisis is not caused by the physical shortage of gas – there’s literally an infinite amount of gas out there for the taking and has always been. But they have political considerations that prevent them from using it.

    Same deal with all other resources – there’s an infinite amount of energy and materials in the universe. That’s a fact. But will the politics allow us to get it? I don’t know. Political questions are far from certain.

    See things structurally – what Zimbabwe had was Mugabe expropriating land from White cultivators and distributing them to both cronies and undertrained Black smallholders. The entire agricultural economy collapsed afterwards. Hyperinflation was just the symptom.

    Agree.

    Hopefully many more realize this, and how both comes downstream from culture. Culture is the basis for everything

    There’s a good case for that.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @mal

    There may be practically infinite energy in the universe, but the question is accessibility. A lot of the low hanging fruit has been plucked there. You can certainly extract usable energy from tar sands or fracking, but it takes much more energy investment to do so than a barrel of sweet crude.
    The return on investment is much lower.

    This is the same issue with "renewables" like solar and wind. They have a relatively rotten return on investment.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

  230. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    How? By mining new metal out of the ground.
     
    Yea, by Native Indian slaves in Spanish Bolivian mines, and then they died out. And once they died we had to have two world wars to sort out who had to have most gold.

    And the rate of metal mining turned out to be a pretty good proxy for the rate of economic growth
     
    .

    LOL yes, but that's not really a good argument, at least not in a way you probably intend.

    You are absolutely right in a sense that medium of exchange throttles your rate of economic growth.

    So what has precisely happened was - some of the smarter overlords were like "WTF is this? Why is my rate of economic growth limited by some dead slaves in Bolivian mines? Can't we just print what we need to accelerate scientific and technological development?"

    And it turned out, that yes, you could. Your economic growth rate was no longer tethered to dead slaves in Bolivian mines. And that's why we live in the world we live in today. Which is a much better world compared to the alternative where we still would need Bolivian slaves to make our medium of exchange.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    How? By mining new metal out of the ground.

    Yea, by Native Indian slaves in Spanish Bolivian mines, and then they died out.

    I was thinking more of the Middle Ages, say 1000-15000 when new metal from European mines was a decent proxy for new economic activity, though I think it still applies fairly well in 1500-1900 too, in spite of the big influx of New World gold from Spanish colonization, which did create some inflation in the classic sense: currency outstripping the economic value it is supposed to represent. But again, this was mild by comparison to the extreme distortions of the fiat era.

    And once they died we had to have two world wars to sort out who had to have most gold.

    Now that I know you grew up in the Soviet Union, I understand why you keep casting the world wars as the result of capitalism, lol!

    Why the world wars happened is obviously a big topic we won’t get to the bottom of in a few blog comments. The most concise meta-summation I can offer is that there was probably some inevitability to the conflict as different power blocs expanded up against the ceiling of the globe itself, but the conflict needn’t have been as awful as it was. In other words, some sort of friction was unavoidable irrespective of whatever financial/economic system various power blocs had.

    (Also, a lot of other stuff happened in the four centuries between New World colonization in 1492 and world war in 1914, so positing Spanish gold -> Verdun and Tannenberg is … highly abbreviated.)

    And it turned out, that yes, you could. Your economic growth rate was no longer tethered to dead slaves in Bolivian mines.

    Retro-monetarism is a peculiar creed for a son of the Soviet Union, lol! But in any case, since inflation followed from the influx of New World metal, a lack of currency could not have been holding back European development. Indeed, since the Iberian landing site of that New World metal became the most economically retarded part of Atlantic Europe in the centuries following the money storm, too much currency would appear to be economically damaging rather than economically liberating.

    And that’s why we live in the world we live in today. Which is a much better world compared to the alternative where we still would need Bolivian slaves to make our medium of exchange.

    Bolivian slaves is a red herring. More precious metal comes out the ground annually today than ever did in the time of the Spanish empire. So arguably, the rate of metal mining is still a good proxy for the rate of economic growth. After all, as measured in gold, the price of a meal or a suit of clothes has been fairly steady over the last two or three millennia. As measured in fiat currency, well … it is to laugh.

    Nevertheless, I’m not even advocating for a return to the gold standard. Just restrained fiating would be good enough! I’m a monetary moderate and pragmatist.

  231. @mal
    @Triteleia Laxa


    I am not particularly knowledgeable about economics, but your arguments regarding credit markets, how the main decision is who decides what gets prioritised and about private sector debt as a proportion of GDP, all ring true. Where can I read more?
     
    So sorry, I didn't mean to ignore you, but its a rather complex subject. You don't really learn by reading stuff about it. You learn by reading criticism of the stuff you want to learn and then weeding out the fluff.

    So for criticism of the state, I found Hayek rather convincing. And for criticism of financial imperialism as it rules today, your will find no better critic than Vladimir Lenin circa 1900-1910. And for Keynesisan take on things, Mike Hudson is a good resource.

    Once you have good background, go to Zero Hedge. Their doomer takes are worthless, but they do post good research letters from Bank of America and Goldman Sachs and other power players. With good historical grounding, you will be able to see what the overlords want other people to see. This will at least get you started.

    Replies: @Yevardian

    So for criticism of the state, I found Hayek rather convincing. And for criticism of financial imperialism as it rules today, your will find no better critic than Vladimir Lenin circa 1900-1910. And for Keynesisan take on things, Mike Hudson is a good resource.

    Michael Hudson is excellent. Ironically, unlike most economists, he actually worked in the private sector for decades, in contrast to people like Milton Friedman who made their careers on attacking government-involvement in the economy… whilst living on government checks. Michael Hudson’s specialty in fact happens to be debt, both as a concept and its history, dating back to the first urban civilisations in Mesopotamia.
    In a similar vein, I would recommend Karl Polanyi, especially for his keystone work “The Great Transformation”. I’m not sure if Ron Unz is familiar with Polanyi’s work (he does afterall, publish Hudson here), but the coda of the book goes into some fascinating background into the economic pressures that led to WWII (it was written in 1941, iirc). However, it does contradict the “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” school of thinking (Though without making him a unique demon, either, think A.J.P Taylor), so I don’t know if our benevolent overlord would still be interested in reading it, at his current Raches trajectory of political awakening.

    Who else? Saskia Sassen is very good, though unforunately her strong gallows humour isn’t carried into her prose, which can be quite dry. She’s especially good on European Union related topics.

    Once you have good background, go to Zero Hedge. Their […]takes are worthless

    Should have stopped there. Speaking as somebody who formerly read Zero Hedge for years… at least it’s a step up from The Economist, not that this is saying anything much. I mean, every column is anonymously headed by ‘Tyler Durden’ lol, its not a serious website.

    • Agree: mal
  232. @Almost Missouri
    @mal

    I said "old Soviet Union" since I was thinking of the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s, when the more extreme forms of non-economic management of economic matters occurred: the abolition of prices, enterprise management by will (or whim) of commissars rather than supply and demand, etc. So "how it turned out" included things like mass famine, which I think is pretty hard to overrate.

    I suppose it still could apply to the later USSR, though my impression is that by then the government had bowed to necessity and there was more of a defacto market orientation, even if insufficient to stave off financial collapse.

    Yes, China and Vietnam are still governed by something we translate as "politburo", but nowadays they both have a much more independent economic sphere, arguably more free and independent than many western countries, so they are no longer a good example of what it is like when everything economic is subsumed in everything political.

    Replies: @mal

    I said “old Soviet Union” since I was thinking of the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s, when the more extreme forms of non-economic management of economic matters occurred: the abolition of prices, enterprise management by will (or whim) of commissars rather than supply and demand, etc. So “how it turned out” included things like mass famine, which I think is pretty hard to overrate.

    Hmm… in 1920′ Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time) and Western corporations were begging to do business there. This makes Soviet Russia vastly more capitalist than any Western nation today. And in the 1930’s Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale. Americans may have invented mass production, but Soviets were quick learners. Which is why USSR emerged as military production superpower during 1940’s war time. That know how didn’t appear by magic.

    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn’t want to do business there. Americans were happy with both prices and commissar management.

    I guess what I’m trying to say is that while famines were unfortunate, how exactly to classify Soviet Russia under New Economy Policy and subsequent Stalinist collectivization is more complicated.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    in 1920′ Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time)
     
    Chervonets long predated the Soviets. But in Soviet times actual gold chervonets became scarce (except for paying foreign creditors). Most citizens dealt with credit tickets, sovznak, and other inflative scrip junk. Banks were "nationalized" (i.e., destroyed), so of course Soviets sought foreign sources for credit when they weren't issuing their own fake fiat money. Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back, and governments who will mass murder for the sake of a few wagons of grain seem like a reasonable credit risk.

    Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale.
     
    When you're presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress. Communist China too managed some industrialization ... while starving millions.

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.


    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn’t want to do business there.
     
    Americans want to do business everywhere all the time, so that is of no special significance. Very few American businesses actually end up earning much in foreign markets, though. I don't think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.

    ...while famines were unfortunate...
     
    "Your sacrifice for the revolution has been duly noted comrade, and—actually, scratch that, comrade, we're writing you out of history." Sorry, can't muster a "lol" for this one.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal

  233. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     
    Yeah, but it's not our decision to make. It's up to the markets. And right now markets love low interest rates and government management practices (else 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%). So the "free markets" have decided that low interest rates are the way to go, and government should have all the fiscal room it needs. So we must give "free markets" everything they they ask for. Its only fair.

    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.
     
    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well. Though granted, this is a hard statement, there is a chance it could be wrong. But in general, infinite money supply is required to meet infinite opportunities. Could opportunities be finite? Maybe, but so far they haven't. And our money supply rose up exactly as warranted.

    As a central bank, yes. But Zimbabwe showed us the way.
     
    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all "developed" economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to "developed" countries during a lunch hour LOL.

    Also can be true, but who is more likely not to waste money: the government or private industry? Today’s government or the government of fifty years ago? Today’s government or the government of twenty years hence?
     
    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money, otherwise, 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%. Markets have vastly more confidence in government than private sector. And no, its not all Fed games, not at long end of the curve. So we must give the markets what they crave most - long term government debt. Supply must meet demand, its only market economics.

    From the eighties to the aughties we had low inflation and moderate growth.
     
    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that - Unions and EPA in the 70's started the process, but Reagan/Volcker dealt the death blow that MAGA types are desperately trying to reverse now), and 90's and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars. We seriously should not base an economy on house price appreciation, it doesn't matter what "free market" wants.

    But this is all a little beside the point. Inflation is more an effect than a cause. If you are running your economy to achieve a certain inflation number, you’re doing it wrong.
     
    Yeah, but if you micromanage the economy, you get accused of being a socialist :). Bottom line is, somebody has to manage it, or nothing ever will get done. And we can't have big wars doing it for us because it's politically incorrect. So yes, inflation targeting is a weak tool (with a good world war, I can achieve in a week what inflation targeting can achieve in a decade), but we all must be civilized now, and historically ordinary tools are out of the question.

    True. And Zimbabwe did more creating than the Fed did (so far), and we see the result: the Zimbabwe dollar effectively ceased to exist. (Obviously, this is “more” in a “per asset” sense.)
     
    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.

    Uh oh.

    Incidentally, there seem to be quite a few things where we agree on the facts but draw opposite implications. The effect is … amusing.
     
    Exactly, and that is why I will miss this blog. :).

    Just like I told Mikel before, I agree with your logic but disagree with assumptions.

    You are absolutely correct in your economic estimates as long as you exclude politics from them. But in real world, it is impossible to exclude politics from economics because politics dictate economics, and both politics and economics are fundamentally all about human behavior. So you can't separate them. Only humans care about economics or politics. The rest of the vast universe doesn't. So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren't, and they must unite for the national good.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri

    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.

    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive

    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets.

    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.

    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.

    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.

    The are many things that can limit opportunities, but a major upspoken one is that there are only a certain number of genuinely productive people. Once you lend them all they can use, then it’s just a question of which hole you’re going to piss the rest of your money down. Indeed, that there still is money left after all the productive loans have been made is a pretty good indication that too much money was printed.

    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a \$billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.

    I’m assuming you’re making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is … more fiat currency.

    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money

    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that

    Indeed. Though the high interest rates of the Volker era are still remembered, people seem to forget the serious disruptions that were being caused by the high inflation that preceded and spawned those interest rates. (People also forget that Volker was appointed and began his interest rate jihad under Carter, not Reagan, although Reagan didn’t fire him either. Presidents typically eschew unnecessary disruption at the Fed.)

    90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a \$trillion dollars.

    Right. Since genuine economic opportunities are limited, all that excess currency the Fed prints has to go somewhere, and asset prices are it, especially real estate prices. So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did! And they have the Swiss bank accounts to prove it. If you mean ordinary Zimbabweans, then not so much.

    So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.

    When ice-cream and dogsh*t unite, you get … dogsh*t.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get … ______.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.
     
    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though. Can't ignore them in the real world.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.
     
    If you look at my favorite plot - Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that's exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that's sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back. There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won't be allowed to happen again.

    I’m assuming you’re making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is … more fiat currency.
     
    Japan, and Germany, and even Mexico have swap lines with Federal Reserve. Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a $billion and not even notice. It wouldn't be unusual. Fed supports other countries when it feels like it. It pumped like quarter $trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.

    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?
     
    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me. But market clearly trusts government more than private sector. Or 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%, below private sector rate. We probably won't completely abolish private sector, but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.


    So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.
     
    We can't, because we don't want another Great Depression.

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!
     
    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe. Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans, they would be slaves forever. At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.


    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get …
     
    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow, @Almost Missouri

  234. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    I said “old Soviet Union” since I was thinking of the USSR of the 1920s and 1930s, when the more extreme forms of non-economic management of economic matters occurred: the abolition of prices, enterprise management by will (or whim) of commissars rather than supply and demand, etc. So “how it turned out” included things like mass famine, which I think is pretty hard to overrate.
     
    Hmm... in 1920' Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time) and Western corporations were begging to do business there. This makes Soviet Russia vastly more capitalist than any Western nation today. And in the 1930's Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale. Americans may have invented mass production, but Soviets were quick learners. Which is why USSR emerged as military production superpower during 1940's war time. That know how didn't appear by magic.

    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn't want to do business there. Americans were happy with both prices and commissar management.

    I guess what I'm trying to say is that while famines were unfortunate, how exactly to classify Soviet Russia under New Economy Policy and subsequent Stalinist collectivization is more complicated.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    in 1920′ Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time)

    Chervonets long predated the Soviets. But in Soviet times actual gold chervonets became scarce (except for paying foreign creditors). Most citizens dealt with credit tickets, sovznak, and other inflative scrip junk. Banks were “nationalized” (i.e., destroyed), so of course Soviets sought foreign sources for credit when they weren’t issuing their own fake fiat money. Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back, and governments who will mass murder for the sake of a few wagons of grain seem like a reasonable credit risk.

    Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale.

    When you’re presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress. Communist China too managed some industrialization … while starving millions.

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.

    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn’t want to do business there.

    Americans want to do business everywhere all the time, so that is of no special significance. Very few American businesses actually end up earning much in foreign markets, though. I don’t think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.

    …while famines were unfortunate…

    “Your sacrifice for the revolution has been duly noted comrade, and—actually, scratch that, comrade, we’re writing you out of history.” Sorry, can’t muster a “lol” for this one.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    The most concise meta-summation I can offer is that there was probably some inevitability to the conflict as different power blocs expanded up against the ceiling of the globe itself, but the conflict needn’t have been as awful as it was. In other words, some sort of friction was unavoidable irrespective of whatever financial/economic system various power blocs had.
     
    They were both a contest of power and ideologies. WWI eliminated classical liberalism & monarchial rule; WWII fascism, and Cold War communism. What remains is late liberalism and it is now meeting its demise, maybe gradual, maybe violent.

    After all, as measured in gold, the price of a meal or a suit of clothes has been fairly steady over the last two or three millennia. As measured in fiat currency, well … it is to laugh.
     
    You see how well commodity monies are as a store of value.

    Nevertheless, I’m not even advocating for a return to the gold standard. Just restrained fiating would be good enough! I’m a monetary moderate and pragmatist.
     
    Fiat is inherently susceptible to manipulation either by central banks or the fractional-reserve banking system. Some kind of commodity money (cryptos included) or a currency based on wholesale price indexing, which represents either the value of wealth or trade, will be more sustainable.

    The are many things that can limit opportunities, but a major upspoken one is that there are only a certain number of genuinely productive people. Once you lend them all they can use, then it’s just a question of which hole you’re going to piss the rest of your money down. Indeed, that there still is money left after all the productive loans have been made is a pretty good indication that too much money was printed.
     
    Yes.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get … ______.
     
    I snapped out of libertarianism because what they propose are just as narrow and unfeasible as communism.

    When you’re presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress.
     
    AK has done a lot of posts on the lost potential of the Russian lands from 1917 and you can check them out. Basically the Russian Empire was already quite industrialized before the Soviets came onto the stage and the Soviets was just catching up back onto the trajectory and then stagnating from that.

    Communist China too managed some industrialization … while starving millions.
     
    Pretty much the same, which is why AK said Maoism gave China a 20-year lag relative to South Korea. Without communism, it could just have been a few years (but South Korea wouldn't have been as developed if there hadn't been the need to contain China)

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.
     
    Apples and Oranges. France was a bit laissez-faire while Germany was more state-directed. But they still beat the Soviets in terms of human cost.

    While a pure command economy has been invalidated by the Soviet example, many forms of economic planning are still on the table, even if they are rejected by free-marketers. I'm more inclined for a free market but those proposals can still be tried at the policymakers' own risk (and of course a human cost).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back
     
    It was American industrial corporations working for gold money and doing good business, not lenders?

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population.
     
    Those countries lost lots of their people in endless wars. French lost like a million in Napoleonic wars alone. And who knows how many in a Revolution. Same with Germans. Not to mention genocide in the colonies.

    I don’t think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.
     
    Regardless, they were happy to do business there and got paid. Clearly, wasn't too terrible of a business environment for them.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  235. @mal
    @Barbarossa


    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.
     
    Nah, if anything, we are far better at handling stress than at any point in history. Its just that famine and death were normal for people in the past, so they didn't complain about it too much.

    I mean, how many Irish did the British starve to death less than 200 years ago? Like a million, plus many more millions as refugees?

    But this sort of thing hardly happens anymore, at least in Ireland and other developed nations. Why? because supply chains can feed all the Irish and more.

    In the past, you would see mass famines due to a pandemic. Today, not so much. All because of improvement in supply chain.

    it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.
     
    We had major corrections in 2008 and 2020. Usually, major corrections occur once a decade, and they are perfectly normal. We then get up and keep on growing. So yes, major corrections are inevitable, and no, they won't stop us from growing. Its like falling off a bike. Sure, unpleasant, but so what? Who cares? You just get back up and keep riding. Major corrections are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Barbarossa

    Nah, if anything, we are far better at handling stress than at any point in history. Its just that famine and death were normal for people in the past, so they didn’t complain about it too much.

    It might just be my unease after reading so many conspiracy theories, but this might come into play again, not as a global-scale Irish Famine, but a global-scale Holodomor. Starving people to extract their resources for a new economy, rather than profiteering on a fragile economy reeling from natural disasters. (I need not to comment further on the nature of early Soviet economy)

    Usually, major corrections occur once a decade, and they are perfectly normal. We then get up and keep on growing. So yes, major corrections are inevitable, and no, they won’t stop us from growing.

    Past performances means nothing. The elites are taking us for a ride and we don’t know where they’re taking whenever they preach the virtues of the “Great Reset”. It’s so vacuous and open for tinfoil interpretations, and this usually is an ill omen.

    Brush this post off if you can come up with a more plausible scenario and assess its risks.

  236. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    in 1920′ Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time)
     
    Chervonets long predated the Soviets. But in Soviet times actual gold chervonets became scarce (except for paying foreign creditors). Most citizens dealt with credit tickets, sovznak, and other inflative scrip junk. Banks were "nationalized" (i.e., destroyed), so of course Soviets sought foreign sources for credit when they weren't issuing their own fake fiat money. Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back, and governments who will mass murder for the sake of a few wagons of grain seem like a reasonable credit risk.

    Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale.
     
    When you're presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress. Communist China too managed some industrialization ... while starving millions.

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.


    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn’t want to do business there.
     
    Americans want to do business everywhere all the time, so that is of no special significance. Very few American businesses actually end up earning much in foreign markets, though. I don't think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.

    ...while famines were unfortunate...
     
    "Your sacrifice for the revolution has been duly noted comrade, and—actually, scratch that, comrade, we're writing you out of history." Sorry, can't muster a "lol" for this one.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal

    The most concise meta-summation I can offer is that there was probably some inevitability to the conflict as different power blocs expanded up against the ceiling of the globe itself, but the conflict needn’t have been as awful as it was. In other words, some sort of friction was unavoidable irrespective of whatever financial/economic system various power blocs had.

    They were both a contest of power and ideologies. WWI eliminated classical liberalism & monarchial rule; WWII fascism, and Cold War communism. What remains is late liberalism and it is now meeting its demise, maybe gradual, maybe violent.

    After all, as measured in gold, the price of a meal or a suit of clothes has been fairly steady over the last two or three millennia. As measured in fiat currency, well … it is to laugh.

    You see how well commodity monies are as a store of value.

    Nevertheless, I’m not even advocating for a return to the gold standard. Just restrained fiating would be good enough! I’m a monetary moderate and pragmatist.

    Fiat is inherently susceptible to manipulation either by central banks or the fractional-reserve banking system. Some kind of commodity money (cryptos included) or a currency based on wholesale price indexing, which represents either the value of wealth or trade, will be more sustainable.

    The are many things that can limit opportunities, but a major upspoken one is that there are only a certain number of genuinely productive people. Once you lend them all they can use, then it’s just a question of which hole you’re going to piss the rest of your money down. Indeed, that there still is money left after all the productive loans have been made is a pretty good indication that too much money was printed.

    Yes.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get … ______.

    I snapped out of libertarianism because what they propose are just as narrow and unfeasible as communism.

    When you’re presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress.

    AK has done a lot of posts on the lost potential of the Russian lands from 1917 and you can check them out. Basically the Russian Empire was already quite industrialized before the Soviets came onto the stage and the Soviets was just catching up back onto the trajectory and then stagnating from that.

    Communist China too managed some industrialization … while starving millions.

    Pretty much the same, which is why AK said Maoism gave China a 20-year lag relative to South Korea. Without communism, it could just have been a few years (but South Korea wouldn’t have been as developed if there hadn’t been the need to contain China)

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.

    Apples and Oranges. France was a bit laissez-faire while Germany was more state-directed. But they still beat the Soviets in terms of human cost.

    While a pure command economy has been invalidated by the Soviet example, many forms of economic planning are still on the table, even if they are rejected by free-marketers. I’m more inclined for a free market but those proposals can still be tried at the policymakers’ own risk (and of course a human cost).

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @Yellowface Anon


    You see how well commodity monies are as a store of value.
     
    Yeah, it's hard to argue with thousands of years of consistent stability.

    I snapped out of libertarianism because what they propose are just as narrow and unfeasible as communism.
     
    I see libertarianism (and perhaps communism?) as what could happen in an environment of highly self-restrained government and a productive and upright population. So far these circumstances have never occurred in real life. I put a question mark after communisms, because Marx never really defined what communism is or how it works, other than saying that in communism he would be able "to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner." In other words, it would be a sort of secular-materialist paradise. Okay, but how? And what about when your neighbor decides to take your cattle rather than tend his own? And what if your neighbor is Genghis Khan?

    AK has done a lot of posts on the lost potential of the Russian lands from 1917 and you can check them out. Basically the Russian Empire was already quite industrialized before the Soviets came onto the stage and the Soviets was just catching up back onto the trajectory and then stagnating from that.
    ...
    Pretty much the same, which is why AK said Maoism gave China a 20-year lag relative to South Korea. Without communism, it could just have been a few years (but South Korea wouldn’t have been as developed if there hadn’t been the need to contain China)
     
    Thanks and Agree.

    I’m more inclined for a free market but those proposals can still be tried at the policymakers’ own risk (and of course a human cost).
     
    Of course the risk and cost is usually borne mostly by working classes rather than the policy makers.

    Which reminds me ... the subject of the (long term) eugenic effect of (short term) population bottlenecks, for instance in the creation of Ashkenazi intelligence, has come up here before, and that got me thinking: the first two thirds or so the 20th century had some pretty harrowing Eurasian population bottlenecks (WWI, WWII, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, etc.) which, with a few exceptions (e.g., massacre of Polish officer class at Katyn) fell disproportionately on the working, poor, and underclass. So after the short term horror of the bottlenecking, shouldn't we be starting to see a eugenic dividend emerging about now, particularly in heavily harrowed Eastern Europe?

    I don't know much about the demographic effect of WWI in France, but I seem to recall that the UK's upper class really took it on the chin in WWI, which they were determined not to repeat in WWII, while France obviously mostly sat out WWII. So maybe the big wars were not necessarily eugenic in Western Europe. (And now of course they import low-human-capital immigrants by the boatload, so they're doubly out of the eugenic game.)

    In his memoir, Hitler complained about how useful, patriotic and productive Germans were disproportionately getting killed at the front in WWI, while malingerers and shirkers proliferated behind the lines, but naturally he didn't provide any peer-reviewed studies to back that up. My reading of WWII memoirs is that Germany's death-burden fell somewhere between the UK's upper class sacrifice and the USSR's mass peasant human waves, so maybe it was eugenically neutral there?

    Anyhow, I've never heard this subject broached explicitly, and I wonder what others here think about this? Is the Russian Reaction the eugenic dividend of the 20th century's tragedies? Was China's rise to bourgeois-dom secretly aided by last century's famines? Was the UK doomed by a demographic death blow?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  237. What are the minimum requirements for a nation-state?

    Heard somewhere that that 40% of the world doesn’t collect reliable vital stats, which makes me think that much of this group might be suspect. Maybe, there is a minimum IQ? Or are they just too polyglot?

    Having nuclear weapons is probably good but not sufficient. About a third of births in England and Whales are to foreign-born mothers. France seems roughly equally fucked.

    What will happen to the fake countries? I believe we haven’t seen the final borders in Africa.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @songbird

    The UK and France are quite interesting examples because AFAIK they were among the first nation states to come into being, France could even be the prototype example of them. They still have articulate and informed guys like Eric Zemmour in public life (he maintains a kind of semi-mystical belief in the post 1648 nation state of France), it makes me think that it will probably be in France that the potential disintegration of this model due to high levels of immigration is first faced consciously.

    I have seen quite reasonable but low key defences of it in relation to the UK, specifically in respect of England the situation is not good though. In 2017 you could see estimates that close to 25% of the population of England was already ethnic minority or foreign born, the woke stuff washing over from the US is like a steroidal highly political version of multi-culturalism which encourages people to identify emotionally with the heritage of their colonised ancestors in what are now other independent nations. I don't see any British figures like Zemmour, or any kind of equivalent tradition of mysticism around the concept of the British state either.

    If England can't be rescued, it might be possible with Scotland and Ireland still. I found out that my mother's maiden name in Irish means 'snow white', this is quite interesting, it is like having a certain level of political incorrectness in your name itself.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  238. @mal
    @Barbarossa


    The difference to me from historical examples is that we exist in a far more precarious position as per the current social and technological complexity. Current and still spiraling supply chain disruptions (stemming from a relatively minor event) show the brittleness of the current system in handling stress.
     
    Nah, if anything, we are far better at handling stress than at any point in history. Its just that famine and death were normal for people in the past, so they didn't complain about it too much.

    I mean, how many Irish did the British starve to death less than 200 years ago? Like a million, plus many more millions as refugees?

    But this sort of thing hardly happens anymore, at least in Ireland and other developed nations. Why? because supply chains can feed all the Irish and more.

    In the past, you would see mass famines due to a pandemic. Today, not so much. All because of improvement in supply chain.

    it seems to me that major correction is ultimately inevitable.
     
    We had major corrections in 2008 and 2020. Usually, major corrections occur once a decade, and they are perfectly normal. We then get up and keep on growing. So yes, major corrections are inevitable, and no, they won't stop us from growing. Its like falling off a bike. Sure, unpleasant, but so what? Who cares? You just get back up and keep riding. Major corrections are not a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Barbarossa

    My point is more that in a very complex, centralized world everything works extremely well, until it doesn’t. The interconnected and interdependent nature of our modern world mean that once a big enough disruption starts, the effects ripple through the entire structure.

    Most of the disasters of the past, like the Irish famine (the reason my family came to America) were relatively localized in their effects.

    If any significant crippling disruption happens in our modern system it really could conceivably take it all down. The resilience of a very complex system becomes dependent on increasingly refined conditions.

    To me, the lesson of Covid is how small a disruption it takes to set off major instabilities in the global system. These are still playing out with rising inflation and spiraling goods and services shortages, so we haven’t seen the full extent yet. I own a business and know other people who do as well and it’s incredible how backed up things are right now, with no real end in sight.

  239. @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    The most concise meta-summation I can offer is that there was probably some inevitability to the conflict as different power blocs expanded up against the ceiling of the globe itself, but the conflict needn’t have been as awful as it was. In other words, some sort of friction was unavoidable irrespective of whatever financial/economic system various power blocs had.
     
    They were both a contest of power and ideologies. WWI eliminated classical liberalism & monarchial rule; WWII fascism, and Cold War communism. What remains is late liberalism and it is now meeting its demise, maybe gradual, maybe violent.

    After all, as measured in gold, the price of a meal or a suit of clothes has been fairly steady over the last two or three millennia. As measured in fiat currency, well … it is to laugh.
     
    You see how well commodity monies are as a store of value.

    Nevertheless, I’m not even advocating for a return to the gold standard. Just restrained fiating would be good enough! I’m a monetary moderate and pragmatist.
     
    Fiat is inherently susceptible to manipulation either by central banks or the fractional-reserve banking system. Some kind of commodity money (cryptos included) or a currency based on wholesale price indexing, which represents either the value of wealth or trade, will be more sustainable.

    The are many things that can limit opportunities, but a major upspoken one is that there are only a certain number of genuinely productive people. Once you lend them all they can use, then it’s just a question of which hole you’re going to piss the rest of your money down. Indeed, that there still is money left after all the productive loans have been made is a pretty good indication that too much money was printed.
     
    Yes.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get … ______.
     
    I snapped out of libertarianism because what they propose are just as narrow and unfeasible as communism.

    When you’re presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress.
     
    AK has done a lot of posts on the lost potential of the Russian lands from 1917 and you can check them out. Basically the Russian Empire was already quite industrialized before the Soviets came onto the stage and the Soviets was just catching up back onto the trajectory and then stagnating from that.

    Communist China too managed some industrialization … while starving millions.
     
    Pretty much the same, which is why AK said Maoism gave China a 20-year lag relative to South Korea. Without communism, it could just have been a few years (but South Korea wouldn't have been as developed if there hadn't been the need to contain China)

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.
     
    Apples and Oranges. France was a bit laissez-faire while Germany was more state-directed. But they still beat the Soviets in terms of human cost.

    While a pure command economy has been invalidated by the Soviet example, many forms of economic planning are still on the table, even if they are rejected by free-marketers. I'm more inclined for a free market but those proposals can still be tried at the policymakers' own risk (and of course a human cost).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    You see how well commodity monies are as a store of value.

    Yeah, it’s hard to argue with thousands of years of consistent stability.

    I snapped out of libertarianism because what they propose are just as narrow and unfeasible as communism.

    I see libertarianism (and perhaps communism?) as what could happen in an environment of highly self-restrained government and a productive and upright population. So far these circumstances have never occurred in real life. I put a question mark after communisms, because Marx never really defined what communism is or how it works, other than saying that in communism he would be able “to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner.” In other words, it would be a sort of secular-materialist paradise. Okay, but how? And what about when your neighbor decides to take your cattle rather than tend his own? And what if your neighbor is Genghis Khan?

    AK has done a lot of posts on the lost potential of the Russian lands from 1917 and you can check them out. Basically the Russian Empire was already quite industrialized before the Soviets came onto the stage and the Soviets was just catching up back onto the trajectory and then stagnating from that.

    Pretty much the same, which is why AK said Maoism gave China a 20-year lag relative to South Korea. Without communism, it could just have been a few years (but South Korea wouldn’t have been as developed if there hadn’t been the need to contain China)

    Thanks and Agree.

    I’m more inclined for a free market but those proposals can still be tried at the policymakers’ own risk (and of course a human cost).

    Of course the risk and cost is usually borne mostly by working classes rather than the policy makers.

    Which reminds me … the subject of the (long term) eugenic effect of (short term) population bottlenecks, for instance in the creation of Ashkenazi intelligence, has come up here before, and that got me thinking: the first two thirds or so the 20th century had some pretty harrowing Eurasian population bottlenecks (WWI, WWII, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, etc.) which, with a few exceptions (e.g., massacre of Polish officer class at Katyn) fell disproportionately on the working, poor, and underclass. So after the short term horror of the bottlenecking, shouldn’t we be starting to see a eugenic dividend emerging about now, particularly in heavily harrowed Eastern Europe?

    I don’t know much about the demographic effect of WWI in France, but I seem to recall that the UK’s upper class really took it on the chin in WWI, which they were determined not to repeat in WWII, while France obviously mostly sat out WWII. So maybe the big wars were not necessarily eugenic in Western Europe. (And now of course they import low-human-capital immigrants by the boatload, so they’re doubly out of the eugenic game.)

    In his memoir, Hitler complained about how useful, patriotic and productive Germans were disproportionately getting killed at the front in WWI, while malingerers and shirkers proliferated behind the lines, but naturally he didn’t provide any peer-reviewed studies to back that up. My reading of WWII memoirs is that Germany’s death-burden fell somewhere between the UK’s upper class sacrifice and the USSR’s mass peasant human waves, so maybe it was eugenically neutral there?

    Anyhow, I’ve never heard this subject broached explicitly, and I wonder what others here think about this? Is the Russian Reaction the eugenic dividend of the 20th century’s tragedies? Was China’s rise to bourgeois-dom secretly aided by last century’s famines? Was the UK doomed by a demographic death blow?

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    I see libertarianism (and perhaps communism?) as what could happen in an environment of highly self-restrained government and a productive and upright population. So far these circumstances have never occurred in real life. I put a question mark after communisms, because Marx never really defined what communism is or how it works, other than saying that in communism he would be able “to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner.” In other words, it would be a sort of secular-materialist paradise. Okay, but how? And what about when your neighbor decides to take your cattle rather than tend his own? And when your neighbor is the Mongols…
     
    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure! While I see libertarianism as possible in an Americanized society (which has strong notions of individualism, established local communities and a largely private economy contemptuous of state intervention), but nowhere else. I'm more of a "leave anything organic and working in place" guy, and some libertarian policies can facilitate this end. Communism requires either post-scarcity or an impossible change in human nature.

    Which reminds me … the subject of the (long term) eugenic effect of (short term) population bottlenecks, for instance in the creation of Ashkenazi intelligence, has come up here before, and that got me thinking: the first two thirds or so the 20th century had some pretty harrowing population bottlenecks in Eurasia (WWI, WWII, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, etc.) which, with a few exceptions (e.g., Soviet massacre of Polish officer class at Katyn) fell disproportionately on the working, poor, and underclass. So after the short term horror of the bottlenecking, shouldn’t we be starting to see a eugenic dividend emerging about now, particularly in heavily harrowed Eastern Europe?
     
    I see it more in the acceleration of demographic transition, which is inevitable after a considerable faction of reproductive age males had been killed off. But anything else I have no idea. Whatever, what's done is done.

    Replies: @schnellandine

  240. @mal
    @Yellowface Anon


    Opportunities are infinite but resources are limited as far as we can identify, and they need to be prioritized to make the best of them before we can find more of them
     
    Maybe, but it hasn't been the case historically. For example, current EU gas crisis is not caused by the physical shortage of gas - there's literally an infinite amount of gas out there for the taking and has always been. But they have political considerations that prevent them from using it.

    Same deal with all other resources - there's an infinite amount of energy and materials in the universe. That's a fact. But will the politics allow us to get it? I don't know. Political questions are far from certain.

    See things structurally – what Zimbabwe had was Mugabe expropriating land from White cultivators and distributing them to both cronies and undertrained Black smallholders. The entire agricultural economy collapsed afterwards. Hyperinflation was just the symptom.
     
    Agree.

    Hopefully many more realize this, and how both comes downstream from culture. Culture is the basis for everything
     
    There's a good case for that.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    There may be practically infinite energy in the universe, but the question is accessibility. A lot of the low hanging fruit has been plucked there. You can certainly extract usable energy from tar sands or fracking, but it takes much more energy investment to do so than a barrel of sweet crude.
    The return on investment is much lower.

    This is the same issue with “renewables” like solar and wind. They have a relatively rotten return on investment.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa

    The lowest energy "fruit" is the free supply of "waste" Thorium that could be reclaimed to serve as fuel via a breeder reactor.

    Some aggressive claims have been made that Thorium is 50% more renewable than solar. We have only 4 Billion years of Sun/Sol versus 6 Billion years of Thorium.

    I do not know that claim is supportable, however Thorium is easily 10,000+ years for the planet.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    , @mal
    @Barbarossa

    As A123 mentioned, we do have a solution - nuclear power, but like anything else, it's bottlenecked by politics. We can access any amount of energy we want, there's not a physical limitation. But will we be allowed to? On that, I have no idea. Politics is a different problem from physics though.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  241. @Almost Missouri
    @Yellowface Anon


    You see how well commodity monies are as a store of value.
     
    Yeah, it's hard to argue with thousands of years of consistent stability.

    I snapped out of libertarianism because what they propose are just as narrow and unfeasible as communism.
     
    I see libertarianism (and perhaps communism?) as what could happen in an environment of highly self-restrained government and a productive and upright population. So far these circumstances have never occurred in real life. I put a question mark after communisms, because Marx never really defined what communism is or how it works, other than saying that in communism he would be able "to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner." In other words, it would be a sort of secular-materialist paradise. Okay, but how? And what about when your neighbor decides to take your cattle rather than tend his own? And what if your neighbor is Genghis Khan?

    AK has done a lot of posts on the lost potential of the Russian lands from 1917 and you can check them out. Basically the Russian Empire was already quite industrialized before the Soviets came onto the stage and the Soviets was just catching up back onto the trajectory and then stagnating from that.
    ...
    Pretty much the same, which is why AK said Maoism gave China a 20-year lag relative to South Korea. Without communism, it could just have been a few years (but South Korea wouldn’t have been as developed if there hadn’t been the need to contain China)
     
    Thanks and Agree.

    I’m more inclined for a free market but those proposals can still be tried at the policymakers’ own risk (and of course a human cost).
     
    Of course the risk and cost is usually borne mostly by working classes rather than the policy makers.

    Which reminds me ... the subject of the (long term) eugenic effect of (short term) population bottlenecks, for instance in the creation of Ashkenazi intelligence, has come up here before, and that got me thinking: the first two thirds or so the 20th century had some pretty harrowing Eurasian population bottlenecks (WWI, WWII, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, etc.) which, with a few exceptions (e.g., massacre of Polish officer class at Katyn) fell disproportionately on the working, poor, and underclass. So after the short term horror of the bottlenecking, shouldn't we be starting to see a eugenic dividend emerging about now, particularly in heavily harrowed Eastern Europe?

    I don't know much about the demographic effect of WWI in France, but I seem to recall that the UK's upper class really took it on the chin in WWI, which they were determined not to repeat in WWII, while France obviously mostly sat out WWII. So maybe the big wars were not necessarily eugenic in Western Europe. (And now of course they import low-human-capital immigrants by the boatload, so they're doubly out of the eugenic game.)

    In his memoir, Hitler complained about how useful, patriotic and productive Germans were disproportionately getting killed at the front in WWI, while malingerers and shirkers proliferated behind the lines, but naturally he didn't provide any peer-reviewed studies to back that up. My reading of WWII memoirs is that Germany's death-burden fell somewhere between the UK's upper class sacrifice and the USSR's mass peasant human waves, so maybe it was eugenically neutral there?

    Anyhow, I've never heard this subject broached explicitly, and I wonder what others here think about this? Is the Russian Reaction the eugenic dividend of the 20th century's tragedies? Was China's rise to bourgeois-dom secretly aided by last century's famines? Was the UK doomed by a demographic death blow?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I see libertarianism (and perhaps communism?) as what could happen in an environment of highly self-restrained government and a productive and upright population. So far these circumstances have never occurred in real life. I put a question mark after communisms, because Marx never really defined what communism is or how it works, other than saying that in communism he would be able “to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner.” In other words, it would be a sort of secular-materialist paradise. Okay, but how? And what about when your neighbor decides to take your cattle rather than tend his own? And when your neighbor is the Mongols…

    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure! While I see libertarianism as possible in an Americanized society (which has strong notions of individualism, established local communities and a largely private economy contemptuous of state intervention), but nowhere else. I’m more of a “leave anything organic and working in place” guy, and some libertarian policies can facilitate this end. Communism requires either post-scarcity or an impossible change in human nature.

    Which reminds me … the subject of the (long term) eugenic effect of (short term) population bottlenecks, for instance in the creation of Ashkenazi intelligence, has come up here before, and that got me thinking: the first two thirds or so the 20th century had some pretty harrowing population bottlenecks in Eurasia (WWI, WWII, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, etc.) which, with a few exceptions (e.g., Soviet massacre of Polish officer class at Katyn) fell disproportionately on the working, poor, and underclass. So after the short term horror of the bottlenecking, shouldn’t we be starting to see a eugenic dividend emerging about now, particularly in heavily harrowed Eastern Europe?

    I see it more in the acceleration of demographic transition, which is inevitable after a considerable faction of reproductive age males had been killed off. But anything else I have no idea. Whatever, what’s done is done.

    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure!
     
    Please give your definition of libertarianism. I see it discussed at UR almost daily, yet they appear to be discussions of something of which I know nothing—which appears soon after to have been the primary point. The popular definition of 'libertarianism' creeps almost as quickly as that of the intellectually useless 'democracy'.

    Could it be that 'libertarianism' is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    Had I a website similar to UR, there'd be a requirement that certain words be defined by each writer, possibly merely with a link to his definition, before inclusion of the word allowed. The list would number over 100.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

  242. As another commenter pointed out, Biden pulled us from Afghanistan. Trump said that he would, but he didn’t.

    Because highly intelligent Trump realized that:
        • Gen Milley had Senate protection
        • Gen Milley would intentionally fail at withdrawal

    Why did you want Trump to have a catastrophic failure on his record? The Milley fiasco could have scuppered the entire MAGA movement.

    Why do you celebrate the predictable Biden/Milley fiasco?
    _____

    Similar logic applies to Syria. Trump skillfully extracted U.S. forces from the kill sack between Turkish and Syrian lines via the excuse “protecting oil”. He did not walk into a Milley failure, by trying to order them out of the country.

    Trump’s success has limited conflict to occasional bouts of 18 year old road rage as APC drivers rub on each other. While unpleasant, that is not going to light off a major combat engagement with heavy casualties.

    Why do you not want to talk about Trump’s genuine achievements?
    Could it be #NeverTrump?

    Trump also promised infrastructure but did not deliver. It appears that Biden may deliver that infrastructure bill.

    Presidents cannot appropriate funds. Due to the presence of non-MAGA GOP(e) swamp critters, MAGA never had a majority in the House or Senate. The only way Trump could have appropriated infrastructure funds would have been overthrowing the Constitution and declaring himself — God Emperor Triumphus I.

    I hate to break it to you, but the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] funding being pushed by the House this year has nothing to do with Infrastructure. It is a social engineering bill. Less than 10% of the funds are earmarked for heavy construction such as bridges & roads. None is marked for border security construction.
    _____

    The most politically aware President in recent history took the achievable wins. And, did not overreach thus minimizing avoidable failures. He did much better than any other recent President with both opposition House and Senate.

    If democracy survives…. The growing MAGA movement stands a good chance at capturing the House appropriations power in the 2022 election. Senate confirmation power will probably be an obtained in 2024 along with a MAGA President.
    ____

    It is logical deduction that your #NeverTrump flailing is motivated by your desire to intentionally fracture support for MAGA. The only movement that has a chance to displace your SJW Globalism.

    If you are not trying to undermine MAGA — Why are you intentionally pushing SJW agitprop hammering Trump for things he had 0% chance of achieving in his First Term?
    ____

    If you really are MAGA — You might get your dream scenario. If the SJW/DNC tries to kill democracy to stop MAGA’s inevitable rise. You may get your God Emperor Triumphus I and the associated Civil War.

    It could lead to a much better U.S. with Constitution 2.0 -or- glow in the dark smoking nuclear craters. I personally think you are nuts to *want* that type of engagement. But if the Nazi-crats bring it. I will fight it.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    You've got the retard vote nailed down, so you can ease up on the BS. There are very few fish left in that barrel. You need to pick up some college educated voters. There are a lot of fish in that one. Hopefully Trump will see the uptick in his non-Hispanic and non-white vote and work on that as well in 2024.

    Replies: @A123

  243. Afghanistan was a perfect example of this. Trump abandoned his previous correct conviction that our involvement was idiotic,

    100% incorrect.

    Bigly aware and intelligent Trump realized that:
        • Firing Senate protected Gen. Milley would end his administration via impeachment.
        • Ordering Gen. Milley to Withdraw would result in an intentional failure due to Pentagon led disloyalty.

    Trump took the achievable win. He scaled back engagement as much as he could with the perfidious Milley in the Chain of Command. Thus, reducing U.S. casualties to a trickle. Still too many, but much better then overreach and failure.

    That mentally ill Not-The-President Biden regressed into an Obama era mind set, slipped his leash, and scampered into Traitor Milley’s ambush was quite surprising.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I'm no Biden fanboy, but I can't understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the "Afghan pullout debacle" as midterm election outrage fodder, but I guarantee that had Trump done the pullout the Dems would be wailing about his incompetence despite conditions being materially the same.

    A lot of this theorizing about Trump's God-level expert political machinations seems to ring hollow held up against his actions and where he is today. I suppose that the justifications can flow endlessly just as the deranged Trump hate did while he was in office. I'm no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones' faith on.

    In the end, Trump was not Hitler, but he wasn't any Bismark either.

    Replies: @A123

  244. About something Anatoly had been writing about, Covid deaths. Those reading Serbian- OK, you van Google-Tran it- can read that Serbia had, it seems, 3 times more Covid deaths than reported:

    https://www.juznevesti.com/BalkanPres/Epidemioloskinja-Jasno-je-da-su-podaci-o-smrtnosti-od-kovida-lazni.sr.html

    Epidemiološkinja: Jasno je da su podaci o smrtnosti od kovida lažni

    https://birn.rs/broj-umrlih-od-korone-tri-puta-veci/

    Potvrđena manipulacija: U 2020. godini postojale potvrde o smrti za tri puta veći broj umrlih od korone

    3,000 deaths were, actually- 10,000

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Bardon Kaldian

    Yes the Balkans seems to have some of the most deaths in the world from coronavirus, relative to population.

    Most deadly countries in the world for coronavirus (of those with excess deaths data available on World Mortality Dataset) seem to be postsoviet sphere, Latin America and - Balkans.
    https://github.com/dkobak/excess-mortality
    https://i.imgur.com/HYXAi5O.jpg

    Replies: @Dmitry

  245. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    Afghanistan was a perfect example of this. Trump abandoned his previous correct conviction that our involvement was idiotic,
     
    100% incorrect.

    Bigly aware and intelligent Trump realized that:
        • Firing Senate protected Gen. Milley would end his administration via impeachment.
        • Ordering Gen. Milley to Withdraw would result in an intentional failure due to Pentagon led disloyalty.

    Trump took the achievable win. He scaled back engagement as much as he could with the perfidious Milley in the Chain of Command. Thus, reducing U.S. casualties to a trickle. Still too many, but much better then overreach and failure.

    That mentally ill Not-The-President Biden regressed into an Obama era mind set, slipped his leash, and scampered into Traitor Milley's ambush was quite surprising.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    I’m no Biden fanboy, but I can’t understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the “Afghan pullout debacle” as midterm election outrage fodder, but I guarantee that had Trump done the pullout the Dems would be wailing about his incompetence despite conditions being materially the same.

    A lot of this theorizing about Trump’s God-level expert political machinations seems to ring hollow held up against his actions and where he is today. I suppose that the justifications can flow endlessly just as the deranged Trump hate did while he was in office. I’m no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones’ faith on.

    In the end, Trump was not Hitler, but he wasn’t any Bismark either.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa


    can’t understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.
     
    A sane plan would have:

    -1- Kept defensible Bagram AFB open
    -2- Evacuated U.S civilians first
    -3- Evacuated other non combatant second
    -4- Fully vetted non combatants (before U.S. entry)
    -5- Recovered expensive military equipment (including brand new helicopters)
    -6- Closed with an orderly military departure from a secure facility

     
    https://ace.mu.nu/archives/suntzu.jpg
     

    Remember the Taliban wanted the U.S. to go and stay gone. They were ready to fully support Trump's original plan to prevent any incidents that might result in a change of mind and/or provide a pretext to stay.

    The Milley/Biden fiasco had no coordination with the locals. And, did everything in the worst manner & sequence possible leading to dead marines and embarrassing airport footage. It is fairly obvious that Gen. Milley intentionally killed American troops in order to:

        • Undermine other possible withdrawals, such as Syria.
        • Try to humiliate Biden into staying in Afghanistan.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the “Afghan pullout debacle” as midterm election outrage fodder,
     
    Had there been no treason, perhaps the GOP might have manufactured something. However, there is so much actual incompetence from Not-The-President Biden and his illegitimate administration there really is no need to manufacture anything.

    If Gen SJW Milley had not sold out to America's enemies, the GOP technique would have been giving the military 100% credit and Biden 0%. This would have been true and easier than attempting to manufacture a set-up.

    I’m no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones’ faith on.
     
    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

    Lying about Trump's achievements and creating fiction about his Senate limited appointments is 100% pure, unadulterated, #NeverTrump behaviour. Blaming someone for *not achieving the unachievable* is inherently absurd and can only be explained by malicious intent.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

    Replies: @songbird, @Barbarossa

  246. @Barbarossa
    @mal

    There may be practically infinite energy in the universe, but the question is accessibility. A lot of the low hanging fruit has been plucked there. You can certainly extract usable energy from tar sands or fracking, but it takes much more energy investment to do so than a barrel of sweet crude.
    The return on investment is much lower.

    This is the same issue with "renewables" like solar and wind. They have a relatively rotten return on investment.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

    The lowest energy “fruit” is the free supply of “waste” Thorium that could be reclaimed to serve as fuel via a breeder reactor.

    Some aggressive claims have been made that Thorium is 50% more renewable than solar. We have only 4 Billion years of Sun/Sol versus 6 Billion years of Thorium.

    I do not know that claim is supportable, however Thorium is easily 10,000+ years for the planet.

    PEACE 😇

    • Agree: mal
    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I've done some reading in the past on "alternative" nukes and molten salt reactors using Thorium look interesting. It seems like there is a lot of conflicting info on how many problems they really solve though, especially since they have their own set of technical issues.
    China seems bullish on bringing them to scale, so perhaps we'll see more soon on that front.

    While they might be a viable possibility in the future they certainly don't seem like a magic bullet.


    https://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/features/nuclear-power-why-molten-salt-reactors-are-problematic-and-canada-investing-in-them-is-a-waste/

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/molten-salt-reactors.aspx

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-08-22/whatever-happened-to-chinas-revolutionary-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-program/

    Replies: @A123

  247. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I'm no Biden fanboy, but I can't understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the "Afghan pullout debacle" as midterm election outrage fodder, but I guarantee that had Trump done the pullout the Dems would be wailing about his incompetence despite conditions being materially the same.

    A lot of this theorizing about Trump's God-level expert political machinations seems to ring hollow held up against his actions and where he is today. I suppose that the justifications can flow endlessly just as the deranged Trump hate did while he was in office. I'm no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones' faith on.

    In the end, Trump was not Hitler, but he wasn't any Bismark either.

    Replies: @A123

    can’t understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.

    A sane plan would have:

    -1- Kept defensible Bagram AFB open
    -2- Evacuated U.S civilians first
    -3- Evacuated other non combatant second
    -4- Fully vetted non combatants (before U.S. entry)
    -5- Recovered expensive military equipment (including brand new helicopters)
    -6- Closed with an orderly military departure from a secure facility

     

     

    Remember the Taliban wanted the U.S. to go and stay gone. They were ready to fully support Trump’s original plan to prevent any incidents that might result in a change of mind and/or provide a pretext to stay.

    The Milley/Biden fiasco had no coordination with the locals. And, did everything in the worst manner & sequence possible leading to dead marines and embarrassing airport footage. It is fairly obvious that Gen. Milley intentionally killed American troops in order to:

        • Undermine other possible withdrawals, such as Syria.
        • Try to humiliate Biden into staying in Afghanistan.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the “Afghan pullout debacle” as midterm election outrage fodder,

    Had there been no treason, perhaps the GOP might have manufactured something. However, there is so much actual incompetence from Not-The-President Biden and his illegitimate administration there really is no need to manufacture anything.

    If Gen SJW Milley had not sold out to America’s enemies, the GOP technique would have been giving the military 100% credit and Biden 0%. This would have been true and easier than attempting to manufacture a set-up.

    I’m no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones’ faith on.

    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

    Lying about Trump’s achievements and creating fiction about his Senate limited appointments is 100% pure, unadulterated, #NeverTrump behaviour. Blaming someone for *not achieving the unachievable* is inherently absurd and can only be explained by malicious intent.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123

    I suspect that leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US. For example, the army did it after they occupied Veracruz in 1914, even though it was a port city. Some of the guns they left may have later been used to murder gringos.

    What has changed is that the equipment has gotten more complicated and expensive.

    There was a lot of woke outrage about leaving "US citizens" behind. But these were no doubt Afghans who will arive soon enough, and then help their relatives come as well.

    Replies: @A123, @Barbarossa

    , @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I think you are making it all a bit more complicated than it is.
    The main reason for the somewhat harried final pullout was that the Afghan government and military collapsed in a matter of days, bringing the Taliban into Kabul far ahead of even the most ambitious of predictions. I didn't even see predictions of such complete collapse from the most doomer of American-skeptic sources.
    If the Afghan Government had held Kabul for only a couple more months it all would have been fairly seamless.

    Sometimes shit just happens, and "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men Gang aft agley".

    I've heard folks armchair strategize that the US should have done the withdrawal from the more defensible Bagram etc.

    The problem is that Bagram is 38 miles and an hour and a half drive in favorable conditions from Kabul International Airport. All the people are in Kabul, so had the the pullout happened from Bagram, there would have been a chaotic mad scramble to move everyone over Taliban held ground (probably with a high concentration of ISIS K getting in some parting shots) to evacuate. It would have been likely far more of a cluster, with far more deaths. There were sound logistical reasons for using the airfield in the population center.


    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

     

    Perhaps for you, but I live in a very Trumpy area and the cult of personality is quite incredible.

    Replies: @A123

  248. I’ve been reading John Dee and the Empire of Angels and I need to say (esp. to those who see the Signs of the End Times in the Great Reset agenda): I’m no a Christian, but the best and the sole historical interpretation of the Revelations is the Preterist one. Unambiguously, the Apocalypse of John was written for contemporary audiences and contains an allegory of religio-political trends of 1st century Roman Judea, esp. the interactions between Roman and Jewish authority.

    It is only thru centuries of studies and exegesis, including countless and mainstream attempts in trying to project a eschatology into the future, was the symbolism and the expectation of a final redemption internalized. And historical actors of interest, likely unconsciously, have been infusing political and social movements with gradual realizations of the eschatological scenario, that cumulates in the bulk of modernist trends. The book has a lot of remarks that connect important historical events to the deliberate actions of persons heavily influenced by Christian eschatology, esp. John Dee and his role in the mystical-ideological foundation of the British Empire that has cumulated in the American hegemony and globalism. And look again at the symbolisms in the events of the past 20 years that have been identified by Christian doomers, and then those by Bill Gates, and the WEF. They are setting the date of the “End Times” to be this decade and bringing back many of those symbolisms from Roman Judea.

    You may say this is God working in mysterious ways. But there are billions who have never been adherents of Abrahamic religions, and will never be, and they have differing interpretations of histories, sometimes having an end point far in the horizon and sometimes having no beginning and end. We also have millions who have left the Abrahamic faiths while staying in their worldview, and seeing a far different utopia from the New Jerusalem Christians promise. Those innocents are being pulled into the self-inflicted termination of the Abrahamic religious world. Imagine the agony of Buddhists, Taoists and Confucians, and Hindus, and atheists who are forced to lose their future over such religious parochialism.

    Let the Confucian world last a myriad years for the Sinosphere. But failing that, “hear the Tao in the morning, and one can die contented in the evening”.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    Well, that sounds like I'm a Full Preterist, plus an Intentional (as in fulfillment) Futurist on Christian Eschatology. Quite an audacious view from a non-Christian East Asian.

    , @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    Thanks, interesting reflections.

    You know, I often think we humans imagine our actions are way more significant than they are and we have way more control than we do.

    To adapt from a quote from LOTR, "there are other forces than the will of humans in the world".

    I don't mean this in any religious sense to refer to God - simply, humans can never foresee everything - I would argue our abilities are actually quite puny - and surprises and confounding factors always exist.

    All these "grand plans" to affect the entire fate of the planet always and inevitably end up in unexpected and surprising places.

    For instance, the Grand Narrative of the 19th century was one of technological progress leading to an ever more rational world in which war would be abolished.

    Instead, it all led to WWI - not a rationalist utopia. What was unexpected was that people grew bored of peace and stability, and of an excessive preoccupation with the material realm. WW1 - the "causeless war" as I regard it - was an attempt at transcendence from the dull confines of a preoccupation with the material realm that constituted technological progress, with it's responsibility and sobriety, it's solid bourgeois common sense, it's sense of spirit being smothered in rigid rules (which led Dostoyevsky's Underground Man to cry out that he refuses to accept that 2+2=4) , all for the trivial benefit of physical safety and survival.

    I am quite sure that whatever Grand Plan the WEF has in store for us - if it indeed has one - will never turn out even remotely as they expect with their illusions of control, but far more interestingly and confoundingly unexpected.

    And in the end, if the human race succeeds in destroying itself, does it really matter? If indeed, as the Taoists and Zennists and mystics of all denominations say, human beings are merely "expressions" of an indestructible underlying energy that now takes on this form, now that, but is fundamentally indivisible and cannot die, what matter if this energy no longer takes on the particular human form?

    There may be fantastic and undreamed of forms for this energy to take on, beings we can't concierge of - but that are in the deepest sense us :)

    One must be very parochial indeed to insist on the human form of this energy surviving forever :)

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  249. @Yellowface Anon
    I've been reading John Dee and the Empire of Angels and I need to say (esp. to those who see the Signs of the End Times in the Great Reset agenda): I'm no a Christian, but the best and the sole historical interpretation of the Revelations is the Preterist one. Unambiguously, the Apocalypse of John was written for contemporary audiences and contains an allegory of religio-political trends of 1st century Roman Judea, esp. the interactions between Roman and Jewish authority.

    It is only thru centuries of studies and exegesis, including countless and mainstream attempts in trying to project a eschatology into the future, was the symbolism and the expectation of a final redemption internalized. And historical actors of interest, likely unconsciously, have been infusing political and social movements with gradual realizations of the eschatological scenario, that cumulates in the bulk of modernist trends. The book has a lot of remarks that connect important historical events to the deliberate actions of persons heavily influenced by Christian eschatology, esp. John Dee and his role in the mystical-ideological foundation of the British Empire that has cumulated in the American hegemony and globalism. And look again at the symbolisms in the events of the past 20 years that have been identified by Christian doomers, and then those by Bill Gates, and the WEF. They are setting the date of the "End Times" to be this decade and bringing back many of those symbolisms from Roman Judea.

    You may say this is God working in mysterious ways. But there are billions who have never been adherents of Abrahamic religions, and will never be, and they have differing interpretations of histories, sometimes having an end point far in the horizon and sometimes having no beginning and end. We also have millions who have left the Abrahamic faiths while staying in their worldview, and seeing a far different utopia from the New Jerusalem Christians promise. Those innocents are being pulled into the self-inflicted termination of the Abrahamic religious world. Imagine the agony of Buddhists, Taoists and Confucians, and Hindus, and atheists who are forced to lose their future over such religious parochialism.

    Let the Confucian world last a myriad years for the Sinosphere. But failing that, "hear the Tao in the morning, and one can die contented in the evening".

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    Well, that sounds like I’m a Full Preterist, plus an Intentional (as in fulfillment) Futurist on Christian Eschatology. Quite an audacious view from a non-Christian East Asian.

  250. @Yellowface Anon
    I've been reading John Dee and the Empire of Angels and I need to say (esp. to those who see the Signs of the End Times in the Great Reset agenda): I'm no a Christian, but the best and the sole historical interpretation of the Revelations is the Preterist one. Unambiguously, the Apocalypse of John was written for contemporary audiences and contains an allegory of religio-political trends of 1st century Roman Judea, esp. the interactions between Roman and Jewish authority.

    It is only thru centuries of studies and exegesis, including countless and mainstream attempts in trying to project a eschatology into the future, was the symbolism and the expectation of a final redemption internalized. And historical actors of interest, likely unconsciously, have been infusing political and social movements with gradual realizations of the eschatological scenario, that cumulates in the bulk of modernist trends. The book has a lot of remarks that connect important historical events to the deliberate actions of persons heavily influenced by Christian eschatology, esp. John Dee and his role in the mystical-ideological foundation of the British Empire that has cumulated in the American hegemony and globalism. And look again at the symbolisms in the events of the past 20 years that have been identified by Christian doomers, and then those by Bill Gates, and the WEF. They are setting the date of the "End Times" to be this decade and bringing back many of those symbolisms from Roman Judea.

    You may say this is God working in mysterious ways. But there are billions who have never been adherents of Abrahamic religions, and will never be, and they have differing interpretations of histories, sometimes having an end point far in the horizon and sometimes having no beginning and end. We also have millions who have left the Abrahamic faiths while staying in their worldview, and seeing a far different utopia from the New Jerusalem Christians promise. Those innocents are being pulled into the self-inflicted termination of the Abrahamic religious world. Imagine the agony of Buddhists, Taoists and Confucians, and Hindus, and atheists who are forced to lose their future over such religious parochialism.

    Let the Confucian world last a myriad years for the Sinosphere. But failing that, "hear the Tao in the morning, and one can die contented in the evening".

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    Thanks, interesting reflections.

    You know, I often think we humans imagine our actions are way more significant than they are and we have way more control than we do.

    To adapt from a quote from LOTR, “there are other forces than the will of humans in the world”.

    I don’t mean this in any religious sense to refer to God – simply, humans can never foresee everything – I would argue our abilities are actually quite puny – and surprises and confounding factors always exist.

    All these “grand plans” to affect the entire fate of the planet always and inevitably end up in unexpected and surprising places.

    For instance, the Grand Narrative of the 19th century was one of technological progress leading to an ever more rational world in which war would be abolished.

    Instead, it all led to WWI – not a rationalist utopia. What was unexpected was that people grew bored of peace and stability, and of an excessive preoccupation with the material realm. WW1 – the “causeless war” as I regard it – was an attempt at transcendence from the dull confines of a preoccupation with the material realm that constituted technological progress, with it’s responsibility and sobriety, it’s solid bourgeois common sense, it’s sense of spirit being smothered in rigid rules (which led Dostoyevsky’s Underground Man to cry out that he refuses to accept that 2+2=4) , all for the trivial benefit of physical safety and survival.

    I am quite sure that whatever Grand Plan the WEF has in store for us – if it indeed has one – will never turn out even remotely as they expect with their illusions of control, but far more interestingly and confoundingly unexpected.

    And in the end, if the human race succeeds in destroying itself, does it really matter? If indeed, as the Taoists and Zennists and mystics of all denominations say, human beings are merely “expressions” of an indestructible underlying energy that now takes on this form, now that, but is fundamentally indivisible and cannot die, what matter if this energy no longer takes on the particular human form?

    There may be fantastic and undreamed of forms for this energy to take on, beings we can’t concierge of – but that are in the deepest sense us 🙂

    One must be very parochial indeed to insist on the human form of this energy surviving forever 🙂

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB

    Maybe I'm just a bit too Confucian and obsessed with the "clash of civilization" worldview thing here.

  251. @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    I see libertarianism (and perhaps communism?) as what could happen in an environment of highly self-restrained government and a productive and upright population. So far these circumstances have never occurred in real life. I put a question mark after communisms, because Marx never really defined what communism is or how it works, other than saying that in communism he would be able “to do this today and that tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to go fishing in the afternoon, to do cattle breeding in the evening, to criticise after dinner.” In other words, it would be a sort of secular-materialist paradise. Okay, but how? And what about when your neighbor decides to take your cattle rather than tend his own? And when your neighbor is the Mongols…
     
    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure! While I see libertarianism as possible in an Americanized society (which has strong notions of individualism, established local communities and a largely private economy contemptuous of state intervention), but nowhere else. I'm more of a "leave anything organic and working in place" guy, and some libertarian policies can facilitate this end. Communism requires either post-scarcity or an impossible change in human nature.

    Which reminds me … the subject of the (long term) eugenic effect of (short term) population bottlenecks, for instance in the creation of Ashkenazi intelligence, has come up here before, and that got me thinking: the first two thirds or so the 20th century had some pretty harrowing population bottlenecks in Eurasia (WWI, WWII, Holodomor, Great Leap Forward, etc.) which, with a few exceptions (e.g., Soviet massacre of Polish officer class at Katyn) fell disproportionately on the working, poor, and underclass. So after the short term horror of the bottlenecking, shouldn’t we be starting to see a eugenic dividend emerging about now, particularly in heavily harrowed Eastern Europe?
     
    I see it more in the acceleration of demographic transition, which is inevitable after a considerable faction of reproductive age males had been killed off. But anything else I have no idea. Whatever, what's done is done.

    Replies: @schnellandine

    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure!

    Please give your definition of libertarianism. I see it discussed at UR almost daily, yet they appear to be discussions of something of which I know nothing—which appears soon after to have been the primary point. The popular definition of ‘libertarianism’ creeps almost as quickly as that of the intellectually useless ‘democracy’.

    Could it be that ‘libertarianism’ is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    Had I a website similar to UR, there’d be a requirement that certain words be defined by each writer, possibly merely with a link to his definition, before inclusion of the word allowed. The list would number over 100.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @schnellandine

    Libertarianism is an especially tough one to define since it often seems like there are as many definitions as libertarians!

    I agree with you on definitions though. Terms like fascist or socialist and Marxist are today used almost exclusively by those who have no idea what they mean. They effectively mean "Bad Thing I Don't Like".

    Since you seem to feel strongly about the definition of libertarianism, perhaps you would share your own definitive interpretation for discussion?

    Replies: @schnellandine

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    It's simple, an anarchist political system where social relations are mediated with Non-Aggression Principle.

    , @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    Could it be that ‘libertarianism’ is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    No they most likely know the history of the libertarian ideology in that it is the destructive will of a lunatic wench by the name of Ayn Rand.

    The Libertarian party platform is quite clear and has been ratified by its members.
    https://www.lp.org/platform

    Libertarians support:
    Open borders with limitless immigration from the third world
    Fully automatic weapons for Black felons
    Legalize all drugs including crack and PCP
    Allow corps to put whatever they want into our food
    Eliminate the EPA and all Federal pollution controls
    Eliminate FDA restrictions for pharmaceutical companies

    Interestingly Ayn Rand did not support open borders for Israel because according to her that's different. All Western countries however are expected to open their borders to the third world.

    Even though this is all public record the Libertarians still follow the cult of this miserable bitch.

    It also came out in her diaries that she admired psychopathic child killer William Hickman.

    She is also on record denying that character traits in individuals can have a genetic basis. There is also a quote where she states that race doesn't exist but if it does then we should pretend it doesn't.

    Race denier, gene denier and total psychopath that made all kinds of amusing exemptions to her own ideology for Israel.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @schnellandine

  252. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    The lowest energy "fruit" is the free supply of "waste" Thorium that could be reclaimed to serve as fuel via a breeder reactor.

    Some aggressive claims have been made that Thorium is 50% more renewable than solar. We have only 4 Billion years of Sun/Sol versus 6 Billion years of Thorium.

    I do not know that claim is supportable, however Thorium is easily 10,000+ years for the planet.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    I’ve done some reading in the past on “alternative” nukes and molten salt reactors using Thorium look interesting. It seems like there is a lot of conflicting info on how many problems they really solve though, especially since they have their own set of technical issues.
    China seems bullish on bringing them to scale, so perhaps we’ll see more soon on that front.

    While they might be a viable possibility in the future they certainly don’t seem like a magic bullet.

    https://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/features/nuclear-power-why-molten-salt-reactors-are-problematic-and-canada-investing-in-them-is-a-waste/

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/molten-salt-reactors.aspx

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-08-22/whatever-happened-to-chinas-revolutionary-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-program/

    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa

    LFTR was a proven method with 1960's technology. Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL] ran one at pilot scale for thousands of hours. The primary detractors of LFTR seem to be those trying to champion inferior, dangerous options like failure prone PRISM "liquid sodium" reactors.

    The best site once was:
    https://thoriummsr.com/
    However it has been years since last maintenance. Another good site is:
    http://lftrnow.com/
    But is also problematic for lack of site support.

    I am sure new sites have emerged, but it has been a while since I needed LFTR documentation.

    The other key option is LCTR. Chloride based salts are favourable for fast neutron solutions. LFTR Fluoride based salts are ideal for slower "thermal" neutron solutions. Both will exist together as they have similar development needs.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Vishnugupta

  253. @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure!
     
    Please give your definition of libertarianism. I see it discussed at UR almost daily, yet they appear to be discussions of something of which I know nothing—which appears soon after to have been the primary point. The popular definition of 'libertarianism' creeps almost as quickly as that of the intellectually useless 'democracy'.

    Could it be that 'libertarianism' is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    Had I a website similar to UR, there'd be a requirement that certain words be defined by each writer, possibly merely with a link to his definition, before inclusion of the word allowed. The list would number over 100.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

    Libertarianism is an especially tough one to define since it often seems like there are as many definitions as libertarians!

    I agree with you on definitions though. Terms like fascist or socialist and Marxist are today used almost exclusively by those who have no idea what they mean. They effectively mean “Bad Thing I Don’t Like”.

    Since you seem to feel strongly about the definition of libertarianism, perhaps you would share your own definitive interpretation for discussion?

    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @Barbarossa

    I define libertarianism as a prohibition on the initiation of force, by anyone, against anyone.

    Dunderheads like to construe that as absent the crucial word 'initiation'. It is not absent. Therefore, I don't need cooperation to be a libertarian. I am not, by being a libertarian, disallowed defense philosophically (the usual strawman). Speaking of strawman fallacy, I've not seen a denunciation of libertarianism which didn't 1) rely on strawman, or 2) disagree with non-aggression (the principle defined above).

    Of course, therefore, I disagree with Ayn Rand on her pillar of the essential 'services' of the state. Any state which 'taxes', or pretends for itself rights superior to a human, is void. On much else I did agree with Rand, another victim of terminal strawman attack.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  254. Barbarossa says:

    I certainly would prefer Trump to Biden since he was less bad or

    There is the mistake I’ve spent decades trying to get people to understand.

    Most, or at least many, ‘American conservatives’ will give lip service to the idea that the state is evil. Granted, it’s nearly always with the caveat a ‘necessary’ one. Their entire supposed ethos (e.g. 2nd amendment) is built on distrust of the state. So the first thing they want to do: Put a ‘good guy’ in charge of something evil and unworthy of trust. The natural expectation? We may finally then trust the state!

    It’s unbelievable to me that people fall for this. ‘American conservatives’ worship T Jefferson. What did he say was essential for liberty? A perpetual spirit of resistance. What better way to preserve resistance than to put knowingly bad guys in charge of the state?

    No, ‘American conservatives’ prefer to be raped in their sleep.

    Trump presided gleefully over the sharpest decline in the situation for American conservatives since FDR, or perhaps even Lincoln. The average Trump rally attendee wouldn’t boo the bastard if he said he wanted to introduce poodle-raping to elementary school classrooms. Like a bad dream. And despite this obvious aspect, I don’t recall a single person ever even considering that my contra-intuitive note may be correct. Good people should not want good people presiding over the state. The state should be crushed into minimalist size, and that will never happen when people mistake it for goodness, which is the immediate and inevitable result of selecting state criminals based on perceived goodness.

    • Disagree: iffen
    • Replies: @iffen
    @schnellandine

    A “starve the beast” approach seems logical at first glance, but I think that in the long run it is detrimental to the nation.

    Look at our social welfare safety net. It is Byzantine, inefficient, arbitrary and inequitable. It is arguably anti-family and anti-work. It works against encouraging initiative in the individual. It lends itself to political rent seeking and politicians using it to buy blocks of votes. It is humiliating to many of the recipients. It is disgusting to see politicians requiring people to line up with their hats in their hands to get a free fan or some other give-away.

    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    Replies: @schnellandine, @Twinkie, @Yellowface Anon

  255. @Barbarossa
    @schnellandine

    Libertarianism is an especially tough one to define since it often seems like there are as many definitions as libertarians!

    I agree with you on definitions though. Terms like fascist or socialist and Marxist are today used almost exclusively by those who have no idea what they mean. They effectively mean "Bad Thing I Don't Like".

    Since you seem to feel strongly about the definition of libertarianism, perhaps you would share your own definitive interpretation for discussion?

    Replies: @schnellandine

    I define libertarianism as a prohibition on the initiation of force, by anyone, against anyone.

    Dunderheads like to construe that as absent the crucial word ‘initiation’. It is not absent. Therefore, I don’t need cooperation to be a libertarian. I am not, by being a libertarian, disallowed defense philosophically (the usual strawman). Speaking of strawman fallacy, I’ve not seen a denunciation of libertarianism which didn’t 1) rely on strawman, or 2) disagree with non-aggression (the principle defined above).

    Of course, therefore, I disagree with Ayn Rand on her pillar of the essential ‘services’ of the state. Any state which ‘taxes’, or pretends for itself rights superior to a human, is void. On much else I did agree with Rand, another victim of terminal strawman attack.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    lol. But a lot of your type gets whipped up into the fantasy of great Randian struggles between the individualist and statists, like Marxist daydreams about class struggles.

    I quit libertarianism since it isn't applicable where NAP isn't in the ethos of a society and there are way too many of these in the world.

  256. @A123
    @Barbarossa


    can’t understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.
     
    A sane plan would have:

    -1- Kept defensible Bagram AFB open
    -2- Evacuated U.S civilians first
    -3- Evacuated other non combatant second
    -4- Fully vetted non combatants (before U.S. entry)
    -5- Recovered expensive military equipment (including brand new helicopters)
    -6- Closed with an orderly military departure from a secure facility

     
    https://ace.mu.nu/archives/suntzu.jpg
     

    Remember the Taliban wanted the U.S. to go and stay gone. They were ready to fully support Trump's original plan to prevent any incidents that might result in a change of mind and/or provide a pretext to stay.

    The Milley/Biden fiasco had no coordination with the locals. And, did everything in the worst manner & sequence possible leading to dead marines and embarrassing airport footage. It is fairly obvious that Gen. Milley intentionally killed American troops in order to:

        • Undermine other possible withdrawals, such as Syria.
        • Try to humiliate Biden into staying in Afghanistan.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the “Afghan pullout debacle” as midterm election outrage fodder,
     
    Had there been no treason, perhaps the GOP might have manufactured something. However, there is so much actual incompetence from Not-The-President Biden and his illegitimate administration there really is no need to manufacture anything.

    If Gen SJW Milley had not sold out to America's enemies, the GOP technique would have been giving the military 100% credit and Biden 0%. This would have been true and easier than attempting to manufacture a set-up.

    I’m no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones’ faith on.
     
    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

    Lying about Trump's achievements and creating fiction about his Senate limited appointments is 100% pure, unadulterated, #NeverTrump behaviour. Blaming someone for *not achieving the unachievable* is inherently absurd and can only be explained by malicious intent.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

    Replies: @songbird, @Barbarossa

    I suspect that leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US. For example, the army did it after they occupied Veracruz in 1914, even though it was a port city. Some of the guns they left may have later been used to murder gringos.

    What has changed is that the equipment has gotten more complicated and expensive.

    There was a lot of woke outrage about leaving “US citizens” behind. But these were no doubt Afghans who will arive soon enough, and then help their relatives come as well.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US. For example, the army did it after they occupied Veracruz in 1914, even though it was a port city.
     
    -A- Crippling and abandoning heavy armor could make sense. After stripping the heaviest plate, the logistics are still 2 main battle tanks per heavy transport plane. However, given the mountainous combat terrain, there should not be too many of these in the field.

    -B- End-of-life trucks and humvees? I would need proof of lifespan, but maybe. It still seems like an indication of a ridiculously too rapid withdrawal.

    -C - Abandoning brand new, just delivered, flight capable helicopters makes no sense in any scenario. That was Traitor Milley's gift to Iran.

    There is no statute of limitation on Treason, and is obvious that Gen. Milley gave aide & comfort to the enemy.
    ____

    Whether you like or dislike Trump. There is one certainty. He learns from experience. Playing "nice" did not have any return. Brutal, highly invasive, personal examinations of Milley and Mueller are well earned. Who will Mueller flip on?

    Inquiring Minds Want To Know!

    Also, payback w/compound interest time.
    What is good for the Goose, is good for the still mobile Pâté de Foie Gras.
    I could go on....

    PEACE 😇
    , @Barbarossa
    @songbird


    I suspect that leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US.
     
    Pretty much.

    https://www.stripes.com/news/war-equipment-to-remain-in-iraq-once-troops-leave-1.30223

    In a landlocked place like Afghanistan where everything gets flown in or out, it was always going to stay.
    The U.S. did disable most of the fancy toys that they left behind, but the Taliban did capture a lot of functional stuff from Afghan forces as they swept up.
  257. Colin Powell has joined McCain in Hell.

    Near his death (not getting much sun?), he looked like a hexadecaroon or Italian.

  258. @A123
    @iffen

    As another commenter pointed out, Biden pulled us from Afghanistan. Trump said that he would, but he didn’t.
     
    Because highly intelligent Trump realized that:
        • Gen Milley had Senate protection
        • Gen Milley would intentionally fail at withdrawal

    Why did you want Trump to have a catastrophic failure on his record? The Milley fiasco could have scuppered the entire MAGA movement.

    Why do you celebrate the predictable Biden/Milley fiasco?
    _____

    Similar logic applies to Syria. Trump skillfully extracted U.S. forces from the kill sack between Turkish and Syrian lines via the excuse "protecting oil". He did not walk into a Milley failure, by trying to order them out of the country.

    Trump's success has limited conflict to occasional bouts of 18 year old road rage as APC drivers rub on each other. While unpleasant, that is not going to light off a major combat engagement with heavy casualties.

    Why do you not want to talk about Trump's genuine achievements?
    Could it be #NeverTrump?

    Trump also promised infrastructure but did not deliver. It appears that Biden may deliver that infrastructure bill.
     
    Presidents cannot appropriate funds. Due to the presence of non-MAGA GOP(e) swamp critters, MAGA never had a majority in the House or Senate. The only way Trump could have appropriated infrastructure funds would have been overthrowing the Constitution and declaring himself -- God Emperor Triumphus I.

    I hate to break it to you, but the Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] funding being pushed by the House this year has nothing to do with Infrastructure. It is a social engineering bill. Less than 10% of the funds are earmarked for heavy construction such as bridges & roads. None is marked for border security construction.
    _____

    The most politically aware President in recent history took the achievable wins. And, did not overreach thus minimizing avoidable failures. He did much better than any other recent President with both opposition House and Senate.

    If democracy survives.... The growing MAGA movement stands a good chance at capturing the House appropriations power in the 2022 election. Senate confirmation power will probably be an obtained in 2024 along with a MAGA President.
    ____

    It is logical deduction that your #NeverTrump flailing is motivated by your desire to intentionally fracture support for MAGA. The only movement that has a chance to displace your SJW Globalism.

    If you are not trying to undermine MAGA -- Why are you intentionally pushing SJW agitprop hammering Trump for things he had 0% chance of achieving in his First Term?
    ____

    If you really are MAGA -- You might get your dream scenario. If the SJW/DNC tries to kill democracy to stop MAGA's inevitable rise. You may get your God Emperor Triumphus I and the associated Civil War.

    It could lead to a much better U.S. with Constitution 2.0 -or- glow in the dark smoking nuclear craters. I personally think you are nuts to *want* that type of engagement. But if the Nazi-crats bring it. I will fight it.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    You’ve got the retard vote nailed down, so you can ease up on the BS. There are very few fish left in that barrel. You need to pick up some college educated voters. There are a lot of fish in that one. Hopefully Trump will see the uptick in his non-Hispanic and non-white vote and work on that as well in 2024.

    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen


    You’ve got the retard vote nailed down, so you can ease up on the BS.
     
    BS and #NeverTrump hate rage is your area of expertise. I would never horn in on your sub-retarded, lobotomite wannabes. However, for the protection of others, I do need to keep the LIGHT focused on your drooling fringe extremism.

    The TRUTH I present, unlike your low-IQ #NeverTrump lies, appeals to university educated STEM and youth voters who want good paying jobs. If you want to appeal to high-IQ and educated voters you need to start with one simple step.

    Stop Your Lobotomite Lying!

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon
  259. @Barbarossa
    @Thomm

    I actually agree with you that any guy who would prefer a white man over a black woman to appease some WN fear of race mixing has their priorities all messed up.
    However, I find it odd that you are so exercised about the whole thing.
    I tend to avoid parts of UNZ which are prominently WN since the topic frequently devolves into stupidification.

    I also kind of assume that there is a fair bit of shit-posting, trolling, and general obfuscation in a decent amount of internet comment sections, besides the fact that a free speech forum like UNZ is likely to attract a certain number of misanthropes, nuts, and degenerates. The fact that there might be people on UNZ who fit your description is not surprising to me, but I don't attach much significance to it.
    UNZ is sometimes a strange and wonderful gutter of the internet...

    Replies: @Thomm

    However, I find it odd that you are so exercised about the whole thing.
    I tend to avoid parts of UNZ which are prominently WN since the topic frequently devolves into stupidification.

    I am not ‘exercised’. My reasons are threefold :

    i) It is a great source of humor, and I have written many funny poems and songs about it. I have made great comedy at their expense (and regarding the fat ones, their expAnse as well).

    ii) I want more of my fellow normal, heterosexual white people to be aware that these degenerates don’t have their best interests at heart, and why we need to keep them out of respectable society. They just want a form of intra-white socialism, under the rationale that there are enough productive white people that these moochers can sustainably harvest us.

    iii) This is the frontier of HBD thought. The extremely high variance in white quality is not discussed sufficiently. The white race is actually two races : a near-flawless race (80%), and a 20% wastematter repository where all the unwanted genes go for rapid filtration from the reproducing gene pool. That is why the males of this wastematter subrace become these WN faggots, while the females become the fat bluehaired feminists.

    But point i), the humor, is a key reason. Come to think of it, I haven’t posted some of my poems and songs in a while. I should repost them.

  260. @songbird
    @A123

    I suspect that leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US. For example, the army did it after they occupied Veracruz in 1914, even though it was a port city. Some of the guns they left may have later been used to murder gringos.

    What has changed is that the equipment has gotten more complicated and expensive.

    There was a lot of woke outrage about leaving "US citizens" behind. But these were no doubt Afghans who will arive soon enough, and then help their relatives come as well.

    Replies: @A123, @Barbarossa

    leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US. For example, the army did it after they occupied Veracruz in 1914, even though it was a port city.

    -A- Crippling and abandoning heavy armor could make sense. After stripping the heaviest plate, the logistics are still 2 main battle tanks per heavy transport plane. However, given the mountainous combat terrain, there should not be too many of these in the field.

    -B- End-of-life trucks and humvees? I would need proof of lifespan, but maybe. It still seems like an indication of a ridiculously too rapid withdrawal.

    -C – Abandoning brand new, just delivered, flight capable helicopters makes no sense in any scenario. That was Traitor Milley’s gift to Iran.

    There is no statute of limitation on Treason, and is obvious that Gen. Milley gave aide & comfort to the enemy.
    ____

    Whether you like or dislike Trump. There is one certainty. He learns from experience. Playing “nice” did not have any return. Brutal, highly invasive, personal examinations of Milley and Mueller are well earned. Who will Mueller flip on?

    Inquiring Minds Want To Know!

    Also, payback w/compound interest time.
    What is good for the Goose, is good for the still mobile Pâté de Foie Gras.
    I could go on….

    PEACE 😇

  261. @iffen
    @A123

    You've got the retard vote nailed down, so you can ease up on the BS. There are very few fish left in that barrel. You need to pick up some college educated voters. There are a lot of fish in that one. Hopefully Trump will see the uptick in his non-Hispanic and non-white vote and work on that as well in 2024.

    Replies: @A123

    You’ve got the retard vote nailed down, so you can ease up on the BS.

    BS and #NeverTrump hate rage is your area of expertise. I would never horn in on your sub-retarded, lobotomite wannabes. However, for the protection of others, I do need to keep the LIGHT focused on your drooling fringe extremism.

    The TRUTH I present, unlike your low-IQ #NeverTrump lies, appeals to university educated STEM and youth voters who want good paying jobs. If you want to appeal to high-IQ and educated voters you need to start with one simple step.

    Stop Your Lobotomite Lying!

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

    • LOL: iffen
  262. @songbird
    @A123

    I suspect that leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US. For example, the army did it after they occupied Veracruz in 1914, even though it was a port city. Some of the guns they left may have later been used to murder gringos.

    What has changed is that the equipment has gotten more complicated and expensive.

    There was a lot of woke outrage about leaving "US citizens" behind. But these were no doubt Afghans who will arive soon enough, and then help their relatives come as well.

    Replies: @A123, @Barbarossa

    I suspect that leaving equipment behind is the historical average for the US.

    Pretty much.

    https://www.stripes.com/news/war-equipment-to-remain-in-iraq-once-troops-leave-1.30223

    In a landlocked place like Afghanistan where everything gets flown in or out, it was always going to stay.
    The U.S. did disable most of the fancy toys that they left behind, but the Taliban did capture a lot of functional stuff from Afghan forces as they swept up.

    • Agree: Not Raul
  263. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I've done some reading in the past on "alternative" nukes and molten salt reactors using Thorium look interesting. It seems like there is a lot of conflicting info on how many problems they really solve though, especially since they have their own set of technical issues.
    China seems bullish on bringing them to scale, so perhaps we'll see more soon on that front.

    While they might be a viable possibility in the future they certainly don't seem like a magic bullet.


    https://www.canadianmanufacturing.com/features/nuclear-power-why-molten-salt-reactors-are-problematic-and-canada-investing-in-them-is-a-waste/

    https://world-nuclear.org/information-library/current-and-future-generation/molten-salt-reactors.aspx

    https://www.resilience.org/stories/2021-08-22/whatever-happened-to-chinas-revolutionary-molten-salt-nuclear-reactor-program/

    Replies: @A123

    LFTR was a proven method with 1960’s technology. Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL] ran one at pilot scale for thousands of hours. The primary detractors of LFTR seem to be those trying to champion inferior, dangerous options like failure prone PRISM “liquid sodium” reactors.

    The best site once was:
    https://thoriummsr.com/
    However it has been years since last maintenance. Another good site is:
    http://lftrnow.com/
    But is also problematic for lack of site support.

    I am sure new sites have emerged, but it has been a while since I needed LFTR documentation.

    The other key option is LCTR. Chloride based salts are favourable for fast neutron solutions. LFTR Fluoride based salts are ideal for slower “thermal” neutron solutions. Both will exist together as they have similar development needs.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I know Oak Ridge ran one for some time, though there were a lot of "unscheduled shutdowns".
    The exceptionally corrosive environment of Molten Salt Reactors seem to be one of the principle hurdles. Not that those are necessarily insurmountable technical problems, but I'm not a physicist so I'm not going to pretend I can parse it out one way or another.

    It seems to me that there once your separate out the professional boosters of the technology and the professional detractors (meaning those who have a vested interest in either success or failure) what is left... is a lot of uncertainty and maybes, even if those are tinged with significant promise.

    , @Vishnugupta
    @A123

    The problem of long term corrosion of the piping by Fluoride salts has never been solved.

    There have been many labs post oak ridge that tried to run fluorid salt for long periods in closed loops to determine if new materials can withstand corrosion, none have succeeded.Instead we have computer simulations which supposedly predict it will work.

    This is the reason the USSR rejected such a reactor for the Alfa class submarine when they were in the market for a clean sheet super reactor for their titanium hulled wonder submarine. Choosing the Lead cooled fast reactor design instead.

    Replies: @A123

  264. @songbird
    What are the minimum requirements for a nation-state?

    Heard somewhere that that 40% of the world doesn't collect reliable vital stats, which makes me think that much of this group might be suspect. Maybe, there is a minimum IQ? Or are they just too polyglot?

    Having nuclear weapons is probably good but not sufficient. About a third of births in England and Whales are to foreign-born mothers. France seems roughly equally fucked.

    What will happen to the fake countries? I believe we haven't seen the final borders in Africa.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    The UK and France are quite interesting examples because AFAIK they were among the first nation states to come into being, France could even be the prototype example of them. They still have articulate and informed guys like Eric Zemmour in public life (he maintains a kind of semi-mystical belief in the post 1648 nation state of France), it makes me think that it will probably be in France that the potential disintegration of this model due to high levels of immigration is first faced consciously.

    I have seen quite reasonable but low key defences of it in relation to the UK, specifically in respect of England the situation is not good though. In 2017 you could see estimates that close to 25% of the population of England was already ethnic minority or foreign born, the woke stuff washing over from the US is like a steroidal highly political version of multi-culturalism which encourages people to identify emotionally with the heritage of their colonised ancestors in what are now other independent nations. I don’t see any British figures like Zemmour, or any kind of equivalent tradition of mysticism around the concept of the British state either.

    If England can’t be rescued, it might be possible with Scotland and Ireland still. I found out that my mother’s maiden name in Irish means ‘snow white’, this is quite interesting, it is like having a certain level of political incorrectness in your name itself.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @Coconuts

    Scotland and Northern Ireland still have a fair amount of asabiyya. What they don't have is much economic heft. Most of that was in England.

    Since gaining their long-sought independence from the UK, Ireland has been busy giving away its hard-won sovereignty as fast as it can. Ireland may now be more pozzed than even England. Ireland's post-Christian woke Catholicism has proved an especial liability in this regard.

    Obviously, to the extent that British economic heft in England is portable, it can decamp to elsewhere. And since Britain hardly manufactures stuff anymore, much of what's left is portable. There's no reason that the City of London financial hub actually needs to be in London, for instance. OTOH, if things have already reached the stage of open ethnic warfare, ghey stuff like trading derivatives ain't gonna matter much anymore. Britain no longer even manufactures its own battle rifle, but imports Belgian FN's for its military. The civilian population is utterly disarmed, even of knives nowadays.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  265. @Almost Missouri
    @mal




    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.
     
    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     

    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets.
     
    It ain't the markets who bail out cronies. It's the Lords of Fiat.


    As already discussed, real banks create money by making productive loans, the opportunities for which are finite.
     
    Not sure about that, I think the opportunities are infinite as well.
     
    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.

    The are many things that can limit opportunities, but a major upspoken one is that there are only a certain number of genuinely productive people. Once you lend them all they can use, then it's just a question of which hole you're going to piss the rest of your money down. Indeed, that there still is money left after all the productive loans have been made is a pretty good indication that too much money was printed.


    All Zimbabwe needs is a swap line at the Federal Reserve, like all “developed” economies have. Zimbabwe needs like a $billion a year, which is what Federal Reserve provides to “developed” countries during a lunch hour LOL.
     
    I'm assuming you're making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is ... more fiat currency.

    Clearly, the private sector is more likely to waste the money
     
    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?

    Reagan/Volcker destroyed American industry with high interest rates (its more complicated than that
     
    Indeed. Though the high interest rates of the Volker era are still remembered, people seem to forget the serious disruptions that were being caused by the high inflation that preceded and spawned those interest rates. (People also forget that Volker was appointed and began his interest rate jihad under Carter, not Reagan, although Reagan didn't fire him either. Presidents typically eschew unnecessary disruption at the Fed.)

    90’s and the aughties were all about real estate based neoliberalism which is not sustainable unless you want a house to cost a $trillion dollars.
     
    Right. Since genuine economic opportunities are limited, all that excess currency the Fed prints has to go somewhere, and asset prices are it, especially real estate prices. So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.

    Zimbabwe dollar was never real. And neither is US dollar or Russian ruble or Euro or any other fiat currency. Those are just tools. If they got any use out of it while it was operational, good on them. And I think they did.
     
    If by "they got any use out of it", you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did! And they have the Swiss bank accounts to prove it. If you mean ordinary Zimbabweans, then not so much.

    So they must come together, and both libertarians and socialists just fail to see the need for this union, they think they are special. But they aren’t, and they must unite for the national good.
     
    When ice-cream and dogsh*t unite, you get ... dogsh*t.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get ... ______.

    Replies: @mal

    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.

    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though. Can’t ignore them in the real world.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.

    If you look at my favorite plot – Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that’s exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that’s sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back. There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won’t be allowed to happen again.

    I’m assuming you’re making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is … more fiat currency.

    Japan, and Germany, and even Mexico have swap lines with Federal Reserve. Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a \$billion and not even notice. It wouldn’t be unusual. Fed supports other countries when it feels like it. It pumped like quarter \$trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.

    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?

    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me. But market clearly trusts government more than private sector. Or 30 year Treasury wouldn’t trade at 2%, below private sector rate. We probably won’t completely abolish private sector, but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.

    So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.

    We can’t, because we don’t want another Great Depression.

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!

    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe. Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans, they would be slaves forever. At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.

    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get …

    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @mal


    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.
     
    Precisely correct.

    All Trade is managed trade. Therefore, successful nations must manage trade. Currency is integral to trade. Therefore, successful nations must manage their sovereign currency.

    MAGA Reindustrialization is far short of nationalization. It is a 'happy medium' government policy that reduces trade & currency dependency vis-à-vis other manipulative nations.

    PEACE 😇
    , @Beckow
    @mal


    ...there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.
     
    Are we happy yet? This is a nirvana, a true communism with everyone given what they need and from everyone based on what they can give. (Actually, the central state stepped in to give virtual money because "they can", but the result is about the same.)

    Where did the comrades go wrong? They were cheap, small-minded, provincial bastards who wouldn't just create money, raise salaries and prices, let people feel rich by giving them an endless circle of virtual wealth. They had it upside down: don't abolish money, but make it ubiquitous and in effect "free". Because unpaid debts are free money.

    Seriously, where is this going? How long can the everything-bubble, the bubble-of-all-bubbles, go on? The "real stuff" is still out there, but we are told that the advertising giant Facebook is worth 10 times more than firms that produce actual stuff. The pretty picture is worth more than a real girl. A long-legged dumbo flashing Putin is worth more than all the gas that Europe is missing. But they say that it will be ok, they will build wind-mills and tweet about virtues...and Greta discovers love...

    And every now and then it all falls apart...

    , @Almost Missouri
    @mal






    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.
     
    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     
    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets.
     
    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.
     
    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though.
     
    Eh, the Lords of Fiat own—or at least spoil—the market.

    Ever since 2008 when they made clear that they will conjure as much fake fiat cash as is necessary to get the "market" result they want, the "market" has been overtly irrelevant to them.

    The market can still matter for private sector participants, however, so long as it is not a matter of particular concern to the LoF.



    I think the opportunities are infinite as well.
     
    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.
     
    If you look at my favorite plot – Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that’s exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that’s sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back.
     
    "Total Credit Outstanding" ≠ "the next person you meet". If opportunities really were infinite, you would be indifferent about to whom you lend since infinite opportunity means all opportunities are effectively equal.

    That said, it's true that not all of that lending will be paid back, and even that some of it was never meant to be paid back. But, the Lords of Fiat never cared about being paid back since they can always fiat as much new cash as they want. Ain't it great owning the money press? For them, debt means something different and has different purposes. It's like doing aerodynamics above the sound barrier, or mathematics within imaginary numbers: a lot of the standard assumptions don't apply.

    There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won’t be allowed to happen again.
     
    2008 wasn't the exception; it was the rule: no LoF-adverse result will be allowed in the market. (Ironically, I think we actually mean the same thing here.)

    Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a $billion and not even notice.
     
    Zimbabwe is economically tiny. US and Japan are economically huge. So yes, the Fed could flick Zimbabwe's financial life support on or off at whim without feeling it.

    Fed supports other countries when it feels like it.
     
    Yep. It's pretty sweet having almost unlimited cash.

    It pumped like quarter $trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.
     
    Indeed it would. Also, trading fake Fed fiat money for Zimbabwe's copious precious metals would be a good trade ... for the Fed.


    if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?
     
    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me.
     
    The market is private sector. Did the private sector decide to abolish itself?

    Admittedly, there is a large banking cartel that LARPs as "private sector" while acting as handmaid to the Fed, so inattentive observers often mistake its labors on behalf of the Lords of Fiat for "private sector" activity. And, as described above, financial markets themselves are substantially corrupted by the infinite fiat intervention put option.

    But market clearly trusts government more than private sector.
     
    More correct restatement: The government increasingly owns the [financial] market more than the private sector does.

    Or 30 year Treasury wouldn’t trade at 2%, below private sector rate.
     
    See above.

    We probably won’t completely abolish private sector,
     
    Not for lack of trying though. BTW, who is "we", Kimosabe?

    but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.
     
    Yeah, all the business owners I know just can't wait to give their hard-earned money to the Feds. /s


    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!
     
    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe.
     
    It wasn't Mugabe digging ore out of the ground. He just wrangled the ones who did, and arranged (i.e., stole) the land rights. But then that's what he was getting paid for as "an important participant in the economy".

    Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans,
     
    They've already long been destroyed by their ZANU overlords, the only question was how much ZANU would pass up the chain.

    they would be slaves forever.
     
    Already are slaves forever ... to ZANU.

    At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.
     
    Since Zimbabwe's foreign debt was always only payable in foreign currency and is still unabrogated, I don't know where you get the idea that hyperinflating the Zimbabwe Dollar out of existence reduced their debt at all, never mind by 30%. But even if Zimbabwe's debt were reduced by 100%, it would make no difference to the average Zimbabwean, who would still be just as much under the thumb of his local ZANU master as before.

    Replies: @mal

  266. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.
     
    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though. Can't ignore them in the real world.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.
     
    If you look at my favorite plot - Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that's exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that's sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back. There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won't be allowed to happen again.

    I’m assuming you’re making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is … more fiat currency.
     
    Japan, and Germany, and even Mexico have swap lines with Federal Reserve. Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a $billion and not even notice. It wouldn't be unusual. Fed supports other countries when it feels like it. It pumped like quarter $trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.

    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?
     
    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me. But market clearly trusts government more than private sector. Or 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%, below private sector rate. We probably won't completely abolish private sector, but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.


    So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.
     
    We can't, because we don't want another Great Depression.

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!
     
    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe. Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans, they would be slaves forever. At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.


    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get …
     
    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow, @Almost Missouri

    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    Precisely correct.

    All Trade is managed trade. Therefore, successful nations must manage trade. Currency is integral to trade. Therefore, successful nations must manage their sovereign currency.

    MAGA Reindustrialization is far short of nationalization. It is a ‘happy medium’ government policy that reduces trade & currency dependency vis-à-vis other manipulative nations.

    PEACE 😇

    • Agree: mal
  267. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    in 1920′ Soviet Russia operated under sound money gold standard (look up chervonets some time)
     
    Chervonets long predated the Soviets. But in Soviet times actual gold chervonets became scarce (except for paying foreign creditors). Most citizens dealt with credit tickets, sovznak, and other inflative scrip junk. Banks were "nationalized" (i.e., destroyed), so of course Soviets sought foreign sources for credit when they weren't issuing their own fake fiat money. Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back, and governments who will mass murder for the sake of a few wagons of grain seem like a reasonable credit risk.

    Soviet commisars took up American mass production methods to scale.
     
    When you're presiding over a subsistence serf-tier plantation economy, there is enormous room for improvement, so even the most ham-fisted methods can make some progress. Communist China too managed some industrialization ... while starving millions.

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population. Maybe something to do with not being run by Bolsheviks.


    So clearly, the commsssars did something right, or American corporations wouldn’t want to do business there.
     
    Americans want to do business everywhere all the time, so that is of no special significance. Very few American businesses actually end up earning much in foreign markets, though. I don't think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.

    ...while famines were unfortunate...
     
    "Your sacrifice for the revolution has been duly noted comrade, and—actually, scratch that, comrade, we're writing you out of history." Sorry, can't muster a "lol" for this one.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal

    Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back

    It was American industrial corporations working for gold money and doing good business, not lenders?

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population.

    Those countries lost lots of their people in endless wars. French lost like a million in Napoleonic wars alone. And who knows how many in a Revolution. Same with Germans. Not to mention genocide in the colonies.

    I don’t think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.

    Regardless, they were happy to do business there and got paid. Clearly, wasn’t too terrible of a business environment for them.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    It was American industrial corporations working for gold money and doing good business, not lenders?
     
    As mentioned, American firms' foreign earnings generally are paltry.


    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population.
     
    Those countries lost lots of their people in endless wars.
     
    I don't think the Thirty Years War (still Germany's costliest) was the cause of Germany's industrializing. On the contrary, it probably delayed German industrialization by at least a century, just as the upheavals of the 20th century set Russia and China back.

    French lost like a million in Napoleonic wars alone. And who knows how many in a Revolution.
     
    Again, where is it established that the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars caused French industrialization? Early industrialization (e.g., textiles, water power) pre-dated this, while decisive industrialization vastly post-dated it. The most evident connection would be to argue that the war and upheaval delayed industrialization, as elsewhere.

    Not to mention genocide in the colonies.
     
    You weren't kidding about that Soviet education.

    If your populations of colonial subjects go from thousands to millions to billions, then you're doing genocide wrong. In fact, if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly "genocided" in your own country, then you're really doing genocide wrong.

    The only thing approaching a real genocide was the unintentional Columbian exchange of microbial pathogens that caused a big die-off in the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. But that was definitely going to happen at some point anyway, and nothing would have prevented it.

    But even had "genocide in the colonies" actually occurred, how would that have caused coal mining in the Ruhr or steel smelting in Piedmont? These are industries that perennially complain about labor shortages, so the last thing they would have wanted was mass deaths of potential laborers. France was far more of an overseas colonizer than Germany, yet it lagged Germany in industrialization. This suggests that colonization was at best a distraction, and at worst a hinderance to industrialization.

    Replies: @mal

  268. @Barbarossa
    @mal

    There may be practically infinite energy in the universe, but the question is accessibility. A lot of the low hanging fruit has been plucked there. You can certainly extract usable energy from tar sands or fracking, but it takes much more energy investment to do so than a barrel of sweet crude.
    The return on investment is much lower.

    This is the same issue with "renewables" like solar and wind. They have a relatively rotten return on investment.

    Replies: @A123, @mal

    As A123 mentioned, we do have a solution – nuclear power, but like anything else, it’s bottlenecked by politics. We can access any amount of energy we want, there’s not a physical limitation. But will we be allowed to? On that, I have no idea. Politics is a different problem from physics though.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @mal

    Still, It's not like nuclear is some "free lunch" though. There are nasty downsides such as the waste which still haven't been really resolved.

    I can see a strong argument that nuclear is really the only viable way to continue our current consumption track, since renewables certainly aren't going to cut it.

    The question becomes whether our political class is stupid enough to believe that they can actually solar farm our way to a solution or if they are just being disingenuous.

  269. @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    Thanks, interesting reflections.

    You know, I often think we humans imagine our actions are way more significant than they are and we have way more control than we do.

    To adapt from a quote from LOTR, "there are other forces than the will of humans in the world".

    I don't mean this in any religious sense to refer to God - simply, humans can never foresee everything - I would argue our abilities are actually quite puny - and surprises and confounding factors always exist.

    All these "grand plans" to affect the entire fate of the planet always and inevitably end up in unexpected and surprising places.

    For instance, the Grand Narrative of the 19th century was one of technological progress leading to an ever more rational world in which war would be abolished.

    Instead, it all led to WWI - not a rationalist utopia. What was unexpected was that people grew bored of peace and stability, and of an excessive preoccupation with the material realm. WW1 - the "causeless war" as I regard it - was an attempt at transcendence from the dull confines of a preoccupation with the material realm that constituted technological progress, with it's responsibility and sobriety, it's solid bourgeois common sense, it's sense of spirit being smothered in rigid rules (which led Dostoyevsky's Underground Man to cry out that he refuses to accept that 2+2=4) , all for the trivial benefit of physical safety and survival.

    I am quite sure that whatever Grand Plan the WEF has in store for us - if it indeed has one - will never turn out even remotely as they expect with their illusions of control, but far more interestingly and confoundingly unexpected.

    And in the end, if the human race succeeds in destroying itself, does it really matter? If indeed, as the Taoists and Zennists and mystics of all denominations say, human beings are merely "expressions" of an indestructible underlying energy that now takes on this form, now that, but is fundamentally indivisible and cannot die, what matter if this energy no longer takes on the particular human form?

    There may be fantastic and undreamed of forms for this energy to take on, beings we can't concierge of - but that are in the deepest sense us :)

    One must be very parochial indeed to insist on the human form of this energy surviving forever :)

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Maybe I’m just a bit too Confucian and obsessed with the “clash of civilization” worldview thing here.

  270. @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure!
     
    Please give your definition of libertarianism. I see it discussed at UR almost daily, yet they appear to be discussions of something of which I know nothing—which appears soon after to have been the primary point. The popular definition of 'libertarianism' creeps almost as quickly as that of the intellectually useless 'democracy'.

    Could it be that 'libertarianism' is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    Had I a website similar to UR, there'd be a requirement that certain words be defined by each writer, possibly merely with a link to his definition, before inclusion of the word allowed. The list would number over 100.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

    It’s simple, an anarchist political system where social relations are mediated with Non-Aggression Principle.

    • Disagree: schnellandine
  271. @schnellandine
    @Barbarossa

    I define libertarianism as a prohibition on the initiation of force, by anyone, against anyone.

    Dunderheads like to construe that as absent the crucial word 'initiation'. It is not absent. Therefore, I don't need cooperation to be a libertarian. I am not, by being a libertarian, disallowed defense philosophically (the usual strawman). Speaking of strawman fallacy, I've not seen a denunciation of libertarianism which didn't 1) rely on strawman, or 2) disagree with non-aggression (the principle defined above).

    Of course, therefore, I disagree with Ayn Rand on her pillar of the essential 'services' of the state. Any state which 'taxes', or pretends for itself rights superior to a human, is void. On much else I did agree with Rand, another victim of terminal strawman attack.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    lol. But a lot of your type gets whipped up into the fantasy of great Randian struggles between the individualist and statists, like Marxist daydreams about class struggles.

    I quit libertarianism since it isn’t applicable where NAP isn’t in the ethos of a society and there are way too many of these in the world.

  272. @mal
    @Barbarossa

    As A123 mentioned, we do have a solution - nuclear power, but like anything else, it's bottlenecked by politics. We can access any amount of energy we want, there's not a physical limitation. But will we be allowed to? On that, I have no idea. Politics is a different problem from physics though.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    Still, It’s not like nuclear is some “free lunch” though. There are nasty downsides such as the waste which still haven’t been really resolved.

    I can see a strong argument that nuclear is really the only viable way to continue our current consumption track, since renewables certainly aren’t going to cut it.

    The question becomes whether our political class is stupid enough to believe that they can actually solar farm our way to a solution or if they are just being disingenuous.

  273. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    LFTR was a proven method with 1960's technology. Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL] ran one at pilot scale for thousands of hours. The primary detractors of LFTR seem to be those trying to champion inferior, dangerous options like failure prone PRISM "liquid sodium" reactors.

    The best site once was:
    https://thoriummsr.com/
    However it has been years since last maintenance. Another good site is:
    http://lftrnow.com/
    But is also problematic for lack of site support.

    I am sure new sites have emerged, but it has been a while since I needed LFTR documentation.

    The other key option is LCTR. Chloride based salts are favourable for fast neutron solutions. LFTR Fluoride based salts are ideal for slower "thermal" neutron solutions. Both will exist together as they have similar development needs.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Vishnugupta

    I know Oak Ridge ran one for some time, though there were a lot of “unscheduled shutdowns”.
    The exceptionally corrosive environment of Molten Salt Reactors seem to be one of the principle hurdles. Not that those are necessarily insurmountable technical problems, but I’m not a physicist so I’m not going to pretend I can parse it out one way or another.

    It seems to me that there once your separate out the professional boosters of the technology and the professional detractors (meaning those who have a vested interest in either success or failure) what is left… is a lot of uncertainty and maybes, even if those are tinged with significant promise.

    • Agree: Vishnugupta
  274. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    You can pretty much see it isn't as much a "anti-pandemic" policy as an economic one that is redistributing consumption & markets from brick-and-mortar businesses to digital ones that can be easily centralized in distribution under Amazon, Taobao, etc. 4IR!

    Replies: @Dmitry

    These modern shopping centres in Russia are usually owned by people with strong connections, i.e. owners will have connections to local elites, so I doubt there is any top down conspiracy to move people into online shopping.

    I think it’s just another half-planned, half-measure.

    Although there is no malevolent conspiracy theory involved, the emphasis on QR codes might be seen as beginning of bad precedent.

    Instead of focusing on sensible policies, clear communication and engineering solutions (like they had in Japan of ventilating buildings) – there has been worship of the QR code, as if scanning something on your phone is a way to manage a pandemic.

    It’s worship of a “cool” technology that allows an increase of state capacity to control peoples’ movements, but probably little effect on the epidemiological situation. That is, it’s easy to see alternative reasons why it might become popular with politicians.

    QR coding for only vaccinated people to enter in Ufa is supposedly resulting in the same underpopulated shopping malls like in Tatarstan.

    Ufa and Kazan are some of the more economically developed, successful cities in Russia, so if QR coding is not being accepted by much of the population there, it’s probably not going to be too popular when introduced into other regions in the next weeks.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    I doubt there is any top down conspiracy to move people into online shopping.
     
    It need not be a conspiracy but as transparent acts to disadvantage and eventually eliminate brick-and-mortar competitors.

    Half-planned, half-measure
     
    QR codes at various levels are endorsed by the WEF. So it is a well-planned measure adopted either half-heartedly or intentionally triggering resistance to it, which will fit the WEF's expectations to overhaul systems of consumption.

    the emphasis on QR codes might be seen as beginning of bad precedent.
     
    Like the TSA thing after 9/11. Air travel hadn't been really handicapped that time, but with vaccine passports, formal economies will be. International travel or leisure consumption won't recover in this century.

    Instead of focusing on sensible policies, clear communication and engineering solutions (like they had in Japan of ventilating buildings) – there has been worship of the QR code, as if scanning something on your phone is a way to manage a pandemic.
     
    Just like the emphasis on vaccines as the sole mean of eliminating pandemic risk, instead of a more all-rounded approach including various forms of prevention and treatment. Vaccines do have a role and should have been used like in seasonal flu outbreaks, but not for economic & political segregation. (And the requirement of vaccination or nothing is unreasonable since there are so many people who have low risk of contacting COVID and without a genuine need of vaccination, yet they are still barred from most places. Even a French/Italian acceptance of -ve test results would be an improvement)

    It’s worship of a “cool” technology that allows an increase of state capacity to control peoples’ movements, but probably little effect on the epidemiological situation. That is, it’s easy to see alternative reasons why it might become popular with politicians.
     
    You get it - more invasive solutions are preferred to set up mechanisms for social control. Which explains the reaction esp. from a place distrusting of state authority like Russia. We're stuck in a Randian impasse.

    it’s probably not going to be too popular when introduced into other regions in the next weeks
     
    Russians are used to black markets and it's time for the rest of the world to start accustoming themselves to them, if vaccine passports really are to be hated. It will become a fixture of life for the new social outcasts, as long as such an authoritarian approach to "security" becomes the default global attitude.

    Which is sad because all the middle ground have been stamped out from both ends of the struggle. I don't care what ought to be, but what will be. 🤡🌐

  275. Sandy Monroe’s interview with Elon Musk.

    I thought their discussion about manufacturing is quite interesting for those of us amateurs not usually interested about these areas.

  276. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon

    These modern shopping centres in Russia are usually owned by people with strong connections, i.e. owners will have connections to local elites, so I doubt there is any top down conspiracy to move people into online shopping.

    I think it's just another half-planned, half-measure.

    Although there is no malevolent conspiracy theory involved, the emphasis on QR codes might be seen as beginning of bad precedent.

    Instead of focusing on sensible policies, clear communication and engineering solutions (like they had in Japan of ventilating buildings) - there has been worship of the QR code, as if scanning something on your phone is a way to manage a pandemic.

    It's worship of a "cool" technology that allows an increase of state capacity to control peoples' movements, but probably little effect on the epidemiological situation. That is, it's easy to see alternative reasons why it might become popular with politicians.

    QR coding for only vaccinated people to enter in Ufa is supposedly resulting in the same underpopulated shopping malls like in Tatarstan.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxEZK7Ac-k0

    Ufa and Kazan are some of the more economically developed, successful cities in Russia, so if QR coding is not being accepted by much of the population there, it's probably not going to be too popular when introduced into other regions in the next weeks.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I doubt there is any top down conspiracy to move people into online shopping.

    It need not be a conspiracy but as transparent acts to disadvantage and eventually eliminate brick-and-mortar competitors.

    Half-planned, half-measure

    QR codes at various levels are endorsed by the WEF. So it is a well-planned measure adopted either half-heartedly or intentionally triggering resistance to it, which will fit the WEF’s expectations to overhaul systems of consumption.

    the emphasis on QR codes might be seen as beginning of bad precedent.

    Like the TSA thing after 9/11. Air travel hadn’t been really handicapped that time, but with vaccine passports, formal economies will be. International travel or leisure consumption won’t recover in this century.

    Instead of focusing on sensible policies, clear communication and engineering solutions (like they had in Japan of ventilating buildings) – there has been worship of the QR code, as if scanning something on your phone is a way to manage a pandemic.

    Just like the emphasis on vaccines as the sole mean of eliminating pandemic risk, instead of a more all-rounded approach including various forms of prevention and treatment. Vaccines do have a role and should have been used like in seasonal flu outbreaks, but not for economic & political segregation. (And the requirement of vaccination or nothing is unreasonable since there are so many people who have low risk of contacting COVID and without a genuine need of vaccination, yet they are still barred from most places. Even a French/Italian acceptance of -ve test results would be an improvement)

    It’s worship of a “cool” technology that allows an increase of state capacity to control peoples’ movements, but probably little effect on the epidemiological situation. That is, it’s easy to see alternative reasons why it might become popular with politicians.

    You get it – more invasive solutions are preferred to set up mechanisms for social control. Which explains the reaction esp. from a place distrusting of state authority like Russia. We’re stuck in a Randian impasse.

    it’s probably not going to be too popular when introduced into other regions in the next weeks

    Russians are used to black markets and it’s time for the rest of the world to start accustoming themselves to them, if vaccine passports really are to be hated. It will become a fixture of life for the new social outcasts, as long as such an authoritarian approach to “security” becomes the default global attitude.

    Which is sad because all the middle ground have been stamped out from both ends of the struggle. I don’t care what ought to be, but what will be. 🤡🌐

    • Agree: Barbarossa
  277. @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Thanks for realizing the ideological limits of these utopian forms of political structure!
     
    Please give your definition of libertarianism. I see it discussed at UR almost daily, yet they appear to be discussions of something of which I know nothing—which appears soon after to have been the primary point. The popular definition of 'libertarianism' creeps almost as quickly as that of the intellectually useless 'democracy'.

    Could it be that 'libertarianism' is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    Had I a website similar to UR, there'd be a requirement that certain words be defined by each writer, possibly merely with a link to his definition, before inclusion of the word allowed. The list would number over 100.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

    Could it be that ‘libertarianism’ is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    No they most likely know the history of the libertarian ideology in that it is the destructive will of a lunatic wench by the name of Ayn Rand.

    The Libertarian party platform is quite clear and has been ratified by its members.
    https://www.lp.org/platform

    Libertarians support:
    Open borders with limitless immigration from the third world
    Fully automatic weapons for Black felons
    Legalize all drugs including crack and PCP
    Allow corps to put whatever they want into our food
    Eliminate the EPA and all Federal pollution controls
    Eliminate FDA restrictions for pharmaceutical companies

    Interestingly Ayn Rand did not support open borders for Israel because according to her that’s different. All Western countries however are expected to open their borders to the third world.

    Even though this is all public record the Libertarians still follow the cult of this miserable bitch.

    It also came out in her diaries that she admired psychopathic child killer William Hickman.

    She is also on record denying that character traits in individuals can have a genetic basis. There is also a quote where she states that race doesn’t exist but if it does then we should pretend it doesn’t.

    Race denier, gene denier and total psychopath that made all kinds of amusing exemptions to her own ideology for Israel.

    • Agree: utu
    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @John Johnson

    They have different subjects of analysis from you WN types. Neither are good.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    , @schnellandine
    @John Johnson

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss 'The Libertarian Party', a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn't a libertarian.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, 'The Libertarian Party' doesn't adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    I like to talk about Rand, but not as a distraction. Not interested in discussing 'The Libertarian Party', except regarding plumbing/sewage.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, 'fascism' is bad, and Antifa is 'anti-fascist'. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can't argue with that! And hey, 'The Libertarian Party' has 'libertarian' right there in the name, so what's to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    The real question is whether one agrees with the prohibition of force initiation. And if one agrees, he should oppose someone operating under that mantle, not use the mantle appropriation to piss on the principle.

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

  278. @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    Could it be that ‘libertarianism’ is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    No they most likely know the history of the libertarian ideology in that it is the destructive will of a lunatic wench by the name of Ayn Rand.

    The Libertarian party platform is quite clear and has been ratified by its members.
    https://www.lp.org/platform

    Libertarians support:
    Open borders with limitless immigration from the third world
    Fully automatic weapons for Black felons
    Legalize all drugs including crack and PCP
    Allow corps to put whatever they want into our food
    Eliminate the EPA and all Federal pollution controls
    Eliminate FDA restrictions for pharmaceutical companies

    Interestingly Ayn Rand did not support open borders for Israel because according to her that's different. All Western countries however are expected to open their borders to the third world.

    Even though this is all public record the Libertarians still follow the cult of this miserable bitch.

    It also came out in her diaries that she admired psychopathic child killer William Hickman.

    She is also on record denying that character traits in individuals can have a genetic basis. There is also a quote where she states that race doesn't exist but if it does then we should pretend it doesn't.

    Race denier, gene denier and total psychopath that made all kinds of amusing exemptions to her own ideology for Israel.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @schnellandine

    They have different subjects of analysis from you WN types. Neither are good.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Yellowface Anon

    They have different subjects of analysis from you WN types. Neither are good.

    I'm not a White nationalist. I'm a racial realist.

    Different subjects of analysis? Everything I listed is in the Libertarian party platform. This isn't a subjective matter.

  279. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    LFTR was a proven method with 1960's technology. Oak Ridge National Laboratory [ORNL] ran one at pilot scale for thousands of hours. The primary detractors of LFTR seem to be those trying to champion inferior, dangerous options like failure prone PRISM "liquid sodium" reactors.

    The best site once was:
    https://thoriummsr.com/
    However it has been years since last maintenance. Another good site is:
    http://lftrnow.com/
    But is also problematic for lack of site support.

    I am sure new sites have emerged, but it has been a while since I needed LFTR documentation.

    The other key option is LCTR. Chloride based salts are favourable for fast neutron solutions. LFTR Fluoride based salts are ideal for slower "thermal" neutron solutions. Both will exist together as they have similar development needs.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @Vishnugupta

    The problem of long term corrosion of the piping by Fluoride salts has never been solved.

    There have been many labs post oak ridge that tried to run fluorid salt for long periods in closed loops to determine if new materials can withstand corrosion, none have succeeded.Instead we have computer simulations which supposedly predict it will work.

    This is the reason the USSR rejected such a reactor for the Alfa class submarine when they were in the market for a clean sheet super reactor for their titanium hulled wonder submarine. Choosing the Lead cooled fast reactor design instead.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Vishnugupta


    The problem of long term corrosion of the piping by Fluoride salts has never been solved.
    ...
    This is the reason the USSR rejected such a reactor for the Alfa class submarine when they were in the market for a clean sheet super reactor for their titanium hulled wonder submarine. Choosing the Lead cooled fast reactor design instead.
     
    There really is no industrial issue with clean FLiBe corrosion. (1)

    Since corrosion in molten fluoride salts is impurity driven, the salts were subjected to re-purification by the hydrofluorination process prior to this research.
    ...
    Based on the corrosion tests, the corrosion attack depth in FLiBe salt was predicted as 17.1 μm/year and 31.2 μm/year for 316 stainless steel tested in 316 stainless steel and in graphite capsules respectively. It is in an acceptable range compared to the Hastelloy-N corrosion in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) fuel salt.

     
    Thus, a successful FLiBe design needs to include elimination of impurities in its full-time chemistry stage, in addition to removing anticipated fission products. This is not particularly technically challenging, however it requires sufficient physical footprint, volumes of toxic/hazardous raw materials, waste removal, and potentially loud equipment such as compressors.

    While the choice of lead/fast was legitimately forced on the Russian military based on compactness and acoustic signature constraints. Dock maintenance associated with the Alfa class reactor has a host of problems that would not be present in a FLiBe/thermal design.

    Military necessity can often lead to different choices than financial return from industrial commerce.

    PEACE 😇

    (1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022311515001397

  280. @schnellandine
    Barbarossa says:

    I certainly would prefer Trump to Biden since he was less bad or
     
    There is the mistake I've spent decades trying to get people to understand.

    Most, or at least many, 'American conservatives' will give lip service to the idea that the state is evil. Granted, it's nearly always with the caveat a 'necessary' one. Their entire supposed ethos (e.g. 2nd amendment) is built on distrust of the state. So the first thing they want to do: Put a 'good guy' in charge of something evil and unworthy of trust. The natural expectation? We may finally then trust the state!

    It's unbelievable to me that people fall for this. 'American conservatives' worship T Jefferson. What did he say was essential for liberty? A perpetual spirit of resistance. What better way to preserve resistance than to put knowingly bad guys in charge of the state?

    No, 'American conservatives' prefer to be raped in their sleep.

    Trump presided gleefully over the sharpest decline in the situation for American conservatives since FDR, or perhaps even Lincoln. The average Trump rally attendee wouldn't boo the bastard if he said he wanted to introduce poodle-raping to elementary school classrooms. Like a bad dream. And despite this obvious aspect, I don't recall a single person ever even considering that my contra-intuitive note may be correct. Good people should not want good people presiding over the state. The state should be crushed into minimalist size, and that will never happen when people mistake it for goodness, which is the immediate and inevitable result of selecting state criminals based on perceived goodness.

    Replies: @iffen

    A “starve the beast” approach seems logical at first glance, but I think that in the long run it is detrimental to the nation.

    Look at our social welfare safety net. It is Byzantine, inefficient, arbitrary and inequitable. It is arguably anti-family and anti-work. It works against encouraging initiative in the individual. It lends itself to political rent seeking and politicians using it to buy blocks of votes. It is humiliating to many of the recipients. It is disgusting to see politicians requiring people to line up with their hats in their hands to get a free fan or some other give-away.

    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @iffen


    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net,
     
    We had social safety nets—plural. The state trained nearly everyone to look to it, not local help. It removed scrutiny, shame, and intelligence. That should be opposed.

    I grew up witnessing the tangible superiority of local social help for the poor. I watched it get killed by state worshipers and thieves.

    The prescription is to lie back and enjoy the rape. Bring in the state, the most brutal, unresponsive filth in history!

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @Twinkie
    @iffen


    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.
     
    Let's - for the sake of argument - accept your premise. Let's say "conservatives" (whatever that might mean) agree to a "coherent and rational" social safety net program. What stops the left, at that point, from saying, "Hey, wait a minute, there are still who are not covered by the safety net, there is iniquity, it turns out it's not comprehensive enough, blah, blah, blah" and seek further expansions?

    It's not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes to achieve its agenda, be it about gun-control, socialized medicine, entitlements, etc., because people are highly averse to sudden and dramatic changes.

    Conservatives have been ineffectual against this incremental onslaught and has fought only a delaying action at best (with occasional, small victories such as the welfare-to-workfare reform in the 1990's). Are you now suggesting that they should just surrender wholesale?

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    You actually have to ask this question: reform or outright destruction of the current system? There isn't a one-size-fit-all system. Opening up space for experimentation is good, but once a good balance is stricken people needs to settle down until the inevitable systemic rot.

    The question of what's needed to aid the needy depends on what kind of social security should be there. If it's Randian, personal savings; if there is a strong sense of solidarity or organic gemeinschaften, mutual aid; if labor is highly atomized and pauperized, state aid. You might even have UBI, but it's fiscally & monetarily destructive in the long run if the supposedly automated and centralized industries aren't taxed hard.

    But since Randism is winning out as the "rational" and "liberal" (as in anti-state) ideology, destruction is inevitable.

    Replies: @iffen

  281. I know Oak Ridge ran one for some time, though there were a lot of “unscheduled shutdowns”.

    A number of the original documents from the pilot run are still available: (1)

    It had a huge number of scheduled shutdowns as the ORNL area did not have 24x7x365 staff. The system was thus had a large number of schedule d events based on personnel availability. If anything, this makes the test more convincing. An overwhelming % of industrial failures are related to “startup” and “shutdown” rather than normal operation.

    I do not recall an an unusually high number of “unscheduled shutdows” for a prototype/pilot facility. The impression that I got was the number of “unscheduled” events was relatively low for the type of test facility.

    The exceptionally corrosive environment of Molten Salt Reactors seem to be one of the principle hurdles. Not that those are necessarily insurmountable technical problems, but I’m not a physicist so I’m not going to pretend I can parse it out one way or another.

    Salt water corrosion is a problem due to the water. Running Fluoride based salts as a liquid involves incredibly high temperatures: (2)

    FLiBe is a molten salt made from a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride. It is both a nuclear reactor coolant and solvent for fertile or fissile material. It served both purposes in the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The 2:1 mixture forms a stoichiometric compound, Li₂BeF₄, which has a melting point of 459 °C, a boiling point of 1430 °C, and a density of 1.94 g/cm³. Its volumetric heat capacity is similar to that of water, more than four times that of sodium, and more than 200 times that of helium at typical reactor conditions.

    There are some technical issues. Some of the most frequently mentioned are:

    -1- With a melt temperature at 460, Practical applications will run at 600+. While those numbers seem quite high and thus limit material selection, modern steel can run that high.

    -2- After U233 fission, there needs to be a chemistry based process to extract soluble Strontium out of the liquid salt. The other product is Xenon which leaves as a gas with no additional chemistry, however the reactor geometry does need to allow for trace have creation and extraction.

    -3- A small amount of U233 becomes U232. Even though it is a tiny % it brings with it all sorts of complications.
    ____

    However, in comparison to the massively longer and harder list of problems from solid fuel – water cooled – U235 reactors, LFTR was the better choice with 60’s technology and is a “no brainer” with modern day technology.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://energyfromthorium.com/msrp/

    (2) Normally I resist Wikipedia, but this particular article seems quite good as a starring point. — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    On reactor shutdowns I did find this original document which paints a decent picture of reliability for a prototype system.

    https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4462915

    It's possible that you are correct, but as I said earlier, I'm not really going to try definitively proving or disproving the scientific hurdles.

    IF MSR powered by Thorium are capable of being a great technology that has been sidelined for non-scientific reasons, then an increasingly multi-polar world should bring it to light. China for example seems bullish on them and if they can work we should see increasing proof.

  282. @A123
    @Barbarossa


    can’t understand why his US pullout was actually all that disastrous. I thought it actually went about as smoothly as could be reasonably expected.
     
    A sane plan would have:

    -1- Kept defensible Bagram AFB open
    -2- Evacuated U.S civilians first
    -3- Evacuated other non combatant second
    -4- Fully vetted non combatants (before U.S. entry)
    -5- Recovered expensive military equipment (including brand new helicopters)
    -6- Closed with an orderly military departure from a secure facility

     
    https://ace.mu.nu/archives/suntzu.jpg
     

    Remember the Taliban wanted the U.S. to go and stay gone. They were ready to fully support Trump's original plan to prevent any incidents that might result in a change of mind and/or provide a pretext to stay.

    The Milley/Biden fiasco had no coordination with the locals. And, did everything in the worst manner & sequence possible leading to dead marines and embarrassing airport footage. It is fairly obvious that Gen. Milley intentionally killed American troops in order to:

        • Undermine other possible withdrawals, such as Syria.
        • Try to humiliate Biden into staying in Afghanistan.

    There is of course a big GOP push to manufacture the “Afghan pullout debacle” as midterm election outrage fodder,
     
    Had there been no treason, perhaps the GOP might have manufactured something. However, there is so much actual incompetence from Not-The-President Biden and his illegitimate administration there really is no need to manufacture anything.

    If Gen SJW Milley had not sold out to America's enemies, the GOP technique would have been giving the military 100% credit and Biden 0%. This would have been true and easier than attempting to manufacture a set-up.

    I’m no Trump hater, but he seems a very silly savior to peg ones’ faith on.
     
    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

    Lying about Trump's achievements and creating fiction about his Senate limited appointments is 100% pure, unadulterated, #NeverTrump behaviour. Blaming someone for *not achieving the unachievable* is inherently absurd and can only be explained by malicious intent.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBrandon

    Replies: @songbird, @Barbarossa

    I think you are making it all a bit more complicated than it is.
    The main reason for the somewhat harried final pullout was that the Afghan government and military collapsed in a matter of days, bringing the Taliban into Kabul far ahead of even the most ambitious of predictions. I didn’t even see predictions of such complete collapse from the most doomer of American-skeptic sources.
    If the Afghan Government had held Kabul for only a couple more months it all would have been fairly seamless.

    Sometimes shit just happens, and “The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men Gang aft agley”.

    I’ve heard folks armchair strategize that the US should have done the withdrawal from the more defensible Bagram etc.

    The problem is that Bagram is 38 miles and an hour and a half drive in favorable conditions from Kabul International Airport. All the people are in Kabul, so had the the pullout happened from Bagram, there would have been a chaotic mad scramble to move everyone over Taliban held ground (probably with a high concentration of ISIS K getting in some parting shots) to evacuate. It would have been likely far more of a cluster, with far more deaths. There were sound logistical reasons for using the airfield in the population center.

    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

    Perhaps for you, but I live in a very Trumpy area and the cult of personality is quite incredible.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @Barbarossa


    I think you are making it all a bit more complicated than it is. The main reason for the somewhat harried final pullout was that the Afghan government and military collapsed in a matter of days
     
    You are not looking at the most simple explanation and have the sequence of cause and effect backwards.

    The catastrophic failure intentionally created by Milley instantly & without advance notice deprived the Afghan military of support. If the details of the Milley Fiasco had been announced in advance, everyone would have easily predicted the Milley Debacle leading to immediate Afghan military collapse.

    The problem is that Bagram is 38 miles and an hour and a half drive in favorable conditions from Kabul International Airport. All the people are in Kabul, so had the the pullout happened from Bagram, there would have been a chaotic mad scramble to move everyone over Taliban held ground (probably with a high concentration of ISIS K getting in some parting shots) to evacuate.
     
    It was in the Taliban's enlightened self interest to make the U.S. withdrawal successful. The #1 goal of the Taliban is permanent U.S. departure and that objective would be reached by making the U.S. withdrawal 100% successful. The original Trump plan even included rewards to the Taliban that would have extend after a successful withdrawal.

    With the intelligent Trump Plan, not Milley's intentional Fail Scheme, the most reliable Taliban sub-groups would have been effectively providing "paid" security for U.S. withdrawal convoys. And, they would have been happy (or at least willing) to do so as this aligned with Taliban goals.

    Could ISIS-K attack and fight through Taliban forces to get at Americans? I suppose it possible, but that seems like a stretch on your part.

    Again, Traitor Milley's Scheme intentionally maximized chaos and panic. Forcing the Taliban's hand into advancing rapidly over stressed the command & control capability of that force. In essence small Taliban units with vague orders (at best) were making their own decisions in a haphazard way.
    _____

    Accidents happen, but nothing this bad could be the product of neglect or incompetence.

    Ordering absolutely everything to be done in the worst manner and obviously the wrong order? This lengthy string of multiple choices can only be the product of intentionally designed malice.

    Occam's Razor is that the simplest explanation is the most likely one. Milley's Debacle Was:
        -A- Intentional
        -B- An incredibly statistically improbable string of multiple "worst" decisions, some of which have no rational explanation

    It has to be CASE "A". There is no other even vaguely credible explanation.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBradon
  283. @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    Could it be that ‘libertarianism’ is something of which most UR commenters know nothing—preferring to make it a whipping boy of distraction?

    No they most likely know the history of the libertarian ideology in that it is the destructive will of a lunatic wench by the name of Ayn Rand.

    The Libertarian party platform is quite clear and has been ratified by its members.
    https://www.lp.org/platform

    Libertarians support:
    Open borders with limitless immigration from the third world
    Fully automatic weapons for Black felons
    Legalize all drugs including crack and PCP
    Allow corps to put whatever they want into our food
    Eliminate the EPA and all Federal pollution controls
    Eliminate FDA restrictions for pharmaceutical companies

    Interestingly Ayn Rand did not support open borders for Israel because according to her that's different. All Western countries however are expected to open their borders to the third world.

    Even though this is all public record the Libertarians still follow the cult of this miserable bitch.

    It also came out in her diaries that she admired psychopathic child killer William Hickman.

    She is also on record denying that character traits in individuals can have a genetic basis. There is also a quote where she states that race doesn't exist but if it does then we should pretend it doesn't.

    Race denier, gene denier and total psychopath that made all kinds of amusing exemptions to her own ideology for Israel.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @schnellandine

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss ‘The Libertarian Party’, a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn’t a libertarian.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, ‘The Libertarian Party’ doesn’t adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    I like to talk about Rand, but not as a distraction. Not interested in discussing ‘The Libertarian Party’, except regarding plumbing/sewage.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, ‘fascism’ is bad, and Antifa is ‘anti-fascist’. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can’t argue with that! And hey, ‘The Libertarian Party’ has ‘libertarian’ right there in the name, so what’s to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    The real question is whether one agrees with the prohibition of force initiation. And if one agrees, he should oppose someone operating under that mantle, not use the mantle appropriation to piss on the principle.

    • Replies: @A123
    @schnellandine


    Antifa is ‘anti-fascist’. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can’t argue with that
     
    I always call them the Facist Stormtroopers of Antifa: (1)

    The Fascist History of Antifa

    In discussing why militant socialists would flock together, Delzell offered this explanation: “Fascists and Communists often found themselves appealing to the same kinds of alienated people.” Other historians, like Zeev Sternhell, agreed: explaining that fascism was a “direct result of very specific revision of Marxism.” UC Berkeley political scientist A. James Gregor regards “Fascism as a variant of Marxism.”

    As can be plainly seen, Antifa is not anti-fascist; they are the true successors of fascism, considering their propensity for mob violence and the “fanatical socialism” that Hitler proclaimed in 1941. Moreover, the comrades of Antifa could be described “anarcho-statist militants,” who bully, terrorize, and attack anyone who will not join their crusade. That is because Mussolini was not only an “authoritarian communist’ who believed in a big state, but advocated street violence as an “anarcho-syndicalist.” Modern-day Antifa echo similar demagogic and contrived sentiments. They repeatedly engage in the sort of militarized street theatrics that were fashionable among Fascist and Communist mobs prior to World War II. In fact, Hitler’s Brownshirts emulated the Italian Blackshirts, attacking and violently disrupting other political groups, such as conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) in the early 1930s, knocking down, kicking down and throwing “stink bombs and tear gas” during violent scuffles. Astonishingly, the Antifa shock-troop rioters continue to behave like Fascists in order to oppose fascism, which illustrates their complete ignorance of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.
     
    The fact that the fascists of Antifa wield the very thing they decry is incredibly SJW/Woke. Not only is it rooted in hypocrisy. The level of indoctrination and mental compartmentalization is so high they have dogmatically eradicated the opportunity for rational self examination.

    They really are the new Blackshirts. As much as I want PEACE, force may be the *only* option to dissuade The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lk-samuels/the-fascist-history-of-antifa/
    , @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss ‘The Libertarian Party’, a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn’t a libertarian.

    A running joke? Tens of thousands of libertarians have voted to ratify the platform. They have chosen to follow the teachings of Rand which includes open borders, automatic weapons for felons and legal crack. If you do not identify with mainstream libertarians then describe yourself as something else.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, ‘The Libertarian Party’ doesn’t adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    How so? The Libertarian party supports a passive military.
    https://www.lp.org/platform/

    Ayn Rand was against the use of government force in theory but supported military action against Palestinians. She described the situation as being similar to Whites dealing with American Indians. Well wouldn't Palestinians be individuals that also deserve freedom from government? Not according to Rand. That's different you see. Israel gets its own collectivist pass. So basically Whites can't act as a group but Israeli Jews can.

    Full of sh-t as always.

    Can provide sources if you would like. Rand even made an ass of herself on Donahue talking about this.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, ‘fascism’ is bad, and Antifa is ‘anti-fascist’. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can’t argue with that! And hey, ‘The Libertarian Party’ has ‘libertarian’ right there in the name, so what’s to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    If thousands of self-identified Antifa members voted on a party platform then yes that becomes the Antifa platform. Someone that doesn't like it is free to start their own movement.

    Furthermore the libertarian publications are in line with the party. So it looks like you are outside popular opinion.

    Most people lose interest in the libertarian ideology when they find out what these nutcases actually support. It all started with Rand since the platform is a mirror image of what she preached.

    The best thing to do with Atlas Shrugged is throw it in the garbage. Libertarianism is just a bizarro hybrid of race denial and market worship. You're supposed to open your borders to the third world and everything will somehow work out according to Rand. But not Israel, they can have borders.

    Replies: @schnellandine

  284. @iffen
    @schnellandine

    A “starve the beast” approach seems logical at first glance, but I think that in the long run it is detrimental to the nation.

    Look at our social welfare safety net. It is Byzantine, inefficient, arbitrary and inequitable. It is arguably anti-family and anti-work. It works against encouraging initiative in the individual. It lends itself to political rent seeking and politicians using it to buy blocks of votes. It is humiliating to many of the recipients. It is disgusting to see politicians requiring people to line up with their hats in their hands to get a free fan or some other give-away.

    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    Replies: @schnellandine, @Twinkie, @Yellowface Anon

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net,

    We had social safety nets—plural. The state trained nearly everyone to look to it, not local help. It removed scrutiny, shame, and intelligence. That should be opposed.

    I grew up witnessing the tangible superiority of local social help for the poor. I watched it get killed by state worshipers and thieves.

    The prescription is to lie back and enjoy the rape. Bring in the state, the most brutal, unresponsive filth in history!

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state. And once you've replaced genuinely organic social institutions with those of atomized "freedom of association", they are hollowed out and in eternal dissolution. You might often get things right because they are organic, but you can also get things wrong because collectivism is a taboo to you.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven't recovered from it.

    Replies: @Beckow, @schnellandine, @John Johnson

  285. @Vishnugupta
    @A123

    The problem of long term corrosion of the piping by Fluoride salts has never been solved.

    There have been many labs post oak ridge that tried to run fluorid salt for long periods in closed loops to determine if new materials can withstand corrosion, none have succeeded.Instead we have computer simulations which supposedly predict it will work.

    This is the reason the USSR rejected such a reactor for the Alfa class submarine when they were in the market for a clean sheet super reactor for their titanium hulled wonder submarine. Choosing the Lead cooled fast reactor design instead.

    Replies: @A123

    The problem of long term corrosion of the piping by Fluoride salts has never been solved.

    This is the reason the USSR rejected such a reactor for the Alfa class submarine when they were in the market for a clean sheet super reactor for their titanium hulled wonder submarine. Choosing the Lead cooled fast reactor design instead.

    There really is no industrial issue with clean FLiBe corrosion. (1)

    Since corrosion in molten fluoride salts is impurity driven, the salts were subjected to re-purification by the hydrofluorination process prior to this research.

    Based on the corrosion tests, the corrosion attack depth in FLiBe salt was predicted as 17.1 μm/year and 31.2 μm/year for 316 stainless steel tested in 316 stainless steel and in graphite capsules respectively. It is in an acceptable range compared to the Hastelloy-N corrosion in the Molten Salt Reactor Experiment (MSRE) fuel salt.

    Thus, a successful FLiBe design needs to include elimination of impurities in its full-time chemistry stage, in addition to removing anticipated fission products. This is not particularly technically challenging, however it requires sufficient physical footprint, volumes of toxic/hazardous raw materials, waste removal, and potentially loud equipment such as compressors.

    While the choice of lead/fast was legitimately forced on the Russian military based on compactness and acoustic signature constraints. Dock maintenance associated with the Alfa class reactor has a host of problems that would not be present in a FLiBe/thermal design.

    Military necessity can often lead to different choices than financial return from industrial commerce.

    PEACE 😇

    (1) https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0022311515001397

  286. @iffen
    @schnellandine

    A “starve the beast” approach seems logical at first glance, but I think that in the long run it is detrimental to the nation.

    Look at our social welfare safety net. It is Byzantine, inefficient, arbitrary and inequitable. It is arguably anti-family and anti-work. It works against encouraging initiative in the individual. It lends itself to political rent seeking and politicians using it to buy blocks of votes. It is humiliating to many of the recipients. It is disgusting to see politicians requiring people to line up with their hats in their hands to get a free fan or some other give-away.

    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    Replies: @schnellandine, @Twinkie, @Yellowface Anon

    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    Let’s – for the sake of argument – accept your premise. Let’s say “conservatives” (whatever that might mean) agree to a “coherent and rational” social safety net program. What stops the left, at that point, from saying, “Hey, wait a minute, there are still who are not covered by the safety net, there is iniquity, it turns out it’s not comprehensive enough, blah, blah, blah” and seek further expansions?

    It’s not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes to achieve its agenda, be it about gun-control, socialized medicine, entitlements, etc., because people are highly averse to sudden and dramatic changes.

    Conservatives have been ineffectual against this incremental onslaught and has fought only a delaying action at best (with occasional, small victories such as the welfare-to-workfare reform in the 1990’s). Are you now suggesting that they should just surrender wholesale?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Twinkie



    @iffen
    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.
     
    It’s not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes
     
    It sounds like #NeverTrump @iffen is now advocating the ultimate Yang-ian Left/Libertarian dream, the Basic Income Guarantee [BIG]. Replacing everything with "only one program" has a superficial appeal to naive GOP(e) acolytes.

    Alas, it would actually be a massive gift to Leftist, anti-worker incrementalism. As soon as BIG was permanently locked in by #NeverTrump GOP(e) surrender, the SJW/Woke would immediately renounce the "only one program" rule. Incremental Left wealth transfer from workers to non-workers would inevitably surge as new programs would be piled on top of a #NeverTrump, @iffen style, surrender & acceptance of BIG.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    , @iffen
    @Twinkie

    Fuck you and the horse that you rode in on. You can't have it both ways with me Twinkie, no matter what you write.

    Replies: @Twinkie

  287. Mr. Karlin often refers to North Korea as “Best Korea” (ironically, I assume). For some reason that came to my mind when I saw this:

  288. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    I think you are making it all a bit more complicated than it is.
    The main reason for the somewhat harried final pullout was that the Afghan government and military collapsed in a matter of days, bringing the Taliban into Kabul far ahead of even the most ambitious of predictions. I didn't even see predictions of such complete collapse from the most doomer of American-skeptic sources.
    If the Afghan Government had held Kabul for only a couple more months it all would have been fairly seamless.

    Sometimes shit just happens, and "The best laid schemes o' Mice an' Men Gang aft agley".

    I've heard folks armchair strategize that the US should have done the withdrawal from the more defensible Bagram etc.

    The problem is that Bagram is 38 miles and an hour and a half drive in favorable conditions from Kabul International Airport. All the people are in Kabul, so had the the pullout happened from Bagram, there would have been a chaotic mad scramble to move everyone over Taliban held ground (probably with a high concentration of ISIS K getting in some parting shots) to evacuate. It would have been likely far more of a cluster, with far more deaths. There were sound logistical reasons for using the airfield in the population center.


    The faith belongs with MAGA which is much larger than just Trump.

     

    Perhaps for you, but I live in a very Trumpy area and the cult of personality is quite incredible.

    Replies: @A123

    I think you are making it all a bit more complicated than it is. The main reason for the somewhat harried final pullout was that the Afghan government and military collapsed in a matter of days

    You are not looking at the most simple explanation and have the sequence of cause and effect backwards.

    The catastrophic failure intentionally created by Milley instantly & without advance notice deprived the Afghan military of support. If the details of the Milley Fiasco had been announced in advance, everyone would have easily predicted the Milley Debacle leading to immediate Afghan military collapse.

    The problem is that Bagram is 38 miles and an hour and a half drive in favorable conditions from Kabul International Airport. All the people are in Kabul, so had the the pullout happened from Bagram, there would have been a chaotic mad scramble to move everyone over Taliban held ground (probably with a high concentration of ISIS K getting in some parting shots) to evacuate.

    It was in the Taliban’s enlightened self interest to make the U.S. withdrawal successful. The #1 goal of the Taliban is permanent U.S. departure and that objective would be reached by making the U.S. withdrawal 100% successful. The original Trump plan even included rewards to the Taliban that would have extend after a successful withdrawal.

    With the intelligent Trump Plan, not Milley’s intentional Fail Scheme, the most reliable Taliban sub-groups would have been effectively providing “paid” security for U.S. withdrawal convoys. And, they would have been happy (or at least willing) to do so as this aligned with Taliban goals.

    Could ISIS-K attack and fight through Taliban forces to get at Americans? I suppose it possible, but that seems like a stretch on your part.

    Again, Traitor Milley’s Scheme intentionally maximized chaos and panic. Forcing the Taliban’s hand into advancing rapidly over stressed the command & control capability of that force. In essence small Taliban units with vague orders (at best) were making their own decisions in a haphazard way.
    _____

    Accidents happen, but nothing this bad could be the product of neglect or incompetence.

    Ordering absolutely everything to be done in the worst manner and obviously the wrong order? This lengthy string of multiple choices can only be the product of intentionally designed malice.

    Occam’s Razor is that the simplest explanation is the most likely one. Milley’s Debacle Was:
        -A- Intentional
        -B- An incredibly statistically improbable string of multiple “worst” decisions, some of which have no rational explanation

    It has to be CASE “A”. There is no other even vaguely credible explanation.

    PEACE 😇

    #LetsGoBradon

  289. @A123

    I know Oak Ridge ran one for some time, though there were a lot of “unscheduled shutdowns”.
     
    A number of the original documents from the pilot run are still available: (1)

    It had a huge number of scheduled shutdowns as the ORNL area did not have 24x7x365 staff. The system was thus had a large number of schedule d events based on personnel availability. If anything, this makes the test more convincing. An overwhelming % of industrial failures are related to "startup" and "shutdown" rather than normal operation.

    I do not recall an an unusually high number of "unscheduled shutdows" for a prototype/pilot facility. The impression that I got was the number of "unscheduled" events was relatively low for the type of test facility.

    The exceptionally corrosive environment of Molten Salt Reactors seem to be one of the principle hurdles. Not that those are necessarily insurmountable technical problems, but I’m not a physicist so I’m not going to pretend I can parse it out one way or another.
     
    Salt water corrosion is a problem due to the water. Running Fluoride based salts as a liquid involves incredibly high temperatures: (2)

    FLiBe is a molten salt made from a mixture of lithium fluoride and beryllium fluoride. It is both a nuclear reactor coolant and solvent for fertile or fissile material. It served both purposes in the Molten-Salt Reactor Experiment at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The 2:1 mixture forms a stoichiometric compound, Li₂BeF₄, which has a melting point of 459 °C, a boiling point of 1430 °C, and a density of 1.94 g/cm³. Its volumetric heat capacity is similar to that of water, more than four times that of sodium, and more than 200 times that of helium at typical reactor conditions.
     
    There are some technical issues. Some of the most frequently mentioned are:

    -1- With a melt temperature at 460, Practical applications will run at 600+. While those numbers seem quite high and thus limit material selection, modern steel can run that high.

    -2- After U233 fission, there needs to be a chemistry based process to extract soluble Strontium out of the liquid salt. The other product is Xenon which leaves as a gas with no additional chemistry, however the reactor geometry does need to allow for trace have creation and extraction.

    -3- A small amount of U233 becomes U232. Even though it is a tiny % it brings with it all sorts of complications.
    ____

    However, in comparison to the massively longer and harder list of problems from solid fuel - water cooled - U235 reactors, LFTR was the better choice with 60's technology and is a "no brainer" with modern day technology.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://energyfromthorium.com/msrp/

    (2) Normally I resist Wikipedia, but this particular article seems quite good as a starring point. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FLiBe

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    On reactor shutdowns I did find this original document which paints a decent picture of reliability for a prototype system.

    https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/4462915

    It’s possible that you are correct, but as I said earlier, I’m not really going to try definitively proving or disproving the scientific hurdles.

    IF MSR powered by Thorium are capable of being a great technology that has been sidelined for non-scientific reasons, then an increasingly multi-polar world should bring it to light. China for example seems bullish on them and if they can work we should see increasing proof.

  290. @iffen
    @schnellandine

    A “starve the beast” approach seems logical at first glance, but I think that in the long run it is detrimental to the nation.

    Look at our social welfare safety net. It is Byzantine, inefficient, arbitrary and inequitable. It is arguably anti-family and anti-work. It works against encouraging initiative in the individual. It lends itself to political rent seeking and politicians using it to buy blocks of votes. It is humiliating to many of the recipients. It is disgusting to see politicians requiring people to line up with their hats in their hands to get a free fan or some other give-away.

    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    Replies: @schnellandine, @Twinkie, @Yellowface Anon

    You actually have to ask this question: reform or outright destruction of the current system? There isn’t a one-size-fit-all system. Opening up space for experimentation is good, but once a good balance is stricken people needs to settle down until the inevitable systemic rot.

    The question of what’s needed to aid the needy depends on what kind of social security should be there. If it’s Randian, personal savings; if there is a strong sense of solidarity or organic gemeinschaften, mutual aid; if labor is highly atomized and pauperized, state aid. You might even have UBI, but it’s fiscally & monetarily destructive in the long run if the supposedly automated and centralized industries aren’t taxed hard.

    But since Randism is winning out as the “rational” and “liberal” (as in anti-state) ideology, destruction is inevitable.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    to aid the needy depends

    Yes, prior values and political beliefs will control this.

    I'm just trying to see it in a pragmatic way. The convoluted piecemeal "system" that we have in the U. S. needs to be replaced with one coherent plan. The split between communitarians and the Randians, as you call them, has produced a Frankenstein.

    automated and centralized industries aren’t taxed hard.

    As to the U. S., I think that it is very difficult to effectively tax businesses or industries. They just pass the taxes through to the consumers. Also, I buy the idea that we shouldn't crimp businesses with taxes unless we are trying to discourage and shrink that industry or business.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  291. @Twinkie
    @iffen


    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.
     
    Let's - for the sake of argument - accept your premise. Let's say "conservatives" (whatever that might mean) agree to a "coherent and rational" social safety net program. What stops the left, at that point, from saying, "Hey, wait a minute, there are still who are not covered by the safety net, there is iniquity, it turns out it's not comprehensive enough, blah, blah, blah" and seek further expansions?

    It's not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes to achieve its agenda, be it about gun-control, socialized medicine, entitlements, etc., because people are highly averse to sudden and dramatic changes.

    Conservatives have been ineffectual against this incremental onslaught and has fought only a delaying action at best (with occasional, small victories such as the welfare-to-workfare reform in the 1990's). Are you now suggesting that they should just surrender wholesale?

    Replies: @A123, @iffen


    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.

    It’s not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes

    It sounds like #NeverTrump is now advocating the ultimate Yang-ian Left/Libertarian dream, the Basic Income Guarantee [BIG]. Replacing everything with “only one program” has a superficial appeal to naive GOP(e) acolytes.

    Alas, it would actually be a massive gift to Leftist, anti-worker incrementalism. As soon as BIG was permanently locked in by #NeverTrump GOP(e) surrender, the SJW/Woke would immediately renounce the “only one program” rule. Incremental Left wealth transfer from workers to non-workers would inevitably surge as new programs would be piled on top of a #NeverTrump, style, surrender & acceptance of BIG.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    You stick with your disgusting LetsGoBrandon. We'll see how many votes that gets you. Less than half of those ignorant rednecks bother to vote.

    Replies: @songbird

  292. @schnellandine
    @iffen


    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net,
     
    We had social safety nets—plural. The state trained nearly everyone to look to it, not local help. It removed scrutiny, shame, and intelligence. That should be opposed.

    I grew up witnessing the tangible superiority of local social help for the poor. I watched it get killed by state worshipers and thieves.

    The prescription is to lie back and enjoy the rape. Bring in the state, the most brutal, unresponsive filth in history!

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state. And once you’ve replaced genuinely organic social institutions with those of atomized “freedom of association”, they are hollowed out and in eternal dissolution. You might often get things right because they are organic, but you can also get things wrong because collectivism is a taboo to you.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.

    • Agree: Barbarossa
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Yellowface Anon


    ...Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease
     
    Right. Libertarians are basically liberals who are also assh.oles...
    , @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.
     
    LOL. Because you were too stupid to understand the sole principle of liberty, everything with the name in it must be damned. Right.

    Confess. You were a leftist masquerading as a 'libertarian', and it couldn't have been your fault. It was those damned Randians, Rothbardians, and everyone but yourself. The two major kryptoniters re liberty are boomers and millennials, for opposed reasons. Each is a disgrace.

    Not a coincidence that in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited. Of course, your entry (mediation) was laughable and informative.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    , @John Johnson
    @Yellowface Anon

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state.

    Yes and libertarians still can't explain how 'free market' Haiti is dirt poor compared to 'socialist' Sweden.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.

    So you admit you are flawed and were taken in by libertarians.

    Instead of continuing to defend a system where you were heavily invested you put your ego aside and faced the truth of the situation even if it meant undermining your confidence.

    Spit upon any man that stands in your way. You are a leader in this time of weakness.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  293. @Coconuts
    @songbird

    The UK and France are quite interesting examples because AFAIK they were among the first nation states to come into being, France could even be the prototype example of them. They still have articulate and informed guys like Eric Zemmour in public life (he maintains a kind of semi-mystical belief in the post 1648 nation state of France), it makes me think that it will probably be in France that the potential disintegration of this model due to high levels of immigration is first faced consciously.

    I have seen quite reasonable but low key defences of it in relation to the UK, specifically in respect of England the situation is not good though. In 2017 you could see estimates that close to 25% of the population of England was already ethnic minority or foreign born, the woke stuff washing over from the US is like a steroidal highly political version of multi-culturalism which encourages people to identify emotionally with the heritage of their colonised ancestors in what are now other independent nations. I don't see any British figures like Zemmour, or any kind of equivalent tradition of mysticism around the concept of the British state either.

    If England can't be rescued, it might be possible with Scotland and Ireland still. I found out that my mother's maiden name in Irish means 'snow white', this is quite interesting, it is like having a certain level of political incorrectness in your name itself.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    Scotland and Northern Ireland still have a fair amount of asabiyya. What they don’t have is much economic heft. Most of that was in England.

    Since gaining their long-sought independence from the UK, Ireland has been busy giving away its hard-won sovereignty as fast as it can. Ireland may now be more pozzed than even England. Ireland’s post-Christian woke Catholicism has proved an especial liability in this regard.

    Obviously, to the extent that British economic heft in England is portable, it can decamp to elsewhere. And since Britain hardly manufactures stuff anymore, much of what’s left is portable. There’s no reason that the City of London financial hub actually needs to be in London, for instance. OTOH, if things have already reached the stage of open ethnic warfare, ghey stuff like trading derivatives ain’t gonna matter much anymore. Britain no longer even manufactures its own battle rifle, but imports Belgian FN’s for its military. The civilian population is utterly disarmed, even of knives nowadays.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @Almost Missouri


    The civilian population is utterly disarmed, even of knives nowadays.
     
    Yeah. There is an actual unironic push to ban pointy knives and clamp down sharply on all knives in the UK.

    https://reason.com/2018/04/24/londoners-embrace-knife-control/

    https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

    No such thing as the slippery slope or progressive stupidification of the populace, no sir!

    Replies: @songbird

  294. @Almost Missouri
    @Coconuts

    Scotland and Northern Ireland still have a fair amount of asabiyya. What they don't have is much economic heft. Most of that was in England.

    Since gaining their long-sought independence from the UK, Ireland has been busy giving away its hard-won sovereignty as fast as it can. Ireland may now be more pozzed than even England. Ireland's post-Christian woke Catholicism has proved an especial liability in this regard.

    Obviously, to the extent that British economic heft in England is portable, it can decamp to elsewhere. And since Britain hardly manufactures stuff anymore, much of what's left is portable. There's no reason that the City of London financial hub actually needs to be in London, for instance. OTOH, if things have already reached the stage of open ethnic warfare, ghey stuff like trading derivatives ain't gonna matter much anymore. Britain no longer even manufactures its own battle rifle, but imports Belgian FN's for its military. The civilian population is utterly disarmed, even of knives nowadays.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    The civilian population is utterly disarmed, even of knives nowadays.

    Yeah. There is an actual unironic push to ban pointy knives and clamp down sharply on all knives in the UK.

    https://reason.com/2018/04/24/londoners-embrace-knife-control/

    https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

    No such thing as the slippery slope or progressive stupidification of the populace, no sir!

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Barbarossa

    Forget if I mentioned this idea before or not, but I believe it would be of extreme benefit to the native British if some law were passed that mandated that all blacks need to carry a butcher knife or an assegai, while in public.

  295. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.
     
    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though. Can't ignore them in the real world.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.
     
    If you look at my favorite plot - Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that's exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that's sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back. There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won't be allowed to happen again.

    I’m assuming you’re making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is … more fiat currency.
     
    Japan, and Germany, and even Mexico have swap lines with Federal Reserve. Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a $billion and not even notice. It wouldn't be unusual. Fed supports other countries when it feels like it. It pumped like quarter $trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.

    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?
     
    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me. But market clearly trusts government more than private sector. Or 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%, below private sector rate. We probably won't completely abolish private sector, but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.


    So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.
     
    We can't, because we don't want another Great Depression.

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!
     
    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe. Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans, they would be slaves forever. At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.


    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get …
     
    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow, @Almost Missouri

    …there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    Are we happy yet? This is a nirvana, a true communism with everyone given what they need and from everyone based on what they can give. (Actually, the central state stepped in to give virtual money because “they can“, but the result is about the same.)

    Where did the comrades go wrong? They were cheap, small-minded, provincial bastards who wouldn’t just create money, raise salaries and prices, let people feel rich by giving them an endless circle of virtual wealth. They had it upside down: don’t abolish money, but make it ubiquitous and in effect “free”. Because unpaid debts are free money.

    Seriously, where is this going? How long can the everything-bubble, the bubble-of-all-bubbles, go on? The “real stuff” is still out there, but we are told that the advertising giant Facebook is worth 10 times more than firms that produce actual stuff. The pretty picture is worth more than a real girl. A long-legged dumbo flashing Putin is worth more than all the gas that Europe is missing. But they say that it will be ok, they will build wind-mills and tweet about virtues…and Greta discovers love…

    And every now and then it all falls apart…

  296. @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state. And once you've replaced genuinely organic social institutions with those of atomized "freedom of association", they are hollowed out and in eternal dissolution. You might often get things right because they are organic, but you can also get things wrong because collectivism is a taboo to you.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven't recovered from it.

    Replies: @Beckow, @schnellandine, @John Johnson

    …Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease

    Right. Libertarians are basically liberals who are also assh.oles…

  297. @A123
    @sudden death

    As you lack trust in me here is an objective source:

    https://fee.org/articles/vaccination-rates-not-linked-to-lower-covid-rates-epidemiology-paper-finds/

    Trusting anything Fake Stream Media [FSM] outlets, like NBC, provide is inherently very risky. The fascist Lügenpresse in the U.S. Exists for a single purpose -- SJW MegaCorporation deception.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @sudden death

    It is not exactly news, but yes, sadly, all the vaccines we have got now are non sterilizing, i.e. leaky ones, which do not prevent transmision in full, but from your own linked article:

    There is widespread agreement among scientists that COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at reducing the risk of developing severe COVID symptoms, which can result in hospitalization and death.

    As we were talking about voter population segment expiry, spread itself matters way less much now, than vax rates, especially with much more infectious and virulent Delta strain being dominant now, e.g. spread remains relatively high even in high vaxed UK, but deaths are subsided compared with previous waves prior mass vax campaign, meanwhile in low vaxed RF both spread&deaths are beating previous records.

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @sudden death

    Also in nearly fully vaxed Portugal, both spread and deaths remain low:

    https://i.redd.it/mv3bq0l6n3l71.png

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @sudden death

    It's "problematic" when the focus of policy-makers are (deliberately) on "cases" that are buoyed by continued transmission and never quite return to the Old Normal. But floomers gonna be floomer.

  298. @sudden death
    @A123

    It is not exactly news, but yes, sadly, all the vaccines we have got now are non sterilizing, i.e. leaky ones, which do not prevent transmision in full, but from your own linked article:


    There is widespread agreement among scientists that COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at reducing the risk of developing severe COVID symptoms, which can result in hospitalization and death.
     
    As we were talking about voter population segment expiry, spread itself matters way less much now, than vax rates, especially with much more infectious and virulent Delta strain being dominant now, e.g. spread remains relatively high even in high vaxed UK, but deaths are subsided compared with previous waves prior mass vax campaign, meanwhile in low vaxed RF both spread&deaths are beating previous records.

    Replies: @sudden death, @Yellowface Anon

    Also in nearly fully vaxed Portugal, both spread and deaths remain low:

  299. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.
     
    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though. Can't ignore them in the real world.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.
     
    If you look at my favorite plot - Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that's exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that's sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back. There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won't be allowed to happen again.

    I’m assuming you’re making a joke here. Otherwise I have to conclude that your proposed remedy for the poster child of hyperinflation is … more fiat currency.
     
    Japan, and Germany, and even Mexico have swap lines with Federal Reserve. Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a $billion and not even notice. It wouldn't be unusual. Fed supports other countries when it feels like it. It pumped like quarter $trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.

    This sounds like you are serious. But if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?
     
    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me. But market clearly trusts government more than private sector. Or 30 year Treasury wouldn't trade at 2%, below private sector rate. We probably won't completely abolish private sector, but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.


    So yet another reason to slow the insane money printing.
     
    We can't, because we don't want another Great Depression.

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!
     
    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe. Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans, they would be slaves forever. At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.


    When libertarians and socialists unite, you get …
     
    Modern economy. State is not going away no matter how much people wish for it. Likewise, full on nationalization is not desirable either. So there will be a happy medium in there somewhere.

    Replies: @A123, @Beckow, @Almost Missouri

    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.

    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive

    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets.

    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.

    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though.

    Eh, the Lords of Fiat own—or at least spoil—the market.

    Ever since 2008 when they made clear that they will conjure as much fake fiat cash as is necessary to get the “market” result they want, the “market” has been overtly irrelevant to them.

    The market can still matter for private sector participants, however, so long as it is not a matter of particular concern to the LoF.

    I think the opportunities are infinite as well.

    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.

    If you look at my favorite plot – Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that’s exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that’s sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back.

    “Total Credit Outstanding” ≠ “the next person you meet”. If opportunities really were infinite, you would be indifferent about to whom you lend since infinite opportunity means all opportunities are effectively equal.

    That said, it’s true that not all of that lending will be paid back, and even that some of it was never meant to be paid back. But, the Lords of Fiat never cared about being paid back since they can always fiat as much new cash as they want. Ain’t it great owning the money press? For them, debt means something different and has different purposes. It’s like doing aerodynamics above the sound barrier, or mathematics within imaginary numbers: a lot of the standard assumptions don’t apply.

    There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won’t be allowed to happen again.

    2008 wasn’t the exception; it was the rule: no LoF-adverse result will be allowed in the market. (Ironically, I think we actually mean the same thing here.)

    Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a \$billion and not even notice.

    Zimbabwe is economically tiny. US and Japan are economically huge. So yes, the Fed could flick Zimbabwe’s financial life support on or off at whim without feeling it.

    Fed supports other countries when it feels like it.

    Yep. It’s pretty sweet having almost unlimited cash.

    It pumped like quarter \$trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.

    Indeed it would. Also, trading fake Fed fiat money for Zimbabwe’s copious precious metals would be a good trade … for the Fed.

    if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?

    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me.

    The market is private sector. Did the private sector decide to abolish itself?

    Admittedly, there is a large banking cartel that LARPs as “private sector” while acting as handmaid to the Fed, so inattentive observers often mistake its labors on behalf of the Lords of Fiat for “private sector” activity. And, as described above, financial markets themselves are substantially corrupted by the infinite fiat intervention put option.

    But market clearly trusts government more than private sector.

    More correct restatement: The government increasingly owns the [financial] market more than the private sector does.

    Or 30 year Treasury wouldn’t trade at 2%, below private sector rate.

    See above.

    We probably won’t completely abolish private sector,

    Not for lack of trying though. BTW, who is “we”, Kimosabe?

    but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.

    Yeah, all the business owners I know just can’t wait to give their hard-earned money to the Feds. /s

    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!

    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe.

    It wasn’t Mugabe digging ore out of the ground. He just wrangled the ones who did, and arranged (i.e., stole) the land rights. But then that’s what he was getting paid for as “an important participant in the economy”.

    Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans,

    They’ve already long been destroyed by their ZANU overlords, the only question was how much ZANU would pass up the chain.

    they would be slaves forever.

    Already are slaves forever … to ZANU.

    At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.

    Since Zimbabwe’s foreign debt was always only payable in foreign currency and is still unabrogated, I don’t know where you get the idea that hyperinflating the Zimbabwe Dollar out of existence reduced their debt at all, never mind by 30%. But even if Zimbabwe’s debt were reduced by 100%, it would make no difference to the average Zimbabwean, who would still be just as much under the thumb of his local ZANU master as before.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Eh, the Lords of Fiat own—or at least spoil—the market.

    Ever since 2008 when they made clear that they will conjure as much fake fiat cash as is necessary to get the “market” result they want, the “market” has been overtly irrelevant to them.

    The market can still matter for private sector participants, however, so long as it is not a matter of particular concern to the LoF.
     

    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can't get enough. So it's all good be spends the same.
    “Total Credit Outstanding” ≠ “the next person you meet”. If opportunities really were infinite, you would be indifferent about to whom you lend since infinite opportunity means all opportunities are effectively equal.
     
    This is exactly what's happening. Junk bond markets trade like at 4%. Higher than government's 2%, but not by much. You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a $billion dollars. And used toilet paper may be too generous of an example compared to what passes for collateral in the financial world. But it doesn't matter as long as TCMDO is rising.
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

    The market is private sector. Did the private sector decide to abolish itself?
     
    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.

    Admittedly, there is a large banking cartel that LARPs as “private sector” while acting as handmaid to the Fed, so inattentive observers often mistake its labors on behalf of the Lords of Fiat for “private sector” activity. And, as described above, financial markets themselves are substantially corrupted by the infinite fiat intervention put option.
     
    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.

    More correct restatement: The government increasingly owns the [financial] market more than the private sector does.
     
    Not really. I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held. Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire. And that's a good thing.

    Not for lack of trying though. BTW, who is “we”, Kimosabe?
     
    Political forces in society, in this case.

    It wasn’t Mugabe digging ore out of the ground. He just wrangled the ones who did, and arranged (i.e., stole) the land rights. But then that’s what he was getting paid for as “an important participant in the economy”.
     
    There is this very important cartoon on YouTube that you need to watch called "Rules for Rulers". It's a good primer for how those things really work. Basically, Mugabe doesn't rule alone, he has his clan that backs him and clearly that clan is numerous and powerful or Mugabe wouldn't be in power. Whether you like it or not, they clearly are important participants in Zimbabwe economy even if all they do is steal stuff. They can do stupid things like steal land rights, but that's their business, irrelevant to the debt to GDP ratio mechanics.


    Already are slaves forever … to ZANU
     
    Local problems require local solutions.

    Look, its a very simple question and answer.

    Question: "Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the "international investment community", or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same "community"?

    The correct answer is b) here. Its not negotiable. That doesn't mean that stealing land rights, plunging your economy in a decade long recession, resulting in international debt to GDP ratio of 250% is a good idea. But once stupid things are done, option b) is still the right answer. And if hyperinflation gets you there faster, then that's the right move.

    Since Zimbabwe’s foreign debt was always only payable in foreign currency and is still unabrogated, I don’t know where you get the idea that hyperinflating the Zimbabwe Dollar out of existence reduced their debt at all, never mind by 30%. But even if Zimbabwe’s debt were reduced by 100%, it would make no difference to the average Zimbabwean, who would still be just as much under the thumb of his local ZANU master as before.
     
    Because hyperinflation works itself into the economy via foreign exchange markets, which are ruled by our good friends, George Soros etc.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever. This devalues local currency, and for any country dependent on imports (and all small countries are) this causes prices to rise. In Zimbabwe' case, their government used the same mechanism to pay off IMF loan in 2007 or so. Needless to say, IMF was not amused. But after almost a decade of economic depression, enough is enough. Zimbabwe made the right call there.

    Funny enough, most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government. Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world), but initial rate shock throttled private sector banks for a couple of years.

    Same deal with Argentina etc - Argentina has lower Debt to GDP than US but they have much weaker banking cartel. Russia had the same problem, high inflation despite low debt, until Nabiulina cartelized the sector and made them obey the state, so now Russian inflation is within 2% of US which is unheard of.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  300. @schnellandine
    @John Johnson

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss 'The Libertarian Party', a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn't a libertarian.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, 'The Libertarian Party' doesn't adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    I like to talk about Rand, but not as a distraction. Not interested in discussing 'The Libertarian Party', except regarding plumbing/sewage.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, 'fascism' is bad, and Antifa is 'anti-fascist'. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can't argue with that! And hey, 'The Libertarian Party' has 'libertarian' right there in the name, so what's to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    The real question is whether one agrees with the prohibition of force initiation. And if one agrees, he should oppose someone operating under that mantle, not use the mantle appropriation to piss on the principle.

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    Antifa is ‘anti-fascist’. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can’t argue with that

    I always call them the Facist Stormtroopers of Antifa: (1)

    The Fascist History of Antifa

    In discussing why militant socialists would flock together, Delzell offered this explanation: “Fascists and Communists often found themselves appealing to the same kinds of alienated people.” Other historians, like Zeev Sternhell, agreed: explaining that fascism was a “direct result of very specific revision of Marxism.” UC Berkeley political scientist A. James Gregor regards “Fascism as a variant of Marxism.”

    As can be plainly seen, Antifa is not anti-fascist; they are the true successors of fascism, considering their propensity for mob violence and the “fanatical socialism” that Hitler proclaimed in 1941. Moreover, the comrades of Antifa could be described “anarcho-statist militants,” who bully, terrorize, and attack anyone who will not join their crusade. That is because Mussolini was not only an “authoritarian communist’ who believed in a big state, but advocated street violence as an “anarcho-syndicalist.” Modern-day Antifa echo similar demagogic and contrived sentiments. They repeatedly engage in the sort of militarized street theatrics that were fashionable among Fascist and Communist mobs prior to World War II. In fact, Hitler’s Brownshirts emulated the Italian Blackshirts, attacking and violently disrupting other political groups, such as conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) in the early 1930s, knocking down, kicking down and throwing “stink bombs and tear gas” during violent scuffles. Astonishingly, the Antifa shock-troop rioters continue to behave like Fascists in order to oppose fascism, which illustrates their complete ignorance of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism.

    The fact that the fascists of Antifa wield the very thing they decry is incredibly SJW/Woke. Not only is it rooted in hypocrisy. The level of indoctrination and mental compartmentalization is so high they have dogmatically eradicated the opportunity for rational self examination.

    They really are the new Blackshirts. As much as I want PEACE, force may be the *only* option to dissuade The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lk-samuels/the-fascist-history-of-antifa/

  301. @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state. And once you've replaced genuinely organic social institutions with those of atomized "freedom of association", they are hollowed out and in eternal dissolution. You might often get things right because they are organic, but you can also get things wrong because collectivism is a taboo to you.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven't recovered from it.

    Replies: @Beckow, @schnellandine, @John Johnson

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.

    LOL. Because you were too stupid to understand the sole principle of liberty, everything with the name in it must be damned. Right.

    Confess. You were a leftist masquerading as a ‘libertarian’, and it couldn’t have been your fault. It was those damned Randians, Rothbardians, and everyone but yourself. The two major kryptoniters re liberty are boomers and millennials, for opposed reasons. Each is a disgrace.

    Not a coincidence that in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited. Of course, your entry (mediation) was laughable and informative.

    • Replies: @A123
    @schnellandine


    in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited.
     
    Your question is actually vague for political application. Let us break it down 3 ways. What is a:
        -1- Libertarian Ideal
        -2- Libertarian Party (not the current one)
        -3- Libertarian Government

    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1. But as a group with the need for practical solutions, how would #3 Libertarian Government handle those individuals who do use force? Only tiny, homogenous communities like the Amish can control misbehavior via "shunning". By the time you reach 1MM+:
        • Stopping force requires force
        • Pacifists are almost always crushed by non-pacifists
    To survive, a Libertarian national government must be impure versus the ideal.

    One hits the same problem with Marxist ideals versus actual governance. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", is a wonderful ideal. However, it fails horribly as #3 government. Beyond the smallest, most homogenous groups:
        -- "From each" requires motivation such as pay.
        -- "To each" will never be based on need.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @schnellandine

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    Go read Deneen's Why Liberalism Failed.

  302. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Fortunately, foreign money lenders will lend to anyone they think will pay them back
     
    It was American industrial corporations working for gold money and doing good business, not lenders?

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population.
     
    Those countries lost lots of their people in endless wars. French lost like a million in Napoleonic wars alone. And who knows how many in a Revolution. Same with Germans. Not to mention genocide in the colonies.

    I don’t think any major American industrial firm ever earned a significant part of its profits in the USSR.
     
    Regardless, they were happy to do business there and got paid. Clearly, wasn't too terrible of a business environment for them.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    It was American industrial corporations working for gold money and doing good business, not lenders?

    As mentioned, American firms’ foreign earnings generally are paltry.

    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population.

    Those countries lost lots of their people in endless wars.

    I don’t think the Thirty Years War (still Germany’s costliest) was the cause of Germany’s industrializing. On the contrary, it probably delayed German industrialization by at least a century, just as the upheavals of the 20th century set Russia and China back.

    French lost like a million in Napoleonic wars alone. And who knows how many in a Revolution.

    Again, where is it established that the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars caused French industrialization? Early industrialization (e.g., textiles, water power) pre-dated this, while decisive industrialization vastly post-dated it. The most evident connection would be to argue that the war and upheaval delayed industrialization, as elsewhere.

    Not to mention genocide in the colonies.

    You weren’t kidding about that Soviet education.

    If your populations of colonial subjects go from thousands to millions to billions, then you’re doing genocide wrong. In fact, if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.

    The only thing approaching a real genocide was the unintentional Columbian exchange of microbial pathogens that caused a big die-off in the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. But that was definitely going to happen at some point anyway, and nothing would have prevented it.

    But even had “genocide in the colonies” actually occurred, how would that have caused coal mining in the Ruhr or steel smelting in Piedmont? These are industries that perennially complain about labor shortages, so the last thing they would have wanted was mass deaths of potential laborers. France was far more of an overseas colonizer than Germany, yet it lagged Germany in industrialization. This suggests that colonization was at best a distraction, and at worst a hinderance to industrialization.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    As mentioned, American firms’ foreign earnings generally are paltry
     
    Doesn't matter, what matters is that they were paid in gold money and they were happy. Clearly, American CEO's found the earnings adequate or they would have left. So business environment in Soviet Russia was acceptable to the international capitalist business in the 1920's and early 1930's.


    The most evident connection would be to argue that the war and upheaval delayed industrialization, as elsewhere.
     
    Sadly, it's actually the opposite. War is literally the only thing that drives technological progress and industrialization.

    Metallurgy was invented to make better cannon, industrial chemistry - to make explosives, and later, to feed armies. First real space rocket was a Soviet ICBM, (also first real ICBM), first functional jet fighters - Germans in WW2.

    The most important invention in the world - Haber Bosch process, again, Germans to make explosives to blow up Allies in WW1, nobody cared about antibiotics until WW2 when US government placed contracts for mass production and biotechnology industry was born. Computers and internet - DARPA and so on. Atomic energy - US government again. Today, SpaceX is working for the Pentagon and NASA, so is every other serious technology developer.

    Everything important was created either by state military directly or by corporations working under contract by the state military.

    European history began with 100 years war, developed through 80 years war, and culminated in 30 years war. After 30 years war, European states became true Global Empires, so it wasn't just about Europe anymore. I don't think there was even a year when Europe wasn't at war somewhere, for almost 1,000 years.

    In fact, if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.
     
    Funny enough, I make the exact same argument about Poland and Ukraine. If USSR just chilled for a few years in the early 1940's and let Germans have their fun, Warsaw and Kiev would be beautiful forest preserves right now and there would be nobody left to complain about Russia. It would a peaceful place.

    The only thing approaching a real genocide was the unintentional Columbian exchange of microbial pathogens that caused a big die-off in the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries.
     
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

    That's sort of the thing I was going for.

    But even had “genocide in the colonies” actually occurred, how would that have caused coal mining in the Ruhr or steel smelting in Piedmont?
     
    Where do you think guns come from? Magic unicorns? Who do you think is the major contractor for the guns? Hint - not the unicorns.

    Government contracting is the best way to grow a business. This will cause coal mining and steel smelting to occur. Private sector demand only comes after government contracts have been signed and executed.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  303. @Barbarossa
    @Almost Missouri


    The civilian population is utterly disarmed, even of knives nowadays.
     
    Yeah. There is an actual unironic push to ban pointy knives and clamp down sharply on all knives in the UK.

    https://reason.com/2018/04/24/londoners-embrace-knife-control/

    https://www.gov.uk/buying-carrying-knives

    No such thing as the slippery slope or progressive stupidification of the populace, no sir!

    Replies: @songbird

    Forget if I mentioned this idea before or not, but I believe it would be of extreme benefit to the native British if some law were passed that mandated that all blacks need to carry a butcher knife or an assegai, while in public.

  304. @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.
     
    LOL. Because you were too stupid to understand the sole principle of liberty, everything with the name in it must be damned. Right.

    Confess. You were a leftist masquerading as a 'libertarian', and it couldn't have been your fault. It was those damned Randians, Rothbardians, and everyone but yourself. The two major kryptoniters re liberty are boomers and millennials, for opposed reasons. Each is a disgrace.

    Not a coincidence that in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited. Of course, your entry (mediation) was laughable and informative.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited.

    Your question is actually vague for political application. Let us break it down 3 ways. What is a:
        -1- Libertarian Ideal
        -2- Libertarian Party (not the current one)
        -3- Libertarian Government

    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1. But as a group with the need for practical solutions, how would #3 Libertarian Government handle those individuals who do use force? Only tiny, homogenous communities like the Amish can control misbehavior via “shunning”. By the time you reach 1MM+:
        • Stopping force requires force
        • Pacifists are almost always crushed by non-pacifists
    To survive, a Libertarian national government must be impure versus the ideal.

    One hits the same problem with Marxist ideals versus actual governance. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”, is a wonderful ideal. However, it fails horribly as #3 government. Beyond the smallest, most homogenous groups:
        — “From each” requires motivation such as pay.
        — “To each” will never be based on need.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @A123


    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1.
     
    And there's the straw man. I stated no such ideal. Read. I even put in a supposed barricade against the usual straw man, but it was apparently ineffective. Poor barricade.

    I'll try to explain another way, for all the clueless interested folks:

    Many granola 'libertarian' types want to sell the doctrine as receptive, friendly, blah blah. This is pure misleading crap. Above all, libertarianism is centered upon when it's ethical to use force. That's it. Its entire reason for existence is force. It loves force. Libertarians may be more known for embracing guns than are vanilla 'conservatives'. Yet they're torqued into 'pacifists' for the purpose of ready disavowal? The popular, usually boomer/millennial view of libertarianism is BS. Wrong. Screwed. Stupid. Convenient.

    The relevant millennials loathe libertarianism because they figure it's jew central and tactically designed to kill whites. Relevant boomers loathe it because they're wedded to the state, which is vilified by libertarian principle. Worse, libertarian principle leads to the ethical killing of the Stockholm Syndrome Syndicalists worshiped by bereft boomers: cops

    Replies: @A123

  305. @A123
    @schnellandine


    in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited.
     
    Your question is actually vague for political application. Let us break it down 3 ways. What is a:
        -1- Libertarian Ideal
        -2- Libertarian Party (not the current one)
        -3- Libertarian Government

    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1. But as a group with the need for practical solutions, how would #3 Libertarian Government handle those individuals who do use force? Only tiny, homogenous communities like the Amish can control misbehavior via "shunning". By the time you reach 1MM+:
        • Stopping force requires force
        • Pacifists are almost always crushed by non-pacifists
    To survive, a Libertarian national government must be impure versus the ideal.

    One hits the same problem with Marxist ideals versus actual governance. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", is a wonderful ideal. However, it fails horribly as #3 government. Beyond the smallest, most homogenous groups:
        -- "From each" requires motivation such as pay.
        -- "To each" will never be based on need.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @schnellandine

    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1.

    And there’s the straw man. I stated no such ideal. Read. I even put in a supposed barricade against the usual straw man, but it was apparently ineffective. Poor barricade.

    I’ll try to explain another way, for all the clueless interested folks:

    Many granola ‘libertarian’ types want to sell the doctrine as receptive, friendly, blah blah. This is pure misleading crap. Above all, libertarianism is centered upon when it’s ethical to use force. That’s it. Its entire reason for existence is force. It loves force. Libertarians may be more known for embracing guns than are vanilla ‘conservatives’. Yet they’re torqued into ‘pacifists’ for the purpose of ready disavowal? The popular, usually boomer/millennial view of libertarianism is BS. Wrong. Screwed. Stupid. Convenient.

    The relevant millennials loathe libertarianism because they figure it’s jew central and tactically designed to kill whites. Relevant boomers loathe it because they’re wedded to the state, which is vilified by libertarian principle. Worse, libertarian principle leads to the ethical killing of the Stockholm Syndrome Syndicalists worshiped by bereft boomers: cops

    • Replies: @A123
    @schnellandine



    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1.
     
    And there’s the straw man. I stated no such ideal. Read. I even put in a supposed barricade against the usual straw man, but it was apparently ineffective. Poor barricade.
     
    A) *NO* That was a extremly close paraphrase of you language
    B) Here is your exact quote:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4962161

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited.
     

    Were you lying and strawmanning up in #283?
    Or, lying and strawmanning up in #305?
    ____

    If you want to create some bit of obscura between "initiation" and "use" you need a microscopically precise definition the term "initiation " that is universally accepted by Libertarians. After all if "initiation of force" is the defining characteristic -- different, legitimate definitions of "initiation of force" creates different cadre of "Libertarians".

    So if you want to be serious provide a definition that almost all Libertarians will accept & share that explicit provides a sharp and easily understood dividing line between actions that qualify as:
        • Initiation of Force
        • Objectionable but Not Initiation of Force

    -- Is screaming at someone "Initiation of Force"?
    -- How about screaming at a child ad an "Initiation of Force"?
    -- Is stalking someone in a bathroom (e.g. Kyrsten Sinema) [1] "Initiation of Force"?

    After lying and strawmanning you must. -- Stop lying. Stop strawmanning. Stop pedantic diversion. And, answer the questions that *define* your position via your terminology.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    [1] https://www.rt.com/usa/536493-kyrsten-sinema-infrastructure-bathroom/

    https://twitter.com/LUCHA_AZ/status/1444729925408153601?s=20

    Replies: @schnellandine

  306. @Yellowface Anon
    @John Johnson

    They have different subjects of analysis from you WN types. Neither are good.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    They have different subjects of analysis from you WN types. Neither are good.

    I’m not a White nationalist. I’m a racial realist.

    Different subjects of analysis? Everything I listed is in the Libertarian party platform. This isn’t a subjective matter.

  307. @schnellandine
    @John Johnson

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss 'The Libertarian Party', a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn't a libertarian.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, 'The Libertarian Party' doesn't adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    I like to talk about Rand, but not as a distraction. Not interested in discussing 'The Libertarian Party', except regarding plumbing/sewage.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, 'fascism' is bad, and Antifa is 'anti-fascist'. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can't argue with that! And hey, 'The Libertarian Party' has 'libertarian' right there in the name, so what's to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    The real question is whether one agrees with the prohibition of force initiation. And if one agrees, he should oppose someone operating under that mantle, not use the mantle appropriation to piss on the principle.

    Replies: @A123, @John Johnson

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss ‘The Libertarian Party’, a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn’t a libertarian.

    A running joke? Tens of thousands of libertarians have voted to ratify the platform. They have chosen to follow the teachings of Rand which includes open borders, automatic weapons for felons and legal crack. If you do not identify with mainstream libertarians then describe yourself as something else.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, ‘The Libertarian Party’ doesn’t adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    How so? The Libertarian party supports a passive military.
    https://www.lp.org/platform/

    Ayn Rand was against the use of government force in theory but supported military action against Palestinians. She described the situation as being similar to Whites dealing with American Indians. Well wouldn’t Palestinians be individuals that also deserve freedom from government? Not according to Rand. That’s different you see. Israel gets its own collectivist pass. So basically Whites can’t act as a group but Israeli Jews can.

    Full of sh-t as always.

    Can provide sources if you would like. Rand even made an ass of herself on Donahue talking about this.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, ‘fascism’ is bad, and Antifa is ‘anti-fascist’. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can’t argue with that! And hey, ‘The Libertarian Party’ has ‘libertarian’ right there in the name, so what’s to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    If thousands of self-identified Antifa members voted on a party platform then yes that becomes the Antifa platform. Someone that doesn’t like it is free to start their own movement.

    Furthermore the libertarian publications are in line with the party. So it looks like you are outside popular opinion.

    Most people lose interest in the libertarian ideology when they find out what these nutcases actually support. It all started with Rand since the platform is a mirror image of what she preached.

    The best thing to do with Atlas Shrugged is throw it in the garbage. Libertarianism is just a bizarro hybrid of race denial and market worship. You’re supposed to open your borders to the third world and everything will somehow work out according to Rand. But not Israel, they can have borders.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @John Johnson


    A running joke? Tens of thousands of libertarians have voted to ratify the platform.
     
    False. Many people in open denial of the libertarian precept and history have declared themselves libertarians and joined the LP in their farce. Why would they do such a thing, hijacking libertarianism?

    The rest of your post is more BS attacking everything except the single guiding philosophy of libertarianism. Why should I care? I like Rand, a non-libertarian, despite her faults and your objections, and despise openly any member of the 'Libertarian Party'. Piss on the LP with my blessing.

    The best thing to do with Atlas Shrugged is throw it in the garbage.
     
    No. That book should be judged with full awareness of its contemporary environment. Whatever your view of Rand, AS at least vindicates her as a soothsayer.

    Replies: @John Johnson

  308. Typical Libertarian on Unz:

    PLZ DON’T TELL THE TRUTH ABOUT ALISA ROSENBAUM

    CANT LEAVE THE CULT NOW IM A LEVEL 9 OBJECTIVIST

    How Ayn Rand admired brutal child killer William Hickman:
    https://medium.com/lessons-from-history/william-e-hickman-the-killer-who-inspired-ayn-rand-c8a9b874bd40

    Warning: The details of the murder are very disturbing

  309. @Yellowface Anon
    @schnellandine

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state. And once you've replaced genuinely organic social institutions with those of atomized "freedom of association", they are hollowed out and in eternal dissolution. You might often get things right because they are organic, but you can also get things wrong because collectivism is a taboo to you.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven't recovered from it.

    Replies: @Beckow, @schnellandine, @John Johnson

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state.

    Yes and libertarians still can’t explain how ‘free market’ Haiti is dirt poor compared to ‘socialist’ Sweden.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.

    So you admit you are flawed and were taken in by libertarians.

    Instead of continuing to defend a system where you were heavily invested you put your ego aside and faced the truth of the situation even if it meant undermining your confidence.

    Spit upon any man that stands in your way. You are a leader in this time of weakness.

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @John Johnson

    Your frame of analysis is "Race" and only "Race". Take it away and nothing is left for you.

    Keep on believing that, you'll be mostly fine. But don't force your ideology onto others (or pit your biological "utopian" state onto the rest of the world).

    Replies: @John Johnson

  310. @Anatoly Karlin
    This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes - within reason.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

    Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.

    Replies: @Mike in Boston, @Che Guava

    Could it be coincidence that Karlin retires from this blog and all of a sudden the sovok blue pillers notch a big win, claiming the scalp of “мужское государство”?

    https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/72920/

    • Replies: @Anatoly Karlin
    @Mike in Boston

    Considering my very dim opinion of them (https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russias-nationalist-turn/), probably not.

  311. @Twinkie
    @iffen


    One of the main reasons that we have the “system” that we now have is political obstruction by conservatives. It has been put together over the years by piecemeal actions and securing “what will pass”.

    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.
     
    Let's - for the sake of argument - accept your premise. Let's say "conservatives" (whatever that might mean) agree to a "coherent and rational" social safety net program. What stops the left, at that point, from saying, "Hey, wait a minute, there are still who are not covered by the safety net, there is iniquity, it turns out it's not comprehensive enough, blah, blah, blah" and seek further expansions?

    It's not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes to achieve its agenda, be it about gun-control, socialized medicine, entitlements, etc., because people are highly averse to sudden and dramatic changes.

    Conservatives have been ineffectual against this incremental onslaught and has fought only a delaying action at best (with occasional, small victories such as the welfare-to-workfare reform in the 1990's). Are you now suggesting that they should just surrender wholesale?

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    Fuck you and the horse that you rode in on. You can’t have it both ways with me Twinkie, no matter what you write.

    • Replies: @Twinkie
    @iffen


    Fuck you and the horse that you rode in on.
     
    That’s a convincing and intelligent argument. You should run your own blog… after you get that estrogen replacement therapy.
  312. @schnellandine
    @A123


    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1.
     
    And there's the straw man. I stated no such ideal. Read. I even put in a supposed barricade against the usual straw man, but it was apparently ineffective. Poor barricade.

    I'll try to explain another way, for all the clueless interested folks:

    Many granola 'libertarian' types want to sell the doctrine as receptive, friendly, blah blah. This is pure misleading crap. Above all, libertarianism is centered upon when it's ethical to use force. That's it. Its entire reason for existence is force. It loves force. Libertarians may be more known for embracing guns than are vanilla 'conservatives'. Yet they're torqued into 'pacifists' for the purpose of ready disavowal? The popular, usually boomer/millennial view of libertarianism is BS. Wrong. Screwed. Stupid. Convenient.

    The relevant millennials loathe libertarianism because they figure it's jew central and tactically designed to kill whites. Relevant boomers loathe it because they're wedded to the state, which is vilified by libertarian principle. Worse, libertarian principle leads to the ethical killing of the Stockholm Syndrome Syndicalists worshiped by bereft boomers: cops

    Replies: @A123

    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1.

    And there’s the straw man. I stated no such ideal. Read. I even put in a supposed barricade against the usual straw man, but it was apparently ineffective. Poor barricade.

    A) *NO* That was a extremly close paraphrase of you language
    B) Here is your exact quote:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4962161

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited.

    Were you lying and strawmanning up in #283?
    Or, lying and strawmanning up in #305?
    ____

    If you want to create some bit of obscura between “initiation” and “use” you need a microscopically precise definition the term “initiation ” that is universally accepted by Libertarians. After all if “initiation of force” is the defining characteristic — different, legitimate definitions of “initiation of force” creates different cadre of “Libertarians”.

    So if you want to be serious provide a definition that almost all Libertarians will accept & share that explicit provides a sharp and easily understood dividing line between actions that qualify as:
        • Initiation of Force
        • Objectionable but Not Initiation of Force

    — Is screaming at someone “Initiation of Force”?
    — How about screaming at a child ad an “Initiation of Force”?
    — Is stalking someone in a bathroom (e.g. Kyrsten Sinema) [1] “Initiation of Force”?

    After lying and strawmanning you must. — Stop lying. Stop strawmanning. Stop pedantic diversion. And, answer the questions that *define* your position via your terminology.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    [1] https://www.rt.com/usa/536493-kyrsten-sinema-infrastructure-bathroom/

    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @A123

    Crack a dictionary and fuck off. On ignore.


    Essential Meaning of initiate
    1     formal : to cause the beginning of (something) : to start or begin (something)
     

    Replies: @A123

  313. @A123
    @Twinkie



    @iffen
    If conservatives would just agree that we need a social safety net, they could proceed to enact a coherent and rational program to replace the jerry-rigged programs that we have now.
     
    It’s not the conservatives who are responsible for the incrementalism used to increase statism (and Woke-ism, for that matter) step-by-step. The Left has known, for a very long time, that people in general are like the proverbial frog in the boiling water and has pushed for incremental changes
     
    It sounds like #NeverTrump @iffen is now advocating the ultimate Yang-ian Left/Libertarian dream, the Basic Income Guarantee [BIG]. Replacing everything with "only one program" has a superficial appeal to naive GOP(e) acolytes.

    Alas, it would actually be a massive gift to Leftist, anti-worker incrementalism. As soon as BIG was permanently locked in by #NeverTrump GOP(e) surrender, the SJW/Woke would immediately renounce the "only one program" rule. Incremental Left wealth transfer from workers to non-workers would inevitably surge as new programs would be piled on top of a #NeverTrump, @iffen style, surrender & acceptance of BIG.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    You stick with your disgusting LetsGoBrandon. We’ll see how many votes that gets you. Less than half of those ignorant rednecks bother to vote.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen

    Aren't you being a little inconsistent? You just dropped an f-bomb one comment back in both a personal and zoological way.

    But a euphemistic slogan that plays on media bias and censorship is "disgusting?"

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

  314. @iffen
    @A123

    You stick with your disgusting LetsGoBrandon. We'll see how many votes that gets you. Less than half of those ignorant rednecks bother to vote.

    Replies: @songbird

    Aren’t you being a little inconsistent? You just dropped an f-bomb one comment back in both a personal and zoological way.

    But a euphemistic slogan that plays on media bias and censorship is “disgusting?”

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird

    Improving % of youth vote is Bigly important for MAGA.

    #F*ckJoeBiden while emotionally compelling, had all sort of problems and was unappealing to high-IQ individuals. I'll be honest, it had the worst sort of FratBoy connotations.

    #LetsGoBrandon is rapidly appearing on women's T-shirts selling to high-IQ University graduates. Smart, recent STEM professionals appreciate clever irony that implies exactly what they want to say without being vulgar.

    Objective fact shows that MAGA's use of #LetsGoBrandon is highly appealing to female swing voters. This sends GOP(e) acolytes into apoplectic fear & loathing (that has nothing to do with Las Vegas).

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JFGPX6M

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    , @iffen
    @songbird

    Context.

    I would never say "fuck you Twinkie, you're a lying cocksucker" in public and especially not in front of his children (if he even has any), or any children for that matter.

    The yard signs and public displays that produced LetsGoBrandan are disgusting.

  315. @sudden death
    @A123

    It is not exactly news, but yes, sadly, all the vaccines we have got now are non sterilizing, i.e. leaky ones, which do not prevent transmision in full, but from your own linked article:


    There is widespread agreement among scientists that COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at reducing the risk of developing severe COVID symptoms, which can result in hospitalization and death.
     
    As we were talking about voter population segment expiry, spread itself matters way less much now, than vax rates, especially with much more infectious and virulent Delta strain being dominant now, e.g. spread remains relatively high even in high vaxed UK, but deaths are subsided compared with previous waves prior mass vax campaign, meanwhile in low vaxed RF both spread&deaths are beating previous records.

    Replies: @sudden death, @Yellowface Anon

    It’s “problematic” when the focus of policy-makers are (deliberately) on “cases” that are buoyed by continued transmission and never quite return to the Old Normal. But floomers gonna be floomer.

  316. @schnellandine
    @Yellowface Anon


    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.
     
    LOL. Because you were too stupid to understand the sole principle of liberty, everything with the name in it must be damned. Right.

    Confess. You were a leftist masquerading as a 'libertarian', and it couldn't have been your fault. It was those damned Randians, Rothbardians, and everyone but yourself. The two major kryptoniters re liberty are boomers and millennials, for opposed reasons. Each is a disgrace.

    Not a coincidence that in a thread wherein a request for a definition of libertarianism was requested, not one person has offered an argument against the definition I posited. Of course, your entry (mediation) was laughable and informative.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    Go read Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed.

  317. @John Johnson
    @Yellowface Anon

    What you see as statism I see as modernism. Modern markets and consumerism level as effectively as the modern state.

    Yes and libertarians still can't explain how 'free market' Haiti is dirt poor compared to 'socialist' Sweden.

    Libertarianism is just the most active form of the liberal disease, and currently the most virulent one. I still haven’t recovered from it.

    So you admit you are flawed and were taken in by libertarians.

    Instead of continuing to defend a system where you were heavily invested you put your ego aside and faced the truth of the situation even if it meant undermining your confidence.

    Spit upon any man that stands in your way. You are a leader in this time of weakness.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Your frame of analysis is “Race” and only “Race”. Take it away and nothing is left for you.

    Keep on believing that, you’ll be mostly fine. But don’t force your ideology onto others (or pit your biological “utopian” state onto the rest of the world).

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Yellowface Anon

    Your frame of analysis is “Race” and only “Race”. Take it away and nothing is left for you.

    Keep on believing that, you’ll be mostly fine. But don’t force your ideology onto others (or pit your biological “utopian” state onto the rest of the world).

    I'm not a utopian of any type.

    Race is the problem for the utopian and that is the point I am making.

    I'm not trying to turn the third world into the first. I'm not a globalist and I can live with their existence as they are. I see African tribes and I don't imagine them in top hats and suspenders. They are fine as they exist.

    My problem is libertarians and socialists that tell me they have the answers to the third world and then turn into rambling children when race is discussed. Clearly their confidence is lacking.

    It was liberal utopians that scolded me for daring to question their plans for the third world. I never really cared until I had to sit through those classes. I was just fine fucking my girlfriend and living. They insulted me with their utopian plans that they couldn't defend. The utopian declared war against me and hath declared war against all Whites.

  318. @songbird
    @iffen

    Aren't you being a little inconsistent? You just dropped an f-bomb one comment back in both a personal and zoological way.

    But a euphemistic slogan that plays on media bias and censorship is "disgusting?"

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    Improving % of youth vote is Bigly important for MAGA.

    #F*ckJoeBiden while emotionally compelling, had all sort of problems and was unappealing to high-IQ individuals. I’ll be honest, it had the worst sort of FratBoy connotations.

    #LetsGoBrandon is rapidly appearing on women’s T-shirts selling to high-IQ University graduates. Smart, recent STEM professionals appreciate clever irony that implies exactly what they want to say without being vulgar.

    Objective fact shows that MAGA’s use of #LetsGoBrandon is highly appealing to female swing voters. This sends GOP(e) acolytes into apoplectic fear & loathing (that has nothing to do with Las Vegas).

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT

    When hashtags are sincerely discussed as if some kind of magic is done with the propagation of a cleverly worded one, we're at the logical conclusion of attention politics.

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    , @songbird
    @A123

    A hash tag is kind of interesting as a metacommentary, since Trump was banned from Twitter. A pity he didn't go to Gab.

    I quite enjoyed his eulogy of Powell, and recently, he seems to have made an oblique reference to Liz Cheney's physionogmy.

    Replies: @A123

  319. @Bardon Kaldian
    About something Anatoly had been writing about, Covid deaths. Those reading Serbian- OK, you van Google-Tran it- can read that Serbia had, it seems, 3 times more Covid deaths than reported:

    https://www.juznevesti.com/BalkanPres/Epidemioloskinja-Jasno-je-da-su-podaci-o-smrtnosti-od-kovida-lazni.sr.html

    Epidemiološkinja: Jasno je da su podaci o smrtnosti od kovida lažni

    https://birn.rs/broj-umrlih-od-korone-tri-puta-veci/

    Potvrđena manipulacija: U 2020. godini postojale potvrde o smrti za tri puta veći broj umrlih od korone

    3,000 deaths were, actually- 10,000

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Yes the Balkans seems to have some of the most deaths in the world from coronavirus, relative to population.

    Most deadly countries in the world for coronavirus (of those with excess deaths data available on World Mortality Dataset) seem to be postsoviet sphere, Latin America and – Balkans.
    https://github.com/dkobak/excess-mortality

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry

    Not saying there is a connection.

    But what is happening with Balkans pollution levels, they have also bad problems of particulate pollution - despite being provincial Mediterranean countries, that depend to some extent on tourism and ecology.

    In the morning, Balkans' cities like Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia and Sarajevo have particulate pollution levels in the comparison, not far from Delhi (with its wildfires and traffic), Ulaanbaatar (with its coal fires in every home) and Krasnoyarsk (with its oligarch controlled heavy industries).
    https://i.imgur.com/GFiHIaU.png

  320. mal says:
    @Almost Missouri
    @mal






    If they are important enough, they will get bailed out.
     
    “important enough” = crony enough

    crony ≠ productive
     
    Yeah, but it’s not our decision to make. It’s up to the markets.
     
    It ain’t the markets who bail out cronies. It’s the Lords of Fiat.
     
    Lords of Fiat are still market participants though.
     
    Eh, the Lords of Fiat own—or at least spoil—the market.

    Ever since 2008 when they made clear that they will conjure as much fake fiat cash as is necessary to get the "market" result they want, the "market" has been overtly irrelevant to them.

    The market can still matter for private sector participants, however, so long as it is not a matter of particular concern to the LoF.



    I think the opportunities are infinite as well.
     
    If you believe that, try lending infinite money—or even finite money—to the next person you meet. See how much you get back.
     
    If you look at my favorite plot – Total Credit Outstanding, you will see that that’s exactly what we do. We are lending on a curve with a very predictable shape that’s sloping to infinity. By design, money is never meant to be paid back.
     
    "Total Credit Outstanding" ≠ "the next person you meet". If opportunities really were infinite, you would be indifferent about to whom you lend since infinite opportunity means all opportunities are effectively equal.

    That said, it's true that not all of that lending will be paid back, and even that some of it was never meant to be paid back. But, the Lords of Fiat never cared about being paid back since they can always fiat as much new cash as they want. Ain't it great owning the money press? For them, debt means something different and has different purposes. It's like doing aerodynamics above the sound barrier, or mathematics within imaginary numbers: a lot of the standard assumptions don't apply.

    There was only one exception to that rule, in 2008, and it won’t be allowed to happen again.
     
    2008 wasn't the exception; it was the rule: no LoF-adverse result will be allowed in the market. (Ironically, I think we actually mean the same thing here.)

    Zimbabwe has less debt than US or Japan and Federal Reserve could float them a $billion and not even notice.
     
    Zimbabwe is economically tiny. US and Japan are economically huge. So yes, the Fed could flick Zimbabwe's financial life support on or off at whim without feeling it.

    Fed supports other countries when it feels like it.
     
    Yep. It's pretty sweet having almost unlimited cash.

    It pumped like quarter $trillion into Japan last year in a swap agreement. Backing Zimbabwe would be vastly cheaper.
     
    Indeed it would. Also, trading fake Fed fiat money for Zimbabwe's copious precious metals would be a good trade ... for the Fed.


    if you really believe that the private sector handles things worse than the government does, then why not just abolish the private sector and make everything more efficient?
     
    Why are you asking me this? Its the market who decided this, not me.
     
    The market is private sector. Did the private sector decide to abolish itself?

    Admittedly, there is a large banking cartel that LARPs as "private sector" while acting as handmaid to the Fed, so inattentive observers often mistake its labors on behalf of the Lords of Fiat for "private sector" activity. And, as described above, financial markets themselves are substantially corrupted by the infinite fiat intervention put option.

    But market clearly trusts government more than private sector.
     
    More correct restatement: The government increasingly owns the [financial] market more than the private sector does.

    Or 30 year Treasury wouldn’t trade at 2%, below private sector rate.
     
    See above.

    We probably won’t completely abolish private sector,
     
    Not for lack of trying though. BTW, who is "we", Kimosabe?

    but the markets have spoken and they want to give government their money.
     
    Yeah, all the business owners I know just can't wait to give their hard-earned money to the Feds. /s


    If by “they got any use out of it”, you mean Mugabe and his cronies, then yes, they certainly did!
     
    Sure, and they are important participants in economy of Zimbabwe.
     
    It wasn't Mugabe digging ore out of the ground. He just wrangled the ones who did, and arranged (i.e., stole) the land rights. But then that's what he was getting paid for as "an important participant in the economy".

    Anyway, making endless payments on 250% debt to GDP ratio would destroy ordinary Zimbabweans,
     
    They've already long been destroyed by their ZANU overlords, the only question was how much ZANU would pass up the chain.

    they would be slaves forever.
     
    Already are slaves forever ... to ZANU.

    At least hyperinflation reduced the debt load to like 70%, something more manageable.
     
    Since Zimbabwe's foreign debt was always only payable in foreign currency and is still unabrogated, I don't know where you get the idea that hyperinflating the Zimbabwe Dollar out of existence reduced their debt at all, never mind by 30%. But even if Zimbabwe's debt were reduced by 100%, it would make no difference to the average Zimbabwean, who would still be just as much under the thumb of his local ZANU master as before.

    Replies: @mal

    Eh, the Lords of Fiat own—or at least spoil—the market.

    Ever since 2008 when they made clear that they will conjure as much fake fiat cash as is necessary to get the “market” result they want, the “market” has been overtly irrelevant to them.

    The market can still matter for private sector participants, however, so long as it is not a matter of particular concern to the LoF.

    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can’t get enough. So it’s all good be spends the same.
    “Total Credit Outstanding” ≠ “the next person you meet”. If opportunities really were infinite, you would be indifferent about to whom you lend since infinite opportunity means all opportunities are effectively equal.

    This is exactly what’s happening. Junk bond markets trade like at 4%. Higher than government’s 2%, but not by much. You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a \$billion dollars. And used toilet paper may be too generous of an example compared to what passes for collateral in the financial world. But it doesn’t matter as long as TCMDO is rising.
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

    The market is private sector. Did the private sector decide to abolish itself?

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.

    Admittedly, there is a large banking cartel that LARPs as “private sector” while acting as handmaid to the Fed, so inattentive observers often mistake its labors on behalf of the Lords of Fiat for “private sector” activity. And, as described above, financial markets themselves are substantially corrupted by the infinite fiat intervention put option.

    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.

    More correct restatement: The government increasingly owns the [financial] market more than the private sector does.

    Not really. I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held. Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire. And that’s a good thing.

    Not for lack of trying though. BTW, who is “we”, Kimosabe?

    Political forces in society, in this case.

    It wasn’t Mugabe digging ore out of the ground. He just wrangled the ones who did, and arranged (i.e., stole) the land rights. But then that’s what he was getting paid for as “an important participant in the economy”.

    There is this very important cartoon on YouTube that you need to watch called “Rules for Rulers”. It’s a good primer for how those things really work. Basically, Mugabe doesn’t rule alone, he has his clan that backs him and clearly that clan is numerous and powerful or Mugabe wouldn’t be in power. Whether you like it or not, they clearly are important participants in Zimbabwe economy even if all they do is steal stuff. They can do stupid things like steal land rights, but that’s their business, irrelevant to the debt to GDP ratio mechanics.

    Already are slaves forever … to ZANU

    Local problems require local solutions.

    Look, its a very simple question and answer.

    Question: “Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the “international investment community”, or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same “community”?

    The correct answer is b) here. Its not negotiable. That doesn’t mean that stealing land rights, plunging your economy in a decade long recession, resulting in international debt to GDP ratio of 250% is a good idea. But once stupid things are done, option b) is still the right answer. And if hyperinflation gets you there faster, then that’s the right move.

    Since Zimbabwe’s foreign debt was always only payable in foreign currency and is still unabrogated, I don’t know where you get the idea that hyperinflating the Zimbabwe Dollar out of existence reduced their debt at all, never mind by 30%. But even if Zimbabwe’s debt were reduced by 100%, it would make no difference to the average Zimbabwean, who would still be just as much under the thumb of his local ZANU master as before.

    Because hyperinflation works itself into the economy via foreign exchange markets, which are ruled by our good friends, George Soros etc.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever. This devalues local currency, and for any country dependent on imports (and all small countries are) this causes prices to rise. In Zimbabwe’ case, their government used the same mechanism to pay off IMF loan in 2007 or so. Needless to say, IMF was not amused. But after almost a decade of economic depression, enough is enough. Zimbabwe made the right call there.

    Funny enough, most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government. Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world), but initial rate shock throttled private sector banks for a couple of years.

    Same deal with Argentina etc – Argentina has lower Debt to GDP than US but they have much weaker banking cartel. Russia had the same problem, high inflation despite low debt, until Nabiulina cartelized the sector and made them obey the state, so now Russian inflation is within 2% of US which is unheard of.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can’t get enough. So it’s all good be spends the same.
     
    Right. That's the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It's a form of Gresham's Law.

    You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a $billion dollars.
     
    Yes, because Goldman Sachs is part of the fiat banking cartel.

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.
     
    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.

    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.
     
    Again an accurate description of the problem.

    I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held.
     
    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be "private", then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.

    Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire.
     
    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).

    And that’s a good thing.
     
    Whether you count the Fed as an opaque cartel of private bankers or whether you count it as just a plausible-deniable arm of the federal state selling debt to itself, neither scenario looks like a good thing to me.

    Question: “Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the “international investment community”, or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same “community”?
     
    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief. How much ZANU/Mugabe keep versus pass on to foreign banksters may be affected by debt renegotiations, but that has as much relevance to ordinary Zimbabweans as our landlord's negotiation with his mortgage holder does to you or me. Probably less, actually. Nevertheless, I still haven't seen any evidence that Zimbabwe's debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever.
     
    This is an interesting theory, but it depends on banks being willing to give USD or other "hard" currency in exchange for Zimbabwe dollars or other joke currency. Why would any bank do that?

    most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government.
     
    I have to disagree, for reasons stated in this comment: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4959102

    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)
     
    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @mal

  321. @mal
    @Almost Missouri

    Ah, but its impossible to divorce political from economic arguments. Because it is only politics that allows economic arguments to be made in the first place.

    "I increased my bar profit margin by 10% by skipping payoff to the police! Too bad I got shot in the head by a roving street gang the next day."

    So keep those legions of woozy bureaucrats in bars, I say.

    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day. Red beads on an island. Can't ignore those power verticals which always develop whenever there are more than 1 human around. Even if they cause loss of economic efficiency. Economic efficiency does no good to dead people.

    Anyway, a dollar from a woozy bureaucrat spends just as well as the dollar from anybody else, so bar owners and bartenders don't complain.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Mikel

    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day.

    No. Sadly, we were very far from reaching any such point.

    Since you claim that printing unlimited amounts of money is beneficial or even necessary to achieve healthy levels of real production (you go much further away in your claims than even MMT theorists), I asked you to explain why increasing the supply of red pebbles in a primitive island society that used them as a means of exchange would (obviously) not increase the levels of physical production and how both situations are different.

    You claimed that even on that island assigning resources to collect large amounts of pebbles would indeed increase production of real goods and services, which is nonsense, and defended this bizarre idea with some weird assumption about someone killing someone if they didn’t use red pebbles, which made no sense.

    So, thinking that on the topic of money and economics (unlike on chemistry, technology and space exploration, where you are very knowledgeable), you are a victim of some sort of magical thinking, I just gave up and left the debate.

    Contrary to what you told TL, there is of course a lot to learn by reading monetary theory books.

    For an introduction I would recommend these two:

    Kenneth Galbraith’s “Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went” is a very good source to get aquainted with the basics of what money is, how it evolved and what different theories and monetary experiments have been conducted over history. Well written, humorous at times and relatively easy to read.

    Huerta de Soto’s “Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles” is very easy to read and provides a simple but very good understanding of the Austrian vision on money and economic cycles.

    • Thanks: mal, Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @mal
    @Mikel


    You claimed that even on that island assigning resources to collect large amounts of pebbles would indeed increase production of real goods and services, which is nonsense, and defended this bizarre idea with some weird assumption about someone killing someone if they didn’t use red pebbles, which made no sense.
     
    Government regulations is the idea that you find impossible to believe in? Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say.

    But in real world, government regulations dictate what production does or does not occur. It is plain for all to see even now with European gas crisis.

    European gas crisis is literally caused by warlords dictating which pebbles to use (energy and carbon in this case, but logic applies to red pebbles on the beach just fine), and it is of paramount importance we understand this. And yes, production of real goods and services depends on it, as you can clearly see with factory shutdowns.

    Increasing the amount of pebbles (whatever carbon trading permits the overlords obsess about) will increase production because it will let factories get back online.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  322. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    It was American industrial corporations working for gold money and doing good business, not lenders?
     
    As mentioned, American firms' foreign earnings generally are paltry.


    Somehow France and Germany both managed to industrialize earlier without starving off big chunks of their population.
     
    Those countries lost lots of their people in endless wars.
     
    I don't think the Thirty Years War (still Germany's costliest) was the cause of Germany's industrializing. On the contrary, it probably delayed German industrialization by at least a century, just as the upheavals of the 20th century set Russia and China back.

    French lost like a million in Napoleonic wars alone. And who knows how many in a Revolution.
     
    Again, where is it established that the French Revolution/Napoleonic Wars caused French industrialization? Early industrialization (e.g., textiles, water power) pre-dated this, while decisive industrialization vastly post-dated it. The most evident connection would be to argue that the war and upheaval delayed industrialization, as elsewhere.

    Not to mention genocide in the colonies.
     
    You weren't kidding about that Soviet education.

    If your populations of colonial subjects go from thousands to millions to billions, then you're doing genocide wrong. In fact, if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly "genocided" in your own country, then you're really doing genocide wrong.

    The only thing approaching a real genocide was the unintentional Columbian exchange of microbial pathogens that caused a big die-off in the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries. But that was definitely going to happen at some point anyway, and nothing would have prevented it.

    But even had "genocide in the colonies" actually occurred, how would that have caused coal mining in the Ruhr or steel smelting in Piedmont? These are industries that perennially complain about labor shortages, so the last thing they would have wanted was mass deaths of potential laborers. France was far more of an overseas colonizer than Germany, yet it lagged Germany in industrialization. This suggests that colonization was at best a distraction, and at worst a hinderance to industrialization.

    Replies: @mal

    As mentioned, American firms’ foreign earnings generally are paltry

    Doesn’t matter, what matters is that they were paid in gold money and they were happy. Clearly, American CEO’s found the earnings adequate or they would have left. So business environment in Soviet Russia was acceptable to the international capitalist business in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.

    The most evident connection would be to argue that the war and upheaval delayed industrialization, as elsewhere.

    Sadly, it’s actually the opposite. War is literally the only thing that drives technological progress and industrialization.

    Metallurgy was invented to make better cannon, industrial chemistry – to make explosives, and later, to feed armies. First real space rocket was a Soviet ICBM, (also first real ICBM), first functional jet fighters – Germans in WW2.

    The most important invention in the world – Haber Bosch process, again, Germans to make explosives to blow up Allies in WW1, nobody cared about antibiotics until WW2 when US government placed contracts for mass production and biotechnology industry was born. Computers and internet – DARPA and so on. Atomic energy – US government again. Today, SpaceX is working for the Pentagon and NASA, so is every other serious technology developer.

    Everything important was created either by state military directly or by corporations working under contract by the state military.

    European history began with 100 years war, developed through 80 years war, and culminated in 30 years war. After 30 years war, European states became true Global Empires, so it wasn’t just about Europe anymore. I don’t think there was even a year when Europe wasn’t at war somewhere, for almost 1,000 years.

    In fact, if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.

    Funny enough, I make the exact same argument about Poland and Ukraine. If USSR just chilled for a few years in the early 1940’s and let Germans have their fun, Warsaw and Kiev would be beautiful forest preserves right now and there would be nobody left to complain about Russia. It would a peaceful place.

    The only thing approaching a real genocide was the unintentional Columbian exchange of microbial pathogens that caused a big die-off in the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

    That’s sort of the thing I was going for.

    But even had “genocide in the colonies” actually occurred, how would that have caused coal mining in the Ruhr or steel smelting in Piedmont?

    Where do you think guns come from? Magic unicorns? Who do you think is the major contractor for the guns? Hint – not the unicorns.

    Government contracting is the best way to grow a business. This will cause coal mining and steel smelting to occur. Private sector demand only comes after government contracts have been signed and executed.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Doesn’t matter, what matters is that they were paid in gold money and they were happy. Clearly, American CEO’s found the earnings adequate or they would have left. So business environment in Soviet Russia was acceptable to the international capitalist business in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.
     
    Were there some American businessmen in the USSR in the 1920s or 1930s? A few. But there were probably more American socialist ideologues. Did either category of American make any money? Perhaps. Did either category of American make any difference to the course of history of either the USSR or the US? No. (Except if you count Lee Harvey Oswald, but he was 1950s).

    Not sure exactly what we're disputing here anymore. This item's genesis was that I said, "to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off." I still think that's true, and I don't think that whether someone once may have made money in state-run economy changes that.


    War is literally the only thing that drives technological progress and industrialization.
     
    Please explain to Anatoly that he is mistaken to lament the upheavals that afflicted Russia in the 20th century.

    Also, the Haber Bosch process was invented before the Word Wars, and then refined and improved between the World Wars. The main effect of the wars was that it was more widely used than it was in peacetime.

    The Cold War probably did result in a lot of technical advancement, but then it wasn't a real war: cities weren't being destroyed and populations slaughtered, which tends to retard progress.



    if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.
     
    Funny enough, I make the exact same argument about Poland and Ukraine. If USSR just chilled for a few years in the early 1940’s and let Germans have their fun, Warsaw and Kiev would be beautiful forest preserves right now and there would be nobody left to complain about Russia. It would a peaceful place.
     
    That doesn't sound exactly the same, that sounds completely different.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

    That’s sort of the thing I was going for.
     

    Okay, but again, these people still exist in large numbers, probably larger numbers than before the "genocide". And they were often at war with their "genociders". Poles and Ukrainians (and Armenians) can at least complain that they really were targeted just for being who they were, and they really did suffer crippling population loss. In most of the third world colonial cases, "genocide" is just a word that non-whites use against whites after they lose a fight against them.

    Whites have to be the least genocidal people on earth. Even if you kill them, they apologize to you and give you reparations. Not that it does them any good.

    But even if the Herero and Namaqua really had been genocided and really ceased to exist, how would that explain industrialization back in Germany? The only way to dig out Ruhr coal is with the shoulder blade of a dead Herero? Spain, Portugal and France were all very active colonial countries. Yet barely-colonial Germany industrialized much faster and farther than they did.

    Replies: @mal

  323. @Mikel
    @mal


    The primacy of politics vs economics is basically the discussion Mikel and I had the other day.
     
    No. Sadly, we were very far from reaching any such point.

    Since you claim that printing unlimited amounts of money is beneficial or even necessary to achieve healthy levels of real production (you go much further away in your claims than even MMT theorists), I asked you to explain why increasing the supply of red pebbles in a primitive island society that used them as a means of exchange would (obviously) not increase the levels of physical production and how both situations are different.

    You claimed that even on that island assigning resources to collect large amounts of pebbles would indeed increase production of real goods and services, which is nonsense, and defended this bizarre idea with some weird assumption about someone killing someone if they didn't use red pebbles, which made no sense.

    So, thinking that on the topic of money and economics (unlike on chemistry, technology and space exploration, where you are very knowledgeable), you are a victim of some sort of magical thinking, I just gave up and left the debate.

    Contrary to what you told TL, there is of course a lot to learn by reading monetary theory books.

    For an introduction I would recommend these two:

    Kenneth Galbraith's "Money: Whence It Came, Where It Went" is a very good source to get aquainted with the basics of what money is, how it evolved and what different theories and monetary experiments have been conducted over history. Well written, humorous at times and relatively easy to read.

    Huerta de Soto's "Money, Bank Credit, and Economic Cycles" is very easy to read and provides a simple but very good understanding of the Austrian vision on money and economic cycles.

    Replies: @mal

    You claimed that even on that island assigning resources to collect large amounts of pebbles would indeed increase production of real goods and services, which is nonsense, and defended this bizarre idea with some weird assumption about someone killing someone if they didn’t use red pebbles, which made no sense.

    Government regulations is the idea that you find impossible to believe in? Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.

    But in real world, government regulations dictate what production does or does not occur. It is plain for all to see even now with European gas crisis.

    European gas crisis is literally caused by warlords dictating which pebbles to use (energy and carbon in this case, but logic applies to red pebbles on the beach just fine), and it is of paramount importance we understand this. And yes, production of real goods and services depends on it, as you can clearly see with factory shutdowns.

    Increasing the amount of pebbles (whatever carbon trading permits the overlords obsess about) will increase production because it will let factories get back online.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @mal

    I'm only half-libertarian - accepting some tenets of Austrian economics while negating some of their fundamental assumptions and conclusion (e.g. individualist economic action is always good). And I'm much closer to "let everything develop organically, individualist or collective".


    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.
     
    No doubt and that is inevitable, since that makes easy money. Austrians say the state's economic activities is the biggest economic distortion in the world.

    Because hyperinflation works itself into the economy via foreign exchange markets, which are ruled by our good friends, George Soros etc.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever. This devalues local currency, and for any country dependent on imports (and all small countries are) this causes prices to rise. In Zimbabwe’ case, their government used the same mechanism to pay off IMF loan in 2007 or so. Needless to say, IMF was not amused. But after almost a decade of economic depression, enough is enough. Zimbabwe made the right call there.
     

    One of the weakest links in the Austrian view of the economic world is their ignorance of transnational economic actors, which is because they either see them as absolutely legitimate or absolutely deplorable.

    Funny enough, most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government. Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world), but initial rate shock throttled private sector banks for a couple of years.

    Same deal with Argentina etc – Argentina has lower Debt to GDP than US but they have much weaker banking cartel. Russia had the same problem, high inflation despite low debt, until Nabiulina cartelized the sector and made them obey the state, so now Russian inflation is within 2% of US which is unheard of.
     

    Despite what monetarists say, hyperinflation episodes have always been caused by the economy's standing being meddled by external actors (either crippling debt/reparations e.g. Germany & Latin America or effects of war e.g. Soviet Union & Hungary). Money printing itself and alone has only led to high inflation. which means drawn out devaluation but survivable. So politics is more important than the monetary system in causing hyperinflation.

    Everything important was created either by state military directly or by corporations working under contract by the state military.
     
    Sometimes. How about the steam engine? Textile industries? Industrialization and invention can be spearheaded by both state & private initiative.

    Government contracting is the best way to grow a business.
     
    It's just one of the many alternatives. You can mass-produce for consumers or monopolize.

    Government regulations is the idea that you find impossible to believe in? Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.

    But in real world, government regulations dictate what production does or does not occur. It is plain for all to see even now with European gas crisis.
     

    Europe has the problem of overregulation in some sectors, esp. energy. They are intentionally penalizing the use of fossil fuels and wounding down their existing nuclear capacities, for no reason but "decarbonization". In other words, the same kind of madness as the Great Leap Forward.

    Some regulations are good, some regulations are suffocating, and some are malicious.


    European gas crisis is literally caused by warlords dictating which pebbles to use (energy and carbon in this case, but logic applies to red pebbles on the beach just fine), and it is of paramount importance we understand this. And yes, production of real goods and services depends on it, as you can clearly see with factory shutdowns.

    Increasing the amount of pebbles (whatever carbon trading permits the overlords obsess about) will increase production because it will let factories get back online.
     

    Yes. The original analogy is about money, but the point about state coercion as the monopoly of force stands. I think you'd prefer a different set of regulations that isn't intentionally harmful.
  324. Still a fun video to watch. Maybe some minor issues about how power is distributed in a democracy, but, overall, spot on.

  325. And this arguably is even more important. Hunter Biden did nothing wrong!

  326. @A123
    @songbird

    Improving % of youth vote is Bigly important for MAGA.

    #F*ckJoeBiden while emotionally compelling, had all sort of problems and was unappealing to high-IQ individuals. I'll be honest, it had the worst sort of FratBoy connotations.

    #LetsGoBrandon is rapidly appearing on women's T-shirts selling to high-IQ University graduates. Smart, recent STEM professionals appreciate clever irony that implies exactly what they want to say without being vulgar.

    Objective fact shows that MAGA's use of #LetsGoBrandon is highly appealing to female swing voters. This sends GOP(e) acolytes into apoplectic fear & loathing (that has nothing to do with Las Vegas).

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JFGPX6M

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    PBUYT

    When hashtags are sincerely discussed as if some kind of magic is done with the propagation of a cleverly worded one, we’re at the logical conclusion of attention politics.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    Christian symbols are anathema to those who serve Satan.

    The LIGHT of the LORD causes you pain.

    The WILL of GOD is thus revealed.

    #LetsGoBrandon

    #LetsGoGOD

    PEACE 😇

    , @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Trump is a master demagogue. He is the most politically successful one since the 1st half of the 20th Century. His "stolen election" is classic demagoguery and is working extremely well with his base.

    Some think that he needs help in sweeping up the dimwitted faithful. I don't believe he needs any help. I think that he has that group well in hand.

    On the other hand, there are many feverish brains working on ways to weaken Trump with those that are not a part of his base. A123 is likely a case in point.

    Replies: @A123

  327. @mal
    @Mikel


    You claimed that even on that island assigning resources to collect large amounts of pebbles would indeed increase production of real goods and services, which is nonsense, and defended this bizarre idea with some weird assumption about someone killing someone if they didn’t use red pebbles, which made no sense.
     
    Government regulations is the idea that you find impossible to believe in? Well, I'm sorry, I don't know what else to say.

    But in real world, government regulations dictate what production does or does not occur. It is plain for all to see even now with European gas crisis.

    European gas crisis is literally caused by warlords dictating which pebbles to use (energy and carbon in this case, but logic applies to red pebbles on the beach just fine), and it is of paramount importance we understand this. And yes, production of real goods and services depends on it, as you can clearly see with factory shutdowns.

    Increasing the amount of pebbles (whatever carbon trading permits the overlords obsess about) will increase production because it will let factories get back online.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I’m only half-libertarian – accepting some tenets of Austrian economics while negating some of their fundamental assumptions and conclusion (e.g. individualist economic action is always good). And I’m much closer to “let everything develop organically, individualist or collective”.

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.

    No doubt and that is inevitable, since that makes easy money. Austrians say the state’s economic activities is the biggest economic distortion in the world.

    Because hyperinflation works itself into the economy via foreign exchange markets, which are ruled by our good friends, George Soros etc.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever. This devalues local currency, and for any country dependent on imports (and all small countries are) this causes prices to rise. In Zimbabwe’ case, their government used the same mechanism to pay off IMF loan in 2007 or so. Needless to say, IMF was not amused. But after almost a decade of economic depression, enough is enough. Zimbabwe made the right call there.

    One of the weakest links in the Austrian view of the economic world is their ignorance of transnational economic actors, which is because they either see them as absolutely legitimate or absolutely deplorable.

    Funny enough, most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government. Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world), but initial rate shock throttled private sector banks for a couple of years.

    Same deal with Argentina etc – Argentina has lower Debt to GDP than US but they have much weaker banking cartel. Russia had the same problem, high inflation despite low debt, until Nabiulina cartelized the sector and made them obey the state, so now Russian inflation is within 2% of US which is unheard of.

    Despite what monetarists say, hyperinflation episodes have always been caused by the economy’s standing being meddled by external actors (either crippling debt/reparations e.g. Germany & Latin America or effects of war e.g. Soviet Union & Hungary). Money printing itself and alone has only led to high inflation. which means drawn out devaluation but survivable. So politics is more important than the monetary system in causing hyperinflation.

    Everything important was created either by state military directly or by corporations working under contract by the state military.

    Sometimes. How about the steam engine? Textile industries? Industrialization and invention can be spearheaded by both state & private initiative.

    Government contracting is the best way to grow a business.

    It’s just one of the many alternatives. You can mass-produce for consumers or monopolize.

    Government regulations is the idea that you find impossible to believe in? Well, I’m sorry, I don’t know what else to say.

    But in real world, government regulations dictate what production does or does not occur. It is plain for all to see even now with European gas crisis.

    Europe has the problem of overregulation in some sectors, esp. energy. They are intentionally penalizing the use of fossil fuels and wounding down their existing nuclear capacities, for no reason but “decarbonization”. In other words, the same kind of madness as the Great Leap Forward.

    Some regulations are good, some regulations are suffocating, and some are malicious.

    European gas crisis is literally caused by warlords dictating which pebbles to use (energy and carbon in this case, but logic applies to red pebbles on the beach just fine), and it is of paramount importance we understand this. And yes, production of real goods and services depends on it, as you can clearly see with factory shutdowns.

    Increasing the amount of pebbles (whatever carbon trading permits the overlords obsess about) will increase production because it will let factories get back online.

    Yes. The original analogy is about money, but the point about state coercion as the monopoly of force stands. I think you’d prefer a different set of regulations that isn’t intentionally harmful.

    • Agree: mal
  328. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    As mentioned, American firms’ foreign earnings generally are paltry
     
    Doesn't matter, what matters is that they were paid in gold money and they were happy. Clearly, American CEO's found the earnings adequate or they would have left. So business environment in Soviet Russia was acceptable to the international capitalist business in the 1920's and early 1930's.


    The most evident connection would be to argue that the war and upheaval delayed industrialization, as elsewhere.
     
    Sadly, it's actually the opposite. War is literally the only thing that drives technological progress and industrialization.

    Metallurgy was invented to make better cannon, industrial chemistry - to make explosives, and later, to feed armies. First real space rocket was a Soviet ICBM, (also first real ICBM), first functional jet fighters - Germans in WW2.

    The most important invention in the world - Haber Bosch process, again, Germans to make explosives to blow up Allies in WW1, nobody cared about antibiotics until WW2 when US government placed contracts for mass production and biotechnology industry was born. Computers and internet - DARPA and so on. Atomic energy - US government again. Today, SpaceX is working for the Pentagon and NASA, so is every other serious technology developer.

    Everything important was created either by state military directly or by corporations working under contract by the state military.

    European history began with 100 years war, developed through 80 years war, and culminated in 30 years war. After 30 years war, European states became true Global Empires, so it wasn't just about Europe anymore. I don't think there was even a year when Europe wasn't at war somewhere, for almost 1,000 years.

    In fact, if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.
     
    Funny enough, I make the exact same argument about Poland and Ukraine. If USSR just chilled for a few years in the early 1940's and let Germans have their fun, Warsaw and Kiev would be beautiful forest preserves right now and there would be nobody left to complain about Russia. It would a peaceful place.

    The only thing approaching a real genocide was the unintentional Columbian exchange of microbial pathogens that caused a big die-off in the New World in the 15th and 16th centuries.
     
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

    That's sort of the thing I was going for.

    But even had “genocide in the colonies” actually occurred, how would that have caused coal mining in the Ruhr or steel smelting in Piedmont?
     
    Where do you think guns come from? Magic unicorns? Who do you think is the major contractor for the guns? Hint - not the unicorns.

    Government contracting is the best way to grow a business. This will cause coal mining and steel smelting to occur. Private sector demand only comes after government contracts have been signed and executed.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    Doesn’t matter, what matters is that they were paid in gold money and they were happy. Clearly, American CEO’s found the earnings adequate or they would have left. So business environment in Soviet Russia was acceptable to the international capitalist business in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.

    Were there some American businessmen in the USSR in the 1920s or 1930s? A few. But there were probably more American socialist ideologues. Did either category of American make any money? Perhaps. Did either category of American make any difference to the course of history of either the USSR or the US? No. (Except if you count Lee Harvey Oswald, but he was 1950s).

    Not sure exactly what we’re disputing here anymore. This item’s genesis was that I said, “to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off.” I still think that’s true, and I don’t think that whether someone once may have made money in state-run economy changes that.

    War is literally the only thing that drives technological progress and industrialization.

    Please explain to Anatoly that he is mistaken to lament the upheavals that afflicted Russia in the 20th century.

    Also, the Haber Bosch process was invented before the Word Wars, and then refined and improved between the World Wars. The main effect of the wars was that it was more widely used than it was in peacetime.

    The Cold War probably did result in a lot of technical advancement, but then it wasn’t a real war: cities weren’t being destroyed and populations slaughtered, which tends to retard progress.

    if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.

    Funny enough, I make the exact same argument about Poland and Ukraine. If USSR just chilled for a few years in the early 1940’s and let Germans have their fun, Warsaw and Kiev would be beautiful forest preserves right now and there would be nobody left to complain about Russia. It would a peaceful place.

    That doesn’t sound exactly the same, that sounds completely different.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

    That’s sort of the thing I was going for.

    Okay, but again, these people still exist in large numbers, probably larger numbers than before the “genocide”. And they were often at war with their “genociders”. Poles and Ukrainians (and Armenians) can at least complain that they really were targeted just for being who they were, and they really did suffer crippling population loss. In most of the third world colonial cases, “genocide” is just a word that non-whites use against whites after they lose a fight against them.

    Whites have to be the least genocidal people on earth. Even if you kill them, they apologize to you and give you reparations. Not that it does them any good.

    But even if the Herero and Namaqua really had been genocided and really ceased to exist, how would that explain industrialization back in Germany? The only way to dig out Ruhr coal is with the shoulder blade of a dead Herero? Spain, Portugal and France were all very active colonial countries. Yet barely-colonial Germany industrialized much faster and farther than they did.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Please explain to Anatoly that he is mistaken to lament the upheavals that afflicted Russia in the 20th century.
     
    I didn't say war was nice. But Soviet Union went on to become a premier scientific and industrial power of the century. Russian Empire would have done the same if it had stuck around.

    Also, the Haber Bosch process was invented before the Word Wars, and then refined and improved between the World Wars. The main effect of the wars was that it was more widely used than it was in peacetime.
     
    Antibiotics were also discovered before the war, but nobody cared. But both techs became important enough to invest in large scale due to battlefield conditions. Haber Bosch was rolled out industrally in 1913, you know exactly what Germany was preparing for.

    The Cold War probably did result in a lot of technical advancement, but then it wasn’t a real war: cities weren’t being destroyed and populations slaughtered, which tends to retard progress.
     
    Desire to not be on the losing side of war is the catalyst for progress.

    Poles and Ukrainians (and Armenians) can at least complain that they really were targeted just for being who they were, and they really did suffer crippling population loss.
     
    There were more Ukrainians and Poles in the USSR than before, and at least in Ukrainian case, after. Population wise, Soviet Union was good for them, unlike German occupation.

    Spain, Portugal and France were all very active colonial countries. Yet barely-colonial Germany industrialized much faster and farther than they did.
     
    Exactly. Germans were late to the game and wanted to get colonies (the whole naval race with Britain thing). To get colonies, they needed lots of guns, and armored ships. Germans dedicated themselves to war, and thus became industrial superpower.
  329. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT

    When hashtags are sincerely discussed as if some kind of magic is done with the propagation of a cleverly worded one, we're at the logical conclusion of attention politics.

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    Christian symbols are anathema to those who serve Satan.

    The LIGHT of the LORD causes you pain.

    The WILL of GOD is thus revealed.

    #LetsGoBrandon

    #LetsGoGOD

    PEACE 😇

  330. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Eh, the Lords of Fiat own—or at least spoil—the market.

    Ever since 2008 when they made clear that they will conjure as much fake fiat cash as is necessary to get the “market” result they want, the “market” has been overtly irrelevant to them.

    The market can still matter for private sector participants, however, so long as it is not a matter of particular concern to the LoF.
     

    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can't get enough. So it's all good be spends the same.
    “Total Credit Outstanding” ≠ “the next person you meet”. If opportunities really were infinite, you would be indifferent about to whom you lend since infinite opportunity means all opportunities are effectively equal.
     
    This is exactly what's happening. Junk bond markets trade like at 4%. Higher than government's 2%, but not by much. You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a $billion dollars. And used toilet paper may be too generous of an example compared to what passes for collateral in the financial world. But it doesn't matter as long as TCMDO is rising.
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/TCMDO

    The market is private sector. Did the private sector decide to abolish itself?
     
    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.

    Admittedly, there is a large banking cartel that LARPs as “private sector” while acting as handmaid to the Fed, so inattentive observers often mistake its labors on behalf of the Lords of Fiat for “private sector” activity. And, as described above, financial markets themselves are substantially corrupted by the infinite fiat intervention put option.
     
    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.

    More correct restatement: The government increasingly owns the [financial] market more than the private sector does.
     
    Not really. I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held. Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire. And that's a good thing.

    Not for lack of trying though. BTW, who is “we”, Kimosabe?
     
    Political forces in society, in this case.

    It wasn’t Mugabe digging ore out of the ground. He just wrangled the ones who did, and arranged (i.e., stole) the land rights. But then that’s what he was getting paid for as “an important participant in the economy”.
     
    There is this very important cartoon on YouTube that you need to watch called "Rules for Rulers". It's a good primer for how those things really work. Basically, Mugabe doesn't rule alone, he has his clan that backs him and clearly that clan is numerous and powerful or Mugabe wouldn't be in power. Whether you like it or not, they clearly are important participants in Zimbabwe economy even if all they do is steal stuff. They can do stupid things like steal land rights, but that's their business, irrelevant to the debt to GDP ratio mechanics.


    Already are slaves forever … to ZANU
     
    Local problems require local solutions.

    Look, its a very simple question and answer.

    Question: "Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the "international investment community", or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same "community"?

    The correct answer is b) here. Its not negotiable. That doesn't mean that stealing land rights, plunging your economy in a decade long recession, resulting in international debt to GDP ratio of 250% is a good idea. But once stupid things are done, option b) is still the right answer. And if hyperinflation gets you there faster, then that's the right move.

    Since Zimbabwe’s foreign debt was always only payable in foreign currency and is still unabrogated, I don’t know where you get the idea that hyperinflating the Zimbabwe Dollar out of existence reduced their debt at all, never mind by 30%. But even if Zimbabwe’s debt were reduced by 100%, it would make no difference to the average Zimbabwean, who would still be just as much under the thumb of his local ZANU master as before.
     
    Because hyperinflation works itself into the economy via foreign exchange markets, which are ruled by our good friends, George Soros etc.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever. This devalues local currency, and for any country dependent on imports (and all small countries are) this causes prices to rise. In Zimbabwe' case, their government used the same mechanism to pay off IMF loan in 2007 or so. Needless to say, IMF was not amused. But after almost a decade of economic depression, enough is enough. Zimbabwe made the right call there.

    Funny enough, most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government. Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world), but initial rate shock throttled private sector banks for a couple of years.

    Same deal with Argentina etc - Argentina has lower Debt to GDP than US but they have much weaker banking cartel. Russia had the same problem, high inflation despite low debt, until Nabiulina cartelized the sector and made them obey the state, so now Russian inflation is within 2% of US which is unheard of.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can’t get enough. So it’s all good be spends the same.

    Right. That’s the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It’s a form of Gresham’s Law.

    You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a \$billion dollars.

    Yes, because Goldman Sachs is part of the fiat banking cartel.

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.

    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.

    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.

    Again an accurate description of the problem.

    I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held.

    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be “private”, then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.

    Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire.

    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).

    And that’s a good thing.

    Whether you count the Fed as an opaque cartel of private bankers or whether you count it as just a plausible-deniable arm of the federal state selling debt to itself, neither scenario looks like a good thing to me.

    Question: “Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the “international investment community”, or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same “community”?

    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief. How much ZANU/Mugabe keep versus pass on to foreign banksters may be affected by debt renegotiations, but that has as much relevance to ordinary Zimbabweans as our landlord’s negotiation with his mortgage holder does to you or me. Probably less, actually. Nevertheless, I still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever.

    This is an interesting theory, but it depends on banks being willing to give USD or other “hard” currency in exchange for Zimbabwe dollars or other joke currency. Why would any bank do that?

    most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government.

    I have to disagree, for reasons stated in this comment: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4959102

    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)

    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Almost Missouri


    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be “private”, then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.
     
    I do not want to unecessarily insert myself into your discussion with @mal. However, you just looked out the window at something interesting.

    Let me lead with some questions

    -- Is the German dominated ECB "private"?
    -- Do you believe that Germany's decision to take interest rates negative is "private"?
    -- Do you accept that the EUR [€] market is large enough to alter the value of USD [$]?


    The Fed no longer has unilateral power. And, with less than credible leadership it has become unconvincing. Whether you Liked or Disliked formed Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, almost everyone accepts that anything he said was "policy" and changed markets. Yellen was a frequently ignored joke. Who is the current Fed leader? And, does anyone care?

    "In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. ... It [would be] bad [even] without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science." -- Dune (Frank Herbert)

    We now have a political/currency Herbert Tripod -- RMB/EUR/USD.

    And science denial has run amok in multiple ways. Most notably the mythology of Global Climate Warming / Cooling / Change.

    The Fed [USD] is reacting to poor decisions from those running RMB and truly unhinged concepts (e.g. negative interest rates) from the German controlled EUR.

    I concur with both @mal and you that current Fed policy is highly problematic. However, I see the root cause as Herbert's Unstable Tripod. EUR insistence that crazy = normal, requires extreme & superficially crazy measures by the Fed to defend the USD and has resulted in understandable but unhelpful actions by those that control RMB.

    The solution is departing from Herbert's Unstable Tripod. After a decade or three -- MAGA Reindustrialization and high tariffs will insulate the American USD from overseas craziness. That does not mean that the Fed will be immediately "good". However, protecting the USD (and thus the Fed) from international "unhinged" is the minimum first step back towards sanity.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    , @Mikel
    @Almost Missouri


    I still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.
     
    That's most likely just mal's imagination.

    I suppose that some part of Zimbabwe's foreign debt was condoned or renegotiated once its economy began to implode but it does not follow that just because you make your citizens' lives miserable through hyperinflation foreign creditors are under any obligation to ease your foreign currency debt payments. In fact, hyperinflation makes it more difficult, not easier, to source foreign currency.

    Replies: @mal

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Right. That’s the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It’s a form of Gresham’s Law.
     
    How? Why do you think producers are too stupid to realize they could be doing something else rather than working for government cash?

    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.
     
    How? Again, why won't producers decide to do something else if that something else is more productive?

    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).
     
    I wouldn't say "most" (Fed is what, $120 billion/month?), but at any rate, private sector is welcome to sell their holdings at any time if they don't like it, and yet they don't.

    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief.
     
    Local ZANU Chief is also an ordinary Zimbabwean. You can't just pretend that people you don't like are not really people. Again, local problems require local solutions. But at national scale, 77% debt is better than 250% debt to the "community".

    still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

     

    Not renegotiated. Repaid lol. That repayment dumped Z dollar on forex market and triggered hyperinflation. But it must have been glorious lol.

    Why would any bank do that?
     
    Why would a bank lend to Pets dot Com or whatever? Or shopping mall real estate? Because it's their job?

    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.
     
    Bush's recession mess and building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet? I will give the Democrats a pass on those two.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  331. @Yellowface Anon
    @John Johnson

    Your frame of analysis is "Race" and only "Race". Take it away and nothing is left for you.

    Keep on believing that, you'll be mostly fine. But don't force your ideology onto others (or pit your biological "utopian" state onto the rest of the world).

    Replies: @John Johnson

    Your frame of analysis is “Race” and only “Race”. Take it away and nothing is left for you.

    Keep on believing that, you’ll be mostly fine. But don’t force your ideology onto others (or pit your biological “utopian” state onto the rest of the world).

    I’m not a utopian of any type.

    Race is the problem for the utopian and that is the point I am making.

    I’m not trying to turn the third world into the first. I’m not a globalist and I can live with their existence as they are. I see African tribes and I don’t imagine them in top hats and suspenders. They are fine as they exist.

    My problem is libertarians and socialists that tell me they have the answers to the third world and then turn into rambling children when race is discussed. Clearly their confidence is lacking.

    It was liberal utopians that scolded me for daring to question their plans for the third world. I never really cared until I had to sit through those classes. I was just fine fucking my girlfriend and living. They insulted me with their utopian plans that they couldn’t defend. The utopian declared war against me and hath declared war against all Whites.

  332. @songbird
    @iffen

    Aren't you being a little inconsistent? You just dropped an f-bomb one comment back in both a personal and zoological way.

    But a euphemistic slogan that plays on media bias and censorship is "disgusting?"

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    Context.

    I would never say “fuck you Twinkie, you’re a lying cocksucker” in public and especially not in front of his children (if he even has any), or any children for that matter.

    The yard signs and public displays that produced LetsGoBrandan are disgusting.

  333. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT

    When hashtags are sincerely discussed as if some kind of magic is done with the propagation of a cleverly worded one, we're at the logical conclusion of attention politics.

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    Trump is a master demagogue. He is the most politically successful one since the 1st half of the 20th Century. His “stolen election” is classic demagoguery and is working extremely well with his base.

    Some think that he needs help in sweeping up the dimwitted faithful. I don’t believe he needs any help. I think that he has that group well in hand.

    On the other hand, there are many feverish brains working on ways to weaken Trump with those that are not a part of his base. A123 is likely a case in point.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen

    As a #NeverTrump demagogue you refuse you acknowledge the TRUTH about massive vote fraud. Multiple audits have objectively & irrefutably shown issues exceeding Biden's margin of victory.

    It is this type of intentional deception by SJW Globalists that leads directly to objective observations such as "breaking the system" and "ending the Constitution". Under the Constitution, the correct procedure was an accurate assessment that the "Electoral College Failed", thus invoking the House of Representatives process to select the President.

    Pence, for incomprehensible reasons, trashed the Constitution. The U.S. is going to have a White House Occupant, Not-The-President Biden or his successor, for another 3+ years. America is now in uncharted territory. Presidents wield Executive Authority. Illegitimate White House Occupants have no lasting power.

    To save the Constitution, the next legitimate President will have to repudiate the illegitimate Executive actions of Not-The-President Biden. Non-Executive Appointments and Regulations are simply void. Given that even Democrats accept that Biden is a catastrophic mistake, there is still a chance that the minimum necessary repudiation will be peaceful.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  334. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    You actually have to ask this question: reform or outright destruction of the current system? There isn't a one-size-fit-all system. Opening up space for experimentation is good, but once a good balance is stricken people needs to settle down until the inevitable systemic rot.

    The question of what's needed to aid the needy depends on what kind of social security should be there. If it's Randian, personal savings; if there is a strong sense of solidarity or organic gemeinschaften, mutual aid; if labor is highly atomized and pauperized, state aid. You might even have UBI, but it's fiscally & monetarily destructive in the long run if the supposedly automated and centralized industries aren't taxed hard.

    But since Randism is winning out as the "rational" and "liberal" (as in anti-state) ideology, destruction is inevitable.

    Replies: @iffen

    to aid the needy depends

    Yes, prior values and political beliefs will control this.

    I’m just trying to see it in a pragmatic way. The convoluted piecemeal “system” that we have in the U. S. needs to be replaced with one coherent plan. The split between communitarians and the Randians, as you call them, has produced a Frankenstein.

    automated and centralized industries aren’t taxed hard.

    As to the U. S., I think that it is very difficult to effectively tax businesses or industries. They just pass the taxes through to the consumers. Also, I buy the idea that we shouldn’t crimp businesses with taxes unless we are trying to discourage and shrink that industry or business.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen


    The convoluted piecemeal “system” that we have in the U. S. needs to be replaced with one coherent plan. The split between communitarians and the Randians, as you call them, has produced a Frankenstein.
     
    I don't think things can be acted on before they unravel. The parts are too incompatible and the way they are stitched comes off easily.

    I buy the idea that we shouldn’t crimp businesses with taxes unless we are trying to discourage and shrink that industry or business.
     
    Agreed, so classical MMT (with a hidden inflationary tax). Not saying it is necessarily bad but this subtlety needs to be known.
  335. @Mike in Boston
    @Anatoly Karlin

    Could it be coincidence that Karlin retires from this blog and all of a sudden the sovok blue pillers notch a big win, claiming the scalp of "мужское государство"?

    https://interfax.com/newsroom/top-stories/72920/

    Replies: @Anatoly Karlin

    Considering my very dim opinion of them (https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russias-nationalist-turn/), probably not.

  336. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can’t get enough. So it’s all good be spends the same.
     
    Right. That's the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It's a form of Gresham's Law.

    You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a $billion dollars.
     
    Yes, because Goldman Sachs is part of the fiat banking cartel.

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.
     
    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.

    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.
     
    Again an accurate description of the problem.

    I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held.
     
    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be "private", then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.

    Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire.
     
    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).

    And that’s a good thing.
     
    Whether you count the Fed as an opaque cartel of private bankers or whether you count it as just a plausible-deniable arm of the federal state selling debt to itself, neither scenario looks like a good thing to me.

    Question: “Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the “international investment community”, or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same “community”?
     
    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief. How much ZANU/Mugabe keep versus pass on to foreign banksters may be affected by debt renegotiations, but that has as much relevance to ordinary Zimbabweans as our landlord's negotiation with his mortgage holder does to you or me. Probably less, actually. Nevertheless, I still haven't seen any evidence that Zimbabwe's debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever.
     
    This is an interesting theory, but it depends on banks being willing to give USD or other "hard" currency in exchange for Zimbabwe dollars or other joke currency. Why would any bank do that?

    most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government.
     
    I have to disagree, for reasons stated in this comment: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4959102

    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)
     
    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @mal

    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be “private”, then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.

    I do not want to unecessarily insert myself into your discussion with . However, you just looked out the window at something interesting.

    Let me lead with some questions

    — Is the German dominated ECB “private”?
    — Do you believe that Germany’s decision to take interest rates negative is “private”?
    — Do you accept that the EUR [€] market is large enough to alter the value of USD [\$]?

    The Fed no longer has unilateral power. And, with less than credible leadership it has become unconvincing. Whether you Liked or Disliked formed Fed Chair Ben Bernanke, almost everyone accepts that anything he said was “policy” and changed markets. Yellen was a frequently ignored joke. Who is the current Fed leader? And, does anyone care?

    “In politics, the tripod is the most unstable of all structures. … It [would be] bad [even] without the complication of a feudal trade culture which turns its back on most science.” — Dune (Frank Herbert)

    We now have a political/currency Herbert Tripod — RMB/EUR/USD.

    And science denial has run amok in multiple ways. Most notably the mythology of Global Climate Warming / Cooling / Change.

    The Fed [USD] is reacting to poor decisions from those running RMB and truly unhinged concepts (e.g. negative interest rates) from the German controlled EUR.

    I concur with both and you that current Fed policy is highly problematic. However, I see the root cause as Herbert’s Unstable Tripod. EUR insistence that crazy = normal, requires extreme & superficially crazy measures by the Fed to defend the USD and has resulted in understandable but unhelpful actions by those that control RMB.

    The solution is departing from Herbert’s Unstable Tripod. After a decade or three — MAGA Reindustrialization and high tariffs will insulate the American USD from overseas craziness. That does not mean that the Fed will be immediately “good”. However, protecting the USD (and thus the Fed) from international “unhinged” is the minimum first step back towards sanity.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  337. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Trump is a master demagogue. He is the most politically successful one since the 1st half of the 20th Century. His "stolen election" is classic demagoguery and is working extremely well with his base.

    Some think that he needs help in sweeping up the dimwitted faithful. I don't believe he needs any help. I think that he has that group well in hand.

    On the other hand, there are many feverish brains working on ways to weaken Trump with those that are not a part of his base. A123 is likely a case in point.

    Replies: @A123

    As a #NeverTrump demagogue you refuse you acknowledge the TRUTH about massive vote fraud. Multiple audits have objectively & irrefutably shown issues exceeding Biden’s margin of victory.

    It is this type of intentional deception by SJW Globalists that leads directly to objective observations such as “breaking the system” and “ending the Constitution”. Under the Constitution, the correct procedure was an accurate assessment that the “Electoral College Failed”, thus invoking the House of Representatives process to select the President.

    Pence, for incomprehensible reasons, trashed the Constitution. The U.S. is going to have a White House Occupant, Not-The-President Biden or his successor, for another 3+ years. America is now in uncharted territory. Presidents wield Executive Authority. Illegitimate White House Occupants have no lasting power.

    To save the Constitution, the next legitimate President will have to repudiate the illegitimate Executive actions of Not-The-President Biden. Non-Executive Appointments and Regulations are simply void. Given that even Democrats accept that Biden is a catastrophic mistake, there is still a chance that the minimum necessary repudiation will be peaceful.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • LOL: iffen
  338. Stress continues to build on Chinese consumers: (1)

    70% of China’s [private/individual] net worth is parked in housing, and since Chinese citizens have not encountered a drop in home prices since 2015, falling prices may fuel a vicious cycle by further weakening demand, worsening the cash shortage at builders and forcing them to offer bigger discounts.

    The 2008 housing plummet in the U.S. was bad for everyone, but landed most heavily on speculators and property flippers. Domestic Chinese regulation encouraged almost everyone into property and other housing related investments. Once confidence is lost and prices start sliding, no one can really guess how far down they will go.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/china-home-prices-drop-first-time-2015-existing-home-sales-crash-63

  339. @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    Your response to me positing that perhaps most UR commenters know nothing of libertarianism is to discuss ‘The Libertarian Party’, a running joke disowned by most libertarians, and Ayn Rand, who stated explicitly that she wasn’t a libertarian.

    A running joke? Tens of thousands of libertarians have voted to ratify the platform. They have chosen to follow the teachings of Rand which includes open borders, automatic weapons for felons and legal crack. If you do not identify with mainstream libertarians then describe yourself as something else.

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited. Obviously, ‘The Libertarian Party’ doesn’t adhere to it philosophically, and neither did Ayn Rand.

    How so? The Libertarian party supports a passive military.
    https://www.lp.org/platform/

    Ayn Rand was against the use of government force in theory but supported military action against Palestinians. She described the situation as being similar to Whites dealing with American Indians. Well wouldn't Palestinians be individuals that also deserve freedom from government? Not according to Rand. That's different you see. Israel gets its own collectivist pass. So basically Whites can't act as a group but Israeli Jews can.

    Full of sh-t as always.

    Can provide sources if you would like. Rand even made an ass of herself on Donahue talking about this.

    The name game fallacy is played successfully by Antifa fans. How does one know someone is bad? Well, ‘fascism’ is bad, and Antifa is ‘anti-fascist’. Ergo, someone opposed by Antifa is a bad person, as is anyone opposing Antifa. Can’t argue with that! And hey, ‘The Libertarian Party’ has ‘libertarian’ right there in the name, so what’s to discuss? They are libertarianism.

    If thousands of self-identified Antifa members voted on a party platform then yes that becomes the Antifa platform. Someone that doesn't like it is free to start their own movement.

    Furthermore the libertarian publications are in line with the party. So it looks like you are outside popular opinion.

    Most people lose interest in the libertarian ideology when they find out what these nutcases actually support. It all started with Rand since the platform is a mirror image of what she preached.

    The best thing to do with Atlas Shrugged is throw it in the garbage. Libertarianism is just a bizarro hybrid of race denial and market worship. You're supposed to open your borders to the third world and everything will somehow work out according to Rand. But not Israel, they can have borders.

    Replies: @schnellandine

    A running joke? Tens of thousands of libertarians have voted to ratify the platform.

    False. Many people in open denial of the libertarian precept and history have declared themselves libertarians and joined the LP in their farce. Why would they do such a thing, hijacking libertarianism?

    The rest of your post is more BS attacking everything except the single guiding philosophy of libertarianism. Why should I care? I like Rand, a non-libertarian, despite her faults and your objections, and despise openly any member of the ‘Libertarian Party’. Piss on the LP with my blessing.

    The best thing to do with Atlas Shrugged is throw it in the garbage.

    No. That book should be judged with full awareness of its contemporary environment. Whatever your view of Rand, AS at least vindicates her as a soothsayer.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    The rest of your post is more BS attacking everything except the single guiding philosophy of libertarianism.

    Ayn Rand, the Libertarian Party and the top Libertarian publications all agree on the following:
    Open borders to the third world
    Legal crack and PCP
    Automatic weapons for Black felons
    No Federal pollution controls
    No FDA testing or regulations

    So what is BS then?

    Since they are in agreement what exactly gives you the authority to declare the party as illegitimate?

    I like Rand, a non-libertarian

    Ayn Rand took the position to not endorse any party of her time. The current libertarian party is modeled after her ideology.

    Modern libertarians consider her the most important founder:
    https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/ayn-rand

    Whatever your view of Rand, AS at least vindicates her as a soothsayer.

    How so? A capitalist dictatorship with high taxes never transpired. Organized labor is weaker than when she wrote it.

    Replies: @schnellandine

  340. @A123
    @schnellandine



    Your stated ideal about refusal to use force sounds great for #1.
     
    And there’s the straw man. I stated no such ideal. Read. I even put in a supposed barricade against the usual straw man, but it was apparently ineffective. Poor barricade.
     
    A) *NO* That was a extremly close paraphrase of you language
    B) Here is your exact quote:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4962161

    Libertarianism is the principle that initiation of force is prohibited.
     

    Were you lying and strawmanning up in #283?
    Or, lying and strawmanning up in #305?
    ____

    If you want to create some bit of obscura between "initiation" and "use" you need a microscopically precise definition the term "initiation " that is universally accepted by Libertarians. After all if "initiation of force" is the defining characteristic -- different, legitimate definitions of "initiation of force" creates different cadre of "Libertarians".

    So if you want to be serious provide a definition that almost all Libertarians will accept & share that explicit provides a sharp and easily understood dividing line between actions that qualify as:
        • Initiation of Force
        • Objectionable but Not Initiation of Force

    -- Is screaming at someone "Initiation of Force"?
    -- How about screaming at a child ad an "Initiation of Force"?
    -- Is stalking someone in a bathroom (e.g. Kyrsten Sinema) [1] "Initiation of Force"?

    After lying and strawmanning you must. -- Stop lying. Stop strawmanning. Stop pedantic diversion. And, answer the questions that *define* your position via your terminology.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    [1] https://www.rt.com/usa/536493-kyrsten-sinema-infrastructure-bathroom/

    https://twitter.com/LUCHA_AZ/status/1444729925408153601?s=20

    Replies: @schnellandine

    Crack a dictionary and fuck off. On ignore.

    Essential Meaning of initiate
    1     formal : to cause the beginning of (something) : to start or begin (something)

    • Replies: @A123
    @schnellandine

    I Accept Your Surrender

    You strawmanned repeatedly in an attempt to divert attention. Now you are upset and vulgar because your deception did not work.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  341. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can’t get enough. So it’s all good be spends the same.
     
    Right. That's the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It's a form of Gresham's Law.

    You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a $billion dollars.
     
    Yes, because Goldman Sachs is part of the fiat banking cartel.

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.
     
    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.

    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.
     
    Again an accurate description of the problem.

    I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held.
     
    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be "private", then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.

    Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire.
     
    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).

    And that’s a good thing.
     
    Whether you count the Fed as an opaque cartel of private bankers or whether you count it as just a plausible-deniable arm of the federal state selling debt to itself, neither scenario looks like a good thing to me.

    Question: “Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the “international investment community”, or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same “community”?
     
    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief. How much ZANU/Mugabe keep versus pass on to foreign banksters may be affected by debt renegotiations, but that has as much relevance to ordinary Zimbabweans as our landlord's negotiation with his mortgage holder does to you or me. Probably less, actually. Nevertheless, I still haven't seen any evidence that Zimbabwe's debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever.
     
    This is an interesting theory, but it depends on banks being willing to give USD or other "hard" currency in exchange for Zimbabwe dollars or other joke currency. Why would any bank do that?

    most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government.
     
    I have to disagree, for reasons stated in this comment: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4959102

    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)
     
    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @mal

    I still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    That’s most likely just mal’s imagination.

    I suppose that some part of Zimbabwe’s foreign debt was condoned or renegotiated once its economy began to implode but it does not follow that just because you make your citizens’ lives miserable through hyperinflation foreign creditors are under any obligation to ease your foreign currency debt payments. In fact, hyperinflation makes it more difficult, not easier, to source foreign currency.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Mikel


    That’s most likely just mal’s imagination.
     
    No exactly. I sometimes know what I'm talking about. :).

    Inflation began accelerating after Mr Mugabe's regime crippled commercial agriculture — Zimbabwe's biggest export earner — by seizing white-owned farms. Having disabled the engine of the economy and destroyed its tax base, the government resorted to printing money to pay its own bills.

    This boosted inflation and drove down the value of the currency. Prices soared in 2005 when Mr Mugabe repaid Zimbabwe's debts to the International Monetary Fund. The Reserve Bank accomplished this feat by the simple expedient of printing about Z$21 trillion.
     

    https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/feb14_2007.HTML

    And latest number on on Zimbabwean Debt to GDP is 77%, much better than US. It was like 250% in 2005.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/government-debt-to-gdp

    Again, I'm not saying Zimbabweans are smart or not a bunch of petty thugs. They should never have messed with their supply chain. It was a stupid mistake.

    But once mistake was made, hyperinflation was the right move, the only move to play.

    I can just imagine the expressions on the faces of IMF officials when Zimbabweans showed up to repay the loans lol. It was probably hilarious.

    But once you mess with the bull ("the international investment community"), you are going to get the horns. They were doomed at that point, so printing to infinity was the only way to go.

    Replies: @Mikel

  342. @schnellandine
    @A123

    Crack a dictionary and fuck off. On ignore.


    Essential Meaning of initiate
    1     formal : to cause the beginning of (something) : to start or begin (something)
     

    Replies: @A123

    I Accept Your Surrender

    You strawmanned repeatedly in an attempt to divert attention. Now you are upset and vulgar because your deception did not work.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  343. Another reason why comparisons of modern America (or “the West” more generally) with ancient Rome are fundamentally misguided, even at their worst the Romans were never this degenerate and insane.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @German_reader

    I don't know.

    At a certain point, the Roman Empire became dominated by an ideology telling people not to get married and have children but remain celibate, to not resist those who want to harm you, to not plan ahead about getting food, clothing, or shelter, to remain childlike even as an adult, to not develop your intellectual faculties or gather knowledge, and more things of this nature.

    Obviously, from a rational, bourgeois, common sense point of view, Woke stuff is utter nonsense. That is too trivial almost to point out.

    But, if you're willing to look at the Woke nonsense not in a scientific way, but as symbol of a human need, as mythical, religious, poetic language, it makes a lot more sense.

    The clear tendency of Woke ideology is to transcend the physical constraints of our world - to shrug off this earthly burden.

    To be rational and practical, common sensical and realistic, is a requirement imposed on us by the desire to survive. However, an excessive preoccupation with physical survival makes life gloomy and depressing (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).

    What all the religions of the world teach, is escape from the burden of being practical, realistic, and common sensical - escape from the dreary business of survival. All religions are fantastical.

    When one discovers that the business of surviving becomes too gloomy and depressing, one realizes one has made a mistake about man's ontological position in the universe.

    I am not defending Woke, either. The problem with Woke is that it is a tortured attempt to create a transcendental religion using the idiom of science and the still lingering naive realism of 19th century Positivism. This is a fundamental category error.

    To escape from the burden of ones gender - of being male or female, with it's baggage and associated strictly defined social roles which may violate your true nature, which may not nearly fit into your prescribed social gender role - that is a perennial human need that all religions have always provided for.

    Woke ideology provides a tortured half way house - the liberation experienced at not having to fit into the strict social role of your birth gender, immediately becomes a prison again as it is affirmed that your chosen gender is essentially you.

    But a naive realist culture cannot do better. Woke is hideous, but one can dimly perceive the tortured groping of a culture trapped in 19th century Positivism towards a true transcendence.

    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry, @German_reader

    , @Yevardian
    @German_reader

    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina, but no, this wasn't considered in any way 'normal'.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy's expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in 'The Roman Empire at Bay' argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper), but the commenting software there is so bad that somehow writing a substantial comment felt inappropriate, so I ended up just spamming shitposts and closed the tab.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird

  344. @iffen
    @Twinkie

    Fuck you and the horse that you rode in on. You can't have it both ways with me Twinkie, no matter what you write.

    Replies: @Twinkie

    Fuck you and the horse that you rode in on.

    That’s a convincing and intelligent argument. You should run your own blog… after you get that estrogen replacement therapy.

    • LOL: Johann Ricke
  345. @German_reader
    https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1450854328189718530

    Another reason why comparisons of modern America (or "the West" more generally) with ancient Rome are fundamentally misguided, even at their worst the Romans were never this degenerate and insane.

    Replies: @AaronB, @Yevardian

    I don’t know.

    At a certain point, the Roman Empire became dominated by an ideology telling people not to get married and have children but remain celibate, to not resist those who want to harm you, to not plan ahead about getting food, clothing, or shelter, to remain childlike even as an adult, to not develop your intellectual faculties or gather knowledge, and more things of this nature.

    Obviously, from a rational, bourgeois, common sense point of view, Woke stuff is utter nonsense. That is too trivial almost to point out.

    But, if you’re willing to look at the Woke nonsense not in a scientific way, but as symbol of a human need, as mythical, religious, poetic language, it makes a lot more sense.

    The clear tendency of Woke ideology is to transcend the physical constraints of our world – to shrug off this earthly burden.

    To be rational and practical, common sensical and realistic, is a requirement imposed on us by the desire to survive. However, an excessive preoccupation with physical survival makes life gloomy and depressing (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).

    What all the religions of the world teach, is escape from the burden of being practical, realistic, and common sensical – escape from the dreary business of survival. All religions are fantastical.

    When one discovers that the business of surviving becomes too gloomy and depressing, one realizes one has made a mistake about man’s ontological position in the universe.

    I am not defending Woke, either. The problem with Woke is that it is a tortured attempt to create a transcendental religion using the idiom of science and the still lingering naive realism of 19th century Positivism. This is a fundamental category error.

    To escape from the burden of ones gender – of being male or female, with it’s baggage and associated strictly defined social roles which may violate your true nature, which may not nearly fit into your prescribed social gender role – that is a perennial human need that all religions have always provided for.

    Woke ideology provides a tortured half way house – the liberation experienced at not having to fit into the strict social role of your birth gender, immediately becomes a prison again as it is affirmed that your chosen gender is essentially you.

    But a naive realist culture cannot do better. Woke is hideous, but one can dimly perceive the tortured groping of a culture trapped in 19th century Positivism towards a true transcendence.

    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @AaronB

    Genuine transcendence

    What other kind is there?

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @Dmitry
    @AaronB

    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment (which has for better or worse been my life of the last few years), this "woke ideology" seems very normal and non-discordant.

    Choose your pronouns, unisex toilets, LGBT flag, don't clap, don't play loud music and use gentle lighting (so to not upset neurodiverse minorities), don't say rude things about peoples' nationalities, don't assume things about other people (unconscious bias). It feels like a 21st century version of Jane Austen.

    On the other hand, if you are living in a dangerous or proletarian environment, "woke campus ideology" can appear completely bizarre. But more elite your environment, the less discordant it seems.

    I assumed German Reader would be surrounded by privileged Zoomers in Heidelberg University, so I'm not sure how he is comparing it to fall of the Roman Empire. And I assumed you are living somewhere like next to Colombia University, in some fashionable upper west side? So this is just a native culture where you are.

    These ideologies seem little surprising, when you live in their luxurious native environment, when students expend $20 for Moleskine notebooks to write their lecture thoughts, and $5000 for an electric bicycle.

    The discordance will be when you export "pronoun theory" and "ethical coffee buying theory", to coal miners or Indian farmers - which is what US State Department's social media manager seems to be trying.

    US State Department probably hired its recruits directly from campus of NYU and Brown University, whose parents had provided exclusive bubble all their life, and we might be surprised if their knowledge of world will even extend to understanding the bad sides of their city.

    Even more sophisticated US State Department branches like "Radio Liberty", are not exactly very intelligent, when you consider how they just provide (usually objective true) content to liberal, educated people who don't need any expensive US taxpayer projects to be sceptical of their government. US State Department would have better propaganda for its money, by aiming for ordinary people.

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @German_reader
    @AaronB

    I don't agree with your interpretation of "wokeness", imo it's a mischaracterization. I don't think the woke show any desire to "shrug off this earthly burden", to escape from the world and its continuous evolutionary struggle for power and status, like ascetics or monks did. They're not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all.
    Your interpretation imo doesn't fit even for the sexual aspects of "wokeness", but totally breaks down for the racial ones. The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.


    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.
     
    Sounds disturbing. You're not planning on founding a cult, are you?

    Replies: @AaronB, @Coconuts

  346. @AaronB
    @German_reader

    I don't know.

    At a certain point, the Roman Empire became dominated by an ideology telling people not to get married and have children but remain celibate, to not resist those who want to harm you, to not plan ahead about getting food, clothing, or shelter, to remain childlike even as an adult, to not develop your intellectual faculties or gather knowledge, and more things of this nature.

    Obviously, from a rational, bourgeois, common sense point of view, Woke stuff is utter nonsense. That is too trivial almost to point out.

    But, if you're willing to look at the Woke nonsense not in a scientific way, but as symbol of a human need, as mythical, religious, poetic language, it makes a lot more sense.

    The clear tendency of Woke ideology is to transcend the physical constraints of our world - to shrug off this earthly burden.

    To be rational and practical, common sensical and realistic, is a requirement imposed on us by the desire to survive. However, an excessive preoccupation with physical survival makes life gloomy and depressing (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).

    What all the religions of the world teach, is escape from the burden of being practical, realistic, and common sensical - escape from the dreary business of survival. All religions are fantastical.

    When one discovers that the business of surviving becomes too gloomy and depressing, one realizes one has made a mistake about man's ontological position in the universe.

    I am not defending Woke, either. The problem with Woke is that it is a tortured attempt to create a transcendental religion using the idiom of science and the still lingering naive realism of 19th century Positivism. This is a fundamental category error.

    To escape from the burden of ones gender - of being male or female, with it's baggage and associated strictly defined social roles which may violate your true nature, which may not nearly fit into your prescribed social gender role - that is a perennial human need that all religions have always provided for.

    Woke ideology provides a tortured half way house - the liberation experienced at not having to fit into the strict social role of your birth gender, immediately becomes a prison again as it is affirmed that your chosen gender is essentially you.

    But a naive realist culture cannot do better. Woke is hideous, but one can dimly perceive the tortured groping of a culture trapped in 19th century Positivism towards a true transcendence.

    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry, @German_reader

    Genuine transcendence

    What other kind is there?

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @iffen

    Attempts that don't quite achieve it.

    And may become grotesque in their failure to do so.

    Replies: @iffen

  347. @iffen
    @AaronB

    Genuine transcendence

    What other kind is there?

    Replies: @AaronB

    Attempts that don’t quite achieve it.

    And may become grotesque in their failure to do so.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @AaronB

    What if that's you.

  348. @AaronB
    @German_reader

    I don't know.

    At a certain point, the Roman Empire became dominated by an ideology telling people not to get married and have children but remain celibate, to not resist those who want to harm you, to not plan ahead about getting food, clothing, or shelter, to remain childlike even as an adult, to not develop your intellectual faculties or gather knowledge, and more things of this nature.

    Obviously, from a rational, bourgeois, common sense point of view, Woke stuff is utter nonsense. That is too trivial almost to point out.

    But, if you're willing to look at the Woke nonsense not in a scientific way, but as symbol of a human need, as mythical, religious, poetic language, it makes a lot more sense.

    The clear tendency of Woke ideology is to transcend the physical constraints of our world - to shrug off this earthly burden.

    To be rational and practical, common sensical and realistic, is a requirement imposed on us by the desire to survive. However, an excessive preoccupation with physical survival makes life gloomy and depressing (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).

    What all the religions of the world teach, is escape from the burden of being practical, realistic, and common sensical - escape from the dreary business of survival. All religions are fantastical.

    When one discovers that the business of surviving becomes too gloomy and depressing, one realizes one has made a mistake about man's ontological position in the universe.

    I am not defending Woke, either. The problem with Woke is that it is a tortured attempt to create a transcendental religion using the idiom of science and the still lingering naive realism of 19th century Positivism. This is a fundamental category error.

    To escape from the burden of ones gender - of being male or female, with it's baggage and associated strictly defined social roles which may violate your true nature, which may not nearly fit into your prescribed social gender role - that is a perennial human need that all religions have always provided for.

    Woke ideology provides a tortured half way house - the liberation experienced at not having to fit into the strict social role of your birth gender, immediately becomes a prison again as it is affirmed that your chosen gender is essentially you.

    But a naive realist culture cannot do better. Woke is hideous, but one can dimly perceive the tortured groping of a culture trapped in 19th century Positivism towards a true transcendence.

    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry, @German_reader

    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment (which has for better or worse been my life of the last few years), this “woke ideology” seems very normal and non-discordant.

    Choose your pronouns, unisex toilets, LGBT flag, don’t clap, don’t play loud music and use gentle lighting (so to not upset neurodiverse minorities), don’t say rude things about peoples’ nationalities, don’t assume things about other people (unconscious bias). It feels like a 21st century version of Jane Austen.

    On the other hand, if you are living in a dangerous or proletarian environment, “woke campus ideology” can appear completely bizarre. But more elite your environment, the less discordant it seems.

    I assumed German Reader would be surrounded by privileged Zoomers in Heidelberg University, so I’m not sure how he is comparing it to fall of the Roman Empire. And I assumed you are living somewhere like next to Colombia University, in some fashionable upper west side? So this is just a native culture where you are.

    These ideologies seem little surprising, when you live in their luxurious native environment, when students expend \$20 for Moleskine notebooks to write their lecture thoughts, and \$5000 for an electric bicycle.

    The discordance will be when you export “pronoun theory” and “ethical coffee buying theory”, to coal miners or Indian farmers – which is what US State Department’s social media manager seems to be trying.

    US State Department probably hired its recruits directly from campus of NYU and Brown University, whose parents had provided exclusive bubble all their life, and we might be surprised if their knowledge of world will even extend to understanding the bad sides of their city.

    Even more sophisticated US State Department branches like “Radio Liberty”, are not exactly very intelligent, when you consider how they just provide (usually objective true) content to liberal, educated people who don’t need any expensive US taxpayer projects to be sceptical of their government. US State Department would have better propaganda for its money, by aiming for ordinary people.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I totally agree with you that Woke culture is a far more casual affair, and has far less of an impact on everyday life, than people - often on this site - who only hear about it through the news, think it is.

    All the freaking out over it is way overblown - in my life, it has barely any impact. I work in a very multiracial environment, and Blacks do not have even a tiny bit of privelege over Whites when it comes to practical matters of business (the bottom line), and Whites are not the least bit afraid to assert themselves. Moreover, few Blacks even try to assert any special privelege.

    (In fact, day to say race relations are today better than ever. When I was a kid, hostile Blacks were common. Today, I never meet with any).

    I wrote about this in the past, and was going to write about it more. And I've made the analogy to Christianity before - lol, you were supposed to turn the other cheek and not resist evil, yet the history of Christian nations is one of unceasing warfare.

    Point is, religions always go against common sense in radical ways, but are never widely observed.It's no different with Woke.

    But society needs a "code" of talk and behavior, and it is often bizarre and fantastic - people say the expected thing, but act in accordance with human nature.

    If you look into anthropology, you find that social codes are often really weird and strange - their purpose seems to be to provide stability, and also precisely to "oppose" common sense.

    In fact, the insistence on Black equality is a measure of how inferior elite Whites think they are - if the religious ideology is meant precisely to "oppose" common sense, as I claim.

  349. German_reader says:
    @AaronB
    @German_reader

    I don't know.

    At a certain point, the Roman Empire became dominated by an ideology telling people not to get married and have children but remain celibate, to not resist those who want to harm you, to not plan ahead about getting food, clothing, or shelter, to remain childlike even as an adult, to not develop your intellectual faculties or gather knowledge, and more things of this nature.

    Obviously, from a rational, bourgeois, common sense point of view, Woke stuff is utter nonsense. That is too trivial almost to point out.

    But, if you're willing to look at the Woke nonsense not in a scientific way, but as symbol of a human need, as mythical, religious, poetic language, it makes a lot more sense.

    The clear tendency of Woke ideology is to transcend the physical constraints of our world - to shrug off this earthly burden.

    To be rational and practical, common sensical and realistic, is a requirement imposed on us by the desire to survive. However, an excessive preoccupation with physical survival makes life gloomy and depressing (all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy).

    What all the religions of the world teach, is escape from the burden of being practical, realistic, and common sensical - escape from the dreary business of survival. All religions are fantastical.

    When one discovers that the business of surviving becomes too gloomy and depressing, one realizes one has made a mistake about man's ontological position in the universe.

    I am not defending Woke, either. The problem with Woke is that it is a tortured attempt to create a transcendental religion using the idiom of science and the still lingering naive realism of 19th century Positivism. This is a fundamental category error.

    To escape from the burden of ones gender - of being male or female, with it's baggage and associated strictly defined social roles which may violate your true nature, which may not nearly fit into your prescribed social gender role - that is a perennial human need that all religions have always provided for.

    Woke ideology provides a tortured half way house - the liberation experienced at not having to fit into the strict social role of your birth gender, immediately becomes a prison again as it is affirmed that your chosen gender is essentially you.

    But a naive realist culture cannot do better. Woke is hideous, but one can dimly perceive the tortured groping of a culture trapped in 19th century Positivism towards a true transcendence.

    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry, @German_reader

    I don’t agree with your interpretation of “wokeness”, imo it’s a mischaracterization. I don’t think the woke show any desire to “shrug off this earthly burden”, to escape from the world and its continuous evolutionary struggle for power and status, like ascetics or monks did. They’re not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all.
    Your interpretation imo doesn’t fit even for the sexual aspects of “wokeness”, but totally breaks down for the racial ones. The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.

    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.

    Sounds disturbing. You’re not planning on founding a cult, are you?

    • Agree: iffen
    • Replies: @AaronB
    @German_reader

    I think you are looking for "pure" forms of the phenomena involved. But I agree you will not find them.

    What I am suggesting is that you will find partially formed religious aspirations here, clearly discernible but not - yet - fully developed.


    The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.
     
    That might make sense for the favored groups, but why are elite Whites - especially WASPS - so intent on self-renunciation?

    Does this not bear a striking resemblance to religious asceticism?

    Moreover, you must know that European self-renunciation began as early as the 18th century among intellectuals, artists, and philosophers.

    They’re not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all
     
    Certain they are not renouncing the physical world - as Positivists, they cannot do that (and that is their problem).

    What I suggest they are doing, is trying to free themselves from certain - very important like gender - constraints of physical life on earth.

    But there is a contradiction at the heart of their project - being Positivists, the moment they free themselves from a physical constraints, they must reimpose another one. Maybe you aren't your birth gender, but you are your chosen gender. They cannot yet conceive that one's physical body simply isn't that important.

    That is why you get tortured, grotesque, contradictory aspirations.

    Sounds disturbing. You’re not planning on founding a cult, are you?
     
    Not me. Rather the opposite of a cult, which is a rigid belief system, I would encourage people to free themselves from any excessive investment in "beliefs" or "opinions", and to ultimately not take this world or our lives too seriously. That is what I mean by "transcendence".

    This attitude is the enemy of all obsessions and cult-like irrationality. It is freedom itself - a decreasing quality in today's world.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @Coconuts
    @German_reader

    I think this is partly because the Woke racial thinking can be almost hilariously wrong and lacking understanding when it is imported into a European setting (even in Britain, which did at least follow some form of liberal ideology and had a large colonial empire). It is then implemented in bureaucracies, cultural institutions and the education system by diversity professionals who are often part of ethnic minority communities, who seem to be working directly from American textbooks. Also at a time of accelerating demographic change within European nation states.

    Replies: @German_reader, @Dmitry

  350. 😂 Open Thread Humor 😁

    This was too good to pass up. (1)

    Under [MORE] tag due to mildly objectionable language.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://twitchy.com/dougp-3137/2021/10/20/science-cnn-chyron-slams-sen-manchin-for-not-allowing-president-biden-to-bring-better-weather/

    [MORE]

  351. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    I don't agree with your interpretation of "wokeness", imo it's a mischaracterization. I don't think the woke show any desire to "shrug off this earthly burden", to escape from the world and its continuous evolutionary struggle for power and status, like ascetics or monks did. They're not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all.
    Your interpretation imo doesn't fit even for the sexual aspects of "wokeness", but totally breaks down for the racial ones. The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.


    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.
     
    Sounds disturbing. You're not planning on founding a cult, are you?

    Replies: @AaronB, @Coconuts

    I think you are looking for “pure” forms of the phenomena involved. But I agree you will not find them.

    What I am suggesting is that you will find partially formed religious aspirations here, clearly discernible but not – yet – fully developed.

    The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.

    That might make sense for the favored groups, but why are elite Whites – especially WASPS – so intent on self-renunciation?

    Does this not bear a striking resemblance to religious asceticism?

    Moreover, you must know that European self-renunciation began as early as the 18th century among intellectuals, artists, and philosophers.

    They’re not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all

    Certain they are not renouncing the physical world – as Positivists, they cannot do that (and that is their problem).

    What I suggest they are doing, is trying to free themselves from certain – very important like gender – constraints of physical life on earth.

    But there is a contradiction at the heart of their project – being Positivists, the moment they free themselves from a physical constraints, they must reimpose another one. Maybe you aren’t your birth gender, but you are your chosen gender. They cannot yet conceive that one’s physical body simply isn’t that important.

    That is why you get tortured, grotesque, contradictory aspirations.

    Sounds disturbing. You’re not planning on founding a cult, are you?

    Not me. Rather the opposite of a cult, which is a rigid belief system, I would encourage people to free themselves from any excessive investment in “beliefs” or “opinions”, and to ultimately not take this world or our lives too seriously. That is what I mean by “transcendence”.

    This attitude is the enemy of all obsessions and cult-like irrationality. It is freedom itself – a decreasing quality in today’s world.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @AaronB


    European self-renunciation began as early as the 18th century among intellectuals, artists, and philosophers.
     
    Who would you say are the earliest European self-renouncers, and what form did their renunciations take? I ask because I have wondered, "who started this?", but I have only been able to trace it back a century or so.

    Replies: @AaronB

  352. @schnellandine
    @John Johnson


    A running joke? Tens of thousands of libertarians have voted to ratify the platform.
     
    False. Many people in open denial of the libertarian precept and history have declared themselves libertarians and joined the LP in their farce. Why would they do such a thing, hijacking libertarianism?

    The rest of your post is more BS attacking everything except the single guiding philosophy of libertarianism. Why should I care? I like Rand, a non-libertarian, despite her faults and your objections, and despise openly any member of the 'Libertarian Party'. Piss on the LP with my blessing.

    The best thing to do with Atlas Shrugged is throw it in the garbage.
     
    No. That book should be judged with full awareness of its contemporary environment. Whatever your view of Rand, AS at least vindicates her as a soothsayer.

    Replies: @John Johnson

    The rest of your post is more BS attacking everything except the single guiding philosophy of libertarianism.

    Ayn Rand, the Libertarian Party and the top Libertarian publications all agree on the following:
    Open borders to the third world
    Legal crack and PCP
    Automatic weapons for Black felons
    No Federal pollution controls
    No FDA testing or regulations

    So what is BS then?

    Since they are in agreement what exactly gives you the authority to declare the party as illegitimate?

    I like Rand, a non-libertarian

    Ayn Rand took the position to not endorse any party of her time. The current libertarian party is modeled after her ideology.

    Modern libertarians consider her the most important founder:
    https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/ayn-rand

    Whatever your view of Rand, AS at least vindicates her as a soothsayer.

    How so? A capitalist dictatorship with high taxes never transpired. Organized labor is weaker than when she wrote it.

    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @John Johnson


    So what is BS then?
     
    Addressing façades instead of the single principle. Still, not one person has addressed the definition I offered of libertarianism, which is reasonably the most prevalent and historical. All I see are pointers to flawed people and orgs. Next, will I hear how Frank Perdue was cruel to chickens?

    Since they are in agreement what exactly gives you the authority to declare the party as illegitimate?
     
    Authority? LOL. Didn't know that was a required element in argument. Oh, wait; it isn't.

    The current libertarian party is modeled after her ideology.
     
    And, to the extent that's true, doesn't conform to the principle of non-aggression, much like Rand. Makes a damned fine substrate for tar application though, as does Rand's birth name, which also is done to death. When discussing libertarianism, focus on a person is to dodge the principle I've stated here several times. That is libertarianism. The running from that, into the arms of convenient diversions, is the identifying characteristic of many confused people, for extensions from the libertarian principle run them into internal contradictions best avoided for psychological comfort. Keep yapping about Rand; I'll stick with the principle. Were I propounding Rand, focus on Rand would be the angle. Wasn't. Just said I like her, despite flaws, and keep saying that she's mostly a diversion re libertarianism.

    How so? A capitalist dictatorship with high taxes never transpired. Organized labor is weaker than when she wrote it.
     
    AS didn't describe a capitalist dictatorship, so no idea what you're talking about. Re 'organized labor'… what?

    To take only one recent, for me, example: I thought for years that the scene of the party at Reardon's home was unbelievably overwrought. No one, I thought, would attempt such blatantly ridiculous posturing. Yet in the last ~5 years it has not merely surfaced, but swarmed.

    No, you needn't tell me about the generally bad novel technique, and all the other obvious weaknesses of the book. I'm not a Rand-licker. Why there can be no general moderation in a view of the woman continues to baffle. Not sure which sect I despise more, the Rand worshipers or the Rand despisers.
  353. @Dmitry
    @AaronB

    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment (which has for better or worse been my life of the last few years), this "woke ideology" seems very normal and non-discordant.

    Choose your pronouns, unisex toilets, LGBT flag, don't clap, don't play loud music and use gentle lighting (so to not upset neurodiverse minorities), don't say rude things about peoples' nationalities, don't assume things about other people (unconscious bias). It feels like a 21st century version of Jane Austen.

    On the other hand, if you are living in a dangerous or proletarian environment, "woke campus ideology" can appear completely bizarre. But more elite your environment, the less discordant it seems.

    I assumed German Reader would be surrounded by privileged Zoomers in Heidelberg University, so I'm not sure how he is comparing it to fall of the Roman Empire. And I assumed you are living somewhere like next to Colombia University, in some fashionable upper west side? So this is just a native culture where you are.

    These ideologies seem little surprising, when you live in their luxurious native environment, when students expend $20 for Moleskine notebooks to write their lecture thoughts, and $5000 for an electric bicycle.

    The discordance will be when you export "pronoun theory" and "ethical coffee buying theory", to coal miners or Indian farmers - which is what US State Department's social media manager seems to be trying.

    US State Department probably hired its recruits directly from campus of NYU and Brown University, whose parents had provided exclusive bubble all their life, and we might be surprised if their knowledge of world will even extend to understanding the bad sides of their city.

    Even more sophisticated US State Department branches like "Radio Liberty", are not exactly very intelligent, when you consider how they just provide (usually objective true) content to liberal, educated people who don't need any expensive US taxpayer projects to be sceptical of their government. US State Department would have better propaganda for its money, by aiming for ordinary people.

    Replies: @AaronB

    I totally agree with you that Woke culture is a far more casual affair, and has far less of an impact on everyday life, than people – often on this site – who only hear about it through the news, think it is.

    All the freaking out over it is way overblown – in my life, it has barely any impact. I work in a very multiracial environment, and Blacks do not have even a tiny bit of privelege over Whites when it comes to practical matters of business (the bottom line), and Whites are not the least bit afraid to assert themselves. Moreover, few Blacks even try to assert any special privelege.

    (In fact, day to say race relations are today better than ever. When I was a kid, hostile Blacks were common. Today, I never meet with any).

    I wrote about this in the past, and was going to write about it more. And I’ve made the analogy to Christianity before – lol, you were supposed to turn the other cheek and not resist evil, yet the history of Christian nations is one of unceasing warfare.

    Point is, religions always go against common sense in radical ways, but are never widely observed.It’s no different with Woke.

    But society needs a “code” of talk and behavior, and it is often bizarre and fantastic – people say the expected thing, but act in accordance with human nature.

    If you look into anthropology, you find that social codes are often really weird and strange – their purpose seems to be to provide stability, and also precisely to “oppose” common sense.

    In fact, the insistence on Black equality is a measure of how inferior elite Whites think they are – if the religious ideology is meant precisely to “oppose” common sense, as I claim.

  354. Even anthills can eventually become a tourist attraction – in Hong Kong tourists try to photo selfies next to the city’s scary looking 1960s-1970s housing.

  355. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    I don't agree with your interpretation of "wokeness", imo it's a mischaracterization. I don't think the woke show any desire to "shrug off this earthly burden", to escape from the world and its continuous evolutionary struggle for power and status, like ascetics or monks did. They're not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all.
    Your interpretation imo doesn't fit even for the sexual aspects of "wokeness", but totally breaks down for the racial ones. The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.


    But nothing is forever. Genuine transcendence, a perennial human need, will eventually be achieved.
     
    Sounds disturbing. You're not planning on founding a cult, are you?

    Replies: @AaronB, @Coconuts

    I think this is partly because the Woke racial thinking can be almost hilariously wrong and lacking understanding when it is imported into a European setting (even in Britain, which did at least follow some form of liberal ideology and had a large colonial empire). It is then implemented in bureaucracies, cultural institutions and the education system by diversity professionals who are often part of ethnic minority communities, who seem to be working directly from American textbooks. Also at a time of accelerating demographic change within European nation states.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts

    I agree, the spread of "woke" ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn't fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it's actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the "nation of immigrants" meme, which has even been taken up by alleged "conservatives". I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that "woke" ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    , @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    Educational centres of Western Europe are becoming a third (and probably soon will be half) Indian and Chinese students. Both countries which were victims of imperialism.

    But I think they actually integrate quite easily. They are not fighting local students, but mixed up to them without a need for affirmative action policies.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FBDucVGdfV8

    The Woke ideology of "safe spaces", microaggressions, personal pronouns, banning clapping, - it's not so useful for the Indian or Chinese students.

    But it's popular with the local elite.

    As part of my industry and employer, we are working with university department.

    One of the greatest change I notice in the last years, requirements to change toilets to unisex. This is all because of non-binary gender concept.

    This is kind of culture change really popular with the young people - they are very worried that non-binary will be discriminated, and have forced that all toilets have to change in the universities.

    In terms of industry, the young people are very concerned about environment and that office culture are using sustainable energy, have access for disabled people, do not include microaggressions, will be inclusive for neurodiversity minorities.

    Aside from the virtue signalling (which is the attractive aspect of a BLM flag), it feels like a hyper-civilization or sensitization, where their whole lives should be a kind of safe space.

    -

    My own view of BLM is that the protest against police brutality in America (also Russia) is correct and important. But the important issue was lost, and re-directed and exploited into American race politics.

    The problem of arbitrary violence and brutality of the authorities, and suppression of ordinary peoples' rights, is very serious. But the topic was re-mapped onto a kind of Obama speech about racial justice (the usefulness of Obama's speeches even in their own terms, can be seen by the fact relative racial income inequality became worse in America after he was president for 8 years).

    https://twitter.com/CrackdownReport/status/941388298760736774

  356. The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.

    I think these kinds of materialist explanations – so popular today – cannot withstand close historical scrutiny, especially if we widen the lens to include world history (so much thinking in the West suffers from this parochialism.)

    Even Kevin McDonald wrote about how America had a home-grown “culture of critique” in the New England Transcendentalists – writers like Thoreau and Emerson, who were deeply critical of common sense bourgeois culture and inspired by foreign cultures (chiefly India).

    He dismissed it as a minor episode he did not fully understand, but of course the American Transcendentalists were an offshoot of European Romanticism, and an absolutely central and critical aspect of Western culture since the 18th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Thoreau is one of America’s most revered writers.

    McDonald cannot give this the significance it deserves, because it would completely invalidate his contention that Jews are primarily responsible for dismantling common sense bourgeois norms in the West

    The question is far larger and more humanly central than a petty tribal conflict.

    Every healthy culture must have a counter-culture that questions and mocks the “common sense” of the mainstream even as it ultimately influences the mainstream.

    For instance, let’s look at China. Mainstream Chinese culture was Confucian – a dull, sober, and practical sort of bourgeois common sense.

    But then Taoism arose, which explicitly mocked and derided the stuffiness of Confucius – in Taoist texts, Confucius is actually the butt of many jokes, and used as an example of a limited being, who even admits his limitations. And Taoism is a wild and anarchic philosophy that gloriously overturns all the tenets of bourgeois common sense.

    A Chinese Kevin McDonald, a materialist with no sense of transcendence, would regard Taoism as a movement by some alien group that somehow infiltrated China in disguise to overturn the solid bourgeois common sense that keeps society healthy.

    But actually, Taoism – which is basically counter-culture – became hugely influential among the Chinese elite for practically all it’s history, and even had a serious effect on Confucianism (which on its own is really too dry).

    For millenia, China had a mainstream culture – sober, responsible, practical, bourgeois – wonderfully balanced by a sublime counter-culture.

    No culture can survive without a counter-culture – because being sober and practical are necessary for survival, but escaping the burden of the dull quotidian is equally necessary if survival is to have any value.

    Christianity was for centuries the counter-culture of the West, but eventually, all counter-culture’s get assimilated and become “respectable”.

    So a new counter-culture – Romanticism – was created..

    Today, Woke is our counter-culture – a particularly insipid and inane one, from a culture that cannot truly escape it’s materialist/Positivist prison so cannot achieve a true counter-culture.

    Since we are race-obsessed materialists, the counter-culture must take the form of being against the dominant race , rather than being against the dominant culture.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @AaronB

    To put it briefly -

    If common sense bourgeois norms are necessary for the health of a society, then dismantling them can only be a hostile act by an enemy (so materialist logic goes).

    Ok, so let's say one views it through the prism of tribal conflict in the West.

    But what about a phenomena like Taoism, which explicitly rejects common sense bourgeois norms? Were Taoists really members of an alien minority who infiltrated Chinese society?

    And then what explains the appeal of these ideas to the host group - why did the Chinese elite embrace Taoism, a philosophy that undermined it's common sense bourgeois values?

    And what about the serious question of whether common sense bourgeois values - civilization itself - is an advance over hunter gathering life? An entire school of philosophy and anthropology exists that argues that civilization itself is ambiguous and may be a source of unhappiness.

    Is this all just ethnic groups trying to undermine dominant cultures, or are these really larger questions about the human condition?

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @German_reader
    @AaronB


    Today, Woke is our counter-culture
     
    A "counter-culture" that is supported by much of the establishment in Western societies (e.g. Germany's president recently said he thinks it's great that there are movements like BLM in Germany, that they're necessary and deserving of support...and my comment which started this discussion referenced a tweet by the US state department...).
    A genuine counter-culture would be identitarians or members of genuinely right-wing parties. Unlike the woke they risk social death and persecution by the state.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

  357. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader

    I think this is partly because the Woke racial thinking can be almost hilariously wrong and lacking understanding when it is imported into a European setting (even in Britain, which did at least follow some form of liberal ideology and had a large colonial empire). It is then implemented in bureaucracies, cultural institutions and the education system by diversity professionals who are often part of ethnic minority communities, who seem to be working directly from American textbooks. Also at a time of accelerating demographic change within European nation states.

    Replies: @German_reader, @Dmitry

    I agree, the spread of “woke” ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn’t fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it’s actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the “nation of immigrants” meme, which has even been taken up by alleged “conservatives”. I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that “woke” ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Much of "woke" fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe (see my discussion above), and much of production of this ideology is centred there as well (e.g. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/). Among the elite areas, there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples' rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, "unconscious bias", and electric mobility.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrVlrZX4UsI


    For racial issues, it's different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.

    But in former empires (UK, France), there such topics like reading in the Jane Austen books, where the wealth of a family (i.e. Mansfield Park) is derived from a slave plantation. This will be popular in the universities.

    However, UK's woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.

    Still this is not so fashionable in the elite areas. Everywhere there are LGBT flags and environmentalist causes. But there are not evident "Black Lives Matter" flags in the elite area.

    Racial issues are relating more to the idea of eliminating of "unconscious bias" and representing diversity from students.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    , @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    I agree, the spread of “woke” ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn’t fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it’s actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the “nation of immigrants” meme, which has even been taken up by alleged “conservatives”.
     
    I vaguely remember people in the 1990s looking to the multi-racial US as a model for the future of Britain, and some of the clear political transplants that were attempted in the 2000s, usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants). Some of this was promoted by conservatives as well, this was probably a sign of the general apathy or optimism surrounding the issue at the time, that it wasn't seen as odd for them to do so but was kind of expected.

    I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that “woke” ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.
     
    I think this is one of the biggest issues in the background of Woke politics in Europe. It looks like in the not too distant future various European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.

    At the moment I still can't see how they will be able to portray this as a story of the positive fulfillment of the liberation and secularisation politics of the 1960s and 70s and the globalist neo-liberal economics of the 80s and 90s; things will only get better... they will get so much better that the old peoples of Western Europe will either stop forming families and die out, or become significantly more African.

    The Woke thing might be the beginning of a strategy of normalising this outcome for the young, and hoping people old enough to remember pre-2000 times don't talk much about it.

    Replies: @German_reader

  358. @German_reader
    @Coconuts

    I agree, the spread of "woke" ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn't fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it's actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the "nation of immigrants" meme, which has even been taken up by alleged "conservatives". I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that "woke" ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe (see my discussion above), and much of production of this ideology is centred there as well (e.g. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/). Among the elite areas, there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.

    For racial issues, it’s different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.

    But in former empires (UK, France), there such topics like reading in the Jane Austen books, where the wealth of a family (i.e. Mansfield Park) is derived from a slave plantation. This will be popular in the universities.

    However, UK’s woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.

    Still this is not so fashionable in the elite areas. Everywhere there are LGBT flags and environmentalist causes. But there are not evident “Black Lives Matter” flags in the elite area.

    Racial issues are relating more to the idea of eliminating of “unconscious bias” and representing diversity from students.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But there are not evident “Black Lives Matter” flags in the elite area.
     
    There were posters for BLM demos in my university library last year (I tore some of them down and threw them into rubbish bins).
    Re universities in general, tbh many departments just ought to be closed down, I'm convinced part of the reason for the increasingly deranged character of Western societies is the excessive expansion of higher education since the 1960s.

    Replies: @Yevardian

    , @A123
    @Dmitry


    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe (see my discussion above), and much of production of this ideology is centred there as well (e.g. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/). Among the elite areas, there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.
     
    To deal with SJW/Wokeness one must start by accurately identifying it as European phenomenon that is exported to the U.S. Can one be more woke than Brussels? The ultra-Left German Elites use EU mechanisms to undermine what they see as undesirable characteristics (e.g. Christianity, Democracy) in countries like Hungary & Poland.

    Q: What EU country stated that their Constitution is superior to EU law, and then hypocritically attacks other countries who want the same status for their Constitutions? A: Germany.

    Q: Who is the #1 Open [Muslim] Borders elected leader on the Globe? A: Angela Merkel. And, there is little hope that her replacement will be better at protecting indigenous Christians.

    Ultra-Left German Elites get to stay in Europe when going to SJW Headquarters in Davos for Elite WEF meetings. Woke SJW followers from the U.S have to trek across the Atlantic to grovel before their European (primarily German) SJW masters.

    Every attempt to unjustly blame the U.S. or "The West" for EuroSJW thinking is a gift that strengthens SJW Globalism.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
  359. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Doesn’t matter, what matters is that they were paid in gold money and they were happy. Clearly, American CEO’s found the earnings adequate or they would have left. So business environment in Soviet Russia was acceptable to the international capitalist business in the 1920’s and early 1930’s.
     
    Were there some American businessmen in the USSR in the 1920s or 1930s? A few. But there were probably more American socialist ideologues. Did either category of American make any money? Perhaps. Did either category of American make any difference to the course of history of either the USSR or the US? No. (Except if you count Lee Harvey Oswald, but he was 1950s).

    Not sure exactly what we're disputing here anymore. This item's genesis was that I said, "to the extent that economic matters can be distinct from political matters, everyone is better off." I still think that's true, and I don't think that whether someone once may have made money in state-run economy changes that.


    War is literally the only thing that drives technological progress and industrialization.
     
    Please explain to Anatoly that he is mistaken to lament the upheavals that afflicted Russia in the 20th century.

    Also, the Haber Bosch process was invented before the Word Wars, and then refined and improved between the World Wars. The main effect of the wars was that it was more widely used than it was in peacetime.

    The Cold War probably did result in a lot of technical advancement, but then it wasn't a real war: cities weren't being destroyed and populations slaughtered, which tends to retard progress.



    if you are being demographically swamped by the very people that you supposedly “genocided” in your own country, then you’re really doing genocide wrong.
     
    Funny enough, I make the exact same argument about Poland and Ukraine. If USSR just chilled for a few years in the early 1940’s and let Germans have their fun, Warsaw and Kiev would be beautiful forest preserves right now and there would be nobody left to complain about Russia. It would a peaceful place.
     
    That doesn't sound exactly the same, that sounds completely different.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Herero_and_Namaqua_genocide

    That’s sort of the thing I was going for.
     

    Okay, but again, these people still exist in large numbers, probably larger numbers than before the "genocide". And they were often at war with their "genociders". Poles and Ukrainians (and Armenians) can at least complain that they really were targeted just for being who they were, and they really did suffer crippling population loss. In most of the third world colonial cases, "genocide" is just a word that non-whites use against whites after they lose a fight against them.

    Whites have to be the least genocidal people on earth. Even if you kill them, they apologize to you and give you reparations. Not that it does them any good.

    But even if the Herero and Namaqua really had been genocided and really ceased to exist, how would that explain industrialization back in Germany? The only way to dig out Ruhr coal is with the shoulder blade of a dead Herero? Spain, Portugal and France were all very active colonial countries. Yet barely-colonial Germany industrialized much faster and farther than they did.

    Replies: @mal

    Please explain to Anatoly that he is mistaken to lament the upheavals that afflicted Russia in the 20th century.

    I didn’t say war was nice. But Soviet Union went on to become a premier scientific and industrial power of the century. Russian Empire would have done the same if it had stuck around.

    Also, the Haber Bosch process was invented before the Word Wars, and then refined and improved between the World Wars. The main effect of the wars was that it was more widely used than it was in peacetime.

    Antibiotics were also discovered before the war, but nobody cared. But both techs became important enough to invest in large scale due to battlefield conditions. Haber Bosch was rolled out industrally in 1913, you know exactly what Germany was preparing for.

    The Cold War probably did result in a lot of technical advancement, but then it wasn’t a real war: cities weren’t being destroyed and populations slaughtered, which tends to retard progress.

    Desire to not be on the losing side of war is the catalyst for progress.

    Poles and Ukrainians (and Armenians) can at least complain that they really were targeted just for being who they were, and they really did suffer crippling population loss.

    There were more Ukrainians and Poles in the USSR than before, and at least in Ukrainian case, after. Population wise, Soviet Union was good for them, unlike German occupation.

    Spain, Portugal and France were all very active colonial countries. Yet barely-colonial Germany industrialized much faster and farther than they did.

    Exactly. Germans were late to the game and wanted to get colonies (the whole naval race with Britain thing). To get colonies, they needed lots of guns, and armored ships. Germans dedicated themselves to war, and thus became industrial superpower.

  360. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Much of "woke" fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe (see my discussion above), and much of production of this ideology is centred there as well (e.g. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/). Among the elite areas, there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples' rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, "unconscious bias", and electric mobility.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrVlrZX4UsI


    For racial issues, it's different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.

    But in former empires (UK, France), there such topics like reading in the Jane Austen books, where the wealth of a family (i.e. Mansfield Park) is derived from a slave plantation. This will be popular in the universities.

    However, UK's woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.

    Still this is not so fashionable in the elite areas. Everywhere there are LGBT flags and environmentalist causes. But there are not evident "Black Lives Matter" flags in the elite area.

    Racial issues are relating more to the idea of eliminating of "unconscious bias" and representing diversity from students.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    But there are not evident “Black Lives Matter” flags in the elite area.

    There were posters for BLM demos in my university library last year (I tore some of them down and threw them into rubbish bins).
    Re universities in general, tbh many departments just ought to be closed down, I’m convinced part of the reason for the increasingly deranged character of Western societies is the excessive expansion of higher education since the 1960s.

    • Replies: @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    There were posters for BLM demos in my university library last year (I tore some of them down and threw them into rubbish bins).
     
    Based.

    A “counter-culture” that is supported by much of the establishment in Western societies (e.g. Germany’s president recently said he thinks it’s great that there are movements like BLM in Germany, that they’re necessary and deserving of support…and my comment which started this discussion referenced a tweet by the US state department…).
     
    The entire term is a misnomber, really. Does anyone really still believe that the whole 'free-love', rock&roll, liberation movement was a grassroots movement? Has *any* really successful cultural revolution ever occured without elite cooption beforehand?
  361. @Mikel
    @Almost Missouri


    I still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.
     
    That's most likely just mal's imagination.

    I suppose that some part of Zimbabwe's foreign debt was condoned or renegotiated once its economy began to implode but it does not follow that just because you make your citizens' lives miserable through hyperinflation foreign creditors are under any obligation to ease your foreign currency debt payments. In fact, hyperinflation makes it more difficult, not easier, to source foreign currency.

    Replies: @mal

    That’s most likely just mal’s imagination.

    No exactly. I sometimes know what I’m talking about. :).

    Inflation began accelerating after Mr Mugabe’s regime crippled commercial agriculture — Zimbabwe’s biggest export earner — by seizing white-owned farms. Having disabled the engine of the economy and destroyed its tax base, the government resorted to printing money to pay its own bills.

    This boosted inflation and drove down the value of the currency. Prices soared in 2005 when Mr Mugabe repaid Zimbabwe’s debts to the International Monetary Fund. The Reserve Bank accomplished this feat by the simple expedient of printing about Z\$21 trillion.

    https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/feb14_2007.HTML

    And latest number on on Zimbabwean Debt to GDP is 77%, much better than US. It was like 250% in 2005.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/government-debt-to-gdp

    Again, I’m not saying Zimbabweans are smart or not a bunch of petty thugs. They should never have messed with their supply chain. It was a stupid mistake.

    But once mistake was made, hyperinflation was the right move, the only move to play.

    I can just imagine the expressions on the faces of IMF officials when Zimbabweans showed up to repay the loans lol. It was probably hilarious.

    But once you mess with the bull (“the international investment community”), you are going to get the horns. They were doomed at that point, so printing to infinity was the only way to go.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @mal


    No exactly. I sometimes know what I’m talking about. :).
     
    No my son. I don't think you do in this particular case. Your (dubious) link doesn't work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines. No country would ever have to worry about getting indebted in US dollars if that was the case!

    It is trivially true that a country that can print its own currency cannot default on debt denominated in that currency (great "discovery" of the MMT theorists). But there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions. That's why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.

    If you read the books I recommended you will understand that anything we can call money must have two essential attributes: be an accepted means of exchange ("money is accepted because it is accepted" Samuelson famously quipped) and serve as a store of value. When contracts and transactions become difficult because prices are constantly changing and keeping your savings in a given currency makes it lose its value over time, people invariably switch to better forms of money.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they're doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal, @Beckow

  362. @AaronB

    The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.
     
    I think these kinds of materialist explanations - so popular today - cannot withstand close historical scrutiny, especially if we widen the lens to include world history (so much thinking in the West suffers from this parochialism.)

    Even Kevin McDonald wrote about how America had a home-grown "culture of critique" in the New England Transcendentalists - writers like Thoreau and Emerson, who were deeply critical of common sense bourgeois culture and inspired by foreign cultures (chiefly India).

    He dismissed it as a minor episode he did not fully understand, but of course the American Transcendentalists were an offshoot of European Romanticism, and an absolutely central and critical aspect of Western culture since the 18th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Thoreau is one of America's most revered writers.

    McDonald cannot give this the significance it deserves, because it would completely invalidate his contention that Jews are primarily responsible for dismantling common sense bourgeois norms in the West

    The question is far larger and more humanly central than a petty tribal conflict.

    Every healthy culture must have a counter-culture that questions and mocks the "common sense" of the mainstream even as it ultimately influences the mainstream.

    For instance, let's look at China. Mainstream Chinese culture was Confucian - a dull, sober, and practical sort of bourgeois common sense.

    But then Taoism arose, which explicitly mocked and derided the stuffiness of Confucius - in Taoist texts, Confucius is actually the butt of many jokes, and used as an example of a limited being, who even admits his limitations. And Taoism is a wild and anarchic philosophy that gloriously overturns all the tenets of bourgeois common sense.

    A Chinese Kevin McDonald, a materialist with no sense of transcendence, would regard Taoism as a movement by some alien group that somehow infiltrated China in disguise to overturn the solid bourgeois common sense that keeps society healthy.

    But actually, Taoism - which is basically counter-culture - became hugely influential among the Chinese elite for practically all it's history, and even had a serious effect on Confucianism (which on its own is really too dry).

    For millenia, China had a mainstream culture - sober, responsible, practical, bourgeois - wonderfully balanced by a sublime counter-culture.

    No culture can survive without a counter-culture - because being sober and practical are necessary for survival, but escaping the burden of the dull quotidian is equally necessary if survival is to have any value.

    Christianity was for centuries the counter-culture of the West, but eventually, all counter-culture's get assimilated and become "respectable".

    So a new counter-culture - Romanticism - was created..

    Today, Woke is our counter-culture - a particularly insipid and inane one, from a culture that cannot truly escape it's materialist/Positivist prison so cannot achieve a true counter-culture.

    Since we are race-obsessed materialists, the counter-culture must take the form of being against the dominant race , rather than being against the dominant culture.

    Replies: @AaronB, @German_reader

    To put it briefly –

    If common sense bourgeois norms are necessary for the health of a society, then dismantling them can only be a hostile act by an enemy (so materialist logic goes).

    Ok, so let’s say one views it through the prism of tribal conflict in the West.

    But what about a phenomena like Taoism, which explicitly rejects common sense bourgeois norms? Were Taoists really members of an alien minority who infiltrated Chinese society?

    And then what explains the appeal of these ideas to the host group – why did the Chinese elite embrace Taoism, a philosophy that undermined it’s common sense bourgeois values?

    And what about the serious question of whether common sense bourgeois values – civilization itself – is an advance over hunter gathering life? An entire school of philosophy and anthropology exists that argues that civilization itself is ambiguous and may be a source of unhappiness.

    Is this all just ethnic groups trying to undermine dominant cultures, or are these really larger questions about the human condition?

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AaronB

    America is a regular chekistan, with one of the world's highest imprisonment rates, and favourable political consensus to ensure permanent luxury among the elites and rulers (not so much worse for the authorities, than life for them in Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China).

    1940s Film Noir was a more realistic genre for the political realities in America, than 1990s romantic comedy.

    Police can torture and execute innocent people outside their hotel room, and the courts might not even punish the executioner. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42277309

    Chevron can use legal connections to imprison people apparently for exposing pollution in Bolivia. https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/kafka-in-america-it-cant-happen-here

    Isn't it easier than talking about these realities, with great comfort and luxury for anyone in the elite, to re-direct into an Obama style of rhetoric about racial inequality, and how we need to install another "Black History Month", and release some corporate videos about our inclusive policy that hires young women from minority nationalities to be in our advertising campaign.
    (Even Harvey Weinstein, was known for his contributions to liberal political groups that supported women's rights and racial equality.)


    ethnic groups trying to undermine dominant cultures, or are these really larger questions about the human condition
     
    But the more point is that, sometimes it's useful to "talk about justice and the human condition" - this is "symbolic gestures". Sometimes you can even add a BLM flag as a fashion symbol, while living in the most elite places in the world.

    Sometimes it's useful for immodest people and unconscientious people, to promote the values of modesty and conscientiousness.

    Afterall, we all remember Obama's attractive speeches about justice and "arc of history". And yet, the reality was less interesting than the speeches - after 8 years of Obama's pleasant speeches about overcoming America's socioeconomic divisions and racial inequality, Baltimore didn't seem to receive the investments.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGuDPcjaVo0

    Replies: @AaronB

  363. @Coconuts
    @German_reader

    I think this is partly because the Woke racial thinking can be almost hilariously wrong and lacking understanding when it is imported into a European setting (even in Britain, which did at least follow some form of liberal ideology and had a large colonial empire). It is then implemented in bureaucracies, cultural institutions and the education system by diversity professionals who are often part of ethnic minority communities, who seem to be working directly from American textbooks. Also at a time of accelerating demographic change within European nation states.

    Replies: @German_reader, @Dmitry

    Educational centres of Western Europe are becoming a third (and probably soon will be half) Indian and Chinese students. Both countries which were victims of imperialism.

    But I think they actually integrate quite easily. They are not fighting local students, but mixed up to them without a need for affirmative action policies.

    The Woke ideology of “safe spaces”, microaggressions, personal pronouns, banning clapping, – it’s not so useful for the Indian or Chinese students.

    But it’s popular with the local elite.

    As part of my industry and employer, we are working with university department.

    One of the greatest change I notice in the last years, requirements to change toilets to unisex. This is all because of non-binary gender concept.

    This is kind of culture change really popular with the young people – they are very worried that non-binary will be discriminated, and have forced that all toilets have to change in the universities.

    In terms of industry, the young people are very concerned about environment and that office culture are using sustainable energy, have access for disabled people, do not include microaggressions, will be inclusive for neurodiversity minorities.

    Aside from the virtue signalling (which is the attractive aspect of a BLM flag), it feels like a hyper-civilization or sensitization, where their whole lives should be a kind of safe space.

    My own view of BLM is that the protest against police brutality in America (also Russia) is correct and important. But the important issue was lost, and re-directed and exploited into American race politics.

    The problem of arbitrary violence and brutality of the authorities, and suppression of ordinary peoples’ rights, is very serious. But the topic was re-mapped onto a kind of Obama speech about racial justice (the usefulness of Obama’s speeches even in their own terms, can be seen by the fact relative racial income inequality became worse in America after he was president for 8 years).

  364. German_reader says:
    @AaronB

    The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.
     
    I think these kinds of materialist explanations - so popular today - cannot withstand close historical scrutiny, especially if we widen the lens to include world history (so much thinking in the West suffers from this parochialism.)

    Even Kevin McDonald wrote about how America had a home-grown "culture of critique" in the New England Transcendentalists - writers like Thoreau and Emerson, who were deeply critical of common sense bourgeois culture and inspired by foreign cultures (chiefly India).

    He dismissed it as a minor episode he did not fully understand, but of course the American Transcendentalists were an offshoot of European Romanticism, and an absolutely central and critical aspect of Western culture since the 18th century on both sides of the Atlantic. Thoreau is one of America's most revered writers.

    McDonald cannot give this the significance it deserves, because it would completely invalidate his contention that Jews are primarily responsible for dismantling common sense bourgeois norms in the West

    The question is far larger and more humanly central than a petty tribal conflict.

    Every healthy culture must have a counter-culture that questions and mocks the "common sense" of the mainstream even as it ultimately influences the mainstream.

    For instance, let's look at China. Mainstream Chinese culture was Confucian - a dull, sober, and practical sort of bourgeois common sense.

    But then Taoism arose, which explicitly mocked and derided the stuffiness of Confucius - in Taoist texts, Confucius is actually the butt of many jokes, and used as an example of a limited being, who even admits his limitations. And Taoism is a wild and anarchic philosophy that gloriously overturns all the tenets of bourgeois common sense.

    A Chinese Kevin McDonald, a materialist with no sense of transcendence, would regard Taoism as a movement by some alien group that somehow infiltrated China in disguise to overturn the solid bourgeois common sense that keeps society healthy.

    But actually, Taoism - which is basically counter-culture - became hugely influential among the Chinese elite for practically all it's history, and even had a serious effect on Confucianism (which on its own is really too dry).

    For millenia, China had a mainstream culture - sober, responsible, practical, bourgeois - wonderfully balanced by a sublime counter-culture.

    No culture can survive without a counter-culture - because being sober and practical are necessary for survival, but escaping the burden of the dull quotidian is equally necessary if survival is to have any value.

    Christianity was for centuries the counter-culture of the West, but eventually, all counter-culture's get assimilated and become "respectable".

    So a new counter-culture - Romanticism - was created..

    Today, Woke is our counter-culture - a particularly insipid and inane one, from a culture that cannot truly escape it's materialist/Positivist prison so cannot achieve a true counter-culture.

    Since we are race-obsessed materialists, the counter-culture must take the form of being against the dominant race , rather than being against the dominant culture.

    Replies: @AaronB, @German_reader

    Today, Woke is our counter-culture

    A “counter-culture” that is supported by much of the establishment in Western societies (e.g. Germany’s president recently said he thinks it’s great that there are movements like BLM in Germany, that they’re necessary and deserving of support…and my comment which started this discussion referenced a tweet by the US state department…).
    A genuine counter-culture would be identitarians or members of genuinely right-wing parties. Unlike the woke they risk social death and persecution by the state.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Current "Woke" ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias - it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.

    The Beatles enter "counter-culture" when they use LSD in 1967. When John Lennon is killed 13 years later, he is already one of the most mainstream celebrities in New York, and President Jimmy Carter presents an official speech in the evening of his assassination (as US Presidents will after a national disaster).


    -

    By the way, to talk about your original analogy to the Roman Empire.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.

    Problems now I see less in the current reality (where it is undeniable that life is better in history than ever before for much of the world's population), but the precedents constantly which are being prepared like Chekhov's gun. Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Counter-culture always gets adopted by the mainstream and influences it. As I said, a healthy culture is defined by both common sense practical values and the need to transcend them. A culture and a counter-culture.

    Man is a creature with a dual nature - he needs bread, but does not live by bread alone.

    As I mentioned with China, where Taoism - which is basically anti-civilization- was adopted as the philosophy of the most civilized men in China, the scholars and Mandarins, the men most deeply involved with sustaining Chinese civilization and invested in it. Why did they "turn" against their own civilization like that? It was common for many high government officials to abandon their posts at a certain age and live as hermits in the mountains, and even in the midst of their duties they sustained a Taoist outlook in art and philosophy as far as possible.

    Similarly, Romanticism in Europe was explicitly critical of civilization, science, industrialism, and prone to lionizing primitive non-industrial - and non-European - cultures, yet was widely popular and hugely influential among European elites.

    A counter-culture is defined by opposing the common sense notion of the average man, the bourgeois, and opposing the practical, sober, and realistic values needed to sustain civilization. It is essentially a critique of civilization.

    Replies: @AaronB

  365. I have generously written three songs specific to the genre of White Trashionalism and its dysfunction. Even the WNs themselves are fond of these songs, and use them as rallying themes.

    Only someone with a truly exceptional knowledge of ALL Western culture (both contemporary and classical) could come up with songs like this. I am so generous that I give these songs away for free.

    The three songs are :

    i) Little Shop of Wiggers
    ii) The Marriage of Wigger-O
    iii) Ann-O-Mite

    I hereby re-post the first one, ‘Little Shop of Wiggers‘ :

    First, it follows the beat of ‘Mean Green Mother’ from ‘Little Shop of Horrors’ :

    The lyrics to be placed in that beat are :

    I’m just a WN wigger, obsessed with race,
    And I am mad.
    I’m just a WN wigger, obsessed with race,
    And it looks like I’ve been haaaaad.
    I’m just a WN wigger, obsessed with race,
    Smarter whites always put me back in my place,
    I’m enviously green!
    And I look……BAD!

    I’m just a WN wigger, obsessed with race,
    My IQ does severely lag.
    I’m just a WN wigger, obsessed with race,
    And I want others to hold the baaaaag…
    I’m just a WN wigger, obsessed with race,
    I smear the jizz of other men all ova mah face,
    I’m a meany queeeen!
    And I am a….. FAG!

    _________________________________________

    Notice how perfectly the verses rhyme. Such is my talent.

    This is a superb song that encapsulates everything that WN wiggers are about. They should use this as their theme song with pride!

    I will post the other songs after this one, so that the whole album is available on this thread.

    Heh heh heh heh

  366. @German_reader
    @AaronB


    Today, Woke is our counter-culture
     
    A "counter-culture" that is supported by much of the establishment in Western societies (e.g. Germany's president recently said he thinks it's great that there are movements like BLM in Germany, that they're necessary and deserving of support...and my comment which started this discussion referenced a tweet by the US state department...).
    A genuine counter-culture would be identitarians or members of genuinely right-wing parties. Unlike the woke they risk social death and persecution by the state.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

    Current “Woke” ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias – it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.

    The Beatles enter “counter-culture” when they use LSD in 1967. When John Lennon is killed 13 years later, he is already one of the most mainstream celebrities in New York, and President Jimmy Carter presents an official speech in the evening of his assassination (as US Presidents will after a national disaster).

    By the way, to talk about your original analogy to the Roman Empire.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.

    Problems now I see less in the current reality (where it is undeniable that life is better in history than ever before for much of the world’s population), but the precedents constantly which are being prepared like Chekhov’s gun. Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    I'm pedantic at times and have the urge to reply or add to your posts point-by-point. Treat these as my own crude reading notes.


    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment...
     
    A ideologically recast version of Bourgeois spite for the masses, and this time intrinsically self-destructive over the long-term. By focusing on frivolities (what they actually are) instead of real High Culture or genuine issues of concern, They're probably abdicating their own moral leadership.

    The discordance will be when you export “pronoun theory” and “ethical coffee buying theory”, to coal miners or Indian farmers – which is what US State Department’s social media manager seems to be trying.
     
    "Ethical coffee buying" might be of use to smallholders planting coffee, because it's economic to them. The only stuff in those SJ theories that will be resonant to the lower classes will be those of tangible (economic) concern.

    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe
     
    Western Europe has been a hotbed of "innovation", "fashions", whatever because of a high degree of individualism (this has an HBD explanation). Just catching up on the newest trends.

    there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.
     
    Like every set of beliefs, there are good and bad things here. Organic farming & electric mobility are alright as far as they have a clear vision of how to do them (and electricity generation from nuclear power instead of the current set of renewables). But anything else are depraved.

    Disclosure: I'm autistic and benefit from "neurodiverse" initiatives

    For racial issues, it’s different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.
     
    This is the limit of Americanization. Real history and real ethnic positions.

    However, UK’s woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.
     
    Which is because the "human rights" angle of these issues are emphasized, and this means they are affected by a more general Europeanization of their view on how social relations should be structured. Not surprising considering that China has been modernizing its ideological worldview after 5/4 and India has the British Raj. But these somewhat make sense from a more conventional "no harms and no exploitation" perspective.

    Educational centres of Western Europe are becoming a third (and probably soon will be half) Indian and Chinese students. Both countries which were victims of imperialism.
     
    A big cargo cult.

    But I think they actually integrate quite easily. They are not fighting local students, but mixed up to them without a need for affirmative action policies.
     
    HBD proponents will tell you they are high-IQ types and they'll succeed no matter what. Why the need for affirmative action, which are for those socially "inferior".

    One of the greatest change I notice in the last years, requirements to change toilets to unisex. This is all because of non-binary gender concept.

    This is kind of culture change really popular with the young people – they are very worried that non-binary will be discriminated, and have forced that all toilets have to change in the universities.
     
    There are definitely extremely few (0.02% to 0.05%) intersex people with deformed genitals who can't be neatly assigned a sex at birth. The 99% must accommodate those freaks and gender LARPers!

    Aside from the virtue signalling (which is the attractive aspect of a BLM flag), it feels like a hyper-civilization or sensitization, where their whole lives should be a kind of safe space.



    My own view of BLM is that the protest against police brutality in America (also Russia) is correct and important. But the important issue was lost, and re-directed and exploited into American race politics.

    The problem of arbitrary violence and brutality of the authorities, and suppression of ordinary peoples’ rights, is very serious. But the topic was re-mapped onto a kind of Obama speech about racial justice (the usefulness of Obama’s speeches even in their own terms, can be seen by the fact relative racial income inequality became worse in America after he was president for 8 years).
     

    Current “Woke” ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias – it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.
     

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.
     
    Very true.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.
     
    Traditionalist thought see the advancement of technologies as decadence.

    Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.
     
    To end this comment, this looks like a really profound example to pick up and it says a lot on what's poor with our current Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement, compulsion, institutional intolerance of alternative standpoints and actions, appropriation by political TPTB...). One way out of these is spearheaded by the opposition/resistance to such a system, and it is ideologically-based parallel societies (e.g. black markets), and before that a re-domesticization of social life no doubt helped by lockdowns, and reconstitution of social ties after the whole Zoom business.

    Agorists and libertarians don't know what new world they're building.

    Replies: @AaronB, @Dmitry

  367. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    Private sector participants take fake fiat cash just fine, happy to, as a matter of fact, and can’t get enough. So it’s all good be spends the same.
     
    Right. That's the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It's a form of Gresham's Law.

    You can literally take used toilet paper, collateralize it at Goldman Sachs, and sell resulting bond for a $billion dollars.
     
    Yes, because Goldman Sachs is part of the fiat banking cartel.

    Private sector smartly decided its best to serve the government. After all, nobody rejects government contracts and money. Private sector chases after government as the most important customer. Private sector is submissive to the government and loves the government, all the noises it makes aside.
     
    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.

    Well, like it or not, they still exist in the real world and they are still market participants.
     
    Again an accurate description of the problem.

    I mean Fed does like to play the markets but majority of US debt is still privately or internationally held.
     
    If you consider the Federal Reserve (the largest single holder of US debt) to be "private", then yes. The Fed is also the entity gaining debt ownership the fastest.

    Just markets participants making choices on their own free will. Aside from Social Security Trust funds and some banking regulations, nobody is forcing anyone to buy government debt, people do it on their on desire.
     
    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).

    And that’s a good thing.
     
    Whether you count the Fed as an opaque cartel of private bankers or whether you count it as just a plausible-deniable arm of the federal state selling debt to itself, neither scenario looks like a good thing to me.

    Question: “Are you better off with a) 250% GDP debt owed to the “international investment community”, or b) 70% GDP debt owed to the same “community”?
     
    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief. How much ZANU/Mugabe keep versus pass on to foreign banksters may be affected by debt renegotiations, but that has as much relevance to ordinary Zimbabweans as our landlord's negotiation with his mortgage holder does to you or me. Probably less, actually. Nevertheless, I still haven't seen any evidence that Zimbabwe's debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    When you have weak, uncartelized banking system , your elites use private banking system to issue loans which they then dump on forex markets to buy dollars or whatever.
     
    This is an interesting theory, but it depends on banks being willing to give USD or other "hard" currency in exchange for Zimbabwe dollars or other joke currency. Why would any bank do that?

    most inflation is caused by private banks rather than the government.
     
    I have to disagree, for reasons stated in this comment: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4959102

    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)
     
    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    Replies: @A123, @Mikel, @mal

    Right. That’s the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It’s a form of Gresham’s Law.

    How? Why do you think producers are too stupid to realize they could be doing something else rather than working for government cash?

    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.

    How? Again, why won’t producers decide to do something else if that something else is more productive?

    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).

    I wouldn’t say “most” (Fed is what, \$120 billion/month?), but at any rate, private sector is welcome to sell their holdings at any time if they don’t like it, and yet they don’t.

    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief.

    Local ZANU Chief is also an ordinary Zimbabwean. You can’t just pretend that people you don’t like are not really people. Again, local problems require local solutions. But at national scale, 77% debt is better than 250% debt to the “community”.

    still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

    Not renegotiated. Repaid lol. That repayment dumped Z dollar on forex market and triggered hyperinflation. But it must have been glorious lol.

    Why would any bank do that?

    Why would a bank lend to Pets dot Com or whatever? Or shopping mall real estate? Because it’s their job?

    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    Bush’s recession mess and building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet? I will give the Democrats a pass on those two.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    do you think producers are too stupid to realize they could be doing something else rather than working for government cash?
     
    The thing about fiat money is you don't have to work for it. You just get it for free by being a crony. That's why it is destructive to the productive economy.

    why won’t producers decide to do something else if that something else is more productive?
     
    It's hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.

    private sector is welcome to sell their holdings at any time if they don’t like it, and yet they don’t.
     
    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.

    Local ZANU Chief is also an ordinary Zimbabwean.
     
    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

    You can’t just pretend that people you don’t like are not really people
     
    .

    I have no particular feelings one way or the other about Zimbabweans. I'm just averse to descriptive inaccuracy.

    Not renegotiated. Repaid lol. That repayment dumped Z dollar on forex market and triggered hyperinflation.
     
    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately $0.

    But it must have been glorious lol.
     
    If you hate Zimbabwe.



    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)
     

     

    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.
     
    Bush’s recession mess and building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet? I will give the Democrats a pass on those two.
     
    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America's second biggest budget deficit?

    And why is "building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet" to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn't have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?

    Would it help you to forgive "Reagan's" deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he's signing a Democrat House's budget?

    Replies: @mal

  368. @German_reader
    @AaronB


    Today, Woke is our counter-culture
     
    A "counter-culture" that is supported by much of the establishment in Western societies (e.g. Germany's president recently said he thinks it's great that there are movements like BLM in Germany, that they're necessary and deserving of support...and my comment which started this discussion referenced a tweet by the US state department...).
    A genuine counter-culture would be identitarians or members of genuinely right-wing parties. Unlike the woke they risk social death and persecution by the state.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

    Counter-culture always gets adopted by the mainstream and influences it. As I said, a healthy culture is defined by both common sense practical values and the need to transcend them. A culture and a counter-culture.

    Man is a creature with a dual nature – he needs bread, but does not live by bread alone.

    As I mentioned with China, where Taoism – which is basically anti-civilization- was adopted as the philosophy of the most civilized men in China, the scholars and Mandarins, the men most deeply involved with sustaining Chinese civilization and invested in it. Why did they “turn” against their own civilization like that? It was common for many high government officials to abandon their posts at a certain age and live as hermits in the mountains, and even in the midst of their duties they sustained a Taoist outlook in art and philosophy as far as possible.

    Similarly, Romanticism in Europe was explicitly critical of civilization, science, industrialism, and prone to lionizing primitive non-industrial – and non-European – cultures, yet was widely popular and hugely influential among European elites.

    A counter-culture is defined by opposing the common sense notion of the average man, the bourgeois, and opposing the practical, sober, and realistic values needed to sustain civilization. It is essentially a critique of civilization.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @AaronB

    As for a right wing counter-culture, for decades now the right has been defined by it's dedication to the values of realistic common sense and sober respectability. It's critique of the left has been it's radical departure from realism and common sense.

    Jared Taylor has this thing where he famously points out that White societies are functional under any political system and Black and Brown societies dysfunctional under any political system.

    This is Taylor's highest value; functionality. This is good, healthy, bourgeois common sense, practical, sober, etc. And it is important, but it isn't enough.

    This is why the right has lost the culture wars.

    When you read Steve Sailer, you think that even if everything he says is correct he has completely missed the point. As long as the right produces mainly people like these, it cannot even compete in the culture wars. (Steve is a nice guy and a talented writer whose writing would have a valuable place for what it is. Only, it can't be the substance of the right wing contribution to the culture wars, a kind of bland, amiable, avuncular, practicality).

    There is another type of right wing politics that does offer transcendence, and in it's best form it is represented by someone like Edmund Burke and his pertinent reflections on the French Revolution - which makes clear, there is also a type of leftism that is dreary and dull and utterly fails at transcendence, like life under Communism and it's dreary materialism.

    Another major problem for the right is that in the recent last, it's main attempts at transcendence, like the Nazis, were sinister, malevolent, and horrifically destructive to large swathes of foreign populations (and itself).

    So for a time, right wing transcendence politics were suspicious and the right confined itself to politics of bland practicality, but despite Ron Unze's best attempts to resurrect this sinister style of right wing transcendence (which would once again destroy the right for decades), I believe the future of the right is to move towards a more sane and balanced Burkean politics of transcendence.

    And with the left becoming so extreme and it's implosion inevitable, perhaps the right will in future gave a contribution to make - perhaps, in the new synthesis that arises, left and right will no longer have meaning.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  369. @mal
    @Mikel


    That’s most likely just mal’s imagination.
     
    No exactly. I sometimes know what I'm talking about. :).

    Inflation began accelerating after Mr Mugabe's regime crippled commercial agriculture — Zimbabwe's biggest export earner — by seizing white-owned farms. Having disabled the engine of the economy and destroyed its tax base, the government resorted to printing money to pay its own bills.

    This boosted inflation and drove down the value of the currency. Prices soared in 2005 when Mr Mugabe repaid Zimbabwe's debts to the International Monetary Fund. The Reserve Bank accomplished this feat by the simple expedient of printing about Z$21 trillion.
     

    https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/feb14_2007.HTML

    And latest number on on Zimbabwean Debt to GDP is 77%, much better than US. It was like 250% in 2005.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/government-debt-to-gdp

    Again, I'm not saying Zimbabweans are smart or not a bunch of petty thugs. They should never have messed with their supply chain. It was a stupid mistake.

    But once mistake was made, hyperinflation was the right move, the only move to play.

    I can just imagine the expressions on the faces of IMF officials when Zimbabweans showed up to repay the loans lol. It was probably hilarious.

    But once you mess with the bull ("the international investment community"), you are going to get the horns. They were doomed at that point, so printing to infinity was the only way to go.

    Replies: @Mikel

    No exactly. I sometimes know what I’m talking about. :).

    No my son. I don’t think you do in this particular case. Your (dubious) link doesn’t work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines. No country would ever have to worry about getting indebted in US dollars if that was the case!

    It is trivially true that a country that can print its own currency cannot default on debt denominated in that currency (great “discovery” of the MMT theorists). But there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions. That’s why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.

    If you read the books I recommended you will understand that anything we can call money must have two essential attributes: be an accepted means of exchange (“money is accepted because it is accepted” Samuelson famously quipped) and serve as a store of value. When contracts and transactions become difficult because prices are constantly changing and keeping your savings in a given currency makes it lose its value over time, people invariably switch to better forms of money.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions.
     
    Needless to say these are the symptoms of the friction between chartalist & metallist monetary theories. It's the conflict between extractive vs transactional logic, tax collectors vs people bartering goods.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.
     
    The biggest problem for MMT is the Treasury failing to know how big the money supply should be to cover the real economy, or it's ignored in favor of distributional policy objectives. And this is where the Austrian vision of a market-determined monetary system (commodity money is secondary to the fact) come into play.

    The way to go for unpayable debt denominated in the national currency is to take the Michael Hudson pill for a debt jubilee, or not to incur such debts, as far as they are needless in the first place. But we've gotten to where we are.

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @mal
    @Mikel


    Your (dubious) link doesn’t work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines.
     
    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets? You can buy and sell any currency you want, be it Zimbabwean dollar, US dollar or any other, for a price.

    Zimbabwe didn't print USD, they printed Zimbabwean dollars and dumped them on forex markets. This will cause Zimbabwe dollars to drop in relative value, but not before the sellers pocket the US dollars needed to pay back IMF loans. Eventually, those forex transactions will cause hyperinflation in import dependent countries, but effect is (relatively) delayed and so you can make bank with getting USD for printed local currency.

    That’s why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.
     
    LOL they did this because local oligarchs who owned the private banks would print money like crazy and dump it for dollars.

    Prior to economic collapse Russian government debt to GDP was around 50%. It did skyrocket to 135% due to economic collapse, but even 135% is too bad by modern standards, and it was an artefact of massive GDP drop in 1998. You can tell it as it recovered back to 55% by 2000.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GGGDTARUA188N

    Russian government debt has been some of the lowest in the world in 2000-2010 and Russian government was running budget surpluses.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-budget

    Yet inflation was running at 10-20%!
    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/inflation-cpi

    It certainly wasn't the government printing all this money. They were actually taking money out.

    It was the pathetic local banking sector and the elites who were printing money and dumping it, until Russian Central Bank put a stop to it starting around 2014. Russian inflation dropped like a rock once banking sector was cleaned up and cartelized.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.
     
    In the modern world, private sector credit is far more dangerous with respect to inflationary pressure than government spending.

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @Beckow
    @Mikel


    ...as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation
     
    True, but it is a bookish point, you need a reliable measure to actually use it. In our world the oversupply of money is not measurable on its own, the system is too open. We can only measure "inflation" - a consequence of an oversupply of money. But how?

    To measure something you need a few agreed on things: a baseline, a set of parameters, and a stable enough measure to apply. Some of it exists, but too much is subjective: what to pick, how to set ratios among different parameters - e.g. housing vs. food vs. medical care... At what point in the chain we measure? How to account for imposed and external costs-benefits like taxes, gment help, etc...It is an imprecise process and the resulting "inflation number" is equally imprecise.

    In the last few decades the Western gments figured out that gaming statistics is easier than fixing problems. So they have adjusted formulas to show what they want to show. If inflation in US-EU was measured with the mid-70's formulas it would be around 8-10%. It is true with other gment statistics: debt is hidden with "separate entities", unemployment is a miraculous 5%, but close to 100 million working age people in US are not in the workforce. It is fiction for mid-wits.

    We are being lied to and people lie for a reason. The make-believe worlds can go on for a long time, but there is nothing holding them up, it is based on faith like the medieval monasticism. The issue is that virtual made-up worlds have to constantly expand. We have reached the point when expansion is very difficult. We have a bubble of all bubbles, an everything-bubble presided over by a few demented old people (quite appropriate for a dead-end). Let's see what reality does to it and when.

  370. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    to aid the needy depends

    Yes, prior values and political beliefs will control this.

    I'm just trying to see it in a pragmatic way. The convoluted piecemeal "system" that we have in the U. S. needs to be replaced with one coherent plan. The split between communitarians and the Randians, as you call them, has produced a Frankenstein.

    automated and centralized industries aren’t taxed hard.

    As to the U. S., I think that it is very difficult to effectively tax businesses or industries. They just pass the taxes through to the consumers. Also, I buy the idea that we shouldn't crimp businesses with taxes unless we are trying to discourage and shrink that industry or business.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    The convoluted piecemeal “system” that we have in the U. S. needs to be replaced with one coherent plan. The split between communitarians and the Randians, as you call them, has produced a Frankenstein.

    I don’t think things can be acted on before they unravel. The parts are too incompatible and the way they are stitched comes off easily.

    I buy the idea that we shouldn’t crimp businesses with taxes unless we are trying to discourage and shrink that industry or business.

    Agreed, so classical MMT (with a hidden inflationary tax). Not saying it is necessarily bad but this subtlety needs to be known.

  371. @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Counter-culture always gets adopted by the mainstream and influences it. As I said, a healthy culture is defined by both common sense practical values and the need to transcend them. A culture and a counter-culture.

    Man is a creature with a dual nature - he needs bread, but does not live by bread alone.

    As I mentioned with China, where Taoism - which is basically anti-civilization- was adopted as the philosophy of the most civilized men in China, the scholars and Mandarins, the men most deeply involved with sustaining Chinese civilization and invested in it. Why did they "turn" against their own civilization like that? It was common for many high government officials to abandon their posts at a certain age and live as hermits in the mountains, and even in the midst of their duties they sustained a Taoist outlook in art and philosophy as far as possible.

    Similarly, Romanticism in Europe was explicitly critical of civilization, science, industrialism, and prone to lionizing primitive non-industrial - and non-European - cultures, yet was widely popular and hugely influential among European elites.

    A counter-culture is defined by opposing the common sense notion of the average man, the bourgeois, and opposing the practical, sober, and realistic values needed to sustain civilization. It is essentially a critique of civilization.

    Replies: @AaronB

    As for a right wing counter-culture, for decades now the right has been defined by it’s dedication to the values of realistic common sense and sober respectability. It’s critique of the left has been it’s radical departure from realism and common sense.

    Jared Taylor has this thing where he famously points out that White societies are functional under any political system and Black and Brown societies dysfunctional under any political system.

    This is Taylor’s highest value; functionality. This is good, healthy, bourgeois common sense, practical, sober, etc. And it is important, but it isn’t enough.

    This is why the right has lost the culture wars.

    When you read Steve Sailer, you think that even if everything he says is correct he has completely missed the point. As long as the right produces mainly people like these, it cannot even compete in the culture wars. (Steve is a nice guy and a talented writer whose writing would have a valuable place for what it is. Only, it can’t be the substance of the right wing contribution to the culture wars, a kind of bland, amiable, avuncular, practicality).

    There is another type of right wing politics that does offer transcendence, and in it’s best form it is represented by someone like Edmund Burke and his pertinent reflections on the French Revolution – which makes clear, there is also a type of leftism that is dreary and dull and utterly fails at transcendence, like life under Communism and it’s dreary materialism.

    Another major problem for the right is that in the recent last, it’s main attempts at transcendence, like the Nazis, were sinister, malevolent, and horrifically destructive to large swathes of foreign populations (and itself).

    So for a time, right wing transcendence politics were suspicious and the right confined itself to politics of bland practicality, but despite Ron Unze’s best attempts to resurrect this sinister style of right wing transcendence (which would once again destroy the right for decades), I believe the future of the right is to move towards a more sane and balanced Burkean politics of transcendence.

    And with the left becoming so extreme and it’s implosion inevitable, perhaps the right will in future gave a contribution to make – perhaps, in the new synthesis that arises, left and right will no longer have meaning.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @AaronB

    What's so transcendent about Burke?

    Replies: @AaronB

  372. Germany’s president recently said he thinks it’s great that there are movements like BLM

    And even Newcorps when they talk to the important executive people, while at the same the corporation was paying Tucker Carlson to generate anger against it among the socioeconomically less important (excluding Trump) people that consume his products.

    Redirecting revolutionary energy is not difficult for Fox News, which is even able to mobilize anger onto such topics as “war on Christmas” (despite the absurdity that talking about a “war on Christmas” in America, was as realistic and also the same thing as complaining about “America’s war against capitalism”).

    This is how the same Newscorps executives respond to BLM.

    And Newscorp, in Australia, receive millions government money to promote women’s sports. https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/40-million-fox-sports-grant-on-auditor-general-s-radar-20210517-p57sog.html

    Westerners who believe a little too much in the importance of ideological arguments and democratic choices of non-elite people, can perhaps fortify skeptical inclinations from reading honest political elites like Surkov – the importance of the ordinary people in American politics might not always be as different from Russia and China as hoped for. https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/europe/interview-an-overdose-of-freedom-is-lethal-to-a-state-says-former-key-putin-adviser-1.4598641

  373. @AaronB
    @AaronB

    To put it briefly -

    If common sense bourgeois norms are necessary for the health of a society, then dismantling them can only be a hostile act by an enemy (so materialist logic goes).

    Ok, so let's say one views it through the prism of tribal conflict in the West.

    But what about a phenomena like Taoism, which explicitly rejects common sense bourgeois norms? Were Taoists really members of an alien minority who infiltrated Chinese society?

    And then what explains the appeal of these ideas to the host group - why did the Chinese elite embrace Taoism, a philosophy that undermined it's common sense bourgeois values?

    And what about the serious question of whether common sense bourgeois values - civilization itself - is an advance over hunter gathering life? An entire school of philosophy and anthropology exists that argues that civilization itself is ambiguous and may be a source of unhappiness.

    Is this all just ethnic groups trying to undermine dominant cultures, or are these really larger questions about the human condition?

    Replies: @Dmitry

    America is a regular chekistan, with one of the world’s highest imprisonment rates, and favourable political consensus to ensure permanent luxury among the elites and rulers (not so much worse for the authorities, than life for them in Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China).

    1940s Film Noir was a more realistic genre for the political realities in America, than 1990s romantic comedy.

    Police can torture and execute innocent people outside their hotel room, and the courts might not even punish the executioner. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42277309

    Chevron can use legal connections to imprison people apparently for exposing pollution in Bolivia. https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/kafka-in-america-it-cant-happen-here

    Isn’t it easier than talking about these realities, with great comfort and luxury for anyone in the elite, to re-direct into an Obama style of rhetoric about racial inequality, and how we need to install another “Black History Month”, and release some corporate videos about our inclusive policy that hires young women from minority nationalities to be in our advertising campaign.
    (Even Harvey Weinstein, was known for his contributions to liberal political groups that supported women’s rights and racial equality.)

    ethnic groups trying to undermine dominant cultures, or are these really larger questions about the human condition

    But the more point is that, sometimes it’s useful to “talk about justice and the human condition” – this is “symbolic gestures”. Sometimes you can even add a BLM flag as a fashion symbol, while living in the most elite places in the world.

    Sometimes it’s useful for immodest people and unconscientious people, to promote the values of modesty and conscientiousness.

    Afterall, we all remember Obama’s attractive speeches about justice and “arc of history”. And yet, the reality was less interesting than the speeches – after 8 years of Obama’s pleasant speeches about overcoming America’s socioeconomic divisions and racial inequality, Baltimore didn’t seem to receive the investments.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I agree with your critiques of America.

    Are there elements in America pushing racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression? Without question. I even think this is a significant factor in the rise of Woke politics.

    Marx famously said that anti-Semitism is the communism of the uneducated - and I think that's basically correct; a class war diverted into a racial war for fools.

    However, Woke politics is not only racial conflict - that could probably be achieved much more easily on right wing lines. Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently - I forget which Woke group - posted a definition of "Whiteness"? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values - common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against "Whiteness", which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification - the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement - in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints (a sense of transcendence and escape from the preoccupation of physically surviving)?

    A recent NYT article was about how White children are not born White but need to be made into "Whites" - assimilated into the culture of bourgeois practicality.

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies - Whites, Jews, Blacks - and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the "structure" of society - being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of "evil".

    Replies: @A123, @iffen, @Dmitry

  374. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Current "Woke" ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias - it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.

    The Beatles enter "counter-culture" when they use LSD in 1967. When John Lennon is killed 13 years later, he is already one of the most mainstream celebrities in New York, and President Jimmy Carter presents an official speech in the evening of his assassination (as US Presidents will after a national disaster).


    -

    By the way, to talk about your original analogy to the Roman Empire.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.

    Problems now I see less in the current reality (where it is undeniable that life is better in history than ever before for much of the world's population), but the precedents constantly which are being prepared like Chekhov's gun. Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I’m pedantic at times and have the urge to reply or add to your posts point-by-point. Treat these as my own crude reading notes.

    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment…

    A ideologically recast version of Bourgeois spite for the masses, and this time intrinsically self-destructive over the long-term. By focusing on frivolities (what they actually are) instead of real High Culture or genuine issues of concern, They’re probably abdicating their own moral leadership.

    The discordance will be when you export “pronoun theory” and “ethical coffee buying theory”, to coal miners or Indian farmers – which is what US State Department’s social media manager seems to be trying.

    “Ethical coffee buying” might be of use to smallholders planting coffee, because it’s economic to them. The only stuff in those SJ theories that will be resonant to the lower classes will be those of tangible (economic) concern.

    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe

    Western Europe has been a hotbed of “innovation”, “fashions”, whatever because of a high degree of individualism (this has an HBD explanation). Just catching up on the newest trends.

    there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.

    Like every set of beliefs, there are good and bad things here. Organic farming & electric mobility are alright as far as they have a clear vision of how to do them (and electricity generation from nuclear power instead of the current set of renewables). But anything else are depraved.

    Disclosure: I’m autistic and benefit from “neurodiverse” initiatives

    For racial issues, it’s different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.

    This is the limit of Americanization. Real history and real ethnic positions.

    However, UK’s woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.

    Which is because the “human rights” angle of these issues are emphasized, and this means they are affected by a more general Europeanization of their view on how social relations should be structured. Not surprising considering that China has been modernizing its ideological worldview after 5/4 and India has the British Raj. But these somewhat make sense from a more conventional “no harms and no exploitation” perspective.

    Educational centres of Western Europe are becoming a third (and probably soon will be half) Indian and Chinese students. Both countries which were victims of imperialism.

    A big cargo cult.

    But I think they actually integrate quite easily. They are not fighting local students, but mixed up to them without a need for affirmative action policies.

    HBD proponents will tell you they are high-IQ types and they’ll succeed no matter what. Why the need for affirmative action, which are for those socially “inferior”.

    One of the greatest change I notice in the last years, requirements to change toilets to unisex. This is all because of non-binary gender concept.

    This is kind of culture change really popular with the young people – they are very worried that non-binary will be discriminated, and have forced that all toilets have to change in the universities.

    There are definitely extremely few (0.02% to 0.05%) intersex people with deformed genitals who can’t be neatly assigned a sex at birth. The 99% must accommodate those freaks and gender LARPers!

    Aside from the virtue signalling (which is the attractive aspect of a BLM flag), it feels like a hyper-civilization or sensitization, where their whole lives should be a kind of safe space.

    My own view of BLM is that the protest against police brutality in America (also Russia) is correct and important. But the important issue was lost, and re-directed and exploited into American race politics.

    The problem of arbitrary violence and brutality of the authorities, and suppression of ordinary peoples’ rights, is very serious. But the topic was re-mapped onto a kind of Obama speech about racial justice (the usefulness of Obama’s speeches even in their own terms, can be seen by the fact relative racial income inequality became worse in America after he was president for 8 years).

    Current “Woke” ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias – it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.

    Very true.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.

    Traditionalist thought see the advancement of technologies as decadence.

    Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.

    To end this comment, this looks like a really profound example to pick up and it says a lot on what’s poor with our current Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement, compulsion, institutional intolerance of alternative standpoints and actions, appropriation by political TPTB…). One way out of these is spearheaded by the opposition/resistance to such a system, and it is ideologically-based parallel societies (e.g. black markets), and before that a re-domesticization of social life no doubt helped by lockdowns, and reconstitution of social ties after the whole Zoom business.

    Agorists and libertarians don’t know what new world they’re building.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon


    the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement, compulsion, institutional intolerance of alternative standpoints and actions, appropriation by political TPTB
     
    This is one of the best descriptions of the modern condition I have read in a while.

    I bolded the safety/security because I think that is the basic factor underlying all the various phenomena of modern life.

    Modern man feels chronic anxiety as his default state. This is what sets in motion the restless "progress", the need for technological control, etc.

    And as I have argued, anxiety - fear that one can die - is the necessary consequence of faulty metaphysics, the metaphysics of radical Seperation, which is the unspoken assumption of modern society.

    But it will pass.
    , @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    “neurodiverse” initiatives
     
    One of the things they have initiated in some cafes/restaurants/public spaces of an elite university, is to introduce more gentle lighting and less sudden noises so that neurodiverse students will not be offended.

    It seems that if people had said they wanted better lighting and less loud music, nobody would listen to them.

    But if it can translated into language like "in order to protect the rights of the neurodiverse minority students (whose community is represented in the union by [.. ])", then immediately there will be money to change the university buildings to soft music and Philips hue light bulbs.


    Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement
     
    It's a technology that would allow less security for the ordinary people, but more security for the authorities and owners of means of production.

    A lot of technology changes (especially since the introduction of the internet to peoples' life) are precedents that can push the balance of power further and further from the average citizen, and more and more to the rulers and the owners of production.

    In a sensible world, there would be immediate moratorium on most all of these technologies, and then writing of a very strict, humanistic based legal framework, that will protect values of civilization everytime when we engage with this technology.

    The basis for each change should be whether any of this is improving peoples' life, not whether it will generate profit. Because the changes are coming faster and faster. And this is our stage of history is our lives being radically changed by technology.

    Of course, now I'm a utopian dreamer, and the best we can hope is the legal system in developed countries might improve the situation slightly from how it has been in the last decade, and punish some of the extreme bypass of peoples' best interest that has been happening already.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  375. @Dmitry
    @AaronB

    America is a regular chekistan, with one of the world's highest imprisonment rates, and favourable political consensus to ensure permanent luxury among the elites and rulers (not so much worse for the authorities, than life for them in Brazil, Mexico, Russia and China).

    1940s Film Noir was a more realistic genre for the political realities in America, than 1990s romantic comedy.

    Police can torture and execute innocent people outside their hotel room, and the courts might not even punish the executioner. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42277309

    Chevron can use legal connections to imprison people apparently for exposing pollution in Bolivia. https://www.michaelmoore.com/p/kafka-in-america-it-cant-happen-here

    Isn't it easier than talking about these realities, with great comfort and luxury for anyone in the elite, to re-direct into an Obama style of rhetoric about racial inequality, and how we need to install another "Black History Month", and release some corporate videos about our inclusive policy that hires young women from minority nationalities to be in our advertising campaign.
    (Even Harvey Weinstein, was known for his contributions to liberal political groups that supported women's rights and racial equality.)


    ethnic groups trying to undermine dominant cultures, or are these really larger questions about the human condition
     
    But the more point is that, sometimes it's useful to "talk about justice and the human condition" - this is "symbolic gestures". Sometimes you can even add a BLM flag as a fashion symbol, while living in the most elite places in the world.

    Sometimes it's useful for immodest people and unconscientious people, to promote the values of modesty and conscientiousness.

    Afterall, we all remember Obama's attractive speeches about justice and "arc of history". And yet, the reality was less interesting than the speeches - after 8 years of Obama's pleasant speeches about overcoming America's socioeconomic divisions and racial inequality, Baltimore didn't seem to receive the investments.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGuDPcjaVo0

    Replies: @AaronB

    I agree with your critiques of America.

    Are there elements in America pushing racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression? Without question. I even think this is a significant factor in the rise of Woke politics.

    Marx famously said that anti-Semitism is the communism of the uneducated – and I think that’s basically correct; a class war diverted into a racial war for fools.

    However, Woke politics is not only racial conflict – that could probably be achieved much more easily on right wing lines. Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently – I forget which Woke group – posted a definition of “Whiteness”? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values – common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against “Whiteness”, which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification – the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints (a sense of transcendence and escape from the preoccupation of physically surviving)?

    A recent NYT article was about how White children are not born White but need to be made into “Whites” – assimilated into the culture of bourgeois practicality.

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the “structure” of society – being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @A123
    @AaronB

    I believe the "Woke group" you are referring to is the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (1)


    Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture recently unveiled guidelines for talking about race. A graphic displayed in the guidelines, entitled "Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States," declares that rational thinking and hard work, among others, are white values.

    In the section, Smithsonian declares that "objective, rational, linear thinking," "quantitative emphasis," "hard work before play," and various other values are aspects and assumptions of whiteness
     

    Their whiteness poster is quite tall, open the [MORE] tag to see it.

    The even used the term "Judeo-Christian" twice to define Whiteness. So, "Jews are White".
    ___

    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    (1) https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333

     

    https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1610610/smithsonian-aspects-white-culture.png

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    , @iffen
    @AaronB


    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.
     
    It is a considerably heavier lift to divide a group into Mensheviks or Bolsheviks. Race, ethnicity and religion are "reliable" fissures. The elites were shocked by their loss of electoral control in the U. S. and are even more terrified by the possible loss of control over the flow of information. They have decided to return to the old standbys to facilitate their exercise of power. Of course these things can spiral out of control as some "but, but, but elite Jews" find themselves counted out as members of good standing in the peasant mobs.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression
     
    It's symbolic gestures, which is to say - almost meaningless.

    Real life is what we should look at more, instead of arguing about symbols.

    In real life, Obama's daughter is in Harvard, with her English boyfriend. Obama purchased a $12 million house in Martha's Vineyard and $8 million house in Kalorama, Washington DC. (https://www.thelist.com/146336/inside-barack-and-michelle-obamas-gorgeous-d-c-home/)

    His speeches about racial inequality have achieved their primary motivation - to make Obama wealthy and successful.

    But money to invest to fix the pavement in Baltimore, or just to provide people in that mainly African American city with normal shops (every shop there is a liquor) - is evidently less interesting and exciting.


    imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations

     

    To form the knot, you need to add another maneuver of the string. That is, arguing about abstract ideals, have been a useful way to avoid concrete manifestations.

    It's clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It's easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.

    Apple has expended $4 billion to build a circular office building for their employees, as a purely vanity project, so the office workers can take cool selfies of their environment in their lunch break. Private opulence and public squalor, is celebrated.

    Investment to even collect trash in these streets will be (of course). not available.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB6gwOBClwE


    Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints
     
    It can also be used as obfuscation and procrastination.

    escape from physical constraints
     
    Perhaps, for young people with trustfunds, in the Upper West Side, or on campus of Brown University and Columbia.

    I agree that ideas in "work ideology" include many universal, positive, civilized ideals - such as not offending peoples' personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).

    But the same is true with Obama's speeches, which had many correct and attractive aspirations. And Obama's speeches were successful in their main aim - which was to give Obama houses in Kalorama and Martha's Vineyard, but that is rather less universal.

    The only people allowed into Obama's houses, are his family and his cleaning staff. It's not a very "universal" achievement.

    -

    Politicians and ideologies shouldn't be given such an easier assessment process, than engineers or builders. That is, our assessment should be on the results, not whether we agree with some of attractive sounding words.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

  376. @Mikel
    @mal


    No exactly. I sometimes know what I’m talking about. :).
     
    No my son. I don't think you do in this particular case. Your (dubious) link doesn't work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines. No country would ever have to worry about getting indebted in US dollars if that was the case!

    It is trivially true that a country that can print its own currency cannot default on debt denominated in that currency (great "discovery" of the MMT theorists). But there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions. That's why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.

    If you read the books I recommended you will understand that anything we can call money must have two essential attributes: be an accepted means of exchange ("money is accepted because it is accepted" Samuelson famously quipped) and serve as a store of value. When contracts and transactions become difficult because prices are constantly changing and keeping your savings in a given currency makes it lose its value over time, people invariably switch to better forms of money.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they're doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal, @Beckow

    there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions.

    Needless to say these are the symptoms of the friction between chartalist & metallist monetary theories. It’s the conflict between extractive vs transactional logic, tax collectors vs people bartering goods.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    The biggest problem for MMT is the Treasury failing to know how big the money supply should be to cover the real economy, or it’s ignored in favor of distributional policy objectives. And this is where the Austrian vision of a market-determined monetary system (commodity money is secondary to the fact) come into play.

    The way to go for unpayable debt denominated in the national currency is to take the Michael Hudson pill for a debt jubilee, or not to incur such debts, as far as they are needless in the first place. But we’ve gotten to where we are.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Yellowface Anon


    The biggest problem for MMT is the Treasury failing to know how big the money supply should be to cover the real economy
     
    I would rather say that this is the biggest problem of any central bank. In the same way that no central planning authority has ever proven very good at producing optimal amounts of any product.

    But I am not really sure that the Austrian alternative of competition of different kinds of money with no central bank would necessarily work very well. Modern Austrian economists have different views themselves.

    It's a tough question. But ideally the amount of money in circulation should de determined by market forces and oversupply of money should not be distorting investment decisions that lead to damaging economic cycles.
  377. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    I'm pedantic at times and have the urge to reply or add to your posts point-by-point. Treat these as my own crude reading notes.


    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment...
     
    A ideologically recast version of Bourgeois spite for the masses, and this time intrinsically self-destructive over the long-term. By focusing on frivolities (what they actually are) instead of real High Culture or genuine issues of concern, They're probably abdicating their own moral leadership.

    The discordance will be when you export “pronoun theory” and “ethical coffee buying theory”, to coal miners or Indian farmers – which is what US State Department’s social media manager seems to be trying.
     
    "Ethical coffee buying" might be of use to smallholders planting coffee, because it's economic to them. The only stuff in those SJ theories that will be resonant to the lower classes will be those of tangible (economic) concern.

    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe
     
    Western Europe has been a hotbed of "innovation", "fashions", whatever because of a high degree of individualism (this has an HBD explanation). Just catching up on the newest trends.

    there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.
     
    Like every set of beliefs, there are good and bad things here. Organic farming & electric mobility are alright as far as they have a clear vision of how to do them (and electricity generation from nuclear power instead of the current set of renewables). But anything else are depraved.

    Disclosure: I'm autistic and benefit from "neurodiverse" initiatives

    For racial issues, it’s different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.
     
    This is the limit of Americanization. Real history and real ethnic positions.

    However, UK’s woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.
     
    Which is because the "human rights" angle of these issues are emphasized, and this means they are affected by a more general Europeanization of their view on how social relations should be structured. Not surprising considering that China has been modernizing its ideological worldview after 5/4 and India has the British Raj. But these somewhat make sense from a more conventional "no harms and no exploitation" perspective.

    Educational centres of Western Europe are becoming a third (and probably soon will be half) Indian and Chinese students. Both countries which were victims of imperialism.
     
    A big cargo cult.

    But I think they actually integrate quite easily. They are not fighting local students, but mixed up to them without a need for affirmative action policies.
     
    HBD proponents will tell you they are high-IQ types and they'll succeed no matter what. Why the need for affirmative action, which are for those socially "inferior".

    One of the greatest change I notice in the last years, requirements to change toilets to unisex. This is all because of non-binary gender concept.

    This is kind of culture change really popular with the young people – they are very worried that non-binary will be discriminated, and have forced that all toilets have to change in the universities.
     
    There are definitely extremely few (0.02% to 0.05%) intersex people with deformed genitals who can't be neatly assigned a sex at birth. The 99% must accommodate those freaks and gender LARPers!

    Aside from the virtue signalling (which is the attractive aspect of a BLM flag), it feels like a hyper-civilization or sensitization, where their whole lives should be a kind of safe space.



    My own view of BLM is that the protest against police brutality in America (also Russia) is correct and important. But the important issue was lost, and re-directed and exploited into American race politics.

    The problem of arbitrary violence and brutality of the authorities, and suppression of ordinary peoples’ rights, is very serious. But the topic was re-mapped onto a kind of Obama speech about racial justice (the usefulness of Obama’s speeches even in their own terms, can be seen by the fact relative racial income inequality became worse in America after he was president for 8 years).
     

    Current “Woke” ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias – it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.
     

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.
     
    Very true.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.
     
    Traditionalist thought see the advancement of technologies as decadence.

    Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.
     
    To end this comment, this looks like a really profound example to pick up and it says a lot on what's poor with our current Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement, compulsion, institutional intolerance of alternative standpoints and actions, appropriation by political TPTB...). One way out of these is spearheaded by the opposition/resistance to such a system, and it is ideologically-based parallel societies (e.g. black markets), and before that a re-domesticization of social life no doubt helped by lockdowns, and reconstitution of social ties after the whole Zoom business.

    Agorists and libertarians don't know what new world they're building.

    Replies: @AaronB, @Dmitry

    the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement, compulsion, institutional intolerance of alternative standpoints and actions, appropriation by political TPTB

    This is one of the best descriptions of the modern condition I have read in a while.

    I bolded the safety/security because I think that is the basic factor underlying all the various phenomena of modern life.

    Modern man feels chronic anxiety as his default state. This is what sets in motion the restless “progress”, the need for technological control, etc.

    And as I have argued, anxiety – fear that one can die – is the necessary consequence of faulty metaphysics, the metaphysics of radical Seperation, which is the unspoken assumption of modern society.

    But it will pass.

  378. @Mikel
    @mal


    No exactly. I sometimes know what I’m talking about. :).
     
    No my son. I don't think you do in this particular case. Your (dubious) link doesn't work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines. No country would ever have to worry about getting indebted in US dollars if that was the case!

    It is trivially true that a country that can print its own currency cannot default on debt denominated in that currency (great "discovery" of the MMT theorists). But there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions. That's why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.

    If you read the books I recommended you will understand that anything we can call money must have two essential attributes: be an accepted means of exchange ("money is accepted because it is accepted" Samuelson famously quipped) and serve as a store of value. When contracts and transactions become difficult because prices are constantly changing and keeping your savings in a given currency makes it lose its value over time, people invariably switch to better forms of money.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they're doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal, @Beckow

    Your (dubious) link doesn’t work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines.

    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets? You can buy and sell any currency you want, be it Zimbabwean dollar, US dollar or any other, for a price.

    Zimbabwe didn’t print USD, they printed Zimbabwean dollars and dumped them on forex markets. This will cause Zimbabwe dollars to drop in relative value, but not before the sellers pocket the US dollars needed to pay back IMF loans. Eventually, those forex transactions will cause hyperinflation in import dependent countries, but effect is (relatively) delayed and so you can make bank with getting USD for printed local currency.

    That’s why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.

    LOL they did this because local oligarchs who owned the private banks would print money like crazy and dump it for dollars.

    Prior to economic collapse Russian government debt to GDP was around 50%. It did skyrocket to 135% due to economic collapse, but even 135% is too bad by modern standards, and it was an artefact of massive GDP drop in 1998. You can tell it as it recovered back to 55% by 2000.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GGGDTARUA188N

    Russian government debt has been some of the lowest in the world in 2000-2010 and Russian government was running budget surpluses.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-budget

    Yet inflation was running at 10-20%!
    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/inflation-cpi

    It certainly wasn’t the government printing all this money. They were actually taking money out.

    It was the pathetic local banking sector and the elites who were printing money and dumping it, until Russian Central Bank put a stop to it starting around 2014. Russian inflation dropped like a rock once banking sector was cleaned up and cartelized.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    In the modern world, private sector credit is far more dangerous with respect to inflationary pressure than government spending.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @Mikel
    @mal


    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets?
     
    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world... to the tune of 1x or 2x that country's whole GDP :-)

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody's willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.

    I don't really know what Zimbabwe has been doing with its foreign debt but what you're telling us is that somehow this godforsaken country has managed to do what dozens upon dozens of countries trapped in foreign debt have never been able to do: print themselves out of their hard currency debts.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can't seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn't add up.

    Replies: @Not Raul, @mal

  379. https://www.zimbabwesituation.com/old/feb14_2007.html

    Let’s see if this link works. Its basically a news aggregator from Zimbabwe.

    “1,600pc inflation makes new notes useless”

    The Telegraph

    Is the article.

  380. The second song I have written :

    The Marriage of Wigger-O :

    In addition to the legendary first song, ‘Little Shop of Wiggers’, which I posted above, I had to create an additional entry that is less dependent on American pop culture and more tied to timeless classics.

    Hence, I chose Italian libretto Opera. The new song is titled ‘The Marriage of Wigger-O’, from the Opera, ‘The Wigger of Seville’.

    An excerpt as a teaser : think of ‘Figaro’, and replace it with ‘Wigger-O’, to the tune of :

    “Wigger-O
    Wigger-O
    Wigger-O
    Wigger-O, Wigger-O, Wigger-O, Wigger-O, Wigger-O, Wigger-O”

    Heh heh heh heh

  381. @AaronB
    @iffen

    Attempts that don't quite achieve it.

    And may become grotesque in their failure to do so.

    Replies: @iffen

    What if that’s you.

  382. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I agree with your critiques of America.

    Are there elements in America pushing racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression? Without question. I even think this is a significant factor in the rise of Woke politics.

    Marx famously said that anti-Semitism is the communism of the uneducated - and I think that's basically correct; a class war diverted into a racial war for fools.

    However, Woke politics is not only racial conflict - that could probably be achieved much more easily on right wing lines. Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently - I forget which Woke group - posted a definition of "Whiteness"? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values - common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against "Whiteness", which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification - the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement - in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints (a sense of transcendence and escape from the preoccupation of physically surviving)?

    A recent NYT article was about how White children are not born White but need to be made into "Whites" - assimilated into the culture of bourgeois practicality.

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies - Whites, Jews, Blacks - and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the "structure" of society - being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of "evil".

    Replies: @A123, @iffen, @Dmitry

    I believe the “Woke group” you are referring to is the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (1)

    Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture recently unveiled guidelines for talking about race. A graphic displayed in the guidelines, entitled “Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States,” declares that rational thinking and hard work, among others, are white values.

    In the section, Smithsonian declares that “objective, rational, linear thinking,” “quantitative emphasis,” “hard work before play,” and various other values are aspects and assumptions of whiteness

    Their whiteness poster is quite tall, open the [MORE] tag to see it.

    The even used the term “Judeo-Christian” twice to define Whiteness. So, “Jews are White”.
    ___

    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    You have missed AaronB's point completely.

    Replies: @A123

    , @AaronB
    @A123

    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is "White" - any conceivable Black civilization would also be "White".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense "anti-civilization" - I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.

    However, it isn't about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism.

    But it's difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it's critique of "worldly" values.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack, @A123

  383. @A123
    @AaronB

    I believe the "Woke group" you are referring to is the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (1)


    Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture recently unveiled guidelines for talking about race. A graphic displayed in the guidelines, entitled "Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States," declares that rational thinking and hard work, among others, are white values.

    In the section, Smithsonian declares that "objective, rational, linear thinking," "quantitative emphasis," "hard work before play," and various other values are aspects and assumptions of whiteness
     

    Their whiteness poster is quite tall, open the [MORE] tag to see it.

    The even used the term "Judeo-Christian" twice to define Whiteness. So, "Jews are White".
    ___

    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    (1) https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333

     

    https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1610610/smithsonian-aspects-white-culture.png

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    You have missed AaronB’s point completely.

    • Troll: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    I fully agreed with Aaron B's observation: (1)


    Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently – I forget which Woke group – posted a definition of “Whiteness”? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values – common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against “Whiteness”, which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification – the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values
     
    That a national museum stands against the values needed to have a nation is absurd.

    You are the one who missed the point. Or, you are INTENTIONALLY TROLLING again. It is hard to tell which.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________





    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4965167

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  384. @German_reader
    @nebulafox


    Sulla completely rehauled everything to be based in writtren law rather than unstated mos maiorum.
     
    I don't remember that tbh. But iirc one of his most controversial measures was his attempt to bring the courts under senatorial control again and reduce the power of the equites in them, which seems quite reactionary to me (of course it's difficult to evaluate, the extant sources about Sulla's time are rather limited after all).
    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today's issues is just silly, issues are too different.

    Replies: @nebulafox, @iffen

    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today’s issues is just silly, issues are too different

    You don’t see the West as being the progeny of Greco-Roman culture? You don’t see the waning of the power and competence of the last hegemon as an end to that tradition?

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Can both of you please elaborate?

    Replies: @iffen

  385. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Much of "woke" fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe (see my discussion above), and much of production of this ideology is centred there as well (e.g. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/). Among the elite areas, there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples' rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, "unconscious bias", and electric mobility.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zrVlrZX4UsI


    For racial issues, it's different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.

    But in former empires (UK, France), there such topics like reading in the Jane Austen books, where the wealth of a family (i.e. Mansfield Park) is derived from a slave plantation. This will be popular in the universities.

    However, UK's woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.

    Still this is not so fashionable in the elite areas. Everywhere there are LGBT flags and environmentalist causes. But there are not evident "Black Lives Matter" flags in the elite area.

    Racial issues are relating more to the idea of eliminating of "unconscious bias" and representing diversity from students.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe (see my discussion above), and much of production of this ideology is centred there as well (e.g. https://www.gender.cam.ac.uk/). Among the elite areas, there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.

    To deal with SJW/Wokeness one must start by accurately identifying it as European phenomenon that is exported to the U.S. Can one be more woke than Brussels? The ultra-Left German Elites use EU mechanisms to undermine what they see as undesirable characteristics (e.g. Christianity, Democracy) in countries like Hungary & Poland.

    Q: What EU country stated that their Constitution is superior to EU law, and then hypocritically attacks other countries who want the same status for their Constitutions? A: Germany.

    Q: Who is the #1 Open [Muslim] Borders elected leader on the Globe? A: Angela Merkel. And, there is little hope that her replacement will be better at protecting indigenous Christians.

    Ultra-Left German Elites get to stay in Europe when going to SJW Headquarters in Davos for Elite WEF meetings. Woke SJW followers from the U.S have to trek across the Atlantic to grovel before their European (primarily German) SJW masters.

    Every attempt to unjustly blame the U.S. or “The West” for EuroSJW thinking is a gift that strengthens SJW Globalism.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  386. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    You have missed AaronB's point completely.

    Replies: @A123

    I fully agreed with Aaron B’s observation: (1)

    Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently – I forget which Woke group – posted a definition of “Whiteness”? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values – common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against “Whiteness”, which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification – the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values

    That a national museum stands against the values needed to have a nation is absurd.

    You are the one who missed the point. Or, you are INTENTIONALLY TROLLING again. It is hard to tell which.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4965167

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the “structure” of society – being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”.

     

    Replies: @A123

  387. @iffen
    @German_reader

    But imo comparing anything from ancient Rome with today’s issues is just silly, issues are too different

    You don't see the West as being the progeny of Greco-Roman culture? You don't see the waning of the power and competence of the last hegemon as an end to that tradition?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Can both of you please elaborate?

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    My plebeian (nice touch, eh?) understanding is that Medieval scholars “rediscovered” ancient Greece and Rome. The intellectual class and elites fashioned that into our heritage myth (Western Civilization) and drew a line through the Holy Roman Empire, the Enlightenment, the Great Divergence, the European Empires, and the finale: Pax Americana. Now, as happened with Pax Romana, the internal conflicts are bringing an end. There just doesn’t seem to be enough American elites with the skill and desire to keep “America” going, just like the Roman elites lost their way as to what was required of a good Roman.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  388. @John Johnson
    @schnellandine

    The rest of your post is more BS attacking everything except the single guiding philosophy of libertarianism.

    Ayn Rand, the Libertarian Party and the top Libertarian publications all agree on the following:
    Open borders to the third world
    Legal crack and PCP
    Automatic weapons for Black felons
    No Federal pollution controls
    No FDA testing or regulations

    So what is BS then?

    Since they are in agreement what exactly gives you the authority to declare the party as illegitimate?

    I like Rand, a non-libertarian

    Ayn Rand took the position to not endorse any party of her time. The current libertarian party is modeled after her ideology.

    Modern libertarians consider her the most important founder:
    https://www.libertarianism.org/publications/essays/ayn-rand

    Whatever your view of Rand, AS at least vindicates her as a soothsayer.

    How so? A capitalist dictatorship with high taxes never transpired. Organized labor is weaker than when she wrote it.

    Replies: @schnellandine

    So what is BS then?

    Addressing façades instead of the single principle. Still, not one person has addressed the definition I offered of libertarianism, which is reasonably the most prevalent and historical. All I see are pointers to flawed people and orgs. Next, will I hear how Frank Perdue was cruel to chickens?

    [MORE]

    Since they are in agreement what exactly gives you the authority to declare the party as illegitimate?

    Authority? LOL. Didn’t know that was a required element in argument. Oh, wait; it isn’t.

    The current libertarian party is modeled after her ideology.

    And, to the extent that’s true, doesn’t conform to the principle of non-aggression, much like Rand. Makes a damned fine substrate for tar application though, as does Rand’s birth name, which also is done to death. When discussing libertarianism, focus on a person is to dodge the principle I’ve stated here several times. That is libertarianism. The running from that, into the arms of convenient diversions, is the identifying characteristic of many confused people, for extensions from the libertarian principle run them into internal contradictions best avoided for psychological comfort. Keep yapping about Rand; I’ll stick with the principle. Were I propounding Rand, focus on Rand would be the angle. Wasn’t. Just said I like her, despite flaws, and keep saying that she’s mostly a diversion re libertarianism.

    How so? A capitalist dictatorship with high taxes never transpired. Organized labor is weaker than when she wrote it.

    AS didn’t describe a capitalist dictatorship, so no idea what you’re talking about. Re ‘organized labor’… what?

    To take only one recent, for me, example: I thought for years that the scene of the party at Reardon’s home was unbelievably overwrought. No one, I thought, would attempt such blatantly ridiculous posturing. Yet in the last ~5 years it has not merely surfaced, but swarmed.

    No, you needn’t tell me about the generally bad novel technique, and all the other obvious weaknesses of the book. I’m not a Rand-licker. Why there can be no general moderation in a view of the woman continues to baffle. Not sure which sect I despise more, the Rand worshipers or the Rand despisers.

  389. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    I fully agreed with Aaron B's observation: (1)


    Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently – I forget which Woke group – posted a definition of “Whiteness”? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values – common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against “Whiteness”, which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification – the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values
     
    That a national museum stands against the values needed to have a nation is absurd.

    You are the one who missed the point. Or, you are INTENTIONALLY TROLLING again. It is hard to tell which.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________





    (1) https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4965167

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    PBUYT

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the “structure” of society – being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    So you admit you missed the point.

    Thanks

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  390. @Thomm
    @Barbarossa


    while I must admit that my enthusiasm for the female companionship of the, “dusky races” as it were, is rather lacking in enthusiasm, it would be a mistake to presume that I would prefer buggering either Matt Damon, or a plate of raw oysters.
     
    Which is why YOU are not named on that list in Comment #10.

    The individuals on that list I posted have either openly said that they would prefer a white man over a black woman (and in some cases even a mulatto woman), or at least refused to say what you just said. They filibustered for comment after comment, but refused to say that they prefer even the most attractive black woman over the fattest, ugliest white man. Some of them have also said that they don't mind an MtF transgender sexual partner, since the race of the person did not change. Hence, we have discovered something quite revealing about contemporary WNs.

    They can always write what you just did, but refuse to do that. Hence, they aren't quite what you assume them to be.

    I don't add names to that list lightly. They have all either said that they prefer a white man over a black woman, or at least failed to say that even the most attractive black woman is the less-unappealing choice of the two, when asked two or more times. A heterosexual would have no problem saying what you just did.

    Replies: @Barbarossa, @schnellandine

    You are the modern instance of The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade; anyone not replying to your latest queerfest is a queer. Simply to ignore you is evidence of gay butt fealty.

    See a psych.

    • Thanks: Barbarossa
    • Replies: @Thomm
    @schnellandine

    False. A normal, heterosexual person has no trouble saying that while a black woman might not be their favorite type of woman, they would still have zero hesitation in declaring preference for a black woman over a white man.

    Again, a heterosexual would not even have to think about it.

    The fact that you degenerates do everything BUT answer the question reveals volumes. Rosie and Alden (both women) also say that most WNs are gay, as does John Derbyshire (when he calls them 'latrine flies').

    So, schnellandine, if you had to choose between the two, and 'neither' is not an option, would you rather have sex with a fat white man (Michael Moore), or with a mulatto (a young Halle Berry)?

    Again, it is a simple question. A heterosexual would have no hesitation in choosing Halle Berry.

    Replies: @schnellandine

  391. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the “structure” of society – being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”.

     

    Replies: @A123

    So you admit you missed the point.

    Thanks

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT
    What we both agree to is emphasizing different portions of the reply because of our differing worldviews.

    Replies: @A123

  392. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    So you admit you missed the point.

    Thanks

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    PBUYT
    What we both agree to is emphasizing different portions of the reply because of our differing worldviews.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    Huh? That does not make sense.

    I posted something from AaronB that I agree with and you do not. You posted something from AaronB that I agree with and you do not. How is that anything other than a concession on your part?

    Let me ask the question in a manner where you cannot be a TROLL and/or evade. Do you:
    -- Agree with both AaronB and myself?
    -- Or, disagree with both AaronB and myself?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  393. I’m beginning to think that Thomm was abused by gay tourists who falsely promised him a visa.

    [MORE]
    if only he had been a member of one of the Abrahamic faiths, he might have had the guidance to avoid this trap and would not now be using a moniker that is a homosexual tell, while repeatedly boasting euphemistically of his tendencies and his desired partners.

  394. @A123
    @songbird

    Improving % of youth vote is Bigly important for MAGA.

    #F*ckJoeBiden while emotionally compelling, had all sort of problems and was unappealing to high-IQ individuals. I'll be honest, it had the worst sort of FratBoy connotations.

    #LetsGoBrandon is rapidly appearing on women's T-shirts selling to high-IQ University graduates. Smart, recent STEM professionals appreciate clever irony that implies exactly what they want to say without being vulgar.

    Objective fact shows that MAGA's use of #LetsGoBrandon is highly appealing to female swing voters. This sends GOP(e) acolytes into apoplectic fear & loathing (that has nothing to do with Las Vegas).

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09JFGPX6M

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    A hash tag is kind of interesting as a metacommentary, since Trump was banned from Twitter. A pity he didn’t go to Gab.

    I quite enjoyed his eulogy of Powell, and recently, he seems to have made an oblique reference to Liz Cheney’s physionogmy.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    A hash tag is kind of interesting as a metacommentary, since Trump was banned from Twitter. A pity he didn’t go to Gab.
     
    Yes. Using the tag #LetsGoBrandon is ironic at at a number of levels.

    It also appeals to high-IQ and female voters by avoiding distasteful vulgarity.
    ______

    It is not clear how many people would see Gab. Part of Trumps methodology was Tweeting to a Yuge audience, thus preventing Fake Media from ignoring or drastically misreporting what he said.

    Trump just announced the latest effort in online presence. However it starts with the same limits audience problem as Gab: (1)


    President Trump announces a merger to initiate Trump Media and Technology Group as a public offering to generate startup funding for a new social media network called TruthSocial.Com . Within the announcement the intent is to create a start-up media network to compete with current social media platforms which largely censor and remove users based on political opinion.

    According to the press release, a beta test will take place in November and a full rollout in the first quarter of 2022. Advanced registration is available at the site Truth.Social.com and Apple users can pre-order at the App store
     

    I am interested in knowing more, but I do not know if I will actually invest. It could easily wind up ensnared in legal battles that do not offer cash returns. Though such fights could set precedents that are useful for hammering Facebook/Twitter.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/20/president-trump-announces-trump-media-and-technology-group-and-truth-social-media-platform/

  395. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT
    What we both agree to is emphasizing different portions of the reply because of our differing worldviews.

    Replies: @A123

    Huh? That does not make sense.

    I posted something from AaronB that I agree with and you do not. You posted something from AaronB that I agree with and you do not. How is that anything other than a concession on your part?

    Let me ask the question in a manner where you cannot be a TROLL and/or evade. Do you:
    — Agree with both AaronB and myself?
    — Or, disagree with both AaronB and myself?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT

    I agree with AaronB in the parts I quoted, and I know what you've selected as one of the examples proving what he says "anti-bourgeois mentality". But he understands it is in fact not intrinsically racial, but cultural, or even spiritual where figureheads like MAGA or Globalists don't matter.

    And then you said


    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.
     
    You're stuck at the materialist, "vote Trump and get to work to pwn those globalists, or else" level of analysis. And so

    being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”
     
    (practical ideologies count as blood too)

    Agreement with you isn't mandatory. Go and read his newest reply to you.

    Replies: @A123

  396. @A123
    @AaronB

    I believe the "Woke group" you are referring to is the Smithsonian in Washington D.C. (1)


    Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture recently unveiled guidelines for talking about race. A graphic displayed in the guidelines, entitled "Aspects and Assumptions of Whiteness in the United States," declares that rational thinking and hard work, among others, are white values.

    In the section, Smithsonian declares that "objective, rational, linear thinking," "quantitative emphasis," "hard work before play," and various other values are aspects and assumptions of whiteness
     

    Their whiteness poster is quite tall, open the [MORE] tag to see it.

    The even used the term "Judeo-Christian" twice to define Whiteness. So, "Jews are White".
    ___

    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    (1) https://www.newsweek.com/smithsonian-race-guidelines-rational-thinking-hard-work-are-white-values-1518333

     

    https://d.newsweek.com/en/full/1610610/smithsonian-aspects-white-culture.png

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”.

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.

    However, it isn’t about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism.

    But it’s difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it’s critique of “worldly” values.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB


    by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”
     
    Very interesting choice of words for a supposed Taoist like you.

    Hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification
     
    Hard work and discipline have been present in the heydays of every civilization pre-modern or modern. But the current form of "rationality" is distinctly a modern, European approach, and other advanced civilizations of Eurasia have them differently (e.g. Neo-Confucianism most proximately). And the especial emphasis in delayed gratification is a sign of how accumulation is prized, i.e. economic modernism, both capitalist, socialist & fascist.

    Traditional values aren't bourgeois. There is no place for the bourgeois in the tripartite Indo-European caste divisions, and the traditional Chinese and Indian view of castes/social classes elevate Scholars/Brahmins above anyone else.

    But whatever. You want to seek a heaven and an earth outside these strictures.

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @Mr. Hack
    @AaronB


    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.
     
    It all changed, unfortunately, when a like minded individual was building his woodfire to cook his meal, that he had procured with a bow and arrow, when a group of raiders rode up on their horses and decided to appropriate the meal for themselves. What can you do? :-)

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @A123
    @AaronB


    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”.
     
    I concur. If one accepts the Smithsonian definition of "White" all successful civilizations have primarily "White" values.

    The obvious counter is -- Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian's definition of "White" is absurd.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that "Jews" are responsible for targeting "Judeo-Christian" values. Yet those who target "Judeo-Christian" values cannot be practicing "Jews".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity
     
    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life "See someone. Take their stuff.". However, it is also very uncivilized.

    However, it isn’t about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism. But it’s difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it’s critique of “worldly” values.
     
    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

  397. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    Huh? That does not make sense.

    I posted something from AaronB that I agree with and you do not. You posted something from AaronB that I agree with and you do not. How is that anything other than a concession on your part?

    Let me ask the question in a manner where you cannot be a TROLL and/or evade. Do you:
    -- Agree with both AaronB and myself?
    -- Or, disagree with both AaronB and myself?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    PBUYT

    I agree with AaronB in the parts I quoted, and I know what you’ve selected as one of the examples proving what he says “anti-bourgeois mentality”. But he understands it is in fact not intrinsically racial, but cultural, or even spiritual where figureheads like MAGA or Globalists don’t matter.

    And then you said

    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.

    You’re stuck at the materialist, “vote Trump and get to work to pwn those globalists, or else” level of analysis. And so

    being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”

    (practical ideologies count as blood too)

    Agreement with you isn’t mandatory. Go and read his newest reply to you.

    • Troll: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    You’re stuck at the materialist, “vote Trump and get to work to pwn those globalists, or else” level of analysis.
     
    You thought process is illogical, leading you to make unsupportable leaps. Not quoting something that is not directly related to the point at hand is neither confirmation nor denial of the unquoted material.

    Every time you make assumptions about what I believe:
        -- You are almost always wrong.
        -- It comes across as TROLLING.
    You make up something, declare that I believe it, attack on that basis, and wildly miss the mark.


    If you get to make up things about others, others get to tell you what you believe, such as your total commitment to Silver Rounds as Hard Currency. Have you gotten your PRC to start using them yet?

    One must generate a certain amount of real world wins to avoid poverty/death. And, survival is a necessity before considering larger issues of morality and faith. That does not make me "stuck", that makes me "realistic".

    The only things "stuck" here seem to be your:
        -1- Deranged #NeverTrump histrionics
        -2- Materialistic commitment to Silver Rounds

    I am willing to amend the 2nd point, if you explain the religious significance. Is your irrevocable commitment to Silver Rounds based on an ecclesiastical dogma "Silver Round Iconic Orthodoxy" or some other little known religious practice?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ab/b7/48/abb74819273c5896ab989ae258ed60ca.jpg

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  398. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Can both of you please elaborate?

    Replies: @iffen

    My plebeian (nice touch, eh?) understanding is that Medieval scholars “rediscovered” ancient Greece and Rome. The intellectual class and elites fashioned that into our heritage myth (Western Civilization) and drew a line through the Holy Roman Empire, the Enlightenment, the Great Divergence, the European Empires, and the finale: Pax Americana. Now, as happened with Pax Romana, the internal conflicts are bringing an end. There just doesn’t seem to be enough American elites with the skill and desire to keep “America” going, just like the Roman elites lost their way as to what was required of a good Roman.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Floyd is the new Jesus then. The 1st time may or may not be a tragedy, but the 2nd time is definitely a farce.

    But one thing modernism differs, is how Western modernity has engulf the entire world and fashioned it into the World System. There are neither modern Parthians nor Han China, since Russia and Communist China have both absorbed modernization in some form.

    Replies: @iffen

  399. @AaronB
    @A123

    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is "White" - any conceivable Black civilization would also be "White".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense "anti-civilization" - I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.

    However, it isn't about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism.

    But it's difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it's critique of "worldly" values.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack, @A123

    by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”

    Very interesting choice of words for a supposed Taoist like you.

    Hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification

    Hard work and discipline have been present in the heydays of every civilization pre-modern or modern. But the current form of “rationality” is distinctly a modern, European approach, and other advanced civilizations of Eurasia have them differently (e.g. Neo-Confucianism most proximately). And the especial emphasis in delayed gratification is a sign of how accumulation is prized, i.e. economic modernism, both capitalist, socialist & fascist.

    Traditional values aren’t bourgeois. There is no place for the bourgeois in the tripartite Indo-European caste divisions, and the traditional Chinese and Indian view of castes/social classes elevate Scholars/Brahmins above anyone else.

    But whatever. You want to seek a heaven and an earth outside these strictures.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon


    Hard work and discipline have been present in the heydays of every civilization pre-modern or modern.
     
    That's true, but this might be a critique of civilization. Hunter gatherers, as we know, led lives of leisure - roughly five hours or less a day.

    Anyways, I'm not opposing exertion. Hunting was a form of very intense exertion, but quite enjoyable. My backpacking trips involve tremendous exertion, but every moment a joy.


    Traditional values aren’t bourgeois. There is no place for the bourgeois in the tripartite Indo-European caste divisions, and the traditional Chinese and Indian view of castes/social classes elevate Scholars/Brahmins above anyone else.
     
    Well, I think the picture is more nuanced than dividing modern and pre-modern civilizations.

    Let's remember that figures like Lao Tzu and the Buddha, Jesus and the Prophets, pre-date modern civilization. Evidently even traditional civilizations were also experienced as deeply problematic by their contemporaries.

    While modern civilization may be an extreme of these problematic tendencies, they appear to be perennial to civilization itself.

    However, I agree with you that traditional cultures severely limited the bourgeois element, and are much more attractive and humane than modernity for that reason (until they lose that delicate balance and become harsh and oppressive).

    Traditional cultures can almost be said to balance the values of civilization and the values of the counter-culture in a much better way. This is a point I frequently make.

    Firstly, life itself was more leisurely, relaxed, and other goals than making money or extending our control of the natural world were recognized - spiritual goals, aesthetic goals, etc, as you say.

    Secondly, pre-modern civilization understood that civilization itself is ambiguous and problematic, and always provided some level of "out" - hermits, monasteries, wandering mountain men, yogis, sanyasis.

    In medieval Europe, even beggars were considered perfectly legitimate and supported by the community - drop outs and loafers.

    But also significantly, this ambivalence towards civilization was at the heart of the art and philosophy of the most civilized men - Chinese scholar-mandarins refreshed themselves with the wilderness poetry of the "rivers and mountains" tradition, kept gardens that were meant to recreate a wilderness scene in miniature, and enjoyed painting scrolls depicting wilderness and man's smallness within it. And the philosophic texts they read, were all about spontaneity and effortless action in accordance with nature.


    But whatever. You want to seek a heaven and an earth outside these strictures
     
    Not necessarily.

    My point is that too much civilization is a disease - and each culture births the antidote. Taoism, Christianity are antidotes.

    A civilization that did not depart too far from nature and incorporated the organic, and provided opportunities to escape into nature, can be relatively enjoyable and healthy.

    And what is civilization but excessive human control, which depends on excessive Seperation from nature? This "rationality" you refer to that is so confining and imprisoning.

    As I said once before, a labyrinthine Medieval city, with architecture that is both more organic and highly embellished, which age has mellowed out and perhaps even crumbling in places, with a street plan that's winding and twisting and mysterious, with towers and castles and palaces and monasteries, odd shrines to the Gods and old churches and squares and fountains, with a complex densely layered social life, with monks, knights, lords, ascetics, yogis, magicians, and fat merchants, with chaotic markets selling exotic spices, strange animals, and all manner of curiosities, where every item is crafted to a standard of beauty - well, such a civilization would be a delight :)

    A city where human control is not so excessive as to squeeze out Life.and reduce everything to a dull uniformity, but where riotous and chaotic Nature blends seamlessly into the picture.

    Problem is, even such a city would need to be escaped from into Nature periodicay. And there is always the danger that - even the propensity - that the delicate balance would be destroyed, and the harsh hand of human control would become oppressive.

    As I said once before, a lord in all his pomp and finery can be an aesthetic delight - but if this "lords and ladies" game becomes too serious, it is a horror.

  400. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    My plebeian (nice touch, eh?) understanding is that Medieval scholars “rediscovered” ancient Greece and Rome. The intellectual class and elites fashioned that into our heritage myth (Western Civilization) and drew a line through the Holy Roman Empire, the Enlightenment, the Great Divergence, the European Empires, and the finale: Pax Americana. Now, as happened with Pax Romana, the internal conflicts are bringing an end. There just doesn’t seem to be enough American elites with the skill and desire to keep “America” going, just like the Roman elites lost their way as to what was required of a good Roman.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Floyd is the new Jesus then. The 1st time may or may not be a tragedy, but the 2nd time is definitely a farce.

    But one thing modernism differs, is how Western modernity has engulf the entire world and fashioned it into the World System. There are neither modern Parthians nor Han China, since Russia and Communist China have both absorbed modernization in some form.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    since Russia and Communist China have both absorbed modernization in some form.

    But their elites do not seem to be intent upon disassembling their nation state.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  401. @AaronB
    @German_reader

    I think you are looking for "pure" forms of the phenomena involved. But I agree you will not find them.

    What I am suggesting is that you will find partially formed religious aspirations here, clearly discernible but not - yet - fully developed.


    The latter are just ethnic warfare by other means, to advance the collective interests of certain favoured ethno-cultural groups at the expense of others, which is a struggle totally of this world.
     
    That might make sense for the favored groups, but why are elite Whites - especially WASPS - so intent on self-renunciation?

    Does this not bear a striking resemblance to religious asceticism?

    Moreover, you must know that European self-renunciation began as early as the 18th century among intellectuals, artists, and philosophers.

    They’re not renouncing personal property or the quest for a sexual partner (or multiple ones) after all
     
    Certain they are not renouncing the physical world - as Positivists, they cannot do that (and that is their problem).

    What I suggest they are doing, is trying to free themselves from certain - very important like gender - constraints of physical life on earth.

    But there is a contradiction at the heart of their project - being Positivists, the moment they free themselves from a physical constraints, they must reimpose another one. Maybe you aren't your birth gender, but you are your chosen gender. They cannot yet conceive that one's physical body simply isn't that important.

    That is why you get tortured, grotesque, contradictory aspirations.

    Sounds disturbing. You’re not planning on founding a cult, are you?
     
    Not me. Rather the opposite of a cult, which is a rigid belief system, I would encourage people to free themselves from any excessive investment in "beliefs" or "opinions", and to ultimately not take this world or our lives too seriously. That is what I mean by "transcendence".

    This attitude is the enemy of all obsessions and cult-like irrationality. It is freedom itself - a decreasing quality in today's world.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    European self-renunciation began as early as the 18th century among intellectuals, artists, and philosophers.

    Who would you say are the earliest European self-renouncers, and what form did their renunciations take? I ask because I have wondered, “who started this?”, but I have only been able to trace it back a century or so.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Almost Missouri

    Forgive me, it's been quite some time since I read in the classics - these days I'm pretty much a barbarian, and all I do is watch Japanese anime, some books on Zen, and wander the woods :)

    Well, pre-dating the actual "renouncers", you had a bunch of thinkers who fought the natural egotistic tendency of everyone to see their own mores and manners as perfect, and everyone else as as absurd and ridiculous barbarians.

    This is the first stage in loosening the natural and blind "self-love" of a person (and imo at this stage, a very healthy intellectual development).

    The first I can remember is Montaigne, who stressed that European manners and morals were not naturally superior to those of the New World being discovered - even ones that Europeans found shocking, like cannibalism.

    A seminal work in this line is the Persian Letters of Montesquieu, which were a sensation in Europe - basically, a fictional work purporting to be the impressions of a Persian prince visiting Europe, and finding it's culture strange and ridiculous and absurd in many ways.

    This attempt to see oneself from the perspective of the foreigner, and finding oneself as imperfect and perhaps in some ways absurd, this relativizing tendency, has no parallel in other traditional cultures as far as I know. This "seeing oneself" from an outside perspective is surely a result of the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts, as well as elements in Christianity.

    The whole Enlightenment - Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, etc, was an attack on religion and traditional culture in a significant way and surely forms a significant chapter in European self "renunciation".

    A serious escalation in European "self-disgust" was the Romantic movement, which was a huge anti-cultural movement and for several generations the most influential cultural movement in Europe.

    At this point you begin too see the familiar "renouncing" of European civilization, although many Romantic writers still made a distinction between the modern and medieval period.

    By the second half of the 19th century European"pessimism" was in full flower among the artistic and intellectual class. You have the French decadents, and then of course in the 20th century the depressed Existentialists, etc.

    I hope you will forgive me for not mentioning names, but it's easy to look up the Romantics (Wordsworth, Blake, Novalis, Baudelaire, etc) and other movements I mentioned, and an honorable mention goes out to all the wanderers and adventurers Europe sent across the world, self imposed exiles, like Sir Richard Burton, who wrote about how he hated England and it's culture and sought refuge in exotic lands, etc.

    The entire cultural project of the modern period, for 500 years, may be described as a concerted attack on the human ego and an attempt to see ourselves "from outside" - the natural pleasure we take in loving ourselves and preferring ourselves.

    Since this is painful - the inflicting of a wound on oneself - the whole phenomena, including science, was described by Nietzsche as "asceticism". And this seems completely correct to me. Today it has reached absurd and grotesque heights.

    The question is, Taoism and Buddhism in the East also involved a concerted attack on egoistic self love, in a very different way, but here it resulted in liberation and joy, not self hate.

    Why did it end up differently for Europe?

    I would argue that science and the Industrial Revolution utilized the new found freedom from egotistic self-centeredness (called - misleadingly - "objectivity") for the very egotistic end of controlling the world in a very harsh and aggressive way (not a cooperative way).

    So freedom from ego did not result in a blissful connection to something larger, but was nipped in the bud and brought crashing down to earth again.

    This created a fracture and tension in European culture that destroyed any potentially harmonious development - an "inner division" and war that is with us to this day.

  402. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I agree with your critiques of America.

    Are there elements in America pushing racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression? Without question. I even think this is a significant factor in the rise of Woke politics.

    Marx famously said that anti-Semitism is the communism of the uneducated - and I think that's basically correct; a class war diverted into a racial war for fools.

    However, Woke politics is not only racial conflict - that could probably be achieved much more easily on right wing lines. Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently - I forget which Woke group - posted a definition of "Whiteness"? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values - common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against "Whiteness", which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification - the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement - in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints (a sense of transcendence and escape from the preoccupation of physically surviving)?

    A recent NYT article was about how White children are not born White but need to be made into "Whites" - assimilated into the culture of bourgeois practicality.

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies - Whites, Jews, Blacks - and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the "structure" of society - being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of "evil".

    Replies: @A123, @iffen, @Dmitry

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    It is a considerably heavier lift to divide a group into Mensheviks or Bolsheviks. Race, ethnicity and religion are “reliable” fissures. The elites were shocked by their loss of electoral control in the U. S. and are even more terrified by the possible loss of control over the flow of information. They have decided to return to the old standbys to facilitate their exercise of power. Of course these things can spiral out of control as some “but, but, but elite Jews” find themselves counted out as members of good standing in the peasant mobs.

    • Thanks: AaronB
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    What you've said proves his point!

    Replies: @iffen

  403. @songbird
    @A123

    A hash tag is kind of interesting as a metacommentary, since Trump was banned from Twitter. A pity he didn't go to Gab.

    I quite enjoyed his eulogy of Powell, and recently, he seems to have made an oblique reference to Liz Cheney's physionogmy.

    Replies: @A123

    A hash tag is kind of interesting as a metacommentary, since Trump was banned from Twitter. A pity he didn’t go to Gab.

    Yes. Using the tag #LetsGoBrandon is ironic at at a number of levels.

    It also appeals to high-IQ and female voters by avoiding distasteful vulgarity.
    ______

    It is not clear how many people would see Gab. Part of Trumps methodology was Tweeting to a Yuge audience, thus preventing Fake Media from ignoring or drastically misreporting what he said.

    Trump just announced the latest effort in online presence. However it starts with the same limits audience problem as Gab: (1)

    President Trump announces a merger to initiate Trump Media and Technology Group as a public offering to generate startup funding for a new social media network called TruthSocial.Com . Within the announcement the intent is to create a start-up media network to compete with current social media platforms which largely censor and remove users based on political opinion.

    According to the press release, a beta test will take place in November and a full rollout in the first quarter of 2022. Advanced registration is available at the site Truth.Social.com and Apple users can pre-order at the App store

    I am interested in knowing more, but I do not know if I will actually invest. It could easily wind up ensnared in legal battles that do not offer cash returns. Though such fights could set precedents that are useful for hammering Facebook/Twitter.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/20/president-trump-announces-trump-media-and-technology-group-and-truth-social-media-platform/

  404. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Floyd is the new Jesus then. The 1st time may or may not be a tragedy, but the 2nd time is definitely a farce.

    But one thing modernism differs, is how Western modernity has engulf the entire world and fashioned it into the World System. There are neither modern Parthians nor Han China, since Russia and Communist China have both absorbed modernization in some form.

    Replies: @iffen

    since Russia and Communist China have both absorbed modernization in some form.

    But their elites do not seem to be intent upon disassembling their nation state.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    I mean picking up some fundamental assumptions about modernity even if skeptically and with some internal resistance.

    Replies: @iffen

  405. @AaronB
    @A123

    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is "White" - any conceivable Black civilization would also be "White".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense "anti-civilization" - I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.

    However, it isn't about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism.

    But it's difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it's critique of "worldly" values.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack, @A123

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.

    It all changed, unfortunately, when a like minded individual was building his woodfire to cook his meal, that he had procured with a bow and arrow, when a group of raiders rode up on their horses and decided to appropriate the meal for themselves. What can you do? 🙂

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    He has in mind some kind of isolated and peaceful agrarian utopia.

  406. @German_reader
    https://twitter.com/StateDept/status/1450854328189718530

    Another reason why comparisons of modern America (or "the West" more generally) with ancient Rome are fundamentally misguided, even at their worst the Romans were never this degenerate and insane.

    Replies: @AaronB, @Yevardian

    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina, but no, this wasn’t considered in any way ‘normal’.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy’s expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in ‘The Roman Empire at Bay’ argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper), but the commenting software there is so bad that somehow writing a substantial comment felt inappropriate, so I ended up just spamming shitposts and closed the tab.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Yevardian


    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina
     
    I know, but he ended up as a mutilated corpse in the Tiber.
    What's currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I've found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy’s expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in ‘The Roman Empire at Bay’ argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper)
     
    thx, haven't read that book, might look at it some time. Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren't all that firm. The sources for the tetrarchy, and for Constantine's time too, are surprisingly limited after all (to an extent most people don't realize; even inscriptions become much rarer), so certainly room for many interpretations.

    Replies: @Yevardian

    , @songbird
    @Yevardian

    How trustworthy are the ancient sources?

    I don't believe Kamala would pimp herself, after she acheived power.

  407. @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB


    by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”
     
    Very interesting choice of words for a supposed Taoist like you.

    Hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification
     
    Hard work and discipline have been present in the heydays of every civilization pre-modern or modern. But the current form of "rationality" is distinctly a modern, European approach, and other advanced civilizations of Eurasia have them differently (e.g. Neo-Confucianism most proximately). And the especial emphasis in delayed gratification is a sign of how accumulation is prized, i.e. economic modernism, both capitalist, socialist & fascist.

    Traditional values aren't bourgeois. There is no place for the bourgeois in the tripartite Indo-European caste divisions, and the traditional Chinese and Indian view of castes/social classes elevate Scholars/Brahmins above anyone else.

    But whatever. You want to seek a heaven and an earth outside these strictures.

    Replies: @AaronB

    Hard work and discipline have been present in the heydays of every civilization pre-modern or modern.

    That’s true, but this might be a critique of civilization. Hunter gatherers, as we know, led lives of leisure – roughly five hours or less a day.

    Anyways, I’m not opposing exertion. Hunting was a form of very intense exertion, but quite enjoyable. My backpacking trips involve tremendous exertion, but every moment a joy.

    Traditional values aren’t bourgeois. There is no place for the bourgeois in the tripartite Indo-European caste divisions, and the traditional Chinese and Indian view of castes/social classes elevate Scholars/Brahmins above anyone else.

    Well, I think the picture is more nuanced than dividing modern and pre-modern civilizations.

    Let’s remember that figures like Lao Tzu and the Buddha, Jesus and the Prophets, pre-date modern civilization. Evidently even traditional civilizations were also experienced as deeply problematic by their contemporaries.

    While modern civilization may be an extreme of these problematic tendencies, they appear to be perennial to civilization itself.

    However, I agree with you that traditional cultures severely limited the bourgeois element, and are much more attractive and humane than modernity for that reason (until they lose that delicate balance and become harsh and oppressive).

    Traditional cultures can almost be said to balance the values of civilization and the values of the counter-culture in a much better way. This is a point I frequently make.

    Firstly, life itself was more leisurely, relaxed, and other goals than making money or extending our control of the natural world were recognized – spiritual goals, aesthetic goals, etc, as you say.

    Secondly, pre-modern civilization understood that civilization itself is ambiguous and problematic, and always provided some level of “out” – hermits, monasteries, wandering mountain men, yogis, sanyasis.

    In medieval Europe, even beggars were considered perfectly legitimate and supported by the community – drop outs and loafers.

    But also significantly, this ambivalence towards civilization was at the heart of the art and philosophy of the most civilized men – Chinese scholar-mandarins refreshed themselves with the wilderness poetry of the “rivers and mountains” tradition, kept gardens that were meant to recreate a wilderness scene in miniature, and enjoyed painting scrolls depicting wilderness and man’s smallness within it. And the philosophic texts they read, were all about spontaneity and effortless action in accordance with nature.

    But whatever. You want to seek a heaven and an earth outside these strictures

    Not necessarily.

    My point is that too much civilization is a disease – and each culture births the antidote. Taoism, Christianity are antidotes.

    A civilization that did not depart too far from nature and incorporated the organic, and provided opportunities to escape into nature, can be relatively enjoyable and healthy.

    And what is civilization but excessive human control, which depends on excessive Seperation from nature? This “rationality” you refer to that is so confining and imprisoning.

    As I said once before, a labyrinthine Medieval city, with architecture that is both more organic and highly embellished, which age has mellowed out and perhaps even crumbling in places, with a street plan that’s winding and twisting and mysterious, with towers and castles and palaces and monasteries, odd shrines to the Gods and old churches and squares and fountains, with a complex densely layered social life, with monks, knights, lords, ascetics, yogis, magicians, and fat merchants, with chaotic markets selling exotic spices, strange animals, and all manner of curiosities, where every item is crafted to a standard of beauty – well, such a civilization would be a delight 🙂

    A city where human control is not so excessive as to squeeze out Life.and reduce everything to a dull uniformity, but where riotous and chaotic Nature blends seamlessly into the picture.

    Problem is, even such a city would need to be escaped from into Nature periodicay. And there is always the danger that – even the propensity – that the delicate balance would be destroyed, and the harsh hand of human control would become oppressive.

    As I said once before, a lord in all his pomp and finery can be an aesthetic delight – but if this “lords and ladies” game becomes too serious, it is a horror.

  408. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But there are not evident “Black Lives Matter” flags in the elite area.
     
    There were posters for BLM demos in my university library last year (I tore some of them down and threw them into rubbish bins).
    Re universities in general, tbh many departments just ought to be closed down, I'm convinced part of the reason for the increasingly deranged character of Western societies is the excessive expansion of higher education since the 1960s.

    Replies: @Yevardian

    There were posters for BLM demos in my university library last year (I tore some of them down and threw them into rubbish bins).

    Based.

    A “counter-culture” that is supported by much of the establishment in Western societies (e.g. Germany’s president recently said he thinks it’s great that there are movements like BLM in Germany, that they’re necessary and deserving of support…and my comment which started this discussion referenced a tweet by the US state department…).

    The entire term is a misnomber, really. Does anyone really still believe that the whole ‘free-love’, rock&roll, liberation movement was a grassroots movement? Has *any* really successful cultural revolution ever occured without elite cooption beforehand?

  409. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    since Russia and Communist China have both absorbed modernization in some form.

    But their elites do not seem to be intent upon disassembling their nation state.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I mean picking up some fundamental assumptions about modernity even if skeptically and with some internal resistance.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Kind of like latching on to the gunpowder and putting it to good use while leaving everything else aside.

  410. @iffen
    @AaronB


    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies – Whites, Jews, Blacks – and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.
     
    It is a considerably heavier lift to divide a group into Mensheviks or Bolsheviks. Race, ethnicity and religion are "reliable" fissures. The elites were shocked by their loss of electoral control in the U. S. and are even more terrified by the possible loss of control over the flow of information. They have decided to return to the old standbys to facilitate their exercise of power. Of course these things can spiral out of control as some "but, but, but elite Jews" find themselves counted out as members of good standing in the peasant mobs.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    What you’ve said proves his point!

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    What you’ve said proves his point!

    Yes, but without all the spiritual/materialism mumbo-jumbo.

    Retention and exercise of power by the elites by any means necessary.

  411. @Mr. Hack
    @AaronB


    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.
     
    It all changed, unfortunately, when a like minded individual was building his woodfire to cook his meal, that he had procured with a bow and arrow, when a group of raiders rode up on their horses and decided to appropriate the meal for themselves. What can you do? :-)

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    He has in mind some kind of isolated and peaceful agrarian utopia.

  412. @AaronB
    @A123

    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is "White" - any conceivable Black civilization would also be "White".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense "anti-civilization" - I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity.

    However, it isn't about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism.

    But it's difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it's critique of "worldly" values.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack, @A123

    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”.

    I concur. If one accepts the Smithsonian definition of “White” all successful civilizations have primarily “White” values.

    The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity

    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life “See someone. Take their stuff.”. However, it is also very uncivilized.

    However, it isn’t about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism. But it’s difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it’s critique of “worldly” values.

    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    If one accepts the Smithsonian definition of “White” all successful civilizations have primarily “White” values. The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd. My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.
     
    Agreed.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world.
     
    Ideologies are modern substitutes for religions. Carl Schmitt saw this.

    A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.
     
    SJW looks distinctly Judaic in how inferiority and superiority complexes are inculcated at the same time for the target populations. Truly the God of Pharisees.
    , @AaronB
    @A123


    The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd.
     
    Yes, I agree. Which is why I don't think it's really about race. Race is merely a proxy for values.

    It's just that we are a retarded culture obsessed with race.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.
     
    I agree with this.

    Jews who attack traditional European culture are ethnic Jews who assimilated into Enlightenment values and continue that tradition.

    Even making an exception for Israel, which is not as common as is claimed (all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath), but even making such a partial exception is well grounded in liberal values - although increasingly contentious among liberals.

    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life “See someone. Take their stuff.”. However, it is also very uncivilized.
     
    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization :)

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a "surplus" - in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.

    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.
     
    Yes, it is the stupid man's culture war.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.
     
    Yes, well, I'm not gonna follow you down that particular rabbit hole :)

    Although there is obvious convergence of interests between SJWs and Islamists and unscrupulous Muslims, Woke ideology seems to me an indigenous European phenomena - the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence.

    It can't help but be grotesque and self contradictory.

    Replies: @A123, @SafeNow

  413. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    I mean picking up some fundamental assumptions about modernity even if skeptically and with some internal resistance.

    Replies: @iffen

    Kind of like latching on to the gunpowder and putting it to good use while leaving everything else aside.

  414. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    What you've said proves his point!

    Replies: @iffen

    What you’ve said proves his point!

    Yes, but without all the spiritual/materialism mumbo-jumbo.

    Retention and exercise of power by the elites by any means necessary.

  415. @Almost Missouri
    @AaronB


    European self-renunciation began as early as the 18th century among intellectuals, artists, and philosophers.
     
    Who would you say are the earliest European self-renouncers, and what form did their renunciations take? I ask because I have wondered, "who started this?", but I have only been able to trace it back a century or so.

    Replies: @AaronB

    Forgive me, it’s been quite some time since I read in the classics – these days I’m pretty much a barbarian, and all I do is watch Japanese anime, some books on Zen, and wander the woods 🙂

    Well, pre-dating the actual “renouncers”, you had a bunch of thinkers who fought the natural egotistic tendency of everyone to see their own mores and manners as perfect, and everyone else as as absurd and ridiculous barbarians.

    This is the first stage in loosening the natural and blind “self-love” of a person (and imo at this stage, a very healthy intellectual development).

    The first I can remember is Montaigne, who stressed that European manners and morals were not naturally superior to those of the New World being discovered – even ones that Europeans found shocking, like cannibalism.

    A seminal work in this line is the Persian Letters of Montesquieu, which were a sensation in Europe – basically, a fictional work purporting to be the impressions of a Persian prince visiting Europe, and finding it’s culture strange and ridiculous and absurd in many ways.

    This attempt to see oneself from the perspective of the foreigner, and finding oneself as imperfect and perhaps in some ways absurd, this relativizing tendency, has no parallel in other traditional cultures as far as I know. This “seeing oneself” from an outside perspective is surely a result of the rediscovery of ancient Greek and Roman texts, as well as elements in Christianity.

    The whole Enlightenment – Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, etc, was an attack on religion and traditional culture in a significant way and surely forms a significant chapter in European self “renunciation”.

    A serious escalation in European “self-disgust” was the Romantic movement, which was a huge anti-cultural movement and for several generations the most influential cultural movement in Europe.

    At this point you begin too see the familiar “renouncing” of European civilization, although many Romantic writers still made a distinction between the modern and medieval period.

    By the second half of the 19th century European”pessimism” was in full flower among the artistic and intellectual class. You have the French decadents, and then of course in the 20th century the depressed Existentialists, etc.

    I hope you will forgive me for not mentioning names, but it’s easy to look up the Romantics (Wordsworth, Blake, Novalis, Baudelaire, etc) and other movements I mentioned, and an honorable mention goes out to all the wanderers and adventurers Europe sent across the world, self imposed exiles, like Sir Richard Burton, who wrote about how he hated England and it’s culture and sought refuge in exotic lands, etc.

    The entire cultural project of the modern period, for 500 years, may be described as a concerted attack on the human ego and an attempt to see ourselves “from outside” – the natural pleasure we take in loving ourselves and preferring ourselves.

    Since this is painful – the inflicting of a wound on oneself – the whole phenomena, including science, was described by Nietzsche as “asceticism”. And this seems completely correct to me. Today it has reached absurd and grotesque heights.

    The question is, Taoism and Buddhism in the East also involved a concerted attack on egoistic self love, in a very different way, but here it resulted in liberation and joy, not self hate.

    Why did it end up differently for Europe?

    I would argue that science and the Industrial Revolution utilized the new found freedom from egotistic self-centeredness (called – misleadingly – “objectivity”) for the very egotistic end of controlling the world in a very harsh and aggressive way (not a cooperative way).

    So freedom from ego did not result in a blissful connection to something larger, but was nipped in the bud and brought crashing down to earth again.

    This created a fracture and tension in European culture that destroyed any potentially harmonious development – an “inner division” and war that is with us to this day.

    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
  416. @A123
    @AaronB


    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”.
     
    I concur. If one accepts the Smithsonian definition of "White" all successful civilizations have primarily "White" values.

    The obvious counter is -- Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian's definition of "White" is absurd.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that "Jews" are responsible for targeting "Judeo-Christian" values. Yet those who target "Judeo-Christian" values cannot be practicing "Jews".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity
     
    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life "See someone. Take their stuff.". However, it is also very uncivilized.

    However, it isn’t about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism. But it’s difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it’s critique of “worldly” values.
     
    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    PBUYT

    If one accepts the Smithsonian definition of “White” all successful civilizations have primarily “White” values. The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd. My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.

    Agreed.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world.

    Ideologies are modern substitutes for religions. Carl Schmitt saw this.

    A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.

    SJW looks distinctly Judaic in how inferiority and superiority complexes are inculcated at the same time for the target populations. Truly the God of Pharisees.

  417. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT

    I agree with AaronB in the parts I quoted, and I know what you've selected as one of the examples proving what he says "anti-bourgeois mentality". But he understands it is in fact not intrinsically racial, but cultural, or even spiritual where figureheads like MAGA or Globalists don't matter.

    And then you said


    Those dependent on government handouts vote DNC. Thus, it is in their interest to push the SJW Globalist agenda. They have maximum power when the U.S. does poorly. The last thing they want is for minorities to be successful. Successful workers vote MAGA.
     
    You're stuck at the materialist, "vote Trump and get to work to pwn those globalists, or else" level of analysis. And so

    being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of “evil”
     
    (practical ideologies count as blood too)

    Agreement with you isn't mandatory. Go and read his newest reply to you.

    Replies: @A123

    You’re stuck at the materialist, “vote Trump and get to work to pwn those globalists, or else” level of analysis.

    You thought process is illogical, leading you to make unsupportable leaps. Not quoting something that is not directly related to the point at hand is neither confirmation nor denial of the unquoted material.

    Every time you make assumptions about what I believe:
        — You are almost always wrong.
        — It comes across as TROLLING.
    You make up something, declare that I believe it, attack on that basis, and wildly miss the mark.

    If you get to make up things about others, others get to tell you what you believe, such as your total commitment to Silver Rounds as Hard Currency. Have you gotten your PRC to start using them yet?

    One must generate a certain amount of real world wins to avoid poverty/death. And, survival is a necessity before considering larger issues of morality and faith. That does not make me “stuck”, that makes me “realistic”.

    The only things “stuck” here seem to be your:
        -1- Deranged #NeverTrump histrionics
        -2- Materialistic commitment to Silver Rounds

    I am willing to amend the 2nd point, if you explain the religious significance. Is your irrevocable commitment to Silver Rounds based on an ecclesiastical dogma “Silver Round Iconic Orthodoxy” or some other little known religious practice?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    • Troll: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    These days I tend to see "silver rounds" as part of a larger system of monies and currencies that are largely stable and/or market determined in value.

  418. @Mikel
    @mal


    No exactly. I sometimes know what I’m talking about. :).
     
    No my son. I don't think you do in this particular case. Your (dubious) link doesn't work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines. No country would ever have to worry about getting indebted in US dollars if that was the case!

    It is trivially true that a country that can print its own currency cannot default on debt denominated in that currency (great "discovery" of the MMT theorists). But there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions. That's why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.

    If you read the books I recommended you will understand that anything we can call money must have two essential attributes: be an accepted means of exchange ("money is accepted because it is accepted" Samuelson famously quipped) and serve as a store of value. When contracts and transactions become difficult because prices are constantly changing and keeping your savings in a given currency makes it lose its value over time, people invariably switch to better forms of money.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they're doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal, @Beckow

    …as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation

    True, but it is a bookish point, you need a reliable measure to actually use it. In our world the oversupply of money is not measurable on its own, the system is too open. We can only measure “inflation” – a consequence of an oversupply of money. But how?

    To measure something you need a few agreed on things: a baseline, a set of parameters, and a stable enough measure to apply. Some of it exists, but too much is subjective: what to pick, how to set ratios among different parameters – e.g. housing vs. food vs. medical care… At what point in the chain we measure? How to account for imposed and external costs-benefits like taxes, gment help, etc…It is an imprecise process and the resulting “inflation number” is equally imprecise.

    In the last few decades the Western gments figured out that gaming statistics is easier than fixing problems. So they have adjusted formulas to show what they want to show. If inflation in US-EU was measured with the mid-70’s formulas it would be around 8-10%. It is true with other gment statistics: debt is hidden with “separate entities”, unemployment is a miraculous 5%, but close to 100 million working age people in US are not in the workforce. It is fiction for mid-wits.

    We are being lied to and people lie for a reason. The make-believe worlds can go on for a long time, but there is nothing holding them up, it is based on faith like the medieval monasticism. The issue is that virtual made-up worlds have to constantly expand. We have reached the point when expansion is very difficult. We have a bubble of all bubbles, an everything-bubble presided over by a few demented old people (quite appropriate for a dead-end). Let’s see what reality does to it and when.

    • Agree: Almost Missouri
  419. @A123
    @AaronB


    Thanks, yes, not just Jews, but by this definition East Asians and anyone who has a civilization is “White” – any conceivable Black civilization would also be “White”.
     
    I concur. If one accepts the Smithsonian definition of "White" all successful civilizations have primarily "White" values.

    The obvious counter is -- Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian's definition of "White" is absurd.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that "Jews" are responsible for targeting "Judeo-Christian" values. Yet those who target "Judeo-Christian" values cannot be practicing "Jews".

    Now to be clear, I myself am in a sense “anti-civilization” – I believe the most enjoyable and happy state for mankind is a relatively primitive simplicity
     
    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life "See someone. Take their stuff.". However, it is also very uncivilized.

    However, it isn’t about race and Woke ideology and language is hopelessly grotesque and distorted, and remains trapped in materialism. But it’s difficult to miss the connection with religion here and it’s critique of “worldly” values.
     
    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd.

    Yes, I agree. Which is why I don’t think it’s really about race. Race is merely a proxy for values.

    It’s just that we are a retarded culture obsessed with race.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.

    I agree with this.

    Jews who attack traditional European culture are ethnic Jews who assimilated into Enlightenment values and continue that tradition.

    Even making an exception for Israel, which is not as common as is claimed (all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath), but even making such a partial exception is well grounded in liberal values – although increasingly contentious among liberals.

    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life “See someone. Take their stuff.”. However, it is also very uncivilized.

    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization 🙂

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a “surplus” – in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.

    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.

    Yes, it is the stupid man’s culture war.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.

    Yes, well, I’m not gonna follow you down that particular rabbit hole 🙂

    Although there is obvious convergence of interests between SJWs and Islamists and unscrupulous Muslims, Woke ideology seems to me an indigenous European phenomena – the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence.

    It can’t help but be grotesque and self contradictory.

    • Replies: @A123
    @AaronB


    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization 🙂

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a “surplus” – in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.
     

    A "bias" of civilization or a "basis" for civilization? 🤔

    Civilization has purposes other than "surplus", however your point is well taken. It comes back to the need to find a 'happy medium'. Some civilization is desirable, excessive over development is not.

    I am very happy that we have sufficient civilization to import coffee beans, roast them, run them through an electric burr grinder, and place them in a stainless steel filter Tube+ for the purpose of cold brew. [MORE]


    all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath
     
    Precisely. Though Leftist Jew is often a contradiction. They are usually post-Judaic in term of religious practice, regardless of their heritage.

    The frequently pushed canard is "Closed Borders for Israel, Open Borders for Everyone Else". Except it is a intentional lie that deliberately conflates two opposing groups. Almost all strongly Zionist Jews accept strong borders for every country, not just Israel. No one has been able to produce a senior Likud official who wants Europe or America to have Open [Muslim] Borders.


    the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence. It can’t help but be grotesque and self contradictory.
     
    I do not think we disagree that much. However, we are a bit trapped by terminology.

    Looking at SJW Globalism in only materialistic terms, while exceedingly grim, underestimates the horror. Excessive materialism, while grotesque, is insufficient to explain Wokeness.

    When I look at SJW/Woke opposition to Judeo-Christian God that implies religion in addition to ideology. It is an awful, Soul Damaging religion based on fundamental degradation of the Human Spirit.

    PEACE 😇

    https://www.amazon.com/TUBE-Infuser-Stainless-Designed-Included/dp/B071WXSCSC/

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @SafeNow
    @AaronB

    A quick thanks for saying something nice about bandits and highwaymen, because my ancestry partly goes back to Nottingham, as in Robin Hood. I’ve been on Unz for a few years now, and this is my first pro-highwaymen comment. But seriously, thank you for the comments about culture, religion, and so on; I am always learning things here and reading ideas to think about.

  420. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    You’re stuck at the materialist, “vote Trump and get to work to pwn those globalists, or else” level of analysis.
     
    You thought process is illogical, leading you to make unsupportable leaps. Not quoting something that is not directly related to the point at hand is neither confirmation nor denial of the unquoted material.

    Every time you make assumptions about what I believe:
        -- You are almost always wrong.
        -- It comes across as TROLLING.
    You make up something, declare that I believe it, attack on that basis, and wildly miss the mark.


    If you get to make up things about others, others get to tell you what you believe, such as your total commitment to Silver Rounds as Hard Currency. Have you gotten your PRC to start using them yet?

    One must generate a certain amount of real world wins to avoid poverty/death. And, survival is a necessity before considering larger issues of morality and faith. That does not make me "stuck", that makes me "realistic".

    The only things "stuck" here seem to be your:
        -1- Deranged #NeverTrump histrionics
        -2- Materialistic commitment to Silver Rounds

    I am willing to amend the 2nd point, if you explain the religious significance. Is your irrevocable commitment to Silver Rounds based on an ecclesiastical dogma "Silver Round Iconic Orthodoxy" or some other little known religious practice?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/ab/b7/48/abb74819273c5896ab989ae258ed60ca.jpg

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    These days I tend to see “silver rounds” as part of a larger system of monies and currencies that are largely stable and/or market determined in value.

  421. @AaronB
    @A123


    The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd.
     
    Yes, I agree. Which is why I don't think it's really about race. Race is merely a proxy for values.

    It's just that we are a retarded culture obsessed with race.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.
     
    I agree with this.

    Jews who attack traditional European culture are ethnic Jews who assimilated into Enlightenment values and continue that tradition.

    Even making an exception for Israel, which is not as common as is claimed (all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath), but even making such a partial exception is well grounded in liberal values - although increasingly contentious among liberals.

    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life “See someone. Take their stuff.”. However, it is also very uncivilized.
     
    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization :)

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a "surplus" - in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.

    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.
     
    Yes, it is the stupid man's culture war.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.
     
    Yes, well, I'm not gonna follow you down that particular rabbit hole :)

    Although there is obvious convergence of interests between SJWs and Islamists and unscrupulous Muslims, Woke ideology seems to me an indigenous European phenomena - the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence.

    It can't help but be grotesque and self contradictory.

    Replies: @A123, @SafeNow

    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization 🙂

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a “surplus” – in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.

    A “bias” of civilization or a “basis” for civilization? 🤔

    Civilization has purposes other than “surplus”, however your point is well taken. It comes back to the need to find a ‘happy medium’. Some civilization is desirable, excessive over development is not.

    I am very happy that we have sufficient civilization to import coffee beans, roast them, run them through an electric burr grinder, and place them in a stainless steel filter Tube+ for the purpose of cold brew. [MORE]

    all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath

    Precisely. Though Leftist Jew is often a contradiction. They are usually post-Judaic in term of religious practice, regardless of their heritage.

    The frequently pushed canard is “Closed Borders for Israel, Open Borders for Everyone Else”. Except it is a intentional lie that deliberately conflates two opposing groups. Almost all strongly Zionist Jews accept strong borders for every country, not just Israel. No one has been able to produce a senior Likud official who wants Europe or America to have Open [Muslim] Borders.

    the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence. It can’t help but be grotesque and self contradictory.

    I do not think we disagree that much. However, we are a bit trapped by terminology.

    Looking at SJW Globalism in only materialistic terms, while exceedingly grim, underestimates the horror. Excessive materialism, while grotesque, is insufficient to explain Wokeness.

    When I look at SJW/Woke opposition to Judeo-Christian God that implies religion in addition to ideology. It is an awful, Soul Damaging religion based on fundamental degradation of the Human Spirit.

    PEACE 😇

    [MORE]

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @A123

    Yeah, the point isn't to eliminate civilization. That ship has sailed :)

    But if we understand that civilization is problematic, and often a source of mental health issues, we can use these insights to live better and more freely, and more naturally.

    I think the old Chinese culture did this very well, but probably all traditional cultures did a better job of it. What distinguishes modernity is the desire to completely seperate from nature and make human control - civilization- absolute. A tragic mistake.

    Coffee is, indeed, one of the glories of civilization!

    Right, the whole attempt to conflate Zionism with what Woke assimilated Jews are doing in America is certainly bizarre.

    I would have thought the smart - and honest - strategy for someone who objects to Jews being too involved in his country on nationalist grounds would be to support nationalist Jews who are not his enemy.

    Actually, that's what European Nationalists, like Orban, do. It's an obvious, practical strategy.

    I think, though, that for many Jew haters the issue is essentially religious - to them, eliminating Jews will usher in the millennium, as Jews are the source of all evil since ancient times. It's an intensely religious vision.

    After all, an anti-Semite has been described as someone who hates Jews more than is strictly necessary :)

    In that context, it makes sense to also oppose Israel.

    Islamists, of course, are very happy about this trend and push it along whenever they can, as we saw with Talha and AnonStarter.

    But in today's West, I think religious anti-Semitism of this sort is a very boutique cult and will never become popular, happily.

    Then you have some people, like Yevardian, who are just so seething with resentment towards Jews that he hates Israel too, but I don't think it's a religious thing for him.


    When I look at SJW/Woke opposition to Judeo-Christian God that implies religion in addition to ideology. It is an awful, Soul Damaging religion based on fundamental degradation of the Human Spirit
     
    I think for you, Woke is an actual evil force seeking to destroy the good. I respect this vision, but I don't believe that myself.

    To me, Woke is a tortured groping towards the good that widely misses the mark. I don't truly believe in evil - I think everyone is trying to do good as best they understand it (yes, even Hitler :) ).

    As someone inspired by Buddhism, I believe that people operate out of "illusion" rather than malice.

    Replies: @A123

  422. @mal
    @Mikel


    Your (dubious) link doesn’t work for me but Zimbabwe, Venezuela or Argentina cannot print US dollars so they cannot possibly pay debt denominated in US dollars by using their printing machines.
     
    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets? You can buy and sell any currency you want, be it Zimbabwean dollar, US dollar or any other, for a price.

    Zimbabwe didn't print USD, they printed Zimbabwean dollars and dumped them on forex markets. This will cause Zimbabwe dollars to drop in relative value, but not before the sellers pocket the US dollars needed to pay back IMF loans. Eventually, those forex transactions will cause hyperinflation in import dependent countries, but effect is (relatively) delayed and so you can make bank with getting USD for printed local currency.

    That’s why pensioners in Russia and other East European countries used to convert most of their pensions to dollars or euros as soon as they received them.
     
    LOL they did this because local oligarchs who owned the private banks would print money like crazy and dump it for dollars.

    Prior to economic collapse Russian government debt to GDP was around 50%. It did skyrocket to 135% due to economic collapse, but even 135% is too bad by modern standards, and it was an artefact of massive GDP drop in 1998. You can tell it as it recovered back to 55% by 2000.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GGGDTARUA188N

    Russian government debt has been some of the lowest in the world in 2000-2010 and Russian government was running budget surpluses.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/government-budget

    Yet inflation was running at 10-20%!
    https://tradingeconomics.com/russia/inflation-cpi

    It certainly wasn't the government printing all this money. They were actually taking money out.

    It was the pathetic local banking sector and the elites who were printing money and dumping it, until Russian Central Bank put a stop to it starting around 2014. Russian inflation dropped like a rock once banking sector was cleaned up and cartelized.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.
     
    In the modern world, private sector credit is far more dangerous with respect to inflationary pressure than government spending.

    Replies: @Mikel

    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets?

    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world… to the tune of 1x or 2x that country’s whole GDP 🙂

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.

    I don’t really know what Zimbabwe has been doing with its foreign debt but what you’re telling us is that somehow this godforsaken country has managed to do what dozens upon dozens of countries trapped in foreign debt have never been able to do: print themselves out of their hard currency debts.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can’t seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn’t add up.

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @Mikel


    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.
     
    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    Replies: @Mikel, @John Johnson

    , @mal
    @Mikel


    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world… to the tune of 1x or 2x that country’s whole GDP 🙂
     
    Of course there is. Forex markets are huge and there are specialists (hedge funds and so) who specifically hunt for distressed global assets, buy them for pennies on the dollar, negotiate for fractions of the penny, and make $billions.

    And Zimbabwe's GDP is about the Hedge Fund CEO's lunch bill. Of course that transaction would clear. Sure, speculative, but there are people who make good living doing this.

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.
     
    Like Raul said, there's no floor. Forex and distressed asset markets will always clear, for a price. This price can be infinitely small, hence hyperinflation, but it will be there. You can now resell Zimbabwe banknotes for like $20 as souvenirs. If you bought them for infinitely small price, you are making an infinitely large profit.

    Like I said, there are some very smart people and computer AI doing this for a living. They will always find the right price.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can’t seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn’t add up.

     

    Venezuela is under sanctions so getting out of debt is not going to help them fix their oil rigs to restart production. So my bet is they will simply ignore the debt. It doesn't matter anyway.

    But if sanctions are lifted, printing money to reduce debt to GDP load (currently at 350%) is the very first thing they will do, guaranteed. It's the right move.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/government-debt-to-gdp

    If you think they will be repaying 350% debt in real terms, you are not living in real world. They will find the right price, guaranteed. And there are people who will help them.

    Replies: @Mikel

  423. @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    there are two crucial things it cannot do: force foreigners to accept that currency and even force its own citizens to use it once they lose confidence in the value of that currency. At that point all a government can do is force you to pay taxes in that currency but people will use alternatives for their everyday transactions.
     
    Needless to say these are the symptoms of the friction between chartalist & metallist monetary theories. It's the conflict between extractive vs transactional logic, tax collectors vs people bartering goods.

    So yes, governments can print as much money as they want and never fail to pay their debts in their own currency but, as soon as the oversupply of money translates into inflation (as it always has done all over history), they’re doomed to feel the effects of a devalued domestic currency.
     
    The biggest problem for MMT is the Treasury failing to know how big the money supply should be to cover the real economy, or it's ignored in favor of distributional policy objectives. And this is where the Austrian vision of a market-determined monetary system (commodity money is secondary to the fact) come into play.

    The way to go for unpayable debt denominated in the national currency is to take the Michael Hudson pill for a debt jubilee, or not to incur such debts, as far as they are needless in the first place. But we've gotten to where we are.

    Replies: @Mikel

    The biggest problem for MMT is the Treasury failing to know how big the money supply should be to cover the real economy

    I would rather say that this is the biggest problem of any central bank. In the same way that no central planning authority has ever proven very good at producing optimal amounts of any product.

    But I am not really sure that the Austrian alternative of competition of different kinds of money with no central bank would necessarily work very well. Modern Austrian economists have different views themselves.

    It’s a tough question. But ideally the amount of money in circulation should de determined by market forces and oversupply of money should not be distorting investment decisions that lead to damaging economic cycles.

  424. German_reader says:
    @Yevardian
    @German_reader

    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina, but no, this wasn't considered in any way 'normal'.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy's expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in 'The Roman Empire at Bay' argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper), but the commenting software there is so bad that somehow writing a substantial comment felt inappropriate, so I ended up just spamming shitposts and closed the tab.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird

    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina

    I know, but he ended up as a mutilated corpse in the Tiber.
    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy’s expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in ‘The Roman Empire at Bay’ argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper)

    thx, haven’t read that book, might look at it some time. Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm. The sources for the tetrarchy, and for Constantine’s time too, are surprisingly limited after all (to an extent most people don’t realize; even inscriptions become much rarer), so certainly room for many interpretations.

    • Replies: @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.
     
    Well, don't fret, I don't think anybody's really is, that's why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter's book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill's latest penguin translation as well.


    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.
     
    The only analogy I've really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that's an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

     

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he'd witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they're incapable of producing children, and any they 'adopt' will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it's reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don't know how familar you are with Toynbee's opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don't work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the 'city-state cosmos' is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there's definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that's rarely found in any 'big history', let alone modern works.

    Ok, I'm waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation ('Soviet Civilisation' is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by 'suicide') or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.


    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there's this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a "euthanasia centre" and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant 'fuck you' to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

  425. Anyone seen the new Chinese movie “The Battle at Lake Changjin” where they defeat the US, during the Korean War? Cost over \$200 million to make.

    • Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms
    @songbird

    Not really and have only seen clips.

    It's heavily jingoistic and phrase being used to mock it and banned on Chinese internet is 蛋炒饭 egg fried rice: Prince Mao Anying was supposed eating this before he was killed by an American bomb. Thus the implication that PRC dodged a bullet of becoming a Mao dynasty like DPRK.

    One obvious conundrum of such a "patriotic", anti-American film, is that the director, Chen Kaige, like many of the PRC elites, holds an American green card.

    There's also zero Korean in the movie, which seems tone-deaf at a time PRC-SK relations is quite poor.

    Another Korean War epic last year The Sacrifice (金刚川), where they got Russian actors to play Americans.

    The actual history of the battle is indeed heroic for the part of the poorly equipped average Chinese soldier. The most impressed by it: the Japanese.

    A PRC epic I do recommend is 建国大业 The Founding of a Republic (2009), for it gave a dignified portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek during Chinese Civil War 1945-49

    Btw, I confess after all this time, I'm actually an Indian

  426. @Mikel
    @mal


    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets?
     
    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world... to the tune of 1x or 2x that country's whole GDP :-)

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody's willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.

    I don't really know what Zimbabwe has been doing with its foreign debt but what you're telling us is that somehow this godforsaken country has managed to do what dozens upon dozens of countries trapped in foreign debt have never been able to do: print themselves out of their hard currency debts.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can't seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn't add up.

    Replies: @Not Raul, @mal

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.

    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    • Agree: mal
    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Not Raul


    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.
     
    True. And precisely because of that, would you be willing to use millions of your dollars to buy 21 trillion of Z$ that tomorrow may be worth peanuts? So why assume that anybody else would?

    Replies: @Not Raul

    , @John Johnson
    @Not Raul

    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    The floor for Zimbabwean currency? How about when you need a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread? Anyways this is all in the past so not sure why you are talking about it as if it happened recently.

    I'll give you the shortened version of Zim currency:

    White liberals and leftists around the world cheer as anti-White Marxist Robert Mugabe takes over the country.

    Bob ignores Western economists and prints money after he learns that farming is harder than just kicking out/killing whites and redistributing their land to his cronies.

    Instead admitting to his mistake he thinks he can fool the market by printing even more to pay government workers and everything will somehow work out.

    Hyperinflation occurs to record breaking levels. Million dollar Zim bills are traded at $1. People buy them on ebay as a joke.

    Currency is completely dumped and Bob allows US dollars/SA Rand become de facto currency.

    Bob is dead and liberals/leftists want to pretend none of this happened because it is another embarrassing tale of Wakanda gone wrong.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  427. @schnellandine
    @Thomm

    You are the modern instance of The Great Loyalty Oath Crusade; anyone not replying to your latest queerfest is a queer. Simply to ignore you is evidence of gay butt fealty.

    See a psych.

    Replies: @Thomm

    False. A normal, heterosexual person has no trouble saying that while a black woman might not be their favorite type of woman, they would still have zero hesitation in declaring preference for a black woman over a white man.

    Again, a heterosexual would not even have to think about it.

    The fact that you degenerates do everything BUT answer the question reveals volumes. Rosie and Alden (both women) also say that most WNs are gay, as does John Derbyshire (when he calls them ‘latrine flies’).

    So, schnellandine, if you had to choose between the two, and ‘neither’ is not an option, would you rather have sex with a fat white man (Michael Moore), or with a mulatto (a young Halle Berry)?

    Again, it is a simple question. A heterosexual would have no hesitation in choosing Halle Berry.

    • Replies: @schnellandine
    @Thomm

    Go ahead, dumbass. Let's hear the logic trail. You've not finished. It's a simple and eminently fair request.

    Replies: @Thomm

  428. @Yevardian
    @German_reader

    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina, but no, this wasn't considered in any way 'normal'.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy's expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in 'The Roman Empire at Bay' argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper), but the commenting software there is so bad that somehow writing a substantial comment felt inappropriate, so I ended up just spamming shitposts and closed the tab.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird

    How trustworthy are the ancient sources?

    I don’t believe Kamala would pimp herself, after she acheived power.

  429. @Not Raul
    @Mikel


    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.
     
    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    Replies: @Mikel, @John Johnson

    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    True. And precisely because of that, would you be willing to use millions of your dollars to buy 21 trillion of Z\$ that tomorrow may be worth peanuts? So why assume that anybody else would?

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @Mikel

    I might be willing to buy Zimbabwean currency if the price were right, and I were planning on spending it immediately.

    People do buy Zimbabwean currency. Otherwise, Zimbabwe couldn’t sell it.

  430. @songbird
    Anyone seen the new Chinese movie "The Battle at Lake Changjin" where they defeat the US, during the Korean War? Cost over $200 million to make.

    Replies: @China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms

    Not really and have only seen clips.

    It’s heavily jingoistic and phrase being used to mock it and banned on Chinese internet is 蛋炒饭 egg fried rice: Prince Mao Anying was supposed eating this before he was killed by an American bomb. Thus the implication that PRC dodged a bullet of becoming a Mao dynasty like DPRK.

    One obvious conundrum of such a “patriotic”, anti-American film, is that the director, Chen Kaige, like many of the PRC elites, holds an American green card.

    There’s also zero Korean in the movie, which seems tone-deaf at a time PRC-SK relations is quite poor.

    Another Korean War epic last year The Sacrifice (金刚川), where they got Russian actors to play Americans.

    The actual history of the battle is indeed heroic for the part of the poorly equipped average Chinese soldier. The most impressed by it: the Japanese.

    A PRC epic I do recommend is 建国大业 The Founding of a Republic (2009), for it gave a dignified portrayal of Chiang Kai-shek during Chinese Civil War 1945-49

    [MORE]

    Btw, I confess after all this time, I’m actually an Indian

    • LOL: songbird
  431. @Thomm
    @schnellandine

    False. A normal, heterosexual person has no trouble saying that while a black woman might not be their favorite type of woman, they would still have zero hesitation in declaring preference for a black woman over a white man.

    Again, a heterosexual would not even have to think about it.

    The fact that you degenerates do everything BUT answer the question reveals volumes. Rosie and Alden (both women) also say that most WNs are gay, as does John Derbyshire (when he calls them 'latrine flies').

    So, schnellandine, if you had to choose between the two, and 'neither' is not an option, would you rather have sex with a fat white man (Michael Moore), or with a mulatto (a young Halle Berry)?

    Again, it is a simple question. A heterosexual would have no hesitation in choosing Halle Berry.

    Replies: @schnellandine

    Go ahead, dumbass. Let’s hear the logic trail. You’ve not finished. It’s a simple and eminently fair request.

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @schnellandine

    Yeah, right. No heterosexual man of any race would ever have difficulty in saying that they prefer Halle Berry over a man as a sexual partner.

    No matter how much you try to filibuster and gaslight, your homosexuality is revealed. I could show your answer anywhere (such as a pro-Trump Republican blog), and 100% of the people there will say that this is indisputable evidence of faggotism.

    What is funny is that you don't even know how to pretend to be a heterosexual. At least you have a fair bit of company with your fellow WN faggots in that Hall of Shame I listed in Comment #10.

  432. @AaronB
    @A123


    The obvious counter is — Since there are obviously successful non-white civilizations, the Smithsonian’s definition of “White” is absurd.
     
    Yes, I agree. Which is why I don't think it's really about race. Race is merely a proxy for values.

    It's just that we are a retarded culture obsessed with race.

    My point about Judeo-Christian values was also meant as irony about the inherent contradictions built into the conversation. People claim that “Jews” are responsible for targeting “Judeo-Christian” values. Yet those who target “Judeo-Christian” values cannot be practicing “Jews”.
     
    I agree with this.

    Jews who attack traditional European culture are ethnic Jews who assimilated into Enlightenment values and continue that tradition.

    Even making an exception for Israel, which is not as common as is claimed (all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath), but even making such a partial exception is well grounded in liberal values - although increasingly contentious among liberals.

    Simple and civilized are two different things.

    Being a highwayman is a simple life “See someone. Take their stuff.”. However, it is also very uncivilized.
     
    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization :)

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a "surplus" - in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.

    Woke ideology uses race to as it is easier to deploy in an inflammatory matter.
     
    Yes, it is the stupid man's culture war.

    I would argue that the SJW assault is tangibly religious. Attacking traditional Judeo-Christian institutions and values is much broader than the material world. A component of SJW is hatred for the God of two faiths, Christianity and Judaism. The Woke want to empower a different Middle Eastern deity who is the antithesis of Christian God.
     
    Yes, well, I'm not gonna follow you down that particular rabbit hole :)

    Although there is obvious convergence of interests between SJWs and Islamists and unscrupulous Muslims, Woke ideology seems to me an indigenous European phenomena - the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence.

    It can't help but be grotesque and self contradictory.

    Replies: @A123, @SafeNow

    A quick thanks for saying something nice about bandits and highwaymen, because my ancestry partly goes back to Nottingham, as in Robin Hood. I’ve been on Unz for a few years now, and this is my first pro-highwaymen comment. But seriously, thank you for the comments about culture, religion, and so on; I am always learning things here and reading ideas to think about.

    • Thanks: AaronB
    • LOL: A123
  433. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    Right. That’s the problem. The newly minted fiat cash soaks up the productive energies of the economy and inhibits more productive activity. It’s a form of Gresham’s Law.
     
    How? Why do you think producers are too stupid to realize they could be doing something else rather than working for government cash?

    Again, this is the problem. A party with effectively infinite (unearned) money drives the real productive (earned) economic activity out of the market.
     
    How? Again, why won't producers decide to do something else if that something else is more productive?

    Most US debt nowadays is sold by the federal to the federal government (in this case counting the Fed as federal government).
     
    I wouldn't say "most" (Fed is what, $120 billion/month?), but at any rate, private sector is welcome to sell their holdings at any time if they don't like it, and yet they don't.

    If you are an ordinary Zimbabwean, neither a) nor b) makes any difference, as you will still be paying, directly or indirectly, your surplus value up to the your local ZANU chief.
     
    Local ZANU Chief is also an ordinary Zimbabwean. You can't just pretend that people you don't like are not really people. Again, local problems require local solutions. But at national scale, 77% debt is better than 250% debt to the "community".

    still haven’t seen any evidence that Zimbabwe’s debt—payable in foreign currency—was renegotiated due to hyperinflation annihilating the Z-dollar.

     

    Not renegotiated. Repaid lol. That repayment dumped Z dollar on forex market and triggered hyperinflation. But it must have been glorious lol.

    Why would any bank do that?
     
    Why would a bank lend to Pets dot Com or whatever? Or shopping mall real estate? Because it's their job?

    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.
     
    Bush's recession mess and building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet? I will give the Democrats a pass on those two.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    do you think producers are too stupid to realize they could be doing something else rather than working for government cash?

    The thing about fiat money is you don’t have to work for it. You just get it for free by being a crony. That’s why it is destructive to the productive economy.

    why won’t producers decide to do something else if that something else is more productive?

    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.

    private sector is welcome to sell their holdings at any time if they don’t like it, and yet they don’t.

    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.

    Local ZANU Chief is also an ordinary Zimbabwean.

    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

    You can’t just pretend that people you don’t like are not really people

    .

    I have no particular feelings one way or the other about Zimbabweans. I’m just averse to descriptive inaccuracy.

    Not renegotiated. Repaid lol. That repayment dumped Z dollar on forex market and triggered hyperinflation.

    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately \$0.

    But it must have been glorious lol.

    If you hate Zimbabwe.

    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)

    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.

    Bush’s recession mess and building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet? I will give the Democrats a pass on those two.

    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America’s second biggest budget deficit?

    And why is “building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet” to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn’t have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?

    Would it help you to forgive “Reagan’s” deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he’s signing a Democrat House’s budget?

    • Replies: @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.
     
    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :). Good, private sector agrees with you.

    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.
     
    I don't think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such, its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have $trillions just laying about.

    It's a new game in town.

    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

     

    Then they would do something about it. They don't, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.

    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately $0.
     
    LOL, I hate to break it to you, but the value of all fiat currency is approximately $0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That's why it's fiat. They got rid of usurous slave debt for the true price of fiat currency. That's exactly what makes it a great deal.

    .If you hate Zimbabwe.
     
    Nah, people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.

    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America’s second biggest budget deficit?
     
    Housing bubble was really more of a scapegoat. Bubbles happen and they are not that big of a deal. Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008, and that was a pure leadership issue. To be fair, financial leadership issue, not so much political. Bush was rather clueless on the subject, but that was expected.

    And why is “building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet” to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn’t have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?
     
    I'm not a Soviet nostalgist. It was a foolish system that got done in by its own internal deficiencies (lack of consumer markets led to lack of credit markets which in turn led to lack of capital markets and that all went downhill from there). But that's the thing, Reagan had nothing to do with Soviet Union collapsing.

    At any rate, 4-5% GDP budget deficit is not how I would define "fiscal conservatism". Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don't.

    Would it help you to forgive “Reagan’s” deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he’s signing a Democrat House’s budget?
     
    Well, then ditch "fiscal conservatism" as an ideology and be proud of Reagan's actions as Democratic government budget executive.

    As far as monetary policy debate goes though, clearly Reagan had higher budget deficit than Carter, but lower inflation. So it wasn't government money printing that was responsible for inflation, it was private sector banking and commercial credit. High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.

    Replies: @A123, @Almost Missouri

  434. Israel’s alternative liberal Prime Minister Yair Lapid wrote a diplomatic article for the 30th anniversary of diplomatic relations with Russia since 1991. Article is mainly meaningless professional diplomatic, sentimentalist speech.

    However, among the meaningless professional diplomatic talkingpoints, states that Israel is still negotiating the freetrade zone with Eurasian Economic Union (while already having a freetrade zone with the EU).*

    This is an example that highlights the sad situation of Ukraine, as one of the motivations for Euromaidan was the presentation to the public that they would have to choose between the EU or Eurasian Economic Union, and this was in fact what later happened with the FTAs.

    EU’s economy is 10 times larger than the Eurasian Economic Union, so Ukraine has to have freetrade with the EU bloc. But Ukraine also needed to maintain freetrade with the Eurasian Economic Union bloc who is far more integrated to.

    Needless to say the obvious, Ukraine was not able to follow such a simple path of freetrade with both blocs, and suspension of freetrade with Russia in 2015 (https://country.eiu.com/article.aspx?articleid=1803787164) before their FTA with the EU .

    Meanwhile everyone else seems will be allowed to sign freetrade agreements with both blocs.

    * “We are in the midst of negotiations towards signing a free trade area agreement between Israel and the Eurasian Economic Union.” (https://www.ynetnews.com/article/h1syykbht) Since 2010, Israel has been in FTA with the EU.

  435. @German_reader
    @Coconuts

    I agree, the spread of "woke" ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn't fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it's actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the "nation of immigrants" meme, which has even been taken up by alleged "conservatives". I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that "woke" ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    I agree, the spread of “woke” ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn’t fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it’s actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the “nation of immigrants” meme, which has even been taken up by alleged “conservatives”.

    I vaguely remember people in the 1990s looking to the multi-racial US as a model for the future of Britain, and some of the clear political transplants that were attempted in the 2000s, usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants). Some of this was promoted by conservatives as well, this was probably a sign of the general apathy or optimism surrounding the issue at the time, that it wasn’t seen as odd for them to do so but was kind of expected.

    I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that “woke” ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.

    I think this is one of the biggest issues in the background of Woke politics in Europe. It looks like in the not too distant future various European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.

    At the moment I still can’t see how they will be able to portray this as a story of the positive fulfillment of the liberation and secularisation politics of the 1960s and 70s and the globalist neo-liberal economics of the 80s and 90s; things will only get better… they will get so much better that the old peoples of Western Europe will either stop forming families and die out, or become significantly more African.

    The Woke thing might be the beginning of a strategy of normalising this outcome for the young, and hoping people old enough to remember pre-2000 times don’t talk much about it.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants).
     
    I don't know, I've very often seen claims that Britain has always been a "nation of immigrants" (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings, Huguenots...apart from the last they were all armed invaders of course), so the changes since the 1950s are nothing new and just a continuation of long-standing national tradition. You get similar talking points in Germany too (about Huguenots and Ruhr Poles). It doesn't matter that it's implausible, lots of people still believe it.

    European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.
     
    I don't think they'll feel they have to explain anything at all, it's pretty clear that they view these processes as basically a good thing after all, as humanity coming together, ending racism etc.; their vision really is one where everybody is becoming racially mixed and then everything will be fine. I can remember skimming through a book by Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing, and how he wanted the same globally, so racial difference would become an individual matter, not something separating entire groups...basically ethnicity would be abolished. I think that's an absurd vision, but a lot of mainstream establishment types probably really hold such ideas. And you can't even discuss these issues openly, because native Europeans at least are constantly told to have a purely values-based civic identity. In Germany this has become very pronounced in the official discourse of the "educated" classes, basically you're expected to pretend that something like ethnic Germans doesn't exist at all (because to do so would be völkisch, that is Nazi), so it's totally delegitimized to object to the coming minority status of Germans or even talk about it (whereas immigrant communities and their activists are of course allowed to hold pretty strong identities and agitate for collective interests, justified on the basis of their alleged suffering under discrimination). The other issue is that the process is already so far advanced in Western Europe that even many people who resent it probably keep quiet out of fear that a more open discussion could lead to violence. So I doubt the establishment responsible for those policies will ever have to come up with an explanation, I think it's more likely that debate on immigration, multiculturalism, race etc. will become ever more restricted (also more legal repression justified by the threat of right-wing terrorism).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

  436. @AaronB
    @AaronB

    As for a right wing counter-culture, for decades now the right has been defined by it's dedication to the values of realistic common sense and sober respectability. It's critique of the left has been it's radical departure from realism and common sense.

    Jared Taylor has this thing where he famously points out that White societies are functional under any political system and Black and Brown societies dysfunctional under any political system.

    This is Taylor's highest value; functionality. This is good, healthy, bourgeois common sense, practical, sober, etc. And it is important, but it isn't enough.

    This is why the right has lost the culture wars.

    When you read Steve Sailer, you think that even if everything he says is correct he has completely missed the point. As long as the right produces mainly people like these, it cannot even compete in the culture wars. (Steve is a nice guy and a talented writer whose writing would have a valuable place for what it is. Only, it can't be the substance of the right wing contribution to the culture wars, a kind of bland, amiable, avuncular, practicality).

    There is another type of right wing politics that does offer transcendence, and in it's best form it is represented by someone like Edmund Burke and his pertinent reflections on the French Revolution - which makes clear, there is also a type of leftism that is dreary and dull and utterly fails at transcendence, like life under Communism and it's dreary materialism.

    Another major problem for the right is that in the recent last, it's main attempts at transcendence, like the Nazis, were sinister, malevolent, and horrifically destructive to large swathes of foreign populations (and itself).

    So for a time, right wing transcendence politics were suspicious and the right confined itself to politics of bland practicality, but despite Ron Unze's best attempts to resurrect this sinister style of right wing transcendence (which would once again destroy the right for decades), I believe the future of the right is to move towards a more sane and balanced Burkean politics of transcendence.

    And with the left becoming so extreme and it's implosion inevitable, perhaps the right will in future gave a contribution to make - perhaps, in the new synthesis that arises, left and right will no longer have meaning.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    What’s so transcendent about Burke?

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Almost Missouri

    As far as I remember, Burke favored a society that was aesthetic and spiritual, and opposed the French Revolution partially on the grounds that it was rationalist and materialist, and did away with the aesthetic and spiritual richness of traditional culture.

  437. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    I'm pedantic at times and have the urge to reply or add to your posts point-by-point. Treat these as my own crude reading notes.


    If you live in the elite and luxurious environment...
     
    A ideologically recast version of Bourgeois spite for the masses, and this time intrinsically self-destructive over the long-term. By focusing on frivolities (what they actually are) instead of real High Culture or genuine issues of concern, They're probably abdicating their own moral leadership.

    The discordance will be when you export “pronoun theory” and “ethical coffee buying theory”, to coal miners or Indian farmers – which is what US State Department’s social media manager seems to be trying.
     
    "Ethical coffee buying" might be of use to smallholders planting coffee, because it's economic to them. The only stuff in those SJ theories that will be resonant to the lower classes will be those of tangible (economic) concern.

    Much of “woke” fits natively in elite parts of Western Europe
     
    Western Europe has been a hotbed of "innovation", "fashions", whatever because of a high degree of individualism (this has an HBD explanation). Just catching up on the newest trends.

    there is endogenous popularity of anything related to gender, neurodiversity, sexuality (even with protests for asexual peoples’ rights), LGBT, ecology, organic farming, “unconscious bias”, and electric mobility.
     
    Like every set of beliefs, there are good and bad things here. Organic farming & electric mobility are alright as far as they have a clear vision of how to do them (and electricity generation from nuclear power instead of the current set of renewables). But anything else are depraved.

    Disclosure: I'm autistic and benefit from "neurodiverse" initiatives

    For racial issues, it’s different compared to USA, because of lack of slavery or extermination of indigenous peoples. For example, in Ireland, the majority population identifies more as being victims of imperialism, than vice-versa, so the message will not be useful for virtue-signalling.
     
    This is the limit of Americanization. Real history and real ethnic positions.

    However, UK’s woke ideology not directed to countries many like India and China which had been exploited by imperialism. But more focus on trying to be cool with the US policies relating to police brutality, black lives matters, etc.
     
    Which is because the "human rights" angle of these issues are emphasized, and this means they are affected by a more general Europeanization of their view on how social relations should be structured. Not surprising considering that China has been modernizing its ideological worldview after 5/4 and India has the British Raj. But these somewhat make sense from a more conventional "no harms and no exploitation" perspective.

    Educational centres of Western Europe are becoming a third (and probably soon will be half) Indian and Chinese students. Both countries which were victims of imperialism.
     
    A big cargo cult.

    But I think they actually integrate quite easily. They are not fighting local students, but mixed up to them without a need for affirmative action policies.
     
    HBD proponents will tell you they are high-IQ types and they'll succeed no matter what. Why the need for affirmative action, which are for those socially "inferior".

    One of the greatest change I notice in the last years, requirements to change toilets to unisex. This is all because of non-binary gender concept.

    This is kind of culture change really popular with the young people – they are very worried that non-binary will be discriminated, and have forced that all toilets have to change in the universities.
     
    There are definitely extremely few (0.02% to 0.05%) intersex people with deformed genitals who can't be neatly assigned a sex at birth. The 99% must accommodate those freaks and gender LARPers!

    Aside from the virtue signalling (which is the attractive aspect of a BLM flag), it feels like a hyper-civilization or sensitization, where their whole lives should be a kind of safe space.



    My own view of BLM is that the protest against police brutality in America (also Russia) is correct and important. But the important issue was lost, and re-directed and exploited into American race politics.

    The problem of arbitrary violence and brutality of the authorities, and suppression of ordinary peoples’ rights, is very serious. But the topic was re-mapped onto a kind of Obama speech about racial justice (the usefulness of Obama’s speeches even in their own terms, can be seen by the fact relative racial income inequality became worse in America after he was president for 8 years).
     

    Current “Woke” ideologies have not been counter-culture for many years, and some of them seemed to be astroturfed last decade almost as finalized teachings. Microaggressions, safe space, unconscious bias – it was all like something delivered directly readymade from the factory, than an organically developing ideology.

    But historically even organic (non-astroturfed) counter-culture had been assimilated by bourgeois democracy almost as fast as can be fashion trends in clothes.
     

    Possibly by the end of our lives, we will be envying the slow decline of the Roman civilization that allowed pockets of the empire to continue the same lifestyles for centuries.
     
    Very true.

    Our historical situation today is very different by design, because we have been since the scientific revolutions sitting in an unstoppable train of technological development.

    Unlike Romans, we have an alienation and horror of continuous technological changes transforming increasing areas of our lives.
     
    Traditionalist thought see the advancement of technologies as decadence.

    Even harmless and positive-intentioned QR-coding by the authorities for vaccinated people to move in a city, can seem like a healthy thing to establish for a precedent.
     
    To end this comment, this looks like a really profound example to pick up and it says a lot on what's poor with our current Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement, compulsion, institutional intolerance of alternative standpoints and actions, appropriation by political TPTB...). One way out of these is spearheaded by the opposition/resistance to such a system, and it is ideologically-based parallel societies (e.g. black markets), and before that a re-domesticization of social life no doubt helped by lockdowns, and reconstitution of social ties after the whole Zoom business.

    Agorists and libertarians don't know what new world they're building.

    Replies: @AaronB, @Dmitry

    “neurodiverse” initiatives

    One of the things they have initiated in some cafes/restaurants/public spaces of an elite university, is to introduce more gentle lighting and less sudden noises so that neurodiverse students will not be offended.

    It seems that if people had said they wanted better lighting and less loud music, nobody would listen to them.

    But if it can translated into language like “in order to protect the rights of the neurodiverse minority students (whose community is represented in the union by [.. ])”, then immediately there will be money to change the university buildings to soft music and Philips hue light bulbs.

    Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement

    It’s a technology that would allow less security for the ordinary people, but more security for the authorities and owners of means of production.

    A lot of technology changes (especially since the introduction of the internet to peoples’ life) are precedents that can push the balance of power further and further from the average citizen, and more and more to the rulers and the owners of production.

    In a sensible world, there would be immediate moratorium on most all of these technologies, and then writing of a very strict, humanistic based legal framework, that will protect values of civilization everytime when we engage with this technology.

    The basis for each change should be whether any of this is improving peoples’ life, not whether it will generate profit. Because the changes are coming faster and faster. And this is our stage of history is our lives being radically changed by technology.

    Of course, now I’m a utopian dreamer, and the best we can hope is the legal system in developed countries might improve the situation slightly from how it has been in the last decade, and punish some of the extreme bypass of peoples’ best interest that has been happening already.

    • Thanks: AaronB
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    In a sensible world, there would be immediate moratorium on most all of these technologies, and then writing of a very strict, humanistic based legal framework, that will protect values of civilization everytime when we engage with this technology.

    The basis for each change should be whether any of this is improving peoples’ life
     
    That sounds good.

    the best we can hope is the legal system in developed countries might improve the situation slightly from how it has been in the last decade, and punish some of the extreme bypass of peoples’ best interest that has been happening already.
     
    Realities are for some already radically corrupt and in need of a total replacement.
  438. @Mikel
    @mal


    You are not familiar with existence of foreign exchange markets?
     
    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world... to the tune of 1x or 2x that country's whole GDP :-)

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody's willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.

    I don't really know what Zimbabwe has been doing with its foreign debt but what you're telling us is that somehow this godforsaken country has managed to do what dozens upon dozens of countries trapped in foreign debt have never been able to do: print themselves out of their hard currency debts.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can't seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn't add up.

    Replies: @Not Raul, @mal

    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world… to the tune of 1x or 2x that country’s whole GDP 🙂

    Of course there is. Forex markets are huge and there are specialists (hedge funds and so) who specifically hunt for distressed global assets, buy them for pennies on the dollar, negotiate for fractions of the penny, and make \$billions.

    And Zimbabwe’s GDP is about the Hedge Fund CEO’s lunch bill. Of course that transaction would clear. Sure, speculative, but there are people who make good living doing this.

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.

    Like Raul said, there’s no floor. Forex and distressed asset markets will always clear, for a price. This price can be infinitely small, hence hyperinflation, but it will be there. You can now resell Zimbabwe banknotes for like \$20 as souvenirs. If you bought them for infinitely small price, you are making an infinitely large profit.

    Like I said, there are some very smart people and computer AI doing this for a living. They will always find the right price.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can’t seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn’t add up.

    Venezuela is under sanctions so getting out of debt is not going to help them fix their oil rigs to restart production. So my bet is they will simply ignore the debt. It doesn’t matter anyway.

    But if sanctions are lifted, printing money to reduce debt to GDP load (currently at 350%) is the very first thing they will do, guaranteed. It’s the right move.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/government-debt-to-gdp

    If you think they will be repaying 350% debt in real terms, you are not living in real world. They will find the right price, guaranteed. And there are people who will help them.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @mal

    I knew you were making stuff up from the very beginning :-)

    OK, so here's what really happened. In 2006 the Zimbabwean Central Bank printed Z$21 trillion not in order to cancel its external debt but in order to pay some arrears to the IMF and avoid being expelled from the Fund and thus receiving any more loans from it. They managed to exchange that crazy sum in the local market (probably bribing some traders with permission to import foreign goods) for... 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe's residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).

    So yes, the central bank's astute strategy did raise inflation immediately but had zero effect in reducing the external debt. In the meantime, Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.

    Sources:
    https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-averts-imf-expulsion-fresh-aid-unlikely
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/external-debt
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

    Replies: @John Johnson, @mal

  439. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    I agree, the spread of “woke” ideology in Europe (and that certainly includes Britain, which was an almost monoethnic nation state within living memory) is another manifestation of Americanization, it doesn’t fit at all (as is shown in terms like BIPOC, when it’s actually white Europeans who are indigenous in Europe), but tbh the same was true about civic nationalism and the “nation of immigrants” meme, which has even been taken up by alleged “conservatives”.
     
    I vaguely remember people in the 1990s looking to the multi-racial US as a model for the future of Britain, and some of the clear political transplants that were attempted in the 2000s, usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants). Some of this was promoted by conservatives as well, this was probably a sign of the general apathy or optimism surrounding the issue at the time, that it wasn't seen as odd for them to do so but was kind of expected.

    I also agree that the demographic turnover is a crucial context and that “woke” ideology is a weapon for activists from immigrant communities, who ultimately are aiming at the complete dismantlement of the European nations their families were (unfortunately) allowed to immigrate to.
     
    I think this is one of the biggest issues in the background of Woke politics in Europe. It looks like in the not too distant future various European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.

    At the moment I still can't see how they will be able to portray this as a story of the positive fulfillment of the liberation and secularisation politics of the 1960s and 70s and the globalist neo-liberal economics of the 80s and 90s; things will only get better... they will get so much better that the old peoples of Western Europe will either stop forming families and die out, or become significantly more African.

    The Woke thing might be the beginning of a strategy of normalising this outcome for the young, and hoping people old enough to remember pre-2000 times don't talk much about it.

    Replies: @German_reader

    usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants).

    I don’t know, I’ve very often seen claims that Britain has always been a “nation of immigrants” (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings, Huguenots…apart from the last they were all armed invaders of course), so the changes since the 1950s are nothing new and just a continuation of long-standing national tradition. You get similar talking points in Germany too (about Huguenots and Ruhr Poles). It doesn’t matter that it’s implausible, lots of people still believe it.

    European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.

    I don’t think they’ll feel they have to explain anything at all, it’s pretty clear that they view these processes as basically a good thing after all, as humanity coming together, ending racism etc.; their vision really is one where everybody is becoming racially mixed and then everything will be fine. I can remember skimming through a book by Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing, and how he wanted the same globally, so racial difference would become an individual matter, not something separating entire groups…basically ethnicity would be abolished. I think that’s an absurd vision, but a lot of mainstream establishment types probably really hold such ideas. And you can’t even discuss these issues openly, because native Europeans at least are constantly told to have a purely values-based civic identity. In Germany this has become very pronounced in the official discourse of the “educated” classes, basically you’re expected to pretend that something like ethnic Germans doesn’t exist at all (because to do so would be völkisch, that is Nazi), so it’s totally delegitimized to object to the coming minority status of Germans or even talk about it (whereas immigrant communities and their activists are of course allowed to hold pretty strong identities and agitate for collective interests, justified on the basis of their alleged suffering under discrimination). The other issue is that the process is already so far advanced in Western Europe that even many people who resent it probably keep quiet out of fear that a more open discussion could lead to violence. So I doubt the establishment responsible for those policies will ever have to come up with an explanation, I think it’s more likely that debate on immigration, multiculturalism, race etc. will become ever more restricted (also more legal repression justified by the threat of right-wing terrorism).

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @German_reader


    I’ve very often seen claims that Britain has always been a “nation of immigrants” (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings,
     
    Oddly enough, I can recall making such statements to troll the locals in the UK in the 1980s, but 1) I knew I was trolling, and 2) I didn't expect anyone to take me seriously.

    It is stunning/horrifying to see my adolescent trolling rebroadcast as official government propaganda.

    BTW, I agree with the rest of the comment.
    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing
     
    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries - partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive men when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people. So you can see how these two realities, have mixed in the writer's emotions.

    -


    However, it's a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their "showcase" presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism - that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil's flag writes "Progress and Order". But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.

    -
    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swfmR6wCBvc


    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe
     
    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scare, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse (I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems) And this is where the world's higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas - in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent - like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    So the populations with greater influence are experiencing a less problematic interethnic interaction, while those who have more problematic interethnic tensions are also those who

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing,
     
    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries – partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive women when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women who are more available to first world men, can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people.

    So it seems like these two realities, have mixed in the writer’s emotions.

    However, it’s a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their “showcase” presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism – that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil’s flag writes “Progress and Order”. But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.


    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swfmR6wCBvc.


    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe

     

    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scarce, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent – like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it's not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader

  440. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I agree with your critiques of America.

    Are there elements in America pushing racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression? Without question. I even think this is a significant factor in the rise of Woke politics.

    Marx famously said that anti-Semitism is the communism of the uneducated - and I think that's basically correct; a class war diverted into a racial war for fools.

    However, Woke politics is not only racial conflict - that could probably be achieved much more easily on right wing lines. Woke politics has a well developed ideology.

    Do you remember recently - I forget which Woke group - posted a definition of "Whiteness"? Steve Sailer made a big deal about it. It was basically, the classic bourgeois values - common sense stuff, like hard work, rationality, discipline, etc.

    So Wokeness defines itself as against "Whiteness", which it defines as the classic bourgeois values of hard work, discipline, rationality, and deferred gratification - the practical virtues needed to sustain civilization.

    Can anything be clearer that Woke is a counter-culture movement - in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints (a sense of transcendence and escape from the preoccupation of physically surviving)?

    A recent NYT article was about how White children are not born White but need to be made into "Whites" - assimilated into the culture of bourgeois practicality.

    In light of all this, I would suggest that the reason Woke makes it all about race and not, as in the past, about ideas and ideology, is because we are a thoroughly materialist culture who can no longer imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations. We need flesh and blood enemies - Whites, Jews, Blacks - and can no longer fight ideologies and worldviews and lifestyles.

    Similarly, the anti-Semites cannot understand the fight is against the "structure" of society - being materialists, they need flesh and blood instantiations of "evil".

    Replies: @A123, @iffen, @Dmitry

    racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression

    It’s symbolic gestures, which is to say – almost meaningless.

    Real life is what we should look at more, instead of arguing about symbols.

    In real life, Obama’s daughter is in Harvard, with her English boyfriend. Obama purchased a \$12 million house in Martha’s Vineyard and \$8 million house in Kalorama, Washington DC. (https://www.thelist.com/146336/inside-barack-and-michelle-obamas-gorgeous-d-c-home/)

    His speeches about racial inequality have achieved their primary motivation – to make Obama wealthy and successful.

    But money to invest to fix the pavement in Baltimore, or just to provide people in that mainly African American city with normal shops (every shop there is a liquor) – is evidently less interesting and exciting.

    imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations

    To form the knot, you need to add another maneuver of the string. That is, arguing about abstract ideals, have been a useful way to avoid concrete manifestations.

    It’s clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It’s easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.

    Apple has expended \$4 billion to build a circular office building for their employees, as a purely vanity project, so the office workers can take cool selfies of their environment in their lunch break. Private opulence and public squalor, is celebrated.

    Investment to even collect trash in these streets will be (of course). not available.

    Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints

    It can also be used as obfuscation and procrastination.

    escape from physical constraints

    Perhaps, for young people with trustfunds, in the Upper West Side, or on campus of Brown University and Columbia.

    I agree that ideas in “work ideology” include many universal, positive, civilized ideals – such as not offending peoples’ personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).

    But the same is true with Obama’s speeches, which had many correct and attractive aspirations. And Obama’s speeches were successful in their main aim – which was to give Obama houses in Kalorama and Martha’s Vineyard, but that is rather less universal.

    The only people allowed into Obama’s houses, are his family and his cleaning staff. It’s not a very “universal” achievement.

    Politicians and ideologies shouldn’t be given such an easier assessment process, than engineers or builders. That is, our assessment should be on the results, not whether we agree with some of attractive sounding words.

    • Agree: Barbarossa
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    It’s clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It’s easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.
     
    Basically yes, but WNs that are in great supply here are used to placing a wall between the White and these people because they are "racially" (ethnically) inferior and will mess up the place anyway.

    ideas in “work ideology” include many universal, positive, civilized ideals – such as not offending peoples’ personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).
     
    It ultimately depends on whether any of these ideas are favorable to one's own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues, and they are definitely entitled to their opinions.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Well, yes, I agree with you - but religion has always been exploited and abused in this fashion. All institutional religion becomes deeply compromised.

    So much so, that some thinkers have concluded that religion is "nothing but" a tool of oppression.

    I certainly agree with you that one major function of Woke ideology is to breathe pleasant nothings into the ear of the peasantry as you grow rich on exploiting them - a major function of official religion has always been to justify oppression or distract from it.

    But it works in part because Woke ideology genuinely speaks to the religious aspirations of many people, particularly elite White people.

  441. @German_reader
    @songbird

    imo it's just part of Razib's pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it's pretty silly. I'm not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a "true populist" who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today, and if anything Sulla was an anti-populist whose main goal was to restore the traditional authority of the senate. So not a very enlightening comparison.

    Replies: @songbird, @Almost Missouri

    it’s just part of Razib’s pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it’s pretty silly. I’m not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a “true populist” who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today,

    Razib used to do a genomics podcast with baizuo Spencer Wells, before they got distracted by 2020 and the podcast veered off into leftwing conspiracy theories. But before it completely cratered, Spencer persuaded Razib to whip out his powerful Sulla take for the audience. It was embarrassing: like hearing a college Sophomore expound what he supposes is a great and novel intellectual breakthrough when in fact he is just retreading an already tired trope with so many flaws that a better educated person wouldn’t touch it. Mercifully, people stopped listening and they discontinued the podcast shortly thereafter.

    ———

    One of the 0ther comments implied you have a Substack. Care to drop the address? I’d read it.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Almost Missouri


    One of the 0ther comments implied you have a Substack. Care to drop the address? I’d read it.
     
    Sorry, have to disappoint you, it was a comment on AK's new Substack, in this thread:
    https://akarlin.substack.com/p/open-takes-1

    I don't think I'd have the stamina myself for blogging, or the creativity. Only thing I could even think about writing is some sort of summary year's end review of books I've read. Maybe I'll do that, if only for my own entertainment. But beyond that I doubt I could produce any quality blogging worth reading.
    Razib is really just insufferably arrogant and has an absurdly inflated sense of his own brilliance. He's undoubtedly smart and his posts about genetics are interesting, but apart from that, his self-representation as a polymath is pretty ridiculous. And when one reads him long enough, it's hard not to feel that he actually does have some sort of anti-white animus (a few months ago he basically wrote that his main objection to CRT and the like was that it could awaken the demons of white racialism...and then he and his mixed-race children would get killed, lol). I think Sailer and others who regarded him as a possible ally were very much mistaken.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  442. @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    do you think producers are too stupid to realize they could be doing something else rather than working for government cash?
     
    The thing about fiat money is you don't have to work for it. You just get it for free by being a crony. That's why it is destructive to the productive economy.

    why won’t producers decide to do something else if that something else is more productive?
     
    It's hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.

    private sector is welcome to sell their holdings at any time if they don’t like it, and yet they don’t.
     
    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.

    Local ZANU Chief is also an ordinary Zimbabwean.
     
    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

    You can’t just pretend that people you don’t like are not really people
     
    .

    I have no particular feelings one way or the other about Zimbabweans. I'm just averse to descriptive inaccuracy.

    Not renegotiated. Repaid lol. That repayment dumped Z dollar on forex market and triggered hyperinflation.
     
    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately $0.

    But it must have been glorious lol.
     
    If you hate Zimbabwe.



    Budget deficit absolutely exploded under Reagan (US went from world creditor to debtor LOL, Republicans are the biggest government money printers in the world)
     

     

    Budget deficits in the early Reagan admin were 4%-5% of GDP.
    Budget deficits in early Obama admin (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 8%-10%.
    Budget deficits in early 1940s (Dem White House, Dem congress) were 20%-30%.
     
    Bush’s recession mess and building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet? I will give the Democrats a pass on those two.
     
    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America's second biggest budget deficit?

    And why is "building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet" to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn't have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?

    Would it help you to forgive "Reagan's" deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he's signing a Democrat House's budget?

    Replies: @mal

    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.

    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :). Good, private sector agrees with you.

    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.

    I don’t think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such, its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have \$trillions just laying about.

    It’s a new game in town.

    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

    Then they would do something about it. They don’t, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.

    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately \$0.

    LOL, I hate to break it to you, but the value of all fiat currency is approximately \$0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That’s why it’s fiat. They got rid of usurous slave debt for the true price of fiat currency. That’s exactly what makes it a great deal.

    .If you hate Zimbabwe.

    Nah, people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.

    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America’s second biggest budget deficit?

    Housing bubble was really more of a scapegoat. Bubbles happen and they are not that big of a deal. Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008, and that was a pure leadership issue. To be fair, financial leadership issue, not so much political. Bush was rather clueless on the subject, but that was expected.

    And why is “building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet” to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn’t have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?

    I’m not a Soviet nostalgist. It was a foolish system that got done in by its own internal deficiencies (lack of consumer markets led to lack of credit markets which in turn led to lack of capital markets and that all went downhill from there). But that’s the thing, Reagan had nothing to do with Soviet Union collapsing.

    At any rate, 4-5% GDP budget deficit is not how I would define “fiscal conservatism”. Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don’t.

    Would it help you to forgive “Reagan’s” deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he’s signing a Democrat House’s budget?

    Well, then ditch “fiscal conservatism” as an ideology and be proud of Reagan’s actions as Democratic government budget executive.

    As far as monetary policy debate goes though, clearly Reagan had higher budget deficit than Carter, but lower inflation. So it wasn’t government money printing that was responsible for inflation, it was private sector banking and commercial credit. High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.

    • Replies: @A123
    @mal


    Housing bubble was really more of a scapegoat. Bubbles happen and they are not that big of a deal. Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008, and that was a pure leadership issue.
     
    Legislation and Regulation was a huge problem, and both sides chipped in. Down payments were once 20%, then 15%, then 10%, then 5%, then 3%. The pièce de résistance was Golden West's contribution: (1)

    Loan-to-value ratios soar on Wachovia's Pick-A-Pay home loans in California; average LTV is 109% in the Central Valley

    The home loans, the legacy of the Golden West Financial Corp. acquisition that Wachovia made in 2006, allowed borrowers to name their payment -- including paying so little that their loan balances actually rose.
     

    When the housing prices declined, everyone with Liabilities significantly higher than Real Asset Value could obtain new financing.
    ___

    The problem with "Too Big To Fail" banks is they could not be allowed to die for their mistakes. AIG also created a huge market problem. They wrote so many products with so little financial backup, when companies tried to tap insurance they found it was not there.

    They ideal fix would be reinstating Glass-Stegall and keeping financial firms small enough to fail without endangering the entire system. Needless to say, that is highly unpopular among Globalists Elite financial executives.
    ___

    There are similarities between this situation and the current China problem. The hole is deeper in China's case, however State Owned Enterprises are common. Placing everything into 100% national government receivership is a very plausible option for the CCP.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________________

    (1) https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/07/wachovia-corps.html

    , @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.
     
    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :)
     
    I'm sure you're aware that I'm saying that free money isn't productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it's a closed club.

    I don’t think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such,
     
    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

    its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have $trillions just laying about.
     
    Yeah, that's the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.

    It’s a new game in town.
     
    Indeed it is, but breezy optimism about it is a little misplaced.

    Then they would do something about it. They don’t, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.
     
    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don't happen from time to time...

    but the value of all fiat currency is approximately $0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That’s why it’s fiat.
     
    Ah, so you'll be giving away all the "worthless" fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?

    people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.
     
    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

    Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008
     
    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

    Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don’t.
     
    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    Reagan [and his Dem congress] had higher budget deficit than Carter [and his Dem congress], but lower inflation.
     
    That's kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn't fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).

    High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.
     
    Possibly. I am agnostic on the cause and means of American deindustrialization, but I'm willing to be persuaded. Still, inflation was damaging industrial employment too (remember "stagflation"?), so I'm not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal

  443. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants).
     
    I don't know, I've very often seen claims that Britain has always been a "nation of immigrants" (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings, Huguenots...apart from the last they were all armed invaders of course), so the changes since the 1950s are nothing new and just a continuation of long-standing national tradition. You get similar talking points in Germany too (about Huguenots and Ruhr Poles). It doesn't matter that it's implausible, lots of people still believe it.

    European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.
     
    I don't think they'll feel they have to explain anything at all, it's pretty clear that they view these processes as basically a good thing after all, as humanity coming together, ending racism etc.; their vision really is one where everybody is becoming racially mixed and then everything will be fine. I can remember skimming through a book by Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing, and how he wanted the same globally, so racial difference would become an individual matter, not something separating entire groups...basically ethnicity would be abolished. I think that's an absurd vision, but a lot of mainstream establishment types probably really hold such ideas. And you can't even discuss these issues openly, because native Europeans at least are constantly told to have a purely values-based civic identity. In Germany this has become very pronounced in the official discourse of the "educated" classes, basically you're expected to pretend that something like ethnic Germans doesn't exist at all (because to do so would be völkisch, that is Nazi), so it's totally delegitimized to object to the coming minority status of Germans or even talk about it (whereas immigrant communities and their activists are of course allowed to hold pretty strong identities and agitate for collective interests, justified on the basis of their alleged suffering under discrimination). The other issue is that the process is already so far advanced in Western Europe that even many people who resent it probably keep quiet out of fear that a more open discussion could lead to violence. So I doubt the establishment responsible for those policies will ever have to come up with an explanation, I think it's more likely that debate on immigration, multiculturalism, race etc. will become ever more restricted (also more legal repression justified by the threat of right-wing terrorism).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    I’ve very often seen claims that Britain has always been a “nation of immigrants” (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings,

    Oddly enough, I can recall making such statements to troll the locals in the UK in the 1980s, but 1) I knew I was trolling, and 2) I didn’t expect anyone to take me seriously.

    It is stunning/horrifying to see my adolescent trolling rebroadcast as official government propaganda.

    BTW, I agree with the rest of the comment.

  444. @Dmitry
    @Bardon Kaldian

    Yes the Balkans seems to have some of the most deaths in the world from coronavirus, relative to population.

    Most deadly countries in the world for coronavirus (of those with excess deaths data available on World Mortality Dataset) seem to be postsoviet sphere, Latin America and - Balkans.
    https://github.com/dkobak/excess-mortality
    https://i.imgur.com/HYXAi5O.jpg

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Not saying there is a connection.

    But what is happening with Balkans pollution levels, they have also bad problems of particulate pollution – despite being provincial Mediterranean countries, that depend to some extent on tourism and ecology.

    In the morning, Balkans’ cities like Zagreb, Belgrade, Sofia and Sarajevo have particulate pollution levels in the comparison, not far from Delhi (with its wildfires and traffic), Ulaanbaatar (with its coal fires in every home) and Krasnoyarsk (with its oligarch controlled heavy industries).

  445. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.
     
    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :). Good, private sector agrees with you.

    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.
     
    I don't think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such, its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have $trillions just laying about.

    It's a new game in town.

    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

     

    Then they would do something about it. They don't, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.

    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately $0.
     
    LOL, I hate to break it to you, but the value of all fiat currency is approximately $0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That's why it's fiat. They got rid of usurous slave debt for the true price of fiat currency. That's exactly what makes it a great deal.

    .If you hate Zimbabwe.
     
    Nah, people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.

    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America’s second biggest budget deficit?
     
    Housing bubble was really more of a scapegoat. Bubbles happen and they are not that big of a deal. Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008, and that was a pure leadership issue. To be fair, financial leadership issue, not so much political. Bush was rather clueless on the subject, but that was expected.

    And why is “building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet” to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn’t have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?
     
    I'm not a Soviet nostalgist. It was a foolish system that got done in by its own internal deficiencies (lack of consumer markets led to lack of credit markets which in turn led to lack of capital markets and that all went downhill from there). But that's the thing, Reagan had nothing to do with Soviet Union collapsing.

    At any rate, 4-5% GDP budget deficit is not how I would define "fiscal conservatism". Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don't.

    Would it help you to forgive “Reagan’s” deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he’s signing a Democrat House’s budget?
     
    Well, then ditch "fiscal conservatism" as an ideology and be proud of Reagan's actions as Democratic government budget executive.

    As far as monetary policy debate goes though, clearly Reagan had higher budget deficit than Carter, but lower inflation. So it wasn't government money printing that was responsible for inflation, it was private sector banking and commercial credit. High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.

    Replies: @A123, @Almost Missouri

    Housing bubble was really more of a scapegoat. Bubbles happen and they are not that big of a deal. Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008, and that was a pure leadership issue.

    Legislation and Regulation was a huge problem, and both sides chipped in. Down payments were once 20%, then 15%, then 10%, then 5%, then 3%. The pièce de résistance was Golden West’s contribution: (1)

    Loan-to-value ratios soar on Wachovia’s Pick-A-Pay home loans in California; average LTV is 109% in the Central Valley

    The home loans, the legacy of the Golden West Financial Corp. acquisition that Wachovia made in 2006, allowed borrowers to name their payment — including paying so little that their loan balances actually rose.

    When the housing prices declined, everyone with Liabilities significantly higher than Real Asset Value could obtain new financing.
    ___

    The problem with “Too Big To Fail” banks is they could not be allowed to die for their mistakes. AIG also created a huge market problem. They wrote so many products with so little financial backup, when companies tried to tap insurance they found it was not there.

    They ideal fix would be reinstating Glass-Stegall and keeping financial firms small enough to fail without endangering the entire system. Needless to say, that is highly unpopular among Globalists Elite financial executives.
    ___

    There are similarities between this situation and the current China problem. The hole is deeper in China’s case, however State Owned Enterprises are common. Placing everything into 100% national government receivership is a very plausible option for the CCP.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________________

    (1) https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/money_co/2008/07/wachovia-corps.html

  446. German_reader says:
    @Almost Missouri
    @German_reader


    it’s just part of Razib’s pretensions at being a polymath, to show off how much he knows about history. But it’s pretty silly. I’m not even sure what his point is, he seems to use Sulla as a stand-in for a “true populist” who will arise to crush the SJWs. But the issues in the late Roman republic bear little resemblance to those of today,
     
    Razib used to do a genomics podcast with baizuo Spencer Wells, before they got distracted by 2020 and the podcast veered off into leftwing conspiracy theories. But before it completely cratered, Spencer persuaded Razib to whip out his powerful Sulla take for the audience. It was embarrassing: like hearing a college Sophomore expound what he supposes is a great and novel intellectual breakthrough when in fact he is just retreading an already tired trope with so many flaws that a better educated person wouldn't touch it. Mercifully, people stopped listening and they discontinued the podcast shortly thereafter.

    ---------

    One of the 0ther comments implied you have a Substack. Care to drop the address? I'd read it.

    Replies: @German_reader

    One of the 0ther comments implied you have a Substack. Care to drop the address? I’d read it.

    Sorry, have to disappoint you, it was a comment on AK’s new Substack, in this thread:
    https://akarlin.substack.com/p/open-takes-1

    I don’t think I’d have the stamina myself for blogging, or the creativity. Only thing I could even think about writing is some sort of summary year’s end review of books I’ve read. Maybe I’ll do that, if only for my own entertainment. But beyond that I doubt I could produce any quality blogging worth reading.
    Razib is really just insufferably arrogant and has an absurdly inflated sense of his own brilliance. He’s undoubtedly smart and his posts about genetics are interesting, but apart from that, his self-representation as a polymath is pretty ridiculous. And when one reads him long enough, it’s hard not to feel that he actually does have some sort of anti-white animus (a few months ago he basically wrote that his main objection to CRT and the like was that it could awaken the demons of white racialism…and then he and his mixed-race children would get killed, lol). I think Sailer and others who regarded him as a possible ally were very much mistaken.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @German_reader

    Agree with your general assessment of Razib and his peers' (mis)reading of him.


    a few months ago he basically wrote that his main objection to CRT and the like was that it could awaken the demons of white racialism…and then he and his mixed-race children would get killed, lol
     
    Amusingly, on an early episode of his genomics podcase, Razib was at pains to let everyone know his Y-DNA was from the R1a haplogroup (i.e., basically ancient Aryans). So that plus his WASP wife makes his kids majority Aryan. (Not that anyone is disposed to reasoned debate on the subject.)

    On a different note, on a more recent Hanania CSPI podcast, Razib said his family had suffered some kind of trauma because of Critical Race Theory at this kids' school, but he didn't go into any detail. I would guess that his kids probably have mostly white friends, but the CRT goons somehow set them at odds with each other, but that's just a guess. Anyway, if there is one kind of event that can cause an adult to change his political spots, it is trauma with his kids, so perhaps Razib may rethink his assumption of a common cause with the left, but that could be too much to hope for.

    Replies: @German_reader

  447. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    “neurodiverse” initiatives
     
    One of the things they have initiated in some cafes/restaurants/public spaces of an elite university, is to introduce more gentle lighting and less sudden noises so that neurodiverse students will not be offended.

    It seems that if people had said they wanted better lighting and less loud music, nobody would listen to them.

    But if it can translated into language like "in order to protect the rights of the neurodiverse minority students (whose community is represented in the union by [.. ])", then immediately there will be money to change the university buildings to soft music and Philips hue light bulbs.


    Zeitgeist (the search for absolute safety/security, intensive surveillance and micromanagement
     
    It's a technology that would allow less security for the ordinary people, but more security for the authorities and owners of means of production.

    A lot of technology changes (especially since the introduction of the internet to peoples' life) are precedents that can push the balance of power further and further from the average citizen, and more and more to the rulers and the owners of production.

    In a sensible world, there would be immediate moratorium on most all of these technologies, and then writing of a very strict, humanistic based legal framework, that will protect values of civilization everytime when we engage with this technology.

    The basis for each change should be whether any of this is improving peoples' life, not whether it will generate profit. Because the changes are coming faster and faster. And this is our stage of history is our lives being radically changed by technology.

    Of course, now I'm a utopian dreamer, and the best we can hope is the legal system in developed countries might improve the situation slightly from how it has been in the last decade, and punish some of the extreme bypass of peoples' best interest that has been happening already.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    In a sensible world, there would be immediate moratorium on most all of these technologies, and then writing of a very strict, humanistic based legal framework, that will protect values of civilization everytime when we engage with this technology.

    The basis for each change should be whether any of this is improving peoples’ life

    That sounds good.

    the best we can hope is the legal system in developed countries might improve the situation slightly from how it has been in the last decade, and punish some of the extreme bypass of peoples’ best interest that has been happening already.

    Realities are for some already radically corrupt and in need of a total replacement.

  448. @mal
    @Mikel


    The existence of forex markets does not mean that there is always somebody willing to buy billions of the most debased currency in the world… to the tune of 1x or 2x that country’s whole GDP 🙂
     
    Of course there is. Forex markets are huge and there are specialists (hedge funds and so) who specifically hunt for distressed global assets, buy them for pennies on the dollar, negotiate for fractions of the penny, and make $billions.

    And Zimbabwe's GDP is about the Hedge Fund CEO's lunch bill. Of course that transaction would clear. Sure, speculative, but there are people who make good living doing this.

    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.
     
    Like Raul said, there's no floor. Forex and distressed asset markets will always clear, for a price. This price can be infinitely small, hence hyperinflation, but it will be there. You can now resell Zimbabwe banknotes for like $20 as souvenirs. If you bought them for infinitely small price, you are making an infinitely large profit.

    Like I said, there are some very smart people and computer AI doing this for a living. They will always find the right price.

    I know that you have confessed your belief in the magic powers of red pebbles but you can’t seriously think that all Venezuela needs to do to pay its foreign debt is print some trillion bolivars, buy dollars with them and voila: debt cancelled. You must realize that something doesn’t add up.

     

    Venezuela is under sanctions so getting out of debt is not going to help them fix their oil rigs to restart production. So my bet is they will simply ignore the debt. It doesn't matter anyway.

    But if sanctions are lifted, printing money to reduce debt to GDP load (currently at 350%) is the very first thing they will do, guaranteed. It's the right move.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/venezuela/government-debt-to-gdp

    If you think they will be repaying 350% debt in real terms, you are not living in real world. They will find the right price, guaranteed. And there are people who will help them.

    Replies: @Mikel

    I knew you were making stuff up from the very beginning 🙂

    OK, so here’s what really happened. In 2006 the Zimbabwean Central Bank printed Z\$21 trillion not in order to cancel its external debt but in order to pay some arrears to the IMF and avoid being expelled from the Fund and thus receiving any more loans from it. They managed to exchange that crazy sum in the local market (probably bribing some traders with permission to import foreign goods) for… 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe’s residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).

    So yes, the central bank’s astute strategy did raise inflation immediately but had zero effect in reducing the external debt. In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.

    Sources:
    https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-averts-imf-expulsion-fresh-aid-unlikely
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/external-debt
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

    • Agree: Aedib
    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @Mikel

    I'm amazed that inflation deniers are still around even after Bobby Mugabe thought he could prove Western economists wrong and fire up the Xerox machine.

    Even scarier is that we have Democrats in DC that like Mugabe think they can fool the market and control inflation even if they just added zeroes to the account.

    Have you heard about their trillion dollar coin plan? Good Lord they think they can play 3 card monte with the market.

    Replies: @mal

    , @mal
    @Mikel


    … 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe’s residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).
     
    Pace yourself, my friend. :). I hope you still remember we are talking about hyperinflation here. If you think $21 trillion Z was all they printed, that is definitely not the case. They apparently had a single banknote with $100 trillion on it. They were printing to way more than $21 trillion to keep making payments. Your link says so as well.

    In a statement on Thursday central bank Governor Gideon Gono said the bank had had to print Z$21 trillion to buy foreign currency to pay the IMF, fuelling inflation.
     

    The IMF had threatened to expel Zimbabwe over debt arrears, but Mugabe's government says it has been making regular payments to the fund and would clear its arrears before a March deadline to pay up or risk expulsion.
     
    You don't need to be a genius to figure out where the money for "regular payments" to the IMF was coming from. Hint - far more than $21 trillion Z.

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).
     
    Yep. And their GDP rose from $5 billion in 2005 to $20 billion in 2015.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/GDP

    That's kinda how debt mechanics work which is why I don't like to use absolute numbers. %GDP is a much better and consistent baseline. So they got richer and grabbed more money from the banks. Ok, seems reasonable. And apparently worth it for them. And yes they did abolish currency and dollarized economy, but where do you think all those dollars came from? USD ain't magic for Zimbabwe and they did what they had to do. Hence hyperinflation is the only move to play. You print whatever you need to keep Chinese and IMF lending you money, and then use it.

    In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.
     
    They like quadrupled their GDP in dollars since the adopting hyperinflation strategy. All the rest is true, which is why hyperinflation is the only right move for them.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.
     
    Quadrupling GDP aside, there's no choice. Here's why. Zimbabwe commercial banking sucks.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ZWEFCSODCXDC

    Private banking system in Zimbabwe is run by such idiots they make US commercial banks look smart. And US commercial banks make bricks look smart.

    And of course, here is the result.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/inflation-cpi

    So from government perspective, hyperinflation is mandatory. If you don't do it, private banks will do it for you. You can't meaningfully talk about government finances (which are not that bad actually), while ignoring private sector.

    Replies: @Mikel

  449. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.
     
    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :). Good, private sector agrees with you.

    When you hold the spigot of fiat money, you can choose interest rates to be whatever you want it to be to keep however many private investors you want. Even so, the Fed nowadays has trouble attracting private investors, which is why it ends up loaning money to itself—or borrowing money from itself, to say the same thing another way.
     
    I don't think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such, its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have $trillions just laying about.

    It's a new game in town.

    I doubt you could convince Zimbabweans of this. Either ordinary citizens or chiefs, who like their status and like others to be aware of it.

     

    Then they would do something about it. They don't, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.

    In other words, Zimbabwe finally got the market price for its currency : approximately $0.
     
    LOL, I hate to break it to you, but the value of all fiat currency is approximately $0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That's why it's fiat. They got rid of usurous slave debt for the true price of fiat currency. That's exactly what makes it a great deal.

    .If you hate Zimbabwe.
     
    Nah, people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.

    Democrats had nothing to do with the housing bubble and inevitable financial collapse? And reflating the bubble was the right use of America’s second biggest budget deficit?
     
    Housing bubble was really more of a scapegoat. Bubbles happen and they are not that big of a deal. Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008, and that was a pure leadership issue. To be fair, financial leadership issue, not so much political. Bush was rather clueless on the subject, but that was expected.

    And why is “building the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet” to crush millions of Germans, Japanese and Italians bloodily fine, while rebuilding the most powerful war industrial economy on the planet to end the Soviet prison of nations bloodlessly (and at much lower deficit) unforgiveable? It wouldn’t have anything to do with you being a Soviet nostalgist would it?
     
    I'm not a Soviet nostalgist. It was a foolish system that got done in by its own internal deficiencies (lack of consumer markets led to lack of credit markets which in turn led to lack of capital markets and that all went downhill from there). But that's the thing, Reagan had nothing to do with Soviet Union collapsing.

    At any rate, 4-5% GDP budget deficit is not how I would define "fiscal conservatism". Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don't.

    Would it help you to forgive “Reagan’s” deficit if you knew that the congressional House (where budgets actually originate—not the Oval Office) was Dem-majority at the time? Or does a Republican president automatically taint any government action, even if he’s signing a Democrat House’s budget?
     
    Well, then ditch "fiscal conservatism" as an ideology and be proud of Reagan's actions as Democratic government budget executive.

    As far as monetary policy debate goes though, clearly Reagan had higher budget deficit than Carter, but lower inflation. So it wasn't government money printing that was responsible for inflation, it was private sector banking and commercial credit. High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.

    Replies: @A123, @Almost Missouri

    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.

    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? 🙂

    I’m sure you’re aware that I’m saying that free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.

    I don’t think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such,

    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

    its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have \$trillions just laying about.

    Yeah, that’s the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.

    It’s a new game in town.

    Indeed it is, but breezy optimism about it is a little misplaced.

    Then they would do something about it. They don’t, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.

    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don’t happen from time to time…

    but the value of all fiat currency is approximately \$0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That’s why it’s fiat.

    Ah, so you’ll be giving away all the “worthless” fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?

    people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.

    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

    Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008

    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

    Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don’t.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    Reagan [and his Dem congress] had higher budget deficit than Carter [and his Dem congress], but lower inflation.

    That’s kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn’t fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).

    High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.

    Possibly. I am agnostic on the cause and means of American deindustrialization, but I’m willing to be persuaded. Still, inflation was damaging industrial employment too (remember “stagflation”?), so I’m not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.
     
    UBI is supposed to be open the doors of this club to everyone. But by that time much of the productive assets of the society will be concentrated like Roman times.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?
     
    We're at the threshold of libertarianism being globalized and as a general ethic, partly because of the COVID agenda, but mostly because of political and economic disaffection.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    , @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    I’m sure you’re aware that I’m saying that free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.
     
    And what I'm saying is that you or I don't get to decide what's productive. Let the producers decide. And for now, they clearly choose government contracts.

    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

     

    Scale my friend, scale. New world is coming. All those SpaceX rockets don't launch themselves without Pentagon backing. And its a good thing. Private sector just needs help catching up, and that's what Fed is here for. Like it or not, new world is coming.

    Yeah, that’s the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.
     
    This is a very fair, valid criticism, and I agree. Which is why I support UBI and such. The future is Elon Musk flying around in $trillion Pentagon funded space stations, but that doesn't mean other people have to suffer. Comfort to the poors is the key duty of the state.

    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don’t happen from time to time…
     
    Politics is very rarely about guns but yes, you get to wield them if you win a debate :)

    Though to be fair, in African case, they may require more gun applications than usual. Hotheads are not to be tolerated.

    Ah, so you’ll be giving away all the “worthless” fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?
     
    Yes! I absolutely do! I never keep more fiat than necessary. I always give my fiat to Goldman Sachs and Vanguard etc to convert it into investable assets.

    Yes, I always give my fiat to the power players of world, and it it worked out great for me. I always strive to have no fiat and convert to assets, absolutely right. For the past 20 years, it was an awesome ride so far, you should try it. No fiat beyond immediate needs.

    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

     

    Local problems require local solutions.

    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

     

    This is actually an excellent question that I don't really have an answer for despite digging for a decade.

    Something happened and banks didn't trust each other despite their duty to trust each other. So Fed and Gov had to interfere. Hilariously, bulk of US derivative problems hit Euro banks far harder than US. Normally, I'd think US would bail out Euro. But they didn't. I don't know why.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

     

    They always are. Crimes are simply acts that people with monopoly on violence deem undesirable. If criminals attain monopoly on violence, by definition, their crimes become legal. Unless they outlaw them later.

    That’s kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn’t fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).
     
    Well sure, I guess government can "borrow" money private sector already printed, but 4% GDP for like a decade? And just to emphasize, I don't really hate Volker, he had to do what he thought was right and he had his valid reasons. But just like with Greenspan hiking straight into the face of ARM reset in 2006, sometimes I wish Central Bankers were chosen on real world experience (like putting up drywall) rather than academic credentials.

    so I’m not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.
     
    Yea its a complex subject because Unions and EPA really started the process. High interest rates delivered killing blow but just like with mortally wounded horses, argument could be made it was a good thing.

    In the ideal world, unions and EPA would back off and be reasonable for a change, and then lower capital costs would supercharge MAGA industrialization. But we don't live in an ideal world.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

  450. @Not Raul
    @Mikel


    In any market when someone starts offering gigantic amounts of a given product the price of that product falls below its floor and eventually nobody’s willing to clear the supply at any price. Demand and supply basics.
     
    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    Replies: @Mikel, @John Johnson

    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    The floor for Zimbabwean currency? How about when you need a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread? Anyways this is all in the past so not sure why you are talking about it as if it happened recently.

    I’ll give you the shortened version of Zim currency:

    White liberals and leftists around the world cheer as anti-White Marxist Robert Mugabe takes over the country.

    Bob ignores Western economists and prints money after he learns that farming is harder than just kicking out/killing whites and redistributing their land to his cronies.

    Instead admitting to his mistake he thinks he can fool the market by printing even more to pay government workers and everything will somehow work out.

    Hyperinflation occurs to record breaking levels. Million dollar Zim bills are traded at \$1. People buy them on ebay as a joke.

    Currency is completely dumped and Bob allows US dollars/SA Rand become de facto currency.

    Bob is dead and liberals/leftists want to pretend none of this happened because it is another embarrassing tale of Wakanda gone wrong.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @John Johnson

    If you replace these racial labels with economic ones it's essentially accurate. So this means there has to be some structural economic issues behind every hyperinflationary episode, often economic dislocation in one form or another.

    Replies: @mal

  451. @German_reader
    @Almost Missouri


    One of the 0ther comments implied you have a Substack. Care to drop the address? I’d read it.
     
    Sorry, have to disappoint you, it was a comment on AK's new Substack, in this thread:
    https://akarlin.substack.com/p/open-takes-1

    I don't think I'd have the stamina myself for blogging, or the creativity. Only thing I could even think about writing is some sort of summary year's end review of books I've read. Maybe I'll do that, if only for my own entertainment. But beyond that I doubt I could produce any quality blogging worth reading.
    Razib is really just insufferably arrogant and has an absurdly inflated sense of his own brilliance. He's undoubtedly smart and his posts about genetics are interesting, but apart from that, his self-representation as a polymath is pretty ridiculous. And when one reads him long enough, it's hard not to feel that he actually does have some sort of anti-white animus (a few months ago he basically wrote that his main objection to CRT and the like was that it could awaken the demons of white racialism...and then he and his mixed-race children would get killed, lol). I think Sailer and others who regarded him as a possible ally were very much mistaken.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    Agree with your general assessment of Razib and his peers’ (mis)reading of him.

    a few months ago he basically wrote that his main objection to CRT and the like was that it could awaken the demons of white racialism…and then he and his mixed-race children would get killed, lol

    Amusingly, on an early episode of his genomics podcase, Razib was at pains to let everyone know his Y-DNA was from the R1a haplogroup (i.e., basically ancient Aryans). So that plus his WASP wife makes his kids majority Aryan. (Not that anyone is disposed to reasoned debate on the subject.)

    On a different note, on a more recent Hanania CSPI podcast, Razib said his family had suffered some kind of trauma because of Critical Race Theory at this kids’ school, but he didn’t go into any detail. I would guess that his kids probably have mostly white friends, but the CRT goons somehow set them at odds with each other, but that’s just a guess. Anyway, if there is one kind of event that can cause an adult to change his political spots, it is trauma with his kids, so perhaps Razib may rethink his assumption of a common cause with the left, but that could be too much to hope for.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Almost Missouri


    Anyway, if there is one kind of event that can cause an adult to change his political spots, it is trauma with his kids, so perhaps Razib may rethink his assumption of a common cause with the left
     
    Well, he's opposed to the "woke" left (because he thinks it could create a WN backlash, and he also objects to "degeneracy", though he's careful not to go into details what exactly he means by that). But imo fundamentally he's just an old school NYT-reading liberal, or a moderate Republican. Lately he's even expressed sympathy for that insane "1 billion Americans" idea (though again, he refused to give his exact reasoning, just that it would be good for family values and work against "degeneracy", presumably because immigrants are socially conservative or whatever). So definitely not something Sailer and his readers could ever be ok with.
  452. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants).
     
    I don't know, I've very often seen claims that Britain has always been a "nation of immigrants" (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings, Huguenots...apart from the last they were all armed invaders of course), so the changes since the 1950s are nothing new and just a continuation of long-standing national tradition. You get similar talking points in Germany too (about Huguenots and Ruhr Poles). It doesn't matter that it's implausible, lots of people still believe it.

    European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.
     
    I don't think they'll feel they have to explain anything at all, it's pretty clear that they view these processes as basically a good thing after all, as humanity coming together, ending racism etc.; their vision really is one where everybody is becoming racially mixed and then everything will be fine. I can remember skimming through a book by Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing, and how he wanted the same globally, so racial difference would become an individual matter, not something separating entire groups...basically ethnicity would be abolished. I think that's an absurd vision, but a lot of mainstream establishment types probably really hold such ideas. And you can't even discuss these issues openly, because native Europeans at least are constantly told to have a purely values-based civic identity. In Germany this has become very pronounced in the official discourse of the "educated" classes, basically you're expected to pretend that something like ethnic Germans doesn't exist at all (because to do so would be völkisch, that is Nazi), so it's totally delegitimized to object to the coming minority status of Germans or even talk about it (whereas immigrant communities and their activists are of course allowed to hold pretty strong identities and agitate for collective interests, justified on the basis of their alleged suffering under discrimination). The other issue is that the process is already so far advanced in Western Europe that even many people who resent it probably keep quiet out of fear that a more open discussion could lead to violence. So I doubt the establishment responsible for those policies will ever have to come up with an explanation, I think it's more likely that debate on immigration, multiculturalism, race etc. will become ever more restricted (also more legal repression justified by the threat of right-wing terrorism).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing

    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries – partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive men when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people. So you can see how these two realities, have mixed in the writer’s emotions.

    However, it’s a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their “showcase” presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism – that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil’s flag writes “Progress and Order”. But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.


    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers.

    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe

    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scare, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse (I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent – like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    So the populations with greater influence are experiencing a less problematic interethnic interaction, while those who have more problematic interethnic tensions are also those who

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry

    ^ Delete this first version of the comment, as this unedited comment that was marked as spam. I reposted the comment with the edits.

  453. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    usually they fizzled out (vague civic nationalism) or were hardly adopted as too implausible (the nation of immigrants).
     
    I don't know, I've very often seen claims that Britain has always been a "nation of immigrants" (Romans, Angles, Jutes, Vikings, Huguenots...apart from the last they were all armed invaders of course), so the changes since the 1950s are nothing new and just a continuation of long-standing national tradition. You get similar talking points in Germany too (about Huguenots and Ruhr Poles). It doesn't matter that it's implausible, lots of people still believe it.

    European political establishments will have to explain the phenomena of steep declines in the original white European population and the resulting significant cultural and demographic shift, amounting to a major remoulding of the previous population and culture.
     
    I don't think they'll feel they have to explain anything at all, it's pretty clear that they view these processes as basically a good thing after all, as humanity coming together, ending racism etc.; their vision really is one where everybody is becoming racially mixed and then everything will be fine. I can remember skimming through a book by Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing, and how he wanted the same globally, so racial difference would become an individual matter, not something separating entire groups...basically ethnicity would be abolished. I think that's an absurd vision, but a lot of mainstream establishment types probably really hold such ideas. And you can't even discuss these issues openly, because native Europeans at least are constantly told to have a purely values-based civic identity. In Germany this has become very pronounced in the official discourse of the "educated" classes, basically you're expected to pretend that something like ethnic Germans doesn't exist at all (because to do so would be völkisch, that is Nazi), so it's totally delegitimized to object to the coming minority status of Germans or even talk about it (whereas immigrant communities and their activists are of course allowed to hold pretty strong identities and agitate for collective interests, justified on the basis of their alleged suffering under discrimination). The other issue is that the process is already so far advanced in Western Europe that even many people who resent it probably keep quiet out of fear that a more open discussion could lead to violence. So I doubt the establishment responsible for those policies will ever have to come up with an explanation, I think it's more likely that debate on immigration, multiculturalism, race etc. will become ever more restricted (also more legal repression justified by the threat of right-wing terrorism).

    Replies: @Almost Missouri, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing,

    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries – partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive women when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women who are more available to first world men, can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people.

    So it seems like these two realities, have mixed in the writer’s emotions.

    However, it’s a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their “showcase” presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism – that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil’s flag writes “Progress and Order”. But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.


    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swfmR6wCBvc.

    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe

    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scarce, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent – like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it’s not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.
     
    New Left categories are driving out Old Left categories in institutionally-sanctioned speech, but realities persist.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it’s not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.
     
    Let's honestly think about what Trumpism has done and will do, either positively or negatively, to the national strength of the US. Neither the self-affirming "MAGA" view or the derisive "Commie"-Dem view will suffice, because they are both trapped in their ideological tunnel visions. But I tend to think whatever good Trumpism has done, is to preserve some of the factors that have served the US well enough which Democrats intend to remove or change to their own political benefit.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries
     
    "Second world" is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don't even know what it would refer to today (same for "third world").
    Not sure if there was any sexual element to Garton-Ash's reasoning, and Brazil probably isn't the worst country on the planet (though it's got severe issues), but I just find the basic reasoning insane when one looks at the experience of truly multiethnic and multicultural societies without a dominant and secure supermajority.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  454. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing
     
    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries - partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive men when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people. So you can see how these two realities, have mixed in the writer's emotions.

    -


    However, it's a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their "showcase" presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism - that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil's flag writes "Progress and Order". But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.

    -
    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swfmR6wCBvc


    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe
     
    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scare, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse (I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems) And this is where the world's higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas - in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent - like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    So the populations with greater influence are experiencing a less problematic interethnic interaction, while those who have more problematic interethnic tensions are also those who

    Replies: @Dmitry

    ^ Delete this first version of the comment, as this unedited comment that was marked as spam. I reposted the comment with the edits.

  455. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression
     
    It's symbolic gestures, which is to say - almost meaningless.

    Real life is what we should look at more, instead of arguing about symbols.

    In real life, Obama's daughter is in Harvard, with her English boyfriend. Obama purchased a $12 million house in Martha's Vineyard and $8 million house in Kalorama, Washington DC. (https://www.thelist.com/146336/inside-barack-and-michelle-obamas-gorgeous-d-c-home/)

    His speeches about racial inequality have achieved their primary motivation - to make Obama wealthy and successful.

    But money to invest to fix the pavement in Baltimore, or just to provide people in that mainly African American city with normal shops (every shop there is a liquor) - is evidently less interesting and exciting.


    imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations

     

    To form the knot, you need to add another maneuver of the string. That is, arguing about abstract ideals, have been a useful way to avoid concrete manifestations.

    It's clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It's easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.

    Apple has expended $4 billion to build a circular office building for their employees, as a purely vanity project, so the office workers can take cool selfies of their environment in their lunch break. Private opulence and public squalor, is celebrated.

    Investment to even collect trash in these streets will be (of course). not available.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB6gwOBClwE


    Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints
     
    It can also be used as obfuscation and procrastination.

    escape from physical constraints
     
    Perhaps, for young people with trustfunds, in the Upper West Side, or on campus of Brown University and Columbia.

    I agree that ideas in "work ideology" include many universal, positive, civilized ideals - such as not offending peoples' personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).

    But the same is true with Obama's speeches, which had many correct and attractive aspirations. And Obama's speeches were successful in their main aim - which was to give Obama houses in Kalorama and Martha's Vineyard, but that is rather less universal.

    The only people allowed into Obama's houses, are his family and his cleaning staff. It's not a very "universal" achievement.

    -

    Politicians and ideologies shouldn't be given such an easier assessment process, than engineers or builders. That is, our assessment should be on the results, not whether we agree with some of attractive sounding words.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    It’s clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It’s easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.

    Basically yes, but WNs that are in great supply here are used to placing a wall between the White and these people because they are “racially” (ethnically) inferior and will mess up the place anyway.

    ideas in “work ideology” include many universal, positive, civilized ideals – such as not offending peoples’ personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).

    It ultimately depends on whether any of these ideas are favorable to one’s own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues, and they are definitely entitled to their opinions.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    cially” (ethnically) inferior and will mess up
     
    Parts of West Virginia are not living so much more happy than Baltimore, from the YouTube drivethroughs. (Although at least they seem to have non-liquor shops).

    This process of underinvesting or asset-stripping areas (to the extent of not even paying for the city to have a walkable pavement), can be surprisingly colour-blind - even in America.

    And in neither place, will Obama be visiting anytime soon. Income transfer when you buy "Dreams for my father ", is from your wallet, to Kalorama and Martha's Vineyard, where the authorities would never allow pavement to be unfixed.


    favorable to one’s own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues
     
    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their "superego" or conscience.* Even Hitler's speeches were first speaking as if in a universal court, about the injustice to and persecution of the German nation, before he could start to promise his listeners that they would become powerful and successful if they support him.

    Trump was a culture shock, because he almost didn't waste time trying to hack peoples' conscience. His speeches might begin complaining about immigrants from Mexico, but very quickly he begins to tell his audience that they will be rich and successful like him.

    -

    *There is the recent example of cryptocurrency. If you want to market cryptocurrency, you can hack peoples' superego with the presentation about how it will be a medium of exchange. Once their conscience has been distracted, then you sell to the real motive, which is access to their enjoyment gambling and becoming wealthy from Pachinko.


    particularism definitely entitled to their opinions.
     
    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it's a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.

    It's not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson's persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the "more serious topics" of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU (that presented problems to the working class like increased competition for jobs).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Coconuts

  456. @Mikel
    @mal

    I knew you were making stuff up from the very beginning :-)

    OK, so here's what really happened. In 2006 the Zimbabwean Central Bank printed Z$21 trillion not in order to cancel its external debt but in order to pay some arrears to the IMF and avoid being expelled from the Fund and thus receiving any more loans from it. They managed to exchange that crazy sum in the local market (probably bribing some traders with permission to import foreign goods) for... 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe's residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).

    So yes, the central bank's astute strategy did raise inflation immediately but had zero effect in reducing the external debt. In the meantime, Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.

    Sources:
    https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-averts-imf-expulsion-fresh-aid-unlikely
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/external-debt
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

    Replies: @John Johnson, @mal

    I’m amazed that inflation deniers are still around even after Bobby Mugabe thought he could prove Western economists wrong and fire up the Xerox machine.

    Even scarier is that we have Democrats in DC that like Mugabe think they can fool the market and control inflation even if they just added zeroes to the account.

    Have you heard about their trillion dollar coin plan? Good Lord they think they can play 3 card monte with the market.

    • Replies: @mal
    @John Johnson


    I’m amazed that inflation deniers are still around even after Bobby Mugabe thought he could prove Western economists wrong and fire up the Xerox machine.
     
    Last I checked, Zimbabwe had far better debt to GDP ratio than US.

    So you may want to hold off on this judgement for a bit :)
  457. @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.
     
    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :)
     
    I'm sure you're aware that I'm saying that free money isn't productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it's a closed club.

    I don’t think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such,
     
    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

    its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have $trillions just laying about.
     
    Yeah, that's the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.

    It’s a new game in town.
     
    Indeed it is, but breezy optimism about it is a little misplaced.

    Then they would do something about it. They don’t, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.
     
    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don't happen from time to time...

    but the value of all fiat currency is approximately $0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That’s why it’s fiat.
     
    Ah, so you'll be giving away all the "worthless" fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?

    people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.
     
    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

    Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008
     
    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

    Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don’t.
     
    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    Reagan [and his Dem congress] had higher budget deficit than Carter [and his Dem congress], but lower inflation.
     
    That's kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn't fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).

    High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.
     
    Possibly. I am agnostic on the cause and means of American deindustrialization, but I'm willing to be persuaded. Still, inflation was damaging industrial employment too (remember "stagflation"?), so I'm not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal

    free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.

    UBI is supposed to be open the doors of this club to everyone. But by that time much of the productive assets of the society will be concentrated like Roman times.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    We’re at the threshold of libertarianism being globalized and as a general ethic, partly because of the COVID agenda, but mostly because of political and economic disaffection.

    • Agree: mal
    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @Yellowface Anon


    UBI is supposed to be open the doors of this club to everyone.
     
    Agree that that's the impression that everyone is supposed to get, but it's kind of like saying, "we'll give everyone a cracker but we're keeping the bakery for ourselves."

    The problem is that a UBI that is large enough to matter would be $5-10 trillion/year, which since it is not possible to collect in taxes, would strongly dilute a $20 trillion GDP economy. So if you missed out on the inflation of the 1970s, you'll get to experience the blockbuster sequel, which in turn would make the UBI less and less valuable, which in turn would result in calls to increase the UBI from an absolute majority of the voting public, which in turn would lead to more UBI, which leads to more dilution, which leads to ... . There's a reason all these discussions tend to end in Zimbabwe.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  458. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing,
     
    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries – partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive women when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women who are more available to first world men, can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people.

    So it seems like these two realities, have mixed in the writer’s emotions.

    However, it’s a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their “showcase” presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism – that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil’s flag writes “Progress and Order”. But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.


    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swfmR6wCBvc.


    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe

     

    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scarce, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent – like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it's not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    New Left categories are driving out Old Left categories in institutionally-sanctioned speech, but realities persist.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it’s not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.

    Let’s honestly think about what Trumpism has done and will do, either positively or negatively, to the national strength of the US. Neither the self-affirming “MAGA” view or the derisive “Commie”-Dem view will suffice, because they are both trapped in their ideological tunnel visions. But I tend to think whatever good Trumpism has done, is to preserve some of the factors that have served the US well enough which Democrats intend to remove or change to their own political benefit.

    • Agree: iffen
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    Trumpism has done
     
    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign - a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden's isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    The really discordant president has been Obama in relation to domestic policies (in external policy he was a bit more consistent to his election campaign).

    After Obama's promises to African American votes - their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.

    https://i.imgur.com/mIdC6ci.jpg

    But Obama's presidency was the new "Gilded age" for the country's elite.

    https://i.imgur.com/oUpYzWb.jpg

    It was good for hedgefund billionaires.
    https://i.imgur.com/T2iQwQF.png

    And even CEOs managed to recover and increase their salary advantage compared to the median income.
    https://i.imgur.com/RprUvlD.png

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people's salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  459. @John Johnson
    @Not Raul

    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.

    The floor for Zimbabwean currency? How about when you need a wheelbarrow of cash to buy a loaf of bread? Anyways this is all in the past so not sure why you are talking about it as if it happened recently.

    I'll give you the shortened version of Zim currency:

    White liberals and leftists around the world cheer as anti-White Marxist Robert Mugabe takes over the country.

    Bob ignores Western economists and prints money after he learns that farming is harder than just kicking out/killing whites and redistributing their land to his cronies.

    Instead admitting to his mistake he thinks he can fool the market by printing even more to pay government workers and everything will somehow work out.

    Hyperinflation occurs to record breaking levels. Million dollar Zim bills are traded at $1. People buy them on ebay as a joke.

    Currency is completely dumped and Bob allows US dollars/SA Rand become de facto currency.

    Bob is dead and liberals/leftists want to pretend none of this happened because it is another embarrassing tale of Wakanda gone wrong.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    If you replace these racial labels with economic ones it’s essentially accurate. So this means there has to be some structural economic issues behind every hyperinflationary episode, often economic dislocation in one form or another.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yeah but "wheelbarrow of cash" is seriously outdated.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is $1 or $1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There's no difference.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

  460. @Mikel
    @mal

    I knew you were making stuff up from the very beginning :-)

    OK, so here's what really happened. In 2006 the Zimbabwean Central Bank printed Z$21 trillion not in order to cancel its external debt but in order to pay some arrears to the IMF and avoid being expelled from the Fund and thus receiving any more loans from it. They managed to exchange that crazy sum in the local market (probably bribing some traders with permission to import foreign goods) for... 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe's residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).

    So yes, the central bank's astute strategy did raise inflation immediately but had zero effect in reducing the external debt. In the meantime, Zimbabwe's economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.

    Sources:
    https://reliefweb.int/report/zimbabwe/zimbabwe-averts-imf-expulsion-fresh-aid-unlikely
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/external-debt
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperinflation_in_Zimbabwe

    Replies: @John Johnson, @mal

    … 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe’s residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).

    Pace yourself, my friend. :). I hope you still remember we are talking about hyperinflation here. If you think \$21 trillion Z was all they printed, that is definitely not the case. They apparently had a single banknote with \$100 trillion on it. They were printing to way more than \$21 trillion to keep making payments. Your link says so as well.

    In a statement on Thursday central bank Governor Gideon Gono said the bank had had to print Z\$21 trillion to buy foreign currency to pay the IMF, fuelling inflation.

    The IMF had threatened to expel Zimbabwe over debt arrears, but Mugabe’s government says it has been making regular payments to the fund and would clear its arrears before a March deadline to pay up or risk expulsion.

    You don’t need to be a genius to figure out where the money for “regular payments” to the IMF was coming from. Hint – far more than \$21 trillion Z.

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).

    Yep. And their GDP rose from \$5 billion in 2005 to \$20 billion in 2015.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/GDP

    That’s kinda how debt mechanics work which is why I don’t like to use absolute numbers. %GDP is a much better and consistent baseline. So they got richer and grabbed more money from the banks. Ok, seems reasonable. And apparently worth it for them. And yes they did abolish currency and dollarized economy, but where do you think all those dollars came from? USD ain’t magic for Zimbabwe and they did what they had to do. Hence hyperinflation is the only move to play. You print whatever you need to keep Chinese and IMF lending you money, and then use it.

    In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.

    They like quadrupled their GDP in dollars since the adopting hyperinflation strategy. All the rest is true, which is why hyperinflation is the only right move for them.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.

    Quadrupling GDP aside, there’s no choice. Here’s why. Zimbabwe commercial banking sucks.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ZWEFCSODCXDC

    Private banking system in Zimbabwe is run by such idiots they make US commercial banks look smart. And US commercial banks make bricks look smart.

    And of course, here is the result.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/inflation-cpi

    So from government perspective, hyperinflation is mandatory. If you don’t do it, private banks will do it for you. You can’t meaningfully talk about government finances (which are not that bad actually), while ignoring private sector.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @Mikel
    @mal

    Well, I have already proven that your claims were wrong.

    Zimbabwe did not reduce its external debt through hyperinflation, let alone get rid of it, let alone do it through the magical trick of printing 21 trillion $Z, which only got them 9 million USD to keep begging for more loans from the IMF.

    But getting you to recognize your mistaken claims is outside of my power and I won't insist. You would actually gain in credibility if you recognized it but it's your call.

    When I first starting discussing economic matters with you I actually wanted to learn from you. I studied economics but I don't consider myself to be particularly knowledgeable. Economy is far from being a hard science. It deals with complex systems of human behavior, social institutions and politics. There is too much chaos and non-linearity in all this to be able to formulate solid laws resembling the ones that work well in the natural sciences. So I try to keep my mind open and get my beliefs challenged. However, a constant repetition of the benefits of printing money and hyperinflation, even when you are objectively shown to be wrong on specific claims, is not going to get me any closer to understanding how things really work.

    Replies: @mal

  461. @John Johnson
    @Mikel

    I'm amazed that inflation deniers are still around even after Bobby Mugabe thought he could prove Western economists wrong and fire up the Xerox machine.

    Even scarier is that we have Democrats in DC that like Mugabe think they can fool the market and control inflation even if they just added zeroes to the account.

    Have you heard about their trillion dollar coin plan? Good Lord they think they can play 3 card monte with the market.

    Replies: @mal

    I’m amazed that inflation deniers are still around even after Bobby Mugabe thought he could prove Western economists wrong and fire up the Xerox machine.

    Last I checked, Zimbabwe had far better debt to GDP ratio than US.

    So you may want to hold off on this judgement for a bit 🙂

  462. @German_reader
    @Yevardian


    Well, Elagabulus was an enthusiastic sodomite who spent years begging his courtiers to find a surgeon that could make him a vagina
     
    I know, but he ended up as a mutilated corpse in the Tiber.
    What's currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I've found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.

    I saw your substack comment on the tetrarchy’s expansion of the Roman army (David Potter in ‘The Roman Empire at Bay’ argued quite convincingly that much of this was almost certainly only on paper)
     
    thx, haven't read that book, might look at it some time. Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren't all that firm. The sources for the tetrarchy, and for Constantine's time too, are surprisingly limited after all (to an extent most people don't realize; even inscriptions become much rarer), so certainly room for many interpretations.

    Replies: @Yevardian

    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.

    Well, don’t fret, I don’t think anybody’s really is, that’s why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter’s book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill’s latest penguin translation as well.

    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.

    The only analogy I’ve really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that’s an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he’d witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they’re incapable of producing children, and any they ‘adopt’ will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it’s reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don’t know how familar you are with Toynbee’s opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don’t work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the ‘city-state cosmos’ is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there’s definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that’s rarely found in any ‘big history’, let alone modern works.

    Ok, I’m waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation (‘Soviet Civilisation’ is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by ‘suicide’) or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.

    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there’s this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a “euthanasia centre” and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant ‘fuck you’ to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yevardian


    it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.
     
    One of the biggest US obsessions right now is a war (hybrid or hot) with China, supposedly helping Taiwan, HK, the Uyghurs, dissidents, etc. but in fact eliminating the competition even at the cost of potentially colossal collateral damage and then impose the rest of globalist values the ChiCom hasn't adopted yet onto a defeated and depopulated China.

    his description of how Western Civilisation (‘Soviet Civilisation’ is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by ‘suicide’) or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.
     

    Dugin has the answer to it, and it's called Fourth Political Theory, or some form of synthetic Eurasianism while allowing multiple civilizational spheres to co-exist.
    , @Almost Missouri
    @Yevardian

    Ah, at last someone is talking about the Eunuch Pill! I've long thought that those passages in Gibbon are the only* ancient analog for our "unprecedented" modern depravities. I've even entertained the notion that our modern homo-mafias might be their literal reincarnations.


    sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they’re incapable of producing children, and any they ‘adopt’ will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it’s reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.
     
    Interesting analysis of the sick logic. First I've seen. Thanks.

    ---------

    *Other than maybe some Old Testament Sodom-and-Gomorrah-type stuff, but that's semi-legendary, whereas ancient Rome is more legit historical.
    , @German_reader
    @Yevardian


    Well, don’t fret, I don’t think anybody’s really is, that’s why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
     
    I've always found it fascinating as well, because of the mixture and interaction of old and new elements (Christianity, the rise of the Germanic peoples etc.; it's very strange to think that someone like Sidonius Apollinaris held office at still imperial Rome and in his letters showed off his classical education with endless literary allusions, while only a few decades later his son fought on the side of the Visigoths against the Franks, in what we think of as the deep dark ages).

    The only analogy I’ve really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that’s an extremely imperfect comparison.
     
    One can at least see a certain rationale behind that, since eunuchs didn't have dynastic interests of their own, so at least in theory were perfect imperial servants. But why something like the trans movement has found such widespread acceptance within just a few years, is very difficult to understand for me. imo it must indicate some deep civilizational sickness, a total unmooring from basic reality.

    I don’t know how familar you are with Toynbee’s opus
     
    Not at all tbh, and I doubt I will read it. I don't think I would agree that most past civilizations have died through suicide, which makes the current trajectory of Western societies all the more baffling. And I don't see any universal cult of suicide today either...sure, the Islamic world has long been on a downward spiral and might eventually implode, India's got huge problems etc., but I don't see them embracing the kind of self-negation that has become so typical of many Westerners.
    I agree that China has recently taken some interesting initiatives. Maybe they'll even enact gamer genocide, would love to see the reactions to that.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Yevardian


    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide.
     
    Eumaios has a sequence of pieces on counter-currents.com where he argues they are true believers in a utopian transhuman free-energy eugenic future that is inevitable given how brilliant they are and how trivial the technical developments are sure to be. It's the flip side of the coin from the Bush II guy who said "we are an Empire and we create reality".

    I'm with Gurdjieff and we all should drink a toast to the idiots!

    (The Eumaios articles are pretty good.)
    , @German_reader
    @Yevardian


    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus
     
    I looked that up, and he seems to make some pretty extreme claims about Ammianus' biography (raised as a Christian, became a pagan like Julian, therefore anti-Christian subtext of his work). Interesting, but I suppose it's a highly controversial view. I can't judge it myself, since I haven't read Ammianus apart from brief snippets, need to try to rectify that at some point (will take some effort though, my impression is that Ammianus' Latin is very difficult, significantly more so than even Tacitus'...or maybe a different kind of difficulty, Ammianus' style seems to be somewhat bombastic, with long, ornate sentences and unusual vocabulary, whereas Tacitus's style is compressed and elliptical).
  463. @Yellowface Anon
    @John Johnson

    If you replace these racial labels with economic ones it's essentially accurate. So this means there has to be some structural economic issues behind every hyperinflationary episode, often economic dislocation in one form or another.

    Replies: @mal

    Yeah but “wheelbarrow of cash” is seriously outdated.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is \$1 or \$1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There’s no difference.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @mal

    But the wiping-out of savings are equally pernicious, if that isn't a feature instead of a bug of CBDCs.

    Replies: @Not Raul, @mal

    , @John Johnson
    @mal

    Yeah but “wheelbarrow of cash” is seriously outdated.

    Outdated? You are the one that asked where the floor would be for Zimbabwe hyperinflation which you obviously didn't research. That was over 10 years ago. Yes the date is in the past.

    Yes they were bringing in wheelbarrows of cash to buy food. That is no exaggeration.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is $1 or $1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There’s no difference.

    So you think the rules of inflation are different if we add zeroes to a computer bank account vs printing money?

    You do realize that those digital zeroes still need to be transferred into physical goods and services? And that your computer currency is still traded globally relative to other currencies?

    Replies: @mal

  464. @Almost Missouri
    @mal



    It’s hard to compete with the 100% return on free money.
     
    So what you are saying is, working for government fiat is in fact the most productive activity the private sector could do? :)
     
    I'm sure you're aware that I'm saying that free money isn't productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it's a closed club.

    I don’t think the Fed has trouble attracting investors as such,
     
    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

    its just that they are too poor to operate at scales required. Few people have $trillions just laying about.
     
    Yeah, that's the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.

    It’s a new game in town.
     
    Indeed it is, but breezy optimism about it is a little misplaced.

    Then they would do something about it. They don’t, so clearly, status quo enjoys support of relevant parties who are also Zimbabwean.
     
    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don't happen from time to time...

    but the value of all fiat currency is approximately $0. Zimbabwe, USD, Euro, ruble, no matter. That’s why it’s fiat.
     
    Ah, so you'll be giving away all the "worthless" fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?

    people who hate Zimbabwe want them to be debt slaves forever.
     
    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

    Failure of interbank lending was the real cause of problems in 2008
     
    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

    Democrats are openly statist, so they get slack for being honest about it. Republicans don’t.
     
    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    Reagan [and his Dem congress] had higher budget deficit than Carter [and his Dem congress], but lower inflation.
     
    That's kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn't fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).

    High rates wrecked commercial credit, destroyed American Middle Class (by sending high paying industrial jobs first to Japan and then to China and Mexico), but they did throttle the inflation. On the backs of cheap foreign labor. Good job, I guess.
     
    Possibly. I am agnostic on the cause and means of American deindustrialization, but I'm willing to be persuaded. Still, inflation was damaging industrial employment too (remember "stagflation"?), so I'm not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @mal

    I’m sure you’re aware that I’m saying that free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.

    And what I’m saying is that you or I don’t get to decide what’s productive. Let the producers decide. And for now, they clearly choose government contracts.

    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

    Scale my friend, scale. New world is coming. All those SpaceX rockets don’t launch themselves without Pentagon backing. And its a good thing. Private sector just needs help catching up, and that’s what Fed is here for. Like it or not, new world is coming.

    Yeah, that’s the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.

    This is a very fair, valid criticism, and I agree. Which is why I support UBI and such. The future is Elon Musk flying around in \$trillion Pentagon funded space stations, but that doesn’t mean other people have to suffer. Comfort to the poors is the key duty of the state.

    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don’t happen from time to time…

    Politics is very rarely about guns but yes, you get to wield them if you win a debate 🙂

    Though to be fair, in African case, they may require more gun applications than usual. Hotheads are not to be tolerated.

    Ah, so you’ll be giving away all the “worthless” fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?

    Yes! I absolutely do! I never keep more fiat than necessary. I always give my fiat to Goldman Sachs and Vanguard etc to convert it into investable assets.

    Yes, I always give my fiat to the power players of world, and it it worked out great for me. I always strive to have no fiat and convert to assets, absolutely right. For the past 20 years, it was an awesome ride so far, you should try it. No fiat beyond immediate needs.

    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

    Local problems require local solutions.

    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

    This is actually an excellent question that I don’t really have an answer for despite digging for a decade.

    Something happened and banks didn’t trust each other despite their duty to trust each other. So Fed and Gov had to interfere. Hilariously, bulk of US derivative problems hit Euro banks far harder than US. Normally, I’d think US would bail out Euro. But they didn’t. I don’t know why.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    They always are. Crimes are simply acts that people with monopoly on violence deem undesirable. If criminals attain monopoly on violence, by definition, their crimes become legal. Unless they outlaw them later.

    That’s kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn’t fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).

    Well sure, I guess government can “borrow” money private sector already printed, but 4% GDP for like a decade? And just to emphasize, I don’t really hate Volker, he had to do what he thought was right and he had his valid reasons. But just like with Greenspan hiking straight into the face of ARM reset in 2006, sometimes I wish Central Bankers were chosen on real world experience (like putting up drywall) rather than academic credentials.

    so I’m not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.

    Yea its a complex subject because Unions and EPA really started the process. High interest rates delivered killing blow but just like with mortally wounded horses, argument could be made it was a good thing.

    In the ideal world, unions and EPA would back off and be reasonable for a change, and then lower capital costs would supercharge MAGA industrialization. But we don’t live in an ideal world.

    • Replies: @Almost Missouri
    @mal


    you or I don’t get to decide what’s productive. Let the producers decide. And for now, they clearly choose government contracts.
     
    You or I might get a very profitable government contract to dig and refill holes. That doesn't mean that work has any economic value, or is economically productive.

    I always give my fiat to Goldman Sachs and Vanguard etc to convert it into investable assets.
     
    Okay, but the question is would Goldman and Vanguard have given you the same investable assets in return if you had given them Zimbabwe dollars instead of USD/Euros/rubles? I suspect not. Also, why do Goldman and Vanguard not quote their asset accounts in ZimDollars if all fiat currency is the same?

    [violent coercion] [slavery]

    Local problems require local solutions.
     

     
    Ah, so that's what you mean by that phrase...


    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?
     
    They always are. Crimes are simply acts that people with monopoly on violence deem undesirable. If criminals attain monopoly on violence, by definition, their crimes become legal. Unless they outlaw them later.
     
    Perhaps I should have stated the question as, "If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be acceptable or even desirable?" Because otherwise your answer implies that your opinion is "yes", or at least that your opinion is approval of whomever has the monopoly on violence no matter what they do.

    Will "Global problems require global solutions" be the motto of the next tyranny?

    Well sure, I guess government can “borrow” money private sector already printed, but 4% GDP for like a decade? And just to emphasize, I don’t really hate Volker, he had to do what he thought was right and he had his valid reasons.
     
    Okay, but if it was the private sector printing all that money, then why blame Reagan and Republicans in general? It's getting hard to keep track of the designated monetary villains here, which now seems to be anyone who is not printing currency willy-nilly.
  465. @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yeah but "wheelbarrow of cash" is seriously outdated.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is $1 or $1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There's no difference.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

    But the wiping-out of savings are equally pernicious, if that isn’t a feature instead of a bug of CBDCs.

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @Yellowface Anon

    It wipes out cash savings (bad); but it also wipes out debt (good). Zimbabwe had been in so much debt that perhaps it was worth it.

    , @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Zimbabwe has no savings aside from like 3 goats. It's a very poor country. So any debt wipeout (including GDP growth that puts money in their pocket) is beneficial.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  466. @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.
     
    Well, don't fret, I don't think anybody's really is, that's why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter's book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill's latest penguin translation as well.


    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.
     
    The only analogy I've really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that's an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

     

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he'd witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they're incapable of producing children, and any they 'adopt' will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it's reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don't know how familar you are with Toynbee's opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don't work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the 'city-state cosmos' is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there's definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that's rarely found in any 'big history', let alone modern works.

    Ok, I'm waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation ('Soviet Civilisation' is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by 'suicide') or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.


    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there's this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a "euthanasia centre" and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant 'fuck you' to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    One of the biggest US obsessions right now is a war (hybrid or hot) with China, supposedly helping Taiwan, HK, the Uyghurs, dissidents, etc. but in fact eliminating the competition even at the cost of potentially colossal collateral damage and then impose the rest of globalist values the ChiCom hasn’t adopted yet onto a defeated and depopulated China.

    his description of how Western Civilisation (‘Soviet Civilisation’ is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by ‘suicide’) or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.

    Dugin has the answer to it, and it’s called Fourth Political Theory, or some form of synthetic Eurasianism while allowing multiple civilizational spheres to co-exist.

  467. Christianity is pro race-mixing so why is anyone surprised?

    https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/

    Race aside, a Swede-Bengali mix is the Gay-SJWISM of Europe & the Subcon put together|| Fk dat,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
    • Replies: @songbird
    @sher singh

    Isn't Sikhism kind of multicult and egalitarian in its ideology? I know that there are Sikh castes, but do any of the Gurus specifically ever say anything pro-caste?

    Replies: @sher singh

  468. @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri


    free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.
     
    UBI is supposed to be open the doors of this club to everyone. But by that time much of the productive assets of the society will be concentrated like Roman times.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?
     
    We're at the threshold of libertarianism being globalized and as a general ethic, partly because of the COVID agenda, but mostly because of political and economic disaffection.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    UBI is supposed to be open the doors of this club to everyone.

    Agree that that’s the impression that everyone is supposed to get, but it’s kind of like saying, “we’ll give everyone a cracker but we’re keeping the bakery for ourselves.”

    The problem is that a UBI that is large enough to matter would be \$5-10 trillion/year, which since it is not possible to collect in taxes, would strongly dilute a \$20 trillion GDP economy. So if you missed out on the inflation of the 1970s, you’ll get to experience the blockbuster sequel, which in turn would make the UBI less and less valuable, which in turn would result in calls to increase the UBI from an absolute majority of the voting public, which in turn would lead to more UBI, which leads to more dilution, which leads to … . There’s a reason all these discussions tend to end in Zimbabwe.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri

    In a way UBI does its redistributional goals extremely well.

    Equalize consumption and wipe out savings in the long-run, that is. (Distributing income and distributing real wealth are 2 things that involve very different economic dynamics)

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  469. @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.
     
    Well, don't fret, I don't think anybody's really is, that's why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter's book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill's latest penguin translation as well.


    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.
     
    The only analogy I've really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that's an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

     

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he'd witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they're incapable of producing children, and any they 'adopt' will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it's reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don't know how familar you are with Toynbee's opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don't work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the 'city-state cosmos' is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there's definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that's rarely found in any 'big history', let alone modern works.

    Ok, I'm waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation ('Soviet Civilisation' is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by 'suicide') or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.


    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there's this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a "euthanasia centre" and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant 'fuck you' to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    Ah, at last someone is talking about the Eunuch Pill! I’ve long thought that those passages in Gibbon are the only* ancient analog for our “unprecedented” modern depravities. I’ve even entertained the notion that our modern homo-mafias might be their literal reincarnations.

    sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they’re incapable of producing children, and any they ‘adopt’ will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it’s reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Interesting analysis of the sick logic. First I’ve seen. Thanks.

    ———

    *Other than maybe some Old Testament Sodom-and-Gomorrah-type stuff, but that’s semi-legendary, whereas ancient Rome is more legit historical.

  470. @mal
    @Almost Missouri


    I’m sure you’re aware that I’m saying that free money isn’t productive at all but it is 100% profit to those fortunate enough to be on the receiving end. Too bad it’s a closed club.
     
    And what I'm saying is that you or I don't get to decide what's productive. Let the producers decide. And for now, they clearly choose government contracts.

    Apparently they do, otherwise why resort to the absurdity of borrowing from themselves?

     

    Scale my friend, scale. New world is coming. All those SpaceX rockets don't launch themselves without Pentagon backing. And its a good thing. Private sector just needs help catching up, and that's what Fed is here for. Like it or not, new world is coming.

    Yeah, that’s the thing about global-scale ponzi schemes: eventually no one else can afford to participate.
     
    This is a very fair, valid criticism, and I agree. Which is why I support UBI and such. The future is Elon Musk flying around in $trillion Pentagon funded space stations, but that doesn't mean other people have to suffer. Comfort to the poors is the key duty of the state.

    ZANU has the guns, which tends to put a cap on what anyone else can do about the situation. Not that attempts don’t happen from time to time…
     
    Politics is very rarely about guns but yes, you get to wield them if you win a debate :)

    Though to be fair, in African case, they may require more gun applications than usual. Hotheads are not to be tolerated.

    Ah, so you’ll be giving away all the “worthless” fiat USD, Euro and ruble you happen to own?
     
    Yes! I absolutely do! I never keep more fiat than necessary. I always give my fiat to Goldman Sachs and Vanguard etc to convert it into investable assets.

    Yes, I always give my fiat to the power players of world, and it it worked out great for me. I always strive to have no fiat and convert to assets, absolutely right. For the past 20 years, it was an awesome ride so far, you should try it. No fiat beyond immediate needs.

    Apparently certain Zimbabweans hate other Zimbabweans, since they hold them in de facto bondage. But this is an old story in Africa.

     

    Local problems require local solutions.

    Why did interbank lending, which usually works so easily that no one worries about it, fail suddenly in 2008? And how is the answer to that question different from a driver saying that his crash was caused by the car in front of him coming into contact with his front bumper?

     

    This is actually an excellent question that I don't really have an answer for despite digging for a decade.

    Something happened and banks didn't trust each other despite their duty to trust each other. So Fed and Gov had to interfere. Hilariously, bulk of US derivative problems hit Euro banks far harder than US. Normally, I'd think US would bail out Euro. But they didn't. I don't know why.

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

     

    They always are. Crimes are simply acts that people with monopoly on violence deem undesirable. If criminals attain monopoly on violence, by definition, their crimes become legal. Unless they outlaw them later.

    That’s kind of true (by a few percentage points), but as mentioned a half-dozen comments ago, Paul Volker (the Fed chairman who raised rates) was appointed by and began his rate hike program under Carter. Reagan merely didn’t fire him. Also, be careful not to conflate budget deficits with printing fiat money, since they are two different things (though they can feed into each other).
     
    Well sure, I guess government can "borrow" money private sector already printed, but 4% GDP for like a decade? And just to emphasize, I don't really hate Volker, he had to do what he thought was right and he had his valid reasons. But just like with Greenspan hiking straight into the face of ARM reset in 2006, sometimes I wish Central Bankers were chosen on real world experience (like putting up drywall) rather than academic credentials.

    so I’m not sure that industrial job losses without inflation were any more inevitable than industrial job losses with inflation, given that there was a growing pool of and accessibility to cheaper foreign labor in an increasingly global trade environment.
     
    Yea its a complex subject because Unions and EPA really started the process. High interest rates delivered killing blow but just like with mortally wounded horses, argument could be made it was a good thing.

    In the ideal world, unions and EPA would back off and be reasonable for a change, and then lower capital costs would supercharge MAGA industrialization. But we don't live in an ideal world.

    Replies: @Almost Missouri

    you or I don’t get to decide what’s productive. Let the producers decide. And for now, they clearly choose government contracts.

    You or I might get a very profitable government contract to dig and refill holes. That doesn’t mean that work has any economic value, or is economically productive.

    I always give my fiat to Goldman Sachs and Vanguard etc to convert it into investable assets.

    Okay, but the question is would Goldman and Vanguard have given you the same investable assets in return if you had given them Zimbabwe dollars instead of USD/Euros/rubles? I suspect not. Also, why do Goldman and Vanguard not quote their asset accounts in ZimDollars if all fiat currency is the same?

    [violent coercion] [slavery]

    Local problems require local solutions.

    Ah, so that’s what you mean by that phrase…

    If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be legal?

    They always are. Crimes are simply acts that people with monopoly on violence deem undesirable. If criminals attain monopoly on violence, by definition, their crimes become legal. Unless they outlaw them later.

    Perhaps I should have stated the question as, “If criminals openly describe themselves as such, should their crimes be acceptable or even desirable?” Because otherwise your answer implies that your opinion is “yes”, or at least that your opinion is approval of whomever has the monopoly on violence no matter what they do.

    Will “Global problems require global solutions” be the motto of the next tyranny?

    Well sure, I guess government can “borrow” money private sector already printed, but 4% GDP for like a decade? And just to emphasize, I don’t really hate Volker, he had to do what he thought was right and he had his valid reasons.

    Okay, but if it was the private sector printing all that money, then why blame Reagan and Republicans in general? It’s getting hard to keep track of the designated monetary villains here, which now seems to be anyone who is not printing currency willy-nilly.

  471. @Almost Missouri
    @Yellowface Anon


    UBI is supposed to be open the doors of this club to everyone.
     
    Agree that that's the impression that everyone is supposed to get, but it's kind of like saying, "we'll give everyone a cracker but we're keeping the bakery for ourselves."

    The problem is that a UBI that is large enough to matter would be $5-10 trillion/year, which since it is not possible to collect in taxes, would strongly dilute a $20 trillion GDP economy. So if you missed out on the inflation of the 1970s, you'll get to experience the blockbuster sequel, which in turn would make the UBI less and less valuable, which in turn would result in calls to increase the UBI from an absolute majority of the voting public, which in turn would lead to more UBI, which leads to more dilution, which leads to ... . There's a reason all these discussions tend to end in Zimbabwe.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    In a way UBI does its redistributional goals extremely well.

    Equalize consumption and wipe out savings in the long-run, that is. (Distributing income and distributing real wealth are 2 things that involve very different economic dynamics)

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    UBI is only done when the state gives up on serious labor and welfare policies while not stepping back for the market and private institutions to work themselves out. It's some kind of idiocratic pretended action.

    The only justifiable ways to do UBI are taxing resource rent e.g. Alaskan oil, which will only be a very modest income supplement and definitely worse than targeted programs; or AIs stealing 90% of jobs and there's massive structural employment that "needs" to be papered over, in this case by taxing automated industries hard after the necessary investments. In both cases there are sources of idle real wealth to pay the programs.

    Read this: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UBI-ESG-Memo-082319.pdf

  472. @A123
    @AaronB


    Calling a bandit uncivilized is a bias of civilization 🙂

    But civilization exists for the purpose of creating a “surplus” – in this sense, it is the enemy of simplicity.
     

    A "bias" of civilization or a "basis" for civilization? 🤔

    Civilization has purposes other than "surplus", however your point is well taken. It comes back to the need to find a 'happy medium'. Some civilization is desirable, excessive over development is not.

    I am very happy that we have sufficient civilization to import coffee beans, roast them, run them through an electric burr grinder, and place them in a stainless steel filter Tube+ for the purpose of cold brew. [MORE]


    all Leftist Jews I know are fiercely anti-Israel. They will condemn White supremacy and describe Israel as a fascist apartheid state in the same breath
     
    Precisely. Though Leftist Jew is often a contradiction. They are usually post-Judaic in term of religious practice, regardless of their heritage.

    The frequently pushed canard is "Closed Borders for Israel, Open Borders for Everyone Else". Except it is a intentional lie that deliberately conflates two opposing groups. Almost all strongly Zionist Jews accept strong borders for every country, not just Israel. No one has been able to produce a senior Likud official who wants Europe or America to have Open [Muslim] Borders.


    the attempt of a materialist Positivist culture to articulate a philosophy of transcendence. It can’t help but be grotesque and self contradictory.
     
    I do not think we disagree that much. However, we are a bit trapped by terminology.

    Looking at SJW Globalism in only materialistic terms, while exceedingly grim, underestimates the horror. Excessive materialism, while grotesque, is insufficient to explain Wokeness.

    When I look at SJW/Woke opposition to Judeo-Christian God that implies religion in addition to ideology. It is an awful, Soul Damaging religion based on fundamental degradation of the Human Spirit.

    PEACE 😇

    https://www.amazon.com/TUBE-Infuser-Stainless-Designed-Included/dp/B071WXSCSC/

    Replies: @AaronB

    Yeah, the point isn’t to eliminate civilization. That ship has sailed 🙂

    But if we understand that civilization is problematic, and often a source of mental health issues, we can use these insights to live better and more freely, and more naturally.

    I think the old Chinese culture did this very well, but probably all traditional cultures did a better job of it. What distinguishes modernity is the desire to completely seperate from nature and make human control – civilization- absolute. A tragic mistake.

    Coffee is, indeed, one of the glories of civilization!

    Right, the whole attempt to conflate Zionism with what Woke assimilated Jews are doing in America is certainly bizarre.

    I would have thought the smart – and honest – strategy for someone who objects to Jews being too involved in his country on nationalist grounds would be to support nationalist Jews who are not his enemy.

    Actually, that’s what European Nationalists, like Orban, do. It’s an obvious, practical strategy.

    I think, though, that for many Jew haters the issue is essentially religious – to them, eliminating Jews will usher in the millennium, as Jews are the source of all evil since ancient times. It’s an intensely religious vision.

    After all, an anti-Semite has been described as someone who hates Jews more than is strictly necessary 🙂

    In that context, it makes sense to also oppose Israel.

    Islamists, of course, are very happy about this trend and push it along whenever they can, as we saw with Talha and AnonStarter.

    But in today’s West, I think religious anti-Semitism of this sort is a very boutique cult and will never become popular, happily.

    Then you have some people, like Yevardian, who are just so seething with resentment towards Jews that he hates Israel too, but I don’t think it’s a religious thing for him.

    When I look at SJW/Woke opposition to Judeo-Christian God that implies religion in addition to ideology. It is an awful, Soul Damaging religion based on fundamental degradation of the Human Spirit

    I think for you, Woke is an actual evil force seeking to destroy the good. I respect this vision, but I don’t believe that myself.

    To me, Woke is a tortured groping towards the good that widely misses the mark. I don’t truly believe in evil – I think everyone is trying to do good as best they understand it (yes, even Hitler 🙂 ).

    As someone inspired by Buddhism, I believe that people operate out of “illusion” rather than malice.

    • Replies: @A123
    @AaronB

    I occur with essentially everything you just stated


    I would have thought the smart – and honest – strategy for someone who objects to Jews being too involved in his country on nationalist grounds would be to support nationalist Jews who are not his enemy. Actually, that’s what European Nationalists, like Orban, do. It’s an obvious, practical strategy.
     
    There is a huge difference between "liking someone" and "being able to do business with them". The anti-Semitic extremists are not capable of "working with" Jews that likely agree with them on a number of points.

    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively -- the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets. Politicians in each of three nations made statements intended for domestic consumption and took symbolic actions that had negligible international reach. Relations between the 3 countries were never going to be impacted.

    The only Major European pairing that I can think of that is still Trapped by History is Russia/Poland. Objectively, Christian Poland and Christian Russia should be able to reach an energy deal that would obtain Polish sign off on NordStream 2. Russia and Hungary made a deal.... However, Russia and Poland just "will not work together". They should.... But, they will not do so.


    I think for you, Woke is an actual evil force seeking to destroy the good. I respect this vision, but I don’t believe that myself.

    To me, Woke is a tortured groping towards the good that widely misses the mark. I don’t truly believe in evil – I think everyone is trying to do good as best they understand it (yes, even Hitler 🙂 ).
     

    I see your point, but we will have to "agree to disagree"....... Which is a construct of Civilization. 😎

    The Third Reich did horrible things to other people, but they did try to protect their own children. They wanted families that would create the next generation of the Reich. At some level, I can see how flawed assumptions + logic could lead people to unwisely support National Socialism.

    The SJW/Woke community wants young children to be able to sexually self mutilate and actively prevents parents from protecting their children. These are life altering decisions with permanent consequences. I cannot believe this level of anti-survival insanity has any tie to logic or "good intentions". It is Evil and indoctrinated as religious/cult unquestionable dogma.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

  473. @Almost Missouri
    @AaronB

    What's so transcendent about Burke?

    Replies: @AaronB

    As far as I remember, Burke favored a society that was aesthetic and spiritual, and opposed the French Revolution partially on the grounds that it was rationalist and materialist, and did away with the aesthetic and spiritual richness of traditional culture.

  474. @Yellowface Anon
    @Almost Missouri

    In a way UBI does its redistributional goals extremely well.

    Equalize consumption and wipe out savings in the long-run, that is. (Distributing income and distributing real wealth are 2 things that involve very different economic dynamics)

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    UBI is only done when the state gives up on serious labor and welfare policies while not stepping back for the market and private institutions to work themselves out. It’s some kind of idiocratic pretended action.

    The only justifiable ways to do UBI are taxing resource rent e.g. Alaskan oil, which will only be a very modest income supplement and definitely worse than targeted programs; or AIs stealing 90% of jobs and there’s massive structural employment that “needs” to be papered over, in this case by taxing automated industries hard after the necessary investments. In both cases there are sources of idle real wealth to pay the programs.

    Read this: https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/UBI-ESG-Memo-082319.pdf

  475. @sher singh
    Christianity is pro race-mixing so why is anyone surprised?

    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/777363024196796426/852791619115417620/unknown.png

    https://hbdchick.wordpress.com/2011/04/04/whatever-happened-to-european-tribes/

    Race aside, a Swede-Bengali mix is the Gay-SJWISM of Europe & the Subcon put together|| Fk dat,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @songbird

    Isn’t Sikhism kind of multicult and egalitarian in its ideology? I know that there are Sikh castes, but do any of the Gurus specifically ever say anything pro-caste?

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @songbird

    Inter-caste marriage is specifically forbidden in the Sikh Code
    Traditional Sikh orders (Nihangs) still practice untouchability||

    Christianity destroys caste through protecting caste-mixing via love marriage||
    Sikh Raaj lawbooks are closer to Balkan/Caucacus clan feuds ala blood money||

    Panjabis are closer to Tajiks & Azeris than to N Indians so makes sense||

    Seems like a cope question on ur part, We have ancestral shrines u have Harvard||

    Replies: @sher singh, @iffen

  476. German_reader says:
    @Almost Missouri
    @German_reader

    Agree with your general assessment of Razib and his peers' (mis)reading of him.


    a few months ago he basically wrote that his main objection to CRT and the like was that it could awaken the demons of white racialism…and then he and his mixed-race children would get killed, lol
     
    Amusingly, on an early episode of his genomics podcase, Razib was at pains to let everyone know his Y-DNA was from the R1a haplogroup (i.e., basically ancient Aryans). So that plus his WASP wife makes his kids majority Aryan. (Not that anyone is disposed to reasoned debate on the subject.)

    On a different note, on a more recent Hanania CSPI podcast, Razib said his family had suffered some kind of trauma because of Critical Race Theory at this kids' school, but he didn't go into any detail. I would guess that his kids probably have mostly white friends, but the CRT goons somehow set them at odds with each other, but that's just a guess. Anyway, if there is one kind of event that can cause an adult to change his political spots, it is trauma with his kids, so perhaps Razib may rethink his assumption of a common cause with the left, but that could be too much to hope for.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Anyway, if there is one kind of event that can cause an adult to change his political spots, it is trauma with his kids, so perhaps Razib may rethink his assumption of a common cause with the left

    Well, he’s opposed to the “woke” left (because he thinks it could create a WN backlash, and he also objects to “degeneracy”, though he’s careful not to go into details what exactly he means by that). But imo fundamentally he’s just an old school NYT-reading liberal, or a moderate Republican. Lately he’s even expressed sympathy for that insane “1 billion Americans” idea (though again, he refused to give his exact reasoning, just that it would be good for family values and work against “degeneracy”, presumably because immigrants are socially conservative or whatever). So definitely not something Sailer and his readers could ever be ok with.

  477. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    racial division in order to distract from inequality and oppression
     
    It's symbolic gestures, which is to say - almost meaningless.

    Real life is what we should look at more, instead of arguing about symbols.

    In real life, Obama's daughter is in Harvard, with her English boyfriend. Obama purchased a $12 million house in Martha's Vineyard and $8 million house in Kalorama, Washington DC. (https://www.thelist.com/146336/inside-barack-and-michelle-obamas-gorgeous-d-c-home/)

    His speeches about racial inequality have achieved their primary motivation - to make Obama wealthy and successful.

    But money to invest to fix the pavement in Baltimore, or just to provide people in that mainly African American city with normal shops (every shop there is a liquor) - is evidently less interesting and exciting.


    imagine fighting abstract ideas, but need concrete manifestations

     

    To form the knot, you need to add another maneuver of the string. That is, arguing about abstract ideals, have been a useful way to avoid concrete manifestations.

    It's clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It's easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.

    Apple has expended $4 billion to build a circular office building for their employees, as a purely vanity project, so the office workers can take cool selfies of their environment in their lunch break. Private opulence and public squalor, is celebrated.

    Investment to even collect trash in these streets will be (of course). not available.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB6gwOBClwE


    Woke is a counter-culture movement – in the sense of being opposed to common sense bourgeois values and seeking escape from physical constraints
     
    It can also be used as obfuscation and procrastination.

    escape from physical constraints
     
    Perhaps, for young people with trustfunds, in the Upper West Side, or on campus of Brown University and Columbia.

    I agree that ideas in "work ideology" include many universal, positive, civilized ideals - such as not offending peoples' personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).

    But the same is true with Obama's speeches, which had many correct and attractive aspirations. And Obama's speeches were successful in their main aim - which was to give Obama houses in Kalorama and Martha's Vineyard, but that is rather less universal.

    The only people allowed into Obama's houses, are his family and his cleaning staff. It's not a very "universal" achievement.

    -

    Politicians and ideologies shouldn't be given such an easier assessment process, than engineers or builders. That is, our assessment should be on the results, not whether we agree with some of attractive sounding words.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    Well, yes, I agree with you – but religion has always been exploited and abused in this fashion. All institutional religion becomes deeply compromised.

    So much so, that some thinkers have concluded that religion is “nothing but” a tool of oppression.

    I certainly agree with you that one major function of Woke ideology is to breathe pleasant nothings into the ear of the peasantry as you grow rich on exploiting them – a major function of official religion has always been to justify oppression or distract from it.

    But it works in part because Woke ideology genuinely speaks to the religious aspirations of many people, particularly elite White people.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
  478. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    Timothy Garton-Ash a few years ago where he wrote about how visiting Brazil had shown him the beauty of racial mixing,
     
    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries – partly because Western men have higher access to younger or more attractive women when they visit the second world, than than to equivalent women they have access to in the first world.

    Non-elite, Brazilian women who are more available to first world men, can also show the beauty of mixed nationality people.

    So it seems like these two realities, have mixed in the writer’s emotions.

    However, it’s a very naive misunderstanding of Brazil, to accept their “showcase” presentation of multinational harmony and successful antiracism – that their elite tries to use as a softpower through the football, or the Rio Carnival.

    Brazil’s flag writes “Progress and Order”. But here the presented value, shows what the country needs, rather than what it has.


    In Brazil there is a lot of pride about the representation of Afro-Brazilian people in their football team, which the elite uses as an attractive showcase to the world.

    However, this is some of the weakest “ersatz” equality. Instead of giving the people in favela, your million dollar house in a gated community – you give them football.

    At the same time when you look at the elite areas of Brazil, the predominance of the pure latinos seems quite evidence, who could from their appearance be descended from the original Portuguese ruling class.

    Neither black Afro-Brazilians, nor even white German-Brazilians and yellow Japanese-Brazilian, seemed to be so very proportionally represented, if we believe YouTube.
    Most people in the elite areas of the multiracial Brazil might look like a “co-incidentally” Portuguese appearance, according to YouTube. The superficial sense is that Brazil has been a very successful country, for its rulers. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=swfmR6wCBvc.


    process is already so far advanced in Western Europe

     

    Because in the elite areas, where resources are not exactly scarce, people are mostly harmonizing well.

    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.

    In these places, most of the people are not going to be influential, due to the lower economic and social status. However, in working democracies they can provide a lot of votes for the populist politicians who know how to harness aspects of this discontent – like Boris Johnson with Brexit in the Kingdom, or Trump 2016 in the United States.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it's not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader

    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries

    “Second world” is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don’t even know what it would refer to today (same for “third world”).
    Not sure if there was any sexual element to Garton-Ash’s reasoning, and Brazil probably isn’t the worst country on the planet (though it’s got severe issues), but I just find the basic reasoning insane when one looks at the experience of truly multiethnic and multicultural societies without a dominant and secure supermajority.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.

    For my imagination, your description made him sound like he was daydreaming about "upgrading his wife" after seeing some beautiful young Brazilian women.


    “Second world” is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don’t even know what it would refer to today (same for “third world”).
     
    I mean what we call middle income countries (although using a higher threshold than World Bank, which categorizes these as high income) - usually these are countries like Russia, Poland, Argentina, Brazil.

    There is a mix of developed and undeveloped country characteristics, sometimes in the same city.

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine), compared to in Western countries, mainly because there is in the atmosphere and memory still sense of resource insecurity, inflation and overnight bankruptcy for the middle classes - and many women seem to respond by obsessing about their nails, with beauty salons becoming the most stable shops in the city.

    At the same time, unlike in poor countries, in middle income countries most women can still afford Western fashions, cosmetics and sanitation, so the middle income countries become the world's "Goldilocks zone" for female beauty or vanity.

    There is also a stereotype of Western men finding beautiful wives in the second world, as they can increase their relative status due to the income differences. By comparison, never hear anyone talking about "beautiful Swiss women", or sex tourism to Norway or Singapore.

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women, I assume it could be reflection of these dynamics. But I didn't read his book.

    -


    Brazil is an ultra extreme mix of first world and third world. There are favelas which look worse than India. And the middle class areas of the same city appear like a paradise (or paradise for Portuguese people).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avjkQ-UOaag.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird, @AaronB

  479. German_reader says:
    @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.
     
    Well, don't fret, I don't think anybody's really is, that's why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter's book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill's latest penguin translation as well.


    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.
     
    The only analogy I've really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that's an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

     

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he'd witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they're incapable of producing children, and any they 'adopt' will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it's reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don't know how familar you are with Toynbee's opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don't work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the 'city-state cosmos' is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there's definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that's rarely found in any 'big history', let alone modern works.

    Ok, I'm waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation ('Soviet Civilisation' is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by 'suicide') or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.


    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there's this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a "euthanasia centre" and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant 'fuck you' to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    Well, don’t fret, I don’t think anybody’s really is, that’s why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.

    I’ve always found it fascinating as well, because of the mixture and interaction of old and new elements (Christianity, the rise of the Germanic peoples etc.; it’s very strange to think that someone like Sidonius Apollinaris held office at still imperial Rome and in his letters showed off his classical education with endless literary allusions, while only a few decades later his son fought on the side of the Visigoths against the Franks, in what we think of as the deep dark ages).

    The only analogy I’ve really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that’s an extremely imperfect comparison.

    One can at least see a certain rationale behind that, since eunuchs didn’t have dynastic interests of their own, so at least in theory were perfect imperial servants. But why something like the trans movement has found such widespread acceptance within just a few years, is very difficult to understand for me. imo it must indicate some deep civilizational sickness, a total unmooring from basic reality.

    I don’t know how familar you are with Toynbee’s opus

    Not at all tbh, and I doubt I will read it. I don’t think I would agree that most past civilizations have died through suicide, which makes the current trajectory of Western societies all the more baffling. And I don’t see any universal cult of suicide today either…sure, the Islamic world has long been on a downward spiral and might eventually implode, India’s got huge problems etc., but I don’t see them embracing the kind of self-negation that has become so typical of many Westerners.
    I agree that China has recently taken some interesting initiatives. Maybe they’ll even enact gamer genocide, would love to see the reactions to that.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @German_reader


    I don’t think I would agree that most past civilizations have died through suicide, which makes the current trajectory of Western societies all the more baffling. And I don’t see any universal cult of suicide today either…
     
    It's pretty close to the late Roman trajectory - Christianization, barbarization and feudalization.

    Maybe they’ll even enact gamer genocide, would love to see the reactions to that.
     
    Won't be done short of good ol' draft for the next WW which will also "kill" the gamer community in the US.
  480. @AaronB
    @A123

    Yeah, the point isn't to eliminate civilization. That ship has sailed :)

    But if we understand that civilization is problematic, and often a source of mental health issues, we can use these insights to live better and more freely, and more naturally.

    I think the old Chinese culture did this very well, but probably all traditional cultures did a better job of it. What distinguishes modernity is the desire to completely seperate from nature and make human control - civilization- absolute. A tragic mistake.

    Coffee is, indeed, one of the glories of civilization!

    Right, the whole attempt to conflate Zionism with what Woke assimilated Jews are doing in America is certainly bizarre.

    I would have thought the smart - and honest - strategy for someone who objects to Jews being too involved in his country on nationalist grounds would be to support nationalist Jews who are not his enemy.

    Actually, that's what European Nationalists, like Orban, do. It's an obvious, practical strategy.

    I think, though, that for many Jew haters the issue is essentially religious - to them, eliminating Jews will usher in the millennium, as Jews are the source of all evil since ancient times. It's an intensely religious vision.

    After all, an anti-Semite has been described as someone who hates Jews more than is strictly necessary :)

    In that context, it makes sense to also oppose Israel.

    Islamists, of course, are very happy about this trend and push it along whenever they can, as we saw with Talha and AnonStarter.

    But in today's West, I think religious anti-Semitism of this sort is a very boutique cult and will never become popular, happily.

    Then you have some people, like Yevardian, who are just so seething with resentment towards Jews that he hates Israel too, but I don't think it's a religious thing for him.


    When I look at SJW/Woke opposition to Judeo-Christian God that implies religion in addition to ideology. It is an awful, Soul Damaging religion based on fundamental degradation of the Human Spirit
     
    I think for you, Woke is an actual evil force seeking to destroy the good. I respect this vision, but I don't believe that myself.

    To me, Woke is a tortured groping towards the good that widely misses the mark. I don't truly believe in evil - I think everyone is trying to do good as best they understand it (yes, even Hitler :) ).

    As someone inspired by Buddhism, I believe that people operate out of "illusion" rather than malice.

    Replies: @A123

    I occur with essentially everything you just stated

    I would have thought the smart – and honest – strategy for someone who objects to Jews being too involved in his country on nationalist grounds would be to support nationalist Jews who are not his enemy. Actually, that’s what European Nationalists, like Orban, do. It’s an obvious, practical strategy.

    There is a huge difference between “liking someone” and “being able to do business with them”. The anti-Semitic extremists are not capable of “working with” Jews that likely agree with them on a number of points.

    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets. Politicians in each of three nations made statements intended for domestic consumption and took symbolic actions that had negligible international reach. Relations between the 3 countries were never going to be impacted.

    The only Major European pairing that I can think of that is still Trapped by History is Russia/Poland. Objectively, Christian Poland and Christian Russia should be able to reach an energy deal that would obtain Polish sign off on NordStream 2. Russia and Hungary made a deal…. However, Russia and Poland just “will not work together”. They should…. But, they will not do so.

    I think for you, Woke is an actual evil force seeking to destroy the good. I respect this vision, but I don’t believe that myself.

    To me, Woke is a tortured groping towards the good that widely misses the mark. I don’t truly believe in evil – I think everyone is trying to do good as best they understand it (yes, even Hitler 🙂 ).

    I see your point, but we will have to “agree to disagree“……. Which is a construct of Civilization. 😎

    The Third Reich did horrible things to other people, but they did try to protect their own children. They wanted families that would create the next generation of the Reich. At some level, I can see how flawed assumptions + logic could lead people to unwisely support National Socialism.

    The SJW/Woke community wants young children to be able to sexually self mutilate and actively prevents parents from protecting their children. These are life altering decisions with permanent consequences. I cannot believe this level of anti-survival insanity has any tie to logic or “good intentions”. It is Evil and indoctrinated as religious/cult unquestionable dogma.

    PEACE 😇

    • Thanks: AaronB
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets.
     
    So Poland should just pay, or what's your point?

    Replies: @A123

  481. @A123
    @AaronB

    I occur with essentially everything you just stated


    I would have thought the smart – and honest – strategy for someone who objects to Jews being too involved in his country on nationalist grounds would be to support nationalist Jews who are not his enemy. Actually, that’s what European Nationalists, like Orban, do. It’s an obvious, practical strategy.
     
    There is a huge difference between "liking someone" and "being able to do business with them". The anti-Semitic extremists are not capable of "working with" Jews that likely agree with them on a number of points.

    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively -- the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets. Politicians in each of three nations made statements intended for domestic consumption and took symbolic actions that had negligible international reach. Relations between the 3 countries were never going to be impacted.

    The only Major European pairing that I can think of that is still Trapped by History is Russia/Poland. Objectively, Christian Poland and Christian Russia should be able to reach an energy deal that would obtain Polish sign off on NordStream 2. Russia and Hungary made a deal.... However, Russia and Poland just "will not work together". They should.... But, they will not do so.


    I think for you, Woke is an actual evil force seeking to destroy the good. I respect this vision, but I don’t believe that myself.

    To me, Woke is a tortured groping towards the good that widely misses the mark. I don’t truly believe in evil – I think everyone is trying to do good as best they understand it (yes, even Hitler 🙂 ).
     

    I see your point, but we will have to "agree to disagree"....... Which is a construct of Civilization. 😎

    The Third Reich did horrible things to other people, but they did try to protect their own children. They wanted families that would create the next generation of the Reich. At some level, I can see how flawed assumptions + logic could lead people to unwisely support National Socialism.

    The SJW/Woke community wants young children to be able to sexually self mutilate and actively prevents parents from protecting their children. These are life altering decisions with permanent consequences. I cannot believe this level of anti-survival insanity has any tie to logic or "good intentions". It is Evil and indoctrinated as religious/cult unquestionable dogma.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets.

    So Poland should just pay, or what’s your point?

    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader



    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets. Politicians in each of three nations made statements intended for domestic consumption and took symbolic actions that had negligible international reach. Relations between the 3 countries were never going to be impacted.
     
    So Poland should just pay, or what’s your point?
     
    I repeated my quote above with the key part in bold. I am not sure how that was unclear... However, in the interest of civilized comity, I will rephrase:

        • There were *NO* policy changes by any of the involved countries.
        • All nations have exactly the same positions they had before.

    So, what was Poland's position before The Kerfuffle Full of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing? That status quo remains unchanged. Presumably, claims will continue to be processed by Polish courts under Polish laws. Poland's Constitution and national sovereignty remains strong against all foreign threats (including anti-democracy German Elites).

    It is also worth noting -- The Israeli Government Is {very quietly} Satisfied With This Result, though for obvious political reasons they will not say so publicly. Upon closer examination they discovered dangerous language buried in some of the proposals aimed at siphoning money away from real Jews and towards anti-Semitic, genocidal, pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

  482. @schnellandine
    @Thomm

    Go ahead, dumbass. Let's hear the logic trail. You've not finished. It's a simple and eminently fair request.

    Replies: @Thomm

    Yeah, right. No heterosexual man of any race would ever have difficulty in saying that they prefer Halle Berry over a man as a sexual partner.

    No matter how much you try to filibuster and gaslight, your homosexuality is revealed. I could show your answer anywhere (such as a pro-Trump Republican blog), and 100% of the people there will say that this is indisputable evidence of faggotism.

    What is funny is that you don’t even know how to pretend to be a heterosexual. At least you have a fair bit of company with your fellow WN faggots in that Hall of Shame I listed in Comment #10.

  483. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    Women of the second world (Brazil, Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, etc) are commonly objectified by men in first world countries
     
    "Second world" is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don't even know what it would refer to today (same for "third world").
    Not sure if there was any sexual element to Garton-Ash's reasoning, and Brazil probably isn't the worst country on the planet (though it's got severe issues), but I just find the basic reasoning insane when one looks at the experience of truly multiethnic and multicultural societies without a dominant and secure supermajority.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.

    For my imagination, your description made him sound like he was daydreaming about “upgrading his wife” after seeing some beautiful young Brazilian women.

    “Second world” is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don’t even know what it would refer to today (same for “third world”).

    I mean what we call middle income countries (although using a higher threshold than World Bank, which categorizes these as high income) – usually these are countries like Russia, Poland, Argentina, Brazil.

    There is a mix of developed and undeveloped country characteristics, sometimes in the same city.

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine), compared to in Western countries, mainly because there is in the atmosphere and memory still sense of resource insecurity, inflation and overnight bankruptcy for the middle classes – and many women seem to respond by obsessing about their nails, with beauty salons becoming the most stable shops in the city.

    At the same time, unlike in poor countries, in middle income countries most women can still afford Western fashions, cosmetics and sanitation, so the middle income countries become the world’s “Goldilocks zone” for female beauty or vanity.

    There is also a stereotype of Western men finding beautiful wives in the second world, as they can increase their relative status due to the income differences. By comparison, never hear anyone talking about “beautiful Swiss women”, or sex tourism to Norway or Singapore.

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women, I assume it could be reflection of these dynamics. But I didn’t read his book.

    Brazil is an ultra extreme mix of first world and third world. There are favelas which look worse than India. And the middle class areas of the same city appear like a paradise (or paradise for Portuguese people).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avjkQ-UOaag.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.
     
    I can't, I just skimmed through it years ago and have forgotten the title, never owned it (Garton-Ash isn't an author whose books I would pay anything for...or even spend more than a few minutes reading).
    But I googled, that article should give the gist of the argument (see especially the final section):
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/12/comment.brazil

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women
     
    It wasn't about women specifically, let alone which women are most sexually attractive. It's more about ending racism through abolishing all distinct ethnicities.
    , @songbird
    @Dmitry


    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation
     
    I wonder if a part of it might be that Brazil is more r-selected. So women with bigger ___ and ____. And maybe they wear more make-up etc.

    I also wonder if women in the West (thots aside) are more afraid to wear dresses and otherwise call attention to themselves than in more mono-ethnic places.

    I don't think that is the whole explanation though. I get the impression dresses are becoming slightly less common in Japan.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @AaronB
    @Dmitry


    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine)
     
    What about rich countries like Japan and South Korea, where women focus on their beauty and personal presentation to an extreme degree - in Korea, to an almost absurd degree? (And Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc).

    And there are serious differences in wealthy countries - and within them. In very wealthy NYC, women focus far more on their beauty than in wealthy San Francisco, say. And women in wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty than America.

    I don't think your "reductionist" sociology holds up :)

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

  484. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.

    For my imagination, your description made him sound like he was daydreaming about "upgrading his wife" after seeing some beautiful young Brazilian women.


    “Second world” is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don’t even know what it would refer to today (same for “third world”).
     
    I mean what we call middle income countries (although using a higher threshold than World Bank, which categorizes these as high income) - usually these are countries like Russia, Poland, Argentina, Brazil.

    There is a mix of developed and undeveloped country characteristics, sometimes in the same city.

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine), compared to in Western countries, mainly because there is in the atmosphere and memory still sense of resource insecurity, inflation and overnight bankruptcy for the middle classes - and many women seem to respond by obsessing about their nails, with beauty salons becoming the most stable shops in the city.

    At the same time, unlike in poor countries, in middle income countries most women can still afford Western fashions, cosmetics and sanitation, so the middle income countries become the world's "Goldilocks zone" for female beauty or vanity.

    There is also a stereotype of Western men finding beautiful wives in the second world, as they can increase their relative status due to the income differences. By comparison, never hear anyone talking about "beautiful Swiss women", or sex tourism to Norway or Singapore.

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women, I assume it could be reflection of these dynamics. But I didn't read his book.

    -


    Brazil is an ultra extreme mix of first world and third world. There are favelas which look worse than India. And the middle class areas of the same city appear like a paradise (or paradise for Portuguese people).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avjkQ-UOaag.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird, @AaronB

    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.

    I can’t, I just skimmed through it years ago and have forgotten the title, never owned it (Garton-Ash isn’t an author whose books I would pay anything for…or even spend more than a few minutes reading).
    But I googled, that article should give the gist of the argument (see especially the final section):
    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/jul/12/comment.brazil

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women

    It wasn’t about women specifically, let alone which women are most sexually attractive. It’s more about ending racism through abolishing all distinct ethnicities.

  485. @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yeah but "wheelbarrow of cash" is seriously outdated.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is $1 or $1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There's no difference.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @John Johnson

    Yeah but “wheelbarrow of cash” is seriously outdated.

    Outdated? You are the one that asked where the floor would be for Zimbabwe hyperinflation which you obviously didn’t research. That was over 10 years ago. Yes the date is in the past.

    Yes they were bringing in wheelbarrows of cash to buy food. That is no exaggeration.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is \$1 or \$1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There’s no difference.

    So you think the rules of inflation are different if we add zeroes to a computer bank account vs printing money?

    You do realize that those digital zeroes still need to be transferred into physical goods and services? And that your computer currency is still traded globally relative to other currencies?

    • Replies: @mal
    @John Johnson


    Outdated? You are the one that asked where the floor would be for Zimbabwe hyperinflation which you obviously didn’t research. That was over 10 years ago. Yes the date is in the past.
     
    10 years ago is quite some time ago? I bet even Zimbabwe has electronic payments now.

    You do realize that those digital zeroes still need to be transferred into physical goods and services? And that your computer currency is still traded globally relative to other currencies?
     
    Nope. Just buy Bitcoin or other digital tokens. No need to transfer into physical goods and services. Actually, that's the main goal of financial assets - inflation buffers. Which is why credit and financial markets are so important.
  486. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    It’s clearly been easier and cheaper to add cool advertising with abstract ideals about ending racism and injustice, than to fix the pavement in Baltimore or West Virginia.

    It’s easier to removing some statues of the Conferacy, than to solve the problem that America is quite a brutal chekistan, for all its non-elite citizens, and that Americans of all nationalities are being killed by its police.
     
    Basically yes, but WNs that are in great supply here are used to placing a wall between the White and these people because they are "racially" (ethnically) inferior and will mess up the place anyway.

    ideas in “work ideology” include many universal, positive, civilized ideals – such as not offending peoples’ personal and psychological liberty (safe spaces), not offending people (microaggressions), no pre-judging people (unconscious bias), not discriminating people or preserving systematic inequalities (anti-racism, anti-sexism). not destroying our environment (organic farming, electric mobility).
     
    It ultimately depends on whether any of these ideas are favorable to one's own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues, and they are definitely entitled to their opinions.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    cially” (ethnically) inferior and will mess up

    Parts of West Virginia are not living so much more happy than Baltimore, from the YouTube drivethroughs. (Although at least they seem to have non-liquor shops).

    This process of underinvesting or asset-stripping areas (to the extent of not even paying for the city to have a walkable pavement), can be surprisingly colour-blind – even in America.

    And in neither place, will Obama be visiting anytime soon. Income transfer when you buy “Dreams for my father “, is from your wallet, to Kalorama and Martha’s Vineyard, where the authorities would never allow pavement to be unfixed.

    favorable to one’s own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues

    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their “superego” or conscience.* Even Hitler’s speeches were first speaking as if in a universal court, about the injustice to and persecution of the German nation, before he could start to promise his listeners that they would become powerful and successful if they support him.

    Trump was a culture shock, because he almost didn’t waste time trying to hack peoples’ conscience. His speeches might begin complaining about immigrants from Mexico, but very quickly he begins to tell his audience that they will be rich and successful like him.

    *There is the recent example of cryptocurrency. If you want to market cryptocurrency, you can hack peoples’ superego with the presentation about how it will be a medium of exchange. Once their conscience has been distracted, then you sell to the real motive, which is access to their enjoyment gambling and becoming wealthy from Pachinko.

    particularism definitely entitled to their opinions.

    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it’s a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.

    It’s not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the “more serious topics” of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU (that presented problems to the working class like increased competition for jobs).

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their “superego” or conscience.
     

    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it’s a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.
     
    I would actually support some sort of particularism & skepticism of modern social ideals, as far as it doesn't trample others' self-determination (like how some HBD/racists still do). It's a good way to scrutinize modern society's instinct for leveling and dissolving everything. But your point about persuasion stands.

    It’s not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the “more serious topics” of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU
     
    Just look at what A123 has been saying. His cultural strawmen ("Islamic SJW") are pretty much rightoid caricatures that are partly accurate and partly off-the-mark, in way that strengthen his worldview [of economic and political strength of the US are systematically weakened by coordinated political interests (which is also partly approximating reality but largely too simplistic)]. Like all Trumpists his biggest goals are mainly economic, then passive-aggressively geopolitical, with the obligatory Christians vs everyone else distinction.

    Low-IQ people search for simple but powerful explanations that can answer what they've problematized. I sometimes do that too.

    ------

    I think what you've said about Middle-income Countries' fashion might be a modernized expression of relatively traditional expectations of beauty in women. And what you expect in Sweden or anywhere "progressive" are often somewhat off-base, to put it mildly. You'll see others say what's wrong with advanced countries' women more explicitly than me.

    Replies: @A123

    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism...
     
    There is an interesting book about Brexit and British populism by David Goodhart (at least it is my favourite analysis) called 'The Road to Somewhere'. It is about the extent to which the group of people he identifies as 'somewheres', people whose identity is bound up with a particular place and local culture, used the vote to assert their presence within a political culture dominated for several decades by more globalist orientated 'anywheres'. The immigration issue was a part of this, but there was some more to it.

    I was in an environment where there were large numbers of people were both traditional Labour voters and mostly on the left, and strongly in favour of Brexit. Hardly anyone seemed to express the point of view of these voters during the referendum campaign (maybe Farrage to some extent, but he is too free-market and libertarian), so I found Goodhart's take relevant.

    The problem is, politics in Britain since Brexit remains mostly anywhere orientated and controlled, and things like Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture and prevent any re-emergence of 'somewhere' political relevance. Several important Woke ideas (for example, false consciousness, the imminent risk of 'Fascism' exploding onto the political scene, the centrality of the experience of ethnic minorities) seem tailor-made for this.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  487. @German_reader
    @Yevardian


    Well, don’t fret, I don’t think anybody’s really is, that’s why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
     
    I've always found it fascinating as well, because of the mixture and interaction of old and new elements (Christianity, the rise of the Germanic peoples etc.; it's very strange to think that someone like Sidonius Apollinaris held office at still imperial Rome and in his letters showed off his classical education with endless literary allusions, while only a few decades later his son fought on the side of the Visigoths against the Franks, in what we think of as the deep dark ages).

    The only analogy I’ve really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that’s an extremely imperfect comparison.
     
    One can at least see a certain rationale behind that, since eunuchs didn't have dynastic interests of their own, so at least in theory were perfect imperial servants. But why something like the trans movement has found such widespread acceptance within just a few years, is very difficult to understand for me. imo it must indicate some deep civilizational sickness, a total unmooring from basic reality.

    I don’t know how familar you are with Toynbee’s opus
     
    Not at all tbh, and I doubt I will read it. I don't think I would agree that most past civilizations have died through suicide, which makes the current trajectory of Western societies all the more baffling. And I don't see any universal cult of suicide today either...sure, the Islamic world has long been on a downward spiral and might eventually implode, India's got huge problems etc., but I don't see them embracing the kind of self-negation that has become so typical of many Westerners.
    I agree that China has recently taken some interesting initiatives. Maybe they'll even enact gamer genocide, would love to see the reactions to that.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I don’t think I would agree that most past civilizations have died through suicide, which makes the current trajectory of Western societies all the more baffling. And I don’t see any universal cult of suicide today either…

    It’s pretty close to the late Roman trajectory – Christianization, barbarization and feudalization.

    Maybe they’ll even enact gamer genocide, would love to see the reactions to that.

    Won’t be done short of good ol’ draft for the next WW which will also “kill” the gamer community in the US.

  488. @mal
    @Mikel


    … 9 million USD (enough to build perhaps another swimming pool at Mugabe’s residence). The total external debt at the time was 3.25 billion USD (361 times more than what they managed to raise with their audacious move).
     
    Pace yourself, my friend. :). I hope you still remember we are talking about hyperinflation here. If you think $21 trillion Z was all they printed, that is definitely not the case. They apparently had a single banknote with $100 trillion on it. They were printing to way more than $21 trillion to keep making payments. Your link says so as well.

    In a statement on Thursday central bank Governor Gideon Gono said the bank had had to print Z$21 trillion to buy foreign currency to pay the IMF, fuelling inflation.
     

    The IMF had threatened to expel Zimbabwe over debt arrears, but Mugabe's government says it has been making regular payments to the fund and would clear its arrears before a March deadline to pay up or risk expulsion.
     
    You don't need to be a genius to figure out where the money for "regular payments" to the IMF was coming from. Hint - far more than $21 trillion Z.

    And today the total external debt has risen to 14.32 billion USD (over 4 times higher than when you claimed they had managed to pay it off).
     
    Yep. And their GDP rose from $5 billion in 2005 to $20 billion in 2015.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/GDP

    That's kinda how debt mechanics work which is why I don't like to use absolute numbers. %GDP is a much better and consistent baseline. So they got richer and grabbed more money from the banks. Ok, seems reasonable. And apparently worth it for them. And yes they did abolish currency and dollarized economy, but where do you think all those dollars came from? USD ain't magic for Zimbabwe and they did what they had to do. Hence hyperinflation is the only move to play. You print whatever you need to keep Chinese and IMF lending you money, and then use it.

    In the meantime, Zimbabwe’s economy has shrunk most years since 2000, has not grown its per capita GDP in constant dollars since the 80s and 50% of its population live under the absolute poverty threshold.
     
    They like quadrupled their GDP in dollars since the adopting hyperinflation strategy. All the rest is true, which is why hyperinflation is the only right move for them.

    Brilliant results, your hyper inflationary strategy.
     
    Quadrupling GDP aside, there's no choice. Here's why. Zimbabwe commercial banking sucks.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/ZWEFCSODCXDC

    Private banking system in Zimbabwe is run by such idiots they make US commercial banks look smart. And US commercial banks make bricks look smart.

    And of course, here is the result.
    https://tradingeconomics.com/zimbabwe/inflation-cpi

    So from government perspective, hyperinflation is mandatory. If you don't do it, private banks will do it for you. You can't meaningfully talk about government finances (which are not that bad actually), while ignoring private sector.

    Replies: @Mikel

    Well, I have already proven that your claims were wrong.

    Zimbabwe did not reduce its external debt through hyperinflation, let alone get rid of it, let alone do it through the magical trick of printing 21 trillion \$Z, which only got them 9 million USD to keep begging for more loans from the IMF.

    But getting you to recognize your mistaken claims is outside of my power and I won’t insist. You would actually gain in credibility if you recognized it but it’s your call.

    When I first starting discussing economic matters with you I actually wanted to learn from you. I studied economics but I don’t consider myself to be particularly knowledgeable. Economy is far from being a hard science. It deals with complex systems of human behavior, social institutions and politics. There is too much chaos and non-linearity in all this to be able to formulate solid laws resembling the ones that work well in the natural sciences. So I try to keep my mind open and get my beliefs challenged. However, a constant repetition of the benefits of printing money and hyperinflation, even when you are objectively shown to be wrong on specific claims, is not going to get me any closer to understanding how things really work.

    • Replies: @mal
    @Mikel


    Well, I have already proven that your claims were wrong.
     
    No you haven't. They printed far more than $21 trillion. That $9M was just one of the payments.

    Zimbabwe did not reduce its external debt through hyperinflation, let alone get rid of it, let alone do it through the magical trick of printing 21 trillion $Z, which only got them 9 million USD to keep begging for more loans from the IMF.
     
    They grew their GDP by getting loans through IMF and making payments on existing loans. Which was a rather good deal under the circumstances.

    They were able to take out more loans as their GDP increased through dollarization. Higher GDP means more debt. Perfectly normal.

    Again, they were printing far more than $21 trillion.
  489. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    cially” (ethnically) inferior and will mess up
     
    Parts of West Virginia are not living so much more happy than Baltimore, from the YouTube drivethroughs. (Although at least they seem to have non-liquor shops).

    This process of underinvesting or asset-stripping areas (to the extent of not even paying for the city to have a walkable pavement), can be surprisingly colour-blind - even in America.

    And in neither place, will Obama be visiting anytime soon. Income transfer when you buy "Dreams for my father ", is from your wallet, to Kalorama and Martha's Vineyard, where the authorities would never allow pavement to be unfixed.


    favorable to one’s own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues
     
    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their "superego" or conscience.* Even Hitler's speeches were first speaking as if in a universal court, about the injustice to and persecution of the German nation, before he could start to promise his listeners that they would become powerful and successful if they support him.

    Trump was a culture shock, because he almost didn't waste time trying to hack peoples' conscience. His speeches might begin complaining about immigrants from Mexico, but very quickly he begins to tell his audience that they will be rich and successful like him.

    -

    *There is the recent example of cryptocurrency. If you want to market cryptocurrency, you can hack peoples' superego with the presentation about how it will be a medium of exchange. Once their conscience has been distracted, then you sell to the real motive, which is access to their enjoyment gambling and becoming wealthy from Pachinko.


    particularism definitely entitled to their opinions.
     
    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it's a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.

    It's not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson's persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the "more serious topics" of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU (that presented problems to the working class like increased competition for jobs).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Coconuts

    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their “superego” or conscience.

    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it’s a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.

    I would actually support some sort of particularism & skepticism of modern social ideals, as far as it doesn’t trample others’ self-determination (like how some HBD/racists still do). It’s a good way to scrutinize modern society’s instinct for leveling and dissolving everything. But your point about persuasion stands.

    It’s not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the “more serious topics” of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU

    Just look at what A123 has been saying. His cultural strawmen (“Islamic SJW”) are pretty much rightoid caricatures that are partly accurate and partly off-the-mark, in way that strengthen his worldview [of economic and political strength of the US are systematically weakened by coordinated political interests (which is also partly approximating reality but largely too simplistic)]. Like all Trumpists his biggest goals are mainly economic, then passive-aggressively geopolitical, with the obligatory Christians vs everyone else distinction.

    Low-IQ people search for simple but powerful explanations that can answer what they’ve problematized. I sometimes do that too.

    ——

    I think what you’ve said about Middle-income Countries’ fashion might be a modernized expression of relatively traditional expectations of beauty in women. And what you expect in Sweden or anywhere “progressive” are often somewhat off-base, to put it mildly. You’ll see others say what’s wrong with advanced countries’ women more explicitly than me.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    Low-IQ people search for simple but powerful explanations that can answer what they’ve problematized. I sometimes do that too.
     
    High-IQ individuals, such as myself, see complex problems for what they are. And, communications is *also* a complex problem given that the core value of the Fake Stream Media is Leftoid deception.

    High-IQ leaders realize the power of creating deceptively simple communications that cannot be distorted by the other side. Mao had a much lengthier run up, so his Little Red Book of quotes was longer than any MAGA product. However, it served a similar purpose. So did Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.
    ____

    We need to split your next point into two pieces, carving out the center bit for a more detailed look.


    Just look at what A123 has been saying.
    ...
    in way that strengthen[s] his worldview
     
    This is actually a compliment, thank you for recognizing that I communicate effectively.

    ... His cultural strawmen (“Islamic SJW”) are pretty much rightoid caricatures ...

     

    Accurate information about SJW Ilhan Omar's beliefs is not a strawman. It is simply the TRUTH about the obvious U.S. intersection of SJW & Islam.

    Using a caricature to portray the TRUTH about radical Leftoid Muslims is simply another form of High-IQ communication. For example, here is a piece by A.F. Branco : (1)

     
    https://comicallyincorrect.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/omar-600-dt.jpg
     

    If your assertion "SJW and Islam are not linked" applies to the U.S. or Europe. Prove it:

    -- Name a U.S. elected Muslim Politician that is not a 100% committed Leftoid SJW.

    -- If The IslamoSoros is not a Muslim. Name one of his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation groups that is active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country. I have looked, and found near zero funding headed into Muslim countries. And, the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

    In the U.S. and Europe, Woke-slam is a single unified, inseparable side.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-not-anti-semitic/

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  490. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Some of the most elite schools are extremely diverse in terms of the nationality of the students(I doubt these places have terrible interethnic problems ) And this is where the world’s higher classes are produced, who will have disproportionate influence.

    On the other hand, more serious ethnic tensions are thrown on the proletarian areas – in banlieues outside Paris, in rustbelt areas of Northern England.
     
    New Left categories are driving out Old Left categories in institutionally-sanctioned speech, but realities persist.

    There is of course a question of using the votes generated by the discontent, and whether they will solve the cause of the discontent. If your votes are a result of discontent, it’s not necessarily even in your best interest to solve it.
     
    Let's honestly think about what Trumpism has done and will do, either positively or negatively, to the national strength of the US. Neither the self-affirming "MAGA" view or the derisive "Commie"-Dem view will suffice, because they are both trapped in their ideological tunnel visions. But I tend to think whatever good Trumpism has done, is to preserve some of the factors that have served the US well enough which Democrats intend to remove or change to their own political benefit.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Trumpism has done

    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign – a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden’s isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    The really discordant president has been Obama in relation to domestic policies (in external policy he was a bit more consistent to his election campaign).

    After Obama’s promises to African American votes – their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.

    But Obama’s presidency was the new “Gilded age” for the country’s elite.

    It was good for hedgefund billionaires.

    And even CEOs managed to recover and increase their salary advantage compared to the median income.

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people’s salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.

    • Agree: AP
    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign – a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden’s isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.
     
    As far as his populist platform goes, he was either too hindered by institutional interests ("Deep State") or focusing on the wrong things. His policies either missed the point or ended up causing much deeper problems in the longer term, while giving fuel for left-wing radicalization.

    Let me briefly think about his policies. Latino immigration is the result of lots of interventionist mess-ups since the Cold War, including the lost economic decade of the 80s caused by indebtedness. It can't really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn't be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic. Tariffs were done not for reindustrialization (they were still low on industrial goods from SE Asia & India and the effect on domestic labor was quite moderate) but to irritate China and set them on the course of eventual collision. Tax cuts are debatable whether you believe in corporate wealth being idle, speculative, or productive. Trumpists have forgotten it was Trump who cut a deal with the Taliban (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest). Both the Trumpist (fossil fuels) & Democrat (renewables) focus on energy have diminishing returns that only nuclear can avoid.

    Whatever he has done or could have done if he was reelected, they won't be as disastrous as what Democrats have been implementing which weren't on the table during Obama's presidency (COVID, Green New Deal, MMT & possible UBI). Wokeness is just an afterthought.

    After Obama’s promises to African American votes – their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.
     
    I don't think you take the HBD perspective in human capital. They'll probably never be equal in wealth with Whites since they don't have the right genes (or culture) to succeed in the US' capitalist economy. But there are still a lot of space for them to catch-up and this is where successive administrations haven't helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black & Latinos are used to, to White & Asian-dominated finance. (What's with the forecast of that graph?)

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people’s salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.
     
    Bernie Sanders was kicked from the race for obvious reasons, he's been challenging the whole economic establishment at least in rhetoric. This is why the Democrats under Biden have incorporated much of his platform while leaving out the core, which is economic populism.

    Replies: @Pericles, @Dmitry

  491. @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.
     
    Well, don't fret, I don't think anybody's really is, that's why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter's book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill's latest penguin translation as well.


    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.
     
    The only analogy I've really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that's an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

     

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he'd witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they're incapable of producing children, and any they 'adopt' will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it's reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don't know how familar you are with Toynbee's opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don't work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the 'city-state cosmos' is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there's definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that's rarely found in any 'big history', let alone modern works.

    Ok, I'm waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation ('Soviet Civilisation' is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by 'suicide') or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.


    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there's this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a "euthanasia centre" and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant 'fuck you' to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide.

    Eumaios has a sequence of pieces on counter-currents.com where he argues they are true believers in a utopian transhuman free-energy eugenic future that is inevitable given how brilliant they are and how trivial the technical developments are sure to be. It’s the flip side of the coin from the Bush II guy who said “we are an Empire and we create reality”.

    I’m with Gurdjieff and we all should drink a toast to the idiots!

    (The Eumaios articles are pretty good.)

  492. What was the first mainstream British film/film set in the UK that tried to pass off blacks as regular English blokes?

    Haven’t seen a huge number of British films beyond Bond, but the first I can recall is “The Italian Job” (1969). Quite startling to compare it to films of the early ’60s.

    Gorgo (1961). Kaiju movie. Only exoticism is Irish-speaking Irish at the beginning. Hundreds of extras on streets of London. Haven’t closely analyzed every frame, but it is quite possible that there isn’t a single Indian or black face in the crowds.

    Dr. No. (1962) some problematic miscegenation with a black woman. But Bond tells a black man to fetch his shoes. Written in the colony of Jamaica?

  493. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.

    For my imagination, your description made him sound like he was daydreaming about "upgrading his wife" after seeing some beautiful young Brazilian women.


    “Second world” is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don’t even know what it would refer to today (same for “third world”).
     
    I mean what we call middle income countries (although using a higher threshold than World Bank, which categorizes these as high income) - usually these are countries like Russia, Poland, Argentina, Brazil.

    There is a mix of developed and undeveloped country characteristics, sometimes in the same city.

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine), compared to in Western countries, mainly because there is in the atmosphere and memory still sense of resource insecurity, inflation and overnight bankruptcy for the middle classes - and many women seem to respond by obsessing about their nails, with beauty salons becoming the most stable shops in the city.

    At the same time, unlike in poor countries, in middle income countries most women can still afford Western fashions, cosmetics and sanitation, so the middle income countries become the world's "Goldilocks zone" for female beauty or vanity.

    There is also a stereotype of Western men finding beautiful wives in the second world, as they can increase their relative status due to the income differences. By comparison, never hear anyone talking about "beautiful Swiss women", or sex tourism to Norway or Singapore.

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women, I assume it could be reflection of these dynamics. But I didn't read his book.

    -


    Brazil is an ultra extreme mix of first world and third world. There are favelas which look worse than India. And the middle class areas of the same city appear like a paradise (or paradise for Portuguese people).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avjkQ-UOaag.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird, @AaronB

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation

    I wonder if a part of it might be that Brazil is more r-selected. So women with bigger ___ and ____. And maybe they wear more make-up etc.

    I also wonder if women in the West (thots aside) are more afraid to wear dresses and otherwise call attention to themselves than in more mono-ethnic places.

    I don’t think that is the whole explanation though. I get the impression dresses are becoming slightly less common in Japan.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @songbird

    The idea that Brazilian women are very libidinous due to the tropical environment used to be widely current. One of the major Brazilian sociologists of the first half of the 20th century wrote a very memorable book called Casa Grande e Senzala with detailed commentary on this topic:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusotropicalism

    This book helped give rise to the Luso-tropicalismo movement.

    A Brazilian woman once passed on some folk wisdom to me, in more polite language, that it is common knowledge that Brazilian women are born already having had intercourse.

    Replies: @AP

  494. @Mikel
    @Not Raul


    What’s the floor for Zimbabwean currency? They can always print more bills with more zeros. There is no floor.
     
    True. And precisely because of that, would you be willing to use millions of your dollars to buy 21 trillion of Z$ that tomorrow may be worth peanuts? So why assume that anybody else would?

    Replies: @Not Raul

    I might be willing to buy Zimbabwean currency if the price were right, and I were planning on spending it immediately.

    People do buy Zimbabwean currency. Otherwise, Zimbabwe couldn’t sell it.

  495. @Yellowface Anon
    @mal

    But the wiping-out of savings are equally pernicious, if that isn't a feature instead of a bug of CBDCs.

    Replies: @Not Raul, @mal

    It wipes out cash savings (bad); but it also wipes out debt (good). Zimbabwe had been in so much debt that perhaps it was worth it.

    • Agree: mal
  496. German_reader says:
    @Yevardian
    @German_reader


    Might well be true, tbh my opinions on late antiquity aren’t all that firm.
     
    Well, don't fret, I don't think anybody's really is, that's why it was always the period of that epoch that most interested me.
    Potter's book goes a lot into investigating how local governance and the middle management of the Empire steadily evolved over time, something that usually gets glossed over as the Emperors of the 3rd and early fourth centuries are constantly being murdered.
    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus, he takes some time to attack Hadrill's latest penguin translation as well.


    What’s currently going on in Western countries (the US especially, I’ve found it noticeable how annoying many Americans are on the net with their homo and tranny stuff) is unprecedented and not easy to explain imo.
     
    The only analogy I've really been able to think of is the rise of eunuchs, although even that's an extremely imperfect comparison. Time to quote Gibbon, because why not:

    Their progress was rapid; and the eunuchs, who, in the time of Augustus, had been abhorred, as the monstrous retinue of an Egyptian queen, were gradually admitted into the families of matrons, of senators, and of the emperors themselves. Restrained by the severe edicts of Domitian and Nerva, cherished by the pride of Diocletian, reduced to an humble station by the prudence of Constantine, they multiplied in the palaces of his degenerate sons, and insensibly acquired the knowledge, and at length the direction, of the secret councils of Constantius.
    The aversion and contempt which mankind has so uniformly entertained for that imperfect species appears to have degraded their character, and to have rendered them almost as incapable as they were supposed to be of conceiving any generous sentiment, or of performing any worthy action.

     

    He later he mentions the great ARMENIAN eunuch general later Narses as exception, in the similar conditions of awe as if he'd witnessed a flying pig, but yes.

    But who knows, perhaps there is some sort of sick logic to the present day adoption of various sexual deviants as a celebrated pet cause. After all, they're incapable of producing children, and any they 'adopt' will overwhelmingly be permanently damaged, if not worse.
    So obviously, they have no stake in the future, or any real community, so of course it's reasonable to assume such people will be more willing to give themselves over, in totality, to any government/supranational project, since they (with the possible and tiny exception of a few genuinely talented artists) essentially exist in order to pleasure and enrich themselves.

    Though perhaps the simpler explanation of all this is simply a cult of suicide. Though this seems almost universal, it seems the only country (capable of doing so) that seems to be seriously fighting this (with an intention of actually stamping it out, rather than to score cheap moralistic points) is China. But this is an extremely recent development, so we have no idea how well it will actually play out.

    I don't know how familar you are with Toynbee's opus, he implausibly stretches a lot to fit his grand framework, and several of his analogies simply don't work (his painfully laboured elaboration of Napoleon ending the 'city-state cosmos' is easily the worst, although the basic idea is fine), there's definitely an overall deep grandeur and impressiveness that's rarely found in any 'big history', let alone modern works.

    Ok, I'm waffling, but near the end of his work, his description of how Western Civilisation ('Soviet Civilisation' is considered a close variant, with a shadowy independent existence, if at all) has been left as the only non-moribund Civilisation left on earth, surrounded by the corpses (all but a few ambiguous cases being ruled to have died by 'suicide') or terminal bodies of all the others.

    Anyway, he then goes on to express his deep concern, that with every known previous civilisation having died by suicide, how can it be supposed that the Western should be any different? The problem is however, no competitor (or even viable alternative) exists, so its failure would take the entire world down with it.


    Going back to the more prosaic day-to-day manifestations of this, it reminds me a Houellebecq scene (yes, I understand the opinions of people who think lowly of him as an author, for a few legitimate reasons, call it a guilty pleasure) at the end of The Map and the Territory . In it, there's this incredible juxtoposition on a Swiss backstreet, between a "euthanasia centre" and a brothel, a few metres from each other. The first turns out to be absolutely swarming with customers, employees, trucks and vans rushing in and out of it, whilst the latter building is almost completely dead in comparison.
    Anyway, in combination with the events of the novel that led there, I found it an incredibly powerful scene, with the following denouement (no spoilers) quite moving, and sickly humorous. It was this book that finally confirmed for me that Houellebecq is genuinely great writer, which makes his flaws even more frustrating.
    Regarding that, The Map and the Territory is the only book of his (other than his debut) than contains none of those pornographic scenes which he seems to include both as a flagrant 'fuck you' to critics, and as a lazy method to ensure some cheap notoriety and brisk sales.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Almost Missouri, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard, @German_reader

    Timothy Barnes has some good monographs on the era too, I particularly enjoyed his study on Ammianus Marcellinus

    I looked that up, and he seems to make some pretty extreme claims about Ammianus’ biography (raised as a Christian, became a pagan like Julian, therefore anti-Christian subtext of his work). Interesting, but I suppose it’s a highly controversial view. I can’t judge it myself, since I haven’t read Ammianus apart from brief snippets, need to try to rectify that at some point (will take some effort though, my impression is that Ammianus’ Latin is very difficult, significantly more so than even Tacitus’…or maybe a different kind of difficulty, Ammianus’ style seems to be somewhat bombastic, with long, ornate sentences and unusual vocabulary, whereas Tacitus’s style is compressed and elliptical).

  497. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    If you post some image of the text from the book, we could see his argument without guessing.

    For my imagination, your description made him sound like he was daydreaming about "upgrading his wife" after seeing some beautiful young Brazilian women.


    “Second world” is kind of an outdated term tbh, I don’t even know what it would refer to today (same for “third world”).
     
    I mean what we call middle income countries (although using a higher threshold than World Bank, which categorizes these as high income) - usually these are countries like Russia, Poland, Argentina, Brazil.

    There is a mix of developed and undeveloped country characteristics, sometimes in the same city.

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine), compared to in Western countries, mainly because there is in the atmosphere and memory still sense of resource insecurity, inflation and overnight bankruptcy for the middle classes - and many women seem to respond by obsessing about their nails, with beauty salons becoming the most stable shops in the city.

    At the same time, unlike in poor countries, in middle income countries most women can still afford Western fashions, cosmetics and sanitation, so the middle income countries become the world's "Goldilocks zone" for female beauty or vanity.

    There is also a stereotype of Western men finding beautiful wives in the second world, as they can increase their relative status due to the income differences. By comparison, never hear anyone talking about "beautiful Swiss women", or sex tourism to Norway or Singapore.

    When you said Garton-Ash is promoting the beauty of mixed appearance Brazilian women, I assume it could be reflection of these dynamics. But I didn't read his book.

    -


    Brazil is an ultra extreme mix of first world and third world. There are favelas which look worse than India. And the middle class areas of the same city appear like a paradise (or paradise for Portuguese people).
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avjkQ-UOaag.

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird, @AaronB

    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine)

    What about rich countries like Japan and South Korea, where women focus on their beauty and personal presentation to an extreme degree – in Korea, to an almost absurd degree? (And Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc).

    And there are serious differences in wealthy countries – and within them. In very wealthy NYC, women focus far more on their beauty than in wealthy San Francisco, say. And women in wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty than America.

    I don’t think your “reductionist” sociology holds up 🙂

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    East Asian women are more neotonous.

    I suspect that factor alone would change the environment. Women who look younger tend to dress up more. Might be some carry down effect, for older-looking women, who don't bother. If so, higher average age probably explains some of the shift across the decades. Maybe, some of the regional differences as well? I bet CA or parts of CA were by dominated the youth bracket of women 18-30, for some years.

    Maybe, a similar effect in some Chinese cities?

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty

     

    These Western European consumer trends, are less to sell sex and femininity (unless perhaps in lower classes).

    Bourgeois women are focusing more on fashion to express their personality and taste, which is what happens in any extremely mature consumer market - where liberty is replaced with ersatz freedom of consumer choice.

    Many of the more elite, are wearing expensive cashmere knitted clothes, that doesn't look attractive to men, and only things that other girls appreciate.

    By comparison in the postsoviet space, the 1990s created a social pressure for young women to appear beautiful from the perspective of trying to attract men - wearing tight clothes, with bright colours. It's partly instinct of how women were responding to "second world problems", when the cage has really been shaken in the 1990s.

    We go from a situation where women in Soviet times didn't shave their legs, to by the 2000s, the beauty salon is the most stable business in the city.

    In Russia/Ukraine, there has since the 1990s been greater social pressure for young women, view fashion and beauty more like Brazilians or perhaps proletarian women in England. There is social pressure to appear beautiful and sexually available (i.e. dressing like high class escorts, often effectively, despite using cheap Chinese made clothes).

    The situation has changed in Russia in the last years and has been now strong movement to a more mature fashion market for young women, like in Western Europe or Japan, where young women are choosing clothes to express personality, cultural level or their tastes - i.e. ersatz freedom of choice, rather than to appear sexually available. There is a lot of cultural convergence to Western Europe happening now especially ultra wealthy cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

    Still if you get outside of the most fashionable cities, young women's fashions today living more in tight clothes with bright colours, to look like an escort, that should remind you of the clothes mentality women in middle income Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Djswr79YE


    Japan where women
     
    In Japan, young women appear much more obsessing about fashion, more to express their personality and individuality (to other women), than to attract men.

    They are in a later stage of consumer development or "mature market" in fashion. They look like they are behaving more like bourgeois young women in Western Europe, where a shapeless cashmere sweater and formal man's leather shoes, are what girls think is cool.

    Replies: @AaronB

  498. @German_reader
    @A123


    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets.
     
    So Poland should just pay, or what's your point?

    Replies: @A123

    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets. Politicians in each of three nations made statements intended for domestic consumption and took symbolic actions that had negligible international reach. Relations between the 3 countries were never going to be impacted.

    So Poland should just pay, or what’s your point?

    I repeated my quote above with the key part in bold. I am not sure how that was unclear… However, in the interest of civilized comity, I will rephrase:

        • There were *NO* policy changes by any of the involved countries.
        • All nations have exactly the same positions they had before.

    So, what was Poland’s position before The Kerfuffle Full of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing? That status quo remains unchanged. Presumably, claims will continue to be processed by Polish courts under Polish laws. Poland’s Constitution and national sovereignty remains strong against all foreign threats (including anti-democracy German Elites).

    It is also worth noting — The Israeli Government Is {very quietly} Satisfied With This Result, though for obvious political reasons they will not say so publicly. Upon closer examination they discovered dangerous language buried in some of the proposals aimed at siphoning money away from real Jews and towards anti-Semitic, genocidal, pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    • All nations have exactly the same positions they had before.
     
    Positions that are irreconcilable, since Poland rejects the argument that it owes compensation to Jewish organizations for heirless property.
    What's your own position on that issue?

    And this:


    pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.
     
    is of course misrepresentation:
    https://jstreet.org/press-releases/j-street-opposes-bds-defends-americans-right-to-boycott/

    Replies: @A123

  499. @AaronB
    @Dmitry


    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine)
     
    What about rich countries like Japan and South Korea, where women focus on their beauty and personal presentation to an extreme degree - in Korea, to an almost absurd degree? (And Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc).

    And there are serious differences in wealthy countries - and within them. In very wealthy NYC, women focus far more on their beauty than in wealthy San Francisco, say. And women in wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty than America.

    I don't think your "reductionist" sociology holds up :)

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    East Asian women are more neotonous.

    I suspect that factor alone would change the environment. Women who look younger tend to dress up more. Might be some carry down effect, for older-looking women, who don’t bother. If so, higher average age probably explains some of the shift across the decades. Maybe, some of the regional differences as well? I bet CA or parts of CA were by dominated the youth bracket of women 18-30, for some years.

    Maybe, a similar effect in some Chinese cities?

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think it's culture.

    Aesthetic concerns are simply more a priority for some cultures. For both men and women.

    Probably, cultures more dominated by a philosophy of abstraction/science, are less concerned with beauty.

    I would bet attitudes to "progress" also play a role - beautiful appearances are a sensuous pleasure and delight, they are immediate gratification. If your entire hope is on the "future", beauty, will seem like frivolous distractions from your "serious" task of building the future.

    It's probably the same reason ornament and embellishment in architecture went out of style.

    Replies: @songbird

  500. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation
     
    I wonder if a part of it might be that Brazil is more r-selected. So women with bigger ___ and ____. And maybe they wear more make-up etc.

    I also wonder if women in the West (thots aside) are more afraid to wear dresses and otherwise call attention to themselves than in more mono-ethnic places.

    I don't think that is the whole explanation though. I get the impression dresses are becoming slightly less common in Japan.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    The idea that Brazilian women are very libidinous due to the tropical environment used to be widely current. One of the major Brazilian sociologists of the first half of the 20th century wrote a very memorable book called Casa Grande e Senzala with detailed commentary on this topic:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusotropicalism

    This book helped give rise to the Luso-tropicalismo movement.

    A Brazilian woman once passed on some folk wisdom to me, in more polite language, that it is common knowledge that Brazilian women are born already having had intercourse.

    • LOL: songbird
    • Replies: @AP
    @Coconuts

    I once met a group of southern Brazilians, who appeared to be of German descent. It was really interesting and a bit bizarre to see these Portuguese-speaking people with obvious German features (blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes) walk, move, sway their hips in a way that is indistinguishable from other Latinos.

    I guess by their movements alone, European or American tourists in Brazil can be distinguished from locals of European-descent (which is more dangerous for tourists).

    Replies: @Dmitry

  501. @A123
    @German_reader



    The recent Israel/Poland/US kerfuffle over WW II era property claims created a huge volume of commentary here. However, if you step back and look at it objectively — the dollar amounts are incredibly tiny versus national budgets. Politicians in each of three nations made statements intended for domestic consumption and took symbolic actions that had negligible international reach. Relations between the 3 countries were never going to be impacted.
     
    So Poland should just pay, or what’s your point?
     
    I repeated my quote above with the key part in bold. I am not sure how that was unclear... However, in the interest of civilized comity, I will rephrase:

        • There were *NO* policy changes by any of the involved countries.
        • All nations have exactly the same positions they had before.

    So, what was Poland's position before The Kerfuffle Full of Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing? That status quo remains unchanged. Presumably, claims will continue to be processed by Polish courts under Polish laws. Poland's Constitution and national sovereignty remains strong against all foreign threats (including anti-democracy German Elites).

    It is also worth noting -- The Israeli Government Is {very quietly} Satisfied With This Result, though for obvious political reasons they will not say so publicly. Upon closer examination they discovered dangerous language buried in some of the proposals aimed at siphoning money away from real Jews and towards anti-Semitic, genocidal, pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    • All nations have exactly the same positions they had before.

    Positions that are irreconcilable, since Poland rejects the argument that it owes compensation to Jewish organizations for heirless property.
    What’s your own position on that issue?

    And this:

    pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    is of course misrepresentation:
    https://jstreet.org/press-releases/j-street-opposes-bds-defends-americans-right-to-boycott/

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader


    Positions that are irreconcilable, since Poland rejects the argument that it owes compensation to Jewish organizations for heirless property.
     
    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes) because Israel does not want funds flowing to anti-Semitic, Apostate organizations that hate Israel.

    What’s your own position on that issue?
     
    I have not heard of any egregious errors by the Polish system. I certainly support Polish sovereignty. At this point there is no issue. Both Poland and Israel oppose giving funds to genocidal BDS Leftoids.

    pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    is of course misrepresentation:
     


     
    Why do you believe an organization that lies about being Jewish suddenly tells the truth about their stance on BDS?

    One the key founders of J-Street launched the organization with anti-Semitic BDS funding. (1)


    The anti-Semitic BDS movement is part of a radical activist agenda to demonize Israel and target Jewish businesses in the Jewish state. It calls for illegal discrimination against Jewish and Israeli businesses—no one can claim to be pro-Israel and also stand for BDS.

    Somehow, however, the founder of one of the most prominent self-described “pro-Israel” groups has secretly been undermining the pro-Israel movement and championing BDS. At a time when American Jews are under attack, we need strong advocates for our interests, not empty words and sabotage.

    Daniel Levy, a co-founder of J Street, sits on the board of Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) where he has been a leading voice in support of massive financial grants for BDS activities. The two groups ostensibly clash when it comes to BDS policy, yet Levy’s fingerprints can be found at both organizations.
     

    The mouthing of empty platitudes is not policy. It is a smoke screen.

    J Street's actions are the exact opposite of what they say. For example: (2)


    A statement from a coalition of progressive Jewish groups rejecting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism because it included anti-Zionism among its examples encountered criticism on social media on Tuesday.

    The statement from the Progressive Israel Network, which includes the left-wing lobby group J Street, argued [against] the definition — which has been adopted by dozens of governments, NGOs, sporting organizations and other civic institutions around the world
     

    The bulk of the World's Jews realize that J Street is highly anti-Semitic.

    That being said, I have to issue a...


    😱 -- *Correction / Retraction* -- 😭

    I withdraw my claim that J Street was a named receipent.

    Upon reflection -- I seem to recall that the document referred to a Board, and then listed qualifications that would effectively guarantee Board alignment to Leftoid causes. However, it did not explicitly name specific organizations.

    I did a quick search for the distribution terms that would have been used for claims associated with heirless property, but did not receive a clean result. If I can find an authoritative source, I will post a follow-up.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.jns.org/opinion/j-street-claims-to-be-pro-israel-but-conceals-bds-ties/

    (2) https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/01/12/left-wing-jewish-groups-rejection-of-holocaust-alliance-antisemitism-definition-meets-criticism/

    Replies: @German_reader

  502. @songbird
    @AaronB

    East Asian women are more neotonous.

    I suspect that factor alone would change the environment. Women who look younger tend to dress up more. Might be some carry down effect, for older-looking women, who don't bother. If so, higher average age probably explains some of the shift across the decades. Maybe, some of the regional differences as well? I bet CA or parts of CA were by dominated the youth bracket of women 18-30, for some years.

    Maybe, a similar effect in some Chinese cities?

    Replies: @AaronB

    I think it’s culture.

    Aesthetic concerns are simply more a priority for some cultures. For both men and women.

    Probably, cultures more dominated by a philosophy of abstraction/science, are less concerned with beauty.

    I would bet attitudes to “progress” also play a role – beautiful appearances are a sensuous pleasure and delight, they are immediate gratification. If your entire hope is on the “future”, beauty, will seem like frivolous distractions from your “serious” task of building the future.

    It’s probably the same reason ornament and embellishment in architecture went out of style.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    Was recently wondering if some aspects of modern Japanese culture are really just a subconscious continuation of Shintoism, whether it carries over in the culture or is just inbuilt into the Japanese mind.

    For example, their love of kaiju movies. I think Godzilla might be about imbuing something large - I don't know, the mountains or high rises - with spirit. Something that is only possible through the modern invention of cinema, where it becomes possible to depict this scale.

    I also wonder about their love of robots. Maybe, it is just an extension of the belief that inanimate objects can have spirits. And that is why they are so willing to accept them, but we fear them.

    I have even wondered fleetingly if there might be something metaphysical about their weird fascination with robots that transform or join together. But, after all, maybe it was just about selling toys...

    Replies: @AaronB, @Dmitry

  503. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    cially” (ethnically) inferior and will mess up
     
    Parts of West Virginia are not living so much more happy than Baltimore, from the YouTube drivethroughs. (Although at least they seem to have non-liquor shops).

    This process of underinvesting or asset-stripping areas (to the extent of not even paying for the city to have a walkable pavement), can be surprisingly colour-blind - even in America.

    And in neither place, will Obama be visiting anytime soon. Income transfer when you buy "Dreams for my father ", is from your wallet, to Kalorama and Martha's Vineyard, where the authorities would never allow pavement to be unfixed.


    favorable to one’s own ideology. For many, particularism and anti-modernism (even bigotry) are virtues
     
    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their "superego" or conscience.* Even Hitler's speeches were first speaking as if in a universal court, about the injustice to and persecution of the German nation, before he could start to promise his listeners that they would become powerful and successful if they support him.

    Trump was a culture shock, because he almost didn't waste time trying to hack peoples' conscience. His speeches might begin complaining about immigrants from Mexico, but very quickly he begins to tell his audience that they will be rich and successful like him.

    -

    *There is the recent example of cryptocurrency. If you want to market cryptocurrency, you can hack peoples' superego with the presentation about how it will be a medium of exchange. Once their conscience has been distracted, then you sell to the real motive, which is access to their enjoyment gambling and becoming wealthy from Pachinko.


    particularism definitely entitled to their opinions.
     
    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it's a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.

    It's not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson's persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the "more serious topics" of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU (that presented problems to the working class like increased competition for jobs).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Coconuts

    Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism…

    There is an interesting book about Brexit and British populism by David Goodhart (at least it is my favourite analysis) called ‘The Road to Somewhere’. It is about the extent to which the group of people he identifies as ‘somewheres’, people whose identity is bound up with a particular place and local culture, used the vote to assert their presence within a political culture dominated for several decades by more globalist orientated ‘anywheres’. The immigration issue was a part of this, but there was some more to it.

    I was in an environment where there were large numbers of people were both traditional Labour voters and mostly on the left, and strongly in favour of Brexit. Hardly anyone seemed to express the point of view of these voters during the referendum campaign (maybe Farrage to some extent, but he is too free-market and libertarian), so I found Goodhart’s take relevant.

    The problem is, politics in Britain since Brexit remains mostly anywhere orientated and controlled, and things like Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture and prevent any re-emergence of ‘somewhere’ political relevance. Several important Woke ideas (for example, false consciousness, the imminent risk of ‘Fascism’ exploding onto the political scene, the centrality of the experience of ethnic minorities) seem tailor-made for this.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    globalist orientated ‘anywheres’
     
    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class "Atlanticists" in the United Kingdom.

    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom's elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.

    The interest in French or German culture, seems more located in the sober, educated, middle class demographics - especially among educated youth.

    Whereas Boris Johnson promotes a lot of relation of the Kingdom's maritime former imperial alliance to the United States of America and Australia.


    Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture

     

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, "anti-cultural appropriation" has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also "buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres", is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.

    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU. https://greekreporter.com/2019/11/27/european-commission-sues-denmark-for-marketing-danish-cheese-as-feta/

    EU was promoting this protectionist cheese policy, which is theoretically just like the woke ideology's debates against "blackface", "gayface", etc. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/jan/14/gay-roles-actors-assassination-gianni-versace-bohemian-rhapsody

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Pericles

  504. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    If you can make those people believe that this supports their self-interest.

    But still you first have to hack their “superego” or conscience.
     

    Localism and genuine cultural diversity, is real virtue, and every romantic traveller knows this. And it’s a luxury, especially after the introduction of low-cost air travel, and even more after the introduction of the internet, where our borders between our cultures are crossed at almost (depending on your internet speed) half of the speed of light.
     
    I would actually support some sort of particularism & skepticism of modern social ideals, as far as it doesn't trample others' self-determination (like how some HBD/racists still do). It's a good way to scrutinize modern society's instinct for leveling and dissolving everything. But your point about persuasion stands.

    It’s not what the average voter is responding to. Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism, but the “more serious topics” of returning money from the EU and reducing immigration from the EU
     
    Just look at what A123 has been saying. His cultural strawmen ("Islamic SJW") are pretty much rightoid caricatures that are partly accurate and partly off-the-mark, in way that strengthen his worldview [of economic and political strength of the US are systematically weakened by coordinated political interests (which is also partly approximating reality but largely too simplistic)]. Like all Trumpists his biggest goals are mainly economic, then passive-aggressively geopolitical, with the obligatory Christians vs everyone else distinction.

    Low-IQ people search for simple but powerful explanations that can answer what they've problematized. I sometimes do that too.

    ------

    I think what you've said about Middle-income Countries' fashion might be a modernized expression of relatively traditional expectations of beauty in women. And what you expect in Sweden or anywhere "progressive" are often somewhat off-base, to put it mildly. You'll see others say what's wrong with advanced countries' women more explicitly than me.

    Replies: @A123

    Low-IQ people search for simple but powerful explanations that can answer what they’ve problematized. I sometimes do that too.

    High-IQ individuals, such as myself, see complex problems for what they are. And, communications is *also* a complex problem given that the core value of the Fake Stream Media is Leftoid deception.

    High-IQ leaders realize the power of creating deceptively simple communications that cannot be distorted by the other side. Mao had a much lengthier run up, so his Little Red Book of quotes was longer than any MAGA product. However, it served a similar purpose. So did Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.
    ____

    We need to split your next point into two pieces, carving out the center bit for a more detailed look.

    Just look at what A123 has been saying.

    in way that strengthen[s] his worldview

    This is actually a compliment, thank you for recognizing that I communicate effectively.

    … His cultural strawmen (“Islamic SJW”) are pretty much rightoid caricatures …

    Accurate information about SJW Ilhan Omar’s beliefs is not a strawman. It is simply the TRUTH about the obvious U.S. intersection of SJW & Islam.

    Using a caricature to portray the TRUTH about radical Leftoid Muslims is simply another form of High-IQ communication. For example, here is a piece by A.F. Branco : (1)

      

    If your assertion “SJW and Islam are not linked” applies to the U.S. or Europe. Prove it:

    — Name a U.S. elected Muslim Politician that is not a 100% committed Leftoid SJW.

    — If The IslamoSoros is not a Muslim. Name one of his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation groups that is active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country. I have looked, and found near zero funding headed into Muslim countries. And, the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

    In the U.S. and Europe, Woke-slam is a single unified, inseparable side.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-not-anti-semitic/

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    High-IQ leaders realize the power of creating deceptively simple communications that cannot be distorted by the other side. Mao had a much lengthier run up, so his Little Red Book of quotes was longer than any MAGA product. However, it served a similar purpose. So did Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.
     
    Good for you to know this, but it doesn't change the fact that consumers of these dictums think in a simpler way. This is how propaganda works.

    Accurate information about SJW Ilhan Omar’s beliefs is not a strawman. It is simply the TRUTH about the obvious U.S. intersection of SJW & Islam.

    Using a caricature to portray the TRUTH about radical Leftoid Muslims is simply another form of High-IQ communication. For example, here is a piece by A.F. Branco :
     
    They indeed intersect but as a part of the broader drive for cultural "inclusiveness". It's undeniable.

    But you're saying explicitly the essence of wokeness is Islamic. The main political ideology Muslims have invented is political Islam, just like how fundamentalist Christians invent Christian Conservatism. It was Jewish and Gentile intellectuals who invented wokeness.

    The comics obviously appeal to the emotions of Zionists in the US, and builds on the friend-foe distinctions between Jews and Judeophiles vs Muslims. You and I can see what it says, the supposed "hypocrisy" of Omar claiming herself not being "anti-Semitic" and then sprouting obvious anti-Jewish remarks (that have been slightly flavored here). "Anti-Semitic" is one of the phrases Jewish elements in legacy mass media have pushed in order to obscure the real nature of their enemies, and which Omar took literally, thinking it to refer a hate of both Jews and Arabs. The particular flavors that guy has added are "Benjamins" (what) and "Nazi Germany" (one of the magic words the woke also use as "fascism" to immediately shut down the debate). Building your worldview fully based on his comics, the good and the bad (which you obviously do), is unrealistic.

    — Name a U.S. elected Muslim Politician that is not a 100% committed Leftoid SJW.
     
    Muslim activists and politicians are using wokeness since it's advantageous for their social & political standing and they want part of the spoils in the woke hierarchy that's being built (what irony).

    — If The IslamoSoros is not a Muslim. Name one of his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation groups that is active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country. I have looked, and found near zero funding headed into Muslim countries.
     
    Soros uses Muslim immigration against Christian-secular liberal states in Europe, and then takes what has served him well in Europe against Muslim-secular states in the Middle East, so in the end neither Europe or Middle East have social cohesion, which is the real goal of Soros.

    the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.
     
    So in your eyes, since Soros funds pro-Irân, anti-Saudi initiatives, you see a Soros-Irân-China-Russia front and a (Trumpist) USA-Israel-Saudi front. But in reality Soros want to undermine every sovereign country in the world, and Muslim ones are no exception, but only after the bigger targets are gone, namely US, China, Russia and European states. Taking the Soros factor away and you have a typical strategic view of geopolitics, from a Trumpist perspective. This means the Muslim world are being pulled by either the West or the East instead of being an independent actor.

    The historic reality is, British imperialists fostered the first Islamists (Wahhâbis & the Muslim Brotherhood) in the quest of controlling and eventually dismember the Ottoman Empire. They had a 2nd bet in the Arab Revolt & Hâshemites, but they grew too independent and their influence were curtailed and limited to only Iraq & Transjordan, letting the Saudis take Hejâz & the 2 Holy Sites. After WWII Americans and Israelis basically gave a free rein to Saudi Wâhhabis and Pakistan, while also strengthening the Shâh of Irân and Turkey, against Arab Socialism. After Arab Socialism started its fragmentation in 1973 & the Iranian Revolution of 1979, America/Israel let Egypt & Irâq change side, gave Saudi control the new Petrodollar system and as a bulwark against Irân. Saudi-trained Mojâhedins went to Afghanistan and served American interests against the Soviets. They became the first "Islamic terrorists" which the US have been using to strike fear into Western populations. America/Israel/Saudis kept on smashing Irâq, Syria, Libya & Yemen, & regime changed Egypt, always benefitting the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Wahhabis.

    Can you notice who and whose ideology keeps on appearing? Who've supported and helped that ideology to capture much of the Middle East? What's the real nature of Islamism (not the self-defense kind in Turkey's Millî Görüş or Iran's Velâyat-e Faqih)?

    Replies: @A123

  505. @AaronB
    @Dmitry


    In these countries, young women are usually on average more focusing on their beauty and personal presentation (in Russia this is starting to change as the country is increasingly economically secure, but I doubt in Ukraine)
     
    What about rich countries like Japan and South Korea, where women focus on their beauty and personal presentation to an extreme degree - in Korea, to an almost absurd degree? (And Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, etc).

    And there are serious differences in wealthy countries - and within them. In very wealthy NYC, women focus far more on their beauty than in wealthy San Francisco, say. And women in wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty than America.

    I don't think your "reductionist" sociology holds up :)

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty

    These Western European consumer trends, are less to sell sex and femininity (unless perhaps in lower classes).

    Bourgeois women are focusing more on fashion to express their personality and taste, which is what happens in any extremely mature consumer market – where liberty is replaced with ersatz freedom of consumer choice.

    Many of the more elite, are wearing expensive cashmere knitted clothes, that doesn’t look attractive to men, and only things that other girls appreciate.

    By comparison in the postsoviet space, the 1990s created a social pressure for young women to appear beautiful from the perspective of trying to attract men – wearing tight clothes, with bright colours. It’s partly instinct of how women were responding to “second world problems”, when the cage has really been shaken in the 1990s.

    We go from a situation where women in Soviet times didn’t shave their legs, to by the 2000s, the beauty salon is the most stable business in the city.

    In Russia/Ukraine, there has since the 1990s been greater social pressure for young women, view fashion and beauty more like Brazilians or perhaps proletarian women in England. There is social pressure to appear beautiful and sexually available (i.e. dressing like high class escorts, often effectively, despite using cheap Chinese made clothes).

    The situation has changed in Russia in the last years and has been now strong movement to a more mature fashion market for young women, like in Western Europe or Japan, where young women are choosing clothes to express personality, cultural level or their tastes – i.e. ersatz freedom of choice, rather than to appear sexually available. There is a lot of cultural convergence to Western Europe happening now especially ultra wealthy cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

    Still if you get outside of the most fashionable cities, young women’s fashions today living more in tight clothes with bright colours, to look like an escort, that should remind you of the clothes mentality women in middle income Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina.

    Japan where women

    In Japan, young women appear much more obsessing about fashion, more to express their personality and individuality (to other women), than to attract men.

    They are in a later stage of consumer development or “mature market” in fashion. They look like they are behaving more like bourgeois young women in Western Europe, where a shapeless cashmere sweater and formal man’s leather shoes, are what girls think is cool.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Hmmm, you do have a point.

    Women dress in "slutty" fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries, for economic reasons. You have a point with that, and I've observed that myself.

    But while you make a solid point, I think you overstate your case. Fashion becomes much more complex and refined in wealthier countries (no longer the simple, obvious, "slutty" look), true, and there is space for more girls to simply ignore what men find attractive, but many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

    Take Korea. It's a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty. The men are also extremely preoccupied with self-presentation.

    In Japan, it isn't quite as you say - yes, there are subcultures where catering to what men find attractive is completely ignored and there is greater space for self expression, but overall, most women try to be beautiful in ways that please men.

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    Also, intelligent men don't find the "slutty" look particularly appealing - they want their sex appeal, of course, but they want it generally in a more subtle, refined, and even creative and individualized, package. So there's that, too.

    As usual, you make a good point, but I think you've failed to capture larger aspects of the entire situation.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Dmitry, @iffen

  506. @German_reader
    @A123


    • All nations have exactly the same positions they had before.
     
    Positions that are irreconcilable, since Poland rejects the argument that it owes compensation to Jewish organizations for heirless property.
    What's your own position on that issue?

    And this:


    pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.
     
    is of course misrepresentation:
    https://jstreet.org/press-releases/j-street-opposes-bds-defends-americans-right-to-boycott/

    Replies: @A123

    Positions that are irreconcilable, since Poland rejects the argument that it owes compensation to Jewish organizations for heirless property.

    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes) because Israel does not want funds flowing to anti-Semitic, Apostate organizations that hate Israel.

    What’s your own position on that issue?

    I have not heard of any egregious errors by the Polish system. I certainly support Polish sovereignty. At this point there is no issue. Both Poland and Israel oppose giving funds to genocidal BDS Leftoids.

    pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    is of course misrepresentation:

    Why do you believe an organization that lies about being Jewish suddenly tells the truth about their stance on BDS?

    One the key founders of J-Street launched the organization with anti-Semitic BDS funding. (1)

    The anti-Semitic BDS movement is part of a radical activist agenda to demonize Israel and target Jewish businesses in the Jewish state. It calls for illegal discrimination against Jewish and Israeli businesses—no one can claim to be pro-Israel and also stand for BDS.

    Somehow, however, the founder of one of the most prominent self-described “pro-Israel” groups has secretly been undermining the pro-Israel movement and championing BDS. At a time when American Jews are under attack, we need strong advocates for our interests, not empty words and sabotage.

    Daniel Levy, a co-founder of J Street, sits on the board of Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) where he has been a leading voice in support of massive financial grants for BDS activities. The two groups ostensibly clash when it comes to BDS policy, yet Levy’s fingerprints can be found at both organizations.

    The mouthing of empty platitudes is not policy. It is a smoke screen.

    J Street’s actions are the exact opposite of what they say. For example: (2)

    A statement from a coalition of progressive Jewish groups rejecting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism because it included anti-Zionism among its examples encountered criticism on social media on Tuesday.

    The statement from the Progressive Israel Network, which includes the left-wing lobby group J Street, argued [against] the definition — which has been adopted by dozens of governments, NGOs, sporting organizations and other civic institutions around the world

    The bulk of the World’s Jews realize that J Street is highly anti-Semitic.

    That being said, I have to issue a…

    😱 — *Correction / Retraction* — 😭

    I withdraw my claim that J Street was a named receipent.

    Upon reflection — I seem to recall that the document referred to a Board, and then listed qualifications that would effectively guarantee Board alignment to Leftoid causes. However, it did not explicitly name specific organizations.

    I did a quick search for the distribution terms that would have been used for claims associated with heirless property, but did not receive a clean result. If I can find an authoritative source, I will post a follow-up.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.jns.org/opinion/j-street-claims-to-be-pro-israel-but-conceals-bds-ties/

    (2) https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/01/12/left-wing-jewish-groups-rejection-of-holocaust-alliance-antisemitism-definition-meets-criticism/

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes)
     
    How the hell would you know that? Do you now want to claim that you're privy to secret negotiations of the Polish, Israeli and US governments?

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

  507. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    wealthy Western Europe probably focus more on their beauty

     

    These Western European consumer trends, are less to sell sex and femininity (unless perhaps in lower classes).

    Bourgeois women are focusing more on fashion to express their personality and taste, which is what happens in any extremely mature consumer market - where liberty is replaced with ersatz freedom of consumer choice.

    Many of the more elite, are wearing expensive cashmere knitted clothes, that doesn't look attractive to men, and only things that other girls appreciate.

    By comparison in the postsoviet space, the 1990s created a social pressure for young women to appear beautiful from the perspective of trying to attract men - wearing tight clothes, with bright colours. It's partly instinct of how women were responding to "second world problems", when the cage has really been shaken in the 1990s.

    We go from a situation where women in Soviet times didn't shave their legs, to by the 2000s, the beauty salon is the most stable business in the city.

    In Russia/Ukraine, there has since the 1990s been greater social pressure for young women, view fashion and beauty more like Brazilians or perhaps proletarian women in England. There is social pressure to appear beautiful and sexually available (i.e. dressing like high class escorts, often effectively, despite using cheap Chinese made clothes).

    The situation has changed in Russia in the last years and has been now strong movement to a more mature fashion market for young women, like in Western Europe or Japan, where young women are choosing clothes to express personality, cultural level or their tastes - i.e. ersatz freedom of choice, rather than to appear sexually available. There is a lot of cultural convergence to Western Europe happening now especially ultra wealthy cities like Moscow and Saint Petersburg.

    Still if you get outside of the most fashionable cities, young women's fashions today living more in tight clothes with bright colours, to look like an escort, that should remind you of the clothes mentality women in middle income Latin American countries like Brazil and Argentina.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_Djswr79YE


    Japan where women
     
    In Japan, young women appear much more obsessing about fashion, more to express their personality and individuality (to other women), than to attract men.

    They are in a later stage of consumer development or "mature market" in fashion. They look like they are behaving more like bourgeois young women in Western Europe, where a shapeless cashmere sweater and formal man's leather shoes, are what girls think is cool.

    Replies: @AaronB

    Hmmm, you do have a point.

    Women dress in “slutty” fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries, for economic reasons. You have a point with that, and I’ve observed that myself.

    But while you make a solid point, I think you overstate your case. Fashion becomes much more complex and refined in wealthier countries (no longer the simple, obvious, “slutty” look), true, and there is space for more girls to simply ignore what men find attractive, but many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

    Take Korea. It’s a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty. The men are also extremely preoccupied with self-presentation.

    In Japan, it isn’t quite as you say – yes, there are subcultures where catering to what men find attractive is completely ignored and there is greater space for self expression, but overall, most women try to be beautiful in ways that please men.

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    Also, intelligent men don’t find the “slutty” look particularly appealing – they want their sex appeal, of course, but they want it generally in a more subtle, refined, and even creative and individualized, package. So there’s that, too.

    As usual, you make a good point, but I think you’ve failed to capture larger aspects of the entire situation.

    • Replies: @John Johnson
    @AaronB

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    When was the last time you went to LA?

    The average woman is an overweight Mexican in sweats with a Mexican boyfriend sporting an oversized and faded Lakers shirt.

    , @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

     

    My girlfriend is Polish and we are not from any elite Western European culture. Although we live in Western Europe, and her main clothes interests are mostly such "sexy" things as scarves and shapeless knitted sweater.

    I.e. her most expensive thing in the closet is kind of clothes that grandmothers wear, and that has to be stored in plastic so that moths do not eat them.

    About half of Western European young women are wearing this kind "loafer" shoes now (https://www.selfridges.com/IE/en/cat/christian-louboutin-mocalaureat-flat-calf-abrasivato-navy-wh_R03681714). Middle class girls are starting to look like little versions of Charlie Chaplin.

    I'm almost predicting that smaller version of men's top hats will soon become fashionable with the European women.

    Of course, a lot of women are more dressing more sexy and glamorous than this, but without the social pressure a lot of women revert to their interest in scarves, bags and phonecases.

    Being interested in your phonecase or your scarf, is of course a very stereotypically feminine personality trait, but it's only something which impresses other women.


    Women dress in “slutty” fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries,

     

    And also in subcultures in Western Europe like gypsies.

    If you believe Netflix, the subculture of ex-Haredi Jewish women in New York have a bit of gypsy attitude developing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a553JOZq-4. .


    San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA
     
    Lol although half of the women in Los Angeles are from a Latin American origin. And the city's fashion leading family are secular Armenians.

    Korea. It’s a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty.
     
    Among the capitalist countries, Korea is only recently high income on the World Bank database.

    In 2003 South Korea has a lower GDP per capita than (still relatively new to capitalism) Russia in 2013. As late as 2013 a year before the devaluation in Russia, Korea was only 10 years ahead of Russia in this indicator.

    In 1990s, South Korea was similar to Argentina. South Korea become high income (in a colloquial sense of this concept) around 2006, similar in year to Israel.

    Korea is almost the world's newest high income country.
    https://i.imgur.com/qPMa6QS.jpg

    So I'll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket - probably more in the direction of Japan.

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @iffen
    @AaronB

    intelligent men don’t find the “slutty” look particularly appealing

    Speak for yourself AaronB.

    Maybe you are not as intelligent as you think.

    Mmmm, wait, maybe I'm not as ........ Never mind, let's just skip it.

  508. @A123
    @German_reader


    Positions that are irreconcilable, since Poland rejects the argument that it owes compensation to Jewish organizations for heirless property.
     
    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes) because Israel does not want funds flowing to anti-Semitic, Apostate organizations that hate Israel.

    What’s your own position on that issue?
     
    I have not heard of any egregious errors by the Polish system. I certainly support Polish sovereignty. At this point there is no issue. Both Poland and Israel oppose giving funds to genocidal BDS Leftoids.

    pro-BDS organizations like J-Street.

    is of course misrepresentation:
     


     
    Why do you believe an organization that lies about being Jewish suddenly tells the truth about their stance on BDS?

    One the key founders of J-Street launched the organization with anti-Semitic BDS funding. (1)


    The anti-Semitic BDS movement is part of a radical activist agenda to demonize Israel and target Jewish businesses in the Jewish state. It calls for illegal discrimination against Jewish and Israeli businesses—no one can claim to be pro-Israel and also stand for BDS.

    Somehow, however, the founder of one of the most prominent self-described “pro-Israel” groups has secretly been undermining the pro-Israel movement and championing BDS. At a time when American Jews are under attack, we need strong advocates for our interests, not empty words and sabotage.

    Daniel Levy, a co-founder of J Street, sits on the board of Rockefeller Brothers Fund (RBF) where he has been a leading voice in support of massive financial grants for BDS activities. The two groups ostensibly clash when it comes to BDS policy, yet Levy’s fingerprints can be found at both organizations.
     

    The mouthing of empty platitudes is not policy. It is a smoke screen.

    J Street's actions are the exact opposite of what they say. For example: (2)


    A statement from a coalition of progressive Jewish groups rejecting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism because it included anti-Zionism among its examples encountered criticism on social media on Tuesday.

    The statement from the Progressive Israel Network, which includes the left-wing lobby group J Street, argued [against] the definition — which has been adopted by dozens of governments, NGOs, sporting organizations and other civic institutions around the world
     

    The bulk of the World's Jews realize that J Street is highly anti-Semitic.

    That being said, I have to issue a...


    😱 -- *Correction / Retraction* -- 😭

    I withdraw my claim that J Street was a named receipent.

    Upon reflection -- I seem to recall that the document referred to a Board, and then listed qualifications that would effectively guarantee Board alignment to Leftoid causes. However, it did not explicitly name specific organizations.

    I did a quick search for the distribution terms that would have been used for claims associated with heirless property, but did not receive a clean result. If I can find an authoritative source, I will post a follow-up.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.jns.org/opinion/j-street-claims-to-be-pro-israel-but-conceals-bds-ties/

    (2) https://www.algemeiner.com/2021/01/12/left-wing-jewish-groups-rejection-of-holocaust-alliance-antisemitism-definition-meets-criticism/

    Replies: @German_reader

    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes)

    How the hell would you know that? Do you now want to claim that you’re privy to secret negotiations of the Polish, Israeli and US governments?

    • Troll: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader

    Why do you think common sense requires ultra secret high level meetings?

    Unlike you -- I observe facts, use logic, and reach rational conclusions. The politicians in all three countries let the matter drop and nothing more has been heard about it.

    Which is infinitly more likely -- The lack of action by all sides indicates:
        -A- The matter is in a satisfactory state for all parties.
        -G- Total silence is escalation towards collapse.

    How in Jesus's name do you know that "Silence = Escalation"?
    Is Israel "Silently Responding" to Iranian aggression?

    Your German theory is bizarre and illogical. Are you stuck in the same desperation mode as your Precious Merkel? I hate to break it to you, but she is on the way out. And, chances are quite poor for your Precious Laschet. You are clearly stuck in the Anger stage, still Grieving for your Elite CDU loss.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    , @iffen
    @German_reader

    You don't want to write comments about WWII, but you don't mind engaging with a propaganda operation.

    Makes perfect sense to me.

    Replies: @German_reader

  509. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Boris Johnson’s persona has promoted somekind of English eccentricity and particularism, but his Brexit was successful not because of localism...
     
    There is an interesting book about Brexit and British populism by David Goodhart (at least it is my favourite analysis) called 'The Road to Somewhere'. It is about the extent to which the group of people he identifies as 'somewheres', people whose identity is bound up with a particular place and local culture, used the vote to assert their presence within a political culture dominated for several decades by more globalist orientated 'anywheres'. The immigration issue was a part of this, but there was some more to it.

    I was in an environment where there were large numbers of people were both traditional Labour voters and mostly on the left, and strongly in favour of Brexit. Hardly anyone seemed to express the point of view of these voters during the referendum campaign (maybe Farrage to some extent, but he is too free-market and libertarian), so I found Goodhart's take relevant.

    The problem is, politics in Britain since Brexit remains mostly anywhere orientated and controlled, and things like Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture and prevent any re-emergence of 'somewhere' political relevance. Several important Woke ideas (for example, false consciousness, the imminent risk of 'Fascism' exploding onto the political scene, the centrality of the experience of ethnic minorities) seem tailor-made for this.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    globalist orientated ‘anywheres’

    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class “Atlanticists” in the United Kingdom.

    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom’s elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.

    The interest in French or German culture, seems more located in the sober, educated, middle class demographics – especially among educated youth.

    Whereas Boris Johnson promotes a lot of relation of the Kingdom’s maritime former imperial alliance to the United States of America and Australia.

    Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also “buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres”, is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.

    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU. https://greekreporter.com/2019/11/27/european-commission-sues-denmark-for-marketing-danish-cheese-as-feta/

    EU was promoting this protectionist cheese policy, which is theoretically just like the woke ideology’s debates against “blackface”, “gayface”, etc. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/jan/14/gay-roles-actors-assassination-gianni-versace-bohemian-rhapsody

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class “Atlanticists” in the United Kingdom.
     
    While the referendum campaign was happening I largely didn't follow the debate because I was sure that remain would win by a 10 or 15% margin, leave appeared to be a protest vote or had this strong provincial feel, either UKIP type 'little Englanders' or old left. I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.

    I don't know how many of them they are, but one of David Goodhart's motivations for writing his book seems to have been to draw attention to the majority of Brexit voters, who weren't of this type. The situation makes me think of those elite theorists of politics like Pareto and Michels, because there was a potentially large 'somewhere' political constituency, but few elites to represent it, so it mostly remains in a politically inert state.

    There was quite strong support for the EU from within ethnic minorities, it seems to me this could be a politically sensitive issue, because you can see a potentially significant conflict of interest here between ethnic minorities and the groups more attached to some version of the historic British state.


    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.
     
    As far as I know this only applies to non-white groups when their culture is appropriated by whites though. In Woke the only oppressed whites can be those who suffer oppression due to their sexual and gender identities or due to disability. (Also fatness, because there is a Critical Fat Studies field). They sometimes talk about class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement's 'Achilles Heel'.

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry

    , @Pericles
    @Dmitry


    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU.

     

    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can't market 'Tel Aviv Champagne' or whatever either. I think it's good overall -- build your own brand instead of free riding. There's too much adulteration of terms already.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP

  510. @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think it's culture.

    Aesthetic concerns are simply more a priority for some cultures. For both men and women.

    Probably, cultures more dominated by a philosophy of abstraction/science, are less concerned with beauty.

    I would bet attitudes to "progress" also play a role - beautiful appearances are a sensuous pleasure and delight, they are immediate gratification. If your entire hope is on the "future", beauty, will seem like frivolous distractions from your "serious" task of building the future.

    It's probably the same reason ornament and embellishment in architecture went out of style.

    Replies: @songbird

    Was recently wondering if some aspects of modern Japanese culture are really just a subconscious continuation of Shintoism, whether it carries over in the culture or is just inbuilt into the Japanese mind.

    For example, their love of kaiju movies. I think Godzilla might be about imbuing something large – I don’t know, the mountains or high rises – with spirit. Something that is only possible through the modern invention of cinema, where it becomes possible to depict this scale.

    I also wonder about their love of robots. Maybe, it is just an extension of the belief that inanimate objects can have spirits. And that is why they are so willing to accept them, but we fear them.

    I have even wondered fleetingly if there might be something metaphysical about their weird fascination with robots that transform or join together. But, after all, maybe it was just about selling toys…

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think those are all good points.

    There is a lingering animism to Japanese culture which I find quite attractive, and which I think gives them strength. They are very modern on the surface, but have not really adopted rationalism as a world view to quite the extent the West has - the "disenchantment of the world" is not really so advanced in Japan.

    Robots, also, are more acceptable to them because they are more comfortable with illusion. It's a Buddhist culture that does not have the West's belief in "essences".

    I remember being surprised reading in Jared Taylor's book on Japan how the Japanese have no problem going to Thailand and paying for the illusion of love with escorts - something that most Westerners find "empty", because they are not content with appearances and demand "substance".

    The whole Asian concern with "face" comes from this Buddhist sense that life is basically an illusion.

    Not believing in essences, they also don't get obsessed and hung up like us on nonsense, and they don't need politics to reflect substance but only be about practical arrangements.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Dmitry
    @songbird


    fascination with robots
     
    It think it can be related to the traditional Japanese love of insects? Although some Japanese philosophers famously related their robotic interests to Buddhism (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/336031.The_Buddha_in_the_Robot).

    Any engineers that try to encourage a fly to escape from your bedroom, will notice how strangely using shortcuts their thought process is compared to our one. Flies seem to be behaving like an easy to program robot but using an algorithm with exponential time complexity to find the empty window.

    Love of insects to love of robots, is not such a far distance, and looking at insects too much could inspire you to robotics - observing insects will even provide you the guidelines for efficient and shortcut programming of robots.

    And we notice that traditional Japanese culture is obsessed with insects, and the children collect beetles as a hobby.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0whuKiPYl8

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @utu

  511. @songbird
    @AaronB

    Was recently wondering if some aspects of modern Japanese culture are really just a subconscious continuation of Shintoism, whether it carries over in the culture or is just inbuilt into the Japanese mind.

    For example, their love of kaiju movies. I think Godzilla might be about imbuing something large - I don't know, the mountains or high rises - with spirit. Something that is only possible through the modern invention of cinema, where it becomes possible to depict this scale.

    I also wonder about their love of robots. Maybe, it is just an extension of the belief that inanimate objects can have spirits. And that is why they are so willing to accept them, but we fear them.

    I have even wondered fleetingly if there might be something metaphysical about their weird fascination with robots that transform or join together. But, after all, maybe it was just about selling toys...

    Replies: @AaronB, @Dmitry

    I think those are all good points.

    There is a lingering animism to Japanese culture which I find quite attractive, and which I think gives them strength. They are very modern on the surface, but have not really adopted rationalism as a world view to quite the extent the West has – the “disenchantment of the world” is not really so advanced in Japan.

    Robots, also, are more acceptable to them because they are more comfortable with illusion. It’s a Buddhist culture that does not have the West’s belief in “essences”.

    I remember being surprised reading in Jared Taylor’s book on Japan how the Japanese have no problem going to Thailand and paying for the illusion of love with escorts – something that most Westerners find “empty”, because they are not content with appearances and demand “substance”.

    The whole Asian concern with “face” comes from this Buddhist sense that life is basically an illusion.

    Not believing in essences, they also don’t get obsessed and hung up like us on nonsense, and they don’t need politics to reflect substance but only be about practical arrangements.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    I suspect that anime also shows a difference in mindset about appearances and reality.

    I know not everyone in Japan watches it, but in the West, it seems like there is a visceral rejection of it as a medium for normal people. Some explain it as being only for kids, while others say it warps the mind and turns people into trannies.

    Perhaps, it is related to the way that traditional Japanese art seems more stylized, while Europeans were often aiming at realism.

    Replies: @AaronB

  512. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Hmmm, you do have a point.

    Women dress in "slutty" fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries, for economic reasons. You have a point with that, and I've observed that myself.

    But while you make a solid point, I think you overstate your case. Fashion becomes much more complex and refined in wealthier countries (no longer the simple, obvious, "slutty" look), true, and there is space for more girls to simply ignore what men find attractive, but many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

    Take Korea. It's a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty. The men are also extremely preoccupied with self-presentation.

    In Japan, it isn't quite as you say - yes, there are subcultures where catering to what men find attractive is completely ignored and there is greater space for self expression, but overall, most women try to be beautiful in ways that please men.

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    Also, intelligent men don't find the "slutty" look particularly appealing - they want their sex appeal, of course, but they want it generally in a more subtle, refined, and even creative and individualized, package. So there's that, too.

    As usual, you make a good point, but I think you've failed to capture larger aspects of the entire situation.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Dmitry, @iffen

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    When was the last time you went to LA?

    The average woman is an overweight Mexican in sweats with a Mexican boyfriend sporting an oversized and faded Lakers shirt.

  513. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Hmmm, you do have a point.

    Women dress in "slutty" fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries, for economic reasons. You have a point with that, and I've observed that myself.

    But while you make a solid point, I think you overstate your case. Fashion becomes much more complex and refined in wealthier countries (no longer the simple, obvious, "slutty" look), true, and there is space for more girls to simply ignore what men find attractive, but many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

    Take Korea. It's a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty. The men are also extremely preoccupied with self-presentation.

    In Japan, it isn't quite as you say - yes, there are subcultures where catering to what men find attractive is completely ignored and there is greater space for self expression, but overall, most women try to be beautiful in ways that please men.

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    Also, intelligent men don't find the "slutty" look particularly appealing - they want their sex appeal, of course, but they want it generally in a more subtle, refined, and even creative and individualized, package. So there's that, too.

    As usual, you make a good point, but I think you've failed to capture larger aspects of the entire situation.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Dmitry, @iffen

    many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

    My girlfriend is Polish and we are not from any elite Western European culture. Although we live in Western Europe, and her main clothes interests are mostly such “sexy” things as scarves and shapeless knitted sweater.

    I.e. her most expensive thing in the closet is kind of clothes that grandmothers wear, and that has to be stored in plastic so that moths do not eat them.

    About half of Western European young women are wearing this kind “loafer” shoes now (https://www.selfridges.com/IE/en/cat/christian-louboutin-mocalaureat-flat-calf-abrasivato-navy-wh_R03681714). Middle class girls are starting to look like little versions of Charlie Chaplin.

    I’m almost predicting that smaller version of men’s top hats will soon become fashionable with the European women.

    Of course, a lot of women are more dressing more sexy and glamorous than this, but without the social pressure a lot of women revert to their interest in scarves, bags and phonecases.

    Being interested in your phonecase or your scarf, is of course a very stereotypically feminine personality trait, but it’s only something which impresses other women.

    Women dress in “slutty” fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries,

    And also in subcultures in Western Europe like gypsies.

    If you believe Netflix, the subculture of ex-Haredi Jewish women in New York have a bit of gypsy attitude developing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a553JOZq-4. .

    San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA

    Lol although half of the women in Los Angeles are from a Latin American origin. And the city’s fashion leading family are secular Armenians.

    Korea. It’s a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty.

    Among the capitalist countries, Korea is only recently high income on the World Bank database.

    In 2003 South Korea has a lower GDP per capita than (still relatively new to capitalism) Russia in 2013. As late as 2013 a year before the devaluation in Russia, Korea was only 10 years ahead of Russia in this indicator.

    In 1990s, South Korea was similar to Argentina. South Korea become high income (in a colloquial sense of this concept) around 2006, similar in year to Israel.

    Korea is almost the world’s newest high income country.

    So I’ll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket – probably more in the direction of Japan.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Definitely, in wealthy countries there is less pressure for women to maximize their "assets" in the most vulgar and obvious ways, that's for sure. That's definitely a dynamic that you've put your finger on.

    But I'm on the subways every morning in NY, and I see lots of attractive women with good feminine style, if often a bit toned down and often quirky and creative and individual. And there is also space for many women to just do their own thing, however weird, which I think is great.

    But there is definitely an interest in beauty and self presentation and being attractive to men.

    As for LA, sure, it's a huge sprawling multi-ethnic city. I'm talking about the parts that are American and White (and assimilated non-Whites), not the Mexican parts or the Kardashian Armenian type areas. It has that too, of course, but I have no idea what goes on there.

    If you go the hipster bars in Silverlake (at least ten years ago), you will find tons of attractive women who care about appearance.

    (My answer to John Johnson too).


    So I’ll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket – probably more in the direction of Japan.
     
    I certainly hope so. Korean beauty standards, though extremely rigorous, are rather bland, uniform, and soulless today, for both men and women.

    They need personality, creativity, and individuality. Korean film and television has become quite creative and good lately, so I am hopeful for them.

    Japanese beauty standards in personal appearance are generally much higher than the (modern) West (and certainly America) , and having feminine appeal is balanced nicely with personal style and quirkiness, while there is also cultural space for those women who want to be eccentric and not care at all what men like to do their thing.

    Korea could do much worse.

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Dmitry

  514. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

     

    My girlfriend is Polish and we are not from any elite Western European culture. Although we live in Western Europe, and her main clothes interests are mostly such "sexy" things as scarves and shapeless knitted sweater.

    I.e. her most expensive thing in the closet is kind of clothes that grandmothers wear, and that has to be stored in plastic so that moths do not eat them.

    About half of Western European young women are wearing this kind "loafer" shoes now (https://www.selfridges.com/IE/en/cat/christian-louboutin-mocalaureat-flat-calf-abrasivato-navy-wh_R03681714). Middle class girls are starting to look like little versions of Charlie Chaplin.

    I'm almost predicting that smaller version of men's top hats will soon become fashionable with the European women.

    Of course, a lot of women are more dressing more sexy and glamorous than this, but without the social pressure a lot of women revert to their interest in scarves, bags and phonecases.

    Being interested in your phonecase or your scarf, is of course a very stereotypically feminine personality trait, but it's only something which impresses other women.


    Women dress in “slutty” fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries,

     

    And also in subcultures in Western Europe like gypsies.

    If you believe Netflix, the subculture of ex-Haredi Jewish women in New York have a bit of gypsy attitude developing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a553JOZq-4. .


    San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA
     
    Lol although half of the women in Los Angeles are from a Latin American origin. And the city's fashion leading family are secular Armenians.

    Korea. It’s a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty.
     
    Among the capitalist countries, Korea is only recently high income on the World Bank database.

    In 2003 South Korea has a lower GDP per capita than (still relatively new to capitalism) Russia in 2013. As late as 2013 a year before the devaluation in Russia, Korea was only 10 years ahead of Russia in this indicator.

    In 1990s, South Korea was similar to Argentina. South Korea become high income (in a colloquial sense of this concept) around 2006, similar in year to Israel.

    Korea is almost the world's newest high income country.
    https://i.imgur.com/qPMa6QS.jpg

    So I'll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket - probably more in the direction of Japan.

    Replies: @AaronB

    Definitely, in wealthy countries there is less pressure for women to maximize their “assets” in the most vulgar and obvious ways, that’s for sure. That’s definitely a dynamic that you’ve put your finger on.

    But I’m on the subways every morning in NY, and I see lots of attractive women with good feminine style, if often a bit toned down and often quirky and creative and individual. And there is also space for many women to just do their own thing, however weird, which I think is great.

    But there is definitely an interest in beauty and self presentation and being attractive to men.

    As for LA, sure, it’s a huge sprawling multi-ethnic city. I’m talking about the parts that are American and White (and assimilated non-Whites), not the Mexican parts or the Kardashian Armenian type areas. It has that too, of course, but I have no idea what goes on there.

    If you go the hipster bars in Silverlake (at least ten years ago), you will find tons of attractive women who care about appearance.

    (My answer to John Johnson too).

    So I’ll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket – probably more in the direction of Japan.

    I certainly hope so. Korean beauty standards, though extremely rigorous, are rather bland, uniform, and soulless today, for both men and women.

    They need personality, creativity, and individuality. Korean film and television has become quite creative and good lately, so I am hopeful for them.

    Japanese beauty standards in personal appearance are generally much higher than the (modern) West (and certainly America) , and having feminine appeal is balanced nicely with personal style and quirkiness, while there is also cultural space for those women who want to be eccentric and not care at all what men like to do their thing.

    Korea could do much worse.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @AaronB


    Definitely, in wealthy countries there is less pressure for women to maximize their “assets” in the most vulgar and obvious ways, that’s for sure.
     
    I don't know what happened to British 'dating' culture when I was in my early 20s, there seemed to be a massive tendency for revealing and sexualised clothing, women engaging in heavy drinking and drug use, lipstick lesbianism, sex in public places and so on.

    When I first got to Lithuania and Belarus it seemed like women had relatively higher and more refined, traditional standards (for example, aiming at looking like an elegant expensive escort rather than a street corner one) even though they had less money.

    Now things seem to have calmed down or it happens via apps. I wonder if many men develop dark and tragic erotic obssessions anymore, the kind of thing Serge Gainsbourg used to make concept albums about in the 1970s:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB0X3wx3fX0&list=PLAyqE9JL0JKNDxPc15aBzFLbFSj3JkrpE

    , @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    subways every morning in NY,
     
    How do you find living in New York nowadays and what areas do you recommend. I will hopefully visit next year depending on the pandemic, and not visited America now for several years.

    If you can survive every morning there, I'm assuming the subway is not as "creepy" as it was in 1990. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LFxrPhNGAk.)

    Replies: @AaronB

  515. @songbird
    @AaronB

    Was recently wondering if some aspects of modern Japanese culture are really just a subconscious continuation of Shintoism, whether it carries over in the culture or is just inbuilt into the Japanese mind.

    For example, their love of kaiju movies. I think Godzilla might be about imbuing something large - I don't know, the mountains or high rises - with spirit. Something that is only possible through the modern invention of cinema, where it becomes possible to depict this scale.

    I also wonder about their love of robots. Maybe, it is just an extension of the belief that inanimate objects can have spirits. And that is why they are so willing to accept them, but we fear them.

    I have even wondered fleetingly if there might be something metaphysical about their weird fascination with robots that transform or join together. But, after all, maybe it was just about selling toys...

    Replies: @AaronB, @Dmitry

    fascination with robots

    It think it can be related to the traditional Japanese love of insects? Although some Japanese philosophers famously related their robotic interests to Buddhism (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/336031.The_Buddha_in_the_Robot).

    Any engineers that try to encourage a fly to escape from your bedroom, will notice how strangely using shortcuts their thought process is compared to our one. Flies seem to be behaving like an easy to program robot but using an algorithm with exponential time complexity to find the empty window.

    Love of insects to love of robots, is not such a far distance, and looking at insects too much could inspire you to robotics – observing insects will even provide you the guidelines for efficient and shortcut programming of robots.

    And we notice that traditional Japanese culture is obsessed with insects, and the children collect beetles as a hobby.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    Been feeling like those fashions trends you've been discussing are quite decadent. Maybe they have always been decadent since the Black Death!

    S Korea, Taiwan, and even China (outside of CCP's reach in the domestic sphere) have been learning Japanese fashion for a decade now.

    ---


    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom’s elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.
     
    The shadows of 19th century ideals are coming back and haunting us. Wokeness is just Victorian ethics and Imperialism in reverse, which is why people with pre-60s ethics hate wokeness.

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also “buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres”, is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.
     
    The last point is a good development, imho. Maybe the first one too if you see it from viewpoints of promoting cultural indigeneity, but the accusation is really abused against mostly harmless stuff.

    ---

    Thanks for the cultural/quasi-HBD observation on insects/robotics. It also explains the prominence of yokais in folklore - spirits and monsters that all have their distinct archetypes, forms and abilities. The Japanese mind is used to collecting curiosities, going thru them one by one, while categorizing and differentiating them. It's good for the kind of analytics useful for automation/robotics.

    BTW a little word to AaronB, outside of the highly stylized faces & hairstyle, anime body proportions are no less realistic than American superhero comics, not to mention adult content. Mangakas and anime artists usually train themselves in sketching realistic body proportions and then embellish the bodies with their art styles and preferences. Also it's interesting to notice how animes/mangas and cartoons have different emphases on the face: Anime almost always focus on the eyes where female ones are usually large and have well-detailed irises. Cartoons tend to distort the facial structure any way the artists want.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @utu
    @Dmitry

    Collecting and playing with insects like grass hoppers, June bugs, dung beetles or having ant farms was pretty universal I think for boys of certain age in Europe.

    But your connection to robots and AI is correct. The AI program or philosophy of Rodney Brooks of MIT was to jumpstart AI development by emulating insect like robots which would be embedded in reality that would be a short cut of millions of years of evolution instead of what was the dominant AI program of creating a disembodied computer brain like a brain in a jar.

    Nouvelle artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to artificial intelligence pioneered in the 1980s by Rodney Brooks, who was then part of MIT artificial intelligence laboratory. Nouvelle AI differs from classical AI by aiming to produce robots with intelligence levels similar to insects. Researchers believe that intelligence can emerge organically from simple behaviors as these intelligences interacted with the "real world," instead of using the constructed worlds which symbolic AIs typically needed to have programmed into them. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_AI

    Military has many application for insectoid robots, so Rodney Brooks was funded well. He was also behind Roomba. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot

    Replies: @Dmitry

  516. @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think those are all good points.

    There is a lingering animism to Japanese culture which I find quite attractive, and which I think gives them strength. They are very modern on the surface, but have not really adopted rationalism as a world view to quite the extent the West has - the "disenchantment of the world" is not really so advanced in Japan.

    Robots, also, are more acceptable to them because they are more comfortable with illusion. It's a Buddhist culture that does not have the West's belief in "essences".

    I remember being surprised reading in Jared Taylor's book on Japan how the Japanese have no problem going to Thailand and paying for the illusion of love with escorts - something that most Westerners find "empty", because they are not content with appearances and demand "substance".

    The whole Asian concern with "face" comes from this Buddhist sense that life is basically an illusion.

    Not believing in essences, they also don't get obsessed and hung up like us on nonsense, and they don't need politics to reflect substance but only be about practical arrangements.

    Replies: @songbird

    I suspect that anime also shows a difference in mindset about appearances and reality.

    I know not everyone in Japan watches it, but in the West, it seems like there is a visceral rejection of it as a medium for normal people. Some explain it as being only for kids, while others say it warps the mind and turns people into trannies.

    Perhaps, it is related to the way that traditional Japanese art seems more stylized, while Europeans were often aiming at realism.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @songbird

    Anime has actually become hugely popular in the West among the young lately.

    There's lots of different animes too, lots of it not particularly stylized in that way you may not not like and more realistic.

    But yes, in general, everything in Japan is more "stylized" because of this sense of illusion and appearance. Things are more of a "game" , as there is no true substance. You can fun and aim for "pointless" beauty.

    European realism really only peaked beginning in the 19th century. Oscar Wilde railed against realism in fiction, as inartistic.

    Replies: @songbird

  517. @songbird
    @AaronB

    I suspect that anime also shows a difference in mindset about appearances and reality.

    I know not everyone in Japan watches it, but in the West, it seems like there is a visceral rejection of it as a medium for normal people. Some explain it as being only for kids, while others say it warps the mind and turns people into trannies.

    Perhaps, it is related to the way that traditional Japanese art seems more stylized, while Europeans were often aiming at realism.

    Replies: @AaronB

    Anime has actually become hugely popular in the West among the young lately.

    There’s lots of different animes too, lots of it not particularly stylized in that way you may not not like and more realistic.

    But yes, in general, everything in Japan is more “stylized” because of this sense of illusion and appearance. Things are more of a “game” , as there is no true substance. You can fun and aim for “pointless” beauty.

    European realism really only peaked beginning in the 19th century. Oscar Wilde railed against realism in fiction, as inartistic.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    I don't know if it could be extended to China or not. But HK cinema is very stylized. At least wuxia. It strikes me that to the Chinese, there must be an implicit assumption that it is fiction - an assumption in every frame, throughout the whole experience.

    Almost like seeing a silent comedy in the West, where motions are exaggerated and the framerate moves things faster than in real life, but we accept it as a comedy, and think nothing of the odd movements, or, at least, once did.

    Perhaps, this helps explain why the characters in HK action movies can be trying to kill each other in one moment but then be friends in the next. The whole story is viewed through a lens of abstraction, with no desire or expectation for realism.

    I feel like, despite the trend of Marvel movies, in the West, people desire more realism and disdain moments of unreality and often eschew fantasy elements, though they do seem to be increasing. (I wouldn't necessarily say that it is a positive trend.)

    Replies: @iffen, @AaronB

  518. @German_reader
    @A123


    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes)
     
    How the hell would you know that? Do you now want to claim that you're privy to secret negotiations of the Polish, Israeli and US governments?

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    Why do you think common sense requires ultra secret high level meetings?

    Unlike you — I observe facts, use logic, and reach rational conclusions. The politicians in all three countries let the matter drop and nothing more has been heard about it.

    Which is infinitly more likely — The lack of action by all sides indicates:
        -A- The matter is in a satisfactory state for all parties.
        -G- Total silence is escalation towards collapse.

    How in Jesus’s name do you know that “Silence = Escalation”?
    Is Israel “Silently Responding” to Iranian aggression?

    Your German theory is bizarre and illogical. Are you stuck in the same desperation mode as your Precious Merkel? I hate to break it to you, but she is on the way out. And, chances are quite poor for your Precious Laschet. You are clearly stuck in the Anger stage, still Grieving for your Elite CDU loss.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  519. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    Trumpism has done
     
    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign - a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden's isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    The really discordant president has been Obama in relation to domestic policies (in external policy he was a bit more consistent to his election campaign).

    After Obama's promises to African American votes - their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.

    https://i.imgur.com/mIdC6ci.jpg

    But Obama's presidency was the new "Gilded age" for the country's elite.

    https://i.imgur.com/oUpYzWb.jpg

    It was good for hedgefund billionaires.
    https://i.imgur.com/T2iQwQF.png

    And even CEOs managed to recover and increase their salary advantage compared to the median income.
    https://i.imgur.com/RprUvlD.png

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people's salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign – a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden’s isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.

    As far as his populist platform goes, he was either too hindered by institutional interests (“Deep State”) or focusing on the wrong things. His policies either missed the point or ended up causing much deeper problems in the longer term, while giving fuel for left-wing radicalization.

    Let me briefly think about his policies. Latino immigration is the result of lots of interventionist mess-ups since the Cold War, including the lost economic decade of the 80s caused by indebtedness. It can’t really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn’t be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic. Tariffs were done not for reindustrialization (they were still low on industrial goods from SE Asia & India and the effect on domestic labor was quite moderate) but to irritate China and set them on the course of eventual collision. Tax cuts are debatable whether you believe in corporate wealth being idle, speculative, or productive. Trumpists have forgotten it was Trump who cut a deal with the Taliban (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest). Both the Trumpist (fossil fuels) & Democrat (renewables) focus on energy have diminishing returns that only nuclear can avoid.

    Whatever he has done or could have done if he was reelected, they won’t be as disastrous as what Democrats have been implementing which weren’t on the table during Obama’s presidency (COVID, Green New Deal, MMT & possible UBI). Wokeness is just an afterthought.

    After Obama’s promises to African American votes – their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.

    I don’t think you take the HBD perspective in human capital. They’ll probably never be equal in wealth with Whites since they don’t have the right genes (or culture) to succeed in the US’ capitalist economy. But there are still a lot of space for them to catch-up and this is where successive administrations haven’t helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black & Latinos are used to, to White & Asian-dominated finance. (What’s with the forecast of that graph?)

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people’s salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.

    Bernie Sanders was kicked from the race for obvious reasons, he’s been challenging the whole economic establishment at least in rhetoric. This is why the Democrats under Biden have incorporated much of his platform while leaving out the core, which is economic populism.

    • Replies: @Pericles
    @Yellowface Anon


    [Illegal immigration] can’t really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn’t be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic.

     

    It's worked for Israel and Hungary as far as I know. India is building a border fence to Bangladesh too, probably other countries as well. Back in the wetback era, even America managed to handle it. Perhaps it's not all that difficult if you actually try.

    The problem is really official unwillingness to act combined with tacit or open encouragement of migrants. (Wall building in the US was opposed with maniacal frenzy by the deep state and rotten judiciary, as I suppose we can still recall.) Same as in most of the EU.

    (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest)

     

    Since that affair is over by now, and it's football season, it seems more correct to say Blinken and the rest of the crazy clown crew not just stumbled but fumbled the ball in the endzone, leading to a comical and humiliating loss.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon

    , @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    successive administrations haven’t helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black

     

    If America's elite actually prioritized about equality between races, then those areas of Baltimore would look like central Moscow,.

    Central Moscow (or central Baku, or Minsk) is an example what places which politicians prioritize, look like. There is infinite budget for every pavement and street lamp.

    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can't even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it's not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.


    HBD perspective in human capital. They’ll probably never be equal in wealth
     
    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia - i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.

    The universal result seems to be - liquor.

    If you look at the situation in Baltimore, the only shop there is a liquor store. It's just like in Tuva.

    -

    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don't have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.


    forecast of that graph?
     
    It is from 2017 (https://prosperitynow.org/files/PDFs/road_to_zero_wealth.pdf), and was based from drawing the trend to 2024.

    For 2013 (first year of Obama's second term) it goes to. It's excluding durable goods (like your car and your television).

    https://i.imgur.com/up5bjE5.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/keaazIB.jpg


    Wokeness
     
    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I'm sure I'm a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.

    There was a photo of Obama's daughter with friends which was labelled:
    "1. Malia Obama, daughter of President Obama
    2. Elizabeth Tisch, daughter of billionaire Steve Tisch
    3. Audrey Kotick, daughter of billionaire Robert Kotick.
    4. Fashion designer Monique Lhuillier, owner of fashion houses based in Los Angeles and Manhattan's Upper East Side
    5. Jamie Tisch, ex-wife of Tisch
    6. Tom Bugbee, CEO Monique Lhuillier
    7. Holden Tisch, daughter of Tisch
    8. Zachary Tisch, son of Tisch
    9. Tassilo von Furstenberg, grandson of Diane von Furstenberg"
    https://i.imgur.com/8jiXc0A.jpg

    Replies: @AP, @Yellowface Anon

  520. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    fascination with robots
     
    It think it can be related to the traditional Japanese love of insects? Although some Japanese philosophers famously related their robotic interests to Buddhism (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/336031.The_Buddha_in_the_Robot).

    Any engineers that try to encourage a fly to escape from your bedroom, will notice how strangely using shortcuts their thought process is compared to our one. Flies seem to be behaving like an easy to program robot but using an algorithm with exponential time complexity to find the empty window.

    Love of insects to love of robots, is not such a far distance, and looking at insects too much could inspire you to robotics - observing insects will even provide you the guidelines for efficient and shortcut programming of robots.

    And we notice that traditional Japanese culture is obsessed with insects, and the children collect beetles as a hobby.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0whuKiPYl8

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @utu

    Been feeling like those fashions trends you’ve been discussing are quite decadent. Maybe they have always been decadent since the Black Death!

    S Korea, Taiwan, and even China (outside of CCP’s reach in the domestic sphere) have been learning Japanese fashion for a decade now.

    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom’s elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.

    The shadows of 19th century ideals are coming back and haunting us. Wokeness is just Victorian ethics and Imperialism in reverse, which is why people with pre-60s ethics hate wokeness.

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also “buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres”, is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.

    The last point is a good development, imho. Maybe the first one too if you see it from viewpoints of promoting cultural indigeneity, but the accusation is really abused against mostly harmless stuff.

    Thanks for the cultural/quasi-HBD observation on insects/robotics. It also explains the prominence of yokais in folklore – spirits and monsters that all have their distinct archetypes, forms and abilities. The Japanese mind is used to collecting curiosities, going thru them one by one, while categorizing and differentiating them. It’s good for the kind of analytics useful for automation/robotics.

    BTW a little word to AaronB, outside of the highly stylized faces & hairstyle, anime body proportions are no less realistic than American superhero comics, not to mention adult content. Mangakas and anime artists usually train themselves in sketching realistic body proportions and then embellish the bodies with their art styles and preferences. Also it’s interesting to notice how animes/mangas and cartoons have different emphases on the face: Anime almost always focus on the eyes where female ones are usually large and have well-detailed irises. Cartoons tend to distort the facial structure any way the artists want.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Yellowface Anon


    The shadows of 19th century ideals are coming back and haunting us. Wokeness is just Victorian ethics and Imperialism in reverse, which is why people with pre-60s ethics hate wokeness.
     
    In that book I mentioned, The Road to Somewhere, the author says this:

    'Anywheres often regard colonialism as Britain's original sin, like slavery in the US, and that first wave multiculturalism was part of a new British mission to show the world that difference without domination could flourish in the mother country. In some ways it did offer a 'soft landing' to new arrivals from Africa or the Indian sub-continent. But by cordoning off minorities in their own districts and with their own leaders and social centres and often making their progress dependent on white advocacy, white liberals were merely continuing the colonial heritage with a smiley face pasted on.' p.128
  521. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    globalist orientated ‘anywheres’
     
    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class "Atlanticists" in the United Kingdom.

    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom's elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.

    The interest in French or German culture, seems more located in the sober, educated, middle class demographics - especially among educated youth.

    Whereas Boris Johnson promotes a lot of relation of the Kingdom's maritime former imperial alliance to the United States of America and Australia.


    Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture

     

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, "anti-cultural appropriation" has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also "buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres", is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.

    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU. https://greekreporter.com/2019/11/27/european-commission-sues-denmark-for-marketing-danish-cheese-as-feta/

    EU was promoting this protectionist cheese policy, which is theoretically just like the woke ideology's debates against "blackface", "gayface", etc. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/jan/14/gay-roles-actors-assassination-gianni-versace-bohemian-rhapsody

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Pericles

    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class “Atlanticists” in the United Kingdom.

    While the referendum campaign was happening I largely didn’t follow the debate because I was sure that remain would win by a 10 or 15% margin, leave appeared to be a protest vote or had this strong provincial feel, either UKIP type ‘little Englanders’ or old left. I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.

    I don’t know how many of them they are, but one of David Goodhart’s motivations for writing his book seems to have been to draw attention to the majority of Brexit voters, who weren’t of this type. The situation makes me think of those elite theorists of politics like Pareto and Michels, because there was a potentially large ‘somewhere’ political constituency, but few elites to represent it, so it mostly remains in a politically inert state.

    There was quite strong support for the EU from within ethnic minorities, it seems to me this could be a politically sensitive issue, because you can see a potentially significant conflict of interest here between ethnic minorities and the groups more attached to some version of the historic British state.

    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    As far as I know this only applies to non-white groups when their culture is appropriated by whites though. In Woke the only oppressed whites can be those who suffer oppression due to their sexual and gender identities or due to disability. (Also fatness, because there is a Critical Fat Studies field). They sometimes talk about class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement’s ‘Achilles Heel’.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @AP
    @Coconuts

    You are one of the many people I will miss, if you don't migrate to AK's substack. I will do so, after this stuff finally dies.


    I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.
     
    Given Britain's extensive colonial history and identity outside of Europe, it would make sense for some segment of the elite to be pro-Brexit. I am thinking these would be Old Money types, the ones who enjoy things like foxhunting and whose ancestors might have had high colonial positions? These might be the ones who probably don't mind importing third worlders from outside the EU to replace the Poles, because they will be isolated from them anyways.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    It is what Johnson says in the speeches always - that Brexit implies the UK will become global citizen, that is not connected to provincial Europe, but to the world - although in particular USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada.

    This is how Johnson in the paper which resulted in the "Global Britain" slogan (which is now official slogan of the Kingdom).

    https://i.imgur.com/fd5SUBI.jpg

    Johnson has adopted the "Global Britain" as the reward of Brexit, and they are very excited now about the alliance "AUKUS" (Australia, UK, US). If you look in the recent presentation of the Global Britain strategy.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/global-britain-is-planting-its-flag-on-the-world-stage-article-by-liz-truss
    https://i.imgur.com/O0fs293.jpg


    -

    His comments about Russia are a little ironic, as he receives a lot of donations from Russian businesspeople, and of course London is party fueled on vast inputs of Russian money. The main newspaper of London is owned by former KGB people, and wife of last Mayor of Moscow (Elena Baturina) is criticized in the same newspaper for her Johnson donations.


    class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement’s ‘Achilles Heel’.

     

    Yes definitely.

    Those articles you posted of women saying "I'm proud from wave of feminists at the university of the 1960s, who read Simone de Beauvoir when in vacation in Paris, and we ​had protested for our rights".

    Translated these kind of feminist you posted - to me it reads like "I am part of the elite, leisure class, where women were reading philosophy books, and we had achieved strong bargaining positions even in relation to men of our class, while you were peasants selling vegetables in the village market."

    Replies: @Coconuts

  522. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    Been feeling like those fashions trends you've been discussing are quite decadent. Maybe they have always been decadent since the Black Death!

    S Korea, Taiwan, and even China (outside of CCP's reach in the domestic sphere) have been learning Japanese fashion for a decade now.

    ---


    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom’s elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.
     
    The shadows of 19th century ideals are coming back and haunting us. Wokeness is just Victorian ethics and Imperialism in reverse, which is why people with pre-60s ethics hate wokeness.

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also “buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres”, is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.
     
    The last point is a good development, imho. Maybe the first one too if you see it from viewpoints of promoting cultural indigeneity, but the accusation is really abused against mostly harmless stuff.

    ---

    Thanks for the cultural/quasi-HBD observation on insects/robotics. It also explains the prominence of yokais in folklore - spirits and monsters that all have their distinct archetypes, forms and abilities. The Japanese mind is used to collecting curiosities, going thru them one by one, while categorizing and differentiating them. It's good for the kind of analytics useful for automation/robotics.

    BTW a little word to AaronB, outside of the highly stylized faces & hairstyle, anime body proportions are no less realistic than American superhero comics, not to mention adult content. Mangakas and anime artists usually train themselves in sketching realistic body proportions and then embellish the bodies with their art styles and preferences. Also it's interesting to notice how animes/mangas and cartoons have different emphases on the face: Anime almost always focus on the eyes where female ones are usually large and have well-detailed irises. Cartoons tend to distort the facial structure any way the artists want.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    The shadows of 19th century ideals are coming back and haunting us. Wokeness is just Victorian ethics and Imperialism in reverse, which is why people with pre-60s ethics hate wokeness.

    In that book I mentioned, The Road to Somewhere, the author says this:

    ‘Anywheres often regard colonialism as Britain’s original sin, like slavery in the US, and that first wave multiculturalism was part of a new British mission to show the world that difference without domination could flourish in the mother country. In some ways it did offer a ‘soft landing’ to new arrivals from Africa or the Indian sub-continent. But by cordoning off minorities in their own districts and with their own leaders and social centres and often making their progress dependent on white advocacy, white liberals were merely continuing the colonial heritage with a smiley face pasted on.’ p.128

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
  523. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    Low-IQ people search for simple but powerful explanations that can answer what they’ve problematized. I sometimes do that too.
     
    High-IQ individuals, such as myself, see complex problems for what they are. And, communications is *also* a complex problem given that the core value of the Fake Stream Media is Leftoid deception.

    High-IQ leaders realize the power of creating deceptively simple communications that cannot be distorted by the other side. Mao had a much lengthier run up, so his Little Red Book of quotes was longer than any MAGA product. However, it served a similar purpose. So did Newt Gingrich's Contract With America.
    ____

    We need to split your next point into two pieces, carving out the center bit for a more detailed look.


    Just look at what A123 has been saying.
    ...
    in way that strengthen[s] his worldview
     
    This is actually a compliment, thank you for recognizing that I communicate effectively.

    ... His cultural strawmen (“Islamic SJW”) are pretty much rightoid caricatures ...

     

    Accurate information about SJW Ilhan Omar's beliefs is not a strawman. It is simply the TRUTH about the obvious U.S. intersection of SJW & Islam.

    Using a caricature to portray the TRUTH about radical Leftoid Muslims is simply another form of High-IQ communication. For example, here is a piece by A.F. Branco : (1)

     
    https://comicallyincorrect.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/omar-600-dt.jpg
     

    If your assertion "SJW and Islam are not linked" applies to the U.S. or Europe. Prove it:

    -- Name a U.S. elected Muslim Politician that is not a 100% committed Leftoid SJW.

    -- If The IslamoSoros is not a Muslim. Name one of his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation groups that is active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country. I have looked, and found near zero funding headed into Muslim countries. And, the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

    In the U.S. and Europe, Woke-slam is a single unified, inseparable side.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://comicallyincorrect.com/a-f-branco-cartoon-not-anti-semitic/

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    PBUYT

    High-IQ leaders realize the power of creating deceptively simple communications that cannot be distorted by the other side. Mao had a much lengthier run up, so his Little Red Book of quotes was longer than any MAGA product. However, it served a similar purpose. So did Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.

    Good for you to know this, but it doesn’t change the fact that consumers of these dictums think in a simpler way. This is how propaganda works.

    Accurate information about SJW Ilhan Omar’s beliefs is not a strawman. It is simply the TRUTH about the obvious U.S. intersection of SJW & Islam.

    Using a caricature to portray the TRUTH about radical Leftoid Muslims is simply another form of High-IQ communication. For example, here is a piece by A.F. Branco :

    They indeed intersect but as a part of the broader drive for cultural “inclusiveness”. It’s undeniable.

    But you’re saying explicitly the essence of wokeness is Islamic. The main political ideology Muslims have invented is political Islam, just like how fundamentalist Christians invent Christian Conservatism. It was Jewish and Gentile intellectuals who invented wokeness.

    The comics obviously appeal to the emotions of Zionists in the US, and builds on the friend-foe distinctions between Jews and Judeophiles vs Muslims. You and I can see what it says, the supposed “hypocrisy” of Omar claiming herself not being “anti-Semitic” and then sprouting obvious anti-Jewish remarks (that have been slightly flavored here). “Anti-Semitic” is one of the phrases Jewish elements in legacy mass media have pushed in order to obscure the real nature of their enemies, and which Omar took literally, thinking it to refer a hate of both Jews and Arabs. The particular flavors that guy has added are “Benjamins” (what) and “Nazi Germany” (one of the magic words the woke also use as “fascism” to immediately shut down the debate). Building your worldview fully based on his comics, the good and the bad (which you obviously do), is unrealistic.

    — Name a U.S. elected Muslim Politician that is not a 100% committed Leftoid SJW.

    Muslim activists and politicians are using wokeness since it’s advantageous for their social & political standing and they want part of the spoils in the woke hierarchy that’s being built (what irony).

    — If The IslamoSoros is not a Muslim. Name one of his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation groups that is active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country. I have looked, and found near zero funding headed into Muslim countries.

    Soros uses Muslim immigration against Christian-secular liberal states in Europe, and then takes what has served him well in Europe against Muslim-secular states in the Middle East, so in the end neither Europe or Middle East have social cohesion, which is the real goal of Soros.

    the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

    So in your eyes, since Soros funds pro-Irân, anti-Saudi initiatives, you see a Soros-Irân-China-Russia front and a (Trumpist) USA-Israel-Saudi front. But in reality Soros want to undermine every sovereign country in the world, and Muslim ones are no exception, but only after the bigger targets are gone, namely US, China, Russia and European states. Taking the Soros factor away and you have a typical strategic view of geopolitics, from a Trumpist perspective. This means the Muslim world are being pulled by either the West or the East instead of being an independent actor.

    The historic reality is, British imperialists fostered the first Islamists (Wahhâbis & the Muslim Brotherhood) in the quest of controlling and eventually dismember the Ottoman Empire. They had a 2nd bet in the Arab Revolt & Hâshemites, but they grew too independent and their influence were curtailed and limited to only Iraq & Transjordan, letting the Saudis take Hejâz & the 2 Holy Sites. After WWII Americans and Israelis basically gave a free rein to Saudi Wâhhabis and Pakistan, while also strengthening the Shâh of Irân and Turkey, against Arab Socialism. After Arab Socialism started its fragmentation in 1973 & the Iranian Revolution of 1979, America/Israel let Egypt & Irâq change side, gave Saudi control the new Petrodollar system and as a bulwark against Irân. Saudi-trained Mojâhedins went to Afghanistan and served American interests against the Soviets. They became the first “Islamic terrorists” which the US have been using to strike fear into Western populations. America/Israel/Saudis kept on smashing Irâq, Syria, Libya & Yemen, & regime changed Egypt, always benefitting the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Wahhabis.

    Can you notice who and whose ideology keeps on appearing? Who’ve supported and helped that ideology to capture much of the Middle East? What’s the real nature of Islamism (not the self-defense kind in Turkey’s Millî Görüş or Iran’s Velâyat-e Faqih)?

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    Good for you to know this, but it doesn’t change the fact that consumers of these dictums think in a simpler way.
     
    For better clarity and accuracy you should rephrase that as, "Some (but not all) consumers... think in a simpler way".

    All effective communication aimed at broad audience has to work across the entire IQ spectrum. Consider the policy of MAGA Reindustrialization. That one phrase covers:
        -1- Jobs for U.S. Workers
        -2- National Security (medicine and industrial goods)
        -3- Strategic international finance & commerce

    I was happy to have co-supporters that only focused on #1. However, I personally scored #2 and #3 as much more compelling drivers for immediate action.

    This is how propaganda works.
     
    George Orwell's 1984 was a warning about dystopian society where language is the ultimate form of power. Leftoids have adopted it as the ultimate "How To...." Guide.

    Perhaps MAGA's biggest legacy is banding a Yuge chunk of the population together in opposition to Orwellian language control. Leftoid ​efforts to misrepresent the TRUTH as "propaganda" have failed. It is now normal to reject Leftoid biased, propaganda terminology.

    But you’re saying explicitly the essence of wokeness is Islamic. The main political ideology Muslims have invented is political Islam. ... It was Jewish and Gentile intellectuals who invented wokeness.

     

    Some intellectual leaders of early Progressivism were indeed Judeo-Christian. However, wokeness was a later addition driven primarily by non-white, anti-Christian Muslims. Cassius Clay rejected his "white" slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW "colored" Muslim values. Most people know him as Muhammad Ali.

    In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and "racial justice". Modern day Wokeness explicitly opposes Judeo-Christian religious beliefs.



    the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

     

    So in your eyes, since Soros funds pro-Irân, anti-Saudi initiatives, you see a Soros-Irân-China-Russia front and a (Trumpist) USA-Israel-Saudi front.
     
    You are going wildly over the top (again). And you intentionally skipped the key point in favour of your Leftoid propaganda.

    A "minimal amount of money", which is what I stated, does not logically connect to your irrelevant & diversionary diatribe.

    Soros uses Muslim immigration against Christian-secular liberal states in Europe, and then takes what has served him well in Europe against Muslim-secular states in the Middle East,
     
    This takes us back to my initial question that you skipped. Let me re-phrase and re-ask to avoid your disingenuous distraction based on "minimal funding".

    How much material (e.g. not minimal) funding does George IslamoSoros provide to groups that are active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country? Can you find any group? And, how much did they get as a % of his total Wokeslamic spending?

    I suspect you will be unable to find any large spending efforts in either Muslim-secular or Muslim-religious states that have an explicitly anti-Muslim character.

    Note: Renting a large cargo plane from a national carrier is neutral (not pro or anti) and quite expensive. Ditto for moving a ship through the Suez Canal. If you find a large dollar line item in a Muslim-secular country, that requires at least minimal detail about the expenditure.

    Americans and Israelis basically gave a free rein to Saudi Wâhhabis
     
    I doubt that America or Israel were focused on the Wâhhabis. They expected the Saudi monarchy to deal with local religious groups.

    Sadly, several Monarchs ago, the SA royal family replicated a mistake made several hundred years earlier by the English crown. (1)

    — 1660 The monarchy regains control as Charles II, son of Charles I, becomes king of England. The new government suspects all religious dissenters of political intrigue. Parliament passes laws banning gatherings and religious activity not authorized by the state church and imprisons many Quakers
    — 1681 William Penn acquires a huge tract of land in the colonies as payment of a debt King Charles II owed Penn’s father. Penn leads an effort to set up a Quaker colony, guaranteeing religious liberty

     
    Paying off the Quakers did not solve the problem. Yes, they went overseas. However, the formation of Pennsylvania allowed the Quakers to become stronger.

    The Saudi Monarchy funded overseas efforts by the Wâhhabis to separate them from domestic political issues. The punt looked promising in the short run. However, it was a long term, serious error. Allowing the Wâhhabis to become multinational increased the threat they pose to everyone, including the SA royal family.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  524. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    fascination with robots
     
    It think it can be related to the traditional Japanese love of insects? Although some Japanese philosophers famously related their robotic interests to Buddhism (https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/336031.The_Buddha_in_the_Robot).

    Any engineers that try to encourage a fly to escape from your bedroom, will notice how strangely using shortcuts their thought process is compared to our one. Flies seem to be behaving like an easy to program robot but using an algorithm with exponential time complexity to find the empty window.

    Love of insects to love of robots, is not such a far distance, and looking at insects too much could inspire you to robotics - observing insects will even provide you the guidelines for efficient and shortcut programming of robots.

    And we notice that traditional Japanese culture is obsessed with insects, and the children collect beetles as a hobby.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0whuKiPYl8

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @utu

    Collecting and playing with insects like grass hoppers, June bugs, dung beetles or having ant farms was pretty universal I think for boys of certain age in Europe.

    But your connection to robots and AI is correct. The AI program or philosophy of Rodney Brooks of MIT was to jumpstart AI development by emulating insect like robots which would be embedded in reality that would be a short cut of millions of years of evolution instead of what was the dominant AI program of creating a disembodied computer brain like a brain in a jar.

    Nouvelle artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to artificial intelligence pioneered in the 1980s by Rodney Brooks, who was then part of MIT artificial intelligence laboratory. Nouvelle AI differs from classical AI by aiming to produce robots with intelligence levels similar to insects. Researchers believe that intelligence can emerge organically from simple behaviors as these intelligences interacted with the “real world,” instead of using the constructed worlds which symbolic AIs typically needed to have programmed into them. – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_AI

    Military has many application for insectoid robots, so Rodney Brooks was funded well. He was also behind Roomba. – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot

    • Thanks: Dmitry
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @utu


    playing with insects. was pretty universal I think for boys of
     
    This is true, and younger children don't have natural prejudice against insects.

    But in our modern European culture, we definitely develop this attitude at some age (which seems quite alienated from nature) that insects are scary and disgusting, and that girls need to run away from spiders.

    I have developed this attitude at some age, and for me no food seems more disgusting than eating insects.

    I'm wondering if it maybe partly derived historically from dietary prohibitions of Abrahamic religion.

    In Japan, the attitude remaining that insects are beautiful ( https://aeon.co/essays/japanese-culture-conquered-the-human-fear-of-creepy-crawlies
    ), as well as tasty (eating insects like wasps larvae are some local cuisine there https://youtu.be/QHRl2gSyuHU?t=1222.).

    Eating insects was fashionable in Ancient Greece and Rome, but it was prohibited as not kosher among the Ancient Israelites (except for a certain kind of locust - which modern sources can't identify, so that afterwards Jews are banned from eating all insects and shellfish).

    In modern Europe we seemed to inherit the Biblical view against eating insects (although not against shellfish).

    This prohibition, also implies that insects must be too disgusting to eat. Whereas Romans and Greeks were historically -

    https://i.imgur.com/JVSXYeW.jpg

    Among the Hebrews, there was one kind of locust that was accepted as kosher, so they didn't have a prejudice against eating all insects in ancient times. But because the identification of the specific locust was lost, they had later banned everything.

    John the Baptist's diet was supposedly completely insect. so Ancient Hebrew tastes were more thinking like modern Japanese than we in modern Europe.
    https://imgur.com/a/CxWeto0

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A4&version=NIV

    insectoid robots

     

    Yes and simple projects in stochastic robotics have also been openly inspired by insects.
    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nigel-Franks/publication/235362107_The_dynamics_of_collective_sorting_robot-like_ants_and_ant-like_robots/links/02e7e52b98ed20ebab000000/The-dynamics-of-collective-sorting-robot-like-ants-and-ant-like-robots.pdf

    Although it's known nowadays that ants don't do exactly random walks .

    Replies: @utu, @Yellowface Anon

  525. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign – a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden’s isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.
     
    As far as his populist platform goes, he was either too hindered by institutional interests ("Deep State") or focusing on the wrong things. His policies either missed the point or ended up causing much deeper problems in the longer term, while giving fuel for left-wing radicalization.

    Let me briefly think about his policies. Latino immigration is the result of lots of interventionist mess-ups since the Cold War, including the lost economic decade of the 80s caused by indebtedness. It can't really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn't be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic. Tariffs were done not for reindustrialization (they were still low on industrial goods from SE Asia & India and the effect on domestic labor was quite moderate) but to irritate China and set them on the course of eventual collision. Tax cuts are debatable whether you believe in corporate wealth being idle, speculative, or productive. Trumpists have forgotten it was Trump who cut a deal with the Taliban (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest). Both the Trumpist (fossil fuels) & Democrat (renewables) focus on energy have diminishing returns that only nuclear can avoid.

    Whatever he has done or could have done if he was reelected, they won't be as disastrous as what Democrats have been implementing which weren't on the table during Obama's presidency (COVID, Green New Deal, MMT & possible UBI). Wokeness is just an afterthought.

    After Obama’s promises to African American votes – their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.
     
    I don't think you take the HBD perspective in human capital. They'll probably never be equal in wealth with Whites since they don't have the right genes (or culture) to succeed in the US' capitalist economy. But there are still a lot of space for them to catch-up and this is where successive administrations haven't helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black & Latinos are used to, to White & Asian-dominated finance. (What's with the forecast of that graph?)

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people’s salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.
     
    Bernie Sanders was kicked from the race for obvious reasons, he's been challenging the whole economic establishment at least in rhetoric. This is why the Democrats under Biden have incorporated much of his platform while leaving out the core, which is economic populism.

    Replies: @Pericles, @Dmitry

    [Illegal immigration] can’t really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn’t be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic.

    It’s worked for Israel and Hungary as far as I know. India is building a border fence to Bangladesh too, probably other countries as well. Back in the wetback era, even America managed to handle it. Perhaps it’s not all that difficult if you actually try.

    The problem is really official unwillingness to act combined with tacit or open encouragement of migrants. (Wall building in the US was opposed with maniacal frenzy by the deep state and rotten judiciary, as I suppose we can still recall.) Same as in most of the EU.

    (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest)

    Since that affair is over by now, and it’s football season, it seems more correct to say Blinken and the rest of the crazy clown crew not just stumbled but fumbled the ball in the endzone, leading to a comical and humiliating loss.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Pericles

    I support border walls. They are necessary in the modern world, where one can move people fast and zerg rush.

    I think there is an analogy that can be made to skin: you wouldn't survive without your skin. But you also need more layers of defense for your body than just your skin. You wouldn't survive with just your skin, but no immune system.

    And the immune system itself is a really complicated and layered thing. You wouldn't survive with just one part of it.

    Trouble is, in the US, most of the "immune system" has been compromised. It has effectively become theater of the mind. Just for show, to make people think they are not being invaded and that the regime isn't culpable in their displacement. And it may have never been well-designed in the first place, not according to modern challenges.

    Replies: @Pericles

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Pericles


    The problem is really official unwillingness to act combined with tacit or open encouragement of migrants
     
    Walls block migration over land. As you know it has to be coupled with a set of anti-migrant policies for effectiveness.

    I'd rather think of why countries export migrants, what went wrong with their economies and societies. Solving that and you can remove the sources of the problem.
  526. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    globalist orientated ‘anywheres’
     
    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class "Atlanticists" in the United Kingdom.

    Romantic sides of the maritime Kingdom's elites, might dream more of Barbados or Vancouver, than of Brussels or Hannover.

    A lot of the English writers like E. M. Forster or Rudyard Kipling , were more inspired by India and Africa, than of Rotterdam or Stockholm.

    The interest in French or German culture, seems more located in the sober, educated, middle class demographics - especially among educated youth.

    Whereas Boris Johnson promotes a lot of relation of the Kingdom's maritime former imperial alliance to the United States of America and Australia.


    Woke can be seen as attempts by some more committed anywheres to fully take control of culture

     

    EU also includes some of the localist, anti-globalizing views, although of a kind which are theoretically consistent with the Woke ideology.

    For example, "anti-cultural appropriation" has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.

    Also "buy organic products which do not travel many kilometres", is a localist, anti-globalizing fashion. Or more or of high-status luxury, that anti-globalization is becoming.

    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU. https://greekreporter.com/2019/11/27/european-commission-sues-denmark-for-marketing-danish-cheese-as-feta/

    EU was promoting this protectionist cheese policy, which is theoretically just like the woke ideology's debates against "blackface", "gayface", etc. https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/jan/14/gay-roles-actors-assassination-gianni-versace-bohemian-rhapsody

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Pericles

    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU.

    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can’t market ‘Tel Aviv Champagne’ or whatever either. I think it’s good overall — build your own brand instead of free riding. There’s too much adulteration of terms already.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Pericles

    It's more than just marketing. The theory behind it is that good good food, like good wine, has "terroir".

    And it's absolutely true. Normandy butter, for instance, simply tastes different. Craft American butter makers have tried to reproduce European style butter - the same fat content, culturing it - yet have so far failed to make butter that is as good as European butter.

    The soil, the air, makes a different product.

    Strangely, craft American cheese makers have come out with European style cheeses that are as good or better.

    Jasper Hill Farms, in Vermont, makes a cheese modeled after the Swiss Vacherin d'or. It's called Harbison and having tried both, in my opinion it's better - but it's also subtly different.

    If they just called it Vacherin, after the Swiss cheese, it would be highly misleading. So these "DOP" labels are important.

    Plus, unscrupulous companies can make seriously substandard products and call it the same thing.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=harbison+cheese&client=ms-android-google&prmd=sinxv&sxsrf=AOaemvIXGIDUrDCBfUG_Rg26jN92MO1BXQ:1635003146845&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6upiu7eDzAhWrQTABHVMyChIQ_AUoAnoECAMQAg&biw=393&bih=730&dpr=2.75#imgrc=W339TxQAZ7vUiM

    Replies: @Pericles

    , @AP
    @Pericles


    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can’t market ‘Tel Aviv Champagne’ or whatever either. I think it’s good overall — build your own brand instead of free riding.
     
    The problem is that these terms denote a type and not a region. Mozzarella is a type of cheese, that can be produced anywhere. If the public feels it is best if it's from Italy, than label it as mozzarella from the home region, Italy. It is silly and cumbersome for consumers to copyright the name of a type of product.

    Replies: @Pericles

  527. @songbird
    @sher singh

    Isn't Sikhism kind of multicult and egalitarian in its ideology? I know that there are Sikh castes, but do any of the Gurus specifically ever say anything pro-caste?

    Replies: @sher singh

    Inter-caste marriage is specifically forbidden in the Sikh Code
    Traditional Sikh orders (Nihangs) still practice untouchability||

    Christianity destroys caste through protecting caste-mixing via love marriage||
    Sikh Raaj lawbooks are closer to Balkan/Caucacus clan feuds ala blood money||

    Panjabis are closer to Tajiks & Azeris than to N Indians so makes sense||

    Seems like a cope question on ur part, We have ancestral shrines u have Harvard||

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @sher singh

    It's multi-cult & egalitarian in so far as all of Creation has the same right to bow to Khalsa||
    Gurbani lit calls caste-mixing a sign of the Kali Yuga|| :shrug:

    There's still different battalions/regiments for each tribe in both the Indian Army & Sikh Militias||
    You need both tribal separation & communal (religious) unity though||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    , @iffen
    @sher singh

    Did you mislead us on the hand being cut off?

    I read that a warrior caste individual cut off the hand of a Dalit because Dalits are not supposed to touch sacred objects.

    Replies: @sher singh

  528. sher singh says:
    @sher singh
    @songbird

    Inter-caste marriage is specifically forbidden in the Sikh Code
    Traditional Sikh orders (Nihangs) still practice untouchability||

    Christianity destroys caste through protecting caste-mixing via love marriage||
    Sikh Raaj lawbooks are closer to Balkan/Caucacus clan feuds ala blood money||

    Panjabis are closer to Tajiks & Azeris than to N Indians so makes sense||

    Seems like a cope question on ur part, We have ancestral shrines u have Harvard||

    Replies: @sher singh, @iffen

    It’s multi-cult & egalitarian in so far as all of Creation has the same right to bow to Khalsa||
    Gurbani lit calls caste-mixing a sign of the Kali Yuga|| :shrug:

    There’s still different battalions/regiments for each tribe in both the Indian Army & Sikh Militias||
    You need both tribal separation & communal (religious) unity though||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Thanks: songbird
  529. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Hmmm, you do have a point.

    Women dress in "slutty" fashion most, in poorer more economically insecure countries, for economic reasons. You have a point with that, and I've observed that myself.

    But while you make a solid point, I think you overstate your case. Fashion becomes much more complex and refined in wealthier countries (no longer the simple, obvious, "slutty" look), true, and there is space for more girls to simply ignore what men find attractive, but many wealthy countries still have women who emphasize feminine beauty.

    Take Korea. It's a wealthy and developed country, and women are obsessed with beauty. The men are also extremely preoccupied with self-presentation.

    In Japan, it isn't quite as you say - yes, there are subcultures where catering to what men find attractive is completely ignored and there is greater space for self expression, but overall, most women try to be beautiful in ways that please men.

    Likewise, San Francisco, women are notorious for being frumpy and disregarding appearance, just wearing comfortable sweatpants, etc, while LA is notorious for extremely beautiful and sexy women.

    Also, intelligent men don't find the "slutty" look particularly appealing - they want their sex appeal, of course, but they want it generally in a more subtle, refined, and even creative and individualized, package. So there's that, too.

    As usual, you make a good point, but I think you've failed to capture larger aspects of the entire situation.

    Replies: @John Johnson, @Dmitry, @iffen

    intelligent men don’t find the “slutty” look particularly appealing

    Speak for yourself AaronB.

    Maybe you are not as intelligent as you think.

    Mmmm, wait, maybe I’m not as …….. Never mind, let’s just skip it.

    • LOL: AaronB
  530. @sher singh
    @songbird

    Inter-caste marriage is specifically forbidden in the Sikh Code
    Traditional Sikh orders (Nihangs) still practice untouchability||

    Christianity destroys caste through protecting caste-mixing via love marriage||
    Sikh Raaj lawbooks are closer to Balkan/Caucacus clan feuds ala blood money||

    Panjabis are closer to Tajiks & Azeris than to N Indians so makes sense||

    Seems like a cope question on ur part, We have ancestral shrines u have Harvard||

    Replies: @sher singh, @iffen

    Did you mislead us on the hand being cut off?

    I read that a warrior caste individual cut off the hand of a Dalit because Dalits are not supposed to touch sacred objects.

    • Disagree: sher singh
    • Replies: @sher singh
    @iffen

    No, Hindu media tried to push that angle at the start because they're retarded & Dalit = BLM
    The guy tried to steal & tear up the scripture so got killed..

    End of.
    Happens to anyone,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @iffen

  531. @German_reader
    @A123


    Positions that are 100% reconciled (quietly & behind the scenes)
     
    How the hell would you know that? Do you now want to claim that you're privy to secret negotiations of the Polish, Israeli and US governments?

    Replies: @A123, @iffen

    You don’t want to write comments about WWII, but you don’t mind engaging with a propaganda operation.

    Makes perfect sense to me.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @iffen

    You're probably right, A123 isn't a commenter worth engaging with.
    I'm not sure though he's a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre, I think he's genuinely delusional.

    Replies: @iffen

  532. @iffen
    @sher singh

    Did you mislead us on the hand being cut off?

    I read that a warrior caste individual cut off the hand of a Dalit because Dalits are not supposed to touch sacred objects.

    Replies: @sher singh

    No, Hindu media tried to push that angle at the start because they’re retarded & Dalit = BLM
    The guy tried to steal & tear up the scripture so got killed..

    End of.
    Happens to anyone,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Replies: @iffen
    @sher singh

    No, Hindu media tried to push that angle

    The Jew York Times is a part of the Hindu media?

    Maybe what I read was describing a different incident than the one you are referencing.

    Replies: @sher singh

  533. @sher singh
    @iffen

    No, Hindu media tried to push that angle at the start because they're retarded & Dalit = BLM
    The guy tried to steal & tear up the scripture so got killed..

    End of.
    Happens to anyone,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @iffen

    No, Hindu media tried to push that angle

    The Jew York Times is a part of the Hindu media?

    Maybe what I read was describing a different incident than the one you are referencing.

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @iffen

    Same incident, America is closer to Cow Poo festival than this:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6QyTxVVmvk
    https://twitter.com/akarlin0/status/1144009116614086658

    Sir, through Transgenderism America increases the supply of White Women for Afro-Americans||
    Please do the needful||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  534. @AaronB
    @songbird

    Anime has actually become hugely popular in the West among the young lately.

    There's lots of different animes too, lots of it not particularly stylized in that way you may not not like and more realistic.

    But yes, in general, everything in Japan is more "stylized" because of this sense of illusion and appearance. Things are more of a "game" , as there is no true substance. You can fun and aim for "pointless" beauty.

    European realism really only peaked beginning in the 19th century. Oscar Wilde railed against realism in fiction, as inartistic.

    Replies: @songbird

    I don’t know if it could be extended to China or not. But HK cinema is very stylized. At least wuxia. It strikes me that to the Chinese, there must be an implicit assumption that it is fiction – an assumption in every frame, throughout the whole experience.

    Almost like seeing a silent comedy in the West, where motions are exaggerated and the framerate moves things faster than in real life, but we accept it as a comedy, and think nothing of the odd movements, or, at least, once did.

    Perhaps, this helps explain why the characters in HK action movies can be trying to kill each other in one moment but then be friends in the next. The whole story is viewed through a lens of abstraction, with no desire or expectation for realism.

    I feel like, despite the trend of Marvel movies, in the West, people desire more realism and disdain moments of unreality and often eschew fantasy elements, though they do seem to be increasing. (I wouldn’t necessarily say that it is a positive trend.)

    • Replies: @iffen
    @songbird

    characters in HK action movies can be trying to kill each other in one moment but then be friends in the next.

    There are Scotch-Irish hillbillies in HK?

    , @AaronB
    @songbird

    Yes, I know what you mean about those movies, they are self consciously "camp". When well done, I find them delightful.

    Kung Fu Hustle is a very amusing modern addition to this style.

    I always find that sudden, unexpected break with "reality" to be a release and exhilaration (I also love fantasy fiction of all types), but I know many people don't agree with me. I once told a very anxiety prone girl I knew that the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time - iirc, gravity and certain other "constants" have to be constantly updated - a fact which I found exhilarating, but which she found terrifying. Some people search for security by clinging to a solid, unshifting "reality" - sand that does not shift beneath their feet - which is just where the Buddha said it can't be found :) But this attitude works it's way into our adult philosophies in a myriad of ways, down to our preference for HBD and other "essentialist" philosophies.

    But to each his own.

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures. It's something like the fictional equivalent of neo-Gothic architecture which became so popular in the 19th century and spread across the world. (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).

    The French realist school of fiction (Zola, etc), began a new trend of realism, but in the English speaking world Hemingway led a concerted attack against stylized fiction, and was entirely successful in rooting it out. Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending "deception" - imagination - in art. I think it's called "In Defense Of Lying" - but I may be wrong.

    As for today, I don't think I agree with you - I think we're experiencing an explosion of interest in the fantastic, extreme, and even to some extent the grotesque. Even Woke betrays a fascination with fantasy and extreme states.

    Many of our realist gritty shows - like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) - are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.

    Replies: @songbird, @Max Demian

  535. @songbird
    @AaronB

    I don't know if it could be extended to China or not. But HK cinema is very stylized. At least wuxia. It strikes me that to the Chinese, there must be an implicit assumption that it is fiction - an assumption in every frame, throughout the whole experience.

    Almost like seeing a silent comedy in the West, where motions are exaggerated and the framerate moves things faster than in real life, but we accept it as a comedy, and think nothing of the odd movements, or, at least, once did.

    Perhaps, this helps explain why the characters in HK action movies can be trying to kill each other in one moment but then be friends in the next. The whole story is viewed through a lens of abstraction, with no desire or expectation for realism.

    I feel like, despite the trend of Marvel movies, in the West, people desire more realism and disdain moments of unreality and often eschew fantasy elements, though they do seem to be increasing. (I wouldn't necessarily say that it is a positive trend.)

    Replies: @iffen, @AaronB

    characters in HK action movies can be trying to kill each other in one moment but then be friends in the next.

    There are Scotch-Irish hillbillies in HK?

    • LOL: songbird
  536. @songbird
    @AaronB

    I don't know if it could be extended to China or not. But HK cinema is very stylized. At least wuxia. It strikes me that to the Chinese, there must be an implicit assumption that it is fiction - an assumption in every frame, throughout the whole experience.

    Almost like seeing a silent comedy in the West, where motions are exaggerated and the framerate moves things faster than in real life, but we accept it as a comedy, and think nothing of the odd movements, or, at least, once did.

    Perhaps, this helps explain why the characters in HK action movies can be trying to kill each other in one moment but then be friends in the next. The whole story is viewed through a lens of abstraction, with no desire or expectation for realism.

    I feel like, despite the trend of Marvel movies, in the West, people desire more realism and disdain moments of unreality and often eschew fantasy elements, though they do seem to be increasing. (I wouldn't necessarily say that it is a positive trend.)

    Replies: @iffen, @AaronB

    Yes, I know what you mean about those movies, they are self consciously “camp”. When well done, I find them delightful.

    Kung Fu Hustle is a very amusing modern addition to this style.

    I always find that sudden, unexpected break with “reality” to be a release and exhilaration (I also love fantasy fiction of all types), but I know many people don’t agree with me. I once told a very anxiety prone girl I knew that the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time – iirc, gravity and certain other “constants” have to be constantly updated – a fact which I found exhilarating, but which she found terrifying. Some people search for security by clinging to a solid, unshifting “reality” – sand that does not shift beneath their feet – which is just where the Buddha said it can’t be found 🙂 But this attitude works it’s way into our adult philosophies in a myriad of ways, down to our preference for HBD and other “essentialist” philosophies.

    But to each his own.

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures. It’s something like the fictional equivalent of neo-Gothic architecture which became so popular in the 19th century and spread across the world. (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).

    The French realist school of fiction (Zola, etc), began a new trend of realism, but in the English speaking world Hemingway led a concerted attack against stylized fiction, and was entirely successful in rooting it out. Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending “deception” – imagination – in art. I think it’s called “In Defense Of Lying” – but I may be wrong.

    As for today, I don’t think I agree with you – I think we’re experiencing an explosion of interest in the fantastic, extreme, and even to some extent the grotesque. Even Woke betrays a fascination with fantasy and extreme states.

    Many of our realist gritty shows – like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) – are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB


    I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol
     
    I have enjoyed a few things he wrote, at least many years ago, however, my perspective probably comes from comparing him to other required authors.

    His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.
     
    I agree. Though, I enjoyed some of those of one of his contemporaries: Wilkie Collins. I can still laugh by calling to mind that fellow who quoted from Robinson Crusoe, like it was the Bible.

    Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending “deception” – imagination – in art. I think it’s called “In Defense Of Lying”
     
    Sounds interesting, though never could get into Wilde previously. The Picture of Dorian Gray is arguably brilliant on some level, but it is also unmistakably written by a homosexual, with certain baggage that sometimes comes with that.

    Many of our realist gritty shows – like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) – are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.
     
    TBH, I hate gritty stuff. (Couldn't get past the first five min. of Breaking Bad) Too humorless. It is tempting for me to characterize grittiness as a form of wokeness. I wish AE were still around to try to ferret out the political affiliation of gritty-consumers. Though I think grittiness could certainly be classified as a form of fantasy, I feel like it is fantasy going in the the wrong direction, becoming over-serious. This seriousness I feel is a type of hyper-realism, even though it deviates from reality unpleasantly - if that makes sense.

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @Max Demian
    @AaronB


    the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time – iirc, gravity and certain other “constants” have to be constantly updated
     
    Is it the laws themselves that change, or merely our understanding of them?

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.
     
    Embellishment and caricatures in a work of fiction?! You don't say!

    Do you consider it an indication of a lack of sophistication or refinement to delight in reading a Dickens novel? Embarrassingly pedestrian?

    (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).
     
    Have you ever tried Barnaby Rudge?

    Have you tried listening to a well-read audio-version of a work by Dickens?

    Replies: @songbird, @AaronB

  537. @Pericles
    @Yellowface Anon


    [Illegal immigration] can’t really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn’t be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic.

     

    It's worked for Israel and Hungary as far as I know. India is building a border fence to Bangladesh too, probably other countries as well. Back in the wetback era, even America managed to handle it. Perhaps it's not all that difficult if you actually try.

    The problem is really official unwillingness to act combined with tacit or open encouragement of migrants. (Wall building in the US was opposed with maniacal frenzy by the deep state and rotten judiciary, as I suppose we can still recall.) Same as in most of the EU.

    (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest)

     

    Since that affair is over by now, and it's football season, it seems more correct to say Blinken and the rest of the crazy clown crew not just stumbled but fumbled the ball in the endzone, leading to a comical and humiliating loss.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon

    I support border walls. They are necessary in the modern world, where one can move people fast and zerg rush.

    I think there is an analogy that can be made to skin: you wouldn’t survive without your skin. But you also need more layers of defense for your body than just your skin. You wouldn’t survive with just your skin, but no immune system.

    And the immune system itself is a really complicated and layered thing. You wouldn’t survive with just one part of it.

    Trouble is, in the US, most of the “immune system” has been compromised. It has effectively become theater of the mind. Just for show, to make people think they are not being invaded and that the regime isn’t culpable in their displacement. And it may have never been well-designed in the first place, not according to modern challenges.

    • Replies: @Pericles
    @songbird


    Trouble is, in the US, most of the “immune system” has been compromised. ...
    Just for show, to make people think they are not being invaded and that the regime isn’t culpable in their displacement.

     

    Shall we simply call it 'poz'? What we have today is a bizarre anti-immune system really. Once they break through, the system becomes welcoming and nourishing to the invaders.

    Cordyceps

    https://images.fineartamerica.com/images-medium-large-5/1-cordyceps-fungus-dr-morley-read.jpg
  538. @iffen
    @sher singh

    No, Hindu media tried to push that angle

    The Jew York Times is a part of the Hindu media?

    Maybe what I read was describing a different incident than the one you are referencing.

    Replies: @sher singh

    Same incident, America is closer to Cow Poo festival than this:

    Sir, through Transgenderism America increases the supply of White Women for Afro-Americans||
    Please do the needful||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  539. @iffen
    @German_reader

    You don't want to write comments about WWII, but you don't mind engaging with a propaganda operation.

    Makes perfect sense to me.

    Replies: @German_reader

    You’re probably right, A123 isn’t a commenter worth engaging with.
    I’m not sure though he’s a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre, I think he’s genuinely delusional.

    • Troll: A123
    • Replies: @iffen
    @German_reader

    I’m not sure though he’s a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre

    I initially thought that it was possible that he was part of a disinformation operation intent upon weakening Trump by tying Trump to, as you say bizarre ideas. After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer, and an extreme right wing type who believes that if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that's about as delusional as you can get.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.

    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election? I know that you are a pessimist with regard to electoral politics, but maybe you can glean a few rays of sunshine for us.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @A123

  540. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    High-IQ leaders realize the power of creating deceptively simple communications that cannot be distorted by the other side. Mao had a much lengthier run up, so his Little Red Book of quotes was longer than any MAGA product. However, it served a similar purpose. So did Newt Gingrich’s Contract With America.
     
    Good for you to know this, but it doesn't change the fact that consumers of these dictums think in a simpler way. This is how propaganda works.

    Accurate information about SJW Ilhan Omar’s beliefs is not a strawman. It is simply the TRUTH about the obvious U.S. intersection of SJW & Islam.

    Using a caricature to portray the TRUTH about radical Leftoid Muslims is simply another form of High-IQ communication. For example, here is a piece by A.F. Branco :
     
    They indeed intersect but as a part of the broader drive for cultural "inclusiveness". It's undeniable.

    But you're saying explicitly the essence of wokeness is Islamic. The main political ideology Muslims have invented is political Islam, just like how fundamentalist Christians invent Christian Conservatism. It was Jewish and Gentile intellectuals who invented wokeness.

    The comics obviously appeal to the emotions of Zionists in the US, and builds on the friend-foe distinctions between Jews and Judeophiles vs Muslims. You and I can see what it says, the supposed "hypocrisy" of Omar claiming herself not being "anti-Semitic" and then sprouting obvious anti-Jewish remarks (that have been slightly flavored here). "Anti-Semitic" is one of the phrases Jewish elements in legacy mass media have pushed in order to obscure the real nature of their enemies, and which Omar took literally, thinking it to refer a hate of both Jews and Arabs. The particular flavors that guy has added are "Benjamins" (what) and "Nazi Germany" (one of the magic words the woke also use as "fascism" to immediately shut down the debate). Building your worldview fully based on his comics, the good and the bad (which you obviously do), is unrealistic.

    — Name a U.S. elected Muslim Politician that is not a 100% committed Leftoid SJW.
     
    Muslim activists and politicians are using wokeness since it's advantageous for their social & political standing and they want part of the spoils in the woke hierarchy that's being built (what irony).

    — If The IslamoSoros is not a Muslim. Name one of his Open [Muslim] Society Foundation groups that is active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country. I have looked, and found near zero funding headed into Muslim countries.
     
    Soros uses Muslim immigration against Christian-secular liberal states in Europe, and then takes what has served him well in Europe against Muslim-secular states in the Middle East, so in the end neither Europe or Middle East have social cohesion, which is the real goal of Soros.

    the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.
     
    So in your eyes, since Soros funds pro-Irân, anti-Saudi initiatives, you see a Soros-Irân-China-Russia front and a (Trumpist) USA-Israel-Saudi front. But in reality Soros want to undermine every sovereign country in the world, and Muslim ones are no exception, but only after the bigger targets are gone, namely US, China, Russia and European states. Taking the Soros factor away and you have a typical strategic view of geopolitics, from a Trumpist perspective. This means the Muslim world are being pulled by either the West or the East instead of being an independent actor.

    The historic reality is, British imperialists fostered the first Islamists (Wahhâbis & the Muslim Brotherhood) in the quest of controlling and eventually dismember the Ottoman Empire. They had a 2nd bet in the Arab Revolt & Hâshemites, but they grew too independent and their influence were curtailed and limited to only Iraq & Transjordan, letting the Saudis take Hejâz & the 2 Holy Sites. After WWII Americans and Israelis basically gave a free rein to Saudi Wâhhabis and Pakistan, while also strengthening the Shâh of Irân and Turkey, against Arab Socialism. After Arab Socialism started its fragmentation in 1973 & the Iranian Revolution of 1979, America/Israel let Egypt & Irâq change side, gave Saudi control the new Petrodollar system and as a bulwark against Irân. Saudi-trained Mojâhedins went to Afghanistan and served American interests against the Soviets. They became the first "Islamic terrorists" which the US have been using to strike fear into Western populations. America/Israel/Saudis kept on smashing Irâq, Syria, Libya & Yemen, & regime changed Egypt, always benefitting the Muslim Brotherhood and/or Wahhabis.

    Can you notice who and whose ideology keeps on appearing? Who've supported and helped that ideology to capture much of the Middle East? What's the real nature of Islamism (not the self-defense kind in Turkey's Millî Görüş or Iran's Velâyat-e Faqih)?

    Replies: @A123

    Good for you to know this, but it doesn’t change the fact that consumers of these dictums think in a simpler way.

    For better clarity and accuracy you should rephrase that as, “Some (but not all) consumers… think in a simpler way”.

    All effective communication aimed at broad audience has to work across the entire IQ spectrum. Consider the policy of MAGA Reindustrialization. That one phrase covers:
        -1- Jobs for U.S. Workers
        -2- National Security (medicine and industrial goods)
        -3- Strategic international finance & commerce

    I was happy to have co-supporters that only focused on #1. However, I personally scored #2 and #3 as much more compelling drivers for immediate action.

    This is how propaganda works.

    George Orwell’s 1984 was a warning about dystopian society where language is the ultimate form of power. Leftoids have adopted it as the ultimate “How To….” Guide.

    Perhaps MAGA’s biggest legacy is banding a Yuge chunk of the population together in opposition to Orwellian language control. Leftoid ​efforts to misrepresent the TRUTH as “propaganda” have failed. It is now normal to reject Leftoid biased, propaganda terminology.

    But you’re saying explicitly the essence of wokeness is Islamic. The main political ideology Muslims have invented is political Islam. … It was Jewish and Gentile intellectuals who invented wokeness.

    Some intellectual leaders of early Progressivism were indeed Judeo-Christian. However, wokeness was a later addition driven primarily by non-white, anti-Christian Muslims. Cassius Clay rejected his “white” slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW “colored” Muslim values. Most people know him as Muhammad Ali.

    In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and “racial justice”. Modern day Wokeness explicitly opposes Judeo-Christian religious beliefs.

    the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

    So in your eyes, since Soros funds pro-Irân, anti-Saudi initiatives, you see a Soros-Irân-China-Russia front and a (Trumpist) USA-Israel-Saudi front.

    You are going wildly over the top (again). And you intentionally skipped the key point in favour of your Leftoid propaganda.

    A “minimal amount of money”, which is what I stated, does not logically connect to your irrelevant & diversionary diatribe.

    Soros uses Muslim immigration against Christian-secular liberal states in Europe, and then takes what has served him well in Europe against Muslim-secular states in the Middle East,

    This takes us back to my initial question that you skipped. Let me re-phrase and re-ask to avoid your disingenuous distraction based on “minimal funding”.

    How much material (e.g. not minimal) funding does George IslamoSoros provide to groups that are active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country? Can you find any group? And, how much did they get as a % of his total Wokeslamic spending?

    I suspect you will be unable to find any large spending efforts in either Muslim-secular or Muslim-religious states that have an explicitly anti-Muslim character.

    Note: Renting a large cargo plane from a national carrier is neutral (not pro or anti) and quite expensive. Ditto for moving a ship through the Suez Canal. If you find a large dollar line item in a Muslim-secular country, that requires at least minimal detail about the expenditure.

    Americans and Israelis basically gave a free rein to Saudi Wâhhabis

    I doubt that America or Israel were focused on the Wâhhabis. They expected the Saudi monarchy to deal with local religious groups.

    Sadly, several Monarchs ago, the SA royal family replicated a mistake made several hundred years earlier by the English crown. (1)

    — 1660 The monarchy regains control as Charles II, son of Charles I, becomes king of England. The new government suspects all religious dissenters of political intrigue. Parliament passes laws banning gatherings and religious activity not authorized by the state church and imprisons many Quakers
    — 1681 William Penn acquires a huge tract of land in the colonies as payment of a debt King Charles II owed Penn’s father. Penn leads an effort to set up a Quaker colony, guaranteeing religious liberty

    Paying off the Quakers did not solve the problem. Yes, they went overseas. However, the formation of Pennsylvania allowed the Quakers to become stronger.

    The Saudi Monarchy funded overseas efforts by the Wâhhabis to separate them from domestic political issues. The punt looked promising in the short run. However, it was a long term, serious error. Allowing the Wâhhabis to become multinational increased the threat they pose to everyone, including the SA royal family.

    PEACE 😇

    • Troll: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    However, wokeness was a later addition driven primarily by non-white, anti-Christian Muslims. Cassius Clay rejected his “white” slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW “colored” Muslim values. Most people know him as Muhammad Ali.

    In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and “racial justice”. Modern day Wokeness explicitly opposes Judeo-Christian religious beliefs.
     
    Their roles are quite small compared to racial & gender, activists.

    You are going wildly over the top (again). And you intentionally skipped the key point in favour of your Leftoid propaganda.
     
    What's your point then? This?:

    How much material (e.g. not minimal) funding does George IslamoSoros provide to groups that are active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country?
     
    You don't need to pay them if they are debauching themselves on their own, or the right moment to start has come. Some Muslims the former, some Muslims the latter.

    The Saudi Monarchy funded overseas efforts by the Wâhhabis to separate them from domestic political issues. The punt looked promising in the short run. However, it was a long term, serious error. Allowing the Wâhhabis to become multinational increased the threat they pose to everyone, including the SA royal family.
     
    As if the Saudis don't drink their own Kool-Aid.

    The first steps to start destroying the Islamic threat would be regime change the Saudis, ban the Muslim Brotherhood everywhere and return the Holy Cities to the Hâshemites. Then we can deal with the rest of radical Islamists (mainly Afghanistan & Pakistan), prevent them from projecting their militancy outside of the Islamic world. Since the US & Israel have helped Islamism, it's their responsibility.

    ------

    Perhaps MAGA’s biggest legacy is banding a Yuge chunk of the population together in opposition to Orwellian language control. Leftoid ​efforts to misrepresent the TRUTH as “propaganda” have failed. It is now normal to reject Leftoid biased, propaganda terminology.
     
    In favor of rightoid propaganda. Neither fully corresponds to reality, which is somewhere between 2 extremes.

    Trolls and propagandists will always exist. But there are tragic times where they won out, their superstitions and libels dominating the consciousness of the whole civilization. We are heading into such times no matter which side wins out.

    Replies: @A123

  541. @Pericles
    @Dmitry


    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU.

     

    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can't market 'Tel Aviv Champagne' or whatever either. I think it's good overall -- build your own brand instead of free riding. There's too much adulteration of terms already.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP

    It’s more than just marketing. The theory behind it is that good good food, like good wine, has “terroir”.

    And it’s absolutely true. Normandy butter, for instance, simply tastes different. Craft American butter makers have tried to reproduce European style butter – the same fat content, culturing it – yet have so far failed to make butter that is as good as European butter.

    The soil, the air, makes a different product.

    Strangely, craft American cheese makers have come out with European style cheeses that are as good or better.

    Jasper Hill Farms, in Vermont, makes a cheese modeled after the Swiss Vacherin d’or. It’s called Harbison and having tried both, in my opinion it’s better – but it’s also subtly different.

    If they just called it Vacherin, after the Swiss cheese, it would be highly misleading. So these “DOP” labels are important.

    Plus, unscrupulous companies can make seriously substandard products and call it the same thing.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=harbison+cheese&client=ms-android-google&prmd=sinxv&sxsrf=AOaemvIXGIDUrDCBfUG_Rg26jN92MO1BXQ:1635003146845&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6upiu7eDzAhWrQTABHVMyChIQ_AUoAnoECAMQAg&biw=393&bih=730&dpr=2.75#imgrc=W339TxQAZ7vUiM

    • Replies: @Pericles
    @AaronB

    For once, I agree with you Aaron.

  542. @Pericles
    @Yellowface Anon


    [Illegal immigration] can’t really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn’t be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic.

     

    It's worked for Israel and Hungary as far as I know. India is building a border fence to Bangladesh too, probably other countries as well. Back in the wetback era, even America managed to handle it. Perhaps it's not all that difficult if you actually try.

    The problem is really official unwillingness to act combined with tacit or open encouragement of migrants. (Wall building in the US was opposed with maniacal frenzy by the deep state and rotten judiciary, as I suppose we can still recall.) Same as in most of the EU.

    (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest)

     

    Since that affair is over by now, and it's football season, it seems more correct to say Blinken and the rest of the crazy clown crew not just stumbled but fumbled the ball in the endzone, leading to a comical and humiliating loss.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon

    The problem is really official unwillingness to act combined with tacit or open encouragement of migrants

    Walls block migration over land. As you know it has to be coupled with a set of anti-migrant policies for effectiveness.

    I’d rather think of why countries export migrants, what went wrong with their economies and societies. Solving that and you can remove the sources of the problem.

  543. @Pericles
    @Dmitry


    For example, EU protectionist law means that Parmesan has to be produced in Parmigiano-Reggiano. Mozzarella sold cheese has to be from Italy. Feta cheese from Greece.

    When Denmark tries to produce these styles of cheese, they are sued by the EU.

     

    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can't market 'Tel Aviv Champagne' or whatever either. I think it's good overall -- build your own brand instead of free riding. There's too much adulteration of terms already.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP

    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can’t market ‘Tel Aviv Champagne’ or whatever either. I think it’s good overall — build your own brand instead of free riding.

    The problem is that these terms denote a type and not a region. Mozzarella is a type of cheese, that can be produced anywhere. If the public feels it is best if it’s from Italy, than label it as mozzarella from the home region, Italy. It is silly and cumbersome for consumers to copyright the name of a type of product.

    • Replies: @Pericles
    @AP


    If the public feels it is best if it’s from Italy, than label it as mozzarella from the home region, Italy.
     
    I'm fine with keeping things as they are. It seems, for example, quite sufficient to call product 'Tel Aviv Sparkling Wine'.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  544. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    Good for you to know this, but it doesn’t change the fact that consumers of these dictums think in a simpler way.
     
    For better clarity and accuracy you should rephrase that as, "Some (but not all) consumers... think in a simpler way".

    All effective communication aimed at broad audience has to work across the entire IQ spectrum. Consider the policy of MAGA Reindustrialization. That one phrase covers:
        -1- Jobs for U.S. Workers
        -2- National Security (medicine and industrial goods)
        -3- Strategic international finance & commerce

    I was happy to have co-supporters that only focused on #1. However, I personally scored #2 and #3 as much more compelling drivers for immediate action.

    This is how propaganda works.
     
    George Orwell's 1984 was a warning about dystopian society where language is the ultimate form of power. Leftoids have adopted it as the ultimate "How To...." Guide.

    Perhaps MAGA's biggest legacy is banding a Yuge chunk of the population together in opposition to Orwellian language control. Leftoid ​efforts to misrepresent the TRUTH as "propaganda" have failed. It is now normal to reject Leftoid biased, propaganda terminology.

    But you’re saying explicitly the essence of wokeness is Islamic. The main political ideology Muslims have invented is political Islam. ... It was Jewish and Gentile intellectuals who invented wokeness.

     

    Some intellectual leaders of early Progressivism were indeed Judeo-Christian. However, wokeness was a later addition driven primarily by non-white, anti-Christian Muslims. Cassius Clay rejected his "white" slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW "colored" Muslim values. Most people know him as Muhammad Ali.

    In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and "racial justice". Modern day Wokeness explicitly opposes Judeo-Christian religious beliefs.



    the minimal amount I spotted a number of years ago is consistent with pro-Iran/anti-Saudi alignment.

     

    So in your eyes, since Soros funds pro-Irân, anti-Saudi initiatives, you see a Soros-Irân-China-Russia front and a (Trumpist) USA-Israel-Saudi front.
     
    You are going wildly over the top (again). And you intentionally skipped the key point in favour of your Leftoid propaganda.

    A "minimal amount of money", which is what I stated, does not logically connect to your irrelevant & diversionary diatribe.

    Soros uses Muslim immigration against Christian-secular liberal states in Europe, and then takes what has served him well in Europe against Muslim-secular states in the Middle East,
     
    This takes us back to my initial question that you skipped. Let me re-phrase and re-ask to avoid your disingenuous distraction based on "minimal funding".

    How much material (e.g. not minimal) funding does George IslamoSoros provide to groups that are active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country? Can you find any group? And, how much did they get as a % of his total Wokeslamic spending?

    I suspect you will be unable to find any large spending efforts in either Muslim-secular or Muslim-religious states that have an explicitly anti-Muslim character.

    Note: Renting a large cargo plane from a national carrier is neutral (not pro or anti) and quite expensive. Ditto for moving a ship through the Suez Canal. If you find a large dollar line item in a Muslim-secular country, that requires at least minimal detail about the expenditure.

    Americans and Israelis basically gave a free rein to Saudi Wâhhabis
     
    I doubt that America or Israel were focused on the Wâhhabis. They expected the Saudi monarchy to deal with local religious groups.

    Sadly, several Monarchs ago, the SA royal family replicated a mistake made several hundred years earlier by the English crown. (1)

    — 1660 The monarchy regains control as Charles II, son of Charles I, becomes king of England. The new government suspects all religious dissenters of political intrigue. Parliament passes laws banning gatherings and religious activity not authorized by the state church and imprisons many Quakers
    — 1681 William Penn acquires a huge tract of land in the colonies as payment of a debt King Charles II owed Penn’s father. Penn leads an effort to set up a Quaker colony, guaranteeing religious liberty

     
    Paying off the Quakers did not solve the problem. Yes, they went overseas. However, the formation of Pennsylvania allowed the Quakers to become stronger.

    The Saudi Monarchy funded overseas efforts by the Wâhhabis to separate them from domestic political issues. The punt looked promising in the short run. However, it was a long term, serious error. Allowing the Wâhhabis to become multinational increased the threat they pose to everyone, including the SA royal family.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    PBUYT

    However, wokeness was a later addition driven primarily by non-white, anti-Christian Muslims. Cassius Clay rejected his “white” slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW “colored” Muslim values. Most people know him as Muhammad Ali.

    In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and “racial justice”. Modern day Wokeness explicitly opposes Judeo-Christian religious beliefs.

    Their roles are quite small compared to racial & gender, activists.

    You are going wildly over the top (again). And you intentionally skipped the key point in favour of your Leftoid propaganda.

    What’s your point then? This?:

    How much material (e.g. not minimal) funding does George IslamoSoros provide to groups that are active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country?

    You don’t need to pay them if they are debauching themselves on their own, or the right moment to start has come. Some Muslims the former, some Muslims the latter.

    The Saudi Monarchy funded overseas efforts by the Wâhhabis to separate them from domestic political issues. The punt looked promising in the short run. However, it was a long term, serious error. Allowing the Wâhhabis to become multinational increased the threat they pose to everyone, including the SA royal family.

    As if the Saudis don’t drink their own Kool-Aid.

    The first steps to start destroying the Islamic threat would be regime change the Saudis, ban the Muslim Brotherhood everywhere and return the Holy Cities to the Hâshemites. Then we can deal with the rest of radical Islamists (mainly Afghanistan & Pakistan), prevent them from projecting their militancy outside of the Islamic world. Since the US & Israel have helped Islamism, it’s their responsibility.

    ——

    Perhaps MAGA’s biggest legacy is banding a Yuge chunk of the population together in opposition to Orwellian language control. Leftoid ​efforts to misrepresent the TRUTH as “propaganda” have failed. It is now normal to reject Leftoid biased, propaganda terminology.

    In favor of rightoid propaganda. Neither fully corresponds to reality, which is somewhere between 2 extremes.

    Trolls and propagandists will always exist. But there are tragic times where they won out, their superstitions and libels dominating the consciousness of the whole civilization. We are heading into such times no matter which side wins out.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon



    Cassius Clay rejected his “white” slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW “colored” Muslim values. ... In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and “racial justice”.
     
    Their roles are quite small compared to racial & gender, activists
     
    The Racial Muslim activists are the Woke Islamic activists. Why would you think they are different?

    Feminist Wokeslam is also very prevalent. Look at the anti-Semitic 2019 Womans' March: (1)

    The accusations date back to organizer Tamika Mallory’s ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has a long history of making anti-Semitic comments. More recently, an article in Tablet alleged that Mallory and fellow organizer Carmen Perez made anti-Jewish comments at planning meetings. Throughout it, the Women’s March organizers — along with Mallory and Perez they include Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour and fashion designer and activist Bob Bland — have released various statements on the controversy. Some have been conciliatory, others have only inflamed the tension.
    ...
    On Nov. 18, Sarsour releases a long statement saying that critics accused her of being anti-Semitic prior to the Farrakhan drama and that the accusations are because she is “a bold, outspoken BDS supporting Palestinian Muslim American woman.” She also says that Mallory’s family had a longstanding relationship with the Nation of Islam
     
    Almost every element of SJW Islamic politics contains Muslim activism against Judeo-Christian beliefs. Look at this picture:

     
    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/09/18/05/48066637-0-image-a-33_1631939229006.jpg
     

    LBGT Gayslam is so powerful within the movement, it has its own Pali-bow flag.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.jta.org/2019/01/17/united-states/a-timeline-of-the-womens-march-anti-semitism-controversies
  545. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class “Atlanticists” in the United Kingdom.
     
    While the referendum campaign was happening I largely didn't follow the debate because I was sure that remain would win by a 10 or 15% margin, leave appeared to be a protest vote or had this strong provincial feel, either UKIP type 'little Englanders' or old left. I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.

    I don't know how many of them they are, but one of David Goodhart's motivations for writing his book seems to have been to draw attention to the majority of Brexit voters, who weren't of this type. The situation makes me think of those elite theorists of politics like Pareto and Michels, because there was a potentially large 'somewhere' political constituency, but few elites to represent it, so it mostly remains in a politically inert state.

    There was quite strong support for the EU from within ethnic minorities, it seems to me this could be a politically sensitive issue, because you can see a potentially significant conflict of interest here between ethnic minorities and the groups more attached to some version of the historic British state.


    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.
     
    As far as I know this only applies to non-white groups when their culture is appropriated by whites though. In Woke the only oppressed whites can be those who suffer oppression due to their sexual and gender identities or due to disability. (Also fatness, because there is a Critical Fat Studies field). They sometimes talk about class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement's 'Achilles Heel'.

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry

    You are one of the many people I will miss, if you don’t migrate to AK’s substack. I will do so, after this stuff finally dies.

    I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.

    Given Britain’s extensive colonial history and identity outside of Europe, it would make sense for some segment of the elite to be pro-Brexit. I am thinking these would be Old Money types, the ones who enjoy things like foxhunting and whose ancestors might have had high colonial positions? These might be the ones who probably don’t mind importing third worlders from outside the EU to replace the Poles, because they will be isolated from them anyways.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @AP


    You are one of the many people I will miss, if you don’t migrate to AK’s substack. I will do so, after this stuff finally dies.
     
    It will be good if you and Mr Hack and the other regular posters make it over, I have an account and expect to start to use it soon as well. The comments format is not as good as here at Unz, that could be one thing keeping these last threads going, hopefully they will reach even more respectable numbers of posts.

    I am thinking these would be Old Money types, the ones who enjoy things like foxhunting and whose ancestors might have had high colonial positions?
     
    They seem to exist, AFAIK they mostly keep a low profile in national politics, part of the international business and finance sector and Conservative Party, and you don't see them unless you are in certain social environments. There are some that are Atlanticist and look to US business (Liam Fox), there are others that still have connections in the Gulf, India, West Africa, dating back to the colonial and Cold War era. In practice they probably don't mind replacing lower level British with Poles, Poles with Indians and so on, if it makes the labour force easier to manage. I think there was always a question about how far they felt connected to the wider British population, Orwell and some of the other socialist writers used to write about this in the 30s.

    If a person knew about both present day British business/foreign policy and genealogy there would be some interesting stories here.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  546. @AaronB
    @Pericles

    It's more than just marketing. The theory behind it is that good good food, like good wine, has "terroir".

    And it's absolutely true. Normandy butter, for instance, simply tastes different. Craft American butter makers have tried to reproduce European style butter - the same fat content, culturing it - yet have so far failed to make butter that is as good as European butter.

    The soil, the air, makes a different product.

    Strangely, craft American cheese makers have come out with European style cheeses that are as good or better.

    Jasper Hill Farms, in Vermont, makes a cheese modeled after the Swiss Vacherin d'or. It's called Harbison and having tried both, in my opinion it's better - but it's also subtly different.

    If they just called it Vacherin, after the Swiss cheese, it would be highly misleading. So these "DOP" labels are important.

    Plus, unscrupulous companies can make seriously substandard products and call it the same thing.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=harbison+cheese&client=ms-android-google&prmd=sinxv&sxsrf=AOaemvIXGIDUrDCBfUG_Rg26jN92MO1BXQ:1635003146845&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi6upiu7eDzAhWrQTABHVMyChIQ_AUoAnoECAMQAg&biw=393&bih=730&dpr=2.75#imgrc=W339TxQAZ7vUiM

    Replies: @Pericles

    For once, I agree with you Aaron.

    • LOL: AaronB
  547. @Coconuts
    @songbird

    The idea that Brazilian women are very libidinous due to the tropical environment used to be widely current. One of the major Brazilian sociologists of the first half of the 20th century wrote a very memorable book called Casa Grande e Senzala with detailed commentary on this topic:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lusotropicalism

    This book helped give rise to the Luso-tropicalismo movement.

    A Brazilian woman once passed on some folk wisdom to me, in more polite language, that it is common knowledge that Brazilian women are born already having had intercourse.

    Replies: @AP

    I once met a group of southern Brazilians, who appeared to be of German descent. It was really interesting and a bit bizarre to see these Portuguese-speaking people with obvious German features (blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes) walk, move, sway their hips in a way that is indistinguishable from other Latinos.

    I guess by their movements alone, European or American tourists in Brazil can be distinguished from locals of European-descent (which is more dangerous for tourists).

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Yes - and in YouTube there are found such examples, that e.g. sending a Tatar girl for a few years to highschool in Japan, results in her speaking, facial expressions and bodylanguage becoming stereotypically Japanese. Even her posture of standing becomes uniquely Japanese, as if her ancestors had been living in Honchu for thousands of years working in rice fields or wearing geta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vrjKzCa0ug.

    When we are children, our national traits are much more on "software level", than we later imagine as adults.

    Still for its successful, it requires probably limiting to smaller scale immigration, where everyone around you is from the local nationality, and this creates great pressure to re-orient yourself to a new culture. But it's not the same trying to Franconize immigrants in the banlieues outside Paris, where native French people can hardly be found.

  548. @songbird
    @Pericles

    I support border walls. They are necessary in the modern world, where one can move people fast and zerg rush.

    I think there is an analogy that can be made to skin: you wouldn't survive without your skin. But you also need more layers of defense for your body than just your skin. You wouldn't survive with just your skin, but no immune system.

    And the immune system itself is a really complicated and layered thing. You wouldn't survive with just one part of it.

    Trouble is, in the US, most of the "immune system" has been compromised. It has effectively become theater of the mind. Just for show, to make people think they are not being invaded and that the regime isn't culpable in their displacement. And it may have never been well-designed in the first place, not according to modern challenges.

    Replies: @Pericles

    Trouble is, in the US, most of the “immune system” has been compromised. …
    Just for show, to make people think they are not being invaded and that the regime isn’t culpable in their displacement.

    Shall we simply call it ‘poz’? What we have today is a bizarre anti-immune system really. Once they break through, the system becomes welcoming and nourishing to the invaders.

    Cordyceps

    • Agree: songbird
  549. @AP
    @Pericles


    Sure, the same goes for wine. You can’t market ‘Tel Aviv Champagne’ or whatever either. I think it’s good overall — build your own brand instead of free riding.
     
    The problem is that these terms denote a type and not a region. Mozzarella is a type of cheese, that can be produced anywhere. If the public feels it is best if it's from Italy, than label it as mozzarella from the home region, Italy. It is silly and cumbersome for consumers to copyright the name of a type of product.

    Replies: @Pericles

    If the public feels it is best if it’s from Italy, than label it as mozzarella from the home region, Italy.

    I’m fine with keeping things as they are. It seems, for example, quite sufficient to call product ‘Tel Aviv Sparkling Wine’.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Pericles

    I'm not fussy about wine and only recently started to not dislike the taste of wine. But in Europe I try to buy Israeli wine for sentimental reasons, and I was able to buy some comparatively cheap industrialized wine from the Golan Heights - it's called "Yarden wine".

    Price of bottles of "Yarden" in Europe seems to be double its price in supermarkets in Israel - where it is a common supermarket brand, so (without researching) I wonder if there could be EU tariffs for wine from Israel.

    For wine, the EU labelling situation is not bad, as the non-European brands simply label themselves by the type of grape.

    Causal supermarket wine customers are probably more likely to buy wine based on a generic grape type, than on the regional name.

    As a non-knowledgeable consumer, I find it easier to understand generic "Merlot" or "Malbec", than the EU regional exclusive names like "Douro" or "Lambrusco".

    But with cheese it is very different situation - how do you describe "Parmesan" or "Mozzarella" without the regional terms?

    Similarly, things like "Serrano ham", "Milano salami", "Parma ham".

    I would have difficulty trying to find what the Danish version of these products are, because the regional labels are way we identify the product type.

    EU also tried to ban UK chocolate from being called chocolate, because it has too low content of cocoa. UK responded by raising the level of cocoa in its chocolate. So maybe it's not all bad. BBC has been reporting that the Brexit will cause a fall in cocoa levels. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36457903

    -

    In other trade news, there is probably can make Aaronb happy - at least USA is removing tariffs on the delicious whisky from Scotland. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/17/cheers-to-that-us-agrees-to-lift-tariffs-on-scotch-whiskey

    Recall, Trump had installed 25% tariffs on Scottish whisky imports to the USA. I assume whisky fans in America could have been pretty angry with Trump for this.

    Replies: @A123, @Pericles

  550. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Although Brexit is supported a lot by upper class “Atlanticists” in the United Kingdom.
     
    While the referendum campaign was happening I largely didn't follow the debate because I was sure that remain would win by a 10 or 15% margin, leave appeared to be a protest vote or had this strong provincial feel, either UKIP type 'little Englanders' or old left. I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.

    I don't know how many of them they are, but one of David Goodhart's motivations for writing his book seems to have been to draw attention to the majority of Brexit voters, who weren't of this type. The situation makes me think of those elite theorists of politics like Pareto and Michels, because there was a potentially large 'somewhere' political constituency, but few elites to represent it, so it mostly remains in a politically inert state.

    There was quite strong support for the EU from within ethnic minorities, it seems to me this could be a politically sensitive issue, because you can see a potentially significant conflict of interest here between ethnic minorities and the groups more attached to some version of the historic British state.


    For example, “anti-cultural appropriation” has been one of the anti-globalization parts of the woke ideology.
     
    As far as I know this only applies to non-white groups when their culture is appropriated by whites though. In Woke the only oppressed whites can be those who suffer oppression due to their sexual and gender identities or due to disability. (Also fatness, because there is a Critical Fat Studies field). They sometimes talk about class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement's 'Achilles Heel'.

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry

    It is what Johnson says in the speeches always – that Brexit implies the UK will become global citizen, that is not connected to provincial Europe, but to the world – although in particular USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada.

    This is how Johnson in the paper which resulted in the “Global Britain” slogan (which is now official slogan of the Kingdom).

    Johnson has adopted the “Global Britain” as the reward of Brexit, and they are very excited now about the alliance “AUKUS” (Australia, UK, US). If you look in the recent presentation of the Global Britain strategy.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/global-britain-is-planting-its-flag-on-the-world-stage-article-by-liz-truss

    His comments about Russia are a little ironic, as he receives a lot of donations from Russian businesspeople, and of course London is party fueled on vast inputs of Russian money. The main newspaper of London is owned by former KGB people, and wife of last Mayor of Moscow (Elena Baturina) is criticized in the same newspaper for her Johnson donations.

    class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement’s ‘Achilles Heel’.

    Yes definitely.

    Those articles you posted of women saying “I’m proud from wave of feminists at the university of the 1960s, who read Simone de Beauvoir when in vacation in Paris, and we ​had protested for our rights”.

    Translated these kind of feminist you posted – to me it reads like “I am part of the elite, leisure class, where women were reading philosophy books, and we had achieved strong bargaining positions even in relation to men of our class, while you were peasants selling vegetables in the village market.”

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Johnson has adopted the “Global Britain” as the reward of Brexit, and they are very excited now about the alliance “AUKUS” (Australia, UK, US). If you look in the recent presentation of the Global Britain strategy.
     
    Given how close the vote was, I wonder if things would have gone differently if it had been known in advance that this kind of 'Global Britain' policy would be the end result, and also the increased cultural/political influence of the US just as it was moving towards the Awokening. I think it could have influenced the outcome.

    It seemed like there was always (at least in theory) the option of Britain remaining in the EU while making a commitment to a 'European Britain' and withdrawing from as much involvement in the Commonwealth and wider world. This may have met many of the needs of the 'somewhere' voters that Goodhart outlines, I thought of it at the time but couldn't see political support for it anywhere. On one hand it seems more relevant given how things are looking long term, on the other perhaps I was only thinking of it because my own interest in Europe is stronger than a lot of other British people's.

    Some of the lines in Johnson's announcement look like he is even goading the Woke, making references to imperial times and being against oppression and things at the same time.

    The feminist lady whose blog I was posting from is a very commercially successful writer from the 90s and 2000s, a couple of Hollywood films were made from her books in that period so she will be very well off. As you were saying, a feature of Wokeness is that it derives social power and authority from the fact it is adopted and promoted by the wealthy and people who already have social position and influence, and holding these views is becoming a sign of being part of the enlightened portion of the higher classes. This seems to happen with progressive ideas that become fashionable in the Anglosphere.
  551. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Trump has mostly followed what he has promised in his election campaign – a lot of noise for the media to use as clickbait, some implementation of Republican policies, some tariffs to try to protect local industry, reduction of corporation tax rate, some immigration restriction, and (following Obama/Biden’s isolationism trend) withdrawal from Afghanistan.
     
    As far as his populist platform goes, he was either too hindered by institutional interests ("Deep State") or focusing on the wrong things. His policies either missed the point or ended up causing much deeper problems in the longer term, while giving fuel for left-wing radicalization.

    Let me briefly think about his policies. Latino immigration is the result of lots of interventionist mess-ups since the Cold War, including the lost economic decade of the 80s caused by indebtedness. It can't really be solved without really changing the way to approach these countries or shooting immigrants at the border (we know that wouldn't be humane), which means any wall-building was mostly symbolic. Tariffs were done not for reindustrialization (they were still low on industrial goods from SE Asia & India and the effect on domestic labor was quite moderate) but to irritate China and set them on the course of eventual collision. Tax cuts are debatable whether you believe in corporate wealth being idle, speculative, or productive. Trumpists have forgotten it was Trump who cut a deal with the Taliban (while Blinken has stumbled on the proper way to withdraw, to be honest). Both the Trumpist (fossil fuels) & Democrat (renewables) focus on energy have diminishing returns that only nuclear can avoid.

    Whatever he has done or could have done if he was reelected, they won't be as disastrous as what Democrats have been implementing which weren't on the table during Obama's presidency (COVID, Green New Deal, MMT & possible UBI). Wokeness is just an afterthought.

    After Obama’s promises to African American votes – their household wealth has fallen to the lowest level.
     
    I don't think you take the HBD perspective in human capital. They'll probably never be equal in wealth with Whites since they don't have the right genes (or culture) to succeed in the US' capitalist economy. But there are still a lot of space for them to catch-up and this is where successive administrations haven't helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black & Latinos are used to, to White & Asian-dominated finance. (What's with the forecast of that graph?)

    Considering the divergences of rhetoric and results with the Democrat president, it can be considered good for the ordinary people’s salary that Bernie Sanders has not been elected.
     
    Bernie Sanders was kicked from the race for obvious reasons, he's been challenging the whole economic establishment at least in rhetoric. This is why the Democrats under Biden have incorporated much of his platform while leaving out the core, which is economic populism.

    Replies: @Pericles, @Dmitry

    successive administrations haven’t helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black

    If America’s elite actually prioritized about equality between races, then those areas of Baltimore would look like central Moscow,.

    Central Moscow (or central Baku, or Minsk) is an example what places which politicians prioritize, look like. There is infinite budget for every pavement and street lamp.

    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can’t even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it’s not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.

    HBD perspective in human capital. They’ll probably never be equal in wealth

    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia – i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.

    The universal result seems to be – liquor.

    If you look at the situation in Baltimore, the only shop there is a liquor store. It’s just like in Tuva.

    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don’t have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.

    forecast of that graph?

    It is from 2017 (https://prosperitynow.org/files/PDFs/road_to_zero_wealth.pdf), and was based from drawing the trend to 2024.

    For 2013 (first year of Obama’s second term) it goes to. It’s excluding durable goods (like your car and your television).
    https://i.imgur.com/keaazIB.jpg

    Wokeness

    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I’m sure I’m a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.

    There was a photo of Obama’s daughter with friends which was labelled:
    “1. Malia Obama, daughter of President Obama
    2. Elizabeth Tisch, daughter of billionaire Steve Tisch
    3. Audrey Kotick, daughter of billionaire Robert Kotick.
    4. Fashion designer Monique Lhuillier, owner of fashion houses based in Los Angeles and Manhattan’s Upper East Side
    5. Jamie Tisch, ex-wife of Tisch
    6. Tom Bugbee, CEO Monique Lhuillier
    7. Holden Tisch, daughter of Tisch
    8. Zachary Tisch, son of Tisch
    9. Tassilo von Furstenberg, grandson of Diane von Furstenberg”

    • LOL: sher singh
    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry

    Excellent post as usual. One point, not really a contradiction:


    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don’t have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.
     
    True, but conservative policies are less harmful, such that under Trump the situation of blacks in America improved somewhat and the racial gap became a little smaller.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-families/u-s-income-inequality-narrowed-slightly-over-last-three-years-fed-idUSKBN26J2LZ

    https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-FED/FAMILIES/oakveexnbvr/chart.png

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can’t even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it’s not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.
     
    Which means the class factor is much greater than the racial factor, even if it is dressed in racialized language (Black localities might have made some questionable decisions to use funds for welfare too).

    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia – i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.
     
    That's the truth - on one hand their level of intellectual development is lower than the level demanded by modern society (HBD). On the other hand, processes of colonialism forcefully integrate them into modern industrial society without trying to ameliorate their cultural plight. Only when we combine both biological and socio-cultural perspectives can we see the whole picture, which is why neither a sole focus on HBD nor blank-slate is realistic.

    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I’m sure I’m a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.
     
    You get it.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  552. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    PBUYT


    However, wokeness was a later addition driven primarily by non-white, anti-Christian Muslims. Cassius Clay rejected his “white” slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW “colored” Muslim values. Most people know him as Muhammad Ali.

    In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and “racial justice”. Modern day Wokeness explicitly opposes Judeo-Christian religious beliefs.
     
    Their roles are quite small compared to racial & gender, activists.

    You are going wildly over the top (again). And you intentionally skipped the key point in favour of your Leftoid propaganda.
     
    What's your point then? This?:

    How much material (e.g. not minimal) funding does George IslamoSoros provide to groups that are active on the ground working against Islam in a Muslim country?
     
    You don't need to pay them if they are debauching themselves on their own, or the right moment to start has come. Some Muslims the former, some Muslims the latter.

    The Saudi Monarchy funded overseas efforts by the Wâhhabis to separate them from domestic political issues. The punt looked promising in the short run. However, it was a long term, serious error. Allowing the Wâhhabis to become multinational increased the threat they pose to everyone, including the SA royal family.
     
    As if the Saudis don't drink their own Kool-Aid.

    The first steps to start destroying the Islamic threat would be regime change the Saudis, ban the Muslim Brotherhood everywhere and return the Holy Cities to the Hâshemites. Then we can deal with the rest of radical Islamists (mainly Afghanistan & Pakistan), prevent them from projecting their militancy outside of the Islamic world. Since the US & Israel have helped Islamism, it's their responsibility.

    ------

    Perhaps MAGA’s biggest legacy is banding a Yuge chunk of the population together in opposition to Orwellian language control. Leftoid ​efforts to misrepresent the TRUTH as “propaganda” have failed. It is now normal to reject Leftoid biased, propaganda terminology.
     
    In favor of rightoid propaganda. Neither fully corresponds to reality, which is somewhere between 2 extremes.

    Trolls and propagandists will always exist. But there are tragic times where they won out, their superstitions and libels dominating the consciousness of the whole civilization. We are heading into such times no matter which side wins out.

    Replies: @A123

    Cassius Clay rejected his “white” slave name as part of his personal advocacy for SJW “colored” Muslim values. … In Europe and especially America, Muslim leaders have been integral to the drive for Woke Islamic values and “racial justice”.

    Their roles are quite small compared to racial & gender, activists

    The Racial Muslim activists are the Woke Islamic activists. Why would you think they are different?

    Feminist Wokeslam is also very prevalent. Look at the anti-Semitic 2019 Womans’ March: (1)

    The accusations date back to organizer Tamika Mallory’s ties to Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, who has a long history of making anti-Semitic comments. More recently, an article in Tablet alleged that Mallory and fellow organizer Carmen Perez made anti-Jewish comments at planning meetings. Throughout it, the Women’s March organizers — along with Mallory and Perez they include Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour and fashion designer and activist Bob Bland — have released various statements on the controversy. Some have been conciliatory, others have only inflamed the tension.

    On Nov. 18, Sarsour releases a long statement saying that critics accused her of being anti-Semitic prior to the Farrakhan drama and that the accusations are because she is “a bold, outspoken BDS supporting Palestinian Muslim American woman.” She also says that Mallory’s family had a longstanding relationship with the Nation of Islam

    Almost every element of SJW Islamic politics contains Muslim activism against Judeo-Christian beliefs. Look at this picture:

     

     

    LBGT Gayslam is so powerful within the movement, it has its own Pali-bow flag.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.jta.org/2019/01/17/united-states/a-timeline-of-the-womens-march-anti-semitism-controversies

  553. @Pericles
    @AP


    If the public feels it is best if it’s from Italy, than label it as mozzarella from the home region, Italy.
     
    I'm fine with keeping things as they are. It seems, for example, quite sufficient to call product 'Tel Aviv Sparkling Wine'.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    I’m not fussy about wine and only recently started to not dislike the taste of wine. But in Europe I try to buy Israeli wine for sentimental reasons, and I was able to buy some comparatively cheap industrialized wine from the Golan Heights – it’s called “Yarden wine”.

    Price of bottles of “Yarden” in Europe seems to be double its price in supermarkets in Israel – where it is a common supermarket brand, so (without researching) I wonder if there could be EU tariffs for wine from Israel.

    For wine, the EU labelling situation is not bad, as the non-European brands simply label themselves by the type of grape.

    Causal supermarket wine customers are probably more likely to buy wine based on a generic grape type, than on the regional name.

    As a non-knowledgeable consumer, I find it easier to understand generic “Merlot” or “Malbec”, than the EU regional exclusive names like “Douro” or “Lambrusco”.

    But with cheese it is very different situation – how do you describe “Parmesan” or “Mozzarella” without the regional terms?

    Similarly, things like “Serrano ham”, “Milano salami”, “Parma ham”.

    I would have difficulty trying to find what the Danish version of these products are, because the regional labels are way we identify the product type.

    EU also tried to ban UK chocolate from being called chocolate, because it has too low content of cocoa. UK responded by raising the level of cocoa in its chocolate. So maybe it’s not all bad. BBC has been reporting that the Brexit will cause a fall in cocoa levels. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36457903

    In other trade news, there is probably can make Aaronb happy – at least USA is removing tariffs on the delicious whisky from Scotland. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/17/cheers-to-that-us-agrees-to-lift-tariffs-on-scotch-whiskey

    Recall, Trump had installed 25% tariffs on Scottish whisky imports to the USA. I assume whisky fans in America could have been pretty angry with Trump for this.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Dmitry


    Recall, Trump had installed 25% tariffs on Scottish whisky imports to the USA. I assume whisky fans in America could have been pretty angry with Trump for this.
     
    Many thanks for the good news.

    Ardbeg Corryvreckan spiked to over $100 between tariffs and sin taxes. However, given current inflationary pressures, my fear is that that the tariff cut will not make it down to individual consumers

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    https://m1.behance.net/rendition/modules/4605734/disp/ee255657e46491d41321ce8e9825a8e5.jpg

    , @Pericles
    @Dmitry


    But with cheese it is very different situation – how do you describe “Parmesan” or “Mozzarella” without the regional terms?

    Similarly, things like “Serrano ham”, “Milano salami”, “Parma ham”.

    I would have difficulty trying to find what the Danish version of these products are, because the regional labels are way we identify the product type.

     

    You could describe mozzarella as "cheese made from buffalo milk", I suppose. Of course, the Danish imitation might be made from some other milk so perhaps that's unsuitable. Parmesan is a form of "hard cheese", Serrano ham is made in a certain way from a certain sort of black pig (I'm not sure), etc.

    Overall, consider that the consumer for whatever reason often is looking to buy the authentic product, not the Danish imitation labeled as authentic.
  554. The third and final song of mine that I will post here is Ann-O-Mite :

    Notice how seamlessly I integrate Mr. Walker’s trademark phrase into the song, and how each verse has its own subplot. That has led to the immense popularity of this song.

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @Thomm

    Just cuz Cow Poo & Niggerz are the same color, doesn't mean you should worship em||

    Replies: @Thomm

  555. @Dmitry
    @Pericles

    I'm not fussy about wine and only recently started to not dislike the taste of wine. But in Europe I try to buy Israeli wine for sentimental reasons, and I was able to buy some comparatively cheap industrialized wine from the Golan Heights - it's called "Yarden wine".

    Price of bottles of "Yarden" in Europe seems to be double its price in supermarkets in Israel - where it is a common supermarket brand, so (without researching) I wonder if there could be EU tariffs for wine from Israel.

    For wine, the EU labelling situation is not bad, as the non-European brands simply label themselves by the type of grape.

    Causal supermarket wine customers are probably more likely to buy wine based on a generic grape type, than on the regional name.

    As a non-knowledgeable consumer, I find it easier to understand generic "Merlot" or "Malbec", than the EU regional exclusive names like "Douro" or "Lambrusco".

    But with cheese it is very different situation - how do you describe "Parmesan" or "Mozzarella" without the regional terms?

    Similarly, things like "Serrano ham", "Milano salami", "Parma ham".

    I would have difficulty trying to find what the Danish version of these products are, because the regional labels are way we identify the product type.

    EU also tried to ban UK chocolate from being called chocolate, because it has too low content of cocoa. UK responded by raising the level of cocoa in its chocolate. So maybe it's not all bad. BBC has been reporting that the Brexit will cause a fall in cocoa levels. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36457903

    -

    In other trade news, there is probably can make Aaronb happy - at least USA is removing tariffs on the delicious whisky from Scotland. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/17/cheers-to-that-us-agrees-to-lift-tariffs-on-scotch-whiskey

    Recall, Trump had installed 25% tariffs on Scottish whisky imports to the USA. I assume whisky fans in America could have been pretty angry with Trump for this.

    Replies: @A123, @Pericles

    Recall, Trump had installed 25% tariffs on Scottish whisky imports to the USA. I assume whisky fans in America could have been pretty angry with Trump for this.

    Many thanks for the good news.

    Ardbeg Corryvreckan spiked to over \$100 between tariffs and sin taxes. However, given current inflationary pressures, my fear is that that the tariff cut will not make it down to individual consumers

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  556. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    successive administrations haven’t helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black

     

    If America's elite actually prioritized about equality between races, then those areas of Baltimore would look like central Moscow,.

    Central Moscow (or central Baku, or Minsk) is an example what places which politicians prioritize, look like. There is infinite budget for every pavement and street lamp.

    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can't even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it's not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.


    HBD perspective in human capital. They’ll probably never be equal in wealth
     
    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia - i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.

    The universal result seems to be - liquor.

    If you look at the situation in Baltimore, the only shop there is a liquor store. It's just like in Tuva.

    -

    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don't have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.


    forecast of that graph?
     
    It is from 2017 (https://prosperitynow.org/files/PDFs/road_to_zero_wealth.pdf), and was based from drawing the trend to 2024.

    For 2013 (first year of Obama's second term) it goes to. It's excluding durable goods (like your car and your television).

    https://i.imgur.com/up5bjE5.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/keaazIB.jpg


    Wokeness
     
    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I'm sure I'm a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.

    There was a photo of Obama's daughter with friends which was labelled:
    "1. Malia Obama, daughter of President Obama
    2. Elizabeth Tisch, daughter of billionaire Steve Tisch
    3. Audrey Kotick, daughter of billionaire Robert Kotick.
    4. Fashion designer Monique Lhuillier, owner of fashion houses based in Los Angeles and Manhattan's Upper East Side
    5. Jamie Tisch, ex-wife of Tisch
    6. Tom Bugbee, CEO Monique Lhuillier
    7. Holden Tisch, daughter of Tisch
    8. Zachary Tisch, son of Tisch
    9. Tassilo von Furstenberg, grandson of Diane von Furstenberg"
    https://i.imgur.com/8jiXc0A.jpg

    Replies: @AP, @Yellowface Anon

    Excellent post as usual. One point, not really a contradiction:

    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don’t have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.

    True, but conservative policies are less harmful, such that under Trump the situation of blacks in America improved somewhat and the racial gap became a little smaller.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-families/u-s-income-inequality-narrowed-slightly-over-last-three-years-fed-idUSKBN26J2LZ

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Thanks.

    I guess you saw when Varlamov made a popular YouTube report from Kyzyl? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CJrIhsR23I.),

    Tuvans are the highest fertility nationality in the Russian Federation, but otherwise this situation of killing yourself with alcohol and violence is very similar to equivalent groups in North America.

    These people lost their traditional, thousands-year nomadic lifestyle, and thrown into disenchantment, and instead of a shaman they now have a liquor store.

    -

    Without wanting to degrade too much this serious topic of loss of the enchantment with the world of traditional peoples, with political trivia - the Senator of the Republic of Tuva is Lyudmila Narusova, wife of Anatoly Sobchak. She is the political stepmother of Putin/Medvedev/Sechin, as well as biological mother of pseudoopposition candidate Ksenia Sobchak.

    It's kind of similar to America - that probably such kind of politicians have been as useful for saving the Tuvans from disenchantment, as Pelosi's family has been in rescuing African Americans in Baltimore. https://web.archive.org/web/20210324145725/https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-dalesandro-family-20191021-w5ftn3ue2zdhfhzvvjr6fmu644-story.html

    Replies: @Dmitry

  557. @AP
    @Dmitry

    Excellent post as usual. One point, not really a contradiction:


    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don’t have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.
     
    True, but conservative policies are less harmful, such that under Trump the situation of blacks in America improved somewhat and the racial gap became a little smaller.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-fed-families/u-s-income-inequality-narrowed-slightly-over-last-three-years-fed-idUSKBN26J2LZ

    https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-FED/FAMILIES/oakveexnbvr/chart.png

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Thanks.

    I guess you saw when Varlamov made a popular YouTube report from Kyzyl? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CJrIhsR23I.),

    Tuvans are the highest fertility nationality in the Russian Federation, but otherwise this situation of killing yourself with alcohol and violence is very similar to equivalent groups in North America.

    These people lost their traditional, thousands-year nomadic lifestyle, and thrown into disenchantment, and instead of a shaman they now have a liquor store.

    Without wanting to degrade too much this serious topic of loss of the enchantment with the world of traditional peoples, with political trivia – the Senator of the Republic of Tuva is Lyudmila Narusova, wife of Anatoly Sobchak. She is the political stepmother of Putin/Medvedev/Sechin, as well as biological mother of pseudoopposition candidate Ksenia Sobchak.

    It’s kind of similar to America – that probably such kind of politicians have been as useful for saving the Tuvans from disenchantment, as Pelosi’s family has been in rescuing African Americans in Baltimore. https://web.archive.org/web/20210324145725/https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-dalesandro-family-20191021-w5ftn3ue2zdhfhzvvjr6fmu644-story.html

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    These people lost their traditional, thousands-year nomadic lifestyle, and thrown into disenchantment, and instead of a shaman they now have a liquor store.

     

    One of the disasters of nationalities like African Americans and Tuvans, is being cut from their ancient spirituality, thrown in the modern world without an anchor.

    One of the strengths of cultures like Japanese, non-mainland Chinese, Jews (excluding Haredim, who rejected much of the post-18th century modernity) and Italians, is being able to balance modernity with a sense of connection to the ancient world.

    In Northern Europe, the connection to the Ancient world is partly mediated through the access to classical texts after Renaissance, and classical and biblical texts through the Church.

    Living in Weimar, Goethe believed in the late 18th century that text was not sufficient, and he could only become spiritually whole, by travel South to Italy, and accessing the classical world via the physical realities of Mediterranean streets and women. (This can be more difficult today with parts of Italy converted to a shiny tourist confectionary, with clean streets, and German and Chinese tourists distracting from the classical experience).

    -

    In this context, it can be easy to emphasize with Americans expending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Noah's Ark in Kentucky. $50 per ticket for this place though?
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4_AP0MiwKA

  558. @AP
    @Coconuts

    I once met a group of southern Brazilians, who appeared to be of German descent. It was really interesting and a bit bizarre to see these Portuguese-speaking people with obvious German features (blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes) walk, move, sway their hips in a way that is indistinguishable from other Latinos.

    I guess by their movements alone, European or American tourists in Brazil can be distinguished from locals of European-descent (which is more dangerous for tourists).

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Yes – and in YouTube there are found such examples, that e.g. sending a Tatar girl for a few years to highschool in Japan, results in her speaking, facial expressions and bodylanguage becoming stereotypically Japanese. Even her posture of standing becomes uniquely Japanese, as if her ancestors had been living in Honchu for thousands of years working in rice fields or wearing geta. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9vrjKzCa0ug.

    When we are children, our national traits are much more on “software level”, than we later imagine as adults.

    Still for its successful, it requires probably limiting to smaller scale immigration, where everyone around you is from the local nationality, and this creates great pressure to re-orient yourself to a new culture. But it’s not the same trying to Franconize immigrants in the banlieues outside Paris, where native French people can hardly be found.

  559. @Thomm
    The third and final song of mine that I will post here is Ann-O-Mite :

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/25b9ba593f7aec3bf46545cf514f8794eb3d3ebcef64bea1ae41743a12b10c70.jpg?w=800&h=924


    Notice how seamlessly I integrate Mr. Walker's trademark phrase into the song, and how each verse has its own subplot. That has led to the immense popularity of this song.

    Replies: @sher singh

    Just cuz Cow Poo & Niggerz are the same color, doesn’t mean you should worship em||

    • Replies: @Thomm
    @sher singh

    er.... You're the South Asian, not me. Therefore, don't you have more pressing problems to address in your country?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  560. @utu
    @Dmitry

    Collecting and playing with insects like grass hoppers, June bugs, dung beetles or having ant farms was pretty universal I think for boys of certain age in Europe.

    But your connection to robots and AI is correct. The AI program or philosophy of Rodney Brooks of MIT was to jumpstart AI development by emulating insect like robots which would be embedded in reality that would be a short cut of millions of years of evolution instead of what was the dominant AI program of creating a disembodied computer brain like a brain in a jar.

    Nouvelle artificial intelligence (AI) is an approach to artificial intelligence pioneered in the 1980s by Rodney Brooks, who was then part of MIT artificial intelligence laboratory. Nouvelle AI differs from classical AI by aiming to produce robots with intelligence levels similar to insects. Researchers believe that intelligence can emerge organically from simple behaviors as these intelligences interacted with the "real world," instead of using the constructed worlds which symbolic AIs typically needed to have programmed into them. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nouvelle_AI

    Military has many application for insectoid robots, so Rodney Brooks was funded well. He was also behind Roomba. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRobot

    Replies: @Dmitry

    playing with insects. was pretty universal I think for boys of

    This is true, and younger children don’t have natural prejudice against insects.

    But in our modern European culture, we definitely develop this attitude at some age (which seems quite alienated from nature) that insects are scary and disgusting, and that girls need to run away from spiders.

    I have developed this attitude at some age, and for me no food seems more disgusting than eating insects.

    I’m wondering if it maybe partly derived historically from dietary prohibitions of Abrahamic religion.

    In Japan, the attitude remaining that insects are beautiful ( https://aeon.co/essays/japanese-culture-conquered-the-human-fear-of-creepy-crawlies
    ), as well as tasty (eating insects like wasps larvae are some local cuisine there https://youtu.be/QHRl2gSyuHU?t=1222.).

    Eating insects was fashionable in Ancient Greece and Rome, but it was prohibited as not kosher among the Ancient Israelites (except for a certain kind of locust – which modern sources can’t identify, so that afterwards Jews are banned from eating all insects and shellfish).

    In modern Europe we seemed to inherit the Biblical view against eating insects (although not against shellfish).

    This prohibition, also implies that insects must be too disgusting to eat. Whereas Romans and Greeks were historically –

    Among the Hebrews, there was one kind of locust that was accepted as kosher, so they didn’t have a prejudice against eating all insects in ancient times. But because the identification of the specific locust was lost, they had later banned everything.

    John the Baptist’s diet was supposedly completely insect. so Ancient Hebrew tastes were more thinking like modern Japanese than we in modern Europe.

    View post on imgur.com

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A4&version=NIV

    insectoid robots

    Yes and simple projects in stochastic robotics have also been openly inspired by insects.
    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nigel-Franks/publication/235362107_The_dynamics_of_collective_sorting_robot-like_ants_and_ant-like_robots/links/02e7e52b98ed20ebab000000/The-dynamics-of-collective-sorting-robot-like-ants-and-ant-like-robots.pdf

    Although it’s known nowadays that ants don’t do exactly random walks .

    • Replies: @utu
    @Dmitry

    In 19th century France maybugs were still eaten.

    In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames, although they require some preparation by soaking in vinegar in order to purge them of soil in their digestive tracts.[6] A cockchafer stew is referred to in W. G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer

    As a kid I loved to play with them when they appeared in May or June. But it seems that they are almost gone and rarely appear in large numbers.

    Children since antiquity have played with cockchafers. In ancient Greece, boys caught the insect, tied a linen thread to its feet and set it free, amusing themselves to watch it fly in spirals. English boys in Victorian times played a very similar game by sticking a pin through one of its wings.[12] Nikola Tesla recalls that as a child he made one of his first "inventions"—an "engine" made by harnessing four cockchafers in this fashion. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    John the Baptist’s diet was supposedly completely insect.
     
    You think an ascetic's tastes was mainstream, don't you?

    Anyway, reintroducing insect powder might be one of the more neutral fads in the food industries, that's nonetheless stigmatized by rightoids because it implies this (and synthetic meat) will drive genuine industrially-farmed meat off the market.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Barbarossa

  561. @sher singh
    @Thomm

    Just cuz Cow Poo & Niggerz are the same color, doesn't mean you should worship em||

    Replies: @Thomm

    er…. You’re the South Asian, not me. Therefore, don’t you have more pressing problems to address in your country?

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Thomm

    India isn't his country, Khalistan is. The worse India as a whole fares, the better the chance Khalistan comes out at the top of the neo-caste system.

    Replies: @sher singh

  562. @Dmitry
    @utu


    playing with insects. was pretty universal I think for boys of
     
    This is true, and younger children don't have natural prejudice against insects.

    But in our modern European culture, we definitely develop this attitude at some age (which seems quite alienated from nature) that insects are scary and disgusting, and that girls need to run away from spiders.

    I have developed this attitude at some age, and for me no food seems more disgusting than eating insects.

    I'm wondering if it maybe partly derived historically from dietary prohibitions of Abrahamic religion.

    In Japan, the attitude remaining that insects are beautiful ( https://aeon.co/essays/japanese-culture-conquered-the-human-fear-of-creepy-crawlies
    ), as well as tasty (eating insects like wasps larvae are some local cuisine there https://youtu.be/QHRl2gSyuHU?t=1222.).

    Eating insects was fashionable in Ancient Greece and Rome, but it was prohibited as not kosher among the Ancient Israelites (except for a certain kind of locust - which modern sources can't identify, so that afterwards Jews are banned from eating all insects and shellfish).

    In modern Europe we seemed to inherit the Biblical view against eating insects (although not against shellfish).

    This prohibition, also implies that insects must be too disgusting to eat. Whereas Romans and Greeks were historically -

    https://i.imgur.com/JVSXYeW.jpg

    Among the Hebrews, there was one kind of locust that was accepted as kosher, so they didn't have a prejudice against eating all insects in ancient times. But because the identification of the specific locust was lost, they had later banned everything.

    John the Baptist's diet was supposedly completely insect. so Ancient Hebrew tastes were more thinking like modern Japanese than we in modern Europe.
    https://imgur.com/a/CxWeto0

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A4&version=NIV

    insectoid robots

     

    Yes and simple projects in stochastic robotics have also been openly inspired by insects.
    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nigel-Franks/publication/235362107_The_dynamics_of_collective_sorting_robot-like_ants_and_ant-like_robots/links/02e7e52b98ed20ebab000000/The-dynamics-of-collective-sorting-robot-like-ants-and-ant-like-robots.pdf

    Although it's known nowadays that ants don't do exactly random walks .

    Replies: @utu, @Yellowface Anon

    In 19th century France maybugs were still eaten.

    In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: “roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast”. A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames, although they require some preparation by soaking in vinegar in order to purge them of soil in their digestive tracts.[6] A cockchafer stew is referred to in W. G. Sebald’s novel The Emigrants. – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer

    As a kid I loved to play with them when they appeared in May or June. But it seems that they are almost gone and rarely appear in large numbers.

    Children since antiquity have played with cockchafers. In ancient Greece, boys caught the insect, tied a linen thread to its feet and set it free, amusing themselves to watch it fly in spirals. English boys in Victorian times played a very similar game by sticking a pin through one of its wings.[12] Nikola Tesla recalls that as a child he made one of his first “inventions”—an “engine” made by harnessing four cockchafers in this fashion. – en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @utu

    Do you think insects were eaten commonly in Ancient Northern Europe? I couldn't find much information.

    I assume that yes, considering we know it was part of the diet in Ancient Greece/Rome, and prevalent still today in non-European cultures (e.g. indigenous people in Mexico, Japanese, etc).

  563. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    successive administrations haven’t helped, and even made things worse but shifting wealth generation from productive sectors Black

     

    If America's elite actually prioritized about equality between races, then those areas of Baltimore would look like central Moscow,.

    Central Moscow (or central Baku, or Minsk) is an example what places which politicians prioritize, look like. There is infinite budget for every pavement and street lamp.

    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can't even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it's not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.


    HBD perspective in human capital. They’ll probably never be equal in wealth
     
    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia - i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.

    The universal result seems to be - liquor.

    If you look at the situation in Baltimore, the only shop there is a liquor store. It's just like in Tuva.

    -

    Now obviously, judging from their actions as opposed to words, liberals in America don't have prioritization to improve this situation (see Obama), and neither likely will conservatives.


    forecast of that graph?
     
    It is from 2017 (https://prosperitynow.org/files/PDFs/road_to_zero_wealth.pdf), and was based from drawing the trend to 2024.

    For 2013 (first year of Obama's second term) it goes to. It's excluding durable goods (like your car and your television).

    https://i.imgur.com/up5bjE5.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/keaazIB.jpg


    Wokeness
     
    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I'm sure I'm a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.

    There was a photo of Obama's daughter with friends which was labelled:
    "1. Malia Obama, daughter of President Obama
    2. Elizabeth Tisch, daughter of billionaire Steve Tisch
    3. Audrey Kotick, daughter of billionaire Robert Kotick.
    4. Fashion designer Monique Lhuillier, owner of fashion houses based in Los Angeles and Manhattan's Upper East Side
    5. Jamie Tisch, ex-wife of Tisch
    6. Tom Bugbee, CEO Monique Lhuillier
    7. Holden Tisch, daughter of Tisch
    8. Zachary Tisch, son of Tisch
    9. Tassilo von Furstenberg, grandson of Diane von Furstenberg"
    https://i.imgur.com/8jiXc0A.jpg

    Replies: @AP, @Yellowface Anon

    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can’t even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it’s not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.

    Which means the class factor is much greater than the racial factor, even if it is dressed in racialized language (Black localities might have made some questionable decisions to use funds for welfare too).

    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia – i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.

    That’s the truth – on one hand their level of intellectual development is lower than the level demanded by modern society (HBD). On the other hand, processes of colonialism forcefully integrate them into modern industrial society without trying to ameliorate their cultural plight. Only when we combine both biological and socio-cultural perspectives can we see the whole picture, which is why neither a sole focus on HBD nor blank-slate is realistic.

    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I’m sure I’m a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.

    You get it.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    intellectual development is lower than the level
     
    It might be true in terms of averages, it might not be (I feel this is all not as well understood as some have claimed). This theory about necessarily lower academic potential is not required to explain Baltimore, however- let's say even in individual or group level, you don't need lack of academic potential for your society to be broken.

    In Russia, there is a Tuvan origin politician "Shoigu", who has climbed to be Minister of Defense (analogous to politicians like Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell in the United States).

    I'm sure that Shoigu is far cleverer person (not necessarily academically) than all of us. But that doesn't have any relation to the fact that the Tuvan society is psychologically broken by colonialism, and has fallen to a Baltimore style of depression of killing themselves with violence and liquor. Even if everyone in the Republic of Tuva had Shoigu's potential to be clever, it seems intuitively plausible to me that it might happen that such a shock as the destruction of their traditional way of life could have such results.

  564. @Thomm
    @sher singh

    er.... You're the South Asian, not me. Therefore, don't you have more pressing problems to address in your country?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    India isn’t his country, Khalistan is. The worse India as a whole fares, the better the chance Khalistan comes out at the top of the neo-caste system.

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @Yellowface Anon

    No, but I swear Thomm said he was brown..
    Bharat is our Desh, India is a cuck colonial creation||

    Sikhi is about Sarbat Da Bhalla (welfare of all), our battle is with the Indian Gov.
    Khalsa fights to protect Dharma||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @Thomm

  565. @Dmitry
    @utu


    playing with insects. was pretty universal I think for boys of
     
    This is true, and younger children don't have natural prejudice against insects.

    But in our modern European culture, we definitely develop this attitude at some age (which seems quite alienated from nature) that insects are scary and disgusting, and that girls need to run away from spiders.

    I have developed this attitude at some age, and for me no food seems more disgusting than eating insects.

    I'm wondering if it maybe partly derived historically from dietary prohibitions of Abrahamic religion.

    In Japan, the attitude remaining that insects are beautiful ( https://aeon.co/essays/japanese-culture-conquered-the-human-fear-of-creepy-crawlies
    ), as well as tasty (eating insects like wasps larvae are some local cuisine there https://youtu.be/QHRl2gSyuHU?t=1222.).

    Eating insects was fashionable in Ancient Greece and Rome, but it was prohibited as not kosher among the Ancient Israelites (except for a certain kind of locust - which modern sources can't identify, so that afterwards Jews are banned from eating all insects and shellfish).

    In modern Europe we seemed to inherit the Biblical view against eating insects (although not against shellfish).

    This prohibition, also implies that insects must be too disgusting to eat. Whereas Romans and Greeks were historically -

    https://i.imgur.com/JVSXYeW.jpg

    Among the Hebrews, there was one kind of locust that was accepted as kosher, so they didn't have a prejudice against eating all insects in ancient times. But because the identification of the specific locust was lost, they had later banned everything.

    John the Baptist's diet was supposedly completely insect. so Ancient Hebrew tastes were more thinking like modern Japanese than we in modern Europe.
    https://imgur.com/a/CxWeto0

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew+3%3A4&version=NIV

    insectoid robots

     

    Yes and simple projects in stochastic robotics have also been openly inspired by insects.
    https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Nigel-Franks/publication/235362107_The_dynamics_of_collective_sorting_robot-like_ants_and_ant-like_robots/links/02e7e52b98ed20ebab000000/The-dynamics-of-collective-sorting-robot-like-ants-and-ant-like-robots.pdf

    Although it's known nowadays that ants don't do exactly random walks .

    Replies: @utu, @Yellowface Anon

    John the Baptist’s diet was supposedly completely insect.

    You think an ascetic’s tastes was mainstream, don’t you?

    Anyway, reintroducing insect powder might be one of the more neutral fads in the food industries, that’s nonetheless stigmatized by rightoids because it implies this (and synthetic meat) will drive genuine industrially-farmed meat off the market.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon

    My post was thrown in the spam folder, so I didn't have the extra 5 minutes time to edit the writing a little more clearly written.

    We know that unlike modern Jews (that are banned from eating all insects), they were allowed to eat a specific kind of locust, and this was probably mainstream - as it was discussed in canonical text Leviticus.
    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2011%3A22&version=NIV

    However, John the Baptist has a distinctive diet from the normal population, as he only eats locusts and honey.

    John the Baptist was likely an Essene, and so he had distinctive lifestyle of that cult, which was different to the normal population - including more restricted dietary rules.

    Jesus is also probably influenced by the Essenes and his teachings seem to be very similar to the Essene teaching.

    Yet in Jesus we can see his diet is not similar at all to Essenes (Gospels describe Jesus eating bread, lamb), as the Essenes of the Jordan Valley "were not permitted" to eat much else than locusts and honey.

    https://i.imgur.com/P2yOXcu.jpg

    John the Baptist's Essene lifestyle is contrasted with Jesus in Luke - it implies Jesus probably is able to drink wine as well, while John was not drinking.

    https://i.imgur.com/j7Udbs1.jpg

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+7&version=ISV

    , @Barbarossa
    @Yellowface Anon

    Tangential, but I found this to be an extremely interesting article on lab grown meat...

    https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    I've noticed the same tendency by rightoids to recoil in fear at the idea of eating bugs. I find it an odd thing to worry about.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  566. @Yellowface Anon
    @Thomm

    India isn't his country, Khalistan is. The worse India as a whole fares, the better the chance Khalistan comes out at the top of the neo-caste system.

    Replies: @sher singh

    No, but I swear Thomm said he was brown..
    Bharat is our Desh, India is a cuck colonial creation||

    Sikhi is about Sarbat Da Bhalla (welfare of all), our battle is with the Indian Gov.
    Khalsa fights to protect Dharma||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Thomm
    @sher singh


    No, but I swear Thomm said he was brown..
     
    Never. I am a regular American white guy.

    A lot of the 70-IQ wiggers here think I am a South Asian, but any quick view of my 2000+ comments proves that that is not the case. I have never once expressed interest in South Asia, never once defended Hinduism, never once slammed Islam, and don't even know anything about your smaller religions (nor do I care). I have defended Jews a fair bit though, so some people here think I am Jewish (also wrong, but at least that isn't a bad guess given my commenting pattern).

    I challenge you to find a single comment of mine, in the last 3 years, that has anything to do with 'defending South Asia'. I have defended skilled immigration before, which is an entirely different matter. But even that was over 3 years ago.

    Not to mention that my extraordinarily high knowledge of American pop culture, and my often professed love of steaks, burgers, and guns also make it impossible that I am a 'South Asian'.

    So you of all people should know better.

    Replies: @sher singh

  567. @German_reader
    @iffen

    You're probably right, A123 isn't a commenter worth engaging with.
    I'm not sure though he's a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre, I think he's genuinely delusional.

    Replies: @iffen

    I’m not sure though he’s a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre

    I initially thought that it was possible that he was part of a disinformation operation intent upon weakening Trump by tying Trump to, as you say bizarre ideas. After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer, and an extreme right wing type who believes that if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that’s about as delusional as you can get.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.

    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election? I know that you are a pessimist with regard to electoral politics, but maybe you can glean a few rays of sunshine for us.

    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen


    After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.
     
    He's mostly a troll who sincerely holds the views, and some of those views are really common among Trumpists (QAnon circles included) in particular and the American version of Alt-Right in general. Just read anything here that isn't from AK.

    Some of these views describe political realities more accurately than the legacy media version of events while some, maybe most, are far off the mark. It depends on what political alignments you have. As an economic dictum goes, people are always rational (but I guess as far as they can control) but they have incomplete information. No one ever has complete & perfect information.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer
     
    It's a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis, the Epoch Times & Global Research's editors. There aren't a single movement but a broad political coalition that is either against the vaccines themselves, Bill Gates, the governments that impose COVID restrictions, and/or the WEF. It's possible to meet moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines, those who want restrictions to be lifted immediately and completely for normalcy & business, agorists/libertarians and regular conspiracy researchers/political dissidents, all under the same label. That's because the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    extreme right wing type
     
    Who else do you expect on Unz.com. They're getting more common and predominant while the liberal & pseudo-left hegemony wanes, as the 21st century Thermidor.

    if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.
     
    No, he wants a Putin-like Trumpism, or failing that DeSantis, who's half-libertarian. Both of them will be more functional than the current Biden administration, but they'll make their own bigotry law and purge the political establishment of Bidenists, wokes, Big Whatever, etc. and break as much stuff as those behind Biden.

    The US or successor states can try Jeffersonian democracy, the inspiration of libertarianism. It's built for individuals & small-scale economic actors who barter. But you can't do large-scale projects without centralizing, and that will be mean Rand-style oligarchy of Capital. It's more efficient to have Hamiltonian industrial policies in that case, like much of continental Europe from 19th century on.

    The root of today's conflicts of political visions were buried in that era. They'll never be resolved until the political subject, which is "America" as an abstract geopolitical and economic subject, breaks down, and neither visions are validated in the end. And more recently, the mess of the last 5 years in the US is basically most people realizing the liberal political order and civility are falling apart, and some segments of the population is going to the FEMA camps. It's just the struggle to get on the top and throw your political enemies into the trucks heading there. A big Squid Game.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that’s about as delusional as you can get.
     
    Indeed, and I have right-wing stances on many issues. Trumpists are a disgrace to right-wing thinkers with their principles and theories Trump has never heard of.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.
     
    There will always be people that's hardwired to think in particular political categories and oppositions, some of them fooling the world for a while. They'll all pass.

    I don't know if what I've said is true, I'm just a spectator in East Asia with popcorn and a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I'm trying to heal. German_reader should just ignore me and say what's happening in Germany. But it appears to be more of the same even with CDU becoming less influential, since a lot of policies are set in Brussels and Davos.

    Replies: @iffen, @A123

    , @German_reader
    @iffen


    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election?
     
    Well, the likely new government has already indicated their desire to "modernize" the country by lots of "progressive" policies, like adoption rights for homosexuals, ability to change your legal gender at will, lowering the voting age to 16 (though they'd need a two thirds majority for that) and legalization of cannabis. Crucially, they also want to make naturalization easier (right now you have to had eight years of legal residence for becoming a citizen...the liberal FDP would like to change that to four years and also wants 500 000 immigrants a year). Holding of dual or multiple citizenships should also become generally possible, not just for EU citizens and people from countries like Iran which don't release their citizens from citizenship, as it is now.
    Basically things will just be a somewhat worse version of the Merkel years...more financial obligations for the EU, continuing mass immigration, disastrous energy policies (to "save the climate"), high tax burden, and more repression against dissent.
    However, in all likelihood pretty much the same would have happened, if CDU/CSU had won the election, so the election didn't really matter at all.
    imo this country is doomed. On some level it still depresses me, but on the other hand, I probably shouldn't care anymore, I don't have children, and if 90% of those bothering to vote think everything is fine, they deserve what's coming for them.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Svidomyatheart, @A123

    , @A123
    @iffen

    ROTFLMAO,

    I am a Christian, therefore the Messiah is Jesus. I never believed (or said) that Trump had deity level powers. So, you are a liar.

    I have gone to great length, multiple times, to explain the political limitations he faced with an active impeachment inquiry and non-MAGA, Establishment senators. I have been realistic and fact based on the constitutional and political limitations that limited the effectiveness of his 1st Term.

    I never said that 1789 was a perfect end state. Did you make-up that lie? Or, are you quoting from the same badly written talking points used by Jen Psaki?

    The lies that you write are so detached from reality, I originally thought you were trolling. However, I now see that you are massively Blue Pilled to the point where it is seriously diminishing your faculties. You simply do not have the Mental capability for even minimal understanding. Your erratic behaviour is consistent with believing and parroting CNN fake news.

    You should seek expert psychiatric care ASAP, before you begin to self harm.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @iffen

  568. @iffen
    @German_reader

    I’m not sure though he’s a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre

    I initially thought that it was possible that he was part of a disinformation operation intent upon weakening Trump by tying Trump to, as you say bizarre ideas. After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer, and an extreme right wing type who believes that if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that's about as delusional as you can get.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.

    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election? I know that you are a pessimist with regard to electoral politics, but maybe you can glean a few rays of sunshine for us.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @A123

    After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.

    He’s mostly a troll who sincerely holds the views, and some of those views are really common among Trumpists (QAnon circles included) in particular and the American version of Alt-Right in general. Just read anything here that isn’t from AK.

    Some of these views describe political realities more accurately than the legacy media version of events while some, maybe most, are far off the mark. It depends on what political alignments you have. As an economic dictum goes, people are always rational (but I guess as far as they can control) but they have incomplete information. No one ever has complete & perfect information.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer

    It’s a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis, the Epoch Times & Global Research’s editors. There aren’t a single movement but a broad political coalition that is either against the vaccines themselves, Bill Gates, the governments that impose COVID restrictions, and/or the WEF. It’s possible to meet moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines, those who want restrictions to be lifted immediately and completely for normalcy & business, agorists/libertarians and regular conspiracy researchers/political dissidents, all under the same label. That’s because the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    extreme right wing type

    Who else do you expect on Unz.com. They’re getting more common and predominant while the liberal & pseudo-left hegemony wanes, as the 21st century Thermidor.

    if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.

    No, he wants a Putin-like Trumpism, or failing that DeSantis, who’s half-libertarian. Both of them will be more functional than the current Biden administration, but they’ll make their own bigotry law and purge the political establishment of Bidenists, wokes, Big Whatever, etc. and break as much stuff as those behind Biden.

    The US or successor states can try Jeffersonian democracy, the inspiration of libertarianism. It’s built for individuals & small-scale economic actors who barter. But you can’t do large-scale projects without centralizing, and that will be mean Rand-style oligarchy of Capital. It’s more efficient to have Hamiltonian industrial policies in that case, like much of continental Europe from 19th century on.

    The root of today’s conflicts of political visions were buried in that era. They’ll never be resolved until the political subject, which is “America” as an abstract geopolitical and economic subject, breaks down, and neither visions are validated in the end. And more recently, the mess of the last 5 years in the US is basically most people realizing the liberal political order and civility are falling apart, and some segments of the population is going to the FEMA camps. It’s just the struggle to get on the top and throw your political enemies into the trucks heading there. A big Squid Game.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that’s about as delusional as you can get.

    Indeed, and I have right-wing stances on many issues. Trumpists are a disgrace to right-wing thinkers with their principles and theories Trump has never heard of.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.

    There will always be people that’s hardwired to think in particular political categories and oppositions, some of them fooling the world for a while. They’ll all pass.

    I don’t know if what I’ve said is true, I’m just a spectator in East Asia with popcorn and a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I’m trying to heal. German_reader should just ignore me and say what’s happening in Germany. But it appears to be more of the same even with CDU becoming less influential, since a lot of policies are set in Brussels and Davos.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines,

    I wouldn't put these into the anti-Vaxx group.

    a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I’m trying to heal.

    Can you be a little more specific? And for my benefit try to hold it to a handful of key ideas or concepts.

    the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    The use of the term agenda implies quite a bit. Maybe you could explain that agenda concept further. I view it as an unfortunate epidemic that many politicians are trying to exploit, because, well, that's what politicians do.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @A123
    @Yellowface Anon



    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer
     
    It’s a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis,
     
    This further illustrates my point about Orwellian language control.

    The two large groups are:
        • "Vaxx-Realists" who want to perform science based Risk/Reward analysis towards a rational decision on taking an Experiental Vaccine.
        • "Manda-Vaxxers" who are anti-science. They genuinely believe -- Establishment orders must be unquestioningly obeyed. Medical evidence shows that HCQ and Ivermectin can be effective treatments.

    The Lügenpresse intentionally uses Anti- and Pro- to avoid any possible hint that "Vaxx-Realism" is the scientifically responsible position.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  569. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen


    After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.
     
    He's mostly a troll who sincerely holds the views, and some of those views are really common among Trumpists (QAnon circles included) in particular and the American version of Alt-Right in general. Just read anything here that isn't from AK.

    Some of these views describe political realities more accurately than the legacy media version of events while some, maybe most, are far off the mark. It depends on what political alignments you have. As an economic dictum goes, people are always rational (but I guess as far as they can control) but they have incomplete information. No one ever has complete & perfect information.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer
     
    It's a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis, the Epoch Times & Global Research's editors. There aren't a single movement but a broad political coalition that is either against the vaccines themselves, Bill Gates, the governments that impose COVID restrictions, and/or the WEF. It's possible to meet moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines, those who want restrictions to be lifted immediately and completely for normalcy & business, agorists/libertarians and regular conspiracy researchers/political dissidents, all under the same label. That's because the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    extreme right wing type
     
    Who else do you expect on Unz.com. They're getting more common and predominant while the liberal & pseudo-left hegemony wanes, as the 21st century Thermidor.

    if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.
     
    No, he wants a Putin-like Trumpism, or failing that DeSantis, who's half-libertarian. Both of them will be more functional than the current Biden administration, but they'll make their own bigotry law and purge the political establishment of Bidenists, wokes, Big Whatever, etc. and break as much stuff as those behind Biden.

    The US or successor states can try Jeffersonian democracy, the inspiration of libertarianism. It's built for individuals & small-scale economic actors who barter. But you can't do large-scale projects without centralizing, and that will be mean Rand-style oligarchy of Capital. It's more efficient to have Hamiltonian industrial policies in that case, like much of continental Europe from 19th century on.

    The root of today's conflicts of political visions were buried in that era. They'll never be resolved until the political subject, which is "America" as an abstract geopolitical and economic subject, breaks down, and neither visions are validated in the end. And more recently, the mess of the last 5 years in the US is basically most people realizing the liberal political order and civility are falling apart, and some segments of the population is going to the FEMA camps. It's just the struggle to get on the top and throw your political enemies into the trucks heading there. A big Squid Game.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that’s about as delusional as you can get.
     
    Indeed, and I have right-wing stances on many issues. Trumpists are a disgrace to right-wing thinkers with their principles and theories Trump has never heard of.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.
     
    There will always be people that's hardwired to think in particular political categories and oppositions, some of them fooling the world for a while. They'll all pass.

    I don't know if what I've said is true, I'm just a spectator in East Asia with popcorn and a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I'm trying to heal. German_reader should just ignore me and say what's happening in Germany. But it appears to be more of the same even with CDU becoming less influential, since a lot of policies are set in Brussels and Davos.

    Replies: @iffen, @A123

    moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines,

    I wouldn’t put these into the anti-Vaxx group.

    a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I’m trying to heal.

    Can you be a little more specific? And for my benefit try to hold it to a handful of key ideas or concepts.

    the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    The use of the term agenda implies quite a bit. Maybe you could explain that agenda concept further. I view it as an unfortunate epidemic that many politicians are trying to exploit, because, well, that’s what politicians do.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    It's mainly how coordinated the restrictions are, mostly from the WHO, and Schwab publishing the Great Reset book to really exploit what COVID restrictions have done for world-historical changes.

    Replies: @iffen

  570. German_reader says:
    @iffen
    @German_reader

    I’m not sure though he’s a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre

    I initially thought that it was possible that he was part of a disinformation operation intent upon weakening Trump by tying Trump to, as you say bizarre ideas. After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer, and an extreme right wing type who believes that if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that's about as delusional as you can get.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.

    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election? I know that you are a pessimist with regard to electoral politics, but maybe you can glean a few rays of sunshine for us.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @A123

    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election?

    Well, the likely new government has already indicated their desire to “modernize” the country by lots of “progressive” policies, like adoption rights for homosexuals, ability to change your legal gender at will, lowering the voting age to 16 (though they’d need a two thirds majority for that) and legalization of cannabis. Crucially, they also want to make naturalization easier (right now you have to had eight years of legal residence for becoming a citizen…the liberal FDP would like to change that to four years and also wants 500 000 immigrants a year). Holding of dual or multiple citizenships should also become generally possible, not just for EU citizens and people from countries like Iran which don’t release their citizens from citizenship, as it is now.
    Basically things will just be a somewhat worse version of the Merkel years…more financial obligations for the EU, continuing mass immigration, disastrous energy policies (to “save the climate”), high tax burden, and more repression against dissent.
    However, in all likelihood pretty much the same would have happened, if CDU/CSU had won the election, so the election didn’t really matter at all.
    imo this country is doomed. On some level it still depresses me, but on the other hand, I probably shouldn’t care anymore, I don’t have children, and if 90% of those bothering to vote think everything is fine, they deserve what’s coming for them.

    • Thanks: iffen
    • Replies: @sher singh
    @German_reader

    Know few Panjabis in Germany.. What's FDP stance on Kirpan & Turban esp in Army?
    Austria & Belgium ok with it. Poland & Italy will only budge after Germany, France & Denmark Idk..

    Demographics can be solved by the Sword, so only political interest is Kirpan||

    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/781981619073318943/901894091003015168/PXL_20211014_201937571.png

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    , @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted? I know Anglos and Atlanticists are working hard on you guys overtime. Anglos completely assimilated all the Germans in the States by WW1/WW2(that's incredibly impressive in only 15-40 years all "Germaness" completely gone and erased and tunred into white creatures) and aside from Anglo isn't the most common ancestry in the US is German? Do you think Anglos will be able to successfully pull that experiment on ethnic Germans in Germany itself like they did on you guys in the States? To turn into paypigs for various asylum seekers and slavery descendants?

    No offense to your Anglo side btw

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @A123
    @German_reader

    Merkel's policies have been leading towards armed conflict with Poland (1)


    “What will happen if the European Commission starts a third world war? If it starts a third world war, we will defend our rights with any weapon that we have at our disposal,” Morawiecki said.

     

    Will the new German government stop wielding the EC against Poland? Or, will they continue with provocation & escalation?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/polish-pm-says-eu-holding-gun-our-head-over-funds-could-start-ww3

    Replies: @German_reader

  571. sher singh says:

    Iffen, when there’s a Karlin discord can explain Sikh v Hindu untouchability in depth
    Yellowface, I get the feeling you’re sincerely a middle class soyboy far removed from violence.. (reality)

    A123 is Hasbara IMO, he was known as that before and just switched to MAGA 6 month ago..
    Same 2 songbird as Iffen, I dislike walls of text most msgs are 5 lines cuz 5 is important in Vedas/Sikhi

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Replies: @iffen
    @sher singh

    A123 is Hasbara IMO,

    Not a chance. Much of Trump's base loves Israel. Dem Jews be smart. They wouldn't be pushing something like A123 that could cause electoral damage to Trump.

    Replies: @A123

  572. @iffen
    @German_reader

    I’m not sure though he’s a propaganda operation. His world view is so bizarre

    I initially thought that it was possible that he was part of a disinformation operation intent upon weakening Trump by tying Trump to, as you say bizarre ideas. After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer, and an extreme right wing type who believes that if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that's about as delusional as you can get.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.

    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election? I know that you are a pessimist with regard to electoral politics, but maybe you can glean a few rays of sunshine for us.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @A123

    ROTFLMAO,

    I am a Christian, therefore the Messiah is Jesus. I never believed (or said) that Trump had deity level powers. So, you are a liar.

    I have gone to great length, multiple times, to explain the political limitations he faced with an active impeachment inquiry and non-MAGA, Establishment senators. I have been realistic and fact based on the constitutional and political limitations that limited the effectiveness of his 1st Term.

    I never said that 1789 was a perfect end state. Did you make-up that lie? Or, are you quoting from the same badly written talking points used by Jen Psaki?

    The lies that you write are so detached from reality, I originally thought you were trolling. However, I now see that you are massively Blue Pilled to the point where it is seriously diminishing your faculties. You simply do not have the Mental capability for even minimal understanding. Your erratic behaviour is consistent with believing and parroting CNN fake news.

    You should seek expert psychiatric care ASAP, before you begin to self harm.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    Mental capability

    Whoa! Breaking out the extra caps. I'm done for now.

  573. sher singh says:
    @German_reader
    @iffen


    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election?
     
    Well, the likely new government has already indicated their desire to "modernize" the country by lots of "progressive" policies, like adoption rights for homosexuals, ability to change your legal gender at will, lowering the voting age to 16 (though they'd need a two thirds majority for that) and legalization of cannabis. Crucially, they also want to make naturalization easier (right now you have to had eight years of legal residence for becoming a citizen...the liberal FDP would like to change that to four years and also wants 500 000 immigrants a year). Holding of dual or multiple citizenships should also become generally possible, not just for EU citizens and people from countries like Iran which don't release their citizens from citizenship, as it is now.
    Basically things will just be a somewhat worse version of the Merkel years...more financial obligations for the EU, continuing mass immigration, disastrous energy policies (to "save the climate"), high tax burden, and more repression against dissent.
    However, in all likelihood pretty much the same would have happened, if CDU/CSU had won the election, so the election didn't really matter at all.
    imo this country is doomed. On some level it still depresses me, but on the other hand, I probably shouldn't care anymore, I don't have children, and if 90% of those bothering to vote think everything is fine, they deserve what's coming for them.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Svidomyatheart, @A123

    Know few Panjabis in Germany.. What’s FDP stance on Kirpan & Turban esp in Army?
    Austria & Belgium ok with it. Poland & Italy will only budge after Germany, France & Denmark Idk..

    Demographics can be solved by the Sword, so only political interest is Kirpan||

    [MORE]

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  574. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen


    After a further reading of some of his comments and a look his website, I no longer hold that view.
     
    He's mostly a troll who sincerely holds the views, and some of those views are really common among Trumpists (QAnon circles included) in particular and the American version of Alt-Right in general. Just read anything here that isn't from AK.

    Some of these views describe political realities more accurately than the legacy media version of events while some, maybe most, are far off the mark. It depends on what political alignments you have. As an economic dictum goes, people are always rational (but I guess as far as they can control) but they have incomplete information. No one ever has complete & perfect information.

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer
     
    It's a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis, the Epoch Times & Global Research's editors. There aren't a single movement but a broad political coalition that is either against the vaccines themselves, Bill Gates, the governments that impose COVID restrictions, and/or the WEF. It's possible to meet moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines, those who want restrictions to be lifted immediately and completely for normalcy & business, agorists/libertarians and regular conspiracy researchers/political dissidents, all under the same label. That's because the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    extreme right wing type
     
    Who else do you expect on Unz.com. They're getting more common and predominant while the liberal & pseudo-left hegemony wanes, as the 21st century Thermidor.

    if we just implement the one simple trick of returning the governmental structure and operation to 1789 specifications we will be in some sort of utopia.
     
    No, he wants a Putin-like Trumpism, or failing that DeSantis, who's half-libertarian. Both of them will be more functional than the current Biden administration, but they'll make their own bigotry law and purge the political establishment of Bidenists, wokes, Big Whatever, etc. and break as much stuff as those behind Biden.

    The US or successor states can try Jeffersonian democracy, the inspiration of libertarianism. It's built for individuals & small-scale economic actors who barter. But you can't do large-scale projects without centralizing, and that will be mean Rand-style oligarchy of Capital. It's more efficient to have Hamiltonian industrial policies in that case, like much of continental Europe from 19th century on.

    The root of today's conflicts of political visions were buried in that era. They'll never be resolved until the political subject, which is "America" as an abstract geopolitical and economic subject, breaks down, and neither visions are validated in the end. And more recently, the mess of the last 5 years in the US is basically most people realizing the liberal political order and civility are falling apart, and some segments of the population is going to the FEMA camps. It's just the struggle to get on the top and throw your political enemies into the trucks heading there. A big Squid Game.

    A lot of right wing types thought that Trump was/is the Messiah. I suppose that’s about as delusional as you can get.
     
    Indeed, and I have right-wing stances on many issues. Trumpists are a disgrace to right-wing thinkers with their principles and theories Trump has never heard of.

    His style, his obsession with Islam, his false accusations toward detractors (accusing me of being a NeverTrumper and you of being a CDU supporter) are classic propaganda efforts.
     
    There will always be people that's hardwired to think in particular political categories and oppositions, some of them fooling the world for a while. They'll all pass.

    I don't know if what I've said is true, I'm just a spectator in East Asia with popcorn and a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I'm trying to heal. German_reader should just ignore me and say what's happening in Germany. But it appears to be more of the same even with CDU becoming less influential, since a lot of policies are set in Brussels and Davos.

    Replies: @iffen, @A123

    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer

    It’s a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis,

    This further illustrates my point about Orwellian language control.

    The two large groups are:
        • “Vaxx-Realists” who want to perform science based Risk/Reward analysis towards a rational decision on taking an Experiental Vaccine.
        • “Manda-Vaxxers” who are anti-science. They genuinely believe — Establishment orders must be unquestioningly obeyed. Medical evidence shows that HCQ and Ivermectin can be effective treatments.

    The Lügenpresse intentionally uses Anti- and Pro- to avoid any possible hint that “Vaxx-Realism” is the scientifically responsible position.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @A123

    There are certainly a significant chunk of irrational Vax-Haters who are as unhinged as the Manda-Vaxxers. You are familiar with Unz.com, right?

    I also run into a fair bit of these types in real life, so they are not just an internet figment.
    It's frustrating to me since I'm firmly in the Vax-Realist camp and the cranks on both sides do a lot to muddy the waters.

    You are correct in that only the cranks on one side are Approved-Narrative sanctioned.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123

  575. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    John the Baptist’s diet was supposedly completely insect.
     
    You think an ascetic's tastes was mainstream, don't you?

    Anyway, reintroducing insect powder might be one of the more neutral fads in the food industries, that's nonetheless stigmatized by rightoids because it implies this (and synthetic meat) will drive genuine industrially-farmed meat off the market.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Barbarossa

    My post was thrown in the spam folder, so I didn’t have the extra 5 minutes time to edit the writing a little more clearly written.

    We know that unlike modern Jews (that are banned from eating all insects), they were allowed to eat a specific kind of locust, and this was probably mainstream – as it was discussed in canonical text Leviticus.
    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Leviticus%2011%3A22&version=NIV

    However, John the Baptist has a distinctive diet from the normal population, as he only eats locusts and honey.

    John the Baptist was likely an Essene, and so he had distinctive lifestyle of that cult, which was different to the normal population – including more restricted dietary rules.

    Jesus is also probably influenced by the Essenes and his teachings seem to be very similar to the Essene teaching.

    Yet in Jesus we can see his diet is not similar at all to Essenes (Gospels describe Jesus eating bread, lamb), as the Essenes of the Jordan Valley “were not permitted” to eat much else than locusts and honey.

    John the Baptist’s Essene lifestyle is contrasted with Jesus in Luke – it implies Jesus probably is able to drink wine as well, while John was not drinking.

    https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Luke+7&version=ISV

  576. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Whereas in Baltimore, the authorities can’t even fix any pavement stones. The public investment level is less than somewhere like Tagil or banlieues outside Paris. And the private investment is only for liquor stores.

    However, it’s not like there is selective underinvestment is unique for African American areas, as we can see very underinvested European-American regions like West Virginia.
     
    Which means the class factor is much greater than the racial factor, even if it is dressed in racialized language (Black localities might have made some questionable decisions to use funds for welfare too).

    These nationalities (indigenous nationalities of the United States, African American descendants of slaves/kidnap victims, Tuvans in Russia – i.e. indigenous peoples of Southern Siberia) have been psychological broken by colonial process.

    They were at most Bronze Age (indigenous peoples in USA or Siberia), or perhaps some early Iron Age (in West Africa) equivalent nationalities, who were thrown into an industrializing dystopia thousands of years ahead of their time. African Americans were kidnapped, and then eventually resulted as a low status, sub-proletarian citizens as late as the middle 20th century.
     
    That's the truth - on one hand their level of intellectual development is lower than the level demanded by modern society (HBD). On the other hand, processes of colonialism forcefully integrate them into modern industrial society without trying to ameliorate their cultural plight. Only when we combine both biological and socio-cultural perspectives can we see the whole picture, which is why neither a sole focus on HBD nor blank-slate is realistic.

    Obama and his family should be a representative symbol for wokeness. I’m sure I’m a lot closer culturally to the average African American people, than he is.
     
    You get it.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    intellectual development is lower than the level

    It might be true in terms of averages, it might not be (I feel this is all not as well understood as some have claimed). This theory about necessarily lower academic potential is not required to explain Baltimore, however- let’s say even in individual or group level, you don’t need lack of academic potential for your society to be broken.

    In Russia, there is a Tuvan origin politician “Shoigu”, who has climbed to be Minister of Defense (analogous to politicians like Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell in the United States).

    I’m sure that Shoigu is far cleverer person (not necessarily academically) than all of us. But that doesn’t have any relation to the fact that the Tuvan society is psychologically broken by colonialism, and has fallen to a Baltimore style of depression of killing themselves with violence and liquor. Even if everyone in the Republic of Tuva had Shoigu’s potential to be clever, it seems intuitively plausible to me that it might happen that such a shock as the destruction of their traditional way of life could have such results.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
  577. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    John the Baptist’s diet was supposedly completely insect.
     
    You think an ascetic's tastes was mainstream, don't you?

    Anyway, reintroducing insect powder might be one of the more neutral fads in the food industries, that's nonetheless stigmatized by rightoids because it implies this (and synthetic meat) will drive genuine industrially-farmed meat off the market.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Barbarossa

    Tangential, but I found this to be an extremely interesting article on lab grown meat…

    https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    I’ve noticed the same tendency by rightoids to recoil in fear at the idea of eating bugs. I find it an odd thing to worry about.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Barbarossa

    It seems degrading to them esp. when coupled with some anti-meat messaging.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

  578. Also, I’ve had no time for commenting and haven’t been able to follow the discussions as closely as I’d like to, but there is some truly epic sustained discussion going on in this thread. It should really be in some internet commenting hall of fame.

    I’ll reread much of this thread when I have more time, but damn, you all deserve a round of applause!

  579. @A123
    @iffen

    ROTFLMAO,

    I am a Christian, therefore the Messiah is Jesus. I never believed (or said) that Trump had deity level powers. So, you are a liar.

    I have gone to great length, multiple times, to explain the political limitations he faced with an active impeachment inquiry and non-MAGA, Establishment senators. I have been realistic and fact based on the constitutional and political limitations that limited the effectiveness of his 1st Term.

    I never said that 1789 was a perfect end state. Did you make-up that lie? Or, are you quoting from the same badly written talking points used by Jen Psaki?

    The lies that you write are so detached from reality, I originally thought you were trolling. However, I now see that you are massively Blue Pilled to the point where it is seriously diminishing your faculties. You simply do not have the Mental capability for even minimal understanding. Your erratic behaviour is consistent with believing and parroting CNN fake news.

    You should seek expert psychiatric care ASAP, before you begin to self harm.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    Mental capability

    Whoa! Breaking out the extra caps. I’m done for now.

  580. @sher singh
    Iffen, when there's a Karlin discord can explain Sikh v Hindu untouchability in depth
    Yellowface, I get the feeling you're sincerely a middle class soyboy far removed from violence.. (reality)

    A123 is Hasbara IMO, he was known as that before and just switched to MAGA 6 month ago..
    Same 2 songbird as Iffen, I dislike walls of text most msgs are 5 lines cuz 5 is important in Vedas/Sikhi

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @iffen

    A123 is Hasbara IMO,

    Not a chance. Much of Trump’s base loves Israel. Dem Jews be smart. They wouldn’t be pushing something like A123 that could cause electoral damage to Trump.

    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen

    Not a chance. Much of Trump’s base loves Israel. Dem Jews be smart. They wouldn’t be pushing something like A123 that could cause electoral damage to Trump.

     

    Except it is obvious that I support effective communications that will generate female and High-IQ votes for MAGA. #LetsGoJordan is 100% non-vulgar, and thus highly useful across all Voter categories.

    ____

    The rational, straightforward, and simple explanation is that your anti-Semitic handlers:

        • Hate Israel, and
        • Fear effective MAGA communication

    Your SJW dogma programmers are experimenting, trying to find something that can counter the MAGA train headed down the rails towards them. They prompted you with obviously, untrue fiction about #LetsGoBrandon. As a parrot, you are re-tweeting their #NeverTrump trial balloon.

    Fortunately, no one is buying the incoherent & absurd lie that you are pushing. Effective #MAGA communications techniques, like #LetsGoBrandon, will generate Yuge numbers of votes for MAGA candidates in the upcoming House & Senate midterms.

    ______

    You do not have to take the Blue Pills. Look at the footage and judge for yourself:
        • #F*ckJoeBiden was near 100% male students
        • #LetsGoBrandon has spread to Alumni stadium sections and High-IQ university populations -- student and graduate -- men & women.

    If you are not passionate about NCAA football you will probably miss another key indicator. To keep their members together, Fraternities coordinate with Universities to obtain "block seating" for their ticket holders. It is really easy to spot if you are physically in the stadium. However, I am not sure it is obvious on camera.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    You can lead a Parrot to the Water of Trutb... but they always ask for Blue Pills...

    Replies: @iffen

  581. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    It is what Johnson says in the speeches always - that Brexit implies the UK will become global citizen, that is not connected to provincial Europe, but to the world - although in particular USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada.

    This is how Johnson in the paper which resulted in the "Global Britain" slogan (which is now official slogan of the Kingdom).

    https://i.imgur.com/fd5SUBI.jpg

    Johnson has adopted the "Global Britain" as the reward of Brexit, and they are very excited now about the alliance "AUKUS" (Australia, UK, US). If you look in the recent presentation of the Global Britain strategy.

    https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/global-britain-is-planting-its-flag-on-the-world-stage-article-by-liz-truss
    https://i.imgur.com/O0fs293.jpg


    -

    His comments about Russia are a little ironic, as he receives a lot of donations from Russian businesspeople, and of course London is party fueled on vast inputs of Russian money. The main newspaper of London is owned by former KGB people, and wife of last Mayor of Moscow (Elena Baturina) is criticized in the same newspaper for her Johnson donations.


    class, but it seems vaguely and not too much, because this would be the movement’s ‘Achilles Heel’.

     

    Yes definitely.

    Those articles you posted of women saying "I'm proud from wave of feminists at the university of the 1960s, who read Simone de Beauvoir when in vacation in Paris, and we ​had protested for our rights".

    Translated these kind of feminist you posted - to me it reads like "I am part of the elite, leisure class, where women were reading philosophy books, and we had achieved strong bargaining positions even in relation to men of our class, while you were peasants selling vegetables in the village market."

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Johnson has adopted the “Global Britain” as the reward of Brexit, and they are very excited now about the alliance “AUKUS” (Australia, UK, US). If you look in the recent presentation of the Global Britain strategy.

    Given how close the vote was, I wonder if things would have gone differently if it had been known in advance that this kind of ‘Global Britain’ policy would be the end result, and also the increased cultural/political influence of the US just as it was moving towards the Awokening. I think it could have influenced the outcome.

    It seemed like there was always (at least in theory) the option of Britain remaining in the EU while making a commitment to a ‘European Britain’ and withdrawing from as much involvement in the Commonwealth and wider world. This may have met many of the needs of the ‘somewhere’ voters that Goodhart outlines, I thought of it at the time but couldn’t see political support for it anywhere. On one hand it seems more relevant given how things are looking long term, on the other perhaps I was only thinking of it because my own interest in Europe is stronger than a lot of other British people’s.

    Some of the lines in Johnson’s announcement look like he is even goading the Woke, making references to imperial times and being against oppression and things at the same time.

    The feminist lady whose blog I was posting from is a very commercially successful writer from the 90s and 2000s, a couple of Hollywood films were made from her books in that period so she will be very well off. As you were saying, a feature of Wokeness is that it derives social power and authority from the fact it is adopted and promoted by the wealthy and people who already have social position and influence, and holding these views is becoming a sign of being part of the enlightened portion of the higher classes. This seems to happen with progressive ideas that become fashionable in the Anglosphere.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
  582. @AP
    @Coconuts

    You are one of the many people I will miss, if you don't migrate to AK's substack. I will do so, after this stuff finally dies.


    I only learned about the existence of this Atlanticist sub-group of anywheres afterwards, when you could read about them in some academic articles published about the campaign.
     
    Given Britain's extensive colonial history and identity outside of Europe, it would make sense for some segment of the elite to be pro-Brexit. I am thinking these would be Old Money types, the ones who enjoy things like foxhunting and whose ancestors might have had high colonial positions? These might be the ones who probably don't mind importing third worlders from outside the EU to replace the Poles, because they will be isolated from them anyways.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    You are one of the many people I will miss, if you don’t migrate to AK’s substack. I will do so, after this stuff finally dies.

    It will be good if you and Mr Hack and the other regular posters make it over, I have an account and expect to start to use it soon as well. The comments format is not as good as here at Unz, that could be one thing keeping these last threads going, hopefully they will reach even more respectable numbers of posts.

    I am thinking these would be Old Money types, the ones who enjoy things like foxhunting and whose ancestors might have had high colonial positions?

    They seem to exist, AFAIK they mostly keep a low profile in national politics, part of the international business and finance sector and Conservative Party, and you don’t see them unless you are in certain social environments. There are some that are Atlanticist and look to US business (Liam Fox), there are others that still have connections in the Gulf, India, West Africa, dating back to the colonial and Cold War era. In practice they probably don’t mind replacing lower level British with Poles, Poles with Indians and so on, if it makes the labour force easier to manage. I think there was always a question about how far they felt connected to the wider British population, Orwell and some of the other socialist writers used to write about this in the 30s.

    If a person knew about both present day British business/foreign policy and genealogy there would be some interesting stories here.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you read in the papers of the "Global Britain" strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of "independent external policy".

    In Russia, "Independent external policy" has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the "Global Britain" papers, often discuss about Russia's leverage - for example "National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country." https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original "Global Britain" paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It's like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the "Great Game").

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It's kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
    https://i.imgur.com/IgzQ6yx.jpg


    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf


    ading the Woke,

     

    The "Global Britain" strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.


    https://i.imgur.com/DxsFXfa.jpg


    making references to imperial times
     
    Although it's also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them - i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? - he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this "New Atlantic Charter".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM47TmCeqdg


    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy
     
    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can't remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP, @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts, @Coconuts

  583. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Definitely, in wealthy countries there is less pressure for women to maximize their "assets" in the most vulgar and obvious ways, that's for sure. That's definitely a dynamic that you've put your finger on.

    But I'm on the subways every morning in NY, and I see lots of attractive women with good feminine style, if often a bit toned down and often quirky and creative and individual. And there is also space for many women to just do their own thing, however weird, which I think is great.

    But there is definitely an interest in beauty and self presentation and being attractive to men.

    As for LA, sure, it's a huge sprawling multi-ethnic city. I'm talking about the parts that are American and White (and assimilated non-Whites), not the Mexican parts or the Kardashian Armenian type areas. It has that too, of course, but I have no idea what goes on there.

    If you go the hipster bars in Silverlake (at least ten years ago), you will find tons of attractive women who care about appearance.

    (My answer to John Johnson too).


    So I’ll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket – probably more in the direction of Japan.
     
    I certainly hope so. Korean beauty standards, though extremely rigorous, are rather bland, uniform, and soulless today, for both men and women.

    They need personality, creativity, and individuality. Korean film and television has become quite creative and good lately, so I am hopeful for them.

    Japanese beauty standards in personal appearance are generally much higher than the (modern) West (and certainly America) , and having feminine appeal is balanced nicely with personal style and quirkiness, while there is also cultural space for those women who want to be eccentric and not care at all what men like to do their thing.

    Korea could do much worse.

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Dmitry

    Definitely, in wealthy countries there is less pressure for women to maximize their “assets” in the most vulgar and obvious ways, that’s for sure.

    I don’t know what happened to British ‘dating’ culture when I was in my early 20s, there seemed to be a massive tendency for revealing and sexualised clothing, women engaging in heavy drinking and drug use, lipstick lesbianism, sex in public places and so on.

    When I first got to Lithuania and Belarus it seemed like women had relatively higher and more refined, traditional standards (for example, aiming at looking like an elegant expensive escort rather than a street corner one) even though they had less money.

    Now things seem to have calmed down or it happens via apps. I wonder if many men develop dark and tragic erotic obssessions anymore, the kind of thing Serge Gainsbourg used to make concept albums about in the 1970s:

  584. @Coconuts
    @AP


    You are one of the many people I will miss, if you don’t migrate to AK’s substack. I will do so, after this stuff finally dies.
     
    It will be good if you and Mr Hack and the other regular posters make it over, I have an account and expect to start to use it soon as well. The comments format is not as good as here at Unz, that could be one thing keeping these last threads going, hopefully they will reach even more respectable numbers of posts.

    I am thinking these would be Old Money types, the ones who enjoy things like foxhunting and whose ancestors might have had high colonial positions?
     
    They seem to exist, AFAIK they mostly keep a low profile in national politics, part of the international business and finance sector and Conservative Party, and you don't see them unless you are in certain social environments. There are some that are Atlanticist and look to US business (Liam Fox), there are others that still have connections in the Gulf, India, West Africa, dating back to the colonial and Cold War era. In practice they probably don't mind replacing lower level British with Poles, Poles with Indians and so on, if it makes the labour force easier to manage. I think there was always a question about how far they felt connected to the wider British population, Orwell and some of the other socialist writers used to write about this in the 30s.

    If a person knew about both present day British business/foreign policy and genealogy there would be some interesting stories here.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    If you read in the papers of the “Global Britain” strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of “independent external policy”.

    In Russia, “Independent external policy” has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the “Global Britain” papers, often discuss about Russia’s leverage – for example “National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country.” https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original “Global Britain” paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It’s like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the “Great Game”).

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It’s kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.

    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf

    ading the Woke,

    The “Global Britain” strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

    making references to imperial times

    Although it’s also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them – i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? – he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this “New Atlantic Charter”.

    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy

    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can’t remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    The imperial dream isn't quite dead yet.

    , @AP
    @Dmitry


    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
     
    Her father edited a Ukrainian newspaper during the Nazi occupation; as such he had to allow some anti-semitic articles, but the focus of his work was on cultural issues. It isn't quite air to simply label him as a collaborator.

    Interestingly, a Ukrainian American was on the short list to become Trump's undersecretary of state (America's version of foreign minister):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Dobriansky

    https://www.globaldispatchespodcast.com/paula-dobriansky-revisited/

    It would have been funny if both North American countries' foreign policies were run in part by Ukrainian diaspora women.
    , @Mr. Hack
    @Dmitry


    (It’s like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the “Great Game”).
     
    But the "great game" has certainly been reinvigorated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the important addition of China as a player. Regional players like Iran and Turkey have also increased their stakes in this Eurasian game. The US certainly seems to be being squeezed out of this game, but the real future of this chess game, in my opinion, will be between Russia and China vying for influence in all of the various "stans", notwithstanding the veneer of great friendship and cooperation between the two as presented at blogs like at Pepe Escobar's. The US position at this real life 3-dimensional game is of course through Ukraine in the western end and Taiwan on the eastern end, with the US encouraging the old player Britain to get more involved as in the past. The "great game" has never really gone totally away, but seems to have entered a new phase with some different players involved. It's a "game" worth watching.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Beckow

    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry

    There is a neo-Churchillian feel to the things you posted. I think (if I am remembering accurately) that one of Churchill's goals was to bring together Britain, the US and what used to be called the 'white dominions', Australia, NZ and Canada (maybe South Africa was part of it then as well) to make the English speaking peoples into a kind of political, as well as linguistic, union.

    I can see that this “independent external policy” will be very attractive to some parts of the Conservative Party, if it can shift priority from social spending, likewise the strong orientation to relatively more economically liberal countries like the US and Canada.

    I have tended to think of Johnson as first and foremost an opportunist, perhaps he does have a vision of some kind. I'm not sure how far it will be possible to realise it but if it stuck and solidified it would be a big change in orientation for the UK. A book about British political history I have has a memorable title for one of its chapters 'From Imperial Power to European Partner', this covers the 1970s and 80s but IMO it could stand for the whole era up to the Brexit vote. Maybe the next chapter will be from 'European Partner to Boris' Global Anglo-Alliance'... in some way it starts to make me feel old.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent.
     
    That is interesting, off the top of my head apart from Jules Verne I can't think of any other famous French authors who concentrated on the theme of sea travel, the distant horizon etc. in the way Melville, Defoe, Conrad did. There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster). The other day I bought a cheap copy of a book of memoirs that was very popular in the 1930s, it was made into a film called 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer', the author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.

    Also, some of the greatest Portuguese literature is about the search for distant shores, often it is dealt with in a more overtly spiritual way than in English literature (maybe Melville and Conrad are a bit like this), the theme of the ascetic struggle of sea voyages, discovery and the construction of the imperio leading to transcendence.

    But, Britain and Portugal used to be much more naval and sea focused nations, when France was always the land based demographic Mastodon of Europe, till Germany and Russia took over later in the 19th century.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @AaronB

  585. @AaronB
    @songbird

    Yes, I know what you mean about those movies, they are self consciously "camp". When well done, I find them delightful.

    Kung Fu Hustle is a very amusing modern addition to this style.

    I always find that sudden, unexpected break with "reality" to be a release and exhilaration (I also love fantasy fiction of all types), but I know many people don't agree with me. I once told a very anxiety prone girl I knew that the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time - iirc, gravity and certain other "constants" have to be constantly updated - a fact which I found exhilarating, but which she found terrifying. Some people search for security by clinging to a solid, unshifting "reality" - sand that does not shift beneath their feet - which is just where the Buddha said it can't be found :) But this attitude works it's way into our adult philosophies in a myriad of ways, down to our preference for HBD and other "essentialist" philosophies.

    But to each his own.

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures. It's something like the fictional equivalent of neo-Gothic architecture which became so popular in the 19th century and spread across the world. (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).

    The French realist school of fiction (Zola, etc), began a new trend of realism, but in the English speaking world Hemingway led a concerted attack against stylized fiction, and was entirely successful in rooting it out. Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending "deception" - imagination - in art. I think it's called "In Defense Of Lying" - but I may be wrong.

    As for today, I don't think I agree with you - I think we're experiencing an explosion of interest in the fantastic, extreme, and even to some extent the grotesque. Even Woke betrays a fascination with fantasy and extreme states.

    Many of our realist gritty shows - like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) - are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.

    Replies: @songbird, @Max Demian

    I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol

    I have enjoyed a few things he wrote, at least many years ago, however, my perspective probably comes from comparing him to other required authors.

    His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.

    I agree. Though, I enjoyed some of those of one of his contemporaries: Wilkie Collins. I can still laugh by calling to mind that fellow who quoted from Robinson Crusoe, like it was the Bible.

    [MORE]

    Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending “deception” – imagination – in art. I think it’s called “In Defense Of Lying”

    Sounds interesting, though never could get into Wilde previously. The Picture of Dorian Gray is arguably brilliant on some level, but it is also unmistakably written by a homosexual, with certain baggage that sometimes comes with that.

    Many of our realist gritty shows – like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) – are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.

    TBH, I hate gritty stuff. (Couldn’t get past the first five min. of Breaking Bad) Too humorless. It is tempting for me to characterize grittiness as a form of wokeness. I wish AE were still around to try to ferret out the political affiliation of gritty-consumers. Though I think grittiness could certainly be classified as a form of fantasy, I feel like it is fantasy going in the the wrong direction, becoming over-serious. This seriousness I feel is a type of hyper-realism, even though it deviates from reality unpleasantly – if that makes sense.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @songbird

    You make good points about grittiness.

    In general, I am on the side of fantasy and the unserious, and oppose the dull realist school, which tries to show life as gray, dull, and uninspiring. That kind of grittiness I don't like - the ugliness school, one might say.

    But certain gritty shows, if done right, can rise to the level of a dark fantasy that breaks through the ordinary crust of life - the more thrilling because you know some people actually live this way. It's not depressing but exhilarating.

    When you mentioned grittiness being connected to Woke, I didn't see the connection at all - but in fact, both are sort of attempts to break away from ordinary dull "reality", so there is a connection.

    But then, all these phenomena that attempt to break away from a dull and oppressive"reality", are connected, however disparate they might seem, and however opposed on the surface.

    Replies: @songbird

  586. @utu
    @Dmitry

    In 19th century France maybugs were still eaten.

    In some areas and times, cockchafers were served as food. A 19th-century recipe from France for cockchafer soup reads: "roast one pound of cockchafers without wings and legs in sizzling butter, then cook them in a chicken soup, add some veal liver and serve with chives on a toast". A German newspaper from Fulda from the 1920s tells of students eating sugar-coated cockchafers. Cockchafer larvae can also be fried or cooked over open flames, although they require some preparation by soaking in vinegar in order to purge them of soil in their digestive tracts.[6] A cockchafer stew is referred to in W. G. Sebald's novel The Emigrants. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer

    As a kid I loved to play with them when they appeared in May or June. But it seems that they are almost gone and rarely appear in large numbers.

    Children since antiquity have played with cockchafers. In ancient Greece, boys caught the insect, tied a linen thread to its feet and set it free, amusing themselves to watch it fly in spirals. English boys in Victorian times played a very similar game by sticking a pin through one of its wings.[12] Nikola Tesla recalls that as a child he made one of his first "inventions"—an "engine" made by harnessing four cockchafers in this fashion. - en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cockchafer

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Do you think insects were eaten commonly in Ancient Northern Europe? I couldn’t find much information.

    I assume that yes, considering we know it was part of the diet in Ancient Greece/Rome, and prevalent still today in non-European cultures (e.g. indigenous people in Mexico, Japanese, etc).

  587. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    Definitely, in wealthy countries there is less pressure for women to maximize their "assets" in the most vulgar and obvious ways, that's for sure. That's definitely a dynamic that you've put your finger on.

    But I'm on the subways every morning in NY, and I see lots of attractive women with good feminine style, if often a bit toned down and often quirky and creative and individual. And there is also space for many women to just do their own thing, however weird, which I think is great.

    But there is definitely an interest in beauty and self presentation and being attractive to men.

    As for LA, sure, it's a huge sprawling multi-ethnic city. I'm talking about the parts that are American and White (and assimilated non-Whites), not the Mexican parts or the Kardashian Armenian type areas. It has that too, of course, but I have no idea what goes on there.

    If you go the hipster bars in Silverlake (at least ten years ago), you will find tons of attractive women who care about appearance.

    (My answer to John Johnson too).


    So I’ll predict or have an online bet, that their aesthetic might change in the next decades after some more time in the high income bracket – probably more in the direction of Japan.
     
    I certainly hope so. Korean beauty standards, though extremely rigorous, are rather bland, uniform, and soulless today, for both men and women.

    They need personality, creativity, and individuality. Korean film and television has become quite creative and good lately, so I am hopeful for them.

    Japanese beauty standards in personal appearance are generally much higher than the (modern) West (and certainly America) , and having feminine appeal is balanced nicely with personal style and quirkiness, while there is also cultural space for those women who want to be eccentric and not care at all what men like to do their thing.

    Korea could do much worse.

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Dmitry

    subways every morning in NY,

    How do you find living in New York nowadays and what areas do you recommend. I will hopefully visit next year depending on the pandemic, and not visited America now for several years.

    If you can survive every morning there, I’m assuming the subway is not as “creepy” as it was in 1990. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LFxrPhNGAk.)

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I dont really go out they much these days since my interests have shifted to wilderness and nature, but the city seems as happening as ever from the few times I've been out. Just be aware NYC can be a bit "seasonal" - some parts of the year, it seems the city empties out of all the "cool" and beautiful people (relatively), while other times it's bursting with them. Probably simar yo Europe in August etc.

    In terms of danger, I don't feel any difference. There are all sorts of reports in the news, but I haven't felt at all threatened nor have I seen any incidents. The city feels very safe. (Especially compared to the 90s, when I personally would be involved in "incidents" on an almost weekly basis).

    The city has definitely gotten a bit wilder, but it is far from crossing any threshold.

    As for neighborhoods, I probably can't add anything to the guidebooks :)

    I would say just get out and walk! You can walk most of the length of Manhattan in a few hours. I used to walk from 86th street to lower Manhattan all the time.

    Don't be afraid to wander, most of the somewhat dangerous neighborhoods are mostly tucked well away on the periphery, it's hard to wander into them. Manhattan's only "bad" neighborhoods are far uptown.

    For a tourist, I think Manhattan is probably more unusual and interesting, overwhelming and atmospheric, but to live, Brooklyn is better because quieter - but also worth exploring in it's own right.

    I would say, don't neglect lower Manhattan especially the financial district. For years I ignored the financial district as having no relevance to me, but it's actually super cool and has an almost carnivalesque feel in summer (street acts, etc) with cool old architecture.

    A really fun walk is to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, which has great views and lands you immediately in cool parts of lower Manhattan.

    Dumbo in Brooklyn also isn't to be missed. It's a renovated warehouse district on the water that is now pretty hip. ​

    Prospect Park is great if you get off the main path and find it's hidden nooks and crannies, little plazas, fountains, and statues. Ten years ago, it was still a "hidden gem" and you felt you had stumbled into a lost world, with crumbling ruins. Alas today it has lost that old charm, but is still worthwhile. Central Park is amazing, but very crowded and central.

    What else?

    If you want to see a 17th ccentury asHidic ghetto, go to Borough Park :)

    Bushwick in Brooklyn is edgy and still gentrifying, but at the right time you can find the best parties there.

    An interesting ethnic neighborhood Mexican/Chinese is Sunset Park in Brooklyn - right next to an old gothic cemetery that has become a tourist attraction.

    Enjoy your trip!

    Replies: @Mikel

  588. @iffen
    @sher singh

    A123 is Hasbara IMO,

    Not a chance. Much of Trump's base loves Israel. Dem Jews be smart. They wouldn't be pushing something like A123 that could cause electoral damage to Trump.

    Replies: @A123

    Not a chance. Much of Trump’s base loves Israel. Dem Jews be smart. They wouldn’t be pushing something like A123 that could cause electoral damage to Trump.

    Except it is obvious that I support effective communications that will generate female and High-IQ votes for MAGA. #LetsGoJordan is 100% non-vulgar, and thus highly useful across all Voter categories.

    ____

    The rational, straightforward, and simple explanation is that your anti-Semitic handlers:

        • Hate Israel, and
        • Fear effective MAGA communication

    Your SJW dogma programmers are experimenting, trying to find something that can counter the MAGA train headed down the rails towards them. They prompted you with obviously, untrue fiction about #LetsGoBrandon. As a parrot, you are re-tweeting their #NeverTrump trial balloon.

    Fortunately, no one is buying the incoherent & absurd lie that you are pushing. Effective #MAGA communications techniques, like #LetsGoBrandon, will generate Yuge numbers of votes for MAGA candidates in the upcoming House & Senate midterms.

    ______

    You do not have to take the Blue Pills. Look at the footage and judge for yourself:
        • #F*ckJoeBiden was near 100% male students
        • #LetsGoBrandon has spread to Alumni stadium sections and High-IQ university populations — student and graduate — men & women.

    If you are not passionate about NCAA football you will probably miss another key indicator. To keep their members together, Fraternities coordinate with Universities to obtain “block seating” for their ticket holders. It is really easy to spot if you are physically in the stadium. However, I am not sure it is obvious on camera.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    You can lead a Parrot to the Water of Trutb… but they always ask for Blue Pills…

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    The problematic nature of you being Hasbara derives from the same Coals to Newcastle point as you helping Trump capture more of his base. The MSM does an excellent job of painting people like Omar as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic (two different things, but the second frequently leads to the first).

    The MSM media does not need your help with tarring people like Omar and Trump does not need your help to be more Trumpy.

    Replies: @A123

  589. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    moderates who want to evaluate the risks and effectiveness of the vaccines,

    I wouldn't put these into the anti-Vaxx group.

    a lot of Americanizing political brainrot I’m trying to heal.

    Can you be a little more specific? And for my benefit try to hold it to a handful of key ideas or concepts.

    the whole COVID agenda appears to be a clean break from the social organization of the past 50 years.

    The use of the term agenda implies quite a bit. Maybe you could explain that agenda concept further. I view it as an unfortunate epidemic that many politicians are trying to exploit, because, well, that's what politicians do.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    It’s mainly how coordinated the restrictions are, mostly from the WHO, and Schwab publishing the Great Reset book to really exploit what COVID restrictions have done for world-historical changes.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    how coordinated

    You do understand that from our vantage point in the present there are an infinite number of points that will outline a path back to a desired objective.

  590. @Barbarossa
    @Yellowface Anon

    Tangential, but I found this to be an extremely interesting article on lab grown meat...

    https://thecounter.org/lab-grown-cultivated-meat-cost-at-scale/?utm_source=pocket-newtab

    I've noticed the same tendency by rightoids to recoil in fear at the idea of eating bugs. I find it an odd thing to worry about.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    It seems degrading to them esp. when coupled with some anti-meat messaging.

    • Replies: @Barbarossa
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yes, that seems to be the issue they have with it. I just find it an odd concern to fixate on given the other pressing issues in the world.

  591. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you read in the papers of the "Global Britain" strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of "independent external policy".

    In Russia, "Independent external policy" has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the "Global Britain" papers, often discuss about Russia's leverage - for example "National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country." https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original "Global Britain" paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It's like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the "Great Game").

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It's kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
    https://i.imgur.com/IgzQ6yx.jpg


    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf


    ading the Woke,

     

    The "Global Britain" strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.


    https://i.imgur.com/DxsFXfa.jpg


    making references to imperial times
     
    Although it's also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them - i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? - he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this "New Atlantic Charter".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM47TmCeqdg


    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy
     
    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can't remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP, @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts, @Coconuts

    The imperial dream isn’t quite dead yet.

  592. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you read in the papers of the "Global Britain" strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of "independent external policy".

    In Russia, "Independent external policy" has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the "Global Britain" papers, often discuss about Russia's leverage - for example "National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country." https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original "Global Britain" paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It's like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the "Great Game").

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It's kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
    https://i.imgur.com/IgzQ6yx.jpg


    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf


    ading the Woke,

     

    The "Global Britain" strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.


    https://i.imgur.com/DxsFXfa.jpg


    making references to imperial times
     
    Although it's also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them - i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? - he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this "New Atlantic Charter".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM47TmCeqdg


    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy
     
    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can't remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP, @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts, @Coconuts

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.

    Her father edited a Ukrainian newspaper during the Nazi occupation; as such he had to allow some anti-semitic articles, but the focus of his work was on cultural issues. It isn’t quite air to simply label him as a collaborator.

    Interestingly, a Ukrainian American was on the short list to become Trump’s undersecretary of state (America’s version of foreign minister):

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paula_Dobriansky

    https://www.globaldispatchespodcast.com/paula-dobriansky-revisited/

    It would have been funny if both North American countries’ foreign policies were run in part by Ukrainian diaspora women.

  593. Learned this as a beginner, then forgot about it||
    Basically a diagonal, wrist first grip on bar for all exercises||

    Less pain, tighter grip, more PRS||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  594. @Yellowface Anon
    @Barbarossa

    It seems degrading to them esp. when coupled with some anti-meat messaging.

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    Yes, that seems to be the issue they have with it. I just find it an odd concern to fixate on given the other pressing issues in the world.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
  595. @A123
    @Yellowface Anon



    He seems to be an anti-Vaxxer
     
    It’s a blanket term that includes Rapoport & Tom Luongo (https://tomluongo.me/2021/10/15/its-time-for-all-good-men-to-stop-fearing-john-galt/), supporters of DeSantis,
     
    This further illustrates my point about Orwellian language control.

    The two large groups are:
        • "Vaxx-Realists" who want to perform science based Risk/Reward analysis towards a rational decision on taking an Experiental Vaccine.
        • "Manda-Vaxxers" who are anti-science. They genuinely believe -- Establishment orders must be unquestioningly obeyed. Medical evidence shows that HCQ and Ivermectin can be effective treatments.

    The Lügenpresse intentionally uses Anti- and Pro- to avoid any possible hint that "Vaxx-Realism" is the scientifically responsible position.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Barbarossa

    There are certainly a significant chunk of irrational Vax-Haters who are as unhinged as the Manda-Vaxxers. You are familiar with Unz.com, right?

    I also run into a fair bit of these types in real life, so they are not just an internet figment.
    It’s frustrating to me since I’m firmly in the Vax-Realist camp and the cranks on both sides do a lot to muddy the waters.

    You are correct in that only the cranks on one side are Approved-Narrative sanctioned.

    • Agree: iffen
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Barbarossa

    Have you seen what he has said on vaccines?

    It is 80% used as a form of non-cooperation with a mainly Democrat political establishment even as Operation Warpspeed started under Trump's watch.

    , @A123
    @Barbarossa

    Yes. This site has unhinged "Vaxx-Haters". They come up with incredibly strange accusations. A microchip in every jab! At least they have consistency:
        • The virus is an Establishment conspiracy
        • The Establishment vaccine is a hoax
    In the real world these are quite rare. If you are encountering them in real life, I feel sympathy for your plight.

    The group that I find most puzzling are those who have total faith in the Establishment vaccine and simultaneously distrust the Establishment.
    ___

    The biggest problem Vaxx-Realists face is poor quality data. Medical facilities receive extra payment if they check the COVID-19 box. At best, the reported figures are "with the virus" not "from the virus". There is probably fraud checking the box even for those who test negative.

    The government approved narrative gets even worse when they openly state they do not want data. (1)


    Axiom: ‘In order to advance a communist ideological belief system, the rulers must *pretend* not to know things’.

    Individually, in groups, or in the systems they construct, that axiom has always been true.

    The Dept of Labor and OSHA standard on adverse Vaccine events:

    “OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination.”
     
    The Biden administration is forcing you to take the jab in order to work, and simultaneously the Biden administration doesn’t want the employer to tell them about workers who are injured by the jab. Simply more evidence the vaccine mandate is not about your health.
     
    Knowing that the data is untrustworthy, badly crimps the ability of Vaxx-Realists to objectively score the situation.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/19/osha-demands-not-to-know-things/

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  596. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    There are certainly a significant chunk of irrational Vax-Haters who are as unhinged as the Manda-Vaxxers. You are familiar with Unz.com, right?

    I also run into a fair bit of these types in real life, so they are not just an internet figment.
    It's frustrating to me since I'm firmly in the Vax-Realist camp and the cranks on both sides do a lot to muddy the waters.

    You are correct in that only the cranks on one side are Approved-Narrative sanctioned.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    Have you seen what he has said on vaccines?

    It is 80% used as a form of non-cooperation with a mainly Democrat political establishment even as Operation Warpspeed started under Trump’s watch.

  597. WEF shill confirmed.

    Good thing AK is leaving the place.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Most people, including a lot of smart people, don't understand what a curve means.

    , @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    Even Singapore doesn't manage to have a majority of students get the correct answer on what appear to be some simple PISA questions. What would a country look like that did? (Maybe, you could make one that did by immigration.)

    Maybe, Singapore, capable in many areas, is too dumb to solve its TFR issues? Or too dumb not to be an IQ shredder?

    Equally, a lot of social problems can be solved/ameliorated by exporting them. But the normie urge against that is also overwhelming. I'd like to see people at least made an offer. At a minimum, I think it would eliminate a lot of the anti-Euro rhetoric. And why not make an offer for them to leave, if you are already paying for them to stay?

  598. @Dmitry
    @Pericles

    I'm not fussy about wine and only recently started to not dislike the taste of wine. But in Europe I try to buy Israeli wine for sentimental reasons, and I was able to buy some comparatively cheap industrialized wine from the Golan Heights - it's called "Yarden wine".

    Price of bottles of "Yarden" in Europe seems to be double its price in supermarkets in Israel - where it is a common supermarket brand, so (without researching) I wonder if there could be EU tariffs for wine from Israel.

    For wine, the EU labelling situation is not bad, as the non-European brands simply label themselves by the type of grape.

    Causal supermarket wine customers are probably more likely to buy wine based on a generic grape type, than on the regional name.

    As a non-knowledgeable consumer, I find it easier to understand generic "Merlot" or "Malbec", than the EU regional exclusive names like "Douro" or "Lambrusco".

    But with cheese it is very different situation - how do you describe "Parmesan" or "Mozzarella" without the regional terms?

    Similarly, things like "Serrano ham", "Milano salami", "Parma ham".

    I would have difficulty trying to find what the Danish version of these products are, because the regional labels are way we identify the product type.

    EU also tried to ban UK chocolate from being called chocolate, because it has too low content of cocoa. UK responded by raising the level of cocoa in its chocolate. So maybe it's not all bad. BBC has been reporting that the Brexit will cause a fall in cocoa levels. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-eu-referendum-36457903

    -

    In other trade news, there is probably can make Aaronb happy - at least USA is removing tariffs on the delicious whisky from Scotland. https://www.aljazeera.com/economy/2021/6/17/cheers-to-that-us-agrees-to-lift-tariffs-on-scotch-whiskey

    Recall, Trump had installed 25% tariffs on Scottish whisky imports to the USA. I assume whisky fans in America could have been pretty angry with Trump for this.

    Replies: @A123, @Pericles

    But with cheese it is very different situation – how do you describe “Parmesan” or “Mozzarella” without the regional terms?

    Similarly, things like “Serrano ham”, “Milano salami”, “Parma ham”.

    I would have difficulty trying to find what the Danish version of these products are, because the regional labels are way we identify the product type.

    You could describe mozzarella as “cheese made from buffalo milk”, I suppose. Of course, the Danish imitation might be made from some other milk so perhaps that’s unsuitable. Parmesan is a form of “hard cheese”, Serrano ham is made in a certain way from a certain sort of black pig (I’m not sure), etc.

    Overall, consider that the consumer for whatever reason often is looking to buy the authentic product, not the Danish imitation labeled as authentic.

  599. @Yellowface Anon
    https://twitter.com/akarlin0/status/1452258860559998977

    WEF shill confirmed.

    Good thing AK is leaving the place.

    Replies: @iffen, @songbird

    Most people, including a lot of smart people, don’t understand what a curve means.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
  600. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    It's mainly how coordinated the restrictions are, mostly from the WHO, and Schwab publishing the Great Reset book to really exploit what COVID restrictions have done for world-historical changes.

    Replies: @iffen

    how coordinated

    You do understand that from our vantage point in the present there are an infinite number of points that will outline a path back to a desired objective.

  601. @A123
    @iffen

    Not a chance. Much of Trump’s base loves Israel. Dem Jews be smart. They wouldn’t be pushing something like A123 that could cause electoral damage to Trump.

     

    Except it is obvious that I support effective communications that will generate female and High-IQ votes for MAGA. #LetsGoJordan is 100% non-vulgar, and thus highly useful across all Voter categories.

    ____

    The rational, straightforward, and simple explanation is that your anti-Semitic handlers:

        • Hate Israel, and
        • Fear effective MAGA communication

    Your SJW dogma programmers are experimenting, trying to find something that can counter the MAGA train headed down the rails towards them. They prompted you with obviously, untrue fiction about #LetsGoBrandon. As a parrot, you are re-tweeting their #NeverTrump trial balloon.

    Fortunately, no one is buying the incoherent & absurd lie that you are pushing. Effective #MAGA communications techniques, like #LetsGoBrandon, will generate Yuge numbers of votes for MAGA candidates in the upcoming House & Senate midterms.

    ______

    You do not have to take the Blue Pills. Look at the footage and judge for yourself:
        • #F*ckJoeBiden was near 100% male students
        • #LetsGoBrandon has spread to Alumni stadium sections and High-IQ university populations -- student and graduate -- men & women.

    If you are not passionate about NCAA football you will probably miss another key indicator. To keep their members together, Fraternities coordinate with Universities to obtain "block seating" for their ticket holders. It is really easy to spot if you are physically in the stadium. However, I am not sure it is obvious on camera.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    You can lead a Parrot to the Water of Trutb... but they always ask for Blue Pills...

    Replies: @iffen

    The problematic nature of you being Hasbara derives from the same Coals to Newcastle point as you helping Trump capture more of his base. The MSM does an excellent job of painting people like Omar as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic (two different things, but the second frequently leads to the first).

    The MSM media does not need your help with tarring people like Omar and Trump does not need your help to be more Trumpy.

    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    --- #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters
    --- You say that Trump needs to reach female and high IQ voters
    --- You want to abolish #LetsGoBrandon as 'vulgar'

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

  602. @Yellowface Anon
    https://twitter.com/akarlin0/status/1452258860559998977

    WEF shill confirmed.

    Good thing AK is leaving the place.

    Replies: @iffen, @songbird

    Even Singapore doesn’t manage to have a majority of students get the correct answer on what appear to be some simple PISA questions. What would a country look like that did? (Maybe, you could make one that did by immigration.)

    Maybe, Singapore, capable in many areas, is too dumb to solve its TFR issues? Or too dumb not to be an IQ shredder?

    Equally, a lot of social problems can be solved/ameliorated by exporting them. But the normie urge against that is also overwhelming. I’d like to see people at least made an offer. At a minimum, I think it would eliminate a lot of the anti-Euro rhetoric. And why not make an offer for them to leave, if you are already paying for them to stay?

  603. I’d like to extend my analogy about the biology of the state (that it is necessary to have a skin and multi-layered immune system, in order for a state to survive.)

    Equally, I think it is true that defense has to extend beyond the skin. No wild animal would sit still and let you inject it with something. You’d have to hit it with a dart-gun, something faster than its reflexes.

    To put it in real life context. I think if the US had rational leadership interested in perpetuating the country, it would be skunk-bombing the caravan, every step of the way. Either flying from Texas, using aircraft carriers, or hiring Mexicans to do it.

  604. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you read in the papers of the "Global Britain" strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of "independent external policy".

    In Russia, "Independent external policy" has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the "Global Britain" papers, often discuss about Russia's leverage - for example "National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country." https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original "Global Britain" paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It's like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the "Great Game").

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It's kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
    https://i.imgur.com/IgzQ6yx.jpg


    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf


    ading the Woke,

     

    The "Global Britain" strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.


    https://i.imgur.com/DxsFXfa.jpg


    making references to imperial times
     
    Although it's also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them - i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? - he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this "New Atlantic Charter".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM47TmCeqdg


    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy
     
    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can't remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP, @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts, @Coconuts

    (It’s like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the “Great Game”).

    But the “great game” has certainly been reinvigorated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the important addition of China as a player. Regional players like Iran and Turkey have also increased their stakes in this Eurasian game. The US certainly seems to be being squeezed out of this game, but the real future of this chess game, in my opinion, will be between Russia and China vying for influence in all of the various “stans”, notwithstanding the veneer of great friendship and cooperation between the two as presented at blogs like at Pepe Escobar’s. The US position at this real life 3-dimensional game is of course through Ukraine in the western end and Taiwan on the eastern end, with the US encouraging the old player Britain to get more involved as in the past. The “great game” has never really gone totally away, but seems to have entered a new phase with some different players involved. It’s a “game” worth watching.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    Biden says US will defend Taiwan if China attacks

    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4689/production/_121175081_gettyimages-1231208453.jpg

    YOWZA!

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    One can argue that Soviets collapsed due to the "great game" - with China switching sides (or sitting it out) they were in a no-win situation. Soviets had too many expensive dependencies, out-of-date ideology and lazy elites.

    The issue for the West is that there was no geo-political collapse, only a pull-back and an economic-social-mental collapse. Regarding power, Russia emerged in a stronger position: they kept the resources and dumped the costly border-lands. They also got rid of the socialist straight-jacket in the economy. It wasn't pretty, but short of making some huge mistakes, Russia will ride this to a very strong position in the next few decades.

    The West knows it, thus the hardly-suppressed hysteria and hyper-activity. China will not switch sides again, they benefit from a balance between the West and Russia. So do the "stans", Iran, Turkey...When something benefits so many on a very deep level, it will happen, it always does.

    The only question is what will happen to the "borderlands", the lands that the West grabbed after 1991, but that are to some extent economically not viable without trade with Russia. Ukraine being a prime example, but the others too. They have two choices: to become a battle-ground no-man's land with excitement and miserable economy, or to find an accommodation with Russia and live better. This is the choice and all the noise about "we are Europe" and "Moscovites" will not change one thing about it.

    The choice should be made by the people living there and not by Washington or people temporarily ruling those countries before they move on to live in London or NY. Washington doesn't want the same thing that the local people need - Washington wants mayhem and war, contracts and seminars, the last thing they need are prosperous, homogeneous, peaceful countries in Central and Eastern Europe. There are many smaller games within the "great game".

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  605. @Barbarossa
    @A123

    There are certainly a significant chunk of irrational Vax-Haters who are as unhinged as the Manda-Vaxxers. You are familiar with Unz.com, right?

    I also run into a fair bit of these types in real life, so they are not just an internet figment.
    It's frustrating to me since I'm firmly in the Vax-Realist camp and the cranks on both sides do a lot to muddy the waters.

    You are correct in that only the cranks on one side are Approved-Narrative sanctioned.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    Yes. This site has unhinged “Vaxx-Haters”. They come up with incredibly strange accusations. A microchip in every jab! At least they have consistency:
        • The virus is an Establishment conspiracy
        • The Establishment vaccine is a hoax
    In the real world these are quite rare. If you are encountering them in real life, I feel sympathy for your plight.

    The group that I find most puzzling are those who have total faith in the Establishment vaccine and simultaneously distrust the Establishment.
    ___

    The biggest problem Vaxx-Realists face is poor quality data. Medical facilities receive extra payment if they check the COVID-19 box. At best, the reported figures are “with the virus” not “from the virus”. There is probably fraud checking the box even for those who test negative.

    The government approved narrative gets even worse when they openly state they do not want data. (1)

    Axiom: ‘In order to advance a communist ideological belief system, the rulers must *pretend* not to know things’.

    Individually, in groups, or in the systems they construct, that axiom has always been true.

    The Dept of Labor and OSHA standard on adverse Vaccine events:

    “OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination.”

    The Biden administration is forcing you to take the jab in order to work, and simultaneously the Biden administration doesn’t want the employer to tell them about workers who are injured by the jab. Simply more evidence the vaccine mandate is not about your health.

    Knowing that the data is untrustworthy, badly crimps the ability of Vaxx-Realists to objectively score the situation.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/19/osha-demands-not-to-know-things/

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @A123

    It becomes a bit difficult to locate any precise reasons why the anti-vaxers really fear the consequences of being vaccinated. It appears that they seem to fear some incredibly debilitating side effects that could possibly even lead to death within 5 years? Glad I'm starting to get my own financial and estate planning affairs in order now. :-)

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

  606. @iffen
    @A123

    The problematic nature of you being Hasbara derives from the same Coals to Newcastle point as you helping Trump capture more of his base. The MSM does an excellent job of painting people like Omar as anti-Israel and anti-Semitic (two different things, but the second frequently leads to the first).

    The MSM media does not need your help with tarring people like Omar and Trump does not need your help to be more Trumpy.

    Replies: @A123

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters
    — You say that Trump needs to reach female and high IQ voters
    — You want to abolish #LetsGoBrandon as ‘vulgar’

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

    — #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters

    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained. Your thinking that it is “a key” derives from being an unaware right winger laboring under millennialism. It’s always a few minutes before dawn, we’re turning the corner, they are heading to “our side” in droves, everybody’s getting Red-pilled, etc., etc.

    With reference to the real world, you should make a mental note that the NeverTrumpers failed. Trump secured the Republican nomination and was elected President.

    I do not believe that it is possible to improve on this:

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    so right back atcha!

    Loving dem extra caps! How about some all-caps words? They are so authoritative that it make me cringy.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

  607. @A123
    @Barbarossa

    Yes. This site has unhinged "Vaxx-Haters". They come up with incredibly strange accusations. A microchip in every jab! At least they have consistency:
        • The virus is an Establishment conspiracy
        • The Establishment vaccine is a hoax
    In the real world these are quite rare. If you are encountering them in real life, I feel sympathy for your plight.

    The group that I find most puzzling are those who have total faith in the Establishment vaccine and simultaneously distrust the Establishment.
    ___

    The biggest problem Vaxx-Realists face is poor quality data. Medical facilities receive extra payment if they check the COVID-19 box. At best, the reported figures are "with the virus" not "from the virus". There is probably fraud checking the box even for those who test negative.

    The government approved narrative gets even worse when they openly state they do not want data. (1)


    Axiom: ‘In order to advance a communist ideological belief system, the rulers must *pretend* not to know things’.

    Individually, in groups, or in the systems they construct, that axiom has always been true.

    The Dept of Labor and OSHA standard on adverse Vaccine events:

    “OSHA will not enforce 29 CFR 1904’s recording requirements to require any employers to record worker side effects from COVID-19 vaccination.”
     
    The Biden administration is forcing you to take the jab in order to work, and simultaneously the Biden administration doesn’t want the employer to tell them about workers who are injured by the jab. Simply more evidence the vaccine mandate is not about your health.
     
    Knowing that the data is untrustworthy, badly crimps the ability of Vaxx-Realists to objectively score the situation.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/19/osha-demands-not-to-know-things/

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    It becomes a bit difficult to locate any precise reasons why the anti-vaxers really fear the consequences of being vaccinated. It appears that they seem to fear some incredibly debilitating side effects that could possibly even lead to death within 5 years? Glad I’m starting to get my own financial and estate planning affairs in order now. 🙂

    • Replies: @A123
    @Mr. Hack

    Experiential vaccines were rushed to market with minimal testing. There are an array of both long term and short term risks. Serious problems from the vaccine are very rare, but people have died within hours of receiving the jab.

    The profile of WUHAN-19 is well known, and the risk to the young & healthy is nearly non-existent.

    https://i.redd.it/ykmbmiwoutm41.png

    Vaxx-realism wants to evaluate the vaccine risk versus disease risk. For those over 60 with pre-existing conditions obtaining the vaccine makes sense. However, there does not seem to be any credible science for experimenting on healthy children where the risk is already effectively zero.

    It looks like vaccinated individuals can be carriers like Typhoid Mary. This makes the original justification, herd immunity, a dubious venture.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    I read a lot of their stuff early on and it revolves either one or combinations of actual side-effects:

    - mild stuff including passing skin rashes
    - heart issues (myocarditis & pericarditis) which also happen in smallpox vaccination
    - reduction in fertility allegedly because of cross-reactivities with genes that facilitate the formation of human placenta. Some studies have been done in trying to invalidate this claim, and live COVID-19 infections are just as potentially problematic: https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v27n2/118.htm
    This means some effects on fertility will be there, but definitely dwarfed by broader socioeconomic shifts.

    and effects that can't be proved or disproved at the moment:

    - unknown risks from the premature deployment of experimental mRNA technologies in the mid-to-long term e.g. cognitive decline (has Mike Whitney mention this?)
    - leaky vaccines leading to worse mutations
    - outright mislabeling of contents i.e. bait-and-switching with sterilizing chemicals/nanoparticles/microchips etc.

    Go read some Mike Whitney's coverage on COVID vaccines and see how much of an exaggeration his claims are. The threat isn't as overblown as hardcore antivaxxers claim, but it has a small basis on infrequent side-effect observations that are taken out of context because of a poor grasp of statistics. And "they gonna kill 90% with COVID vaxxes!" works well to alienate normies from an out-of-touch and increasingly coercive medical establishment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack

  608. @Mr. Hack
    @Dmitry


    (It’s like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the “Great Game”).
     
    But the "great game" has certainly been reinvigorated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the important addition of China as a player. Regional players like Iran and Turkey have also increased their stakes in this Eurasian game. The US certainly seems to be being squeezed out of this game, but the real future of this chess game, in my opinion, will be between Russia and China vying for influence in all of the various "stans", notwithstanding the veneer of great friendship and cooperation between the two as presented at blogs like at Pepe Escobar's. The US position at this real life 3-dimensional game is of course through Ukraine in the western end and Taiwan on the eastern end, with the US encouraging the old player Britain to get more involved as in the past. The "great game" has never really gone totally away, but seems to have entered a new phase with some different players involved. It's a "game" worth watching.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Beckow

    Biden says US will defend Taiwan if China attacks

    YOWZA!

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59005300

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  609. Interesting to consider why blue eyes aren’t more common in dogs. When you consider the long history of the domesticated dog, its short generation time, and large breeding litter. No overlay with a map of blue eyes in humans. Maybe, it speaks to the trade-offs of having blue eyes?

  610. @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    Biden says US will defend Taiwan if China attacks

    https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/976/cpsprodpb/4689/production/_121175081_gettyimages-1231208453.jpg

    YOWZA!

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    An ultimatum the US hopes to affect PLA strategic calculations which assumes the military liberation of Taiwan to involve minimal US intervention. The PLA won't be ready to go head-on with the US military in 10 years. Failing that, it wouldn't end well for everyone but the Neo-Malthusians in the current elite.

  611. @Mr. Hack
    @A123

    It becomes a bit difficult to locate any precise reasons why the anti-vaxers really fear the consequences of being vaccinated. It appears that they seem to fear some incredibly debilitating side effects that could possibly even lead to death within 5 years? Glad I'm starting to get my own financial and estate planning affairs in order now. :-)

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    Experiential vaccines were rushed to market with minimal testing. There are an array of both long term and short term risks. Serious problems from the vaccine are very rare, but people have died within hours of receiving the jab.

    The profile of WUHAN-19 is well known, and the risk to the young & healthy is nearly non-existent.

    Vaxx-realism wants to evaluate the vaccine risk versus disease risk. For those over 60 with pre-existing conditions obtaining the vaccine makes sense. However, there does not seem to be any credible science for experimenting on healthy children where the risk is already effectively zero.

    It looks like vaccinated individuals can be carriers like Typhoid Mary. This makes the original justification, herd immunity, a dubious venture.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Agree: Barbarossa
  612. @sher singh
    @Yellowface Anon

    No, but I swear Thomm said he was brown..
    Bharat is our Desh, India is a cuck colonial creation||

    Sikhi is about Sarbat Da Bhalla (welfare of all), our battle is with the Indian Gov.
    Khalsa fights to protect Dharma||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @Thomm

    No, but I swear Thomm said he was brown..

    Never. I am a regular American white guy.

    A lot of the 70-IQ wiggers here think I am a South Asian, but any quick view of my 2000+ comments proves that that is not the case. I have never once expressed interest in South Asia, never once defended Hinduism, never once slammed Islam, and don’t even know anything about your smaller religions (nor do I care). I have defended Jews a fair bit though, so some people here think I am Jewish (also wrong, but at least that isn’t a bad guess given my commenting pattern).

    I challenge you to find a single comment of mine, in the last 3 years, that has anything to do with ‘defending South Asia’. I have defended skilled immigration before, which is an entirely different matter. But even that was over 3 years ago.

    Not to mention that my extraordinarily high knowledge of American pop culture, and my often professed love of steaks, burgers, and guns also make it impossible that I am a ‘South Asian’.

    So you of all people should know better.

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @Thomm

    I don't actually give a fuck or really comment outside the Karlin blog.
    So, you're a literal cuck. :shrug:

  613. @Mr. Hack
    @A123

    It becomes a bit difficult to locate any precise reasons why the anti-vaxers really fear the consequences of being vaccinated. It appears that they seem to fear some incredibly debilitating side effects that could possibly even lead to death within 5 years? Glad I'm starting to get my own financial and estate planning affairs in order now. :-)

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    I read a lot of their stuff early on and it revolves either one or combinations of actual side-effects:

    – mild stuff including passing skin rashes
    – heart issues (myocarditis & pericarditis) which also happen in smallpox vaccination
    – reduction in fertility allegedly because of cross-reactivities with genes that facilitate the formation of human placenta. Some studies have been done in trying to invalidate this claim, and live COVID-19 infections are just as potentially problematic: https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v27n2/118.htm
    This means some effects on fertility will be there, but definitely dwarfed by broader socioeconomic shifts.

    and effects that can’t be proved or disproved at the moment:

    – unknown risks from the premature deployment of experimental mRNA technologies in the mid-to-long term e.g. cognitive decline (has Mike Whitney mention this?)
    – leaky vaccines leading to worse mutations
    – outright mislabeling of contents i.e. bait-and-switching with sterilizing chemicals/nanoparticles/microchips etc.

    Go read some Mike Whitney’s coverage on COVID vaccines and see how much of an exaggeration his claims are. The threat isn’t as overblown as hardcore antivaxxers claim, but it has a small basis on infrequent side-effect observations that are taken out of context because of a poor grasp of statistics. And “they gonna kill 90% with COVID vaxxes!” works well to alienate normies from an out-of-touch and increasingly coercive medical establishment.

    • Agree: A123
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    I need to qualify what I said, I came out of antivaxx and I'm now a vaxx realist and my focus isn't on the vaccines themselves. People who choose to vaccinate bear whatever risks there are, like any other treatment or preventative measures.

    I'm not say there will be any definite issue that will be mRNA technology-specific. AnonfromTN who isn't around will be more knowledgeable than me on this. And any "bait-and-switch" claims must be taken with many shakers of salt, without actual smoking-guns.

    , @Mr. Hack
    @Yellowface Anon

    Do these few risks to perfect healths dissipate with time? Most folks have their small pox vaccines when they're quite young and don't seem to experience many setbacks as adults.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  614. @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-59005300

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    An ultimatum the US hopes to affect PLA strategic calculations which assumes the military liberation of Taiwan to involve minimal US intervention. The PLA won’t be ready to go head-on with the US military in 10 years. Failing that, it wouldn’t end well for everyone but the Neo-Malthusians in the current elite.

  615. IMO, Soviet Union came pretty close to duplicating the current insanity of the West during the early years of the Great Depression. (And the US came close to escaping it – there were more emigrants one year than immigrants.)

    There was an international, ideological push to make the USSR the destination of international labor. Not only of Americans and Europeans, but of other groups. There was a great deal of color signaling about the few blacks that managed to come. There was a growing enthusiasm for American sportsball, and baseball leagues were forming and being promoted.

    But the USSR did not have the necessary economic incentives. Workers often offered to buy the clothes off of the backs of recent arrivals. Moscow and St. Petersburg had a severe housing shortage. A planned economy just could not manage replacement migration.

  616. @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    I read a lot of their stuff early on and it revolves either one or combinations of actual side-effects:

    - mild stuff including passing skin rashes
    - heart issues (myocarditis & pericarditis) which also happen in smallpox vaccination
    - reduction in fertility allegedly because of cross-reactivities with genes that facilitate the formation of human placenta. Some studies have been done in trying to invalidate this claim, and live COVID-19 infections are just as potentially problematic: https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v27n2/118.htm
    This means some effects on fertility will be there, but definitely dwarfed by broader socioeconomic shifts.

    and effects that can't be proved or disproved at the moment:

    - unknown risks from the premature deployment of experimental mRNA technologies in the mid-to-long term e.g. cognitive decline (has Mike Whitney mention this?)
    - leaky vaccines leading to worse mutations
    - outright mislabeling of contents i.e. bait-and-switching with sterilizing chemicals/nanoparticles/microchips etc.

    Go read some Mike Whitney's coverage on COVID vaccines and see how much of an exaggeration his claims are. The threat isn't as overblown as hardcore antivaxxers claim, but it has a small basis on infrequent side-effect observations that are taken out of context because of a poor grasp of statistics. And "they gonna kill 90% with COVID vaxxes!" works well to alienate normies from an out-of-touch and increasingly coercive medical establishment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack

    I need to qualify what I said, I came out of antivaxx and I’m now a vaxx realist and my focus isn’t on the vaccines themselves. People who choose to vaccinate bear whatever risks there are, like any other treatment or preventative measures.

    I’m not say there will be any definite issue that will be mRNA technology-specific. AnonfromTN who isn’t around will be more knowledgeable than me on this. And any “bait-and-switch” claims must be taken with many shakers of salt, without actual smoking-guns.

  617. @A123
    @iffen

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    --- #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters
    --- You say that Trump needs to reach female and high IQ voters
    --- You want to abolish #LetsGoBrandon as 'vulgar'

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    “A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

    — #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters

    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained. Your thinking that it is “a key” derives from being an unaware right winger laboring under millennialism. It’s always a few minutes before dawn, we’re turning the corner, they are heading to “our side” in droves, everybody’s getting Red-pilled, etc., etc.

    With reference to the real world, you should make a mental note that the NeverTrumpers failed. Trump secured the Republican nomination and was elected President.

    I do not believe that it is possible to improve on this:

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    so right back atcha!

    Loving dem extra caps! How about some all-caps words? They are so authoritative that it make me cringy.

    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen


    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained.
     
    Here the key fact in one picture:

     
    https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2021/10/IMG_4943.jpg
     

    The CURRENT strategy is working. More voters are turning away from Biden everyday.

    You are advocating:
    -- Stopping the EFFECTIVE strategy
    -- Replacing it with something unproven

    What MAGA planks are you planning to repudiate as part of your new communications effort? And, how are you going to avoid losing current supports when your "soft touch" approach is correctly understood as "weakness".

    Your "softening" proposal sounds exactly like what Le Pen attempted in France. Here are the results: (1)


    Zemmour benefits from Le Pen’s disappointed voters

    Zemmour mainly benefits from disappointed voters who voted in the first round for Le Pen in the last election in 2017, or right-wing Republican candidate François Fillon, who failed due to a scandal involving his wife’s fictitious employment.

    Zemmour’s high result, who stands to the right of Le Pen on a political scale, is explained by sociologists as the non-participation of left-wing voters in the second round. Many of them said that in the case of the Macron-Zemmour duel, they would not go to the polls. Zemmour would then receive virtually 100 % support from Le Pen voters in the second round if they come to the polls (43 percent of them want to stay at home if their favorite is eliminated).
     

    Clearly you are "playing to lose" and make suggestions that are designed to cripple MAGA communications. -- Not Going To Happen!

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _________________

    (1) https://rmx.news/france/macron-may-be-challenged-in-french-elections-by-zemmour-poll/

    P.S. Per your request I have added ALLCAPS words. They do not seem particularly helpful. Almost like you made a suggestion for less effective communication...

    Replies: @iffen

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen


    they are heading to “our side” in droves, everybody’s getting Red-pilled
     
    In a normal world where the Democrats come up with their IRL ideologies & policies on their own, your (iffen's) image would be right and there would be many who will be convinced of their political merit, the Democrats will be legitimate.

    But we don't have a normal political scene anywhere in the world since 2020. The COVID agenda is here and it is a matter of life and death for most who have decided to change their political alignment. This explains 90% of the Great Awakening, and it will create a much more permanent backlash to Cultural Left ideology than the ideology itself can attract, since it appears at the same junction as world-historical changes it play little part in.

    Politics is as much about ideologies as contingency.
  618. @Thomm
    @sher singh


    No, but I swear Thomm said he was brown..
     
    Never. I am a regular American white guy.

    A lot of the 70-IQ wiggers here think I am a South Asian, but any quick view of my 2000+ comments proves that that is not the case. I have never once expressed interest in South Asia, never once defended Hinduism, never once slammed Islam, and don't even know anything about your smaller religions (nor do I care). I have defended Jews a fair bit though, so some people here think I am Jewish (also wrong, but at least that isn't a bad guess given my commenting pattern).

    I challenge you to find a single comment of mine, in the last 3 years, that has anything to do with 'defending South Asia'. I have defended skilled immigration before, which is an entirely different matter. But even that was over 3 years ago.

    Not to mention that my extraordinarily high knowledge of American pop culture, and my often professed love of steaks, burgers, and guns also make it impossible that I am a 'South Asian'.

    So you of all people should know better.

    Replies: @sher singh

    I don’t actually give a fuck or really comment outside the Karlin blog.
    So, you’re a literal cuck. :shrug:

  619. @iffen
    @A123

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

    — #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters

    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained. Your thinking that it is “a key” derives from being an unaware right winger laboring under millennialism. It’s always a few minutes before dawn, we’re turning the corner, they are heading to “our side” in droves, everybody’s getting Red-pilled, etc., etc.

    With reference to the real world, you should make a mental note that the NeverTrumpers failed. Trump secured the Republican nomination and was elected President.

    I do not believe that it is possible to improve on this:

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    so right back atcha!

    Loving dem extra caps! How about some all-caps words? They are so authoritative that it make me cringy.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained.

    Here the key fact in one picture:

      

    The CURRENT strategy is working. More voters are turning away from Biden everyday.

    You are advocating:
    — Stopping the EFFECTIVE strategy
    — Replacing it with something unproven

    What MAGA planks are you planning to repudiate as part of your new communications effort? And, how are you going to avoid losing current supports when your “soft touch” approach is correctly understood as “weakness”.

    Your “softening” proposal sounds exactly like what Le Pen attempted in France. Here are the results: (1)

    Zemmour benefits from Le Pen’s disappointed voters

    Zemmour mainly benefits from disappointed voters who voted in the first round for Le Pen in the last election in 2017, or right-wing Republican candidate François Fillon, who failed due to a scandal involving his wife’s fictitious employment.

    Zemmour’s high result, who stands to the right of Le Pen on a political scale, is explained by sociologists as the non-participation of left-wing voters in the second round. Many of them said that in the case of the Macron-Zemmour duel, they would not go to the polls. Zemmour would then receive virtually 100 % support from Le Pen voters in the second round if they come to the polls (43 percent of them want to stay at home if their favorite is eliminated).

    Clearly you are “playing to lose” and make suggestions that are designed to cripple MAGA communications. — Not Going To Happen!

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _________________

    (1) https://rmx.news/france/macron-may-be-challenged-in-french-elections-by-zemmour-poll/

    P.S. Per your request I have added ALLCAPS words. They do not seem particularly helpful. Almost like you made a suggestion for less effective communication…

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    We can't count on Biden's negatives.

    Anyway, if Biden had been the nominee in 2016 instead of Clinton with an extreme high negative, Trump would never have been elected.

    Replies: @A123

  620. @A123
    @iffen


    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained.
     
    Here the key fact in one picture:

     
    https://i1.wp.com/www.powerlineblog.com/ed-assets/2021/10/IMG_4943.jpg
     

    The CURRENT strategy is working. More voters are turning away from Biden everyday.

    You are advocating:
    -- Stopping the EFFECTIVE strategy
    -- Replacing it with something unproven

    What MAGA planks are you planning to repudiate as part of your new communications effort? And, how are you going to avoid losing current supports when your "soft touch" approach is correctly understood as "weakness".

    Your "softening" proposal sounds exactly like what Le Pen attempted in France. Here are the results: (1)


    Zemmour benefits from Le Pen’s disappointed voters

    Zemmour mainly benefits from disappointed voters who voted in the first round for Le Pen in the last election in 2017, or right-wing Republican candidate François Fillon, who failed due to a scandal involving his wife’s fictitious employment.

    Zemmour’s high result, who stands to the right of Le Pen on a political scale, is explained by sociologists as the non-participation of left-wing voters in the second round. Many of them said that in the case of the Macron-Zemmour duel, they would not go to the polls. Zemmour would then receive virtually 100 % support from Le Pen voters in the second round if they come to the polls (43 percent of them want to stay at home if their favorite is eliminated).
     

    Clearly you are "playing to lose" and make suggestions that are designed to cripple MAGA communications. -- Not Going To Happen!

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _________________

    (1) https://rmx.news/france/macron-may-be-challenged-in-french-elections-by-zemmour-poll/

    P.S. Per your request I have added ALLCAPS words. They do not seem particularly helpful. Almost like you made a suggestion for less effective communication...

    Replies: @iffen

    We can’t count on Biden’s negatives.

    Anyway, if Biden had been the nominee in 2016 instead of Clinton with an extreme high negative, Trump would never have been elected.

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen


    We can’t count on Biden’s negatives.
     
    So... Your suggestion is abandoning the strategy that created those negatives?

    That proposal seems foolish & self-destructive.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @iffen

  621. @iffen
    @A123

    We can't count on Biden's negatives.

    Anyway, if Biden had been the nominee in 2016 instead of Clinton with an extreme high negative, Trump would never have been elected.

    Replies: @A123

    We can’t count on Biden’s negatives.

    So… Your suggestion is abandoning the strategy that created those negatives?

    That proposal seems foolish & self-destructive.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    Biden and contingent events are creating his negatives. It has nothing to do with "your" strategy, or Trump' for that matter.

    You are innumerate. I don't hold that against you; you were born that way.

    Trump increased his yahoo vote, even after the pundits said that there was little juice left in that orange. The problem was that Biden increased the non-yahoo vote by a bigger number.

    The pool of yahoo voters is decreasing every cycle. The only way for Trump to win is to increase his non-yahoo vote (edumacted voters, women (which he did), Hispanics(which he did), etc.

    "Nuff said on this subject by me.

    Replies: @A123

  622. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you read in the papers of the "Global Britain" strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of "independent external policy".

    In Russia, "Independent external policy" has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the "Global Britain" papers, often discuss about Russia's leverage - for example "National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country." https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original "Global Britain" paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It's like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the "Great Game").

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It's kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
    https://i.imgur.com/IgzQ6yx.jpg


    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf


    ading the Woke,

     

    The "Global Britain" strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.


    https://i.imgur.com/DxsFXfa.jpg


    making references to imperial times
     
    Although it's also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them - i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? - he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this "New Atlantic Charter".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM47TmCeqdg


    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy
     
    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can't remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP, @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts, @Coconuts

    There is a neo-Churchillian feel to the things you posted. I think (if I am remembering accurately) that one of Churchill’s goals was to bring together Britain, the US and what used to be called the ‘white dominions’, Australia, NZ and Canada (maybe South Africa was part of it then as well) to make the English speaking peoples into a kind of political, as well as linguistic, union.

    I can see that this “independent external policy” will be very attractive to some parts of the Conservative Party, if it can shift priority from social spending, likewise the strong orientation to relatively more economically liberal countries like the US and Canada.

    I have tended to think of Johnson as first and foremost an opportunist, perhaps he does have a vision of some kind. I’m not sure how far it will be possible to realise it but if it stuck and solidified it would be a big change in orientation for the UK. A book about British political history I have has a memorable title for one of its chapters ‘From Imperial Power to European Partner’, this covers the 1970s and 80s but IMO it could stand for the whole era up to the Brexit vote. Maybe the next chapter will be from ‘European Partner to Boris’ Global Anglo-Alliance’… in some way it starts to make me feel old.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Coconuts

    If the world is consolidating into cultural blocs it makes sense for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and NZ to come together somehow. It’ll be a bit of a race against time though, America is demographically headed for a semi-Latin American fate. I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @sher singh

  623. @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you read in the papers of the "Global Britain" strategy from Chatham House and Henry Jackson, they seem influenced quite a lot by Russia, with the concept of "independent external policy".

    In Russia, "Independent external policy" has created a lot of prestige for the politicians, but not really so much useful results for ordinary people (this kind of external policy is very prestigious, but it costs money that you could use for upgrading the hospitals and schools).

    In the "Global Britain" papers, often discuss about Russia's leverage - for example "National wealth and international influence can interconnect, but they do not necessarily correlate. Russia’s GDP is currently broadly equal to that of Canada, yet Russia is a far more influential country." https://www.chathamhouse.org/2021/01/global-britain-global-broker/03-britains-relative-position

    In the original "Global Britain" paper which Boris Johnson has written in, they want the UK (with Canada and Australia) to build strategic relation to Ukraine.

    (It's like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the "Great Game").

    Boris Johnson signed this paper, which is talking about creating a UK-Canada-Ukraine alliance. It's kind of eccentric, considering that Ukraine (neither even Russia) does not have much economic importance compared to EU countries.

    They are even excited that Canada has a Ukrainian-ancestry (somekind of descendent from Nazi-collaborating) Foreign Minister.
    https://i.imgur.com/IgzQ6yx.jpg


    https://henryjacksonsociety.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/HJS-Global-Britain-%C2%AD-A-Twenty-first-Century-Vision-Report-A4-web.pdf


    ading the Woke,

     

    The "Global Britain" strategy is based also in reducing foreign (charity) aid donations.

    Currently UK is paying for things like rebuilding streets in Beirut (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDBhueKHcTE.).

    They want to spend the money on former imperial colonies and build a navy fleet with Australia, Canada and New Zealand.


    https://i.imgur.com/DxsFXfa.jpg


    making references to imperial times
     
    Although it's also to imperial colonies that rebelled against them - i.e. USA. I guess Johnson really loves America? - he was born in New York, according to Wikipedia. He wrote in 2014 a book about Winston Churchill, who was half-American.

    His idea is this "New Atlantic Charter".

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LM47TmCeqdg


    knew about both present day British business/foreign policy
     
    There is an essay of criticism on this topic, written by the philosopher Deleuze. I can't remember the essay name.

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent. Although maybe it was more like Deleuze was using the anglosaxon world for a comparison to try to criticize a current (perhaps it is written in the 1950s) provincialism of French literature, which is his real dislike.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP, @Mr. Hack, @Coconuts, @Coconuts

    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent.

    That is interesting, off the top of my head apart from Jules Verne I can’t think of any other famous French authors who concentrated on the theme of sea travel, the distant horizon etc. in the way Melville, Defoe, Conrad did. There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster). The other day I bought a cheap copy of a book of memoirs that was very popular in the 1930s, it was made into a film called ‘Lives of a Bengal Lancer’, the author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.

    Also, some of the greatest Portuguese literature is about the search for distant shores, often it is dealt with in a more overtly spiritual way than in English literature (maybe Melville and Conrad are a bit like this), the theme of the ascetic struggle of sea voyages, discovery and the construction of the imperio leading to transcendence.

    But, Britain and Portugal used to be much more naval and sea focused nations, when France was always the land based demographic Mastodon of Europe, till Germany and Russia took over later in the 19th century.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Coconuts


    There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster).
     
    Have you ever read "Lost Horizon" by James Hilton? There was also an excellent film based on this novel too, that you'd probably enjoy if you like this sort of faire.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Lost_Horizon_postcard_promotion_1937.JPG

    I'm assuming that you're referring to Forster's "A Passage to India" and Maugham's most excellent "A Razor's Edge"? Have I missed anything within this genre that you've read and would recommend?

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts

    , @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    If you just sit in the sofa in the 19th century section of the bookshops in England, it's half of it books about the adventures to tropical countries.

    A lot of the glamour of the United Kingdom's elites in the 19th century, is that they are sailing to islands in the Pacific Ocean, or working as the ruler to a province in India.

    Even in Jane Austen books, the young people develop a lot of freedom only when their father has to go for business vacation to plantations of Caribbean islands.


    author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.
     
    Life in India, and the Hindu relligion, has an influence on the 19th century thought in England. A few years ago, I was discussing in this forum with Utu about the influence of India on the development of modern logic in England.

    The passion of Boole, De Morgan and Babbage, was Indology (they were also a kind of Zionists or British Israelites).

    De Morgan's youth was living in India. And Boole's wife Mary Everest Boole who was introduced to Indian culture by her uncle (which Mount Everest is named for), was writing like she was dreaming about future generations of Indian computer scientists that would restore India with Boolean algebra.

    https://i.imgur.com/rE0PwHh.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/vhTcrUr.jpg

    https://archive.org/details/indianthoughtwes00bool/page/n3

    , @AaronB
    @Coconuts

    Pierre Loti was an extremely popular 19th century French writer whose novels took place in foreign lands, mostly Cambodia and SEA, now forgotten. Nietzsche mentions him as one of his favorites.

    Flaubert wrote famous travel diaries of travel to Egypt and sleeping with exotic Arab prostitutes there.

    Maupassant had many stories that take place in exotic North Africa.

    The most famous in this vein though is probably Rimbaud, the young poet who gave up a brilliant career in poetry to take up a life of adventure and gun-running in Ethiopia - I love his story :)

    Alexandra David-Neel was the first European to penetrate Tibet, and wrote a bunch of books on it still read today.

    And there are many more I am now forgetting. As modernity wore on, European intellectuals and artists grew increasingly disaffected with European civilization, and the French were definitely fascinated by exotic lands.

    Still, the English did seem to produce an unusually high number not just of writing about foreign lands, but also of adventurers and exiles who preferred the exotic to life in modern Britain, all the great explorers and adventurers and travel writers.

    I think the 18th century Grand Tour began in England, which every lord was expected to undergo - it seems from early on, the British were sick of themselves :)

    Paul Theroux said the British were fleeing the stuffy and oppressive class system in England - perhaps, but it seems more likely part of the wider romantic European disaffection with modernity and industrialism, at its peak in England, the richest country in Europe and the most modern and scientific.

    As for India, the most profound cultural impact was on German Romantic poets and philosophers, like Holderin, Novalis, and and Schopenhauer, and it's been said that the Romantic movement in Germany was the discovery of Indian wisdom basically.

    While the exotic life and scenery of India figured largely in English literature (Kipling, Wilkie Collins, Foster, etc), Indian spirituality seems to have had a very small impact until the 20th century.

    Even American writers like Emerson and Thoreau seem to have been more seriously impacted by Hindu spiritually per se in the 19th century.

    Perhaps the British were too militarily and politically involved in the development of India - Macaulay even wanted to abolish Hindu learning and replace it with English and science, etc.

    But the 20th century produced several brilliant English writers on Indian spirituality, and it's impact grew dramatically.

  624. Would be a pretty big propaganda coup for Euros if they could bring back some of the more charismatic megafauna killed off by the Amerinds and Abos. Though, I guess it is not likely for a variety of reasons.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    I support all these megafauna resurrections!

    Replies: @songbird

  625. @A123
    @iffen


    We can’t count on Biden’s negatives.
     
    So... Your suggestion is abandoning the strategy that created those negatives?

    That proposal seems foolish & self-destructive.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    Biden and contingent events are creating his negatives. It has nothing to do with “your” strategy, or Trump’ for that matter.

    You are innumerate. I don’t hold that against you; you were born that way.

    Trump increased his yahoo vote, even after the pundits said that there was little juice left in that orange. The problem was that Biden increased the non-yahoo vote by a bigger number.

    The pool of yahoo voters is decreasing every cycle. The only way for Trump to win is to increase his non-yahoo vote (edumacted voters, women (which he did), Hispanics(which he did), etc.

    “Nuff said on this subject by me.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen

    I am accurate. Your inability to see that is telling.

    "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."--George Santayana


    The only way for Trump to win is to increase his .. vote [among] educated voters, women (*which he did*), Hispanics(*which he did*), etc.
     
    You concede that the current MAGA strategy is successful at obtaining swing voters. Then you 180 and say the successful strategy is a problem.

    You are advocating for emulation of Le Pen. However, the lesson of her FN to RN failure is, "Capitulation = Defeat".

    Why are you so closed to evidence and facts?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Not Raul

  626. @iffen
    @A123

    Biden and contingent events are creating his negatives. It has nothing to do with "your" strategy, or Trump' for that matter.

    You are innumerate. I don't hold that against you; you were born that way.

    Trump increased his yahoo vote, even after the pundits said that there was little juice left in that orange. The problem was that Biden increased the non-yahoo vote by a bigger number.

    The pool of yahoo voters is decreasing every cycle. The only way for Trump to win is to increase his non-yahoo vote (edumacted voters, women (which he did), Hispanics(which he did), etc.

    "Nuff said on this subject by me.

    Replies: @A123

    I am accurate. Your inability to see that is telling.

    “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”–George Santayana

    The only way for Trump to win is to increase his .. vote [among] educated voters, women (*which he did*), Hispanics(*which he did*), etc.

    You concede that the current MAGA strategy is successful at obtaining swing voters. Then you 180 and say the successful strategy is a problem.

    You are advocating for emulation of Le Pen. However, the lesson of her FN to RN failure is, “Capitulation = Defeat”.

    Why are you so closed to evidence and facts?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @A123


    #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters
     
    You actually have no evidence that this helped Trump to win voters in 2016, and 2020; and it’s unlikely that you ever will, because #LetsGoBrandon is from 2021, which comes after 2016, and 2020.

    Replies: @A123, @A123

  627. @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    I read a lot of their stuff early on and it revolves either one or combinations of actual side-effects:

    - mild stuff including passing skin rashes
    - heart issues (myocarditis & pericarditis) which also happen in smallpox vaccination
    - reduction in fertility allegedly because of cross-reactivities with genes that facilitate the formation of human placenta. Some studies have been done in trying to invalidate this claim, and live COVID-19 infections are just as potentially problematic: https://www.hkmj.org/abstracts/v27n2/118.htm
    This means some effects on fertility will be there, but definitely dwarfed by broader socioeconomic shifts.

    and effects that can't be proved or disproved at the moment:

    - unknown risks from the premature deployment of experimental mRNA technologies in the mid-to-long term e.g. cognitive decline (has Mike Whitney mention this?)
    - leaky vaccines leading to worse mutations
    - outright mislabeling of contents i.e. bait-and-switching with sterilizing chemicals/nanoparticles/microchips etc.

    Go read some Mike Whitney's coverage on COVID vaccines and see how much of an exaggeration his claims are. The threat isn't as overblown as hardcore antivaxxers claim, but it has a small basis on infrequent side-effect observations that are taken out of context because of a poor grasp of statistics. And "they gonna kill 90% with COVID vaxxes!" works well to alienate normies from an out-of-touch and increasingly coercive medical establishment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mr. Hack

    Do these few risks to perfect healths dissipate with time? Most folks have their small pox vaccines when they’re quite young and don’t seem to experience many setbacks as adults.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    We don't know for sure yet. They can well be insignificant in the larger scheme of things, but much of the damage wrought by the struggle between mandavaxxers & antivaxxers will be done by the time we find out.

  628. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent.
     
    That is interesting, off the top of my head apart from Jules Verne I can't think of any other famous French authors who concentrated on the theme of sea travel, the distant horizon etc. in the way Melville, Defoe, Conrad did. There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster). The other day I bought a cheap copy of a book of memoirs that was very popular in the 1930s, it was made into a film called 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer', the author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.

    Also, some of the greatest Portuguese literature is about the search for distant shores, often it is dealt with in a more overtly spiritual way than in English literature (maybe Melville and Conrad are a bit like this), the theme of the ascetic struggle of sea voyages, discovery and the construction of the imperio leading to transcendence.

    But, Britain and Portugal used to be much more naval and sea focused nations, when France was always the land based demographic Mastodon of Europe, till Germany and Russia took over later in the 19th century.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @AaronB

    There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster).

    Have you ever read “Lost Horizon” by James Hilton? There was also an excellent film based on this novel too, that you’d probably enjoy if you like this sort of faire.

    I’m assuming that you’re referring to Forster’s “A Passage to India” and Maugham’s most excellent “A Razor’s Edge”? Have I missed anything within this genre that you’ve read and would recommend?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Mr. Hack

    I have read it many years ago, as well as seen the movie.

    I was pretty amused when I learned of this city:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La_City

    As the book is slightly politically incorrect, at least by modern standards.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Coconuts
    @Mr. Hack

    I didn't know about that one, thanks a lot for the recommendation... this could be one for after I finish the 'Bengal Lancer' book. I recognised the author's name, then saw that this is because he wrote another famous bestseller in the 30s, the boarding school story 'Goodbye Mr. Chips'.

    You are also right about the titles I had in mind, I remember reading 'Razor's Edge' and some years later 'A Passage to India', it was in the early days of the internet when you still had to find books mainly in libraries and 2nd hand bookshops.

    When I was younger I read a couple of novels set in British India by John Masters (Bhowani Junction and Nightrunners of Bengal), these are more realist without IIRC the spiritual themes but I thought they were good at the time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masters

  629. @iffen
    @A123

    The ineffectiveness of your #NeverTrump propaganda is your inconsistency:

    "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines.” Ralph Waldo Emerson

    — #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters

    Taking your advice of looking at “real word facts” it is obvious that your 1st premise is invalid. I doubt that it will reach females or high IQ voters (or any combination) in a significant number. And even if it does, it would lose a thousand votes for every one that might be gained. Your thinking that it is “a key” derives from being an unaware right winger laboring under millennialism. It’s always a few minutes before dawn, we’re turning the corner, they are heading to “our side” in droves, everybody’s getting Red-pilled, etc., etc.

    With reference to the real world, you should make a mental note that the NeverTrumpers failed. Trump secured the Republican nomination and was elected President.

    I do not believe that it is possible to improve on this:

    Combining your positions with real world facts in a rational manner indicates that the objective of your statements is Agitprop.

    so right back atcha!

    Loving dem extra caps! How about some all-caps words? They are so authoritative that it make me cringy.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    they are heading to “our side” in droves, everybody’s getting Red-pilled

    In a normal world where the Democrats come up with their IRL ideologies & policies on their own, your (iffen’s) image would be right and there would be many who will be convinced of their political merit, the Democrats will be legitimate.

    But we don’t have a normal political scene anywhere in the world since 2020. The COVID agenda is here and it is a matter of life and death for most who have decided to change their political alignment. This explains 90% of the Great Awakening, and it will create a much more permanent backlash to Cultural Left ideology than the ideology itself can attract, since it appears at the same junction as world-historical changes it play little part in.

    Politics is as much about ideologies as contingency.

  630. @Yellowface Anon
    @mal

    But the wiping-out of savings are equally pernicious, if that isn't a feature instead of a bug of CBDCs.

    Replies: @Not Raul, @mal

    Zimbabwe has no savings aside from like 3 goats. It’s a very poor country. So any debt wipeout (including GDP growth that puts money in their pocket) is beneficial.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @mal

    Nope. A lot of peasants and tenant farmers once had admittedly megre savings, and wiping those were painful.


    Actually, that’s the main goal of financial assets – inflation buffers.
     
    Do you know what you are arguing for?

    Replies: @mal

  631. @Mr. Hack
    @Yellowface Anon

    Do these few risks to perfect healths dissipate with time? Most folks have their small pox vaccines when they're quite young and don't seem to experience many setbacks as adults.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    We don’t know for sure yet. They can well be insignificant in the larger scheme of things, but much of the damage wrought by the struggle between mandavaxxers & antivaxxers will be done by the time we find out.

  632. @John Johnson
    @mal

    Yeah but “wheelbarrow of cash” is seriously outdated.

    Outdated? You are the one that asked where the floor would be for Zimbabwe hyperinflation which you obviously didn't research. That was over 10 years ago. Yes the date is in the past.

    Yes they were bringing in wheelbarrows of cash to buy food. That is no exaggeration.

    When you make digital payments with your phone or face recognition software, it is completely irrelevant if the price is $1 or $1 trillion. Computer payment systems can handle both numbers with equivalent ease. There’s no difference.

    So you think the rules of inflation are different if we add zeroes to a computer bank account vs printing money?

    You do realize that those digital zeroes still need to be transferred into physical goods and services? And that your computer currency is still traded globally relative to other currencies?

    Replies: @mal

    Outdated? You are the one that asked where the floor would be for Zimbabwe hyperinflation which you obviously didn’t research. That was over 10 years ago. Yes the date is in the past.

    10 years ago is quite some time ago? I bet even Zimbabwe has electronic payments now.

    You do realize that those digital zeroes still need to be transferred into physical goods and services? And that your computer currency is still traded globally relative to other currencies?

    Nope. Just buy Bitcoin or other digital tokens. No need to transfer into physical goods and services. Actually, that’s the main goal of financial assets – inflation buffers. Which is why credit and financial markets are so important.

  633. @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    Zimbabwe has no savings aside from like 3 goats. It's a very poor country. So any debt wipeout (including GDP growth that puts money in their pocket) is beneficial.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Nope. A lot of peasants and tenant farmers once had admittedly megre savings, and wiping those were painful.

    Actually, that’s the main goal of financial assets – inflation buffers.

    Do you know what you are arguing for?

    • Replies: @mal
    @Yellowface Anon

    I'm trying to describe reality that's neither black or white. I'm not arguing for anything, just describing reality as it is, and best possible moves available in different circumstances.

    Why is it so hard to understand that if you trash your economy, hyperinflation is the only possible move you can make?

    Those farmers' meager savings are completely irrelevant. It doesn't matter if you have 10 pennies if you will have to pay $100 monthly in taxes and bank fees to service international loan. You have to make a run for it or you will get perpetually stuck. So Zimbabweans printed, got dollars, made payments, kept some dollars in the economy apparently, good on them.

    All I'm saying is there was no better move for them available given the circumstances. Their economy was in depression for years. Continuing that was pointless.


    Do you know what you are arguing for?
     
    Financial assets (including Bitcoin etc), are good inflation hedges for those concerned with inflation? Also, money spent on financial assets is money not spent on cat food etc, so it removes pressure on real world inflation indicators?

    I thought it was a rather common sense thing, and not in any way controversial?

    I don't have a problem with Zimbabwe goat farmers buying Bitcoin etc.
  634. @Mikel
    @mal

    Well, I have already proven that your claims were wrong.

    Zimbabwe did not reduce its external debt through hyperinflation, let alone get rid of it, let alone do it through the magical trick of printing 21 trillion $Z, which only got them 9 million USD to keep begging for more loans from the IMF.

    But getting you to recognize your mistaken claims is outside of my power and I won't insist. You would actually gain in credibility if you recognized it but it's your call.

    When I first starting discussing economic matters with you I actually wanted to learn from you. I studied economics but I don't consider myself to be particularly knowledgeable. Economy is far from being a hard science. It deals with complex systems of human behavior, social institutions and politics. There is too much chaos and non-linearity in all this to be able to formulate solid laws resembling the ones that work well in the natural sciences. So I try to keep my mind open and get my beliefs challenged. However, a constant repetition of the benefits of printing money and hyperinflation, even when you are objectively shown to be wrong on specific claims, is not going to get me any closer to understanding how things really work.

    Replies: @mal

    Well, I have already proven that your claims were wrong.

    No you haven’t. They printed far more than \$21 trillion. That \$9M was just one of the payments.

    Zimbabwe did not reduce its external debt through hyperinflation, let alone get rid of it, let alone do it through the magical trick of printing 21 trillion \$Z, which only got them 9 million USD to keep begging for more loans from the IMF.

    They grew their GDP by getting loans through IMF and making payments on existing loans. Which was a rather good deal under the circumstances.

    They were able to take out more loans as their GDP increased through dollarization. Higher GDP means more debt. Perfectly normal.

    Again, they were printing far more than \$21 trillion.

  635. I propose to send the population of Angola Prison, Louisiana to Angola, Africa and to pocket the savings achieved thereby.

  636. @Yellowface Anon
    @mal

    Nope. A lot of peasants and tenant farmers once had admittedly megre savings, and wiping those were painful.


    Actually, that’s the main goal of financial assets – inflation buffers.
     
    Do you know what you are arguing for?

    Replies: @mal

    I’m trying to describe reality that’s neither black or white. I’m not arguing for anything, just describing reality as it is, and best possible moves available in different circumstances.

    Why is it so hard to understand that if you trash your economy, hyperinflation is the only possible move you can make?

    Those farmers’ meager savings are completely irrelevant. It doesn’t matter if you have 10 pennies if you will have to pay \$100 monthly in taxes and bank fees to service international loan. You have to make a run for it or you will get perpetually stuck. So Zimbabweans printed, got dollars, made payments, kept some dollars in the economy apparently, good on them.

    All I’m saying is there was no better move for them available given the circumstances. Their economy was in depression for years. Continuing that was pointless.

    Do you know what you are arguing for?

    Financial assets (including Bitcoin etc), are good inflation hedges for those concerned with inflation? Also, money spent on financial assets is money not spent on cat food etc, so it removes pressure on real world inflation indicators?

    I thought it was a rather common sense thing, and not in any way controversial?

    I don’t have a problem with Zimbabwe goat farmers buying Bitcoin etc.

  637. @A123
    @Blinky Bill


    Chinese companies currently top the list of the biggest shipping container manufacturers. They are about 85% of the world’s total production of shipping containers and have been making a record 500,000 containers a month, up from 200,000 previously.
     
    Interesting, but the need is:

    'Empty' containers on the 'West Coast'.

    A Chinese container at $3,000 (60% of U.S.) plus the cost to move it to the U.S. over $7,000 runs net $10,000. This is twice the effective $5,000 cost of a U.S. built new container.

    Even if double cost 'empty' containers were routed to the U.S., how would they be unloaded to alleviate the bottleneck?
    -- Limited numbers mixed in with full containers would join the 'full' queue for weeks.
    -- It is hard to see how a 75%+ full freighter of 'empty' containers could be arranged.
    ___

    This does speak to the need for MAGA Reindustrialization. Making more real goods, such as containers, is a vital national security interest for the U.S. Only North American made containers can reach the congestion via ground to potentially cure the issue. Mexico and/or Canada might help, but I do not think either of them makes many shipping containers.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @David Davenport

    This does speak to the need for MAGA Reindustrialization.

    But importing less of anything from China is part of the MAGA agenda for American reindustrialization.

  638. @Mr. Hack
    @Coconuts


    There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster).
     
    Have you ever read "Lost Horizon" by James Hilton? There was also an excellent film based on this novel too, that you'd probably enjoy if you like this sort of faire.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Lost_Horizon_postcard_promotion_1937.JPG

    I'm assuming that you're referring to Forster's "A Passage to India" and Maugham's most excellent "A Razor's Edge"? Have I missed anything within this genre that you've read and would recommend?

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts

    I have read it many years ago, as well as seen the movie.

    I was pretty amused when I learned of this city:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La_City

    As the book is slightly politically incorrect, at least by modern standards.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @songbird

    The book also inspired the name of a valley in PNG, where another politically incorrect story took place:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_New_Guinea_Gremlin_Special_rescue

    More details in Lost in Shangri-La (2011) by Mitchell Zuckoff. Wouldn't say it is a great book, but the story is interesting.

  639. @songbird
    @Mr. Hack

    I have read it many years ago, as well as seen the movie.

    I was pretty amused when I learned of this city:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shangri-La_City

    As the book is slightly politically incorrect, at least by modern standards.

    Replies: @songbird

    The book also inspired the name of a valley in PNG, where another politically incorrect story took place:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1945_New_Guinea_Gremlin_Special_rescue

    More details in Lost in Shangri-La (2011) by Mitchell Zuckoff. Wouldn’t say it is a great book, but the story is interesting.

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
  640. @German_reader
    @iffen


    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election?
     
    Well, the likely new government has already indicated their desire to "modernize" the country by lots of "progressive" policies, like adoption rights for homosexuals, ability to change your legal gender at will, lowering the voting age to 16 (though they'd need a two thirds majority for that) and legalization of cannabis. Crucially, they also want to make naturalization easier (right now you have to had eight years of legal residence for becoming a citizen...the liberal FDP would like to change that to four years and also wants 500 000 immigrants a year). Holding of dual or multiple citizenships should also become generally possible, not just for EU citizens and people from countries like Iran which don't release their citizens from citizenship, as it is now.
    Basically things will just be a somewhat worse version of the Merkel years...more financial obligations for the EU, continuing mass immigration, disastrous energy policies (to "save the climate"), high tax burden, and more repression against dissent.
    However, in all likelihood pretty much the same would have happened, if CDU/CSU had won the election, so the election didn't really matter at all.
    imo this country is doomed. On some level it still depresses me, but on the other hand, I probably shouldn't care anymore, I don't have children, and if 90% of those bothering to vote think everything is fine, they deserve what's coming for them.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Svidomyatheart, @A123

    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted? I know Anglos and Atlanticists are working hard on you guys overtime. Anglos completely assimilated all the Germans in the States by WW1/WW2(that’s incredibly impressive in only 15-40 years all “Germaness” completely gone and erased and tunred into white creatures) and aside from Anglo isn’t the most common ancestry in the US is German? Do you think Anglos will be able to successfully pull that experiment on ethnic Germans in Germany itself like they did on you guys in the States? To turn into paypigs for various asylum seekers and slavery descendants?

    No offense to your Anglo side btw

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted?
     
    The West German bourgeoisie is so fucked in the head I no longer believe in the possibility of political change averting total disaster. The migration crisis and everything that followed was an eye-opening experience for me, it really showed me that I have nothing in common anymore with large sections of this country (and that applies to ethnic Germans, obviously even more true with regard to Turks or various "people of color")...they live in a total fantasy land where states and nations are obsolete and the only problem is "Nazis" (or maybe "white privilege" and "white supremacy", US concepts have been taken up rapidly by left-wingers in Germany). 2018 kind of mentally broke me...migrants (Kurds iirc) stabbed to death a native in Chemnitz (actually a mixed-race guy of half Cuban ancestry iirc, and his friends who were also seriously wounded were Russian-Germans...didn't matter either, as do all the other horror crimes perpetrated by Merkel's migrants)...and the German establishment reacted by inventing some kind of anti-foreigner pogrom in Chemnitz, with "antifascist" bands holding huge concerts against racism there and being lauded by the fucking president for it, with all the good people virtue-signaling on social media with the slogan "Wir sind mehr" (= we are more than them, i.e. evil Nazis hunting down innocent, defenseless migrants). That showed me that the West German bourgeoisie in its boundless self-righteousness will never snap out of their delusions, they will carry this insane mass immigration project to its bitter conclusion, not least because otherwise they would have to admit that East German proles back in 2014/15 had a more accurate perception of reality than them.
    As for "Anglo" influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy. Obviously that pernicious influence continues to operate, you get all the racial discourse about things being "too white" now in Germany too. But one can't absolve Germany's elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @songbird, @Svidomyatheart

  641. Used to wonder if the heat being cranked up in public buildings was a sign of our descent into gerontocracy, but now I wonder if it may have really been a sign of our descent into gynecocracy.

  642. @A123
    @iffen

    I am accurate. Your inability to see that is telling.

    "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."--George Santayana


    The only way for Trump to win is to increase his .. vote [among] educated voters, women (*which he did*), Hispanics(*which he did*), etc.
     
    You concede that the current MAGA strategy is successful at obtaining swing voters. Then you 180 and say the successful strategy is a problem.

    You are advocating for emulation of Le Pen. However, the lesson of her FN to RN failure is, "Capitulation = Defeat".

    Why are you so closed to evidence and facts?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Not Raul

    #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters

    You actually have no evidence that this helped Trump to win voters in 2016, and 2020; and it’s unlikely that you ever will, because #LetsGoBrandon is from 2021, which comes after 2016, and 2020.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Not Raul


    no evidence that this helped Trump to win voters in 2016, and 2020;
     
    Correct. There is no evidence #LetsGoBrandon, which started in 2021 impacted the election in 2016. To the best of my knowledge time travel does not exist.

    However, there is plenty of current evidence:
        • Biden's popularity is dropping in 2021
        • #LetsGoBrandon is from 2021

    Further, observation / anecdotal evidence seen in football stadiums that female students and alumni with children are joining in the #LetsGoBrandon chants.

    While correlation is not always causation. Objective observers will find a link between the two positions. It takes true #NeverTrump science denial to jettison 100% of the available facts and declare"what females are doing is offensive to women".

    PEACE 😇
    , @A123
    @Not Raul

    Here is evidence that the current MAGA strategy is winning with Likely Voters: (1)


    I&I/TIPP Poll Shocker: Trump Beats Biden In Presidential Poll In Every U.S. Region But One
    ..
    Key demographic groups also show a swing away from Biden toward Trump. The breakdown shows a major swing from Biden to Trump in the last month.
    ...
    Among married women, often viewed as a heavily influential voting group, the shift toward Trump was particularly notable: In September, this group favored Biden (42.4%) to Trump (42.1%). In October, they gave Trump 53.2% of their vote, versus just 40% for Biden, a huge swing.
     
    It takes #NeverTrump levels of reality denial & pomposity to declare the strategy that is +10.8% with women is the result of something that drives women away.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/25/ii-tipp-poll-shocker-trump-beats-biden-in-presidential-poll-in-every-u-s-region-but-one/

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  643. @songbird
    Would be a pretty big propaganda coup for Euros if they could bring back some of the more charismatic megafauna killed off by the Amerinds and Abos. Though, I guess it is not likely for a variety of reasons.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I support all these megafauna resurrections!

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    Really like the idea of bringing back Doedicurus. Closest thing to an ankylosaur this side of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Also, giant ground sloths would be neat.

    Though, easiest might be the aurochs. After that, things that are preserved in permafrost - of these I think the woolly is the best, and am intrigued by the idea that rewildering it would warm up Siberia. Not much progress seems to have been made so far, which is discouraging. Maybe, with more resources?

    We should be spending less on blank-slatism and more on breeding programs. Doesn't have to be about eugenics. (at least not immediately, dysgenics is coming on us fast, I fear) Lots of value to unlock in animals and plants.

  644. @Not Raul
    @A123


    #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters
     
    You actually have no evidence that this helped Trump to win voters in 2016, and 2020; and it’s unlikely that you ever will, because #LetsGoBrandon is from 2021, which comes after 2016, and 2020.

    Replies: @A123, @A123

    no evidence that this helped Trump to win voters in 2016, and 2020;

    Correct. There is no evidence #LetsGoBrandon, which started in 2021 impacted the election in 2016. To the best of my knowledge time travel does not exist.

    However, there is plenty of current evidence:
        • Biden’s popularity is dropping in 2021
        • #LetsGoBrandon is from 2021

    Further, observation / anecdotal evidence seen in football stadiums that female students and alumni with children are joining in the #LetsGoBrandon chants.

    While correlation is not always causation. Objective observers will find a link between the two positions. It takes true #NeverTrump science denial to jettison 100% of the available facts and declare”what females are doing is offensive to women“.

    PEACE 😇

  645. @German_reader
    @iffen


    Speaking of the CDU, what are your thoughts on the recent election?
     
    Well, the likely new government has already indicated their desire to "modernize" the country by lots of "progressive" policies, like adoption rights for homosexuals, ability to change your legal gender at will, lowering the voting age to 16 (though they'd need a two thirds majority for that) and legalization of cannabis. Crucially, they also want to make naturalization easier (right now you have to had eight years of legal residence for becoming a citizen...the liberal FDP would like to change that to four years and also wants 500 000 immigrants a year). Holding of dual or multiple citizenships should also become generally possible, not just for EU citizens and people from countries like Iran which don't release their citizens from citizenship, as it is now.
    Basically things will just be a somewhat worse version of the Merkel years...more financial obligations for the EU, continuing mass immigration, disastrous energy policies (to "save the climate"), high tax burden, and more repression against dissent.
    However, in all likelihood pretty much the same would have happened, if CDU/CSU had won the election, so the election didn't really matter at all.
    imo this country is doomed. On some level it still depresses me, but on the other hand, I probably shouldn't care anymore, I don't have children, and if 90% of those bothering to vote think everything is fine, they deserve what's coming for them.

    Replies: @sher singh, @Svidomyatheart, @A123

    Merkel’s policies have been leading towards armed conflict with Poland (1)

    “What will happen if the European Commission starts a third world war? If it starts a third world war, we will defend our rights with any weapon that we have at our disposal,” Morawiecki said.

    Will the new German government stop wielding the EC against Poland? Or, will they continue with provocation & escalation?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/polish-pm-says-eu-holding-gun-our-head-over-funds-could-start-ww3

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    Merkel’s policies have been leading towards armed conflict with Poland
     
    "armed conflict", lol, if Germany's joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest them. The conflict will be purely financial.
    I don't even know why the Poles bother to keep the migrants from Belarus out, they should just put all those Iraqis, Yemenis etc. in buses and drive them right up to the German border and send them off to the Promised Land.

    Replies: @A123

  646. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @German_reader

    Merkel's policies have been leading towards armed conflict with Poland (1)


    “What will happen if the European Commission starts a third world war? If it starts a third world war, we will defend our rights with any weapon that we have at our disposal,” Morawiecki said.

     

    Will the new German government stop wielding the EC against Poland? Or, will they continue with provocation & escalation?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.zerohedge.com/political/polish-pm-says-eu-holding-gun-our-head-over-funds-could-start-ww3

    Replies: @German_reader

    Merkel’s policies have been leading towards armed conflict with Poland

    “armed conflict”, lol, if Germany’s joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest them. The conflict will be purely financial.
    I don’t even know why the Poles bother to keep the migrants from Belarus out, they should just put all those Iraqis, Yemenis etc. in buses and drive them right up to the German border and send them off to the Promised Land.

    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader


    I don’t even know why the Poles bother to keep the migrants from Belarus out, they should just put all those Iraqis, Yemenis etc. in buses and drive them right up to the German border and send them off to the Promised Land.
     
    I 100% agree with you.

    Hmmmm..... Let me check the New Testament to see if this is one of the Signs mentioned in Revelations..... What was that bit about Judgement?

    PEACE 😇
  647. German_reader says:
    @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted? I know Anglos and Atlanticists are working hard on you guys overtime. Anglos completely assimilated all the Germans in the States by WW1/WW2(that's incredibly impressive in only 15-40 years all "Germaness" completely gone and erased and tunred into white creatures) and aside from Anglo isn't the most common ancestry in the US is German? Do you think Anglos will be able to successfully pull that experiment on ethnic Germans in Germany itself like they did on you guys in the States? To turn into paypigs for various asylum seekers and slavery descendants?

    No offense to your Anglo side btw

    Replies: @German_reader

    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted?

    The West German bourgeoisie is so fucked in the head I no longer believe in the possibility of political change averting total disaster. The migration crisis and everything that followed was an eye-opening experience for me, it really showed me that I have nothing in common anymore with large sections of this country (and that applies to ethnic Germans, obviously even more true with regard to Turks or various “people of color”)…they live in a total fantasy land where states and nations are obsolete and the only problem is “Nazis” (or maybe “white privilege” and “white supremacy”, US concepts have been taken up rapidly by left-wingers in Germany). 2018 kind of mentally broke me…migrants (Kurds iirc) stabbed to death a native in Chemnitz (actually a mixed-race guy of half Cuban ancestry iirc, and his friends who were also seriously wounded were Russian-Germans…didn’t matter either, as do all the other horror crimes perpetrated by Merkel’s migrants)…and the German establishment reacted by inventing some kind of anti-foreigner pogrom in Chemnitz, with “antifascist” bands holding huge concerts against racism there and being lauded by the fucking president for it, with all the good people virtue-signaling on social media with the slogan “Wir sind mehr” (= we are more than them, i.e. evil Nazis hunting down innocent, defenseless migrants). That showed me that the West German bourgeoisie in its boundless self-righteousness will never snap out of their delusions, they will carry this insane mass immigration project to its bitter conclusion, not least because otherwise they would have to admit that East German proles back in 2014/15 had a more accurate perception of reality than them.
    As for “Anglo” influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy. Obviously that pernicious influence continues to operate, you get all the racial discourse about things being “too white” now in Germany too. But one can’t absolve Germany’s elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Germany's situation seems mixed to my eyes. Economy is robust, diversified and most people have jobs, including young people (which is not the situation in Southern Europe). Even with the radical changes in the automobile industry, they attracted Tesla to Brandenburg.

    Coronavirus has been comparatively well managed, most people will still have their grandparents' alive for a few more years, which is a very important topic.

    I've haven't been in Dresden, but it seems like its rebuilding has challenged our assumptions in a positive sense about the possibility of historical reconstruction in cities.

    German usually looks strong on all typical indicators I look at - imprisonment rates, life expectancy, murder rates, death by air pollution, etc.

    On the other hand, there is second most aging population of a major country after Japan, below replacement fertility rates, and the importation of significantly unfiltered and Islamic new proletariat, which means that can soon be not only MacDonald's and KFC branches in every city, but also such multinational chains as ISIS and the Taliban (this is already reality Russian cities as well, but somehow I feel like the security services in Russia are more competent to mostly suppress terrorist cells in Russia than in Germany - what is like Germany's FSB?) .


    Germany’s joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest

     

    This is surely an situation where the 20th century can be envying the 21st century.

    German bourgeoisie is so fucked

     

    It's funny because two of most difficult in the class co-students I've studied with (for only a few weeks fortunately), had been children of German bourgeoisie. Although I was more thinking this sample was more of a product of the study abroad filter being applied to them, the Germany billionaire families sending their most difficult youth to become permanent students abroad, so they do not have to manage these ADD people in their home during their 20ies.

    Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America

     

    I think the mental life of the English people is pretty different, despite identical languages.

    For example which seems to me to add a sense of cultural distance, American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah's ark. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not expecting we will be able to visit one of these in Oxford, Edinburgh or Dublin anytime near.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeNOURXWCmM

    Replies: @AP, @Yellowface Anon

    , @songbird
    @German_reader


    As for “Anglo” influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy.
     
    I'm of two minds on this.

    Firstly, London and Paris were separately each once the biggest city in the world. If big cities are engines of corruption (and I think they fundamentally are), then I suspect that they were big enough to develop these heresies on their own. Also, I think, whether or not one approves of colonies, de-colonization seems to have been a spiritual retreat by the West. Obviously, it was a retreat or diminution on the map. It both encouraged sun peoples to flee to Euro countries (we were taking-in our own, so others exploited that to sneak in) as well as encouraged virtue-signaling in the susceptible about how their coming should be accepted. Not to mention, Europe is close to West Asia and North Africa. (though maybe not close to India or sub-Sahara or the Caribbean)

    OTOH, it is strange to consider what I consider to be the smallest country in Western Europe with a real identity: Ireland. It seems to me that it was too small to develop these heresies on its own, having a low population and no megalopoli. In the local context, it seems to be either some form of elite social contagion from foreign parts or else of external power being applied. (Recently, there has been a campaign to push a law for against anti-Semitism in Ireland, in part it weirdly seems to be being championed by the press in Israel.)

    And once I accept that, I guess I have to be open to the idea of social contagion or power affecting larger countries. Of course, Europe stopped competing with Hollywood a long time ago. Also, I find it very weird how this melting pot idea developed in America, and seemed to jump to the other big scale country, the USSR, during the Great Depression (albeit abortively), before jumping back to America. It is almost like proto-globalists were trying to target the biggest scale country they could get leverage on, whenever they thought they could do so.

    But one can’t absolve Germany’s elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.
     
    My cynical take is that blank-slatism has the keys to the kingdom, all the levers of power: civil rights laws. So, for example, if there was a nationalist version of Soros, he would have his wealth extracted from him, by the courts because his organization would be accused of racism, etc. And people really fall in line with power and wealth structures. Mark Collett is not a wealthy guy.
    , @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    I know im coming off rude and unpleasant but i assure you im just being realistic.
    See the core of the problem is that is a good 95% of Anglos are pro Empire and will defend it if push comes to shove.This article does read somewhat like cope because irrc Greeks are salty Anglos always support Turks over them but the core point is there ( https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-transatlantic-love-affair-is-over/ ) I think Brits see "oh man those Americans they used to be us...literally" and US is still a technological and cultural powerhouse and so Brits get taken over by all kinds of mind viruses otherwise they would not be in the situation they are now. Even now they want to make that 5 eyes club(those recent anti China shenanigans against France with Aussies+Brits+Americans). Blood is still thicker than water, I suppose.

    You just said it yourself that Britain is mentally occupied by America. And what happens when "Right Wing" Americans view Somalis as closer to them than Europeans and view having Somali businesses as the cornerstones of successful policy?
    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British...equivalent?(if that's a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners? I think the rot sets in at very early age where they get indoctrinated with race , minority worship, gay worship, etc.

    The issue is that the US will get more and more insane as time passes by. The problem is when an empire sees its weakening it can lash out. On whom will they lash out?
    USSR was killing its own citizens. Mostly. And USSR managed to cause extreme amounts of damage before it finally imploded. What will Anglos do? Nobody knows the amount of damage US empire will cause but they're definitely going to try something in Europe thats for sure, all signs point there. But thats for the future...2030s and 2040s I guess.


    Imagine we are getting stuck between 2 empires, both equally insane one wants to cannibalize and consume you and the other to flood you with unassimilable foreigners, there was an article about how Ukraine need to import Africans Pakistanis and Indians into its workforce by some think tank but unfortunately i have lost it.
    Of course the 4-6 billion Africans being buttressed by the US empire is going to be a headache in future. And yes by now everyone is aware of the Bantu genocidal expansion but Americans have this blank slate theory and an odd mindset "Oh man sure those blacks loot kill and riot haha but they're OUR based blacks".

    US wants Africans and the whole Global South in every part of the globe and especially Europe.(including parts Anglos didnt to colonize in the past) and Russia wants its Chechen and other Russian mystery meat SlavoFinnoUgricTurkic mutts to flood us. Both plans are incredibly devious and insidious.

    US destroys and sucks up dwindling resources from all over the world just so they can to prop up their favorite pets to the tune of 3000-4000 calories a day and housing, EBT, etc. Americans have poured everything into blacks giving money, power, status ,their women and so on yet with no return on investment whatsoever(except rap music and "black family values" aka extremely dysfunctional social norms).

    And on the other side Russia rips out precious metals and other minerals just to feed and sustain Kavkazoids and other ethnic minorities that murder(seriously blacks can be sort of placated with gibs and such but Chechens and other Caucasoids can and will just kill you for a slight offense like a Chechen slaying some child or a woman is a regular occurrence).
    At least blacks produce music and i dont know some sort of ?"culture"?(as degenerate and useless as it is) What do Chechens do? Slit throats and are massively involved into other shady things all those extremely clannish gold chain people do? They're like extremely dangerous gypsies with their ethnic mafias.


    I assure you things are not looking good here either. Even in the most far flung "province" of the empire( we arent even a province Ukraine isnt part of anything) Westerners are pushing this transgender and multiculturalism poison trying to destroy what little we have remaining of our world(after gomunism, Russian parasites, etc)
    Take a look at this stuff straight out of US State Department. Der Russe Nitichevski muss sterben, damit wir leben. Its like we have to substitute Russie for West....

    https://i.imgur.com/vePsaVo.jpg
    https://imgur.com/a/TGG4sEO
    these are not my hands btw

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @LatW

  648. @German_reader
    @A123


    Merkel’s policies have been leading towards armed conflict with Poland
     
    "armed conflict", lol, if Germany's joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest them. The conflict will be purely financial.
    I don't even know why the Poles bother to keep the migrants from Belarus out, they should just put all those Iraqis, Yemenis etc. in buses and drive them right up to the German border and send them off to the Promised Land.

    Replies: @A123

    I don’t even know why the Poles bother to keep the migrants from Belarus out, they should just put all those Iraqis, Yemenis etc. in buses and drive them right up to the German border and send them off to the Promised Land.

    I 100% agree with you.

    Hmmmm….. Let me check the New Testament to see if this is one of the Signs mentioned in Revelations….. What was that bit about Judgement?

    PEACE 😇

  649. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    subways every morning in NY,
     
    How do you find living in New York nowadays and what areas do you recommend. I will hopefully visit next year depending on the pandemic, and not visited America now for several years.

    If you can survive every morning there, I'm assuming the subway is not as "creepy" as it was in 1990. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LFxrPhNGAk.)

    Replies: @AaronB

    I dont really go out they much these days since my interests have shifted to wilderness and nature, but the city seems as happening as ever from the few times I’ve been out. Just be aware NYC can be a bit “seasonal” – some parts of the year, it seems the city empties out of all the “cool” and beautiful people (relatively), while other times it’s bursting with them. Probably simar yo Europe in August etc.

    In terms of danger, I don’t feel any difference. There are all sorts of reports in the news, but I haven’t felt at all threatened nor have I seen any incidents. The city feels very safe. (Especially compared to the 90s, when I personally would be involved in “incidents” on an almost weekly basis).

    The city has definitely gotten a bit wilder, but it is far from crossing any threshold.

    As for neighborhoods, I probably can’t add anything to the guidebooks 🙂

    I would say just get out and walk! You can walk most of the length of Manhattan in a few hours. I used to walk from 86th street to lower Manhattan all the time.

    Don’t be afraid to wander, most of the somewhat dangerous neighborhoods are mostly tucked well away on the periphery, it’s hard to wander into them. Manhattan’s only “bad” neighborhoods are far uptown.

    For a tourist, I think Manhattan is probably more unusual and interesting, overwhelming and atmospheric, but to live, Brooklyn is better because quieter – but also worth exploring in it’s own right.

    I would say, don’t neglect lower Manhattan especially the financial district. For years I ignored the financial district as having no relevance to me, but it’s actually super cool and has an almost carnivalesque feel in summer (street acts, etc) with cool old architecture.

    A really fun walk is to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, which has great views and lands you immediately in cool parts of lower Manhattan.

    Dumbo in Brooklyn also isn’t to be missed. It’s a renovated warehouse district on the water that is now pretty hip. ​

    Prospect Park is great if you get off the main path and find it’s hidden nooks and crannies, little plazas, fountains, and statues. Ten years ago, it was still a “hidden gem” and you felt you had stumbled into a lost world, with crumbling ruins. Alas today it has lost that old charm, but is still worthwhile. Central Park is amazing, but very crowded and central.

    What else?

    If you want to see a 17th ccentury asHidic ghetto, go to Borough Park 🙂

    Bushwick in Brooklyn is edgy and still gentrifying, but at the right time you can find the best parties there.

    An interesting ethnic neighborhood Mexican/Chinese is Sunset Park in Brooklyn – right next to an old gothic cemetery that has become a tourist attraction.

    Enjoy your trip!

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Aaron, have you ever been to a concert by the Shira Choir? They're based in NYC, if I'm not mistaken.

    I actually came across them while watching some videos that mocked the looks of the Hasidim. They certainly look weird and almost purposefully unattractive but this group surprised me by the quality of their vocals. This song in particular is very powerful:

    https://youtu.be/ckVYO9oI8vc

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

  650. I read the alternate history timeline “What Madness is This” and I knew all the factors leading to the madness in the timeline is still here, but buried deep before and being unearthed now.

    [MORE]

    It has 2 endings: all-way MAD after every country has gone insane; or MAD between European states leading to Fascist America pulling a Man in the High Castle fulfill the WASP’s Manifest Destiny of the timeline to be the sole people on Earth.

  651. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    I dont really go out they much these days since my interests have shifted to wilderness and nature, but the city seems as happening as ever from the few times I've been out. Just be aware NYC can be a bit "seasonal" - some parts of the year, it seems the city empties out of all the "cool" and beautiful people (relatively), while other times it's bursting with them. Probably simar yo Europe in August etc.

    In terms of danger, I don't feel any difference. There are all sorts of reports in the news, but I haven't felt at all threatened nor have I seen any incidents. The city feels very safe. (Especially compared to the 90s, when I personally would be involved in "incidents" on an almost weekly basis).

    The city has definitely gotten a bit wilder, but it is far from crossing any threshold.

    As for neighborhoods, I probably can't add anything to the guidebooks :)

    I would say just get out and walk! You can walk most of the length of Manhattan in a few hours. I used to walk from 86th street to lower Manhattan all the time.

    Don't be afraid to wander, most of the somewhat dangerous neighborhoods are mostly tucked well away on the periphery, it's hard to wander into them. Manhattan's only "bad" neighborhoods are far uptown.

    For a tourist, I think Manhattan is probably more unusual and interesting, overwhelming and atmospheric, but to live, Brooklyn is better because quieter - but also worth exploring in it's own right.

    I would say, don't neglect lower Manhattan especially the financial district. For years I ignored the financial district as having no relevance to me, but it's actually super cool and has an almost carnivalesque feel in summer (street acts, etc) with cool old architecture.

    A really fun walk is to cross the Brooklyn Bridge into Manhattan, which has great views and lands you immediately in cool parts of lower Manhattan.

    Dumbo in Brooklyn also isn't to be missed. It's a renovated warehouse district on the water that is now pretty hip. ​

    Prospect Park is great if you get off the main path and find it's hidden nooks and crannies, little plazas, fountains, and statues. Ten years ago, it was still a "hidden gem" and you felt you had stumbled into a lost world, with crumbling ruins. Alas today it has lost that old charm, but is still worthwhile. Central Park is amazing, but very crowded and central.

    What else?

    If you want to see a 17th ccentury asHidic ghetto, go to Borough Park :)

    Bushwick in Brooklyn is edgy and still gentrifying, but at the right time you can find the best parties there.

    An interesting ethnic neighborhood Mexican/Chinese is Sunset Park in Brooklyn - right next to an old gothic cemetery that has become a tourist attraction.

    Enjoy your trip!

    Replies: @Mikel

    Aaron, have you ever been to a concert by the Shira Choir? They’re based in NYC, if I’m not mistaken.

    I actually came across them while watching some videos that mocked the looks of the Hasidim. They certainly look weird and almost purposefully unattractive but this group surprised me by the quality of their vocals. This song in particular is very powerful:

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Mikel

    The dark sides of this, is that the Haredi Jewish men develop good singers partly because most of the Haredi communities ban women from singing when men can hear (as they believe women singing in public where men can hear, would encourage "sexual immorality"). Especially they dislike men hearing a solo female singer's voice.

    So singing duty for Haredim in mixed-gender areas, can be only for men and children, women singers are banned from there, and women who want to sing can only sing in women's only concerts which men are banned from hearing.

    In Israel, female soldiers singing is one of the centres of the country's culture, and female soldiers are singing on the street for national festivals. So some of the few Haredi soldiers are leaving the army because they believe listening to a woman singing would be so "immoral" for them. https://www.pressreader.com/israel/jerusalem-post/20120112/282381216414313

    But somehow men singing in front of women is allowed by Haredi Jews, and they don't worry it could encourage romantic thoughts (someone needed to tell them about Beatlemania and Justin Bieber).

    Replies: @AaronB, @Max Demian

    , @AaronB
    @Mikel

    Thanks!

    I agree to come extent the Hasidic look seems deliberately off-putting. I say to some extent because if you see them in their Sabbath or holiday finery, they can be impressive, especially the fine old men in their magnificent fur hats and long beards, many of them tall and imposing, in their special holiday coats.

    I have always hated those side curls, though :)

    Its interesting, because medieval Rabbis looked dignified and fine, and Sephardic Rabbis did too in their oriental garb.

    It is time to update this eccentric look - I also don't like the costume of the modern orthodox. All of this is recent, and there is no reason something more dignified can't be worked out.

    I've never been to see that group, no. As a secular person, I have very little involvement with the Hasidim except occasional visits to their neighborhoods and in the past, mixed events on certain holidays.

    I find them fascinating, though, and I enjoy walking through their neighborhoods. They are an interesting group - in their stores and houses, they hang these little signs that say it's a religious duty to be constantly full of joy, and they drink more alcohol than other Jews and party harder :) (of course, there is a dark side to the sect too)

    It's a great song. The lyrics are cool too, from the Psalms -

    "Except the LORD build the house,
    they labour in vain that build it;
    except the LORD keep the city,
    the watchman waketh but in vain.
    Behold, He that keepeth Israel
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    He that keepeth Israel."

    I'm not religious, but I something about ancient religious poetry that I find very moving. Some verses from the Rig Veda and Upanishads also move me.

    The ancient world of the Psalms, seems to have been a dark place - a world of terror and danger, a world of tragedy and heroism, of anguish and yearning, of warriors fighting desperate battles, of enemies on all sides, of death defying victories and bitter defeats, and ultimately, a great desire for deliverance from this kind of world - it is the world of the Bronze Age, man's first leap into civilization from hunter-gathering. It is a grand world, and has it's appeal, but it is not a world of light.

    You get the same flavor from the famous Psalm - " Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil......"

    Thrilling and powerful stuff, but a dark world. Icelandic Saga and Homeric poetry is similarly dark.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mikel

  652. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry

    There is a neo-Churchillian feel to the things you posted. I think (if I am remembering accurately) that one of Churchill's goals was to bring together Britain, the US and what used to be called the 'white dominions', Australia, NZ and Canada (maybe South Africa was part of it then as well) to make the English speaking peoples into a kind of political, as well as linguistic, union.

    I can see that this “independent external policy” will be very attractive to some parts of the Conservative Party, if it can shift priority from social spending, likewise the strong orientation to relatively more economically liberal countries like the US and Canada.

    I have tended to think of Johnson as first and foremost an opportunist, perhaps he does have a vision of some kind. I'm not sure how far it will be possible to realise it but if it stuck and solidified it would be a big change in orientation for the UK. A book about British political history I have has a memorable title for one of its chapters 'From Imperial Power to European Partner', this covers the 1970s and 80s but IMO it could stand for the whole era up to the Brexit vote. Maybe the next chapter will be from 'European Partner to Boris' Global Anglo-Alliance'... in some way it starts to make me feel old.

    Replies: @AP

    If the world is consolidating into cultural blocs it makes sense for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and NZ to come together somehow. It’ll be a bit of a race against time though, America is demographically headed for a semi-Latin American fate. I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.
     
    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can't even speak any Spanih at all. Mixed marriages are quite common (the gals aren't all overweight, and have you looked at the Heinz 57 white girls lately?. :-)). There just doesn't seem to be a super huge accent on maintaining the home culture, beyond restaurants, taco and burrito shops, except around Christmas time. Then you can see great Mariachi concerts and the cloaked candles in front of people's homes. One area besides cuisine where you can see a genuine pride in Mexican culture is expressed at various traditional and salsa dance clubs around the Valley. Beautiful Mexican costumes accompany the head spinning swirling dancing. A new sport that I recently discovered, that includes Mexican equestrian skills, Escaramuza, definitely allows the participants, young girls and women, display their skills with great pride:

    https://youtu.be/qMUd7KF6bQA

    https://media.vogue.com/r/w_2000/2018/02/10/Escaramuza-Slide-1.jpg

    https://media.vogue.com/r/w_2000/2018/02/10/Escaramuza-Slide-2.jpg

    Replies: @AP

    , @sher singh
    @AP

    They'll just identify with their brown minorities.
    California has a lot of communities with Sikh husbands and mexican wives.

    https://www.unz.com/gnxp/women-as-the-drivers-of-between-culture-distance/

    You really underestimate how many South Asians there are because they infight||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @songbird

  653. @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    I support all these megafauna resurrections!

    Replies: @songbird

    Really like the idea of bringing back Doedicurus. Closest thing to an ankylosaur this side of the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event. Also, giant ground sloths would be neat.

    Though, easiest might be the aurochs. After that, things that are preserved in permafrost – of these I think the woolly is the best, and am intrigued by the idea that rewildering it would warm up Siberia. Not much progress seems to have been made so far, which is discouraging. Maybe, with more resources?

    We should be spending less on blank-slatism and more on breeding programs. Doesn’t have to be about eugenics. (at least not immediately, dysgenics is coming on us fast, I fear) Lots of value to unlock in animals and plants.

  654. @Mr. Hack
    @Coconuts


    There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster).
     
    Have you ever read "Lost Horizon" by James Hilton? There was also an excellent film based on this novel too, that you'd probably enjoy if you like this sort of faire.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/97/Lost_Horizon_postcard_promotion_1937.JPG

    I'm assuming that you're referring to Forster's "A Passage to India" and Maugham's most excellent "A Razor's Edge"? Have I missed anything within this genre that you've read and would recommend?

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts

    I didn’t know about that one, thanks a lot for the recommendation… this could be one for after I finish the ‘Bengal Lancer’ book. I recognised the author’s name, then saw that this is because he wrote another famous bestseller in the 30s, the boarding school story ‘Goodbye Mr. Chips’.

    You are also right about the titles I had in mind, I remember reading ‘Razor’s Edge’ and some years later ‘A Passage to India’, it was in the early days of the internet when you still had to find books mainly in libraries and 2nd hand bookshops.

    When I was younger I read a couple of novels set in British India by John Masters (Bhowani Junction and Nightrunners of Bengal), these are more realist without IIRC the spiritual themes but I thought they were good at the time.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Masters

  655. @AP
    @Coconuts

    If the world is consolidating into cultural blocs it makes sense for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and NZ to come together somehow. It’ll be a bit of a race against time though, America is demographically headed for a semi-Latin American fate. I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @sher singh

    I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.

    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can’t even speak any Spanih at all. Mixed marriages are quite common (the gals aren’t all overweight, and have you looked at the Heinz 57 white girls lately?. :-)). There just doesn’t seem to be a super huge accent on maintaining the home culture, beyond restaurants, taco and burrito shops, except around Christmas time. Then you can see great Mariachi concerts and the cloaked candles in front of people’s homes. One area besides cuisine where you can see a genuine pride in Mexican culture is expressed at various traditional and salsa dance clubs around the Valley. Beautiful Mexican costumes accompany the head spinning swirling dancing. A new sport that I recently discovered, that includes Mexican equestrian skills, Escaramuza, definitely allows the participants, young girls and women, display their skills with great pride:

    [MORE]

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can’t even speak any Spanih at all.
     
    Hopefully. OTOH one sees large stadiums in California where the Mexican team is cheered as they play against the American team who are booed:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008444/Only-America-U-S-soccer-team-booed-Mexico--California.html

    "U.S. soccer team booed in their own country as Mexican fans turn LA into an 'away' game"

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/26/article-0-0CBC1F6400000578-942_634x444.jpg

    :::::::::::::::::

    America could become the leader of the Anglo world, or it could go in another direction and be the leader of the Americas (it probably won't hold onto Asia, but can chase the Chinese off the hemisphere if it wakes up and feels like it). Very optimistically, it would do both, showing two faces as Russia has a European and an Asian face.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

  656. Covid is ragging in the whole Eastern Europe. Vax-skeptics are paying the price of their ideology.

  657. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted?
     
    The West German bourgeoisie is so fucked in the head I no longer believe in the possibility of political change averting total disaster. The migration crisis and everything that followed was an eye-opening experience for me, it really showed me that I have nothing in common anymore with large sections of this country (and that applies to ethnic Germans, obviously even more true with regard to Turks or various "people of color")...they live in a total fantasy land where states and nations are obsolete and the only problem is "Nazis" (or maybe "white privilege" and "white supremacy", US concepts have been taken up rapidly by left-wingers in Germany). 2018 kind of mentally broke me...migrants (Kurds iirc) stabbed to death a native in Chemnitz (actually a mixed-race guy of half Cuban ancestry iirc, and his friends who were also seriously wounded were Russian-Germans...didn't matter either, as do all the other horror crimes perpetrated by Merkel's migrants)...and the German establishment reacted by inventing some kind of anti-foreigner pogrom in Chemnitz, with "antifascist" bands holding huge concerts against racism there and being lauded by the fucking president for it, with all the good people virtue-signaling on social media with the slogan "Wir sind mehr" (= we are more than them, i.e. evil Nazis hunting down innocent, defenseless migrants). That showed me that the West German bourgeoisie in its boundless self-righteousness will never snap out of their delusions, they will carry this insane mass immigration project to its bitter conclusion, not least because otherwise they would have to admit that East German proles back in 2014/15 had a more accurate perception of reality than them.
    As for "Anglo" influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy. Obviously that pernicious influence continues to operate, you get all the racial discourse about things being "too white" now in Germany too. But one can't absolve Germany's elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @songbird, @Svidomyatheart

    Germany’s situation seems mixed to my eyes. Economy is robust, diversified and most people have jobs, including young people (which is not the situation in Southern Europe). Even with the radical changes in the automobile industry, they attracted Tesla to Brandenburg.

    Coronavirus has been comparatively well managed, most people will still have their grandparents’ alive for a few more years, which is a very important topic.

    I’ve haven’t been in Dresden, but it seems like its rebuilding has challenged our assumptions in a positive sense about the possibility of historical reconstruction in cities.

    German usually looks strong on all typical indicators I look at – imprisonment rates, life expectancy, murder rates, death by air pollution, etc.

    On the other hand, there is second most aging population of a major country after Japan, below replacement fertility rates, and the importation of significantly unfiltered and Islamic new proletariat, which means that can soon be not only MacDonald’s and KFC branches in every city, but also such multinational chains as ISIS and the Taliban (this is already reality Russian cities as well, but somehow I feel like the security services in Russia are more competent to mostly suppress terrorist cells in Russia than in Germany – what is like Germany’s FSB?) .

    Germany’s joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest

    This is surely an situation where the 20th century can be envying the 21st century.

    German bourgeoisie is so fucked

    It’s funny because two of most difficult in the class co-students I’ve studied with (for only a few weeks fortunately), had been children of German bourgeoisie. Although I was more thinking this sample was more of a product of the study abroad filter being applied to them, the Germany billionaire families sending their most difficult youth to become permanent students abroad, so they do not have to manage these ADD people in their home during their 20ies.

    Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America

    I think the mental life of the English people is pretty different, despite identical languages.

    For example which seems to me to add a sense of cultural distance, American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah’s ark. Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m not expecting we will be able to visit one of these in Oxford, Edinburgh or Dublin anytime near.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah’s ark
     
    Certain Americans of certain regions have preserved a type of British culture and worldview of, say, the 17th century (when their ancestors left Britain) that has disappeared in the homeland. If the old Roundheads or Scottish Presbyterians had remained as they were culturally and spiritually, than we would have expected such things being built in Britain in the 21st century. So it's not really a case of being non-British but rather of being Old British.

    Until the 1960s, Quebec offered a similar version of France, if France had never undergone the Revolution and all that came later. But Quebec caught up quickly after its "Quiet Revolution."

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    Something similar was built by Evagelicals in Hong Kong, of all places.

    https://www.luxuo.com/culture/art/noah-ark-hong-kong-kwok-brothers-00003.html

    Replies: @songbird

  658. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Germany's situation seems mixed to my eyes. Economy is robust, diversified and most people have jobs, including young people (which is not the situation in Southern Europe). Even with the radical changes in the automobile industry, they attracted Tesla to Brandenburg.

    Coronavirus has been comparatively well managed, most people will still have their grandparents' alive for a few more years, which is a very important topic.

    I've haven't been in Dresden, but it seems like its rebuilding has challenged our assumptions in a positive sense about the possibility of historical reconstruction in cities.

    German usually looks strong on all typical indicators I look at - imprisonment rates, life expectancy, murder rates, death by air pollution, etc.

    On the other hand, there is second most aging population of a major country after Japan, below replacement fertility rates, and the importation of significantly unfiltered and Islamic new proletariat, which means that can soon be not only MacDonald's and KFC branches in every city, but also such multinational chains as ISIS and the Taliban (this is already reality Russian cities as well, but somehow I feel like the security services in Russia are more competent to mostly suppress terrorist cells in Russia than in Germany - what is like Germany's FSB?) .


    Germany’s joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest

     

    This is surely an situation where the 20th century can be envying the 21st century.

    German bourgeoisie is so fucked

     

    It's funny because two of most difficult in the class co-students I've studied with (for only a few weeks fortunately), had been children of German bourgeoisie. Although I was more thinking this sample was more of a product of the study abroad filter being applied to them, the Germany billionaire families sending their most difficult youth to become permanent students abroad, so they do not have to manage these ADD people in their home during their 20ies.

    Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America

     

    I think the mental life of the English people is pretty different, despite identical languages.

    For example which seems to me to add a sense of cultural distance, American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah's ark. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not expecting we will be able to visit one of these in Oxford, Edinburgh or Dublin anytime near.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeNOURXWCmM

    Replies: @AP, @Yellowface Anon

    American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah’s ark

    Certain Americans of certain regions have preserved a type of British culture and worldview of, say, the 17th century (when their ancestors left Britain) that has disappeared in the homeland. If the old Roundheads or Scottish Presbyterians had remained as they were culturally and spiritually, than we would have expected such things being built in Britain in the 21st century. So it’s not really a case of being non-British but rather of being Old British.

    Until the 1960s, Quebec offered a similar version of France, if France had never undergone the Revolution and all that came later. But Quebec caught up quickly after its “Quiet Revolution.”

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    There is something true that (especially in context of reading Mary Boole's letter to Bose) 19th century English culture read more eccentric in the modern American direction. For example, 19th century movements like British Israelism would seem more of a match to 21st century America, than any contemporary cultures in Europe.

    Replies: @AP

  659. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent.
     
    That is interesting, off the top of my head apart from Jules Verne I can't think of any other famous French authors who concentrated on the theme of sea travel, the distant horizon etc. in the way Melville, Defoe, Conrad did. There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster). The other day I bought a cheap copy of a book of memoirs that was very popular in the 1930s, it was made into a film called 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer', the author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.

    Also, some of the greatest Portuguese literature is about the search for distant shores, often it is dealt with in a more overtly spiritual way than in English literature (maybe Melville and Conrad are a bit like this), the theme of the ascetic struggle of sea voyages, discovery and the construction of the imperio leading to transcendence.

    But, Britain and Portugal used to be much more naval and sea focused nations, when France was always the land based demographic Mastodon of Europe, till Germany and Russia took over later in the 19th century.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @AaronB

    If you just sit in the sofa in the 19th century section of the bookshops in England, it’s half of it books about the adventures to tropical countries.

    A lot of the glamour of the United Kingdom’s elites in the 19th century, is that they are sailing to islands in the Pacific Ocean, or working as the ruler to a province in India.

    Even in Jane Austen books, the young people develop a lot of freedom only when their father has to go for business vacation to plantations of Caribbean islands.

    author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.

    Life in India, and the Hindu relligion, has an influence on the 19th century thought in England. A few years ago, I was discussing in this forum with Utu about the influence of India on the development of modern logic in England.

    The passion of Boole, De Morgan and Babbage, was Indology (they were also a kind of Zionists or British Israelites).

    De Morgan’s youth was living in India. And Boole’s wife Mary Everest Boole who was introduced to Indian culture by her uncle (which Mount Everest is named for), was writing like she was dreaming about future generations of Indian computer scientists that would restore India with Boolean algebra.
    https://i.imgur.com/vhTcrUr.jpg

    https://archive.org/details/indianthoughtwes00bool/page/n3

    • Thanks: Not Raul
  660. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted?
     
    The West German bourgeoisie is so fucked in the head I no longer believe in the possibility of political change averting total disaster. The migration crisis and everything that followed was an eye-opening experience for me, it really showed me that I have nothing in common anymore with large sections of this country (and that applies to ethnic Germans, obviously even more true with regard to Turks or various "people of color")...they live in a total fantasy land where states and nations are obsolete and the only problem is "Nazis" (or maybe "white privilege" and "white supremacy", US concepts have been taken up rapidly by left-wingers in Germany). 2018 kind of mentally broke me...migrants (Kurds iirc) stabbed to death a native in Chemnitz (actually a mixed-race guy of half Cuban ancestry iirc, and his friends who were also seriously wounded were Russian-Germans...didn't matter either, as do all the other horror crimes perpetrated by Merkel's migrants)...and the German establishment reacted by inventing some kind of anti-foreigner pogrom in Chemnitz, with "antifascist" bands holding huge concerts against racism there and being lauded by the fucking president for it, with all the good people virtue-signaling on social media with the slogan "Wir sind mehr" (= we are more than them, i.e. evil Nazis hunting down innocent, defenseless migrants). That showed me that the West German bourgeoisie in its boundless self-righteousness will never snap out of their delusions, they will carry this insane mass immigration project to its bitter conclusion, not least because otherwise they would have to admit that East German proles back in 2014/15 had a more accurate perception of reality than them.
    As for "Anglo" influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy. Obviously that pernicious influence continues to operate, you get all the racial discourse about things being "too white" now in Germany too. But one can't absolve Germany's elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @songbird, @Svidomyatheart

    As for “Anglo” influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy.

    I’m of two minds on this.

    Firstly, London and Paris were separately each once the biggest city in the world. If big cities are engines of corruption (and I think they fundamentally are), then I suspect that they were big enough to develop these heresies on their own.

    [MORE]
    Also, I think, whether or not one approves of colonies, de-colonization seems to have been a spiritual retreat by the West. Obviously, it was a retreat or diminution on the map. It both encouraged sun peoples to flee to Euro countries (we were taking-in our own, so others exploited that to sneak in) as well as encouraged virtue-signaling in the susceptible about how their coming should be accepted. Not to mention, Europe is close to West Asia and North Africa. (though maybe not close to India or sub-Sahara or the Caribbean)

    OTOH, it is strange to consider what I consider to be the smallest country in Western Europe with a real identity: Ireland. It seems to me that it was too small to develop these heresies on its own, having a low population and no megalopoli. In the local context, it seems to be either some form of elite social contagion from foreign parts or else of external power being applied. (Recently, there has been a campaign to push a law for against anti-Semitism in Ireland, in part it weirdly seems to be being championed by the press in Israel.)

    And once I accept that, I guess I have to be open to the idea of social contagion or power affecting larger countries. Of course, Europe stopped competing with Hollywood a long time ago. Also, I find it very weird how this melting pot idea developed in America, and seemed to jump to the other big scale country, the USSR, during the Great Depression (albeit abortively), before jumping back to America. It is almost like proto-globalists were trying to target the biggest scale country they could get leverage on, whenever they thought they could do so.

    But one can’t absolve Germany’s elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.

    My cynical take is that blank-slatism has the keys to the kingdom, all the levers of power: civil rights laws. So, for example, if there was a nationalist version of Soros, he would have his wealth extracted from him, by the courts because his organization would be accused of racism, etc. And people really fall in line with power and wealth structures. Mark Collett is not a wealthy guy.

    • Thanks: sher singh
  661. @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Aaron, have you ever been to a concert by the Shira Choir? They're based in NYC, if I'm not mistaken.

    I actually came across them while watching some videos that mocked the looks of the Hasidim. They certainly look weird and almost purposefully unattractive but this group surprised me by the quality of their vocals. This song in particular is very powerful:

    https://youtu.be/ckVYO9oI8vc

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

    The dark sides of this, is that the Haredi Jewish men develop good singers partly because most of the Haredi communities ban women from singing when men can hear (as they believe women singing in public where men can hear, would encourage “sexual immorality”). Especially they dislike men hearing a solo female singer’s voice.

    So singing duty for Haredim in mixed-gender areas, can be only for men and children, women singers are banned from there, and women who want to sing can only sing in women’s only concerts which men are banned from hearing.

    In Israel, female soldiers singing is one of the centres of the country’s culture, and female soldiers are singing on the street for national festivals. So some of the few Haredi soldiers are leaving the army because they believe listening to a woman singing would be so “immoral” for them. https://www.pressreader.com/israel/jerusalem-post/20120112/282381216414313

    But somehow men singing in front of women is allowed by Haredi Jews, and they don’t worry it could encourage romantic thoughts (someone needed to tell them about Beatlemania and Justin Bieber).

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • LOL: Mikel
    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    That article is from 2012.

    There is now an entire infantry battalion of Haredi soldiers, a large one, called Netzach Yehuda (Victorious Judah), and it's growing.

    They seem to have an unusually high rate of abuse of Palestinians, though, for some reason.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.com/magazine/netzach-yehuda-the-quiet-revolution-of-the-haredi-community-598007/amp

    Anyways, they are very different from the Hasidim. The Hasidim of New York are in general anti-Zionist and don't support the state of Israel.

    They are the "mystical" Jews that descend from the Bal Shem Tov, and have splintered into many different sects.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Max Demian
    @Dmitry


    The dark sides of this, is that the Haredi Jewish men develop good singers partly because most of the Haredi communities ban women from singing when men can hear
     
    What do you find "dark" about that?

    (as they believe women singing in public where men can hear, would encourage “sexual immorality”)
     
    The concern is that the voice of a woman singing can arouse lust in a man.

    But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matthew 5:28)
     
    Orthodox Jews are not exactly the only ones to consider mere lewd or lustful thoughts to be sinful...

    But somehow men singing in front of women is allowed by Haredi Jews, and they don’t worry it could encourage romantic thoughts
     
    It's almost as if there are inherent, fundamental, profound differences in the respective psyches and biological responses to various stimuli between the male and the female of the species.

    Romantic vs. lewd. Which better describes the thoughts that the sound of an attractive woman singing are likely to provoke in a man?

  662. @AP
    @Dmitry


    American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah’s ark
     
    Certain Americans of certain regions have preserved a type of British culture and worldview of, say, the 17th century (when their ancestors left Britain) that has disappeared in the homeland. If the old Roundheads or Scottish Presbyterians had remained as they were culturally and spiritually, than we would have expected such things being built in Britain in the 21st century. So it's not really a case of being non-British but rather of being Old British.

    Until the 1960s, Quebec offered a similar version of France, if France had never undergone the Revolution and all that came later. But Quebec caught up quickly after its "Quiet Revolution."

    Replies: @Dmitry

    There is something true that (especially in context of reading Mary Boole’s letter to Bose) 19th century English culture read more eccentric in the modern American direction. For example, 19th century movements like British Israelism would seem more of a match to 21st century America, than any contemporary cultures in Europe.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    There is something true that (especially in context of reading Mary Boole’s letter to Bose) 19th century English culture read more eccentric in the modern American direction.
     
    Yes, this survived in Britain up to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

    Anatol Lieven wrote an interesting book, "America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism ." He observed that parts of America were settled prior to the adoption of the Enlightenment and maintain pre-Enlightenment Protestant values.

    He quoted William G. Boykin, a US general during the Iraq war about his enemy: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was the real God and his was an idol.” This was compared to Oliver Cromwell’s “God of Warre.” Lieven observed that British, French and Russian officers often enjoy elements of the post-Enlightenment 19th century (Brits have a passion for horse breeding, apparently), whereas this American general reflected a much older worldview, that of the 17th century Brits who settled the American interior.
  663. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Germany's situation seems mixed to my eyes. Economy is robust, diversified and most people have jobs, including young people (which is not the situation in Southern Europe). Even with the radical changes in the automobile industry, they attracted Tesla to Brandenburg.

    Coronavirus has been comparatively well managed, most people will still have their grandparents' alive for a few more years, which is a very important topic.

    I've haven't been in Dresden, but it seems like its rebuilding has challenged our assumptions in a positive sense about the possibility of historical reconstruction in cities.

    German usually looks strong on all typical indicators I look at - imprisonment rates, life expectancy, murder rates, death by air pollution, etc.

    On the other hand, there is second most aging population of a major country after Japan, below replacement fertility rates, and the importation of significantly unfiltered and Islamic new proletariat, which means that can soon be not only MacDonald's and KFC branches in every city, but also such multinational chains as ISIS and the Taliban (this is already reality Russian cities as well, but somehow I feel like the security services in Russia are more competent to mostly suppress terrorist cells in Russia than in Germany - what is like Germany's FSB?) .


    Germany’s joke army would cross the border the Polish police would just have to arrest

     

    This is surely an situation where the 20th century can be envying the 21st century.

    German bourgeoisie is so fucked

     

    It's funny because two of most difficult in the class co-students I've studied with (for only a few weeks fortunately), had been children of German bourgeoisie. Although I was more thinking this sample was more of a product of the study abroad filter being applied to them, the Germany billionaire families sending their most difficult youth to become permanent students abroad, so they do not have to manage these ADD people in their home during their 20ies.

    Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America

     

    I think the mental life of the English people is pretty different, despite identical languages.

    For example which seems to me to add a sense of cultural distance, American people expend hundreds of million dollars building a recreation of Noah's ark. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm not expecting we will be able to visit one of these in Oxford, Edinburgh or Dublin anytime near.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PeNOURXWCmM

    Replies: @AP, @Yellowface Anon

    Something similar was built by Evagelicals in Hong Kong, of all places.

    https://www.luxuo.com/culture/art/noah-ark-hong-kong-kwok-brothers-00003.html

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    I've always been fascinated by John Woo's strange combination of gun fu and appreciation for church aesthetics.

  664. @Dmitry
    @AP

    Thanks.

    I guess you saw when Varlamov made a popular YouTube report from Kyzyl? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6CJrIhsR23I.),

    Tuvans are the highest fertility nationality in the Russian Federation, but otherwise this situation of killing yourself with alcohol and violence is very similar to equivalent groups in North America.

    These people lost their traditional, thousands-year nomadic lifestyle, and thrown into disenchantment, and instead of a shaman they now have a liquor store.

    -

    Without wanting to degrade too much this serious topic of loss of the enchantment with the world of traditional peoples, with political trivia - the Senator of the Republic of Tuva is Lyudmila Narusova, wife of Anatoly Sobchak. She is the political stepmother of Putin/Medvedev/Sechin, as well as biological mother of pseudoopposition candidate Ksenia Sobchak.

    It's kind of similar to America - that probably such kind of politicians have been as useful for saving the Tuvans from disenchantment, as Pelosi's family has been in rescuing African Americans in Baltimore. https://web.archive.org/web/20210324145725/https://www.baltimoresun.com/politics/bs-md-pol-dalesandro-family-20191021-w5ftn3ue2zdhfhzvvjr6fmu644-story.html

    Replies: @Dmitry

    These people lost their traditional, thousands-year nomadic lifestyle, and thrown into disenchantment, and instead of a shaman they now have a liquor store.

    One of the disasters of nationalities like African Americans and Tuvans, is being cut from their ancient spirituality, thrown in the modern world without an anchor.

    One of the strengths of cultures like Japanese, non-mainland Chinese, Jews (excluding Haredim, who rejected much of the post-18th century modernity) and Italians, is being able to balance modernity with a sense of connection to the ancient world.

    In Northern Europe, the connection to the Ancient world is partly mediated through the access to classical texts after Renaissance, and classical and biblical texts through the Church.

    Living in Weimar, Goethe believed in the late 18th century that text was not sufficient, and he could only become spiritually whole, by travel South to Italy, and accessing the classical world via the physical realities of Mediterranean streets and women. (This can be more difficult today with parts of Italy converted to a shiny tourist confectionary, with clean streets, and German and Chinese tourists distracting from the classical experience).

    In this context, it can be easy to emphasize with Americans expending hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild Noah’s Ark in Kentucky. \$50 per ticket for this place though?

  665. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    Something similar was built by Evagelicals in Hong Kong, of all places.

    https://www.luxuo.com/culture/art/noah-ark-hong-kong-kwok-brothers-00003.html

    Replies: @songbird

    I’ve always been fascinated by John Woo’s strange combination of gun fu and appreciation for church aesthetics.

  666. @AP
    @Coconuts

    If the world is consolidating into cultural blocs it makes sense for the UK, USA, Canada, Australia and NZ to come together somehow. It’ll be a bit of a race against time though, America is demographically headed for a semi-Latin American fate. I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @sher singh

    They’ll just identify with their brown minorities.
    California has a lot of communities with Sikh husbands and mexican wives.

    https://www.unz.com/gnxp/women-as-the-drivers-of-between-culture-distance/

    You really underestimate how many South Asians there are because they infight||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Replies: @songbird
    @sher singh

    High rate of single motherhood shows they are incompatible.

    You think the state is feminist and high-handed now, wait till single motherhood creeps up to 70%.

    Replies: @sher singh

  667. @sher singh
    @AP

    They'll just identify with their brown minorities.
    California has a lot of communities with Sikh husbands and mexican wives.

    https://www.unz.com/gnxp/women-as-the-drivers-of-between-culture-distance/

    You really underestimate how many South Asians there are because they infight||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @songbird

    High rate of single motherhood shows they are incompatible.

    You think the state is feminist and high-handed now, wait till single motherhood creeps up to 70%.

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @songbird

    It's not though, honor killing is lit a manslaughter charge of max 7 parole around 1/3rd of that||

    Also:

    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/777361459130138627/902764164576067614/10272.png

    Hard to gaf about progressivism, when it doesn't apply to you||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  668. Part of my social credit system would be to force progressive recidivists in the US to wear MAGA hats.

    In Germany, they would have to wear hats with German flags on them, and if they were really bad, they would have the black eagle on them.

  669. @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Aaron, have you ever been to a concert by the Shira Choir? They're based in NYC, if I'm not mistaken.

    I actually came across them while watching some videos that mocked the looks of the Hasidim. They certainly look weird and almost purposefully unattractive but this group surprised me by the quality of their vocals. This song in particular is very powerful:

    https://youtu.be/ckVYO9oI8vc

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

    Thanks!

    I agree to come extent the Hasidic look seems deliberately off-putting. I say to some extent because if you see them in their Sabbath or holiday finery, they can be impressive, especially the fine old men in their magnificent fur hats and long beards, many of them tall and imposing, in their special holiday coats.

    I have always hated those side curls, though 🙂

    Its interesting, because medieval Rabbis looked dignified and fine, and Sephardic Rabbis did too in their oriental garb.

    It is time to update this eccentric look – I also don’t like the costume of the modern orthodox. All of this is recent, and there is no reason something more dignified can’t be worked out.

    I’ve never been to see that group, no. As a secular person, I have very little involvement with the Hasidim except occasional visits to their neighborhoods and in the past, mixed events on certain holidays.

    I find them fascinating, though, and I enjoy walking through their neighborhoods. They are an interesting group – in their stores and houses, they hang these little signs that say it’s a religious duty to be constantly full of joy, and they drink more alcohol than other Jews and party harder 🙂 (of course, there is a dark side to the sect too)

    It’s a great song. The lyrics are cool too, from the Psalms –

    “Except the LORD build the house,
    they labour in vain that build it;
    except the LORD keep the city,
    the watchman waketh but in vain.
    Behold, He that keepeth Israel
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    He that keepeth Israel.”

    I’m not religious, but I something about ancient religious poetry that I find very moving. Some verses from the Rig Veda and Upanishads also move me.

    The ancient world of the Psalms, seems to have been a dark place – a world of terror and danger, a world of tragedy and heroism, of anguish and yearning, of warriors fighting desperate battles, of enemies on all sides, of death defying victories and bitter defeats, and ultimately, a great desire for deliverance from this kind of world – it is the world of the Bronze Age, man’s first leap into civilization from hunter-gathering. It is a grand world, and has it’s appeal, but it is not a world of light.

    You get the same flavor from the famous Psalm – ” Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil……”

    Thrilling and powerful stuff, but a dark world. Icelandic Saga and Homeric poetry is similarly dark.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AaronB

    On the street level, the Haredi cities are indeed very pleasant to walk through, as they create a romantic atmosphere of the 18th or 19th century. It's especially atmospheric in the night, as they are walking outside at all ages at 10pm. It feels like you have entered a time machine, and transported to a village of not less than about 150 years ago.

    But on the political, demographic and economic level, they are a very dangerous situation.

    If there is one order from a cult leader, then the streets are blocked across cities by thousands of impenetrable, brainwashed youth.

    And the Haredim can use this to intimidate society. "Jerusalem Faction" already shows its ability to close the Israeli road system.

    These are brainwashed youth, controlled by the older men (who are communicating by phone to their headquarters). They can be a disaster for Israel's future aspirations to be a functional or developed country.

    If one of them is killed during a protest, and these became violent, it could also result in an intifada situation. As if the National Religious and the Islamist groups did not add enough volatility in Israel.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_vBwLNK0os


    it’s a religious duty to be constantly full of joy, and they drink more alcohol than other Jews
     
    But also the Chasidic men are not working, which is the worst aspect of hippie culture. (Although at least Haredi women have high employment rates).

    Note that Israel's economy uses many African workers (mainly from Sudan and Eritrea), Palestinian workers, Jordanian workers, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, thousands of Chinese builders. This is partly because most of the Haredi men are refusing to work.

    Haredi men could be working in a restaurant, in a construction industry, or cleaning buildings. Instead many of these jobs being operated by African workers, Palestinians, Filipinos, Latin American illegal immigrants.

    In some ways these African workers, Palestinians, Filipinos, are living more holy, than the "holymen" who refuse to contribute practical work. There is such almost bourgeois immodestly to not accepting work as a cleaner, builder or a waiter.

    , @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Thank you. Very good insights on what life must have been like at the dawn of civilization.

    I don't need to understand any word to perceive that this song is about something deep, spiritual, ancient. Hope to see this group singing one day, perhaps if I finally give in to my wife's idea of visiting NY, although I don't know if these people perform for outsiders.

    I have always wondered why religions in different parts of the world, from very ancient times, were so concerned with regulating people's day-to-day lives, especially what people can eat/drink and sexual norms, a part of which is what external looks are acceptable.

    There's probably something deep in these matters. I know several people who, as soon as they stopped being religious, became vegetarian and adopted some other lifestyle norms that they didn't have before. Essentially, they felt the need to regulate again their lives with different rituals and ironically they were much more observant than before, in spite of not having any religion now.

    Part of it must be the in-group/out-group thing, I guess. Hippies, punks, skinheads, antifas, lgbts, etc all follow some sort of external appearance norms to signal their belonging to their community. Sadly, Basque leftist separatists have also adopted some disgusting aesthetics of mullets and face-piercings. I cringe when I see them.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

  670. @Dmitry
    @Mikel

    The dark sides of this, is that the Haredi Jewish men develop good singers partly because most of the Haredi communities ban women from singing when men can hear (as they believe women singing in public where men can hear, would encourage "sexual immorality"). Especially they dislike men hearing a solo female singer's voice.

    So singing duty for Haredim in mixed-gender areas, can be only for men and children, women singers are banned from there, and women who want to sing can only sing in women's only concerts which men are banned from hearing.

    In Israel, female soldiers singing is one of the centres of the country's culture, and female soldiers are singing on the street for national festivals. So some of the few Haredi soldiers are leaving the army because they believe listening to a woman singing would be so "immoral" for them. https://www.pressreader.com/israel/jerusalem-post/20120112/282381216414313

    But somehow men singing in front of women is allowed by Haredi Jews, and they don't worry it could encourage romantic thoughts (someone needed to tell them about Beatlemania and Justin Bieber).

    Replies: @AaronB, @Max Demian

    That article is from 2012.

    There is now an entire infantry battalion of Haredi soldiers, a large one, called Netzach Yehuda (Victorious Judah), and it’s growing.

    They seem to have an unusually high rate of abuse of Palestinians, though, for some reason.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.com/magazine/netzach-yehuda-the-quiet-revolution-of-the-haredi-community-598007/amp

    Anyways, they are very different from the Hasidim. The Hasidim of New York are in general anti-Zionist and don’t support the state of Israel.

    They are the “mystical” Jews that descend from the Bal Shem Tov, and have splintered into many different sects.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    they are very different from the Hasidim.

     

    Haredi refers to the whole sector of "modernity rejecting" Jewish cults that lives in Israel. Fast growing sector of 1,2 million people.

    Chasids' stream (obviously with many rival cults between them) composes a significant proportion of Haredim that live in Israel.

    The political party "Yahadut hatorah" is called in English "United Torah Judaism".

    It is "united", because of the political level of the Lithuanian sects created alliance with the political level of many Chasidic sects in the early 1990s.

    Although the Chasids and the Litnaks hate each other theologically, they have the same religious requirements to demand from the state. So they united their political parties to increase their bargaining power in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).


    Hasidim of New York are in general anti-Zionist

     

    Many Haredi groups (regardless whether chasids or not) in Israel oppose Israeli state, and you can see on YouTube how some of the more extreme sects in Jerusalem are burning Israeli flags during their Lag b'omer festivals.

    However, there are Chasidic sects which are more conciliatory to Israel. Chabad-Lubavitch has developed friendly to Israeli authorities, perhaps because of idiosyncratic views of their cult leader Schneerson of New York - who had even donated money to Rabin.

    But even the friendly to Zionists Chabad are still banned from symbolic gestures to support Israel.
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/chabad-nepal-emissary-drops-independence-day-honor-on-rabbis-orders/


    the “mystical” Jews that descend from the Bal Shem Tov

     

    Lithuanian vs. Hasidic split was from the late 18th century. There is an article on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnagdim

    There is now an entire infantry battalion of Haredi

     

    This is a very small minority of the Haredi world.

    Haredi Jews have a population of 1,2 million people. Haredi Jews have a total fertility rate of 7-8. The median age of a Haredi Jew in Israel is - 17 years old. And yet the Haredi world send 2000 soldiers to the Israeli army. It's incredibly insignificant numbers considering their demographic compositions.

    These soldiers would often be socially considered the losers, outcasts and rebels of Haredi world.

    In Israel I talked to once a secular hipster looking girl (with nose ring, etc), who said her family were Haredim. When the average number of children is 7-8 and the median age is 17 - I guess the Haredi cults have to allow for a small "failure rate", or "acceptable casualties".

    Replies: @Max Demian

  671. @Dmitry
    @AP

    There is something true that (especially in context of reading Mary Boole's letter to Bose) 19th century English culture read more eccentric in the modern American direction. For example, 19th century movements like British Israelism would seem more of a match to 21st century America, than any contemporary cultures in Europe.

    Replies: @AP

    There is something true that (especially in context of reading Mary Boole’s letter to Bose) 19th century English culture read more eccentric in the modern American direction.

    Yes, this survived in Britain up to the 19th and early 20th centuries.

    Anatol Lieven wrote an interesting book, “America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism .” He observed that parts of America were settled prior to the adoption of the Enlightenment and maintain pre-Enlightenment Protestant values.

    He quoted William G. Boykin, a US general during the Iraq war about his enemy: “I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was the real God and his was an idol.” This was compared to Oliver Cromwell’s “God of Warre.” Lieven observed that British, French and Russian officers often enjoy elements of the post-Enlightenment 19th century (Brits have a passion for horse breeding, apparently), whereas this American general reflected a much older worldview, that of the 17th century Brits who settled the American interior.

  672. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    I’m not sure if it will successfully Anglify the Latinos as it did the Germans, Irish, Italians, etc.
     
    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can't even speak any Spanih at all. Mixed marriages are quite common (the gals aren't all overweight, and have you looked at the Heinz 57 white girls lately?. :-)). There just doesn't seem to be a super huge accent on maintaining the home culture, beyond restaurants, taco and burrito shops, except around Christmas time. Then you can see great Mariachi concerts and the cloaked candles in front of people's homes. One area besides cuisine where you can see a genuine pride in Mexican culture is expressed at various traditional and salsa dance clubs around the Valley. Beautiful Mexican costumes accompany the head spinning swirling dancing. A new sport that I recently discovered, that includes Mexican equestrian skills, Escaramuza, definitely allows the participants, young girls and women, display their skills with great pride:

    https://youtu.be/qMUd7KF6bQA

    https://media.vogue.com/r/w_2000/2018/02/10/Escaramuza-Slide-1.jpg

    https://media.vogue.com/r/w_2000/2018/02/10/Escaramuza-Slide-2.jpg

    Replies: @AP

    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can’t even speak any Spanih at all.

    Hopefully. OTOH one sees large stadiums in California where the Mexican team is cheered as they play against the American team who are booed:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008444/Only-America-U-S-soccer-team-booed-Mexico--California.html

    “U.S. soccer team booed in their own country as Mexican fans turn LA into an ‘away’ game”

    :::::::::::::::::

    America could become the leader of the Anglo world, or it could go in another direction and be the leader of the Americas (it probably won’t hold onto Asia, but can chase the Chinese off the hemisphere if it wakes up and feels like it). Very optimistically, it would do both, showing two faces as Russia has a European and an Asian face.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?

    https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3B89M/the-heavyweight-boxer-wladimir-klitschko-in-action-during-the-wbo-D3B89M.jpg
    The heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko in action during the WBO title fight vs. the US boxer Jameel McCline on 8 December 2002 in Las Vegas.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

    , @Dmitry
    @AP

    You could also imagine that NAFTA could become like the Eurasian Economic Union, where there is an open borders system and freemovement between the countries.

    A problem would be that Mexico has a comparatively very low GDP per capita (relative to USA and Canada), so all the young people in Mexico would emigrate to USA and Canada if they had an opportunity. (It would perhaps operate better like the Soviet Union, where internal movement of people was very restricted, unlike in Eurasian Economic Union.)


    Mexican team is cheered as
     
    Even with its comparatively very low economic and social development level (5 times lower GDP per capita than Canada, 6 times lower than USA), media culture in Mexico seems to be very assimilating to the American culture.

    Americans talk about their fears of Latinization. But when you watch some Mexican television, it feels more the other way round - Mexico losing its cultural idiosyncrasy, and becoming more normalized to American culture.

    For example, 1990s Mexican telenovelas seem much more weird and culturally strange, than 2020s ones. Women in the new telenovelas are not even as glamorous and beautiful as in 1990s ones, and the 2020s stories have less of the crazy Latin dream logic that makes 1990s Mexican television kind of scary to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41PpdVA-Zk.

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AP

    When Mexico beat Korea in the world cup match it ended at 4:00 A.M. or so Pacific time and my neighborhood was lit up by a million firecrackers. I didn't even know there was a game until after I got up the next morning and checked the internet. All I knew was some crazy neighbors were blowing up a million firecrackers. It was all over in 5 minutes and I went right back to sleep.

  673. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    If I remember his theory, he writes that the anglosaxon literature always dreams about breaking free from its home to reach distance beaches, and that this is the dream of Daniel Defoe, Herman Melville, etc. while in French literature this passion is absent.
     
    That is interesting, off the top of my head apart from Jules Verne I can't think of any other famous French authors who concentrated on the theme of sea travel, the distant horizon etc. in the way Melville, Defoe, Conrad did. There were also these British authors in the 20s and 30s who wrote about India and spiritual self discovery (e.g. Somerset Maughan and E.M. Forster). The other day I bought a cheap copy of a book of memoirs that was very popular in the 1930s, it was made into a film called 'Lives of a Bengal Lancer', the author ends up practicing Yoga and meditation in an ashram.

    Also, some of the greatest Portuguese literature is about the search for distant shores, often it is dealt with in a more overtly spiritual way than in English literature (maybe Melville and Conrad are a bit like this), the theme of the ascetic struggle of sea voyages, discovery and the construction of the imperio leading to transcendence.

    But, Britain and Portugal used to be much more naval and sea focused nations, when France was always the land based demographic Mastodon of Europe, till Germany and Russia took over later in the 19th century.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @AaronB

    Pierre Loti was an extremely popular 19th century French writer whose novels took place in foreign lands, mostly Cambodia and SEA, now forgotten. Nietzsche mentions him as one of his favorites.

    Flaubert wrote famous travel diaries of travel to Egypt and sleeping with exotic Arab prostitutes there.

    Maupassant had many stories that take place in exotic North Africa.

    The most famous in this vein though is probably Rimbaud, the young poet who gave up a brilliant career in poetry to take up a life of adventure and gun-running in Ethiopia – I love his story 🙂

    Alexandra David-Neel was the first European to penetrate Tibet, and wrote a bunch of books on it still read today.

    And there are many more I am now forgetting. As modernity wore on, European intellectuals and artists grew increasingly disaffected with European civilization, and the French were definitely fascinated by exotic lands.

    Still, the English did seem to produce an unusually high number not just of writing about foreign lands, but also of adventurers and exiles who preferred the exotic to life in modern Britain, all the great explorers and adventurers and travel writers.

    I think the 18th century Grand Tour began in England, which every lord was expected to undergo – it seems from early on, the British were sick of themselves 🙂

    Paul Theroux said the British were fleeing the stuffy and oppressive class system in England – perhaps, but it seems more likely part of the wider romantic European disaffection with modernity and industrialism, at its peak in England, the richest country in Europe and the most modern and scientific.

    As for India, the most profound cultural impact was on German Romantic poets and philosophers, like Holderin, Novalis, and and Schopenhauer, and it’s been said that the Romantic movement in Germany was the discovery of Indian wisdom basically.

    While the exotic life and scenery of India figured largely in English literature (Kipling, Wilkie Collins, Foster, etc), Indian spirituality seems to have had a very small impact until the 20th century.

    Even American writers like Emerson and Thoreau seem to have been more seriously impacted by Hindu spiritually per se in the 19th century.

    Perhaps the British were too militarily and politically involved in the development of India – Macaulay even wanted to abolish Hindu learning and replace it with English and science, etc.

    But the 20th century produced several brilliant English writers on Indian spirituality, and it’s impact grew dramatically.

  674. @Not Raul
    @A123


    #LetsGoBrandon is highly effective at reaching female and high IQ voters
     
    You actually have no evidence that this helped Trump to win voters in 2016, and 2020; and it’s unlikely that you ever will, because #LetsGoBrandon is from 2021, which comes after 2016, and 2020.

    Replies: @A123, @A123

    Here is evidence that the current MAGA strategy is winning with Likely Voters: (1)

    I&I/TIPP Poll Shocker: Trump Beats Biden In Presidential Poll In Every U.S. Region But One
    ..
    Key demographic groups also show a swing away from Biden toward Trump. The breakdown shows a major swing from Biden to Trump in the last month.

    Among married women, often viewed as a heavily influential voting group, the shift toward Trump was particularly notable: In September, this group favored Biden (42.4%) to Trump (42.1%). In October, they gave Trump 53.2% of their vote, versus just 40% for Biden, a huge swing.

    It takes #NeverTrump levels of reality denial & pomposity to declare the strategy that is +10.8% with women is the result of something that drives women away.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/25/ii-tipp-poll-shocker-trump-beats-biden-in-presidential-poll-in-every-u-s-region-but-one/

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    The swing in popularity needs explanations from a neutral angle without Trumpist self-conceit.

    The US is probably going the direction of Argentina.

    Replies: @A123

  675. @songbird
    @sher singh

    High rate of single motherhood shows they are incompatible.

    You think the state is feminist and high-handed now, wait till single motherhood creeps up to 70%.

    Replies: @sher singh

    It’s not though, honor killing is lit a manslaughter charge of max 7 parole around 1/3rd of that||

    Also:

    Hard to gaf about progressivism, when it doesn’t apply to you||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  676. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can’t even speak any Spanih at all.
     
    Hopefully. OTOH one sees large stadiums in California where the Mexican team is cheered as they play against the American team who are booed:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008444/Only-America-U-S-soccer-team-booed-Mexico--California.html

    "U.S. soccer team booed in their own country as Mexican fans turn LA into an 'away' game"

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/26/article-0-0CBC1F6400000578-942_634x444.jpg

    :::::::::::::::::

    America could become the leader of the Anglo world, or it could go in another direction and be the leader of the Americas (it probably won't hold onto Asia, but can chase the Chinese off the hemisphere if it wakes up and feels like it). Very optimistically, it would do both, showing two faces as Russia has a European and an Asian face.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?
    The heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko in action during the WBO title fight vs. the US boxer Jameel McCline on 8 December 2002 in Las Vegas.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack

    Those weren’t national teams but individuals. But you kind of prove my point, I’m not an assimilated American and neither were those Mexican fans in California.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mikhail

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mr. Hack

    Ha ha. Don't most white people always root for the white guy even if he is a gypsy? My old neighbors went nuts when the gypsy king won his first belt; it was by far the most noise I ever heard come out of their apartment.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    , @Mikhail
    @Mr. Hack


    @AP

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?
     
    How about this Ukrainian who I've been rooting for?

    https://www.dw.com/en/oleksander-usyk-ukraines-controversial-heavyweight-boxing-champion/a-59398411

    The kind of twisted DW slant which is to be expected from that venue.

    Three healthy alternatives:

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/08/10/olympic-afterthoughts/

    https://www.academia.edu/37358188/Michael_Averko_Consistency_and_Reality_Lacking_on_Crimea

    https://www.eurasiareview.com/19072021-getting-putins-intentions-wrong-again-on-russia-ukraine-oped/
  677. @A123
    @Not Raul

    Here is evidence that the current MAGA strategy is winning with Likely Voters: (1)


    I&I/TIPP Poll Shocker: Trump Beats Biden In Presidential Poll In Every U.S. Region But One
    ..
    Key demographic groups also show a swing away from Biden toward Trump. The breakdown shows a major swing from Biden to Trump in the last month.
    ...
    Among married women, often viewed as a heavily influential voting group, the shift toward Trump was particularly notable: In September, this group favored Biden (42.4%) to Trump (42.1%). In October, they gave Trump 53.2% of their vote, versus just 40% for Biden, a huge swing.
     
    It takes #NeverTrump levels of reality denial & pomposity to declare the strategy that is +10.8% with women is the result of something that drives women away.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://issuesinsights.com/2021/10/25/ii-tipp-poll-shocker-trump-beats-biden-in-presidential-poll-in-every-u-s-region-but-one/

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    The swing in popularity needs explanations from a neutral angle without Trumpist self-conceit.

    The US is probably going the direction of Argentina.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon


    needs explanations from a neutral angle
     
    I understand your desire for neutrality, but it does not exist in U.S. politics. The SJW Globalists have crushed anything that even vaguely resembles neutrality.

    Orwellian #NeverTrump aggression manipulates language to perpetuate SJW dogma. Neutral analysis requires objective words and concepts that are no longer tolerated in the public space.

    Who will provide this 'neutral' voice? And, how will they survive the Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa? To the SJW zealots, 'neutrality' is Heresy.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
  678. As I said in a reply days ago, American politics have lost civility after Trump. Everyone has the realization that some group will shed their blood and their main goal, whatever language it is dressed in, is to get to the top of the new social hierarchy when the dust settles, and throw their enemies to the meat grinder.

    Either systemic racism & White privilege must be eliminated, or White Nationalists must assert their right to have their legitimate place (like South African Whites during apartheid).
    Twitter driving rightoids to Gab or the Gab rabble calling successfully for Twitter to be expropriated. (social media models lead to toxic politics anyway)
    Provaxx or antivaxx.
    Trumpists disenfrachising Bidenists or Bidenists marginalizing Trumpists.
    (I suspect the only thing Trumpists & Bidenists will mostly agree on is foreign policy directions since these are set by the MIC)

    These all fit into the mold of “oppress or be oppressed”. The “City upon a Hill” is being burnt.

    Is there a cliodynamics explanation for this outside of very broad cyclical strokes?

    • Agree: sher singh
    • Replies: @sher singh
    @Yellowface Anon

    America is only 50% White, but you wouldn't know that looking around||
    At the media, government, institutions, corporate executives;

    The apartheid already exists, it's just about convincing the rest ("minorities") that it's justified.
    Whether due 2 heavy intermarriage or meekness, E Asians seem to support W Supremacy despite being victimized||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    , @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon


    disenfrachising Bidenists
     
    I don't want to do that, at all. I want to increase their franchise, by transitioning it to more productive and engaging fields, like who the next American Idol will be, what character dies off or returns on the latest soap opera, and what new flavor of potato chips or soda will be introduced.
  679. @songbird
    @AaronB


    I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol
     
    I have enjoyed a few things he wrote, at least many years ago, however, my perspective probably comes from comparing him to other required authors.

    His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.
     
    I agree. Though, I enjoyed some of those of one of his contemporaries: Wilkie Collins. I can still laugh by calling to mind that fellow who quoted from Robinson Crusoe, like it was the Bible.

    Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending “deception” – imagination – in art. I think it’s called “In Defense Of Lying”
     
    Sounds interesting, though never could get into Wilde previously. The Picture of Dorian Gray is arguably brilliant on some level, but it is also unmistakably written by a homosexual, with certain baggage that sometimes comes with that.

    Many of our realist gritty shows – like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) – are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.
     
    TBH, I hate gritty stuff. (Couldn't get past the first five min. of Breaking Bad) Too humorless. It is tempting for me to characterize grittiness as a form of wokeness. I wish AE were still around to try to ferret out the political affiliation of gritty-consumers. Though I think grittiness could certainly be classified as a form of fantasy, I feel like it is fantasy going in the the wrong direction, becoming over-serious. This seriousness I feel is a type of hyper-realism, even though it deviates from reality unpleasantly - if that makes sense.

    Replies: @AaronB

    You make good points about grittiness.

    In general, I am on the side of fantasy and the unserious, and oppose the dull realist school, which tries to show life as gray, dull, and uninspiring. That kind of grittiness I don’t like – the ugliness school, one might say.

    But certain gritty shows, if done right, can rise to the level of a dark fantasy that breaks through the ordinary crust of life – the more thrilling because you know some people actually live this way. It’s not depressing but exhilarating.

    When you mentioned grittiness being connected to Woke, I didn’t see the connection at all – but in fact, both are sort of attempts to break away from ordinary dull “reality”, so there is a connection.

    But then, all these phenomena that attempt to break away from a dull and oppressive”reality”, are connected, however disparate they might seem, and however opposed on the surface.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    I wonder if people's differing tastes in movies are really about their differing dreams and fantasies. And that is why we disdain some and embrace others.

    For example, I once saw the movie His Girl Friday (1940) and, though it is a famous, well-received film, I thought it was awful. I couldn't stand the rapid-fire dialogue that often overlapped. It seemed hyper-artificial, noisy, and jarring to me, like a record speeded up and then played simultaneously with another record. But, maybe, it appeals to people who are more verbal and dream of verbal conflicts.
    ______
    To me, the most interesting Jews in NYC are the Syrians. I find it remarkable that they can maintain their identity in America's largest city, which has its largest Jewish population, despite not having a huge population. I think they practice shunning, like the Amish. But I suppose the Haredi also do this...

    Urban groups in modern cities are interesting. Could Jews be the most urbanized population ever? I think it is possible, even though several countries are ranked as being more urban than Israel. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly) including some of the oil Arabs. People have been speaking about the big social changes among Arabs. I guess there have always been city Arabs, but, for some of them, what a strange thing it must be to go from desert nomadism to cities, in just two or three generations.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  680. I was reading Vox Day’s new blog today, and it reminded me of how even though our conflicts seem to be about race, they are actually about values.

    Vox Day massively supports China and the PRC and a huge issue for him lately is China’s right to conquer Taiwan by force. And I was wondering why he seems practically to be salivating over China conquering Taiwan. What relevance does that have to being a White Nationalist?

    But then you have Andrew Anglin actively looking forward to Chinese global domination – and again one thinks, why would a White Nationalists positively salivate over a foreign race becoming dominant?

    And in general, there is widespread support among White Nationalists on Unz for China and the PRC.

    But then you realize – despite the talk, White Nationalists are not really talking about race anymore than the Woke crowd is. White Nationalists are no more truly interested in race than the Left is, and both use race as a proxy for values.

    White Nationalists admire the PRC for being authoritarian, brutal, “efficient”, controlling, a surveillance society, with a ruthless economic system, etc.

    Indeed, race is a “mystique” – blood and soil, etc. Yet you absolutely never hear White Nationalists talk about Whites as a “mystique” of blood – rather, they talk exclusively in the best most modern scientific utilitarian concerns.

    Jared Taylor famously says the point of a White ethnostate would be utilitarian – a more functional system, and the WNs focus most on utilitarian concerns like crime, economics, efficiency, social dysfunction, and the like.

    In fact, many WNs are careful to disavow any belief in racial “mystique” and insist they emphatically do not view Whites as the superior race – indeed their bizarre depiction of the Promethean, all-conquering European civilization as the “beta-race” par excellence hardly allows any mystique of superiority.

    In the end, no one today in the West is truly “racist” as no one really believes in the “mystique” of race – we all just use race as a proxy for values, and so you may easily have White Nationalists support “Yellow” dominance and privileged wealthy Whites seemingly genuflect to Blacks.

    Race, today, is merely the secret language in which we talk about values – but none of us have the world view that would even allow us to be truly racist anymore 🙂

    Even genetics doesn’t imply a “mystique” of race, but a purely utilitarian – and utterly accidental and not “essentialist” – consideration. The only commenter here who is a genuine racist is Intelligent Dasein, who has tried to work out a genuine mystical “mystique” of race – a true reactionary’s reactionary, and not a mere larper as so many here.

  681. @Yellowface Anon
    @A123

    The swing in popularity needs explanations from a neutral angle without Trumpist self-conceit.

    The US is probably going the direction of Argentina.

    Replies: @A123

    needs explanations from a neutral angle

    I understand your desire for neutrality, but it does not exist in U.S. politics. The SJW Globalists have crushed anything that even vaguely resembles neutrality.

    Orwellian #NeverTrump aggression manipulates language to perpetuate SJW dogma. Neutral analysis requires objective words and concepts that are no longer tolerated in the public space.

    Who will provide this ‘neutral’ voice? And, how will they survive the Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa? To the SJW zealots, ‘neutrality’ is Heresy.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  682. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?

    https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3B89M/the-heavyweight-boxer-wladimir-klitschko-in-action-during-the-wbo-D3B89M.jpg
    The heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko in action during the WBO title fight vs. the US boxer Jameel McCline on 8 December 2002 in Las Vegas.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

    Those weren’t national teams but individuals. But you kind of prove my point, I’m not an assimilated American and neither were those Mexican fans in California.

    • Agree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Almost all (or all) of the fights that theKlitschko brothers were involved with included a draping of the old blue and yellow on their bodies and a singing of the Ukrainian national anthem, as this pre-fight ritual was reciprocated by their opponents.

    The point that I was trying to make is that America is a great country that has thrived on the assimilation of immigrants, sooner or later as in our case and many others. By the time that you have grandkids, they'll probably be fully assimilated. America is indeed a great country, and can easily accompany the nostalgic yearnings of their citizens for "the old country". In the case of Mexican-Americans, I think that those that aspire to rise up the social economic latter of economic success will easily learn to adapt and work with their white neighbors (I work for such an individual, who's a third or fourth generation Mexican-American who barely can speak any Spanish). How do you feel about dual citizenship? The US government allows it, the Ukrainian one doesn't.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Mikhail
    @AP

    Lot of Americans of Jewish, Italian, Polish and other backgrounds who kind of do the same.

  683. I was reading Rod Dreher’s blog today, and was struck by how worried he is by the coming technocratic totalitarianism, which is being pioneered by China but obviously also being increasingly implemented in the West, if not quite so severely yet.

    In the short term, he’s basically correct that this is awful, but he seems worried that this might become a long term or even semi-permanent system.

    I must confess I’m completely unworried about that. Totalitarian systems always burn out – and relatively shortly, too.

    Totalitarian systems arise after periods of instability, and promise safety, security, and control, discipline and order, at the price of freedom and joy – what this overlooks, is that humans get sick of safety and control after only a short while 🙂

    World War One was a rejection of the Long Victorian Peace, and the system of safety, order, and control that had emerged. People simply felt stifled and bored by it, and a merry war was going to be a fine adventure (only, the old chivalrous way of war had been replaced by the horrors of mechanistic war).

    It is possible to see the downfall of the system of order and control being constructed in several ways.

    One, as the education of humanity.

    Humanity may be regarded as a “single organism”, and history it’s process of education. Basically, the perfect human life is the simple and nomadic life of the hunter-gathere. However, humanity wonders if perhaps there is something more.

    That is the myth of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had it made, they had the perfect life in the garden of the Earth. But they were tempted by “knowledge of good and evil” – basically, the analytic process of making distinctions and taking them for real, which Zen also says is man’s fall from paradise.

    The Bronze Age world, the world of the Psalms, the Homeric epics, the Icelandic Sagas (although much later, same in spirit), is the world of man’s first civilization – no longer paradise, no longer an idyll, the world is dark and terrible, full of monsters.

    Man’s “journey”, is to find his way back to the Garden he has mistakenly cast aside. The story of civilization may be seen as the gradual recovery of this state of leisure and plenty through technology – and what is “progress” but a recovery of our state in the Garden? – perhaps, finally, culminating in the discarding of technology as never having been necessary at all.

    In this way, man comes to know himself, and take his rightful place in the grand scheme of things. But he could not have done this fully and completely without first undergoing the process of alienation from himself that is modernity. He would always guess at if there is really “something else”.

    Technology, here, was never even the point – just a tool of education.

    In this view, we still have a ways to go in the process of alienation and control, and the world still has to taste the sterile emptiness of total technocratic control before he can be convinced of it’s pointlessness.

    If so, China may be the next ” world historical” people and the current engine of history, if accelerating dystopia is the necessary next step.

    The Chinese, one of the world’s most unruly, anarchic, and individualistic people (Westerners, being relatively cooperative and docile, could be ruled by a light hand – the Chinese needed despotism), are precisely the people who will need to develop a technocratic surveillance state to govern themselves at all.

    So much for that view.

    Another view is simply the old Taoist view that – the world works in cycles. Now authoritarianism is all the rage, tomorrow man grows tired of it and craves freedom.

    Both views are underneath the same – just some prefer the “grand narrative” and some the “small”.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB


    Another view is simply the old Taoist view that – the world works in cycles. Now authoritarianism is all the rage, tomorrow man grows tired of it and craves freedom.
     
    I'm not sure if a primitive state after the collapse of civilization can last indefinitely - after all, some forms of medievalism will set in as societies re-emerge from the void like the recovery of post-Bronze Age Collapse Greece.

    But what's sure is how a vital energy keep on finding ways to express itself even in the most direst places, and even in a world without humans.

    Perhaps you can call me a regular Chinese mind - Confucian when optimistic, Taoist when pessimistic 😉

    [Let me say for the record, that every ideology, if sincerely applied, will lead to dystopia. After all, someone's utopia will be someone else's dystopia. The best approach to the world is not being serious]

    Replies: @AaronB

  684. @AP
    @Mr. Hack

    Those weren’t national teams but individuals. But you kind of prove my point, I’m not an assimilated American and neither were those Mexican fans in California.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mikhail

    Almost all (or all) of the fights that theKlitschko brothers were involved with included a draping of the old blue and yellow on their bodies and a singing of the Ukrainian national anthem, as this pre-fight ritual was reciprocated by their opponents.

    The point that I was trying to make is that America is a great country that has thrived on the assimilation of immigrants, sooner or later as in our case and many others. By the time that you have grandkids, they’ll probably be fully assimilated. America is indeed a great country, and can easily accompany the nostalgic yearnings of their citizens for “the old country”. In the case of Mexican-Americans, I think that those that aspire to rise up the social economic latter of economic success will easily learn to adapt and work with their white neighbors (I work for such an individual, who’s a third or fourth generation Mexican-American who barely can speak any Spanish). How do you feel about dual citizenship? The US government allows it, the Ukrainian one doesn’t.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    By the time that you have grandkids, they’ll probably be fully assimilated.
     
    Maybe. We don't speak English with our kids though. From my end it's the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia). The kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA, if things go down. I hope they don't, I don't feel like starting over.

    We aren't disruptive to America though. There are not 60 million of us, as there are Latinos in the USA.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack

  685. @Yellowface Anon
    As I said in a reply days ago, American politics have lost civility after Trump. Everyone has the realization that some group will shed their blood and their main goal, whatever language it is dressed in, is to get to the top of the new social hierarchy when the dust settles, and throw their enemies to the meat grinder.

    Either systemic racism & White privilege must be eliminated, or White Nationalists must assert their right to have their legitimate place (like South African Whites during apartheid).
    Twitter driving rightoids to Gab or the Gab rabble calling successfully for Twitter to be expropriated. (social media models lead to toxic politics anyway)
    Provaxx or antivaxx.
    Trumpists disenfrachising Bidenists or Bidenists marginalizing Trumpists.
    (I suspect the only thing Trumpists & Bidenists will mostly agree on is foreign policy directions since these are set by the MIC)

    These all fit into the mold of "oppress or be oppressed". The "City upon a Hill" is being burnt.

    Is there a cliodynamics explanation for this outside of very broad cyclical strokes?

    Replies: @sher singh, @songbird

    America is only 50% White, but you wouldn’t know that looking around||
    At the media, government, institutions, corporate executives;

    The apartheid already exists, it’s just about convincing the rest (“minorities”) that it’s justified.
    Whether due 2 heavy intermarriage or meekness, E Asians seem to support W Supremacy despite being victimized||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  686. @AaronB
    I was reading Rod Dreher's blog today, and was struck by how worried he is by the coming technocratic totalitarianism, which is being pioneered by China but obviously also being increasingly implemented in the West, if not quite so severely yet.

    In the short term, he's basically correct that this is awful, but he seems worried that this might become a long term or even semi-permanent system.

    I must confess I'm completely unworried about that. Totalitarian systems always burn out - and relatively shortly, too.

    Totalitarian systems arise after periods of instability, and promise safety, security, and control, discipline and order, at the price of freedom and joy - what this overlooks, is that humans get sick of safety and control after only a short while :)

    World War One was a rejection of the Long Victorian Peace, and the system of safety, order, and control that had emerged. People simply felt stifled and bored by it, and a merry war was going to be a fine adventure (only, the old chivalrous way of war had been replaced by the horrors of mechanistic war).

    It is possible to see the downfall of the system of order and control being constructed in several ways.

    One, as the education of humanity.

    Humanity may be regarded as a "single organism", and history it's process of education. Basically, the perfect human life is the simple and nomadic life of the hunter-gathere. However, humanity wonders if perhaps there is something more.

    That is the myth of the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve had it made, they had the perfect life in the garden of the Earth. But they were tempted by "knowledge of good and evil" - basically, the analytic process of making distinctions and taking them for real, which Zen also says is man's fall from paradise.

    The Bronze Age world, the world of the Psalms, the Homeric epics, the Icelandic Sagas (although much later, same in spirit), is the world of man's first civilization - no longer paradise, no longer an idyll, the world is dark and terrible, full of monsters.

    Man's "journey", is to find his way back to the Garden he has mistakenly cast aside. The story of civilization may be seen as the gradual recovery of this state of leisure and plenty through technology - and what is "progress" but a recovery of our state in the Garden? - perhaps, finally, culminating in the discarding of technology as never having been necessary at all.

    In this way, man comes to know himself, and take his rightful place in the grand scheme of things. But he could not have done this fully and completely without first undergoing the process of alienation from himself that is modernity. He would always guess at if there is really "something else".

    Technology, here, was never even the point - just a tool of education.

    In this view, we still have a ways to go in the process of alienation and control, and the world still has to taste the sterile emptiness of total technocratic control before he can be convinced of it's pointlessness.

    If so, China may be the next " world historical" people and the current engine of history, if accelerating dystopia is the necessary next step.

    The Chinese, one of the world's most unruly, anarchic, and individualistic people (Westerners, being relatively cooperative and docile, could be ruled by a light hand - the Chinese needed despotism), are precisely the people who will need to develop a technocratic surveillance state to govern themselves at all.

    So much for that view.

    Another view is simply the old Taoist view that - the world works in cycles. Now authoritarianism is all the rage, tomorrow man grows tired of it and craves freedom.

    Both views are underneath the same - just some prefer the "grand narrative" and some the "small".

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Another view is simply the old Taoist view that – the world works in cycles. Now authoritarianism is all the rage, tomorrow man grows tired of it and craves freedom.

    I’m not sure if a primitive state after the collapse of civilization can last indefinitely – after all, some forms of medievalism will set in as societies re-emerge from the void like the recovery of post-Bronze Age Collapse Greece.

    But what’s sure is how a vital energy keep on finding ways to express itself even in the most direst places, and even in a world without humans.

    Perhaps you can call me a regular Chinese mind – Confucian when optimistic, Taoist when pessimistic 😉

    [Let me say for the record, that every ideology, if sincerely applied, will lead to dystopia. After all, someone’s utopia will be someone else’s dystopia. The best approach to the world is not being serious]

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    Great comment.

    There is no "end state". Things rise and fall, and what's food for one is poison for another (seemingly).

    There is nowhere to go, and nothing to strive for. Life is good just as it is.

    This is to not take life seriously, but joyously - what I regard as the state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden :) And also what I have called "transcendence".

    In my comment above, the "goal" of history is to....realize there is no goal (get back to the Garden), and we never had to have a "history :) (incidentally, it was this notion of "progress" that infuriated T Laxa and set her off on me)

    Of course, the majority cannot "see" this - and so we have history. And so you are right, we will return most likely to some kind of medieval civilization - which, honestly, if it isn't bigoted and fanatic, is really not so bad.

    And because many labor under illusion, what is food for one is poison for another. Which is why I would never force my view on the world, and support even transhumanists and techno-utopians doing their thing so long as they don't coerce me into their projects :)

    As for Confucians and Taoists, isn't it the other way around? Confucians are the pessimists, as they believe rules and rituals are needed to restrain man, while Taoists are the optimists, as they believe spontaneous human nature is essentially good :)

    But Confucianism really isn't so bad at all, and has a good deal of Taoism in it, and echoes Taoist themes a lot.

    Anyways, thanks for your comment bringing me back to "fundamentals".

  687. This once again proves my assertion that hyperinflation is the product of a loss in institutional confidence, reflected in the value of the most proximate instrument issued by such institutions.

  688. @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB


    Another view is simply the old Taoist view that – the world works in cycles. Now authoritarianism is all the rage, tomorrow man grows tired of it and craves freedom.
     
    I'm not sure if a primitive state after the collapse of civilization can last indefinitely - after all, some forms of medievalism will set in as societies re-emerge from the void like the recovery of post-Bronze Age Collapse Greece.

    But what's sure is how a vital energy keep on finding ways to express itself even in the most direst places, and even in a world without humans.

    Perhaps you can call me a regular Chinese mind - Confucian when optimistic, Taoist when pessimistic 😉

    [Let me say for the record, that every ideology, if sincerely applied, will lead to dystopia. After all, someone's utopia will be someone else's dystopia. The best approach to the world is not being serious]

    Replies: @AaronB

    Great comment.

    There is no “end state”. Things rise and fall, and what’s food for one is poison for another (seemingly).

    There is nowhere to go, and nothing to strive for. Life is good just as it is.

    This is to not take life seriously, but joyously – what I regard as the state of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden 🙂 And also what I have called “transcendence”.

    In my comment above, the “goal” of history is to….realize there is no goal (get back to the Garden), and we never had to have a “history 🙂 (incidentally, it was this notion of “progress” that infuriated T Laxa and set her off on me)

    Of course, the majority cannot “see” this – and so we have history. And so you are right, we will return most likely to some kind of medieval civilization – which, honestly, if it isn’t bigoted and fanatic, is really not so bad.

    And because many labor under illusion, what is food for one is poison for another. Which is why I would never force my view on the world, and support even transhumanists and techno-utopians doing their thing so long as they don’t coerce me into their projects 🙂

    As for Confucians and Taoists, isn’t it the other way around? Confucians are the pessimists, as they believe rules and rituals are needed to restrain man, while Taoists are the optimists, as they believe spontaneous human nature is essentially good 🙂

    But Confucianism really isn’t so bad at all, and has a good deal of Taoism in it, and echoes Taoist themes a lot.

    Anyways, thanks for your comment bringing me back to “fundamentals”.

  689. @AaronB
    @Dmitry

    That article is from 2012.

    There is now an entire infantry battalion of Haredi soldiers, a large one, called Netzach Yehuda (Victorious Judah), and it's growing.

    They seem to have an unusually high rate of abuse of Palestinians, though, for some reason.

    https://www.google.com/amp/s/m.jpost.com/magazine/netzach-yehuda-the-quiet-revolution-of-the-haredi-community-598007/amp

    Anyways, they are very different from the Hasidim. The Hasidim of New York are in general anti-Zionist and don't support the state of Israel.

    They are the "mystical" Jews that descend from the Bal Shem Tov, and have splintered into many different sects.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    they are very different from the Hasidim.

    Haredi refers to the whole sector of “modernity rejecting” Jewish cults that lives in Israel. Fast growing sector of 1,2 million people.

    Chasids’ stream (obviously with many rival cults between them) composes a significant proportion of Haredim that live in Israel.

    The political party “Yahadut hatorah” is called in English “United Torah Judaism”.

    It is “united”, because of the political level of the Lithuanian sects created alliance with the political level of many Chasidic sects in the early 1990s.

    Although the Chasids and the Litnaks hate each other theologically, they have the same religious requirements to demand from the state. So they united their political parties to increase their bargaining power in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).

    Hasidim of New York are in general anti-Zionist

    Many Haredi groups (regardless whether chasids or not) in Israel oppose Israeli state, and you can see on YouTube how some of the more extreme sects in Jerusalem are burning Israeli flags during their Lag b’omer festivals.

    However, there are Chasidic sects which are more conciliatory to Israel. Chabad-Lubavitch has developed friendly to Israeli authorities, perhaps because of idiosyncratic views of their cult leader Schneerson of New York – who had even donated money to Rabin.

    But even the friendly to Zionists Chabad are still banned from symbolic gestures to support Israel.
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/chabad-nepal-emissary-drops-independence-day-honor-on-rabbis-orders/

    the “mystical” Jews that descend from the Bal Shem Tov

    Lithuanian vs. Hasidic split was from the late 18th century. There is an article on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnagdim

    There is now an entire infantry battalion of Haredi

    This is a very small minority of the Haredi world.

    Haredi Jews have a population of 1,2 million people. Haredi Jews have a total fertility rate of 7-8. The median age of a Haredi Jew in Israel is – 17 years old. And yet the Haredi world send 2000 soldiers to the Israeli army. It’s incredibly insignificant numbers considering their demographic compositions.

    These soldiers would often be socially considered the losers, outcasts and rebels of Haredi world.

    In Israel I talked to once a secular hipster looking girl (with nose ring, etc), who said her family were Haredim. When the average number of children is 7-8 and the median age is 17 – I guess the Haredi cults have to allow for a small “failure rate”, or “acceptable casualties”.

    • Replies: @Max Demian
    @Dmitry


    Haredi refers to the whole sector of “modernity rejecting” Jewish cults that lives in Israel.
     
    "Cults"? As a categorical, unqualified categorization of the rather broad, diverse demographic category that is encompassed by the term Haredi? Isn't that just a bit tendentious?

    Would it be any less tendentious to apply the characterization "cult" to Zionism itself, or at least any number of the many strains/ subsets thereof? (To say nothing of countless other entities both secular as well as religious; non-Jewish as well as Jewish; Left-wing as well as Right-wing, etc.)

    Chasids and the Litnaks [sic*] hate each other theologically,
     
    The last time that such a statement could have been said with any degree of accuracy might have been as much as a century ago or more.

    First, it has been at least that long that the theological disputes (highly esoteric) between the Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760) and the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) and their respective disciples have been mostly, if not entirely moot. (What differences remain between Hasidim and non-Hasidic Haredim are mostly cultural and more matters of style than substance).

    Second, it is true that that there have been and continue to this day to be considerable fracture, factionalization and at times quite bitter disputes between Orthodox Jews across-the-spectrum, however

    - (a) it's been a long time since any of the significant fault lines have been Hasidim vs. non-Hasidim (aka Litvaks or Misnagdim) (at least per se; where said difference has been primary or critical)
    and,
    - (b) with perhaps some highly specific and limited exceptions, to categorically state, of any two groups within the Haredi umbrella that they "hate each other" would be inaccurate.

    Finally, to address some of the other topics raised in your post:

    - Views of Zionism and approaches toward the modern State of Israel among Orthodox Jews span a spectrum from vehemently pro- to vehemently anti-. A substantial number of Haredim maintain that a Jew is religiously forbidden to even so much as vote in any Israeli national election, let alone to serve to in any government or ruling coalition of the State.

    - Chabad-Lubavitch are in a category unto themselves among Orthodox Jews, differing profoundly (both ideologically as well as culturally) from both all other Haredim as well as non-Haredim.

    When the average number of children is 7-8 and the median age is 17 – I guess the Haredi cults have to allow for a small “failure rate”, or “acceptable casualties”.
     
    Do you think any serious, committed Orthodox Jew would ever find it "acceptable" for a child of his to abandon Judaism? Do you think Haredim ever make a conscious calculation along the lines that you suggest?

    Aren't the reasons for the high fertility rate among Orthodox Jews (and Haredim in particular) rather simple?
    Namely,
    1.)Belief that having as many children as reasonably possible is, if not an absolute obligation, at least highly desirable and praiseworthy;
    2.) Fact that they, as a rule, consider contraception to only be permitted in cases where conception would create rather severe problems (such as threats to the health the parents or any existing children);
    3.) Young age at marriage;
    and, finally,
    4.) Low rate of divorce.
  690. @AaronB
    @songbird

    You make good points about grittiness.

    In general, I am on the side of fantasy and the unserious, and oppose the dull realist school, which tries to show life as gray, dull, and uninspiring. That kind of grittiness I don't like - the ugliness school, one might say.

    But certain gritty shows, if done right, can rise to the level of a dark fantasy that breaks through the ordinary crust of life - the more thrilling because you know some people actually live this way. It's not depressing but exhilarating.

    When you mentioned grittiness being connected to Woke, I didn't see the connection at all - but in fact, both are sort of attempts to break away from ordinary dull "reality", so there is a connection.

    But then, all these phenomena that attempt to break away from a dull and oppressive"reality", are connected, however disparate they might seem, and however opposed on the surface.

    Replies: @songbird

    I wonder if people’s differing tastes in movies are really about their differing dreams and fantasies. And that is why we disdain some and embrace others.

    For example, I once saw the movie His Girl Friday (1940) and, though it is a famous, well-received film, I thought it was awful. I couldn’t stand the rapid-fire dialogue that often overlapped. It seemed hyper-artificial, noisy, and jarring to me, like a record speeded up and then played simultaneously with another record. But, maybe, it appeals to people who are more verbal and dream of verbal conflicts.
    ______
    To me, the most interesting Jews in NYC are the Syrians. I find it remarkable that they can maintain their identity in America’s largest city, which has its largest Jewish population, despite not having a huge population. I think they practice shunning, like the Amish. But I suppose the Haredi also do this…

    Urban groups in modern cities are interesting. Could Jews be the most urbanized population ever? I think it is possible, even though several countries are ranked as being more urban than Israel. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly) including some of the oil Arabs. People have been speaking about the big social changes among Arabs. I guess there have always been city Arabs, but, for some of them, what a strange thing it must be to go from desert nomadism to cities, in just two or three generations.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @songbird


    urbanized population ever? I think it is possible, even though several countries are ranked as being more urban
     
    It's more the opposite. Ashkenazi Jewish culture means living in small dense villages.

    Haredim need to live in high population density, because they are create a village surveillance system, where everyone is watching everyone else.

    Without this high density and mutual "village surveillance", it would be impossible to follow their religious rules.

    The strictnesss of Judaism is possible only because all the village is checking that the other village members are not breaking Sabbath. This is religious observance would be impossible for isolated mystics. They achieved the high level of observance via social pressure and watching everyone from the windows.

    -

    It's not surprising to me that Israel doesn't have anywhere that feels like real city. Everywhere feels like a provincial area or village, even among skyscrapers. The Jewish culture searches for a "small village" atmosphere.

    The reason that Tel Aviv is quite enchanting for tourists, it it has completely the atmosphere of small provincial beach city maybe 100,000 people (although its real population is almost 500,000).


    Jews be the most urbanized population
     
    Most Ashkenazi Jews lived in small villages without clean water, until the early 20th century. They are from some of Europe's most provincial and backward areas.

    They would view the great European cities as scary places where they lose their religion, and embourgeoisizing secular Jews were mass emigrating there to escape their village oppressions, and access things like running water.

    For the residence permit for Saint-Petersburg or Moscow, Jews would need to fulfil special visa requirements, mostly converting to Christianity.

    -

    I think it not surprising that the escape from cities in post-war America was led partly by Jewish urban planners, who were a couple generations away from ancestors that would live in some muddy village between Minsk and Mogilev.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Levitt

    That's also why Zionist immigration to one of the poorest parts of the Ottoman Empire was possible - because the immigrants were arriving to Palestine from mostly oppressive and very not-wealthy conditions.


    Only very recently in historical terms (a few generations), the Ashkenazi Jews were mostly living like this.
    https://i.imgur.com/V8sHha0.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

  691. @AaronB
    @Mikel

    Thanks!

    I agree to come extent the Hasidic look seems deliberately off-putting. I say to some extent because if you see them in their Sabbath or holiday finery, they can be impressive, especially the fine old men in their magnificent fur hats and long beards, many of them tall and imposing, in their special holiday coats.

    I have always hated those side curls, though :)

    Its interesting, because medieval Rabbis looked dignified and fine, and Sephardic Rabbis did too in their oriental garb.

    It is time to update this eccentric look - I also don't like the costume of the modern orthodox. All of this is recent, and there is no reason something more dignified can't be worked out.

    I've never been to see that group, no. As a secular person, I have very little involvement with the Hasidim except occasional visits to their neighborhoods and in the past, mixed events on certain holidays.

    I find them fascinating, though, and I enjoy walking through their neighborhoods. They are an interesting group - in their stores and houses, they hang these little signs that say it's a religious duty to be constantly full of joy, and they drink more alcohol than other Jews and party harder :) (of course, there is a dark side to the sect too)

    It's a great song. The lyrics are cool too, from the Psalms -

    "Except the LORD build the house,
    they labour in vain that build it;
    except the LORD keep the city,
    the watchman waketh but in vain.
    Behold, He that keepeth Israel
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    He that keepeth Israel."

    I'm not religious, but I something about ancient religious poetry that I find very moving. Some verses from the Rig Veda and Upanishads also move me.

    The ancient world of the Psalms, seems to have been a dark place - a world of terror and danger, a world of tragedy and heroism, of anguish and yearning, of warriors fighting desperate battles, of enemies on all sides, of death defying victories and bitter defeats, and ultimately, a great desire for deliverance from this kind of world - it is the world of the Bronze Age, man's first leap into civilization from hunter-gathering. It is a grand world, and has it's appeal, but it is not a world of light.

    You get the same flavor from the famous Psalm - " Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil......"

    Thrilling and powerful stuff, but a dark world. Icelandic Saga and Homeric poetry is similarly dark.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mikel

    On the street level, the Haredi cities are indeed very pleasant to walk through, as they create a romantic atmosphere of the 18th or 19th century. It’s especially atmospheric in the night, as they are walking outside at all ages at 10pm. It feels like you have entered a time machine, and transported to a village of not less than about 150 years ago.

    But on the political, demographic and economic level, they are a very dangerous situation.

    If there is one order from a cult leader, then the streets are blocked across cities by thousands of impenetrable, brainwashed youth.

    And the Haredim can use this to intimidate society. “Jerusalem Faction” already shows its ability to close the Israeli road system.

    These are brainwashed youth, controlled by the older men (who are communicating by phone to their headquarters). They can be a disaster for Israel’s future aspirations to be a functional or developed country.

    If one of them is killed during a protest, and these became violent, it could also result in an intifada situation. As if the National Religious and the Islamist groups did not add enough volatility in Israel.

    it’s a religious duty to be constantly full of joy, and they drink more alcohol than other Jews

    But also the Chasidic men are not working, which is the worst aspect of hippie culture. (Although at least Haredi women have high employment rates).

    Note that Israel’s economy uses many African workers (mainly from Sudan and Eritrea), Palestinian workers, Jordanian workers, hundreds of thousands of Filipinos, thousands of Chinese builders. This is partly because most of the Haredi men are refusing to work.

    Haredi men could be working in a restaurant, in a construction industry, or cleaning buildings. Instead many of these jobs being operated by African workers, Palestinians, Filipinos, Latin American illegal immigrants.

    In some ways these African workers, Palestinians, Filipinos, are living more holy, than the “holymen” who refuse to contribute practical work. There is such almost bourgeois immodestly to not accepting work as a cleaner, builder or a waiter.

  692. @Yellowface Anon
    As I said in a reply days ago, American politics have lost civility after Trump. Everyone has the realization that some group will shed their blood and their main goal, whatever language it is dressed in, is to get to the top of the new social hierarchy when the dust settles, and throw their enemies to the meat grinder.

    Either systemic racism & White privilege must be eliminated, or White Nationalists must assert their right to have their legitimate place (like South African Whites during apartheid).
    Twitter driving rightoids to Gab or the Gab rabble calling successfully for Twitter to be expropriated. (social media models lead to toxic politics anyway)
    Provaxx or antivaxx.
    Trumpists disenfrachising Bidenists or Bidenists marginalizing Trumpists.
    (I suspect the only thing Trumpists & Bidenists will mostly agree on is foreign policy directions since these are set by the MIC)

    These all fit into the mold of "oppress or be oppressed". The "City upon a Hill" is being burnt.

    Is there a cliodynamics explanation for this outside of very broad cyclical strokes?

    Replies: @sher singh, @songbird

    disenfrachising Bidenists

    I don’t want to do that, at all. I want to increase their franchise, by transitioning it to more productive and engaging fields, like who the next American Idol will be, what character dies off or returns on the latest soap opera, and what new flavor of potato chips or soda will be introduced.

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
  693. @songbird
    @AaronB

    I wonder if people's differing tastes in movies are really about their differing dreams and fantasies. And that is why we disdain some and embrace others.

    For example, I once saw the movie His Girl Friday (1940) and, though it is a famous, well-received film, I thought it was awful. I couldn't stand the rapid-fire dialogue that often overlapped. It seemed hyper-artificial, noisy, and jarring to me, like a record speeded up and then played simultaneously with another record. But, maybe, it appeals to people who are more verbal and dream of verbal conflicts.
    ______
    To me, the most interesting Jews in NYC are the Syrians. I find it remarkable that they can maintain their identity in America's largest city, which has its largest Jewish population, despite not having a huge population. I think they practice shunning, like the Amish. But I suppose the Haredi also do this...

    Urban groups in modern cities are interesting. Could Jews be the most urbanized population ever? I think it is possible, even though several countries are ranked as being more urban than Israel. Surprisingly (or not surprisingly) including some of the oil Arabs. People have been speaking about the big social changes among Arabs. I guess there have always been city Arabs, but, for some of them, what a strange thing it must be to go from desert nomadism to cities, in just two or three generations.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    urbanized population ever? I think it is possible, even though several countries are ranked as being more urban

    It’s more the opposite. Ashkenazi Jewish culture means living in small dense villages.

    Haredim need to live in high population density, because they are create a village surveillance system, where everyone is watching everyone else.

    Without this high density and mutual “village surveillance”, it would be impossible to follow their religious rules.

    The strictnesss of Judaism is possible only because all the village is checking that the other village members are not breaking Sabbath. This is religious observance would be impossible for isolated mystics. They achieved the high level of observance via social pressure and watching everyone from the windows.

    It’s not surprising to me that Israel doesn’t have anywhere that feels like real city. Everywhere feels like a provincial area or village, even among skyscrapers. The Jewish culture searches for a “small village” atmosphere.

    The reason that Tel Aviv is quite enchanting for tourists, it it has completely the atmosphere of small provincial beach city maybe 100,000 people (although its real population is almost 500,000).

    Jews be the most urbanized population

    Most Ashkenazi Jews lived in small villages without clean water, until the early 20th century. They are from some of Europe’s most provincial and backward areas.

    They would view the great European cities as scary places where they lose their religion, and embourgeoisizing secular Jews were mass emigrating there to escape their village oppressions, and access things like running water.

    For the residence permit for Saint-Petersburg or Moscow, Jews would need to fulfil special visa requirements, mostly converting to Christianity.

    I think it not surprising that the escape from cities in post-war America was led partly by Jewish urban planners, who were a couple generations away from ancestors that would live in some muddy village between Minsk and Mogilev.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Levitt

    That’s also why Zionist immigration to one of the poorest parts of the Ottoman Empire was possible – because the immigrants were arriving to Palestine from mostly oppressive and very not-wealthy conditions.

    Only very recently in historical terms (a few generations), the Ashkenazi Jews were mostly living like this.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry


    Most Ashkenazi Jews lived in small villages without clean water, until the early 20th century.
     
    True of most people? In fact, though I meant to refer to modern times (anchored by NYC), I'm not sure that Shetls, though small and backwater, wouldn't be a denser organization than most peasants at that time. Maybe, a kind of proto-urbanism?

    Haredim need to live in high population density, because they are create a village surveillance system, where everyone is watching everyone else.
     
    I have been curious about how they organize in a city, and demarcate the neighborhoods. I wish there was an anthropological book explaining them better.

    Apparently, the Amish create new divisions as they grow in population or area. Typically, having prayer meeting in different, rotating houses. And they draft men to become preachers, whether they want to, or have the ability, or not. They also publish magazines and newsletters, to help bridge the wider community.

    Would be interesting to see NYC groups organized by TFR at the granular level, to compare them to the Amish.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  694. The American right is really uniquely horrible, aggressive, cruel and vindictive abroad, in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
    It would be better if more right-wing Europeans knew that these people prefer Somalis over them. There’s already too much American and Israeli influence on the European right, it needs to be rejected.

    • LOL: sher singh
    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    Can't wrap my head around this "1% minorities on the federal level" in Europe factoid. It seems such a bald-faced, trash statistic that I'm amazed that anyone has the gall to make that claim. Where is it true? Poland or the EU parliament? Obviously, not true at the NHS. France ideologically doesn't even take statistics on race - I wonder whether the book mentions that.

    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism, but what would the ancient German tribes do with modern German politicians, if we are to believe Tacitus about their only capital crimes being cowardice, treason, and sexual aberration? Most likely kill them all, including the AfD. Germans should consider going back to townhall-style meetings where they vote by banging their weapons - I think it might be a more responsive system.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    It's kind of interesting to read those claims, but like a satire of comparing apples and oranges.


    -----

    https://i.imgur.com/GxtC5tB.jpg

    Proportion of these nationalities can be completely different in each country.

    Also it writes like it is inferring from the lower "token diversity" indicators, to claim there is anti-diversity bias or provincial culture in Europe.

    Different nationalities might have different vocational skills, or desire level for working in different places. (For example, Haredi men don't work much in Israel, with the cause not being discrimination against them, but their lack of desire to work).

    There is also the fact that hiring of minority workers in such an employer, doesn't show how the median minority people are living. Shoigu is a Tuvan Minister of Defense in Russia - if you implied from that median Tuvans are living well, you would be very confused about the situation in Tuva.

    -----

    https://i.imgur.com/0nj1LuB.jpg

    Aside from the fact it measures the extent to which the population has been brainwashed to believe in "hard work leads to success" mythologies.

    This could be an interesting poll, although there would likely be great difference within Europe.

    If you sample Greeks, Italians, Bulgarians, Spanish, Romanians, and then sample Germans and English. There must be papers about belief system of people indoctrinated with "Mediterranean work ethic" vs. "Protestant work ethic".

    ---------

    https://i.imgur.com/zaGDOxl.jpg

    Because America use a different immigration regime than many countries in Europe - i.e. HB1 visa people will have very different income results on average, in a trivial way as the visa specifies the type of work.

    --------------


    https://i.imgur.com/gnSVFAe.jpg1.

    In many European countries, you donate enormous share of your income to the public, through taxation.

    2. US and European GDP per capita is very different. You would have to compare countries with equivalent post-tax net salary.

    3. A lot of American "charity" is simply paying for religious services, or religious activities (including missionary activity), rather than actually helping in Africa or India. E.g. Mitt Romney has been tithed to the Mormon Church.

    -----------------------

    https://i.imgur.com/XVVzmB3.jpg

    Most African Americans are descended from kidnap/hostage victims, and have been living in America for centuries. Meanwhile, most African people in Europe are recent immigrants or guest workers, who arrive voluntarily, and clearly don't have a bad situation in Europe (they vote with their feet).

    Replies: @Inselaffen

    , @A123
    @German_reader


    The American right is really uniquely horrible,
     
    MAGA broke the Left/Right concept, so your statement is very ambiguous.

    -- The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
    -- The SJW DNC is the party of MegaCorporations and Wall Street banks (Right?)

    If GW Bush ran for office today, he would be a full fledged DNC Jacka$$ His NeoConDemocrat war monger buddies are all DNC. And, we know he places corporations over workers.


    in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
     
    MAGA unequivocally stands against Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] and Open Borders. MAGA Reindustrialization involves restraining MegaCorporations and their lobbyists. However, many MAGA supporters would argue that they are saving capitalism from monopolies, oligopolies, and State Owned Enterprises.

    Open [Muslim] Borders and Anti-Christian aggression are key characteristics of SJW Jihadi religious dogma held by Angela Merkel, and her pawn Ilhan Omar. Calling them "right" is confusing. However, I agree with you. Merkel has used underlings like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values, including unlimited Muslim migration.

    Judeo-Christian Populists in both Europe & America need to stand up against Berlin's attempt to force Rape-ugees on the world. What Christian Europe needs the most is less Germany Uniparty (Red-Black-Green-Yellow). As long as power is wielded by that UnHoly 4 Headed Abomination of Moral Turpitude, all Infidels (Jews & Christians) need to stand together in common cause.
    ___

    There are some easy fixes, but Germany will not even allow them to be discussed.

    Renting land in North Africa for an "EU Asylum Clearing" center would be an immediate win. All Muslims who enter the EU and claim Asylum would be sent there until their case yields entry to a specific country willing to accept them.

    This is the humane option. How many die trying to illegally cross the Med? With a "Total Containment Facility" in Africa... Many would be able to cross a land border to start their asylum process.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader, @Stan d Mute

  695. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can’t even speak any Spanih at all.
     
    Hopefully. OTOH one sees large stadiums in California where the Mexican team is cheered as they play against the American team who are booed:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008444/Only-America-U-S-soccer-team-booed-Mexico--California.html

    "U.S. soccer team booed in their own country as Mexican fans turn LA into an 'away' game"

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/26/article-0-0CBC1F6400000578-942_634x444.jpg

    :::::::::::::::::

    America could become the leader of the Anglo world, or it could go in another direction and be the leader of the Americas (it probably won't hold onto Asia, but can chase the Chinese off the hemisphere if it wakes up and feels like it). Very optimistically, it would do both, showing two faces as Russia has a European and an Asian face.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

    You could also imagine that NAFTA could become like the Eurasian Economic Union, where there is an open borders system and freemovement between the countries.

    A problem would be that Mexico has a comparatively very low GDP per capita (relative to USA and Canada), so all the young people in Mexico would emigrate to USA and Canada if they had an opportunity. (It would perhaps operate better like the Soviet Union, where internal movement of people was very restricted, unlike in Eurasian Economic Union.)

    Mexican team is cheered as

    Even with its comparatively very low economic and social development level (5 times lower GDP per capita than Canada, 6 times lower than USA), media culture in Mexico seems to be very assimilating to the American culture.

    Americans talk about their fears of Latinization. But when you watch some Mexican television, it feels more the other way round – Mexico losing its cultural idiosyncrasy, and becoming more normalized to American culture.

    For example, 1990s Mexican telenovelas seem much more weird and culturally strange, than 2020s ones. Women in the new telenovelas are not even as glamorous and beautiful as in 1990s ones, and the 2020s stories have less of the crazy Latin dream logic that makes 1990s Mexican television kind of scary to watch. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41PpdVA-Zk.

  696. @German_reader
    https://twitter.com/literaryeric/status/1453011853391638536

    The American right is really uniquely horrible, aggressive, cruel and vindictive abroad, in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
    It would be better if more right-wing Europeans knew that these people prefer Somalis over them. There's already too much American and Israeli influence on the European right, it needs to be rejected.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @A123

    Can’t wrap my head around this “1% minorities on the federal level” in Europe factoid. It seems such a bald-faced, trash statistic that I’m amazed that anyone has the gall to make that claim. Where is it true? Poland or the EU parliament? Obviously, not true at the NHS. France ideologically doesn’t even take statistics on race – I wonder whether the book mentions that.

    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism, but what would the ancient German tribes do with modern German politicians, if we are to believe Tacitus about their only capital crimes being cowardice, treason, and sexual aberration? Most likely kill them all, including the AfD. Germans should consider going back to townhall-style meetings where they vote by banging their weapons – I think it might be a more responsive system.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism
     
    It's not growing, I've been anti-American for a long time (even if I think most anti-Americanism is pretty stupid, since it's usually just "America isn't living up to her ideals", when imo many of those ideals are exactly the problem). Back around 2015/2016 I had some hopes the American right might be able to reform itself and come to a saner view of the world (America as a normal, if powerful, country, an end to interventions abroad and mass immigration), but of course that hope proved to be completely mistaken, in foreign policy it was just the usual exceptionalist bs (and grotesque servility towards Jewish interest groups, on an unprecedented level), in the cultural sphere disgusting pandering to blacks, homos and trannies. imo the US right is really irredeemable, and the anti-European undercurrents in their ideological outlook are noticeable (for a telling, if extreme, example I just refer to the commenter "Johann Ricke" on Sailer's blog who once stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany and other former Axis countries). I really think if there ever were genuine hardline right-wing regimes in Europe in power, US right-wingers could easily be persuaded to support subversion or even armed intervention against them, because America's role as a crusader against evil abroad is so central to their identity, and the only remaining national myths in the US are antiracist ones (civil war, WW2, civil rights movement).

    including the AfD.
     
    AfD has a lot of good people, so that would be rather unfair imo.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry

  697. @German_reader
    https://twitter.com/literaryeric/status/1453011853391638536

    The American right is really uniquely horrible, aggressive, cruel and vindictive abroad, in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
    It would be better if more right-wing Europeans knew that these people prefer Somalis over them. There's already too much American and Israeli influence on the European right, it needs to be rejected.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @A123

    It’s kind of interesting to read those claims, but like a satire of comparing apples and oranges.

    —–

    Proportion of these nationalities can be completely different in each country.

    Also it writes like it is inferring from the lower “token diversity” indicators, to claim there is anti-diversity bias or provincial culture in Europe.

    Different nationalities might have different vocational skills, or desire level for working in different places. (For example, Haredi men don’t work much in Israel, with the cause not being discrimination against them, but their lack of desire to work).

    There is also the fact that hiring of minority workers in such an employer, doesn’t show how the median minority people are living. Shoigu is a Tuvan Minister of Defense in Russia – if you implied from that median Tuvans are living well, you would be very confused about the situation in Tuva.

    —–


    Aside from the fact it measures the extent to which the population has been brainwashed to believe in “hard work leads to success” mythologies.

    This could be an interesting poll, although there would likely be great difference within Europe.

    If you sample Greeks, Italians, Bulgarians, Spanish, Romanians, and then sample Germans and English. There must be papers about belief system of people indoctrinated with “Mediterranean work ethic” vs. “Protestant work ethic”.

    ———

    Because America use a different immigration regime than many countries in Europe – i.e. HB1 visa people will have very different income results on average, in a trivial way as the visa specifies the type of work.

    ————–

    https://i.imgur.com/gnSVFAe.jpg1.

    In many European countries, you donate enormous share of your income to the public, through taxation.

    2. US and European GDP per capita is very different. You would have to compare countries with equivalent post-tax net salary.

    3. A lot of American “charity” is simply paying for religious services, or religious activities (including missionary activity), rather than actually helping in Africa or India. E.g. Mitt Romney has been tithed to the Mormon Church.

    ———————–

    Most African Americans are descended from kidnap/hostage victims, and have been living in America for centuries. Meanwhile, most African people in Europe are recent immigrants or guest workers, who arrive voluntarily, and clearly don’t have a bad situation in Europe (they vote with their feet).

    • Replies: @Inselaffen
    @Dmitry

    to me the issue is not whether the stats are accurate (or even halfway fair) comparisons, but the ideology behind making such propaganda to begin with.

    That it's from a 'right wing' american perspective (or at least something 'right wing' americans are agreeing with) makes it even worse, in that respect.

  698. @Dmitry
    @songbird


    urbanized population ever? I think it is possible, even though several countries are ranked as being more urban
     
    It's more the opposite. Ashkenazi Jewish culture means living in small dense villages.

    Haredim need to live in high population density, because they are create a village surveillance system, where everyone is watching everyone else.

    Without this high density and mutual "village surveillance", it would be impossible to follow their religious rules.

    The strictnesss of Judaism is possible only because all the village is checking that the other village members are not breaking Sabbath. This is religious observance would be impossible for isolated mystics. They achieved the high level of observance via social pressure and watching everyone from the windows.

    -

    It's not surprising to me that Israel doesn't have anywhere that feels like real city. Everywhere feels like a provincial area or village, even among skyscrapers. The Jewish culture searches for a "small village" atmosphere.

    The reason that Tel Aviv is quite enchanting for tourists, it it has completely the atmosphere of small provincial beach city maybe 100,000 people (although its real population is almost 500,000).


    Jews be the most urbanized population
     
    Most Ashkenazi Jews lived in small villages without clean water, until the early 20th century. They are from some of Europe's most provincial and backward areas.

    They would view the great European cities as scary places where they lose their religion, and embourgeoisizing secular Jews were mass emigrating there to escape their village oppressions, and access things like running water.

    For the residence permit for Saint-Petersburg or Moscow, Jews would need to fulfil special visa requirements, mostly converting to Christianity.

    -

    I think it not surprising that the escape from cities in post-war America was led partly by Jewish urban planners, who were a couple generations away from ancestors that would live in some muddy village between Minsk and Mogilev.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Levitt

    That's also why Zionist immigration to one of the poorest parts of the Ottoman Empire was possible - because the immigrants were arriving to Palestine from mostly oppressive and very not-wealthy conditions.


    Only very recently in historical terms (a few generations), the Ashkenazi Jews were mostly living like this.
    https://i.imgur.com/V8sHha0.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

    Most Ashkenazi Jews lived in small villages without clean water, until the early 20th century.

    True of most people? In fact, though I meant to refer to modern times (anchored by NYC), I’m not sure that Shetls, though small and backwater, wouldn’t be a denser organization than most peasants at that time. Maybe, a kind of proto-urbanism?

    Haredim need to live in high population density, because they are create a village surveillance system, where everyone is watching everyone else.

    I have been curious about how they organize in a city, and demarcate the neighborhoods. I wish there was an anthropological book explaining them better.

    Apparently, the Amish create new divisions as they grow in population or area. Typically, having prayer meeting in different, rotating houses. And they draft men to become preachers, whether they want to, or have the ability, or not. They also publish magazines and newsletters, to help bridge the wider community.

    Would be interesting to see NYC groups organized by TFR at the granular level, to compare them to the Amish.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @songbird


    (anchored by NYC),
     
    There is a very trashy style reality television show in Netflix called "My Unorthodox Life", which is like a satire of 20th century historical processes involved in the secularization of the Jewish people. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a553JOZq-4.)

    There is a woman who has escaped from Judaism, and now lives in a skyscraper in NYC, working in the fashion industry, and promoting feminism and sex education.

    Of course, by definition no observant Jews can live in multi-level buildings (especially not skyscapers), as they are not allowed to use an elevator during Sabbath.

    So when Jews live in multi-level buildings (higher than around 4 floors), it's a sign they are either very physically active people who like to walk up stairs - or it's a decisive way for them to exit Jewish observance, as they have to break the Sabbath by definition of where they live.

    Observant Jews can work in an office with multi-levels, as they simply have to go home before Sabbath.

    But multi-level residential building (beyond around 4 floors depending on their fitness) is incompatible with Jewish religion. This is a problem for urban planning in Israel, as they have to build low-rise for observant Jewish populations.

    As a result they have to build quite strange architecture in the religious areas - high density but with not more than about 4 floors.


    denser organization than most peasants
     
    Maybe, although the habitation area of historical villages and settlements through human history, are extremely dense by modern stands, but would be surrounded by much more space.

    So it depends what your denominator is - the population density is low relative to the size of the land, but extremely high relative to the living area and buildings. The strongest example would be when people lived in caves, they would be very high density for the size of the cave, but very low density relative to the land in which the cave location.

  699. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    Most Ashkenazi Jews lived in small villages without clean water, until the early 20th century.
     
    True of most people? In fact, though I meant to refer to modern times (anchored by NYC), I'm not sure that Shetls, though small and backwater, wouldn't be a denser organization than most peasants at that time. Maybe, a kind of proto-urbanism?

    Haredim need to live in high population density, because they are create a village surveillance system, where everyone is watching everyone else.
     
    I have been curious about how they organize in a city, and demarcate the neighborhoods. I wish there was an anthropological book explaining them better.

    Apparently, the Amish create new divisions as they grow in population or area. Typically, having prayer meeting in different, rotating houses. And they draft men to become preachers, whether they want to, or have the ability, or not. They also publish magazines and newsletters, to help bridge the wider community.

    Would be interesting to see NYC groups organized by TFR at the granular level, to compare them to the Amish.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    (anchored by NYC),

    There is a very trashy style reality television show in Netflix called “My Unorthodox Life”, which is like a satire of 20th century historical processes involved in the secularization of the Jewish people. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6a553JOZq-4.)

    There is a woman who has escaped from Judaism, and now lives in a skyscraper in NYC, working in the fashion industry, and promoting feminism and sex education.

    Of course, by definition no observant Jews can live in multi-level buildings (especially not skyscapers), as they are not allowed to use an elevator during Sabbath.

    So when Jews live in multi-level buildings (higher than around 4 floors), it’s a sign they are either very physically active people who like to walk up stairs – or it’s a decisive way for them to exit Jewish observance, as they have to break the Sabbath by definition of where they live.

    Observant Jews can work in an office with multi-levels, as they simply have to go home before Sabbath.

    But multi-level residential building (beyond around 4 floors depending on their fitness) is incompatible with Jewish religion. This is a problem for urban planning in Israel, as they have to build low-rise for observant Jewish populations.

    As a result they have to build quite strange architecture in the religious areas – high density but with not more than about 4 floors.

    denser organization than most peasants

    Maybe, although the habitation area of historical villages and settlements through human history, are extremely dense by modern stands, but would be surrounded by much more space.

    So it depends what your denominator is – the population density is low relative to the size of the land, but extremely high relative to the living area and buildings. The strongest example would be when people lived in caves, they would be very high density for the size of the cave, but very low density relative to the land in which the cave location.

    • Thanks: songbird
  700. I think Ron is too optimistic on Latinos.

    Granted, Mexico is a lot more developed now, and less volatile, and I am not predicting a race war in that direction, but it seems foolhardy to have open borders with a people that were engaged in an ethnic conflict with you, where both sides were killing civilians on sight, at least to a limited extent (more men than women or kids), not much more than 100 years ago. I think, at the very least, it speaks to a strong, innate sense of identity, which is not completely bridgeable to those who have eyes, and would necessarily have strong political repercussions.

    Anti-Americanism was once very powerful within Latin America.

    Though, I would say 10x for North Africans in Europe, or 100X for blacks. And I would prefer Castizo futurism to what seems the current track of the US.

  701. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader

    Can't wrap my head around this "1% minorities on the federal level" in Europe factoid. It seems such a bald-faced, trash statistic that I'm amazed that anyone has the gall to make that claim. Where is it true? Poland or the EU parliament? Obviously, not true at the NHS. France ideologically doesn't even take statistics on race - I wonder whether the book mentions that.

    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism, but what would the ancient German tribes do with modern German politicians, if we are to believe Tacitus about their only capital crimes being cowardice, treason, and sexual aberration? Most likely kill them all, including the AfD. Germans should consider going back to townhall-style meetings where they vote by banging their weapons - I think it might be a more responsive system.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism

    It’s not growing, I’ve been anti-American for a long time (even if I think most anti-Americanism is pretty stupid, since it’s usually just “America isn’t living up to her ideals”, when imo many of those ideals are exactly the problem). Back around 2015/2016 I had some hopes the American right might be able to reform itself and come to a saner view of the world (America as a normal, if powerful, country, an end to interventions abroad and mass immigration), but of course that hope proved to be completely mistaken, in foreign policy it was just the usual exceptionalist bs (and grotesque servility towards Jewish interest groups, on an unprecedented level), in the cultural sphere disgusting pandering to blacks, homos and trannies. imo the US right is really irredeemable, and the anti-European undercurrents in their ideological outlook are noticeable (for a telling, if extreme, example I just refer to the commenter “Johann Ricke” on Sailer’s blog who once stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany and other former Axis countries). I really think if there ever were genuine hardline right-wing regimes in Europe in power, US right-wingers could easily be persuaded to support subversion or even armed intervention against them, because America’s role as a crusader against evil abroad is so central to their identity, and the only remaining national myths in the US are antiracist ones (civil war, WW2, civil rights movement).

    including the AfD.

    AfD has a lot of good people, so that would be rather unfair imo.

    • Agree: songbird
    • Replies: @iffen
    @German_reader

    Don't give up on us, GR.

    The fat lady has not yet sung and the fat man may get re-elected and shake things up.

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Do you visit America often, or is this from all from their media? If you travel or live between countries, you know to expect that different countries are often like mixing orange juice and milk, even when you are talking about similar nationalities like Russians and Germans.

    Outside of some East Coast cities like New York and Boston, America feels like an opposite country to Germany in almost every way, except in terms of its industries and economy. (Germany is much more similar to Russia culturally).

    I have more culture shock walking in a street in America, than walking in Japan. That is, I think America is more of a different culture than almost anywhere I have visited. (It's similar to Mexico though).

    Whereas Germany feels not much different to Russia at all, and neither so far from Western Europe.

    Obviously not much of America will export well to Germany. But America has power, so most all of their things will be exported regardless of your emotional reactions.


    anti-European undercurrents in their ideological
     
    East coast cities like New York and Boston are somewhat more similar to Europe.
    Although even the elite Americans have some messianic religious style of thinking which you cannot avoid reading, and which is representative of a different continent.

    Republican base include places like Kentucky or Florida, which is really different mentality and lifestyle from modern European life.


    stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany
     
    Germany's pro-Israel attitude is unusual for Europe, and more similar to America. But in most of Western Europe the attitude is very anti-Israel. This is not based in rational consideration, but the influence of unconscious or conscious religious thinking in both cases (whether unconsciously in the anti-Israel view with supposedly secular people of UK and Ireland, or more consciously with the pro-Israel views among American Christians, who base their orientation from biblical quotes).

    Replies: @German_reader

  702. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism
     
    It's not growing, I've been anti-American for a long time (even if I think most anti-Americanism is pretty stupid, since it's usually just "America isn't living up to her ideals", when imo many of those ideals are exactly the problem). Back around 2015/2016 I had some hopes the American right might be able to reform itself and come to a saner view of the world (America as a normal, if powerful, country, an end to interventions abroad and mass immigration), but of course that hope proved to be completely mistaken, in foreign policy it was just the usual exceptionalist bs (and grotesque servility towards Jewish interest groups, on an unprecedented level), in the cultural sphere disgusting pandering to blacks, homos and trannies. imo the US right is really irredeemable, and the anti-European undercurrents in their ideological outlook are noticeable (for a telling, if extreme, example I just refer to the commenter "Johann Ricke" on Sailer's blog who once stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany and other former Axis countries). I really think if there ever were genuine hardline right-wing regimes in Europe in power, US right-wingers could easily be persuaded to support subversion or even armed intervention against them, because America's role as a crusader against evil abroad is so central to their identity, and the only remaining national myths in the US are antiracist ones (civil war, WW2, civil rights movement).

    including the AfD.
     
    AfD has a lot of good people, so that would be rather unfair imo.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry

    Don’t give up on us, GR.

    The fat lady has not yet sung and the fat man may get re-elected and shake things up.

  703. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    I think that it will, at least in Arizona and California. Mexicans seem to blend in with their white English speaking comrades rather easily. By the third generation, many can’t even speak any Spanih at all.
     
    Hopefully. OTOH one sees large stadiums in California where the Mexican team is cheered as they play against the American team who are booed:

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2008444/Only-America-U-S-soccer-team-booed-Mexico--California.html

    "U.S. soccer team booed in their own country as Mexican fans turn LA into an 'away' game"

    https://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2011/06/26/article-0-0CBC1F6400000578-942_634x444.jpg

    :::::::::::::::::

    America could become the leader of the Anglo world, or it could go in another direction and be the leader of the Americas (it probably won't hold onto Asia, but can chase the Chinese off the hemisphere if it wakes up and feels like it). Very optimistically, it would do both, showing two faces as Russia has a European and an Asian face.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry, @Emil Nikola Richard

    When Mexico beat Korea in the world cup match it ended at 4:00 A.M. or so Pacific time and my neighborhood was lit up by a million firecrackers. I didn’t even know there was a game until after I got up the next morning and checked the internet. All I knew was some crazy neighbors were blowing up a million firecrackers. It was all over in 5 minutes and I went right back to sleep.

  704. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Despite myself, I am warming up to the spirit of your growing anti-Americanism
     
    It's not growing, I've been anti-American for a long time (even if I think most anti-Americanism is pretty stupid, since it's usually just "America isn't living up to her ideals", when imo many of those ideals are exactly the problem). Back around 2015/2016 I had some hopes the American right might be able to reform itself and come to a saner view of the world (America as a normal, if powerful, country, an end to interventions abroad and mass immigration), but of course that hope proved to be completely mistaken, in foreign policy it was just the usual exceptionalist bs (and grotesque servility towards Jewish interest groups, on an unprecedented level), in the cultural sphere disgusting pandering to blacks, homos and trannies. imo the US right is really irredeemable, and the anti-European undercurrents in their ideological outlook are noticeable (for a telling, if extreme, example I just refer to the commenter "Johann Ricke" on Sailer's blog who once stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany and other former Axis countries). I really think if there ever were genuine hardline right-wing regimes in Europe in power, US right-wingers could easily be persuaded to support subversion or even armed intervention against them, because America's role as a crusader against evil abroad is so central to their identity, and the only remaining national myths in the US are antiracist ones (civil war, WW2, civil rights movement).

    including the AfD.
     
    AfD has a lot of good people, so that would be rather unfair imo.

    Replies: @iffen, @Dmitry

    Do you visit America often, or is this from all from their media? If you travel or live between countries, you know to expect that different countries are often like mixing orange juice and milk, even when you are talking about similar nationalities like Russians and Germans.

    Outside of some East Coast cities like New York and Boston, America feels like an opposite country to Germany in almost every way, except in terms of its industries and economy. (Germany is much more similar to Russia culturally).

    I have more culture shock walking in a street in America, than walking in Japan. That is, I think America is more of a different culture than almost anywhere I have visited. (It’s similar to Mexico though).

    Whereas Germany feels not much different to Russia at all, and neither so far from Western Europe.

    Obviously not much of America will export well to Germany. But America has power, so most all of their things will be exported regardless of your emotional reactions.

    anti-European undercurrents in their ideological

    East coast cities like New York and Boston are somewhat more similar to Europe.
    Although even the elite Americans have some messianic religious style of thinking which you cannot avoid reading, and which is representative of a different continent.

    Republican base include places like Kentucky or Florida, which is really different mentality and lifestyle from modern European life.

    stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany

    Germany’s pro-Israel attitude is unusual for Europe, and more similar to America. But in most of Western Europe the attitude is very anti-Israel. This is not based in rational consideration, but the influence of unconscious or conscious religious thinking in both cases (whether unconsciously in the anti-Israel view with supposedly secular people of UK and Ireland, or more consciously with the pro-Israel views among American Christians, who base their orientation from biblical quotes).

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But in most of Western Europe the attitude is very anti-Israel. This is not based in rational consideration, but the influence of unconscious or conscious religious thinking in both cases
     
    I don't see the equivalence tbh, even if many people in Western Europe have a disfavourable view of Israel, it's only a central issue for relatively few people. Whereas for many Americans fervent pro-Israel sentiment is a core part of their identity. The "America right or wrong" book by Anatal Lieven which AP mentioned above is pretty good on this pro-Israel sentiment as a component of American nationalism.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  705. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?

    https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3B89M/the-heavyweight-boxer-wladimir-klitschko-in-action-during-the-wbo-D3B89M.jpg
    The heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko in action during the WBO title fight vs. the US boxer Jameel McCline on 8 December 2002 in Las Vegas.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

    Ha ha. Don’t most white people always root for the white guy even if he is a gypsy? My old neighbors went nuts when the gypsy king won his first belt; it was by far the most noise I ever heard come out of their apartment.

    • Disagree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @Mikhail
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    Ha ha. Don’t most white people always root for the white guy even if he is a gypsy? My old neighbors went nuts when the gypsy king won his first belt; it was by far the most noise I ever heard come out of their apartment.
     
    Creed versus Drago - a matter of fictional reality.
  706. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Do you visit America often, or is this from all from their media? If you travel or live between countries, you know to expect that different countries are often like mixing orange juice and milk, even when you are talking about similar nationalities like Russians and Germans.

    Outside of some East Coast cities like New York and Boston, America feels like an opposite country to Germany in almost every way, except in terms of its industries and economy. (Germany is much more similar to Russia culturally).

    I have more culture shock walking in a street in America, than walking in Japan. That is, I think America is more of a different culture than almost anywhere I have visited. (It's similar to Mexico though).

    Whereas Germany feels not much different to Russia at all, and neither so far from Western Europe.

    Obviously not much of America will export well to Germany. But America has power, so most all of their things will be exported regardless of your emotional reactions.


    anti-European undercurrents in their ideological
     
    East coast cities like New York and Boston are somewhat more similar to Europe.
    Although even the elite Americans have some messianic religious style of thinking which you cannot avoid reading, and which is representative of a different continent.

    Republican base include places like Kentucky or Florida, which is really different mentality and lifestyle from modern European life.


    stated if Israel were ever threatened with destruction, she should drop nukes on Germany
     
    Germany's pro-Israel attitude is unusual for Europe, and more similar to America. But in most of Western Europe the attitude is very anti-Israel. This is not based in rational consideration, but the influence of unconscious or conscious religious thinking in both cases (whether unconsciously in the anti-Israel view with supposedly secular people of UK and Ireland, or more consciously with the pro-Israel views among American Christians, who base their orientation from biblical quotes).

    Replies: @German_reader

    But in most of Western Europe the attitude is very anti-Israel. This is not based in rational consideration, but the influence of unconscious or conscious religious thinking in both cases

    I don’t see the equivalence tbh, even if many people in Western Europe have a disfavourable view of Israel, it’s only a central issue for relatively few people. Whereas for many Americans fervent pro-Israel sentiment is a core part of their identity. The “America right or wrong” book by Anatal Lieven which AP mentioned above is pretty good on this pro-Israel sentiment as a component of American nationalism.

    • Agree: sher singh, Not Raul
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    central issue for relatively few people
     
    It is a strangely central issue for liberals in Western European countries like Ireland and UK. For example, I have been walking by a Palestine flag in daily walk to work, in two different countries. Also I've been by a Spanish city with a huge Palestine flag.

    This is a kind of religious flag of local liberals who become emotionally invested with the topic without really being interested in it. It is related to religion although unconsciously. If you look at English television, or media like Guardian, it's one of the priority topics for them in the negative sense. The attitude is also almost surreal in how much it is reversed from Russian television (very pro-Israel). Similarly in France "Le Monde", Israel is an important topic negatively, and in Spain - for "El Pais".


    pro-Israel sentiment is a core part of their identity.
     
    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this. Israel needs to try to improve its relationship with the leftwing in America.

    We saw with the attitude to coronavirus masks, or how Romney-Obama fans' sentiments in relation to Russia reversed 4 years later with Clinton-Trump's fanbase.
    -----------

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?

    I would say it is a very interesting country if you approach without believing any of their ideology (which sometimes they believe too much yourself) such as the ideals about "freedom", etc. You write like you become "disllusioned with America"- so the problem was your illusions.

    To say the obvious, like visiting any dangerous exotic tribe, you have to be careful about them, and not interpret their words on their own terms.


    American nationalism.
     
    There is a difference between nationalism (as in a liberation ideology of occupied countries) and imperialism. I had to explain this to Karlin (who is a "Russian imperialist" in terms of ideology) - but for Germany it's more confusing as nationalism included unification (rather than liberation), and was eventually converted to imperialism.

    Unlike 19th century Poles or Czechs, only in America could you say the confederacy is being occupied and might need a nationalist rebellion. Otherwise, this is the world dominant superpower, with imperialist ideologies, which encourage a jingoist attitude.

    America is also a revolutionary country, and the important things they argue about are usually more in the mental world or symbols, than in sober reality on the ground (the reality there changes less than their media pretend).

    So a patriotic rapper can talk about nothing substantial, but only about peoples' attitude to symbols. But for American listeners will probably be concerned what he is talking about, and believe it is relevant to the world whether someone kneels in the NFL, or that he doesn't want to write his pronouns, etc. This is a very ideological culture, which attributes almost magical powers to its symbols
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV7oI_Z68Pk

    Replies: @German_reader

  707. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    It's kind of interesting to read those claims, but like a satire of comparing apples and oranges.


    -----

    https://i.imgur.com/GxtC5tB.jpg

    Proportion of these nationalities can be completely different in each country.

    Also it writes like it is inferring from the lower "token diversity" indicators, to claim there is anti-diversity bias or provincial culture in Europe.

    Different nationalities might have different vocational skills, or desire level for working in different places. (For example, Haredi men don't work much in Israel, with the cause not being discrimination against them, but their lack of desire to work).

    There is also the fact that hiring of minority workers in such an employer, doesn't show how the median minority people are living. Shoigu is a Tuvan Minister of Defense in Russia - if you implied from that median Tuvans are living well, you would be very confused about the situation in Tuva.

    -----

    https://i.imgur.com/0nj1LuB.jpg

    Aside from the fact it measures the extent to which the population has been brainwashed to believe in "hard work leads to success" mythologies.

    This could be an interesting poll, although there would likely be great difference within Europe.

    If you sample Greeks, Italians, Bulgarians, Spanish, Romanians, and then sample Germans and English. There must be papers about belief system of people indoctrinated with "Mediterranean work ethic" vs. "Protestant work ethic".

    ---------

    https://i.imgur.com/zaGDOxl.jpg

    Because America use a different immigration regime than many countries in Europe - i.e. HB1 visa people will have very different income results on average, in a trivial way as the visa specifies the type of work.

    --------------


    https://i.imgur.com/gnSVFAe.jpg1.

    In many European countries, you donate enormous share of your income to the public, through taxation.

    2. US and European GDP per capita is very different. You would have to compare countries with equivalent post-tax net salary.

    3. A lot of American "charity" is simply paying for religious services, or religious activities (including missionary activity), rather than actually helping in Africa or India. E.g. Mitt Romney has been tithed to the Mormon Church.

    -----------------------

    https://i.imgur.com/XVVzmB3.jpg

    Most African Americans are descended from kidnap/hostage victims, and have been living in America for centuries. Meanwhile, most African people in Europe are recent immigrants or guest workers, who arrive voluntarily, and clearly don't have a bad situation in Europe (they vote with their feet).

    Replies: @Inselaffen

    to me the issue is not whether the stats are accurate (or even halfway fair) comparisons, but the ideology behind making such propaganda to begin with.

    That it’s from a ‘right wing’ american perspective (or at least something ‘right wing’ americans are agreeing with) makes it even worse, in that respect.

  708. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But in most of Western Europe the attitude is very anti-Israel. This is not based in rational consideration, but the influence of unconscious or conscious religious thinking in both cases
     
    I don't see the equivalence tbh, even if many people in Western Europe have a disfavourable view of Israel, it's only a central issue for relatively few people. Whereas for many Americans fervent pro-Israel sentiment is a core part of their identity. The "America right or wrong" book by Anatal Lieven which AP mentioned above is pretty good on this pro-Israel sentiment as a component of American nationalism.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    central issue for relatively few people

    It is a strangely central issue for liberals in Western European countries like Ireland and UK. For example, I have been walking by a Palestine flag in daily walk to work, in two different countries. Also I’ve been by a Spanish city with a huge Palestine flag.

    This is a kind of religious flag of local liberals who become emotionally invested with the topic without really being interested in it. It is related to religion although unconsciously. If you look at English television, or media like Guardian, it’s one of the priority topics for them in the negative sense. The attitude is also almost surreal in how much it is reversed from Russian television (very pro-Israel). Similarly in France “Le Monde”, Israel is an important topic negatively, and in Spain – for “El Pais”.

    pro-Israel sentiment is a core part of their identity.

    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this. Israel needs to try to improve its relationship with the leftwing in America.

    We saw with the attitude to coronavirus masks, or how Romney-Obama fans’ sentiments in relation to Russia reversed 4 years later with Clinton-Trump’s fanbase.
    ———–

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?

    I would say it is a very interesting country if you approach without believing any of their ideology (which sometimes they believe too much yourself) such as the ideals about “freedom”, etc. You write like you become “disllusioned with America”- so the problem was your illusions.

    To say the obvious, like visiting any dangerous exotic tribe, you have to be careful about them, and not interpret their words on their own terms.

    American nationalism.

    There is a difference between nationalism (as in a liberation ideology of occupied countries) and imperialism. I had to explain this to Karlin (who is a “Russian imperialist” in terms of ideology) – but for Germany it’s more confusing as nationalism included unification (rather than liberation), and was eventually converted to imperialism.

    Unlike 19th century Poles or Czechs, only in America could you say the confederacy is being occupied and might need a nationalist rebellion. Otherwise, this is the world dominant superpower, with imperialist ideologies, which encourage a jingoist attitude.

    America is also a revolutionary country, and the important things they argue about are usually more in the mental world or symbols, than in sober reality on the ground (the reality there changes less than their media pretend).

    So a patriotic rapper can talk about nothing substantial, but only about peoples’ attitude to symbols. But for American listeners will probably be concerned what he is talking about, and believe it is relevant to the world whether someone kneels in the NFL, or that he doesn’t want to write his pronouns, etc. This is a very ideological culture, which attributes almost magical powers to its symbols

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    It’s one of the main political issues in Western European countries like Ireland and UK.
     
    Sorry, but that seems an absurd exaggeration to me, imo the only people in Britain who care much about Israel/Palestine are Muslims and a subset of left-wingers (and even among the left it's not universal, Corbyn and his ilk lost the power struggle in Labour after all). To the extent average Brits think about the issue at all, many of them are even probably somewhat pro-Israel, out of dislike for Muslims (similar factors also apply in countries in continental Europe which have large Muslim minorities).
    I think your perception is somewhat skewed from having spent time in Cambridge, or whatever university town it was where you encountered leftie students.

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?
     
    It's rather negative, but there probably isn't much point in going into it. And my "disillusionment" happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.

    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this.
     
    This might happen, perceptions of Israel seem to be getting more negative among Democrats. I don't think it's inevitable, but maybe Israel will eventually come to be seen as another manifestation of "white supremacy" (even though such a descpription doesn't really fit the Israel/Palestine conflict).

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Dmitry

  709. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    central issue for relatively few people
     
    It is a strangely central issue for liberals in Western European countries like Ireland and UK. For example, I have been walking by a Palestine flag in daily walk to work, in two different countries. Also I've been by a Spanish city with a huge Palestine flag.

    This is a kind of religious flag of local liberals who become emotionally invested with the topic without really being interested in it. It is related to religion although unconsciously. If you look at English television, or media like Guardian, it's one of the priority topics for them in the negative sense. The attitude is also almost surreal in how much it is reversed from Russian television (very pro-Israel). Similarly in France "Le Monde", Israel is an important topic negatively, and in Spain - for "El Pais".


    pro-Israel sentiment is a core part of their identity.
     
    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this. Israel needs to try to improve its relationship with the leftwing in America.

    We saw with the attitude to coronavirus masks, or how Romney-Obama fans' sentiments in relation to Russia reversed 4 years later with Clinton-Trump's fanbase.
    -----------

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?

    I would say it is a very interesting country if you approach without believing any of their ideology (which sometimes they believe too much yourself) such as the ideals about "freedom", etc. You write like you become "disllusioned with America"- so the problem was your illusions.

    To say the obvious, like visiting any dangerous exotic tribe, you have to be careful about them, and not interpret their words on their own terms.


    American nationalism.
     
    There is a difference between nationalism (as in a liberation ideology of occupied countries) and imperialism. I had to explain this to Karlin (who is a "Russian imperialist" in terms of ideology) - but for Germany it's more confusing as nationalism included unification (rather than liberation), and was eventually converted to imperialism.

    Unlike 19th century Poles or Czechs, only in America could you say the confederacy is being occupied and might need a nationalist rebellion. Otherwise, this is the world dominant superpower, with imperialist ideologies, which encourage a jingoist attitude.

    America is also a revolutionary country, and the important things they argue about are usually more in the mental world or symbols, than in sober reality on the ground (the reality there changes less than their media pretend).

    So a patriotic rapper can talk about nothing substantial, but only about peoples' attitude to symbols. But for American listeners will probably be concerned what he is talking about, and believe it is relevant to the world whether someone kneels in the NFL, or that he doesn't want to write his pronouns, etc. This is a very ideological culture, which attributes almost magical powers to its symbols
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RV7oI_Z68Pk

    Replies: @German_reader

    It’s one of the main political issues in Western European countries like Ireland and UK.

    Sorry, but that seems an absurd exaggeration to me, imo the only people in Britain who care much about Israel/Palestine are Muslims and a subset of left-wingers (and even among the left it’s not universal, Corbyn and his ilk lost the power struggle in Labour after all). To the extent average Brits think about the issue at all, many of them are even probably somewhat pro-Israel, out of dislike for Muslims (similar factors also apply in countries in continental Europe which have large Muslim minorities).
    I think your perception is somewhat skewed from having spent time in Cambridge, or whatever university town it was where you encountered leftie students.

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?

    It’s rather negative, but there probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.

    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this.

    This might happen, perceptions of Israel seem to be getting more negative among Democrats. I don’t think it’s inevitable, but maybe Israel will eventually come to be seen as another manifestation of “white supremacy” (even though such a descpription doesn’t really fit the Israel/Palestine conflict).

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @German_reader


    It’s rather negative, but there probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.
     
    I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the Iraq War.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    average Brits think about the issue at
     
    It's possible that ordinary people do not care (you only notice the passionate people, about these topics).

    This is definitely not true with the media class and the academics, however. Israel (in negative sense) is one of the leading topics in the news programs, and also in the academic culture.

    Of course, there is no explanation for it, except that the religious unconscious of the secularized population.

    The reason you can see there is something religious, is because people are very passionate about the Israel/Palestine topic, but they are also not interested in it - i.e. they don't care much about the details.

    So in the end it people concerned about the spiritual symbols, rather than what really happens in that area of the world.


    university town it was where you encountered leftie
     
    Yes in my industry we have been partner to the university sphere. So I mainly had been in a Western Europe student area for years. But I wouldn't say the young students seem that passionate international politics. Students of Western Europe are also around 1/3 Chinese and Indians (much more Hindus than Muslims), who seem apolitical.

    Among the non-Chinese/India students, you can see that all of LGBT culture, respect for neuro and ethnic diverse people, choosing your pronouns, has become endogenously very popular. It fits to their psychology and luxury life circumstance.


    getting more negative among Democrats. I don’t think it’s inevitable, but maybe Israel
     
    Netanyahu's relation to the Republican Party has also increased the problem.

    Israel's external policy needs to focus on its leftwing connection to the USA. It's strange, because it's one of the most racially diverse countries in the world, and also with a socially liberal demographic in their elite, so they should it have been easy for them - they should have had by now an African female president, and a non-binary prime minister.

    But unlike the country, the political class reminds more of Japan, where many are family friends of each other, and live within an elite Ashkenazi bubble. Therefore Isaac Herzog has to be the Prime Minister. And all of the new Prime Minister, President, and Foreign, are now Ashkenazi. Despite including liberals, their new government is very weak in its "woke quota".


    probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.
     
    Disillusionment, when it's in relation to politics (not so much if it is in relation to your wife) is healthy.

    To say obvious of course the topic of America, is all more deep, important and interesting, than a war they had against a third world country that opposed them (and which they will continue to have such wars in the future, in a rhymical pattern).
    It would be like deciding the opinion of the United Kingdom, on their Mahdist War in Sudan.

    Replies: @Mikel

  710. @AaronB
    @Mikel

    Thanks!

    I agree to come extent the Hasidic look seems deliberately off-putting. I say to some extent because if you see them in their Sabbath or holiday finery, they can be impressive, especially the fine old men in their magnificent fur hats and long beards, many of them tall and imposing, in their special holiday coats.

    I have always hated those side curls, though :)

    Its interesting, because medieval Rabbis looked dignified and fine, and Sephardic Rabbis did too in their oriental garb.

    It is time to update this eccentric look - I also don't like the costume of the modern orthodox. All of this is recent, and there is no reason something more dignified can't be worked out.

    I've never been to see that group, no. As a secular person, I have very little involvement with the Hasidim except occasional visits to their neighborhoods and in the past, mixed events on certain holidays.

    I find them fascinating, though, and I enjoy walking through their neighborhoods. They are an interesting group - in their stores and houses, they hang these little signs that say it's a religious duty to be constantly full of joy, and they drink more alcohol than other Jews and party harder :) (of course, there is a dark side to the sect too)

    It's a great song. The lyrics are cool too, from the Psalms -

    "Except the LORD build the house,
    they labour in vain that build it;
    except the LORD keep the city,
    the watchman waketh but in vain.
    Behold, He that keepeth Israel
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    doth neither slumber nor sleep,
    He that keepeth Israel."

    I'm not religious, but I something about ancient religious poetry that I find very moving. Some verses from the Rig Veda and Upanishads also move me.

    The ancient world of the Psalms, seems to have been a dark place - a world of terror and danger, a world of tragedy and heroism, of anguish and yearning, of warriors fighting desperate battles, of enemies on all sides, of death defying victories and bitter defeats, and ultimately, a great desire for deliverance from this kind of world - it is the world of the Bronze Age, man's first leap into civilization from hunter-gathering. It is a grand world, and has it's appeal, but it is not a world of light.

    You get the same flavor from the famous Psalm - " Though I walk through the valley of death, I will fear no evil......"

    Thrilling and powerful stuff, but a dark world. Icelandic Saga and Homeric poetry is similarly dark.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mikel

    Thank you. Very good insights on what life must have been like at the dawn of civilization.

    I don’t need to understand any word to perceive that this song is about something deep, spiritual, ancient. Hope to see this group singing one day, perhaps if I finally give in to my wife’s idea of visiting NY, although I don’t know if these people perform for outsiders.

    I have always wondered why religions in different parts of the world, from very ancient times, were so concerned with regulating people’s day-to-day lives, especially what people can eat/drink and sexual norms, a part of which is what external looks are acceptable.

    There’s probably something deep in these matters. I know several people who, as soon as they stopped being religious, became vegetarian and adopted some other lifestyle norms that they didn’t have before. Essentially, they felt the need to regulate again their lives with different rituals and ironically they were much more observant than before, in spite of not having any religion now.

    Part of it must be the in-group/out-group thing, I guess. Hippies, punks, skinheads, antifas, lgbts, etc all follow some sort of external appearance norms to signal their belonging to their community. Sadly, Basque leftist separatists have also adopted some disgusting aesthetics of mullets and face-piercings. I cringe when I see them.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    I have always wondered why religions in different parts of the world, from very ancient times, were so concerned with regulating people’s day-to-day lives
     
    It is about how social norms are anchored, and the main way it is regulated in the pre-modern world is tradition, which is very often religious and/or mystical.
    , @AaronB
    @Mikel

    If you ever make it to NYC, perhaps I can find out where this group are playing and I can get you in :) I am sure they would be delighted if a non-Jew appreciated their music (as a secular Jew, in their eyes, I am hardly different than you, but I find the Hasidim quite tolerant of outsiders when it isn't about marriage etc)

    Good points about regulating ones life. I think it might be a form of mental therapy, similar to Buddhist mindfulness. Rituals "ground" you in the present, and help you cease ruminations and probably reduce anxiety.

    Good points also on dress and on group/put group psychology. I am sure that is a huge part of it.

    I never understood why Hasidic dress "froze" in the 18th century - evidently, they were dressing like their Polish etc neighbors, but then stopped updating.

    But I wonder if it was a resistance to the growing influence of the Enlightenment and secularization, which began around that time.

  711. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Almost all (or all) of the fights that theKlitschko brothers were involved with included a draping of the old blue and yellow on their bodies and a singing of the Ukrainian national anthem, as this pre-fight ritual was reciprocated by their opponents.

    The point that I was trying to make is that America is a great country that has thrived on the assimilation of immigrants, sooner or later as in our case and many others. By the time that you have grandkids, they'll probably be fully assimilated. America is indeed a great country, and can easily accompany the nostalgic yearnings of their citizens for "the old country". In the case of Mexican-Americans, I think that those that aspire to rise up the social economic latter of economic success will easily learn to adapt and work with their white neighbors (I work for such an individual, who's a third or fourth generation Mexican-American who barely can speak any Spanish). How do you feel about dual citizenship? The US government allows it, the Ukrainian one doesn't.

    Replies: @AP

    By the time that you have grandkids, they’ll probably be fully assimilated.

    Maybe. We don’t speak English with our kids though. From my end it’s the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia). The kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA, if things go down. I hope they don’t, I don’t feel like starting over.

    We aren’t disruptive to America though. There are not 60 million of us, as there are Latinos in the USA.

    • Thanks: sher singh
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Your political views seemed to me very American. For example, any arguments about hunting, dogs, religion, law, capitalism or houses.

    Also (as we discussed above) your pro-Ukraine flagwaving views, has been as American as apple pie among the 20th century, non-WASP, non-Axis, non-refugee nationalities (i.e. excluding English, German, Italian, Japanese). I.e. Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, even Chinese Americans. I noticed in San Francisco, that the Chinese Americans have added these displays about the brutality of Japan during the Second World War.


    kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA

     

    Without offending pro-Ukrainian patriotism, but I wouldn't view Ukraine would be the most useful or robust hedge or insurance against American collapse.

    I guess if you buy a castle in Ukraine it could be cool, and you could hire a private army with an American salary - but not so much if there is American collapse, and you need to work or use public healthcare locally, rather than relying on your American salary.

    Only younger professionals I know in Ukraine, are emigrating. For use by bourgeois children that expect professional employment like they would have in New England, with high salaries - maybe if you attained them passports for Switzerland or Australia. Even any EU passport are very useful - almost enough to marry EU citizens for.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    From my end it’s the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia).
     
    I'm not quite following you here. Are you inferring that your kids are third generationers who have learned Ukrainian, on your side? If so, I think that this is pretty rare, not the norm. They must have been born somewhere outside of the US to be first generation Russian speakers that emigrated to the US at some point?

    I'm glad to hear that your newbees can be seen in Church every Sunday. Not so in Phoenix. We currently have about 4 member families that fit the description. They rarely attend church services and the kids have an increasingly difficult time speaking in Ukrainian. I was, however, sitting next to one of the "kids" after church at a dinner , who is now 18, and has started to show a genuine interest in her native tongue. She actually speaks Ukrainian with a Ukrainian accent, unlike myself. I told her to find some Ukrainian blogs that align with her interests and start reading even a little bit every day, and that would help her get her skills to a higher level. Her younger sister is more interested in her green colored hair than speaking in Ukrainian. :-(

    Replies: @AP

  712. @German_reader
    https://twitter.com/literaryeric/status/1453011853391638536

    The American right is really uniquely horrible, aggressive, cruel and vindictive abroad, in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
    It would be better if more right-wing Europeans knew that these people prefer Somalis over them. There's already too much American and Israeli influence on the European right, it needs to be rejected.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @A123

    The American right is really uniquely horrible,

    MAGA broke the Left/Right concept, so your statement is very ambiguous.

    — The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
    — The SJW DNC is the party of MegaCorporations and Wall Street banks (Right?)

    If GW Bush ran for office today, he would be a full fledged DNC Jacka\$\$ His NeoConDemocrat war monger buddies are all DNC. And, we know he places corporations over workers.

    in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.

    MAGA unequivocally stands against Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] and Open Borders. MAGA Reindustrialization involves restraining MegaCorporations and their lobbyists. However, many MAGA supporters would argue that they are saving capitalism from monopolies, oligopolies, and State Owned Enterprises.

    Open [Muslim] Borders and Anti-Christian aggression are key characteristics of SJW Jihadi religious dogma held by Angela Merkel, and her pawn Ilhan Omar. Calling them “right” is confusing. However, I agree with you. Merkel has used underlings like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values, including unlimited Muslim migration.

    Judeo-Christian Populists in both Europe & America need to stand up against Berlin’s attempt to force Rape-ugees on the world. What Christian Europe needs the most is less Germany Uniparty (Red-Black-Green-Yellow). As long as power is wielded by that UnHoly 4 Headed Abomination of Moral Turpitude, all Infidels (Jews & Christians) need to stand together in common cause.
    ___

    There are some easy fixes, but Germany will not even allow them to be discussed.

    Renting land in North Africa for an “EU Asylum Clearing” center would be an immediate win. All Muslims who enter the EU and claim Asylum would be sent there until their case yields entry to a specific country willing to accept them.

    This is the humane option. How many die trying to illegally cross the Med? With a “Total Containment Facility” in Africa… Many would be able to cross a land border to start their asylum process.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
     
    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?

    Merkel has used pawns like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values
     
    Well, I would even agree that Germany doesn't play a positive role in Europe today (even though its attempts at bullying Poland and Hungary haven't been successful so far, and as regards the southern Europeans, they're not innocent on the migration issue either). However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    Replies: @iffen, @Not Raul, @A123

    , @Stan d Mute
    @A123


    MAGA unequivocally stands against Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] and Open Borders.
     
    Well then, that finally explains why your Orange Man pardoned Kwame Kilpatrick.

    We here in the HBD Mitten, we who have been paying attention, might disagree with your retarded assessment.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/kwame-kilpatrick-pardoned-by-president-trump/ar-BB1cUEBv
  713. @AP
    @Mr. Hack

    Those weren’t national teams but individuals. But you kind of prove my point, I’m not an assimilated American and neither were those Mexican fans in California.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mikhail

    Lot of Americans of Jewish, Italian, Polish and other backgrounds who kind of do the same.

  714. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Mr. Hack

    Ha ha. Don't most white people always root for the white guy even if he is a gypsy? My old neighbors went nuts when the gypsy king won his first belt; it was by far the most noise I ever heard come out of their apartment.

    Replies: @Mikhail

    Ha ha. Don’t most white people always root for the white guy even if he is a gypsy? My old neighbors went nuts when the gypsy king won his first belt; it was by far the most noise I ever heard come out of their apartment.

    Creed versus Drago – a matter of fictional reality.

  715. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @German_reader


    The American right is really uniquely horrible,
     
    MAGA broke the Left/Right concept, so your statement is very ambiguous.

    -- The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
    -- The SJW DNC is the party of MegaCorporations and Wall Street banks (Right?)

    If GW Bush ran for office today, he would be a full fledged DNC Jacka$$ His NeoConDemocrat war monger buddies are all DNC. And, we know he places corporations over workers.


    in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
     
    MAGA unequivocally stands against Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] and Open Borders. MAGA Reindustrialization involves restraining MegaCorporations and their lobbyists. However, many MAGA supporters would argue that they are saving capitalism from monopolies, oligopolies, and State Owned Enterprises.

    Open [Muslim] Borders and Anti-Christian aggression are key characteristics of SJW Jihadi religious dogma held by Angela Merkel, and her pawn Ilhan Omar. Calling them "right" is confusing. However, I agree with you. Merkel has used underlings like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values, including unlimited Muslim migration.

    Judeo-Christian Populists in both Europe & America need to stand up against Berlin's attempt to force Rape-ugees on the world. What Christian Europe needs the most is less Germany Uniparty (Red-Black-Green-Yellow). As long as power is wielded by that UnHoly 4 Headed Abomination of Moral Turpitude, all Infidels (Jews & Christians) need to stand together in common cause.
    ___

    There are some easy fixes, but Germany will not even allow them to be discussed.

    Renting land in North Africa for an "EU Asylum Clearing" center would be an immediate win. All Muslims who enter the EU and claim Asylum would be sent there until their case yields entry to a specific country willing to accept them.

    This is the humane option. How many die trying to illegally cross the Med? With a "Total Containment Facility" in Africa... Many would be able to cross a land border to start their asylum process.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader, @Stan d Mute

    The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)

    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?

    Merkel has used pawns like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values

    Well, I would even agree that Germany doesn’t play a positive role in Europe today (even though its attempts at bullying Poland and Hungary haven’t been successful so far, and as regards the southern Europeans, they’re not innocent on the migration issue either). However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @iffen
    @German_reader

    Tragicomedy has to be one of the greatest art forms created by humanity.

    "Conservatives" who claim Trump as one of their own is cosmic tragicomedy.

    , @Not Raul
    @German_reader


    However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.
     
    Das Woke is a hoax? 🙃
    , @A123
    @German_reader


    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?
     
    As you well know, MAGA held neither the House nor the Senate during Trump's administration. Plus, there was an ever looming threat of Impeachment.

    Trump's administration did manage to build 400-450 miles of border wall without House appropriations. That is a substantial achievement versus the opposition. How many miles of wall did Merkel build.

    NAFTA was hideous to U.S. workers. USMCA is decent first step in the right direction. However, he still had to obtain treaty approval from a non-MAGA Senate.

    Trump's administration removed regulation and encouraged the development of fracking for both oil & gas to make the U.S. energy self sufficient and keep energy prices low. This is exactly the opposite of Merkel's plans to shut down nuclear and become totally dependent on imported energy. Biden following Merkel's lead, ended a pipeline project, and put union workers on the dole.

    Every worker personally feels the horror of Merkel/Biden energy policy when they try to fill their tank. And, energy price driven inflation is just beginning to land.

     
    https://i1.wp.com/politicallyincorrecthumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/gas-prices-compared-obama-vs-trump.jpg
     

    Who is the poster child for Green Energy? Could it Greta Thunberg of Sweden?


    your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.
     
    Your feeble attempts to blame America for SJW Davos Globalism is severely geographically challenged. Hint, Davos is in Europe.

    You need to stop blaming the U.S. for horrible, tragic things that *Europeans* have inflicted on Europe. If you want to present a case that Bulgaria & France damaged Germany, I would be happy to listen with an open mind. There is evidence that would support such a charge.

     
    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/16/00/2E7ADF9D00000578-0-image-a-58_1447634992599.jpg
     

    However, your attempts to blame America for European SJW Globalism is absurd bordering on laughable.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

  716. @German_reader
    @A123


    The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
     
    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?

    Merkel has used pawns like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values
     
    Well, I would even agree that Germany doesn't play a positive role in Europe today (even though its attempts at bullying Poland and Hungary haven't been successful so far, and as regards the southern Europeans, they're not innocent on the migration issue either). However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    Replies: @iffen, @Not Raul, @A123

    Tragicomedy has to be one of the greatest art forms created by humanity.

    “Conservatives” who claim Trump as one of their own is cosmic tragicomedy.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
  717. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    It’s one of the main political issues in Western European countries like Ireland and UK.
     
    Sorry, but that seems an absurd exaggeration to me, imo the only people in Britain who care much about Israel/Palestine are Muslims and a subset of left-wingers (and even among the left it's not universal, Corbyn and his ilk lost the power struggle in Labour after all). To the extent average Brits think about the issue at all, many of them are even probably somewhat pro-Israel, out of dislike for Muslims (similar factors also apply in countries in continental Europe which have large Muslim minorities).
    I think your perception is somewhat skewed from having spent time in Cambridge, or whatever university town it was where you encountered leftie students.

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?
     
    It's rather negative, but there probably isn't much point in going into it. And my "disillusionment" happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.

    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this.
     
    This might happen, perceptions of Israel seem to be getting more negative among Democrats. I don't think it's inevitable, but maybe Israel will eventually come to be seen as another manifestation of "white supremacy" (even though such a descpription doesn't really fit the Israel/Palestine conflict).

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Dmitry

    It’s rather negative, but there probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.

    I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the Iraq War.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Not Raul

    Not much to say about it, it's just that it was obvious at the time that the official justification for the war was bs and that Bush's administration was bent on starting a war anyway. Even if one acknowledges that the US public was to some extent traumatized by 9/11, it was disturbing how deranged many Americans were in their war fever, by any rational calculation there was just no way a prostrate country like Iraq could be seen as a "threat" to the world's most powerful state. There's a delusional, paranoid character to much of foreign policy discourse in the US, and the Iraq war was a really drastic illustration of that.
    There was also an obvious Jewish factor to the war. Atlanticist media in Germany ran quite a few pieces by Jews or pro-Israel activists in their pro-war propaganda, which basically argued that you had to be some kind of horrible antisemite if you thought what was blatantly an aggressive war of choice might not be a good idea. I wouldn't even claim that factor was the dominant or most important one, but I couldn't help but notice it, and imo anybody who claims it played no role at all is either naive or deliberately obfuscatory.

    Replies: @Not Raul

  718. @German_reader
    @A123


    The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
     
    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?

    Merkel has used pawns like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values
     
    Well, I would even agree that Germany doesn't play a positive role in Europe today (even though its attempts at bullying Poland and Hungary haven't been successful so far, and as regards the southern Europeans, they're not innocent on the migration issue either). However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    Replies: @iffen, @Not Raul, @A123

    However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    Das Woke is a hoax? 🙃

  719. @German_reader
    @A123


    The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
     
    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?

    Merkel has used pawns like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values
     
    Well, I would even agree that Germany doesn't play a positive role in Europe today (even though its attempts at bullying Poland and Hungary haven't been successful so far, and as regards the southern Europeans, they're not innocent on the migration issue either). However, your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    Replies: @iffen, @Not Raul, @A123

    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?

    As you well know, MAGA held neither the House nor the Senate during Trump’s administration. Plus, there was an ever looming threat of Impeachment.

    Trump’s administration did manage to build 400-450 miles of border wall without House appropriations. That is a substantial achievement versus the opposition. How many miles of wall did Merkel build.

    NAFTA was hideous to U.S. workers. USMCA is decent first step in the right direction. However, he still had to obtain treaty approval from a non-MAGA Senate.

    Trump’s administration removed regulation and encouraged the development of fracking for both oil & gas to make the U.S. energy self sufficient and keep energy prices low. This is exactly the opposite of Merkel’s plans to shut down nuclear and become totally dependent on imported energy. Biden following Merkel’s lead, ended a pipeline project, and put union workers on the dole.

    Every worker personally feels the horror of Merkel/Biden energy policy when they try to fill their tank. And, energy price driven inflation is just beginning to land.

      

    Who is the poster child for Green Energy? Could it Greta Thunberg of Sweden?

    your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.

    Your feeble attempts to blame America for SJW Davos Globalism is severely geographically challenged. Hint, Davos is in Europe.

    You need to stop blaming the U.S. for horrible, tragic things that *Europeans* have inflicted on Europe. If you want to present a case that Bulgaria & France damaged Germany, I would be happy to listen with an open mind. There is evidence that would support such a charge.

      

    However, your attempts to blame America for European SJW Globalism is absurd bordering on laughable.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    As you well know, MAGA held neither the House nor the Senate during Trump’s administration.
     
    I'm not an expert on US politics, but I remember that rather differently:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_elections

    Democrats made a net gain of 41 seats in the United States House of Representatives, gaining a majority in the chamber and thereby ending the federal trifecta that the Republican Party had established in the 2016 elections.
     
    So imo it would be more accurate that Trump and the rotten Republicans pissed away a golden opportunity.

    Replies: @A123

  720. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @German_reader


    Can you name some specific policies of the Trump administration to support that view?
     
    As you well know, MAGA held neither the House nor the Senate during Trump's administration. Plus, there was an ever looming threat of Impeachment.

    Trump's administration did manage to build 400-450 miles of border wall without House appropriations. That is a substantial achievement versus the opposition. How many miles of wall did Merkel build.

    NAFTA was hideous to U.S. workers. USMCA is decent first step in the right direction. However, he still had to obtain treaty approval from a non-MAGA Senate.

    Trump's administration removed regulation and encouraged the development of fracking for both oil & gas to make the U.S. energy self sufficient and keep energy prices low. This is exactly the opposite of Merkel's plans to shut down nuclear and become totally dependent on imported energy. Biden following Merkel's lead, ended a pipeline project, and put union workers on the dole.

    Every worker personally feels the horror of Merkel/Biden energy policy when they try to fill their tank. And, energy price driven inflation is just beginning to land.

     
    https://i1.wp.com/politicallyincorrecthumor.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/gas-prices-compared-obama-vs-trump.jpg
     

    Who is the poster child for Green Energy? Could it Greta Thunberg of Sweden?


    your attempts to pretend that Germany is also responsible for wokeism in the US is really a bit eccentric.
     
    Your feeble attempts to blame America for SJW Davos Globalism is severely geographically challenged. Hint, Davos is in Europe.

    You need to stop blaming the U.S. for horrible, tragic things that *Europeans* have inflicted on Europe. If you want to present a case that Bulgaria & France damaged Germany, I would be happy to listen with an open mind. There is evidence that would support such a charge.

     
    http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2015/11/16/00/2E7ADF9D00000578-0-image-a-58_1447634992599.jpg
     

    However, your attempts to blame America for European SJW Globalism is absurd bordering on laughable.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    As you well know, MAGA held neither the House nor the Senate during Trump’s administration.

    I’m not an expert on US politics, but I remember that rather differently:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_elections

    Democrats made a net gain of 41 seats in the United States House of Representatives, gaining a majority in the chamber and thereby ending the federal trifecta that the Republican Party had established in the 2016 elections.

    So imo it would be more accurate that Trump and the rotten Republicans pissed away a golden opportunity.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader

    You misunderstand the situation. The actual state of play should be familiar to Europeans.
    ___

    MAGA split the GOP into two factions with very different goals. Thus there were three distinct power blocks in the Legislature:
        -1- SJW/DNC -- Anti-MAGA
        -2- GOP(e) -- Anti-MAGA
        -3- New GOP -- MAGA

    Anti-MAGA factions #1 & #2 were always in the majority. The only saving grace is that the intolerant SJW's were (and still are) incapable of compromise.

    There was brutal horse trading over almost everything. Most visibly Cabinet and Judicial picks. The big business aligned GOP(e) made it clear that some things were off the table. There never was a chance of getting H1B/OPT visa reform through the Legislature.

    The betrayal by Judas Sessions was a vicious blow to the Trump Administration. It gave massive leverage to GOP(e) Senators via the ability to investigate Trump and and possibly vote to Impeach.
    ____

    Doesn't this sound much like the 3-way coalitions that are common on your side of the Pond?

    The key difference is that U.S. elections are irrevocably date locked. There is no option to call for 'no confidence' or 'early elections'. MAGA and the GOP(e) grudgingly made a series of of one-off deals, because they both wanted accomplishments to campaign on. And, a major blow up, such as a government shutdown, would empower the SJW/DNC.
    ____

    Going forward MAGA needs to finish removing the GOP(e) holdovers. For example, Liz Cheney is going to be Primaried by a MAGA candidate.

    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp. Many fewer compromises. Much more productivity on the Policy front.

    # LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

  721. German_reader says:
    @Not Raul
    @German_reader


    It’s rather negative, but there probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.
     
    I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on the Iraq War.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Not much to say about it, it’s just that it was obvious at the time that the official justification for the war was bs and that Bush’s administration was bent on starting a war anyway. Even if one acknowledges that the US public was to some extent traumatized by 9/11, it was disturbing how deranged many Americans were in their war fever, by any rational calculation there was just no way a prostrate country like Iraq could be seen as a “threat” to the world’s most powerful state. There’s a delusional, paranoid character to much of foreign policy discourse in the US, and the Iraq war was a really drastic illustration of that.
    There was also an obvious Jewish factor to the war. Atlanticist media in Germany ran quite a few pieces by Jews or pro-Israel activists in their pro-war propaganda, which basically argued that you had to be some kind of horrible antisemite if you thought what was blatantly an aggressive war of choice might not be a good idea. I wouldn’t even claim that factor was the dominant or most important one, but I couldn’t help but notice it, and imo anybody who claims it played no role at all is either naive or deliberately obfuscatory.

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @German_reader

    I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.


    There’s a delusional, paranoid character to much of foreign policy discourse in the US, and the Iraq war was a really drastic illustration of that.
     
    Perhaps the paranoia comes from dominating a continent. In the absence of military threats nearby, we imagine fake threats far away, to fill in the empty space.

    Replies: @Not Raul

  722. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    It’s one of the main political issues in Western European countries like Ireland and UK.
     
    Sorry, but that seems an absurd exaggeration to me, imo the only people in Britain who care much about Israel/Palestine are Muslims and a subset of left-wingers (and even among the left it's not universal, Corbyn and his ilk lost the power struggle in Labour after all). To the extent average Brits think about the issue at all, many of them are even probably somewhat pro-Israel, out of dislike for Muslims (similar factors also apply in countries in continental Europe which have large Muslim minorities).
    I think your perception is somewhat skewed from having spent time in Cambridge, or whatever university town it was where you encountered leftie students.

    By the way what is your impression of America anyway?
     
    It's rather negative, but there probably isn't much point in going into it. And my "disillusionment" happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.

    America is built in a partisan system now, so if Israel becomes associated with a religious group (i.e. Evangelicals, who are allied to the Republican party), the other side will eventually flip. Israel will be cursed from this.
     
    This might happen, perceptions of Israel seem to be getting more negative among Democrats. I don't think it's inevitable, but maybe Israel will eventually come to be seen as another manifestation of "white supremacy" (even though such a descpription doesn't really fit the Israel/Palestine conflict).

    Replies: @Not Raul, @Dmitry

    average Brits think about the issue at

    It’s possible that ordinary people do not care (you only notice the passionate people, about these topics).

    This is definitely not true with the media class and the academics, however. Israel (in negative sense) is one of the leading topics in the news programs, and also in the academic culture.

    Of course, there is no explanation for it, except that the religious unconscious of the secularized population.

    The reason you can see there is something religious, is because people are very passionate about the Israel/Palestine topic, but they are also not interested in it – i.e. they don’t care much about the details.

    So in the end it people concerned about the spiritual symbols, rather than what really happens in that area of the world.

    university town it was where you encountered leftie

    Yes in my industry we have been partner to the university sphere. So I mainly had been in a Western Europe student area for years. But I wouldn’t say the young students seem that passionate international politics. Students of Western Europe are also around 1/3 Chinese and Indians (much more Hindus than Muslims), who seem apolitical.

    Among the non-Chinese/India students, you can see that all of LGBT culture, respect for neuro and ethnic diverse people, choosing your pronouns, has become endogenously very popular. It fits to their psychology and luxury life circumstance.

    getting more negative among Democrats. I don’t think it’s inevitable, but maybe Israel

    Netanyahu’s relation to the Republican Party has also increased the problem.

    Israel’s external policy needs to focus on its leftwing connection to the USA. It’s strange, because it’s one of the most racially diverse countries in the world, and also with a socially liberal demographic in their elite, so they should it have been easy for them – they should have had by now an African female president, and a non-binary prime minister.

    But unlike the country, the political class reminds more of Japan, where many are family friends of each other, and live within an elite Ashkenazi bubble. Therefore Isaac Herzog has to be the Prime Minister. And all of the new Prime Minister, President, and Foreign, are now Ashkenazi. Despite including liberals, their new government is very weak in its “woke quota”.

    probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.

    Disillusionment, when it’s in relation to politics (not so much if it is in relation to your wife) is healthy.

    To say obvious of course the topic of America, is all more deep, important and interesting, than a war they had against a third world country that opposed them (and which they will continue to have such wars in the future, in a rhymical pattern).
    It would be like deciding the opinion of the United Kingdom, on their Mahdist War in Sudan.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Dmitry


    Of course, there is no explanation for it, except that the religious unconscious of the secularized population.
     
    No, I don't think so. I'm not sure what kind of unconscious religious motivations you see for the European anti-Israel stance but I know that in Spain and the Basque Country it's just a matter of supporting the oppressed, weaker and colored minority against a country perceived as part of the global Western/White world. In other words, it's a part of the standard progressive (and nowadays woke) package. I'd be surprised if things were much different in the rest of Europe.

    In the US, on the contrary, religion does play a part in ordinary people's support for Israel. I like reading the comments to the local news just for the purpose of understanding how ordinary people think on different matters and international news on my local newspapers rarely elicit any comments at all. People care surprisingly little about foreign matters. But Israel is different. You see lots of comments supportive of Israel whenever there are clashes with the Palestinians. I'm not entirely sure though how much of it is the strong familiarity that people have with Israel due to religious reasons and how much is just media conditioning. Some comments seems to just repeat the usual talking points you here on the US MSM.

    In any case, in my ~30 years in Europe I don't remember having ever perceived any anti-Jewish sentiment of religious origin. That is all part of the distant past, I think. Anti-Muslim feelings of a religious nature, however, are quite visible sometimes.

  723. @German_reader
    @Not Raul

    Not much to say about it, it's just that it was obvious at the time that the official justification for the war was bs and that Bush's administration was bent on starting a war anyway. Even if one acknowledges that the US public was to some extent traumatized by 9/11, it was disturbing how deranged many Americans were in their war fever, by any rational calculation there was just no way a prostrate country like Iraq could be seen as a "threat" to the world's most powerful state. There's a delusional, paranoid character to much of foreign policy discourse in the US, and the Iraq war was a really drastic illustration of that.
    There was also an obvious Jewish factor to the war. Atlanticist media in Germany ran quite a few pieces by Jews or pro-Israel activists in their pro-war propaganda, which basically argued that you had to be some kind of horrible antisemite if you thought what was blatantly an aggressive war of choice might not be a good idea. I wouldn't even claim that factor was the dominant or most important one, but I couldn't help but notice it, and imo anybody who claims it played no role at all is either naive or deliberately obfuscatory.

    Replies: @Not Raul

    I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.

    There’s a delusional, paranoid character to much of foreign policy discourse in the US, and the Iraq war was a really drastic illustration of that.

    Perhaps the paranoia comes from dominating a continent. In the absence of military threats nearby, we imagine fake threats far away, to fill in the empty space.

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @Not Raul

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bc/Francisco_José_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg/677px-Francisco_José_de_Goya_y_Lucientes_-_The_sleep_of_reason_produces_monsters_%28No._43%29%2C_from_Los_Caprichos_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg

  724. @German_reader
    @A123


    As you well know, MAGA held neither the House nor the Senate during Trump’s administration.
     
    I'm not an expert on US politics, but I remember that rather differently:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2018_United_States_elections

    Democrats made a net gain of 41 seats in the United States House of Representatives, gaining a majority in the chamber and thereby ending the federal trifecta that the Republican Party had established in the 2016 elections.
     
    So imo it would be more accurate that Trump and the rotten Republicans pissed away a golden opportunity.

    Replies: @A123

    You misunderstand the situation. The actual state of play should be familiar to Europeans.
    ___

    MAGA split the GOP into two factions with very different goals. Thus there were three distinct power blocks in the Legislature:
        -1- SJW/DNC — Anti-MAGA
        -2- GOP(e) — Anti-MAGA
        -3- New GOP — MAGA

    Anti-MAGA factions #1 & #2 were always in the majority. The only saving grace is that the intolerant SJW’s were (and still are) incapable of compromise.

    There was brutal horse trading over almost everything. Most visibly Cabinet and Judicial picks. The big business aligned GOP(e) made it clear that some things were off the table. There never was a chance of getting H1B/OPT visa reform through the Legislature.

    The betrayal by Judas Sessions was a vicious blow to the Trump Administration. It gave massive leverage to GOP(e) Senators via the ability to investigate Trump and and possibly vote to Impeach.
    ____

    Doesn’t this sound much like the 3-way coalitions that are common on your side of the Pond?

    The key difference is that U.S. elections are irrevocably date locked. There is no option to call for ‘no confidence’ or ‘early elections’. MAGA and the GOP(e) grudgingly made a series of of one-off deals, because they both wanted accomplishments to campaign on. And, a major blow up, such as a government shutdown, would empower the SJW/DNC.
    ____

    Going forward MAGA needs to finish removing the GOP(e) holdovers. For example, Liz Cheney is going to be Primaried by a MAGA candidate.

    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp. Many fewer compromises. Much more productivity on the Policy front.

    # LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp.
     
    Sounds like wishful thinking to me, I don't get the impression that MAGA is more than an advertising slogan without substance, or that there is genuine change among Republicans.
    But of course I may be mistaken, I don't follow US politics closely. Good luck anyway.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

  725. @Not Raul
    @German_reader

    I agree with pretty much everything you wrote.


    There’s a delusional, paranoid character to much of foreign policy discourse in the US, and the Iraq war was a really drastic illustration of that.
     
    Perhaps the paranoia comes from dominating a continent. In the absence of military threats nearby, we imagine fake threats far away, to fill in the empty space.

    Replies: @Not Raul

  726. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    By the time that you have grandkids, they’ll probably be fully assimilated.
     
    Maybe. We don't speak English with our kids though. From my end it's the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia). The kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA, if things go down. I hope they don't, I don't feel like starting over.

    We aren't disruptive to America though. There are not 60 million of us, as there are Latinos in the USA.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack

    Your political views seemed to me very American. For example, any arguments about hunting, dogs, religion, law, capitalism or houses.

    Also (as we discussed above) your pro-Ukraine flagwaving views, has been as American as apple pie among the 20th century, non-WASP, non-Axis, non-refugee nationalities (i.e. excluding English, German, Italian, Japanese). I.e. Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, even Chinese Americans. I noticed in San Francisco, that the Chinese Americans have added these displays about the brutality of Japan during the Second World War.

    kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA

    Without offending pro-Ukrainian patriotism, but I wouldn’t view Ukraine would be the most useful or robust hedge or insurance against American collapse.

    I guess if you buy a castle in Ukraine it could be cool, and you could hire a private army with an American salary – but not so much if there is American collapse, and you need to work or use public healthcare locally, rather than relying on your American salary.

    Only younger professionals I know in Ukraine, are emigrating. For use by bourgeois children that expect professional employment like they would have in New England, with high salaries – maybe if you attained them passports for Switzerland or Australia. Even any EU passport are very useful – almost enough to marry EU citizens for.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    Your political views seemed to me very American. For example, any arguments about hunting, dogs, religion, law, capitalism or houses.
     
    Why only American? People from Western Ukraine and Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants, who come every Sunday). It is rare for Americans, unless they are Mormons or Evangelical Protestants, to be religious, and I am not one of those. Similar with views of hunting, dogs, etc. Do you think that viewing dogs as fundamentally different from livestock is uniquely American and that Russians or Ukrainians who don't mind eating pigs aren't disgusted by the idea of eating dogs?

    Ideas about capitalism or housing might just reflect familiarity with a superior system, rather than assimilation. Long-term visitors who see this first hand can also be impressed. And such ideas are not limited to America. Many Russians in Moscow like cars and houses with yards outside the city too - something I do not understand, if I lived in Moscow I would prefer the metro over sitting in traffic, but several friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more "American" than I am?


    Also (as we discussed above) your pro-Ukraine flagwaving views, has been as American as apple pie among the 20th century, non-WASP, non-Axis, non-refugee nationalities (i.e. excluding English, German, Italian, Japanese). I.e. Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, even Chinese Americans.
     
    I don't think that there is something fundamentally "American" about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese. Something fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in Brooklyn? Are unassimilated Chinese in Malaysia or Australia also American-like? An unassimilated Indian in Singapore is being like an American?

    Yours is a bit of a circular argument - if one is assimilated one is an American, but if one is not assimilated one is also an American by virtue of not being assimilated. The reality is that America has some foreigners living on its territory. Most of them are harmless or helpful, but if there are too many of one kind or of they achieve positions of great influence, they may be disruptive.


    "kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA"

    Without offending pro-Ukrainian patriotism, but I wouldn’t view Ukraine would be the most useful or robust hedge or insurance against American collapse.
     

    Their mother is Russian so their non-American passport isn't a Ukrainian one.

    I guess if you buy a castle in Ukraine it could be cool, and you could hire a private army with an American salary – but not so much if there is American collapse, and you need to work or use public healthcare locally, rather than relying on your American salary.
     
    If we had to escape a collapsing USA we would move into my wife's flat in central Moscow and live modestly off rent from another flat her family owns and from low salaries at some Russian hospital. This would be bad compared to my current lifestyle, I'd prefer America to be doing well. For the record, I think that chance of America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1% - not impossible, but extremely unlikely. More likely would be it sliding into a richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I'll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn't flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil is nicer than the rest.

    Only younger professionals I know in Ukraine, are emigrating.
     
    Your sample is necessarily limited to those who aren't there. I have plenty of cousins who stay there and live well. One returned from Canada (after first getting a Canadian citizenship). The ones who are best off are working in senior management of IT firms in Lviv. These pay good Western salaries in dollars, which go very far in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  727. Not sure that the hypothesis that America is to blame is supported by the way that Enoch Powell was sidelined, despite having broad support. Or de Gaulle writing in 1959, “It is very good that there are yellow Frenchmen, black Frenchmen, brown Frenchmen. They prove that France is open to all races and that she has a universal mission.”

    But I am not ideologically opposed to anti-Americanism, if it can be utilized effectively. I believe Latin Americans failed at it, but that is not to say that Europeans would. Could maybe even benefit heritage Americans by encouraging an insular culture or identity separate from mainstream Americanism, or a return to their root identity, as Jews have arguably done so, to a certain extent.

    Seems like it is more politically correct than the alternatives, and therefore might be more effective. Also, seems more real than the impersonal and abstract “multiculturalism”, and naturally it would be wise to tie the two together.

  728. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    average Brits think about the issue at
     
    It's possible that ordinary people do not care (you only notice the passionate people, about these topics).

    This is definitely not true with the media class and the academics, however. Israel (in negative sense) is one of the leading topics in the news programs, and also in the academic culture.

    Of course, there is no explanation for it, except that the religious unconscious of the secularized population.

    The reason you can see there is something religious, is because people are very passionate about the Israel/Palestine topic, but they are also not interested in it - i.e. they don't care much about the details.

    So in the end it people concerned about the spiritual symbols, rather than what really happens in that area of the world.


    university town it was where you encountered leftie
     
    Yes in my industry we have been partner to the university sphere. So I mainly had been in a Western Europe student area for years. But I wouldn't say the young students seem that passionate international politics. Students of Western Europe are also around 1/3 Chinese and Indians (much more Hindus than Muslims), who seem apolitical.

    Among the non-Chinese/India students, you can see that all of LGBT culture, respect for neuro and ethnic diverse people, choosing your pronouns, has become endogenously very popular. It fits to their psychology and luxury life circumstance.


    getting more negative among Democrats. I don’t think it’s inevitable, but maybe Israel
     
    Netanyahu's relation to the Republican Party has also increased the problem.

    Israel's external policy needs to focus on its leftwing connection to the USA. It's strange, because it's one of the most racially diverse countries in the world, and also with a socially liberal demographic in their elite, so they should it have been easy for them - they should have had by now an African female president, and a non-binary prime minister.

    But unlike the country, the political class reminds more of Japan, where many are family friends of each other, and live within an elite Ashkenazi bubble. Therefore Isaac Herzog has to be the Prime Minister. And all of the new Prime Minister, President, and Foreign, are now Ashkenazi. Despite including liberals, their new government is very weak in its "woke quota".


    probably isn’t much point in going into it. And my “disillusionment” happened long ago, because of the 2003 Iraq war.
     
    Disillusionment, when it's in relation to politics (not so much if it is in relation to your wife) is healthy.

    To say obvious of course the topic of America, is all more deep, important and interesting, than a war they had against a third world country that opposed them (and which they will continue to have such wars in the future, in a rhymical pattern).
    It would be like deciding the opinion of the United Kingdom, on their Mahdist War in Sudan.

    Replies: @Mikel

    Of course, there is no explanation for it, except that the religious unconscious of the secularized population.

    No, I don’t think so. I’m not sure what kind of unconscious religious motivations you see for the European anti-Israel stance but I know that in Spain and the Basque Country it’s just a matter of supporting the oppressed, weaker and colored minority against a country perceived as part of the global Western/White world. In other words, it’s a part of the standard progressive (and nowadays woke) package. I’d be surprised if things were much different in the rest of Europe.

    In the US, on the contrary, religion does play a part in ordinary people’s support for Israel. I like reading the comments to the local news just for the purpose of understanding how ordinary people think on different matters and international news on my local newspapers rarely elicit any comments at all. People care surprisingly little about foreign matters. But Israel is different. You see lots of comments supportive of Israel whenever there are clashes with the Palestinians. I’m not entirely sure though how much of it is the strong familiarity that people have with Israel due to religious reasons and how much is just media conditioning. Some comments seems to just repeat the usual talking points you here on the US MSM.

    In any case, in my ~30 years in Europe I don’t remember having ever perceived any anti-Jewish sentiment of religious origin. That is all part of the distant past, I think. Anti-Muslim feelings of a religious nature, however, are quite visible sometimes.

  729. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @German_reader

    You misunderstand the situation. The actual state of play should be familiar to Europeans.
    ___

    MAGA split the GOP into two factions with very different goals. Thus there were three distinct power blocks in the Legislature:
        -1- SJW/DNC -- Anti-MAGA
        -2- GOP(e) -- Anti-MAGA
        -3- New GOP -- MAGA

    Anti-MAGA factions #1 & #2 were always in the majority. The only saving grace is that the intolerant SJW's were (and still are) incapable of compromise.

    There was brutal horse trading over almost everything. Most visibly Cabinet and Judicial picks. The big business aligned GOP(e) made it clear that some things were off the table. There never was a chance of getting H1B/OPT visa reform through the Legislature.

    The betrayal by Judas Sessions was a vicious blow to the Trump Administration. It gave massive leverage to GOP(e) Senators via the ability to investigate Trump and and possibly vote to Impeach.
    ____

    Doesn't this sound much like the 3-way coalitions that are common on your side of the Pond?

    The key difference is that U.S. elections are irrevocably date locked. There is no option to call for 'no confidence' or 'early elections'. MAGA and the GOP(e) grudgingly made a series of of one-off deals, because they both wanted accomplishments to campaign on. And, a major blow up, such as a government shutdown, would empower the SJW/DNC.
    ____

    Going forward MAGA needs to finish removing the GOP(e) holdovers. For example, Liz Cheney is going to be Primaried by a MAGA candidate.

    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp. Many fewer compromises. Much more productivity on the Policy front.

    # LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp.

    Sounds like wishful thinking to me, I don’t get the impression that MAGA is more than an advertising slogan without substance, or that there is genuine change among Republicans.
    But of course I may be mistaken, I don’t follow US politics closely. Good luck anyway.

    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader


    Sounds like wishful thinking to me, I don’t get the impression that MAGA is more than an advertising slogan without substance, or that there is genuine change among Republicans. But of course I may be mistaken, I don’t follow US politics closely. Good luck anyway.

     

    As you say, you are not in the U.S. The Legacy of Trump's first term is not the the policies that happened during those four years. It is the MAGA realignment of the parties on major issues.

    One huge and obvious change is the return of the NeoCons to their natural home in the DNC War Party.

    The other is that Financial, Insurance, Real Estate [FIRE] MegaCorporations have flipped and are now DNC. This can be best seen by the actions of their mouth piece, The US Chamber of Commerce. (1) (2)

    MAGA is now irrevocably committed to Reindustrialization and Job Creation. Elected GOP officials who are not onboard with the new MAGA priorities are resigning or facing bruising Primaries.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/01/12/u-s-chamber-of-commerce-will-stop-financial-support-for-congress-members-who-support-president-trump/

    (2) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2020/08/28/the-bloom-is-off-the-ruse-tom-donohue-and-u-s-chamber-of-commerce-announce-support-for-far-left-democrats-in-2020/
    , @Yellowface Anon
    @German_reader

    Harnessing dissatifaction of the political establishment, alienation and the anticipation of eventual destitution under the curent system, are the names of the game. Needless to say, Trumpists are succeeding spectacularly especially since the start of this year, since the priorities of the American Right have shifted away from capturing the existing institutions.

  730. I wonder how the latest DNA study is being received in Japan. Would it be similar to what happened in India? Or do Japanese not really care/already acknowledge blood ties with the Chinese and Koreans? Could it change politics?

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    Or do Japanese not really care/already acknowledge blood ties with the Chinese and Koreans?
     
    I don't know, wasn't it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?
    iirc there were also attempts to forcibly assimilate Koreans and Taiwanese during Japanese rule (e.g. by forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names). Would the Japanese have done that, if they had thought there was a totally unbridgeable racial gulf?

    Replies: @songbird

  731. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    I wonder how the latest DNA study is being received in Japan. Would it be similar to what happened in India? Or do Japanese not really care/already acknowledge blood ties with the Chinese and Koreans? Could it change politics?

    Replies: @German_reader

    Or do Japanese not really care/already acknowledge blood ties with the Chinese and Koreans?

    I don’t know, wasn’t it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?
    iirc there were also attempts to forcibly assimilate Koreans and Taiwanese during Japanese rule (e.g. by forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names). Would the Japanese have done that, if they had thought there was a totally unbridgeable racial gulf?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader


    I don’t know, wasn’t it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?
     
    I had always thought that it was a lot, figuring rice was probably domesticated outside of Japan. And then there is the Ainu. And in SE Asia, the Negritos.

    Then, I guess, there is the Shinsen Shijiroku, which is a catalogue of Japanese clans from around 815 AD. Of 1182 families recorded, it reports 326 were foreign. With 126 coming from China, and the rest from different Korean kingdoms. Supposedly, many from Baekje as refugees, when it fell (660 AD), and some of these with inferred Chinese ancestry, based on the characters.

    I don't know about others' preconceived ideas, but I'm actually kind of shocked by how late they got their Chinese admixture, if I understand it correctly. It was in the Kofun period and not before then. (Starting very roughly around 250 AD). Makes modern Europeans seem ancient.

    Given the amount of Chinese ancestry, I'm surprised that there is no historical account by the Chinese about them subjugating Japan. (unless I am mistaken? Or maybe it was a slow process?) Wei-Zhi visited Japan in 297 AD, and I don't think he mentions anything about it.

    I swear I remember reading claims a few years ago that Japan and Korea had changed very little in comparison to Europe. That most of their DNA was local hunter-gatherers.

    With Europe, I think there's been a strong political element to the discussion. Originally, it was conquerors from the Russian Steppe, but that was too un-PC, after WW2. So, it became "pots not people" and the term "Battle-Axe culture" was put aside. Then the DNA proved it was a lie. And they changed tactics. "Europeans were originally black, your ancestors killed them off." (when I first saw the recreation of Cheddar Man, I thought it was photoshopped by brilliant 4chan trolls.) "There is no such thing as a European, it has always been in flux. A melting pot."

    Not sure about Japanese attitudes to Japanification. What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human. And I guess they were also invading SE Asia and PNG.

    Wish Africa were cold enough, so that we could get a more detailed story there. I think it would be quite interesting.

    Replies: @songbird, @German_reader

  732. @German_reader
    @A123


    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp.
     
    Sounds like wishful thinking to me, I don't get the impression that MAGA is more than an advertising slogan without substance, or that there is genuine change among Republicans.
    But of course I may be mistaken, I don't follow US politics closely. Good luck anyway.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    Sounds like wishful thinking to me, I don’t get the impression that MAGA is more than an advertising slogan without substance, or that there is genuine change among Republicans. But of course I may be mistaken, I don’t follow US politics closely. Good luck anyway.

    As you say, you are not in the U.S. The Legacy of Trump’s first term is not the the policies that happened during those four years. It is the MAGA realignment of the parties on major issues.

    One huge and obvious change is the return of the NeoCons to their natural home in the DNC War Party.

    The other is that Financial, Insurance, Real Estate [FIRE] MegaCorporations have flipped and are now DNC. This can be best seen by the actions of their mouth piece, The US Chamber of Commerce. (1) (2)

    MAGA is now irrevocably committed to Reindustrialization and Job Creation. Elected GOP officials who are not onboard with the new MAGA priorities are resigning or facing bruising Primaries.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/01/12/u-s-chamber-of-commerce-will-stop-financial-support-for-congress-members-who-support-president-trump/

    (2) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2020/08/28/the-bloom-is-off-the-ruse-tom-donohue-and-u-s-chamber-of-commerce-announce-support-for-far-left-democrats-in-2020/

  733. @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Thank you. Very good insights on what life must have been like at the dawn of civilization.

    I don't need to understand any word to perceive that this song is about something deep, spiritual, ancient. Hope to see this group singing one day, perhaps if I finally give in to my wife's idea of visiting NY, although I don't know if these people perform for outsiders.

    I have always wondered why religions in different parts of the world, from very ancient times, were so concerned with regulating people's day-to-day lives, especially what people can eat/drink and sexual norms, a part of which is what external looks are acceptable.

    There's probably something deep in these matters. I know several people who, as soon as they stopped being religious, became vegetarian and adopted some other lifestyle norms that they didn't have before. Essentially, they felt the need to regulate again their lives with different rituals and ironically they were much more observant than before, in spite of not having any religion now.

    Part of it must be the in-group/out-group thing, I guess. Hippies, punks, skinheads, antifas, lgbts, etc all follow some sort of external appearance norms to signal their belonging to their community. Sadly, Basque leftist separatists have also adopted some disgusting aesthetics of mullets and face-piercings. I cringe when I see them.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    I have always wondered why religions in different parts of the world, from very ancient times, were so concerned with regulating people’s day-to-day lives

    It is about how social norms are anchored, and the main way it is regulated in the pre-modern world is tradition, which is very often religious and/or mystical.

  734. @Dmitry
    @AP

    Your political views seemed to me very American. For example, any arguments about hunting, dogs, religion, law, capitalism or houses.

    Also (as we discussed above) your pro-Ukraine flagwaving views, has been as American as apple pie among the 20th century, non-WASP, non-Axis, non-refugee nationalities (i.e. excluding English, German, Italian, Japanese). I.e. Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, even Chinese Americans. I noticed in San Francisco, that the Chinese Americans have added these displays about the brutality of Japan during the Second World War.


    kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA

     

    Without offending pro-Ukrainian patriotism, but I wouldn't view Ukraine would be the most useful or robust hedge or insurance against American collapse.

    I guess if you buy a castle in Ukraine it could be cool, and you could hire a private army with an American salary - but not so much if there is American collapse, and you need to work or use public healthcare locally, rather than relying on your American salary.

    Only younger professionals I know in Ukraine, are emigrating. For use by bourgeois children that expect professional employment like they would have in New England, with high salaries - maybe if you attained them passports for Switzerland or Australia. Even any EU passport are very useful - almost enough to marry EU citizens for.

    Replies: @AP

    Your political views seemed to me very American. For example, any arguments about hunting, dogs, religion, law, capitalism or houses.

    Why only American? People from Western Ukraine and Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants, who come every Sunday). It is rare for Americans, unless they are Mormons or Evangelical Protestants, to be religious, and I am not one of those. Similar with views of hunting, dogs, etc. Do you think that viewing dogs as fundamentally different from livestock is uniquely American and that Russians or Ukrainians who don’t mind eating pigs aren’t disgusted by the idea of eating dogs?

    Ideas about capitalism or housing might just reflect familiarity with a superior system, rather than assimilation. Long-term visitors who see this first hand can also be impressed. And such ideas are not limited to America. Many Russians in Moscow like cars and houses with yards outside the city too – something I do not understand, if I lived in Moscow I would prefer the metro over sitting in traffic, but several friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more “American” than I am?

    Also (as we discussed above) your pro-Ukraine flagwaving views, has been as American as apple pie among the 20th century, non-WASP, non-Axis, non-refugee nationalities (i.e. excluding English, German, Italian, Japanese). I.e. Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, even Chinese Americans.

    I don’t think that there is something fundamentally “American” about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese. Something fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in Brooklyn? Are unassimilated Chinese in Malaysia or Australia also American-like? An unassimilated Indian in Singapore is being like an American?

    Yours is a bit of a circular argument – if one is assimilated one is an American, but if one is not assimilated one is also an American by virtue of not being assimilated. The reality is that America has some foreigners living on its territory. Most of them are harmless or helpful, but if there are too many of one kind or of they achieve positions of great influence, they may be disruptive.

    “kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA”

    Without offending pro-Ukrainian patriotism, but I wouldn’t view Ukraine would be the most useful or robust hedge or insurance against American collapse.

    Their mother is Russian so their non-American passport isn’t a Ukrainian one.

    I guess if you buy a castle in Ukraine it could be cool, and you could hire a private army with an American salary – but not so much if there is American collapse, and you need to work or use public healthcare locally, rather than relying on your American salary.

    If we had to escape a collapsing USA we would move into my wife’s flat in central Moscow and live modestly off rent from another flat her family owns and from low salaries at some Russian hospital. This would be bad compared to my current lifestyle, I’d prefer America to be doing well. For the record, I think that chance of America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1% – not impossible, but extremely unlikely. More likely would be it sliding into a richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I’ll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn’t flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil is nicer than the rest.

    Only younger professionals I know in Ukraine, are emigrating.

    Your sample is necessarily limited to those who aren’t there. I have plenty of cousins who stay there and live well. One returned from Canada (after first getting a Canadian citizenship). The ones who are best off are working in senior management of IT firms in Lviv. These pay good Western salaries in dollars, which go very far in Ukraine.

    • Agree: sher singh
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

     

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view.

    I never talked to e.g. Polish or Ukrainian people (or Spanish, or Germans, or Italians), who have these perspectives.

    This is not the specifics of attending church, but the way of discussing the religion. Similarly with other topics.

    friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more “American”

     

    Well, Navalny has these views about houses
    https://www.inliberty.ru/article/dom-navalny/

    Ukrainians who don’t mind eating pigs aren’t disgusted by the idea of eating dogs
     
    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations.

    Maybe in England there is a stronger attention for dog protection similar to America. But those same people who care for dogs' rights in England, would likely also be opposed to hunting, shooting coyotes, etc, (It's also similar in Russia - people who care about shooting street dogs, are also opposed to hunting).

    American by virtue of not being assimilated
     
    This is extremely 20th century, socially acceptable attitude to the home country, in America, which we know from the films and novels - to be flagwaving, proud, organizing parades, etc.

    The different immigrant groups have their own variations on the same theme, and it allows a secular community to be maintained.

    Unlike Irish, Jews and Italians - African Americans lacked a country to be proud of, and this has been difficult work to substitute for them (e.g. "Martin Luther King day").

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won't do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It's impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing "Colombus Day Parade" through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.

    fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in

     

    If Hasid were supporting Israel, it would be a sign that they were assimilating to modern America. They are supposed live mentally as they had in the 18th century, and are not supposed to adapt any nationalism.

    Of course, generally, Amish and Hasidic Jews are showing that even America does not have the skills to assimilate everyone, and they won't be waving any flags.

    “American” about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese.

     

    People like Conan O'Brian and his Armenian assistant Sona (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Fh563bQTA.), obviously have a very American attitude - with this proud flag waving for Ireland and Armenia.

    Similarly Obama writes "Dreams from my Father" to show he is like other Ellis Island Americans that immigrate to the "Land of the Free", while retaining dreams of their homeland - Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.

    Look at the career of Martin Scorsese, based on showing particularity of Italian-American immigrant experience. If Martin Scorsese's family had immigrated to France or England, they would not be making this style of film.

    This style of immigration is part of the American narrative, since at least the early 20th century. By the time "Godfather Part II " is released, no audience will be seeing this as a "non-American story".

    unassimilated Indian in Singapore
     
    I don't think Indians in Singapore, will be organizing "Celebrate India" parades through the streets.

    Whereas the American Jews are having "Celebrate Israel Parade". Israelis themselves would be embarrassed by this, and you can't imagine this in Europe.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPUcp-Qw9E

    This is indeed an American attitude. You even see in this forum (or more Sailer forum) - Americans are proud to support different countries, like selecting of football teams to support, as kind of symbols. In Europe, you would more likely just support a city football team.

    America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1%
     
    Well it is always far more likely than societal collapse, that you would just have trouble with IRS, in which case Russian passport is very useful, and it's envious to hear you will be living as an elite fugitive with an apartment in central Moscow.

    richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I’ll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn’t flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil
     
    Rich people in Brazil probably live better than in most every other country - it's a country designed to be paradise for them.

    If the collapse in the USA would be only to "Brazilian style country", then I'm not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of "Submission" by Houellebecq.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP, @sher singh

  735. @German_reader
    @A123


    The next MAGA President will have the House, Senate, or both in the MAGA camp.
     
    Sounds like wishful thinking to me, I don't get the impression that MAGA is more than an advertising slogan without substance, or that there is genuine change among Republicans.
    But of course I may be mistaken, I don't follow US politics closely. Good luck anyway.

    Replies: @A123, @Yellowface Anon

    Harnessing dissatifaction of the political establishment, alienation and the anticipation of eventual destitution under the curent system, are the names of the game. Needless to say, Trumpists are succeeding spectacularly especially since the start of this year, since the priorities of the American Right have shifted away from capturing the existing institutions.

  736. Has anyone read the newest featured post from Anglin?

    Blinken seems to have forgotten China (as in Red China) is the permanent member of the UN Security Council since 1972, and Taiwan is de jure a province of China from the view of UN, even from the perspective of Taipei (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Province).

    The likeliness of WWII happening between China & the US in this & the next year is above 30%. A telling & certain sign WWIII against China is planned, is the US and/or China being outside the Security Council (either unilateral withdrawal or expulsion)

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    Empty cannons of rhetoric.

    The political elite of the US may be dumb and short-sighted, but they are not suicidal.

    IMO, we averted war with Iran because it was too big. And, if the Boltons and McCains did not know it, others did.

    Replies: @A123

  737. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    By the time that you have grandkids, they’ll probably be fully assimilated.
     
    Maybe. We don't speak English with our kids though. From my end it's the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia). The kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA, if things go down. I hope they don't, I don't feel like starting over.

    We aren't disruptive to America though. There are not 60 million of us, as there are Latinos in the USA.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack

    From my end it’s the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia).

    I’m not quite following you here. Are you inferring that your kids are third generationers who have learned Ukrainian, on your side? If so, I think that this is pretty rare, not the norm. They must have been born somewhere outside of the US to be first generation Russian speakers that emigrated to the US at some point?

    I’m glad to hear that your newbees can be seen in Church every Sunday. Not so in Phoenix. We currently have about 4 member families that fit the description. They rarely attend church services and the kids have an increasingly difficult time speaking in Ukrainian. I was, however, sitting next to one of the “kids” after church at a dinner , who is now 18, and has started to show a genuine interest in her native tongue. She actually speaks Ukrainian with a Ukrainian accent, unlike myself. I told her to find some Ukrainian blogs that align with her interests and start reading even a little bit every day, and that would help her get her skills to a higher level. Her younger sister is more interested in her green colored hair than speaking in Ukrainian. 🙁

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m glad to hear that your newbees can be seen in Church every Sunday. Not so in Phoenix. We currently have about 4 member families that fit the description.
     
    Ukrainians interested in preserving their heritage probably wouldn't move to Phoenix, but to places with established communities with Ukrainian schools as well as churches etc. I would not have moved to a place without that infrastructure.

    I’m not quite following you here. Are you inferring that your kids are third generationers who have learned Ukrainian, on your side? If so, I think that this is pretty rare, not the norm. They must have been born somewhere outside of the US to be first generation Russian speakers that emigrated to the US at some point?
     


    Me and my parents were born outside Ukraine so from me they are the third generation born abroad, away from Ukraine. But from my wife they are the first generation born outside Russia.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  738. @Dmitry
    @Mikel

    The dark sides of this, is that the Haredi Jewish men develop good singers partly because most of the Haredi communities ban women from singing when men can hear (as they believe women singing in public where men can hear, would encourage "sexual immorality"). Especially they dislike men hearing a solo female singer's voice.

    So singing duty for Haredim in mixed-gender areas, can be only for men and children, women singers are banned from there, and women who want to sing can only sing in women's only concerts which men are banned from hearing.

    In Israel, female soldiers singing is one of the centres of the country's culture, and female soldiers are singing on the street for national festivals. So some of the few Haredi soldiers are leaving the army because they believe listening to a woman singing would be so "immoral" for them. https://www.pressreader.com/israel/jerusalem-post/20120112/282381216414313

    But somehow men singing in front of women is allowed by Haredi Jews, and they don't worry it could encourage romantic thoughts (someone needed to tell them about Beatlemania and Justin Bieber).

    Replies: @AaronB, @Max Demian

    The dark sides of this, is that the Haredi Jewish men develop good singers partly because most of the Haredi communities ban women from singing when men can hear

    What do you find “dark” about that?

    (as they believe women singing in public where men can hear, would encourage “sexual immorality”)

    The concern is that the voice of a woman singing can arouse lust in a man.

    But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart. (Matthew 5:28)

    Orthodox Jews are not exactly the only ones to consider mere lewd or lustful thoughts to be sinful…

    But somehow men singing in front of women is allowed by Haredi Jews, and they don’t worry it could encourage romantic thoughts

    It’s almost as if there are inherent, fundamental, profound differences in the respective psyches and biological responses to various stimuli between the male and the female of the species.

    Romantic vs. lewd. Which better describes the thoughts that the sound of an attractive woman singing are likely to provoke in a man?

    • LOL: sher singh
  739. @A123
    @German_reader


    The American right is really uniquely horrible,
     
    MAGA broke the Left/Right concept, so your statement is very ambiguous.

    -- The MAGA GOP is the workers party (Left?)
    -- The SJW DNC is the party of MegaCorporations and Wall Street banks (Right?)

    If GW Bush ran for office today, he would be a full fledged DNC Jacka$$ His NeoConDemocrat war monger buddies are all DNC. And, we know he places corporations over workers.


    in favour of antiracism, mass immigration and unrestrained capitalism at home.
     
    MAGA unequivocally stands against Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] and Open Borders. MAGA Reindustrialization involves restraining MegaCorporations and their lobbyists. However, many MAGA supporters would argue that they are saving capitalism from monopolies, oligopolies, and State Owned Enterprises.

    Open [Muslim] Borders and Anti-Christian aggression are key characteristics of SJW Jihadi religious dogma held by Angela Merkel, and her pawn Ilhan Omar. Calling them "right" is confusing. However, I agree with you. Merkel has used underlings like Rashid Tlaib to spread uniquely horrible Deutsche SJW values, including unlimited Muslim migration.

    Judeo-Christian Populists in both Europe & America need to stand up against Berlin's attempt to force Rape-ugees on the world. What Christian Europe needs the most is less Germany Uniparty (Red-Black-Green-Yellow). As long as power is wielded by that UnHoly 4 Headed Abomination of Moral Turpitude, all Infidels (Jews & Christians) need to stand together in common cause.
    ___

    There are some easy fixes, but Germany will not even allow them to be discussed.

    Renting land in North Africa for an "EU Asylum Clearing" center would be an immediate win. All Muslims who enter the EU and claim Asylum would be sent there until their case yields entry to a specific country willing to accept them.

    This is the humane option. How many die trying to illegally cross the Med? With a "Total Containment Facility" in Africa... Many would be able to cross a land border to start their asylum process.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @German_reader, @Stan d Mute

    MAGA unequivocally stands against Diversity, Inclusion, Equity [DIE] and Open Borders.

    Well then, that finally explains why your Orange Man pardoned Kwame Kilpatrick.

    We here in the HBD Mitten, we who have been paying attention, might disagree with your retarded assessment.

    https://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/nfl/kwame-kilpatrick-pardoned-by-president-trump/ar-BB1cUEBv

  740. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    Do you think maybe Germany will be able to shake off the rot or at least hold down all the degeneracy like they did before in the 20th century or are parts of it( in particular-West Germany) completely subverted?
     
    The West German bourgeoisie is so fucked in the head I no longer believe in the possibility of political change averting total disaster. The migration crisis and everything that followed was an eye-opening experience for me, it really showed me that I have nothing in common anymore with large sections of this country (and that applies to ethnic Germans, obviously even more true with regard to Turks or various "people of color")...they live in a total fantasy land where states and nations are obsolete and the only problem is "Nazis" (or maybe "white privilege" and "white supremacy", US concepts have been taken up rapidly by left-wingers in Germany). 2018 kind of mentally broke me...migrants (Kurds iirc) stabbed to death a native in Chemnitz (actually a mixed-race guy of half Cuban ancestry iirc, and his friends who were also seriously wounded were Russian-Germans...didn't matter either, as do all the other horror crimes perpetrated by Merkel's migrants)...and the German establishment reacted by inventing some kind of anti-foreigner pogrom in Chemnitz, with "antifascist" bands holding huge concerts against racism there and being lauded by the fucking president for it, with all the good people virtue-signaling on social media with the slogan "Wir sind mehr" (= we are more than them, i.e. evil Nazis hunting down innocent, defenseless migrants). That showed me that the West German bourgeoisie in its boundless self-righteousness will never snap out of their delusions, they will carry this insane mass immigration project to its bitter conclusion, not least because otherwise they would have to admit that East German proles back in 2014/15 had a more accurate perception of reality than them.
    As for "Anglo" influence, I would rather limit it to American influence, which I would agree has been really pernicious in Europe. And that includes Britain imo whose mental thralldom to America is a tragedy. Obviously that pernicious influence continues to operate, you get all the racial discourse about things being "too white" now in Germany too. But one can't absolve Germany's elites and the general population of their responsibility, in the end much of this madness is self-inflicted.

    Replies: @Dmitry, @songbird, @Svidomyatheart

    I know im coming off rude and unpleasant but i assure you im just being realistic.
    See the core of the problem is that is a good 95% of Anglos are pro Empire and will defend it if push comes to shove.This article does read somewhat like cope because irrc Greeks are salty Anglos always support Turks over them but the core point is there ( https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-transatlantic-love-affair-is-over/ ) I think Brits see “oh man those Americans they used to be us…literally” and US is still a technological and cultural powerhouse and so Brits get taken over by all kinds of mind viruses otherwise they would not be in the situation they are now. Even now they want to make that 5 eyes club(those recent anti China shenanigans against France with Aussies+Brits+Americans). Blood is still thicker than water, I suppose.

    You just said it yourself that Britain is mentally occupied by America. And what happens when “Right Wing” Americans view Somalis as closer to them than Europeans and view having Somali businesses as the cornerstones of successful policy?
    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British…equivalent?(if that’s a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners? I think the rot sets in at very early age where they get indoctrinated with race , minority worship, gay worship, etc.

    The issue is that the US will get more and more insane as time passes by. The problem is when an empire sees its weakening it can lash out. On whom will they lash out?
    USSR was killing its own citizens. Mostly. And USSR managed to cause extreme amounts of damage before it finally imploded. What will Anglos do? Nobody knows the amount of damage US empire will cause but they’re definitely going to try something in Europe thats for sure, all signs point there. But thats for the future…2030s and 2040s I guess.

    Imagine we are getting stuck between 2 empires, both equally insane one wants to cannibalize and consume you and the other to flood you with unassimilable foreigners, there was an article about how Ukraine need to import Africans Pakistanis and Indians into its workforce by some think tank but unfortunately i have lost it.
    Of course the 4-6 billion Africans being buttressed by the US empire is going to be a headache in future. And yes by now everyone is aware of the Bantu genocidal expansion but Americans have this blank slate theory and an odd mindset “Oh man sure those blacks loot kill and riot haha but they’re OUR based blacks”.

    US wants Africans and the whole Global South in every part of the globe and especially Europe.(including parts Anglos didnt to colonize in the past) and Russia wants its Chechen and other Russian mystery meat SlavoFinnoUgricTurkic mutts to flood us. Both plans are incredibly devious and insidious.

    US destroys and sucks up dwindling resources from all over the world just so they can to prop up their favorite pets to the tune of 3000-4000 calories a day and housing, EBT, etc. Americans have poured everything into blacks giving money, power, status ,their women and so on yet with no return on investment whatsoever(except rap music and “black family values” aka extremely dysfunctional social norms).

    And on the other side Russia rips out precious metals and other minerals just to feed and sustain Kavkazoids and other ethnic minorities that murder(seriously blacks can be sort of placated with gibs and such but Chechens and other Caucasoids can and will just kill you for a slight offense like a Chechen slaying some child or a woman is a regular occurrence).
    At least blacks produce music and i dont know some sort of ?”culture”?(as degenerate and useless as it is) What do Chechens do? Slit throats and are massively involved into other shady things all those extremely clannish gold chain people do? They’re like extremely dangerous gypsies with their ethnic mafias.

    I assure you things are not looking good here either. Even in the most far flung “province” of the empire( we arent even a province Ukraine isnt part of anything) Westerners are pushing this transgender and multiculturalism poison trying to destroy what little we have remaining of our world(after gomunism, Russian parasites, etc)
    Take a look at this stuff straight out of US State Department. Der Russe Nitichevski muss sterben, damit wir leben. Its like we have to substitute Russie for West….
    https://imgur.com/a/TGG4sEO
    these are not my hands btw

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Svidomyatheart

    Fortunately, most Ukrainian families that are rearing children don't have the time, nor the desire to read what's on the US State Department's website. Do you currently live in Ukraine, what part? Do you think that your pronounced angst towards Russians is characteristic of most Ukrainians in your area? It wasn't always so, and in the not too distant past, most Ukrainians held pretty positive feelings towards their neighbors...

    Replies: @Svidomyatheart, @Svidomyatheart

    , @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British…equivalent?(if that’s a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners?
     


    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don't quite know what to make of it. Might be the twisted mirror image of the pretensions to global hegemony which seem to come so naturally to many Americans. Powell's world view was a much more traditional and rational one, which imo only looks extreme if one thinks nations (at least European ones) are an illegitimate concept per se.
    But anyway, of course you're right that large percentages of Westerners today are fervent believers in multiculturalism and mass immigration, and I'd agree that Britain is one of the worse examples for this in Europe (maybe on the same level as Sweden and West Germany). But it's a historically fairly recent development. During my father's childhood and youth in Lancashire in the 1950s and 1960s it was an almost monoethnic environment (apart from some other white Europeans, like Poles and Balts who had fled from the Soviets; there also were already some colored immigrants, but they were clearly regarded as foreign and resented in a way the Eastern Europeans weren't), with a strong sense of British (or maybe rather English) nationhood. This sceptred isle, and all that. And it most definitely wasn't a racially inclusive concept of nationhood.
    There was also less personal experience of the empire than one could imagine, none of my relatives from the mid-19th century onwards had any experience of it, and as far as I can tell the same seems to be true for the families of all my father's friends and acquaintances. Regarding America, there was intense resentment of the US in post-war Britain. My English grandfather didn't like the Americans he encountered during WW2, he thought them arrogant and condescending, and there was a lot of envy of the material abundance the Americans enjoyed (and which they flaunted), while Britain was on food rationing until the early 1950s. And after WW2 there was a widespread sentiment that the US was intent on humiliating Britain and dismantling her great power status. Now on a surface level at least much of that criticism was probably unfair, given American assistance (though on a deeper level it probably wasn't incorrect). But that kind of sentiments wasn't uncommon, and obviously complicates any interpretation founded on natural convergence of British and American interests.
    Of course that's all somewhat anecdotal and probably not the whole story, but I find it difficult to reconcile the experiences of my father (or of his friends still living in England, most of whose horizons are basically limited to northwestern Europe) with all those notions of "global Britain" and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn't reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit voters.

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us
     
    I can see how Ukraine's position is very difficult. Personally I think it would be best if some kind of mutually acceptable agreement between Ukraine and Russia could be reached, but obviously that seems hardly possible when many Russians don't even accept that Ukraine is a separate nation. So I guess you'll have to try to exploit Westerners to your advantage, while keeping their nation-wrecking ideology at bay. We'll see if that's possible.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @Svidomyatheart

    , @LatW
    @Svidomyatheart


    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us
     
    Ukraine is large enough that it can carve out its own policy, if there is political will. You have not signed into any serious obligations yet with the West. Even if Ukraine gets integrated into the Western security structures in some way, let's say, through some kind of an enhanced cooperation, even then Ukraine does not have to fully comply with the woke ideology. The amount of support from the US, while important, is not enough to win a war for you plus there are geopolitical interests in the Black Sea that the West will never give up. What, the US will stop siding with you against Russia, just because you don't introduce gender neutrality? No. Besides, if you look at Johnson's "Global Britain" remarks, it seems that the British will not abandon you.

    Ukraine has shown that it has the will to stand up for itself. Recently the Ukrainian army has brought some potentially game changing elements to the front lines that could help enforce a real cease fire.

    Maybe Ukraine should model itself in a way that's more similar to countries such as Japan, Turkey, Israel. All of these are Western partners, but they retain their own internal policies. You can always argue that you are freedom loving Cossacks who have their own Cossack way. :) And always argue that Ukraine is a front line state that deserves all kinds of exceptions. Not exceptions in, let's say, the rule of law which is good to observe for Ukraine's own sake, but exceptions pertaining to the woke practices.

    Ideally, of course, a range of countries should come together and simply state that we can continue our friendship and cooperation, but that we will not be accepting the crazy parts. Frankly, last summer's "pregnant people" really did it for me. Time to tactfully say "No thanks".

    The excerpt you posted is very disturbing and if it indeed comes from the State Department then it's very dangerous (not only encourages mutilating female children but teaches one not to accept or even dislike femininity). Of course, the State Department has been living in its own world for a long time. Again, you don't have to comply in any way! You have enough bargaining power on your own. The more risky part is if people themselves start doing it, because parts of the world are now on track for this.

    Replies: @Svidomyatheart

  741. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Or do Japanese not really care/already acknowledge blood ties with the Chinese and Koreans?
     
    I don't know, wasn't it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?
    iirc there were also attempts to forcibly assimilate Koreans and Taiwanese during Japanese rule (e.g. by forcing Koreans to adopt Japanese names). Would the Japanese have done that, if they had thought there was a totally unbridgeable racial gulf?

    Replies: @songbird

    I don’t know, wasn’t it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?

    I had always thought that it was a lot, figuring rice was probably domesticated outside of Japan. And then there is the Ainu. And in SE Asia, the Negritos.

    Then, I guess, there is the Shinsen Shijiroku, which is a catalogue of Japanese clans from around 815 AD. Of 1182 families recorded, it reports 326 were foreign. With 126 coming from China, and the rest from different Korean kingdoms. Supposedly, many from Baekje as refugees, when it fell (660 AD), and some of these with inferred Chinese ancestry, based on the characters.

    I don’t know about others’ preconceived ideas, but I’m actually kind of shocked by how late they got their Chinese admixture, if I understand it correctly. It was in the Kofun period and not before then. (Starting very roughly around 250 AD). Makes modern Europeans seem ancient.

    [MORE]

    Given the amount of Chinese ancestry, I’m surprised that there is no historical account by the Chinese about them subjugating Japan. (unless I am mistaken? Or maybe it was a slow process?) Wei-Zhi visited Japan in 297 AD, and I don’t think he mentions anything about it.

    I swear I remember reading claims a few years ago that Japan and Korea had changed very little in comparison to Europe. That most of their DNA was local hunter-gatherers.

    With Europe, I think there’s been a strong political element to the discussion. Originally, it was conquerors from the Russian Steppe, but that was too un-PC, after WW2. So, it became “pots not people” and the term “Battle-Axe culture” was put aside. Then the DNA proved it was a lie. And they changed tactics. “Europeans were originally black, your ancestors killed them off.” (when I first saw the recreation of Cheddar Man, I thought it was photoshopped by brilliant 4chan trolls.) “There is no such thing as a European, it has always been in flux. A melting pot.”

    Not sure about Japanese attitudes to Japanification. What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human. And I guess they were also invading SE Asia and PNG.

    Wish Africa were cold enough, so that we could get a more detailed story there. I think it would be quite interesting.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @songbird

    As late as 2019, it was thought Japanese share in average about 90% of their genome with the Yayoi.

    Wildly inaccurate, if we can believe the latest study. More like 30% and actually less, if you don't count more recent inflows of Koreans.

    , @German_reader
    @songbird

    thx, that's interesting, didn't know about this early Japanese history.


    What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human.
     
    They certainly had a superiority complex, but their official propaganda at least was based on the idea after all that they were "liberating" Asia from Western colonialism, for the benefit of their Asian brothers (who in exchange should be grateful and accept Japanese leadership).
    iirc they were more contemptuous of the swarthier Asians in southeast Asia who were more obviously racially different from the Japanese and didn't intend to assimilate them, unlike in Korea and Taiwan.
    There's some interesting information about Japanese attitudes and settlement plans in John Dower's War without mercy (even though I found his antiracism annoying and he's probably too biased in favour of the Japanese, presumably because of his Japanese wife). I don't know though if that's still current state of research or outdated, Japanese imperialism doesn't seem to get that much attention in Western academia.

    Replies: @songbird

  742. @songbird
    @German_reader


    I don’t know, wasn’t it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?
     
    I had always thought that it was a lot, figuring rice was probably domesticated outside of Japan. And then there is the Ainu. And in SE Asia, the Negritos.

    Then, I guess, there is the Shinsen Shijiroku, which is a catalogue of Japanese clans from around 815 AD. Of 1182 families recorded, it reports 326 were foreign. With 126 coming from China, and the rest from different Korean kingdoms. Supposedly, many from Baekje as refugees, when it fell (660 AD), and some of these with inferred Chinese ancestry, based on the characters.

    I don't know about others' preconceived ideas, but I'm actually kind of shocked by how late they got their Chinese admixture, if I understand it correctly. It was in the Kofun period and not before then. (Starting very roughly around 250 AD). Makes modern Europeans seem ancient.

    Given the amount of Chinese ancestry, I'm surprised that there is no historical account by the Chinese about them subjugating Japan. (unless I am mistaken? Or maybe it was a slow process?) Wei-Zhi visited Japan in 297 AD, and I don't think he mentions anything about it.

    I swear I remember reading claims a few years ago that Japan and Korea had changed very little in comparison to Europe. That most of their DNA was local hunter-gatherers.

    With Europe, I think there's been a strong political element to the discussion. Originally, it was conquerors from the Russian Steppe, but that was too un-PC, after WW2. So, it became "pots not people" and the term "Battle-Axe culture" was put aside. Then the DNA proved it was a lie. And they changed tactics. "Europeans were originally black, your ancestors killed them off." (when I first saw the recreation of Cheddar Man, I thought it was photoshopped by brilliant 4chan trolls.) "There is no such thing as a European, it has always been in flux. A melting pot."

    Not sure about Japanese attitudes to Japanification. What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human. And I guess they were also invading SE Asia and PNG.

    Wish Africa were cold enough, so that we could get a more detailed story there. I think it would be quite interesting.

    Replies: @songbird, @German_reader

    As late as 2019, it was thought Japanese share in average about 90% of their genome with the Yayoi.

    Wildly inaccurate, if we can believe the latest study. More like 30% and actually less, if you don’t count more recent inflows of Koreans.

  743. This is huge and no one talks about it. Meds like Greeks & Jews have interest in suppression

    Indus-Nile-Danube Dam son. Pic not loading it Persian Empire||

  744. *https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/903273696427397141/unknown.png

    Interesting thought, Brahmins as elite of IVC while we know many Kshatriya tribes are more recent||
    Satisfies all sides of debate and re-invigorates Dharma, cool I guess.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  745. @AP
    @Dmitry


    Your political views seemed to me very American. For example, any arguments about hunting, dogs, religion, law, capitalism or houses.
     
    Why only American? People from Western Ukraine and Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants, who come every Sunday). It is rare for Americans, unless they are Mormons or Evangelical Protestants, to be religious, and I am not one of those. Similar with views of hunting, dogs, etc. Do you think that viewing dogs as fundamentally different from livestock is uniquely American and that Russians or Ukrainians who don't mind eating pigs aren't disgusted by the idea of eating dogs?

    Ideas about capitalism or housing might just reflect familiarity with a superior system, rather than assimilation. Long-term visitors who see this first hand can also be impressed. And such ideas are not limited to America. Many Russians in Moscow like cars and houses with yards outside the city too - something I do not understand, if I lived in Moscow I would prefer the metro over sitting in traffic, but several friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more "American" than I am?


    Also (as we discussed above) your pro-Ukraine flagwaving views, has been as American as apple pie among the 20th century, non-WASP, non-Axis, non-refugee nationalities (i.e. excluding English, German, Italian, Japanese). I.e. Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, Armenian Americans, even Chinese Americans.
     
    I don't think that there is something fundamentally "American" about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese. Something fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in Brooklyn? Are unassimilated Chinese in Malaysia or Australia also American-like? An unassimilated Indian in Singapore is being like an American?

    Yours is a bit of a circular argument - if one is assimilated one is an American, but if one is not assimilated one is also an American by virtue of not being assimilated. The reality is that America has some foreigners living on its territory. Most of them are harmless or helpful, but if there are too many of one kind or of they achieve positions of great influence, they may be disruptive.


    "kids have dual passports so who knows if they will even stay in the USA"

    Without offending pro-Ukrainian patriotism, but I wouldn’t view Ukraine would be the most useful or robust hedge or insurance against American collapse.
     

    Their mother is Russian so their non-American passport isn't a Ukrainian one.

    I guess if you buy a castle in Ukraine it could be cool, and you could hire a private army with an American salary – but not so much if there is American collapse, and you need to work or use public healthcare locally, rather than relying on your American salary.
     
    If we had to escape a collapsing USA we would move into my wife's flat in central Moscow and live modestly off rent from another flat her family owns and from low salaries at some Russian hospital. This would be bad compared to my current lifestyle, I'd prefer America to be doing well. For the record, I think that chance of America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1% - not impossible, but extremely unlikely. More likely would be it sliding into a richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I'll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn't flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil is nicer than the rest.

    Only younger professionals I know in Ukraine, are emigrating.
     
    Your sample is necessarily limited to those who aren't there. I have plenty of cousins who stay there and live well. One returned from Canada (after first getting a Canadian citizenship). The ones who are best off are working in senior management of IT firms in Lviv. These pay good Western salaries in dollars, which go very far in Ukraine.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view.

    I never talked to e.g. Polish or Ukrainian people (or Spanish, or Germans, or Italians), who have these perspectives.

    This is not the specifics of attending church, but the way of discussing the religion. Similarly with other topics.

    friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more “American”

    Well, Navalny has these views about houses
    https://www.inliberty.ru/article/dom-navalny/

    Ukrainians who don’t mind eating pigs aren’t disgusted by the idea of eating dogs

    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations.

    Maybe in England there is a stronger attention for dog protection similar to America. But those same people who care for dogs’ rights in England, would likely also be opposed to hunting, shooting coyotes, etc, (It’s also similar in Russia – people who care about shooting street dogs, are also opposed to hunting).

    American by virtue of not being assimilated

    This is extremely 20th century, socially acceptable attitude to the home country, in America, which we know from the films and novels – to be flagwaving, proud, organizing parades, etc.

    The different immigrant groups have their own variations on the same theme, and it allows a secular community to be maintained.

    Unlike Irish, Jews and Italians – African Americans lacked a country to be proud of, and this has been difficult work to substitute for them (e.g. “Martin Luther King day”).

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won’t do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It’s impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing “Colombus Day Parade” through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.

    fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in

    If Hasid were supporting Israel, it would be a sign that they were assimilating to modern America. They are supposed live mentally as they had in the 18th century, and are not supposed to adapt any nationalism.

    Of course, generally, Amish and Hasidic Jews are showing that even America does not have the skills to assimilate everyone, and they won’t be waving any flags.

    “American” about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese.

    People like Conan O’Brian and his Armenian assistant Sona (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Fh563bQTA.), obviously have a very American attitude – with this proud flag waving for Ireland and Armenia.

    Similarly Obama writes “Dreams from my Father” to show he is like other Ellis Island Americans that immigrate to the “Land of the Free”, while retaining dreams of their homeland – Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.

    Look at the career of Martin Scorsese, based on showing particularity of Italian-American immigrant experience. If Martin Scorsese’s family had immigrated to France or England, they would not be making this style of film.

    This style of immigration is part of the American narrative, since at least the early 20th century. By the time “Godfather Part II ” is released, no audience will be seeing this as a “non-American story”.

    unassimilated Indian in Singapore

    I don’t think Indians in Singapore, will be organizing “Celebrate India” parades through the streets.

    Whereas the American Jews are having “Celebrate Israel Parade”. Israelis themselves would be embarrassed by this, and you can’t imagine this in Europe.

    This is indeed an American attitude. You even see in this forum (or more Sailer forum) – Americans are proud to support different countries, like selecting of football teams to support, as kind of symbols. In Europe, you would more likely just support a city football team.

    America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1%

    Well it is always far more likely than societal collapse, that you would just have trouble with IRS, in which case Russian passport is very useful, and it’s envious to hear you will be living as an elite fugitive with an apartment in central Moscow.

    richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I’ll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn’t flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil

    Rich people in Brazil probably live better than in most every other country – it’s a country designed to be paradise for them.

    If the collapse in the USA would be only to “Brazilian style country”, then I’m not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of “Submission” by Houellebecq.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Dmitry


    If the collapse in the USA would be only to “Brazilian style country”, then I’m not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of “Submission” by Houellebecq.
     
    There was an article a few years back about how when the children of the Chinese elite come to study in American universities, what they can't stand the most is that they are treated like ordinary people and not shown any special deference or obsequiousness by the people they meet in daily life.

    If you go to a country like Thailand, an ordinary Westerner on a decent salary can briefly experience what it is like to live as an "elite", and even experience a level of deference and obsequiousness he will never get at home.

    As we know, beyond a certain rather low level of wealth, more wealth doesn't make you happier - the main reason people acquire wealth is to feel superior to other people lol.

    For a long time, America was not very good at providing this "experience of superiority" to it's elite class - that's why rich foreigners prefer London to NY, London with it's class system and tradition of deference to status.

    I am sure American elites, in a globalized world, realize they are getting a raw deal. They can't even act like lords and royalty to normal Americans, kind of the whole point of clawing your way to elite status.

    I am sure this is a big part of why the elites are pushing China lately, too.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @AP
    @Dmitry


    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view
     
    How so? I do not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my cousins. Maybe it’s due to age differences?

    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations
     
    My dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon while my wife calls the police.

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won’t do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It’s impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing “Colombus Day Parade” through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.
     
    The Italian-American flagwavers mostly do not speak Italian and don’t visit Italy regularly. They have assimilated.

    My grandparents could have stayed in Germany or Austria. They left precisely because in Germany they would have felt obligated to become Germans whereas in America they did not have to become Americans.

    Your interesting claim is that because when living in America one need not be an American, the fact of not being an American makes one an American. So it is very American for a Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school. The fact that my kids didn't speak English until they started school shows how American they are. What could be more truly American than Chinatown? Etc.

    BTW circumstances are no different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA. It’s more of a universal phenomenon of settler-countries. Also Brazil:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Brazilians

    Are Ukrainians down there being Americans?

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @sher singh
    @Dmitry

    *https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/903330099573694505/D5UqPGRX4AI0fYF.png

    It's K next step of Assimilating is reverse assimilation||

    Replies: @AP

  746. @Dmitry
    @AP


    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

     

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view.

    I never talked to e.g. Polish or Ukrainian people (or Spanish, or Germans, or Italians), who have these perspectives.

    This is not the specifics of attending church, but the way of discussing the religion. Similarly with other topics.

    friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more “American”

     

    Well, Navalny has these views about houses
    https://www.inliberty.ru/article/dom-navalny/

    Ukrainians who don’t mind eating pigs aren’t disgusted by the idea of eating dogs
     
    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations.

    Maybe in England there is a stronger attention for dog protection similar to America. But those same people who care for dogs' rights in England, would likely also be opposed to hunting, shooting coyotes, etc, (It's also similar in Russia - people who care about shooting street dogs, are also opposed to hunting).

    American by virtue of not being assimilated
     
    This is extremely 20th century, socially acceptable attitude to the home country, in America, which we know from the films and novels - to be flagwaving, proud, organizing parades, etc.

    The different immigrant groups have their own variations on the same theme, and it allows a secular community to be maintained.

    Unlike Irish, Jews and Italians - African Americans lacked a country to be proud of, and this has been difficult work to substitute for them (e.g. "Martin Luther King day").

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won't do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It's impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing "Colombus Day Parade" through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.

    fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in

     

    If Hasid were supporting Israel, it would be a sign that they were assimilating to modern America. They are supposed live mentally as they had in the 18th century, and are not supposed to adapt any nationalism.

    Of course, generally, Amish and Hasidic Jews are showing that even America does not have the skills to assimilate everyone, and they won't be waving any flags.

    “American” about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese.

     

    People like Conan O'Brian and his Armenian assistant Sona (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Fh563bQTA.), obviously have a very American attitude - with this proud flag waving for Ireland and Armenia.

    Similarly Obama writes "Dreams from my Father" to show he is like other Ellis Island Americans that immigrate to the "Land of the Free", while retaining dreams of their homeland - Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.

    Look at the career of Martin Scorsese, based on showing particularity of Italian-American immigrant experience. If Martin Scorsese's family had immigrated to France or England, they would not be making this style of film.

    This style of immigration is part of the American narrative, since at least the early 20th century. By the time "Godfather Part II " is released, no audience will be seeing this as a "non-American story".

    unassimilated Indian in Singapore
     
    I don't think Indians in Singapore, will be organizing "Celebrate India" parades through the streets.

    Whereas the American Jews are having "Celebrate Israel Parade". Israelis themselves would be embarrassed by this, and you can't imagine this in Europe.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPUcp-Qw9E

    This is indeed an American attitude. You even see in this forum (or more Sailer forum) - Americans are proud to support different countries, like selecting of football teams to support, as kind of symbols. In Europe, you would more likely just support a city football team.

    America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1%
     
    Well it is always far more likely than societal collapse, that you would just have trouble with IRS, in which case Russian passport is very useful, and it's envious to hear you will be living as an elite fugitive with an apartment in central Moscow.

    richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I’ll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn’t flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil
     
    Rich people in Brazil probably live better than in most every other country - it's a country designed to be paradise for them.

    If the collapse in the USA would be only to "Brazilian style country", then I'm not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of "Submission" by Houellebecq.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP, @sher singh

    If the collapse in the USA would be only to “Brazilian style country”, then I’m not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of “Submission” by Houellebecq.

    There was an article a few years back about how when the children of the Chinese elite come to study in American universities, what they can’t stand the most is that they are treated like ordinary people and not shown any special deference or obsequiousness by the people they meet in daily life.

    If you go to a country like Thailand, an ordinary Westerner on a decent salary can briefly experience what it is like to live as an “elite”, and even experience a level of deference and obsequiousness he will never get at home.

    As we know, beyond a certain rather low level of wealth, more wealth doesn’t make you happier – the main reason people acquire wealth is to feel superior to other people lol.

    For a long time, America was not very good at providing this “experience of superiority” to it’s elite class – that’s why rich foreigners prefer London to NY, London with it’s class system and tradition of deference to status.

    I am sure American elites, in a globalized world, realize they are getting a raw deal. They can’t even act like lords and royalty to normal Americans, kind of the whole point of clawing your way to elite status.

    I am sure this is a big part of why the elites are pushing China lately, too.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    to feel superior to other people

     

    This large money also creates a very warm and pleasant multinational social experience.

    The most utopian multinational experience you can have in life, is if you go to a course to study with students from other countries (some of them will be children of billionaires, who understandably seem to become addicted to this kind of atmosphere - I think some of them almost live as permanent students for their 20ies, going across a course to another course, to another course).


    deference or obsequiousness by the people they meet in daily

     

    It's also the freedom of "second life". Almost all ultra-wealthy people of Russia, are socializing in Marbella, Monaco, London - they create their own world, with high entry costs, away from other peoples' eyes, as well as some of the system their parents help create for controlling the ordinary people.

    London with it’s class

     

    Most of the world's rich people invested in some property in London, and it has a good education system, so they can make friends. In the end, the young people like socializing, although in bubbles. I'm sceptical if you claim they are not investing in New York almost as much though.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0INhtujvJc

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  747. Would there be any advantage in creating mirror-clones? Or maybe not because the leftside/rightside brain differences seem to largely be bunk. Only thing I can think of is left-handed swordsmen, or twin-balanced rowers (like the Winkelvoss twins). All old tech. Maybe, flanking guards?

    Guess that would possibly leave sister-clones, to take advantage of different sex traits.

    And I suppose also that one could theoretically make super-clones by removing the really bad mutations and making the good copies homozygous. But, that would presumably be pretty difficult.

  748. @Yellowface Anon
    Has anyone read the newest featured post from Anglin?

    Blinken seems to have forgotten China (as in Red China) is the permanent member of the UN Security Council since 1972, and Taiwan is de jure a province of China from the view of UN, even from the perspective of Taipei (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taiwan_Province).

    The likeliness of WWII happening between China & the US in this & the next year is above 30%. A telling & certain sign WWIII against China is planned, is the US and/or China being outside the Security Council (either unilateral withdrawal or expulsion)

    Replies: @songbird

    Empty cannons of rhetoric.

    The political elite of the US may be dumb and short-sighted, but they are not suicidal.

    IMO, we averted war with Iran because it was too big. And, if the Boltons and McCains did not know it, others did.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    The political elite of the US may be dumb and short-sighted, but they are not suicidal.

    IMO, we averted war with Iran because it was too big.
     
    Despite sociopath Khamenei's attempt to start a war. President Trump refused to be baited.

    Not-The-President Biden's attempts to destabilize the Middle East (and the rest of the world) are failing. Foreign leaders know that Biden is mentally incompetent:
        • The Pope cancelled a joint appearance.
        • JCPOA will stay dead because Biden cannot deliver.

    His own team has to spend significant effort retracting the dangerous & crazy things that happen when he is near a microphone:
        • First, it was a walk back on Taiwan.
        • Now, it is a walk back on Israeli sovereignty. (Below)

    Expect more basement 'alone time' for TraitorJoe.

    PEACE 😇

    https://twitter.com/Ostrov_A/status/1453608462282330115?s=20

    Replies: @songbird

  749. Zucc’s algorithms gave me this in a rare expression of benevolence:

    https://bigthink.com/the-present/singleton-hypothesis-future-humanity/

    A typical progressive. The ultimate one, maybe.

  750. @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    I know im coming off rude and unpleasant but i assure you im just being realistic.
    See the core of the problem is that is a good 95% of Anglos are pro Empire and will defend it if push comes to shove.This article does read somewhat like cope because irrc Greeks are salty Anglos always support Turks over them but the core point is there ( https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-transatlantic-love-affair-is-over/ ) I think Brits see "oh man those Americans they used to be us...literally" and US is still a technological and cultural powerhouse and so Brits get taken over by all kinds of mind viruses otherwise they would not be in the situation they are now. Even now they want to make that 5 eyes club(those recent anti China shenanigans against France with Aussies+Brits+Americans). Blood is still thicker than water, I suppose.

    You just said it yourself that Britain is mentally occupied by America. And what happens when "Right Wing" Americans view Somalis as closer to them than Europeans and view having Somali businesses as the cornerstones of successful policy?
    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British...equivalent?(if that's a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners? I think the rot sets in at very early age where they get indoctrinated with race , minority worship, gay worship, etc.

    The issue is that the US will get more and more insane as time passes by. The problem is when an empire sees its weakening it can lash out. On whom will they lash out?
    USSR was killing its own citizens. Mostly. And USSR managed to cause extreme amounts of damage before it finally imploded. What will Anglos do? Nobody knows the amount of damage US empire will cause but they're definitely going to try something in Europe thats for sure, all signs point there. But thats for the future...2030s and 2040s I guess.


    Imagine we are getting stuck between 2 empires, both equally insane one wants to cannibalize and consume you and the other to flood you with unassimilable foreigners, there was an article about how Ukraine need to import Africans Pakistanis and Indians into its workforce by some think tank but unfortunately i have lost it.
    Of course the 4-6 billion Africans being buttressed by the US empire is going to be a headache in future. And yes by now everyone is aware of the Bantu genocidal expansion but Americans have this blank slate theory and an odd mindset "Oh man sure those blacks loot kill and riot haha but they're OUR based blacks".

    US wants Africans and the whole Global South in every part of the globe and especially Europe.(including parts Anglos didnt to colonize in the past) and Russia wants its Chechen and other Russian mystery meat SlavoFinnoUgricTurkic mutts to flood us. Both plans are incredibly devious and insidious.

    US destroys and sucks up dwindling resources from all over the world just so they can to prop up their favorite pets to the tune of 3000-4000 calories a day and housing, EBT, etc. Americans have poured everything into blacks giving money, power, status ,their women and so on yet with no return on investment whatsoever(except rap music and "black family values" aka extremely dysfunctional social norms).

    And on the other side Russia rips out precious metals and other minerals just to feed and sustain Kavkazoids and other ethnic minorities that murder(seriously blacks can be sort of placated with gibs and such but Chechens and other Caucasoids can and will just kill you for a slight offense like a Chechen slaying some child or a woman is a regular occurrence).
    At least blacks produce music and i dont know some sort of ?"culture"?(as degenerate and useless as it is) What do Chechens do? Slit throats and are massively involved into other shady things all those extremely clannish gold chain people do? They're like extremely dangerous gypsies with their ethnic mafias.


    I assure you things are not looking good here either. Even in the most far flung "province" of the empire( we arent even a province Ukraine isnt part of anything) Westerners are pushing this transgender and multiculturalism poison trying to destroy what little we have remaining of our world(after gomunism, Russian parasites, etc)
    Take a look at this stuff straight out of US State Department. Der Russe Nitichevski muss sterben, damit wir leben. Its like we have to substitute Russie for West....

    https://i.imgur.com/vePsaVo.jpg
    https://imgur.com/a/TGG4sEO
    these are not my hands btw

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @LatW

    Fortunately, most Ukrainian families that are rearing children don’t have the time, nor the desire to read what’s on the US State Department’s website. Do you currently live in Ukraine, what part? Do you think that your pronounced angst towards Russians is characteristic of most Ukrainians in your area? It wasn’t always so, and in the not too distant past, most Ukrainians held pretty positive feelings towards their neighbors…

    • Replies: @Svidomyatheart
    @Mr. Hack

    Im itching to call you an idiot. You've been on the forum for how many years and still dont get it ? No its not on the State Department's website, but its the work of US State Department because where else from would Negrolatry and gay/tranny worship come from?

    Its a "children's book" for 3-5 year olds. This is just a text example of how Americans become Bantu loving and gay loving creatures that they are

    btw this is the 2nd image if people are scared to click that link im not sure how it didnt embed.
    https://imgur.com/bUE9CpL

    Just like the ones they got in the States'

    https://imgur.com/qNhgKV3

    , @Svidomyatheart
    @Mr. Hack

    Yeah I think we're preoccupied about the real fight in the East which overrides everything else and makes it secondary. (pehaps too busy? while all kinds of enemies and vultures circle by).

    I still dont think anything will come out of that propaganda though but the trends are unsettling as more and more will be pushed forth. Even in the most distant parts of the world like Iraq or Syria and Afghanistan (lol) you have people from there putting pronouns and BLM on their twitter handle .

    And what is there to like about Russians? They're like the Turks who want to kill and destroy. What if they come into your home?

    You see Finalnd did mostly OK with Finlandization, Even now if NATO somehow magically imploded Russia would be offering Poland Finlandization and autonomy but nothing for us. Russia seems to have accepted that Poland, the Baltic states, Czech and Slovak republics are now aligned with the West but they have other plans for us.

    It wasnt always so because I figured they'd back they have plenty of land. Live and let live and al lthat

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I dont know? say Ivan Ilyin's about how we're always supposed to be chained ot them?? Like this one?

    "Малороссия и Великороссия связаны воедино верой, племенем, исторической судьбой, географическим положением, хозяйством, культурой и политикой"

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @LatW

  751. @Mr. Hack
    @Dmitry


    (It’s like they were reading too many books about 19th century conflicts, and the “Great Game”).
     
    But the "great game" has certainly been reinvigorated since the collapse of the Soviet Union, with the important addition of China as a player. Regional players like Iran and Turkey have also increased their stakes in this Eurasian game. The US certainly seems to be being squeezed out of this game, but the real future of this chess game, in my opinion, will be between Russia and China vying for influence in all of the various "stans", notwithstanding the veneer of great friendship and cooperation between the two as presented at blogs like at Pepe Escobar's. The US position at this real life 3-dimensional game is of course through Ukraine in the western end and Taiwan on the eastern end, with the US encouraging the old player Britain to get more involved as in the past. The "great game" has never really gone totally away, but seems to have entered a new phase with some different players involved. It's a "game" worth watching.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Beckow

    One can argue that Soviets collapsed due to the “great game” – with China switching sides (or sitting it out) they were in a no-win situation. Soviets had too many expensive dependencies, out-of-date ideology and lazy elites.

    The issue for the West is that there was no geo-political collapse, only a pull-back and an economic-social-mental collapse. Regarding power, Russia emerged in a stronger position: they kept the resources and dumped the costly border-lands. They also got rid of the socialist straight-jacket in the economy. It wasn’t pretty, but short of making some huge mistakes, Russia will ride this to a very strong position in the next few decades.

    The West knows it, thus the hardly-suppressed hysteria and hyper-activity. China will not switch sides again, they benefit from a balance between the West and Russia. So do the “stans”, Iran, Turkey…When something benefits so many on a very deep level, it will happen, it always does.

    The only question is what will happen to the “borderlands”, the lands that the West grabbed after 1991, but that are to some extent economically not viable without trade with Russia. Ukraine being a prime example, but the others too. They have two choices: to become a battle-ground no-man’s land with excitement and miserable economy, or to find an accommodation with Russia and live better. This is the choice and all the noise about “we are Europe” and “Moscovites” will not change one thing about it.

    The choice should be made by the people living there and not by Washington or people temporarily ruling those countries before they move on to live in London or NY. Washington doesn’t want the same thing that the local people need – Washington wants mayhem and war, contracts and seminars, the last thing they need are prosperous, homogeneous, peaceful countries in Central and Eastern Europe. There are many smaller games within the “great game”.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow

    I agree with most of what you state, except this:


    The only question is what will happen to the “borderlands”, the lands that the West grabbed after 1991, but that are to some extent economically not viable without trade with Russia. Ukraine being a prime example, but the others too.
     
    Even before 2014, Ukraine's trade with the EU was slightly higher than with Russia, and today its grown quite a bit from then. For Ukraine, it stood on solid ground having large trade with both blocks, whereas today its trade with Russia is probably down considerably. There's no going back today, I think that even you should be able to understand that. Russia's not slated for any large leaps forward in its economy (from what I've read by Karlin, if not others too), so why would Ukraine even consider such a move? Politically, Ukraine needs to continue its separation from Russian influence, if it wants to retain its own identity and culture. Trade with Russia? The more the better.

    Replies: @Beckow

  752. One thing that has always puzzled me, with regard to ancient migrations is how it is claimed that Southern China was thinly populated, and this facilitated the movement of Northern Chinese into the South.

    I’m not ideologically opposed to the idea. And it seems difficult to make sense of what happened in Taiwan, without it.

    But it doesn’t seem to fit unto a European template. In ancient times, Southern Europe was much more densely populated than Northern. In Roman times, it is asserted that the Germans sowed snatch crops, not much different from American Indians. One reason being that oak trees are very difficult to cut down, without iron. (I encourage anyone to try cutting oak, it can be difficult even with a chainsaw, unless it is a very powerful one. Or you can try cutting a sapling with a lopper)

    Anyone have an explanation for it?

  753. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    One can argue that Soviets collapsed due to the "great game" - with China switching sides (or sitting it out) they were in a no-win situation. Soviets had too many expensive dependencies, out-of-date ideology and lazy elites.

    The issue for the West is that there was no geo-political collapse, only a pull-back and an economic-social-mental collapse. Regarding power, Russia emerged in a stronger position: they kept the resources and dumped the costly border-lands. They also got rid of the socialist straight-jacket in the economy. It wasn't pretty, but short of making some huge mistakes, Russia will ride this to a very strong position in the next few decades.

    The West knows it, thus the hardly-suppressed hysteria and hyper-activity. China will not switch sides again, they benefit from a balance between the West and Russia. So do the "stans", Iran, Turkey...When something benefits so many on a very deep level, it will happen, it always does.

    The only question is what will happen to the "borderlands", the lands that the West grabbed after 1991, but that are to some extent economically not viable without trade with Russia. Ukraine being a prime example, but the others too. They have two choices: to become a battle-ground no-man's land with excitement and miserable economy, or to find an accommodation with Russia and live better. This is the choice and all the noise about "we are Europe" and "Moscovites" will not change one thing about it.

    The choice should be made by the people living there and not by Washington or people temporarily ruling those countries before they move on to live in London or NY. Washington doesn't want the same thing that the local people need - Washington wants mayhem and war, contracts and seminars, the last thing they need are prosperous, homogeneous, peaceful countries in Central and Eastern Europe. There are many smaller games within the "great game".

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I agree with most of what you state, except this:

    The only question is what will happen to the “borderlands”, the lands that the West grabbed after 1991, but that are to some extent economically not viable without trade with Russia. Ukraine being a prime example, but the others too.

    Even before 2014, Ukraine’s trade with the EU was slightly higher than with Russia, and today its grown quite a bit from then. For Ukraine, it stood on solid ground having large trade with both blocks, whereas today its trade with Russia is probably down considerably. There’s no going back today, I think that even you should be able to understand that. Russia’s not slated for any large leaps forward in its economy (from what I’ve read by Karlin, if not others too), so why would Ukraine even consider such a move? Politically, Ukraine needs to continue its separation from Russian influence, if it wants to retain its own identity and culture. Trade with Russia? The more the better.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You need to look at what is being traded and to what benefit. Some stuff is essential, other optional. Look at US or UK supply chain issues today: many essentials are missing, but the so-called high-value items like "consulting", "social media advertising", flipping real estate, "security services" are plentiful. These are not equal: in an inflated virtual, bubble economy the high-level stuff explodes while the essentials become under-valued and slowly become scarce. Try some nuance, otherwise you get fooled by surface generalities.

    Regarding Russia and its not-happening "leap forward": we simply don't know, it will depend on many factors, price for resources, global developments. You could be right, or they could take-off by growing faster than the West. What nobody predicts any longer is a collapse of Russia (few years back that was all the rage). Countries with massive resources, security and almost no debt don't collapse.

    If the West experiences what looks like an increasingly likely "leap backwards" any country remaining stable will look great. The real, material stuff matters: food, energy, transportation, resources, etc...how it is valued or "traded" depends on circumstances. Today most assets in the West are astronomically over-valued and over-leveraged (debt!!!). The central banks are trying to inflate out of it and that will roll through the global economy like an earthquake...so I would be careful not to take today's relative GNP numbers at face value. If there is a "war", the West will benefit and buy itself more time. If there isn't, we may be surprised by how the GNP numbers look like in 2025.

    Replies: @AP

  754. @Dmitry
    @AP


    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

     

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view.

    I never talked to e.g. Polish or Ukrainian people (or Spanish, or Germans, or Italians), who have these perspectives.

    This is not the specifics of attending church, but the way of discussing the religion. Similarly with other topics.

    friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more “American”

     

    Well, Navalny has these views about houses
    https://www.inliberty.ru/article/dom-navalny/

    Ukrainians who don’t mind eating pigs aren’t disgusted by the idea of eating dogs
     
    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations.

    Maybe in England there is a stronger attention for dog protection similar to America. But those same people who care for dogs' rights in England, would likely also be opposed to hunting, shooting coyotes, etc, (It's also similar in Russia - people who care about shooting street dogs, are also opposed to hunting).

    American by virtue of not being assimilated
     
    This is extremely 20th century, socially acceptable attitude to the home country, in America, which we know from the films and novels - to be flagwaving, proud, organizing parades, etc.

    The different immigrant groups have their own variations on the same theme, and it allows a secular community to be maintained.

    Unlike Irish, Jews and Italians - African Americans lacked a country to be proud of, and this has been difficult work to substitute for them (e.g. "Martin Luther King day").

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won't do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It's impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing "Colombus Day Parade" through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.

    fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in

     

    If Hasid were supporting Israel, it would be a sign that they were assimilating to modern America. They are supposed live mentally as they had in the 18th century, and are not supposed to adapt any nationalism.

    Of course, generally, Amish and Hasidic Jews are showing that even America does not have the skills to assimilate everyone, and they won't be waving any flags.

    “American” about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese.

     

    People like Conan O'Brian and his Armenian assistant Sona (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Fh563bQTA.), obviously have a very American attitude - with this proud flag waving for Ireland and Armenia.

    Similarly Obama writes "Dreams from my Father" to show he is like other Ellis Island Americans that immigrate to the "Land of the Free", while retaining dreams of their homeland - Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.

    Look at the career of Martin Scorsese, based on showing particularity of Italian-American immigrant experience. If Martin Scorsese's family had immigrated to France or England, they would not be making this style of film.

    This style of immigration is part of the American narrative, since at least the early 20th century. By the time "Godfather Part II " is released, no audience will be seeing this as a "non-American story".

    unassimilated Indian in Singapore
     
    I don't think Indians in Singapore, will be organizing "Celebrate India" parades through the streets.

    Whereas the American Jews are having "Celebrate Israel Parade". Israelis themselves would be embarrassed by this, and you can't imagine this in Europe.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPUcp-Qw9E

    This is indeed an American attitude. You even see in this forum (or more Sailer forum) - Americans are proud to support different countries, like selecting of football teams to support, as kind of symbols. In Europe, you would more likely just support a city football team.

    America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1%
     
    Well it is always far more likely than societal collapse, that you would just have trouble with IRS, in which case Russian passport is very useful, and it's envious to hear you will be living as an elite fugitive with an apartment in central Moscow.

    richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I’ll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn’t flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil
     
    Rich people in Brazil probably live better than in most every other country - it's a country designed to be paradise for them.

    If the collapse in the USA would be only to "Brazilian style country", then I'm not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of "Submission" by Houellebecq.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP, @sher singh

    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view

    How so? I do not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my cousins. Maybe it’s due to age differences?

    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations

    My dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon while my wife calls the police.

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won’t do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It’s impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing “Colombus Day Parade” through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.

    The Italian-American flagwavers mostly do not speak Italian and don’t visit Italy regularly. They have assimilated.

    My grandparents could have stayed in Germany or Austria. They left precisely because in Germany they would have felt obligated to become Germans whereas in America they did not have to become Americans.

    Your interesting claim is that because when living in America one need not be an American, the fact of not being an American makes one an American. So it is very American for a Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school. The fact that my kids didn’t speak English until they started school shows how American they are. What could be more truly American than Chinatown? Etc.

    BTW circumstances are no different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA. It’s more of a universal phenomenon of settler-countries. Also Brazil:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Brazilians

    Are Ukrainians down there being Americans?

    • Agree: sher singh
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    when living in America one need not be an American
     
    Well, I'm a fanboy of Israel, and would like to try to win all the Israel fanboy competitions, and defeat everyone with some obscure knowledge of Hebrew grammar or Israeli politics.

    But this concept of a "Celebrate Israel parade" looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine "Celebrate Russia" doing parade (it's an even more funny idea).

    I don't think it is because of being myself idiosyncratic, but another measure of my cultural distance from America. I'm sure if I was assimilated in New England, I would understand these things more - that all the communities are supposed to have their own pride (even LGBT people can create such civic pride for their sexuality).

    Irish Americans also have the same (looking more working class version) of these parades, as the Zionist secular Jews.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8UCt9Ze5D4

    When you are Russian in Europe (I think this is true for almost everyone), you are walking around in Europe hoping people think you are natives, almost like an undercover agent when you at the supermarket.


    dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon

     

    Well there is America, with guns in the bedroom after the dog wakes you. (This is a classic scene in the film "Boyz n the Hood" (1991)).

    -

    These dogs in Russian farms make circles of their own shit, because they are tied to small string which is pushed into the ground by hammer, and can be tied there for hours. Then returned the next day, with no-one cleaning their circle of shit.

    I'm opposed to it because I'm a bleeding heart person i.e. for the same reason I'm never going on hunting trips.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.


    Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school.
     
    But these young American Jews don't go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.

    They're not going to sit on the pavement like an Israeli person, put their feet on the bus seats, or go to the office wearing pajamas and underwear showing.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans. The reason is because Jews in America will have much a higher GDP per capita, than Jews in Israel. Therefore American Jews who go to Israel, can be selected as ones with the strongest "United States Foreign Service" idealism of changing the world, as opposed to the economic migration Israel received from Ukraine/Russia.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkaFxQG4WHQ

    There is another class of American Jews who just go to Israel to manage their families' property portfolio - these people's motivations are of course a bit less culturally distant from Russian elites' perspective.


    not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my
     
    Mostly people are interested in religion, to calm their soul, because of difficult torturing spiritual questions, after their family have died, etc.

    Whereas in America, it of course includes this (especially in "born again" church), but it also how you build the local social life.

    A lot of discussion of religion in this forum, seemed to me blasphemous. But of course, in the American perspective it is not, because the church (or Jewish synagogue, or Mormon temple) is a form of "city square", or "public sphere", that is lacking in many other ways in the cultural life in America.

    Also notice that people with the world's most un-Christian views, are often going to churches in America.

    By the way, I'm not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don't socialize after the service - just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.


    different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA

     

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their "melting pot", encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.

    At the same time, the children are becoming incredibly well assimilated.


    -


    I think about Conan O'Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it's one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.

    At the same, he is of course culturally totally American culturally, from bodylanguage to his jokes, and the Irish peoples' sense of humor will have some difficulty with him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2TlhQcOO8.

    Replies: @songbird, @AP

  755. Some schools in the US are now banning To Kill a Mockingbird. I am 100% behind the decision – should have been done 60 years earlier.

  756. @Dmitry
    @AP


    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

     

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view.

    I never talked to e.g. Polish or Ukrainian people (or Spanish, or Germans, or Italians), who have these perspectives.

    This is not the specifics of attending church, but the way of discussing the religion. Similarly with other topics.

    friends prefer traffic. Does that make them more “American”

     

    Well, Navalny has these views about houses
    https://www.inliberty.ru/article/dom-navalny/

    Ukrainians who don’t mind eating pigs aren’t disgusted by the idea of eating dogs
     
    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations.

    Maybe in England there is a stronger attention for dog protection similar to America. But those same people who care for dogs' rights in England, would likely also be opposed to hunting, shooting coyotes, etc, (It's also similar in Russia - people who care about shooting street dogs, are also opposed to hunting).

    American by virtue of not being assimilated
     
    This is extremely 20th century, socially acceptable attitude to the home country, in America, which we know from the films and novels - to be flagwaving, proud, organizing parades, etc.

    The different immigrant groups have their own variations on the same theme, and it allows a secular community to be maintained.

    Unlike Irish, Jews and Italians - African Americans lacked a country to be proud of, and this has been difficult work to substitute for them (e.g. "Martin Luther King day").

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won't do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It's impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing "Colombus Day Parade" through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.

    fundamentally American about Yiddish-speaking Hasids in

     

    If Hasid were supporting Israel, it would be a sign that they were assimilating to modern America. They are supposed live mentally as they had in the 18th century, and are not supposed to adapt any nationalism.

    Of course, generally, Amish and Hasidic Jews are showing that even America does not have the skills to assimilate everyone, and they won't be waving any flags.

    “American” about being an unassimilated Armenian, Jew, or Chinese.

     

    People like Conan O'Brian and his Armenian assistant Sona (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z5Fh563bQTA.), obviously have a very American attitude - with this proud flag waving for Ireland and Armenia.

    Similarly Obama writes "Dreams from my Father" to show he is like other Ellis Island Americans that immigrate to the "Land of the Free", while retaining dreams of their homeland - Irish Americans, Jewish Americans, etc.

    Look at the career of Martin Scorsese, based on showing particularity of Italian-American immigrant experience. If Martin Scorsese's family had immigrated to France or England, they would not be making this style of film.

    This style of immigration is part of the American narrative, since at least the early 20th century. By the time "Godfather Part II " is released, no audience will be seeing this as a "non-American story".

    unassimilated Indian in Singapore
     
    I don't think Indians in Singapore, will be organizing "Celebrate India" parades through the streets.

    Whereas the American Jews are having "Celebrate Israel Parade". Israelis themselves would be embarrassed by this, and you can't imagine this in Europe.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQPUcp-Qw9E

    This is indeed an American attitude. You even see in this forum (or more Sailer forum) - Americans are proud to support different countries, like selecting of football teams to support, as kind of symbols. In Europe, you would more likely just support a city football team.

    America collapsing in my lifetime is about 1%
     
    Well it is always far more likely than societal collapse, that you would just have trouble with IRS, in which case Russian passport is very useful, and it's envious to hear you will be living as an elite fugitive with an apartment in central Moscow.

    richer and better managed version of Brazil. Not ideal, I’ll be voting for whoever may prevent that, but I wouldn’t flee in that case. My region will still be nice, as southern Brazil
     
    Rich people in Brazil probably live better than in most every other country - it's a country designed to be paradise for them.

    If the collapse in the USA would be only to "Brazilian style country", then I'm not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of "Submission" by Houellebecq.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AP, @sher singh

    *https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/903330099573694505/D5UqPGRX4AI0fYF.png

    It’s K next step of Assimilating is reverse assimilation||

    • Replies: @AP
    @sher singh

    Very nice

  757. @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    Empty cannons of rhetoric.

    The political elite of the US may be dumb and short-sighted, but they are not suicidal.

    IMO, we averted war with Iran because it was too big. And, if the Boltons and McCains did not know it, others did.

    Replies: @A123

    The political elite of the US may be dumb and short-sighted, but they are not suicidal.

    IMO, we averted war with Iran because it was too big.

    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war. President Trump refused to be baited.

    Not-The-President Biden’s attempts to destabilize the Middle East (and the rest of the world) are failing. Foreign leaders know that Biden is mentally incompetent:
        • The Pope cancelled a joint appearance.
        • JCPOA will stay dead because Biden cannot deliver.

    His own team has to spend significant effort retracting the dangerous & crazy things that happen when he is near a microphone:
        • First, it was a walk back on Taiwan.
        • Now, it is a walk back on Israeli sovereignty. (Below)

    Expect more basement ‘alone time’ for TraitorJoe.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123


    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war.
     
    If he had wanted to start a war, I would suppose he would have attacked the US domestically.

    Replies: @A123

  758. German_reader says:
    @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    I know im coming off rude and unpleasant but i assure you im just being realistic.
    See the core of the problem is that is a good 95% of Anglos are pro Empire and will defend it if push comes to shove.This article does read somewhat like cope because irrc Greeks are salty Anglos always support Turks over them but the core point is there ( https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-transatlantic-love-affair-is-over/ ) I think Brits see "oh man those Americans they used to be us...literally" and US is still a technological and cultural powerhouse and so Brits get taken over by all kinds of mind viruses otherwise they would not be in the situation they are now. Even now they want to make that 5 eyes club(those recent anti China shenanigans against France with Aussies+Brits+Americans). Blood is still thicker than water, I suppose.

    You just said it yourself that Britain is mentally occupied by America. And what happens when "Right Wing" Americans view Somalis as closer to them than Europeans and view having Somali businesses as the cornerstones of successful policy?
    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British...equivalent?(if that's a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners? I think the rot sets in at very early age where they get indoctrinated with race , minority worship, gay worship, etc.

    The issue is that the US will get more and more insane as time passes by. The problem is when an empire sees its weakening it can lash out. On whom will they lash out?
    USSR was killing its own citizens. Mostly. And USSR managed to cause extreme amounts of damage before it finally imploded. What will Anglos do? Nobody knows the amount of damage US empire will cause but they're definitely going to try something in Europe thats for sure, all signs point there. But thats for the future...2030s and 2040s I guess.


    Imagine we are getting stuck between 2 empires, both equally insane one wants to cannibalize and consume you and the other to flood you with unassimilable foreigners, there was an article about how Ukraine need to import Africans Pakistanis and Indians into its workforce by some think tank but unfortunately i have lost it.
    Of course the 4-6 billion Africans being buttressed by the US empire is going to be a headache in future. And yes by now everyone is aware of the Bantu genocidal expansion but Americans have this blank slate theory and an odd mindset "Oh man sure those blacks loot kill and riot haha but they're OUR based blacks".

    US wants Africans and the whole Global South in every part of the globe and especially Europe.(including parts Anglos didnt to colonize in the past) and Russia wants its Chechen and other Russian mystery meat SlavoFinnoUgricTurkic mutts to flood us. Both plans are incredibly devious and insidious.

    US destroys and sucks up dwindling resources from all over the world just so they can to prop up their favorite pets to the tune of 3000-4000 calories a day and housing, EBT, etc. Americans have poured everything into blacks giving money, power, status ,their women and so on yet with no return on investment whatsoever(except rap music and "black family values" aka extremely dysfunctional social norms).

    And on the other side Russia rips out precious metals and other minerals just to feed and sustain Kavkazoids and other ethnic minorities that murder(seriously blacks can be sort of placated with gibs and such but Chechens and other Caucasoids can and will just kill you for a slight offense like a Chechen slaying some child or a woman is a regular occurrence).
    At least blacks produce music and i dont know some sort of ?"culture"?(as degenerate and useless as it is) What do Chechens do? Slit throats and are massively involved into other shady things all those extremely clannish gold chain people do? They're like extremely dangerous gypsies with their ethnic mafias.


    I assure you things are not looking good here either. Even in the most far flung "province" of the empire( we arent even a province Ukraine isnt part of anything) Westerners are pushing this transgender and multiculturalism poison trying to destroy what little we have remaining of our world(after gomunism, Russian parasites, etc)
    Take a look at this stuff straight out of US State Department. Der Russe Nitichevski muss sterben, damit wir leben. Its like we have to substitute Russie for West....

    https://i.imgur.com/vePsaVo.jpg
    https://imgur.com/a/TGG4sEO
    these are not my hands btw

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @LatW

    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British…equivalent?(if that’s a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners?

    [MORE]

    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don’t quite know what to make of it. Might be the twisted mirror image of the pretensions to global hegemony which seem to come so naturally to many Americans. Powell’s world view was a much more traditional and rational one, which imo only looks extreme if one thinks nations (at least European ones) are an illegitimate concept per se.
    But anyway, of course you’re right that large percentages of Westerners today are fervent believers in multiculturalism and mass immigration, and I’d agree that Britain is one of the worse examples for this in Europe (maybe on the same level as Sweden and West Germany). But it’s a historically fairly recent development. During my father’s childhood and youth in Lancashire in the 1950s and 1960s it was an almost monoethnic environment (apart from some other white Europeans, like Poles and Balts who had fled from the Soviets; there also were already some colored immigrants, but they were clearly regarded as foreign and resented in a way the Eastern Europeans weren’t), with a strong sense of British (or maybe rather English) nationhood. This sceptred isle, and all that. And it most definitely wasn’t a racially inclusive concept of nationhood.
    There was also less personal experience of the empire than one could imagine, none of my relatives from the mid-19th century onwards had any experience of it, and as far as I can tell the same seems to be true for the families of all my father’s friends and acquaintances. Regarding America, there was intense resentment of the US in post-war Britain. My English grandfather didn’t like the Americans he encountered during WW2, he thought them arrogant and condescending, and there was a lot of envy of the material abundance the Americans enjoyed (and which they flaunted), while Britain was on food rationing until the early 1950s. And after WW2 there was a widespread sentiment that the US was intent on humiliating Britain and dismantling her great power status. Now on a surface level at least much of that criticism was probably unfair, given American assistance (though on a deeper level it probably wasn’t incorrect). But that kind of sentiments wasn’t uncommon, and obviously complicates any interpretation founded on natural convergence of British and American interests.
    Of course that’s all somewhat anecdotal and probably not the whole story, but I find it difficult to reconcile the experiences of my father (or of his friends still living in England, most of whose horizons are basically limited to northwestern Europe) with all those notions of “global Britain” and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn’t reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit voters.

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    I can see how Ukraine’s position is very difficult. Personally I think it would be best if some kind of mutually acceptable agreement between Ukraine and Russia could be reached, but obviously that seems hardly possible when many Russians don’t even accept that Ukraine is a separate nation. So I guess you’ll have to try to exploit Westerners to your advantage, while keeping their nation-wrecking ideology at bay. We’ll see if that’s possible.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader


    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don’t quite know what to make of it.
     
    Tried reading it once, and thought it was too sanguinary. Couldn't get past the first throat-cutting. I wonder if he could have been some agent provocateur? That would be my strong suspicion. But I don't really know anything about him.

    Seems to be a real dearth of good racist literature and films.

    Guess there are a few that can be interpreted as having a subtext, like Carpenter's The Thing (based on one of my favorite sci-fi stories), or The Midwich Cuckoos, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But most of those seem accidental. The guy who wrote Body Snatchers was woke.

    Closest thing I can think of in near times is the Flashman novels. I suspect George MacDonald Fraser was genuinely ethnocentric, even if the message about Fuzzy-wuzzies is camouflaged by his European characters often being just as treacherous, debaucherous, or evil. I think he was quite intelligent, which is reflected in his ability to incorporate historical facts, though they are a bit too tawdry for me. (Probably by design, so he could get away with it.)

    But I've never remotely heard of anything with a positive vision. (I think that is why Camp of the Saints was originally tolerated) Hard to find regular nationalist stories, let alone anything with a united front against globalism or radical universalism. Difficult to even find anything not woke.
    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    “global Britain” and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn’t reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit

     

    Well it is written "Global Britain" - i.e. Britain, where the attitude of the ruling class to the lower classes, had reminded the former in the 19th century of the caste system of India.

    Although probably Brexit is helpful for the proletarian people as it reduces the supply of labour (so it was a good idea for them to vote for Brexit), Boris Johnson of Upper East Side Manhattan and Oxford, might have limited cultural similarity to the section of Brexit voters who are poor people in some unfashionable districts of the Kingdom.

    His idea of entertaining people, is singing Ancient Greek. I doubt his friendship group is including even many standard middle class professional.
    https://youtu.be/MaTAbfp-yrE?t=10

    His childhood photos look like
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e7a002aca2babe12ae66d7620541a1c42811e748/0_0_1708_1208/master/1708.jpg

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    tbh I used Pierce(as extreme as he was) because I couldn't think of any other American and my English is quite rudimentary so sometimes its hard to lay out my thoughts .

    Ofc he comes off as unhinged but America was 90% white and dropped to 50%ish during his lifetime too maybe that immerse transformation may have affected him psychologically?
    possibly all the diversity had gotten to him maybe?

    So but instead of Central Asians US is focusing on Africans.

    They are not doing anything differently from the USSR when it was going through and destroying all kinds of talented people and commoners just to "educate and equalize" Central Asian tribesemen and other minorities(ofc it was all a fluke and a fail).

    Of course later on for unbeknownst reasons?(Russia has all the keys in the archives but we will probably never have access to those) Stalin turned on quite lot of them(unsure if that was due to revolts and danger of secession or need to industrialize(but there was no Hitler at that time unless Soviet intelligence services were god tier 666 psychic fortunetellers and knew Hitler was going to get elected and lead to WW2 or something else).


    The other issue once again im probably repeating myself but most actually support these ideas unlike a lot of citizens of the USSR(but i guess a lot of idiots also supported USSR in its initial stages before the mass bloodletting and repressions happened and it became much more clear)

  759. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader


    I don’t know, wasn’t it always obvious that much of Japanese ancestry comes from the mainland?
     
    I had always thought that it was a lot, figuring rice was probably domesticated outside of Japan. And then there is the Ainu. And in SE Asia, the Negritos.

    Then, I guess, there is the Shinsen Shijiroku, which is a catalogue of Japanese clans from around 815 AD. Of 1182 families recorded, it reports 326 were foreign. With 126 coming from China, and the rest from different Korean kingdoms. Supposedly, many from Baekje as refugees, when it fell (660 AD), and some of these with inferred Chinese ancestry, based on the characters.

    I don't know about others' preconceived ideas, but I'm actually kind of shocked by how late they got their Chinese admixture, if I understand it correctly. It was in the Kofun period and not before then. (Starting very roughly around 250 AD). Makes modern Europeans seem ancient.

    Given the amount of Chinese ancestry, I'm surprised that there is no historical account by the Chinese about them subjugating Japan. (unless I am mistaken? Or maybe it was a slow process?) Wei-Zhi visited Japan in 297 AD, and I don't think he mentions anything about it.

    I swear I remember reading claims a few years ago that Japan and Korea had changed very little in comparison to Europe. That most of their DNA was local hunter-gatherers.

    With Europe, I think there's been a strong political element to the discussion. Originally, it was conquerors from the Russian Steppe, but that was too un-PC, after WW2. So, it became "pots not people" and the term "Battle-Axe culture" was put aside. Then the DNA proved it was a lie. And they changed tactics. "Europeans were originally black, your ancestors killed them off." (when I first saw the recreation of Cheddar Man, I thought it was photoshopped by brilliant 4chan trolls.) "There is no such thing as a European, it has always been in flux. A melting pot."

    Not sure about Japanese attitudes to Japanification. What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human. And I guess they were also invading SE Asia and PNG.

    Wish Africa were cold enough, so that we could get a more detailed story there. I think it would be quite interesting.

    Replies: @songbird, @German_reader

    thx, that’s interesting, didn’t know about this early Japanese history.

    What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human.

    They certainly had a superiority complex, but their official propaganda at least was based on the idea after all that they were “liberating” Asia from Western colonialism, for the benefit of their Asian brothers (who in exchange should be grateful and accept Japanese leadership).
    iirc they were more contemptuous of the swarthier Asians in southeast Asia who were more obviously racially different from the Japanese and didn’t intend to assimilate them, unlike in Korea and Taiwan.
    There’s some interesting information about Japanese attitudes and settlement plans in John Dower’s War without mercy (even though I found his antiracism annoying and he’s probably too biased in favour of the Japanese, presumably because of his Japanese wife). I don’t know though if that’s still current state of research or outdated, Japanese imperialism doesn’t seem to get that much attention in Western academia.

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    I think the March 1st Movement was one of the archetypes of these regime cycles, like the Shah in Iran or the Russian Revolution, where control was getting less repressive, leading to a greater outpouring of revolutionaries. Though, the resolution was certainly quite bloody.

    From a Western perspective, my understanding is that the Japanese were pretty harsh generally, but I once read a book from the '50s (I think sponsored by the US government to get Americans to learn about Korea), and it seemed laudatory of the Japanese, with caveats. Standards of living and agricultural and industrial output were definitely increasing, during colonialism.

    Replies: @German_reader

  760. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow

    I agree with most of what you state, except this:


    The only question is what will happen to the “borderlands”, the lands that the West grabbed after 1991, but that are to some extent economically not viable without trade with Russia. Ukraine being a prime example, but the others too.
     
    Even before 2014, Ukraine's trade with the EU was slightly higher than with Russia, and today its grown quite a bit from then. For Ukraine, it stood on solid ground having large trade with both blocks, whereas today its trade with Russia is probably down considerably. There's no going back today, I think that even you should be able to understand that. Russia's not slated for any large leaps forward in its economy (from what I've read by Karlin, if not others too), so why would Ukraine even consider such a move? Politically, Ukraine needs to continue its separation from Russian influence, if it wants to retain its own identity and culture. Trade with Russia? The more the better.

    Replies: @Beckow

    You need to look at what is being traded and to what benefit. Some stuff is essential, other optional. Look at US or UK supply chain issues today: many essentials are missing, but the so-called high-value items like “consulting”, “social media advertising”, flipping real estate, “security services” are plentiful. These are not equal: in an inflated virtual, bubble economy the high-level stuff explodes while the essentials become under-valued and slowly become scarce. Try some nuance, otherwise you get fooled by surface generalities.

    Regarding Russia and its not-happening “leap forward”: we simply don’t know, it will depend on many factors, price for resources, global developments. You could be right, or they could take-off by growing faster than the West. What nobody predicts any longer is a collapse of Russia (few years back that was all the rage). Countries with massive resources, security and almost no debt don’t collapse.

    If the West experiences what looks like an increasingly likely “leap backwards” any country remaining stable will look great. The real, material stuff matters: food, energy, transportation, resources, etc…how it is valued or “traded” depends on circumstances. Today most assets in the West are astronomically over-valued and over-leveraged (debt!!!). The central banks are trying to inflate out of it and that will roll through the global economy like an earthquake…so I would be careful not to take today’s relative GNP numbers at face value. If there is a “war”, the West will benefit and buy itself more time. If there isn’t, we may be surprised by how the GNP numbers look like in 2025.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    Look at US or UK supply chain issues today: many essentials are missing
     
    It's strange because here in the northeastern USA nothing is missing in stores. In contrast to the beginning of Covid when toilet paper and paper towels were hard to find (but not impossible).

    Is it a problem o the West Coast?

    Replies: @Beckow

  761. @AaronB
    @songbird

    Yes, I know what you mean about those movies, they are self consciously "camp". When well done, I find them delightful.

    Kung Fu Hustle is a very amusing modern addition to this style.

    I always find that sudden, unexpected break with "reality" to be a release and exhilaration (I also love fantasy fiction of all types), but I know many people don't agree with me. I once told a very anxiety prone girl I knew that the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time - iirc, gravity and certain other "constants" have to be constantly updated - a fact which I found exhilarating, but which she found terrifying. Some people search for security by clinging to a solid, unshifting "reality" - sand that does not shift beneath their feet - which is just where the Buddha said it can't be found :) But this attitude works it's way into our adult philosophies in a myriad of ways, down to our preference for HBD and other "essentialist" philosophies.

    But to each his own.

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures. It's something like the fictional equivalent of neo-Gothic architecture which became so popular in the 19th century and spread across the world. (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).

    The French realist school of fiction (Zola, etc), began a new trend of realism, but in the English speaking world Hemingway led a concerted attack against stylized fiction, and was entirely successful in rooting it out. Oscar Wilde wrote a fantastic essay opposing the new realist essay and defending "deception" - imagination - in art. I think it's called "In Defense Of Lying" - but I may be wrong.

    As for today, I don't think I agree with you - I think we're experiencing an explosion of interest in the fantastic, extreme, and even to some extent the grotesque. Even Woke betrays a fascination with fantasy and extreme states.

    Many of our realist gritty shows - like Breaking Bad, The Wire, and Boardwalk Empire (great show) - are fascinated by the extreme, dark underbelly of life, and peel back the layers of smug, comfortable bourgeois society to reveal something more extreme lurking just underneath.

    Replies: @songbird, @Max Demian

    the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time – iirc, gravity and certain other “constants” have to be constantly updated

    Is it the laws themselves that change, or merely our understanding of them?

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.

    Embellishment and caricatures in a work of fiction?! You don’t say!

    Do you consider it an indication of a lack of sophistication or refinement to delight in reading a Dickens novel? Embarrassingly pedestrian?

    (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).

    Have you ever tried Barnaby Rudge?

    Have you tried listening to a well-read audio-version of a work by Dickens?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Max Demian


    Embellishment and caricatures in a work of fiction?! You don’t say!
     
    Miss Havisham is good pro-natalist progaganda.

    Though, TBH, I think a lot his comedic characters fall flat. Grimwig is sort of funny, when you paint the whole picture, but his catchphrase "I'll eat my head" is too over-the-top, IMO.
    , @AaronB
    @Max Demian

    No, it's the actual measurements that change. It's something spooky that is just papered over. I don't remember exactly but I remember finding it cool and spooky.

    I'd love to enjoy a Dickens novel. I love the idea of a Dickens novel. George Orwell's essay on Dickens makes him sound so cool. I love neo-Gothic architecture.

    But I just can't finish a Dickens novel. I've tried Barnaby Rudge. It's like Proust - I love the idea of him, that he has this kind of melancholy Buddhist quality to his writing, but I just haven't been able to get into Proust. One of my favorite travel writers, Pico Iyer, makes Proust sound so Buddhist and cool, just my kind of thing. But no.

    Maybe one day the key to all this literature will be unlocked for me. You have to be ready for certain books and writers.

    I couldn't enjoy Joseph Conrad for a long time, and then he one day just "clicked" for me, and now I love him.

    However, I did really enjoy Dickens contemporary Thackeray, and found Vanity Fair sublime - especially the ending, where the heroine finally realizes that she enjoys the bohemian lifestyle and has no desire to return to "respectability" :)

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

  762. @A123
    @songbird


    The political elite of the US may be dumb and short-sighted, but they are not suicidal.

    IMO, we averted war with Iran because it was too big.
     
    Despite sociopath Khamenei's attempt to start a war. President Trump refused to be baited.

    Not-The-President Biden's attempts to destabilize the Middle East (and the rest of the world) are failing. Foreign leaders know that Biden is mentally incompetent:
        • The Pope cancelled a joint appearance.
        • JCPOA will stay dead because Biden cannot deliver.

    His own team has to spend significant effort retracting the dangerous & crazy things that happen when he is near a microphone:
        • First, it was a walk back on Taiwan.
        • Now, it is a walk back on Israeli sovereignty. (Below)

    Expect more basement 'alone time' for TraitorJoe.

    PEACE 😇

    https://twitter.com/Ostrov_A/status/1453608462282330115?s=20

    Replies: @songbird

    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war.

    If he had wanted to start a war, I would suppose he would have attacked the US domestically.

    • Agree: Not Raul
    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird



    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war.
     
    If he had wanted to start a war, I would suppose he would have attacked the US domestically
     
    To serve his personal PR narrative, Khamenei wanted a conflict:
    -- Big enough to rally the Iranian people to his persona
    -- Controlled enough to protect his personal wealth derived from oil and other SOE's

    Trump wisely refused to put boots on the ground. Instead he enhanced the effective containment strategy. Limiting Khamenei's resources was delivering results. It forced A choice between:
    -- The Iranian people, or
    -- Global aggression


    Of course, Not-The-President Biden managed to screw up a winning position by caving in.... No surprise there....

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

     
    https://i.imgflip.com/5m04kp.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

  763. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British…equivalent?(if that’s a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners?
     


    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don't quite know what to make of it. Might be the twisted mirror image of the pretensions to global hegemony which seem to come so naturally to many Americans. Powell's world view was a much more traditional and rational one, which imo only looks extreme if one thinks nations (at least European ones) are an illegitimate concept per se.
    But anyway, of course you're right that large percentages of Westerners today are fervent believers in multiculturalism and mass immigration, and I'd agree that Britain is one of the worse examples for this in Europe (maybe on the same level as Sweden and West Germany). But it's a historically fairly recent development. During my father's childhood and youth in Lancashire in the 1950s and 1960s it was an almost monoethnic environment (apart from some other white Europeans, like Poles and Balts who had fled from the Soviets; there also were already some colored immigrants, but they were clearly regarded as foreign and resented in a way the Eastern Europeans weren't), with a strong sense of British (or maybe rather English) nationhood. This sceptred isle, and all that. And it most definitely wasn't a racially inclusive concept of nationhood.
    There was also less personal experience of the empire than one could imagine, none of my relatives from the mid-19th century onwards had any experience of it, and as far as I can tell the same seems to be true for the families of all my father's friends and acquaintances. Regarding America, there was intense resentment of the US in post-war Britain. My English grandfather didn't like the Americans he encountered during WW2, he thought them arrogant and condescending, and there was a lot of envy of the material abundance the Americans enjoyed (and which they flaunted), while Britain was on food rationing until the early 1950s. And after WW2 there was a widespread sentiment that the US was intent on humiliating Britain and dismantling her great power status. Now on a surface level at least much of that criticism was probably unfair, given American assistance (though on a deeper level it probably wasn't incorrect). But that kind of sentiments wasn't uncommon, and obviously complicates any interpretation founded on natural convergence of British and American interests.
    Of course that's all somewhat anecdotal and probably not the whole story, but I find it difficult to reconcile the experiences of my father (or of his friends still living in England, most of whose horizons are basically limited to northwestern Europe) with all those notions of "global Britain" and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn't reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit voters.

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us
     
    I can see how Ukraine's position is very difficult. Personally I think it would be best if some kind of mutually acceptable agreement between Ukraine and Russia could be reached, but obviously that seems hardly possible when many Russians don't even accept that Ukraine is a separate nation. So I guess you'll have to try to exploit Westerners to your advantage, while keeping their nation-wrecking ideology at bay. We'll see if that's possible.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @Svidomyatheart

    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don’t quite know what to make of it.

    Tried reading it once, and thought it was too sanguinary.

    [MORE]
    Couldn’t get past the first throat-cutting. I wonder if he could have been some agent provocateur? That would be my strong suspicion. But I don’t really know anything about him.

    Seems to be a real dearth of good racist literature and films.

    Guess there are a few that can be interpreted as having a subtext, like Carpenter’s The Thing (based on one of my favorite sci-fi stories), or The Midwich Cuckoos, or Invasion of the Body Snatchers. But most of those seem accidental. The guy who wrote Body Snatchers was woke.

    Closest thing I can think of in near times is the Flashman novels. I suspect George MacDonald Fraser was genuinely ethnocentric, even if the message about Fuzzy-wuzzies is camouflaged by his European characters often being just as treacherous, debaucherous, or evil. I think he was quite intelligent, which is reflected in his ability to incorporate historical facts, though they are a bit too tawdry for me. (Probably by design, so he could get away with it.)

    But I’ve never remotely heard of anything with a positive vision. (I think that is why Camp of the Saints was originally tolerated) Hard to find regular nationalist stories, let alone anything with a united front against globalism or radical universalism. Difficult to even find anything not woke.

  764. @sher singh
    @Dmitry

    *https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/903330099573694505/D5UqPGRX4AI0fYF.png

    It's K next step of Assimilating is reverse assimilation||

    Replies: @AP

    Very nice

  765. @Max Demian
    @AaronB


    the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time – iirc, gravity and certain other “constants” have to be constantly updated
     
    Is it the laws themselves that change, or merely our understanding of them?

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.
     
    Embellishment and caricatures in a work of fiction?! You don't say!

    Do you consider it an indication of a lack of sophistication or refinement to delight in reading a Dickens novel? Embarrassingly pedestrian?

    (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).
     
    Have you ever tried Barnaby Rudge?

    Have you tried listening to a well-read audio-version of a work by Dickens?

    Replies: @songbird, @AaronB

    Embellishment and caricatures in a work of fiction?! You don’t say!

    Miss Havisham is good pro-natalist progaganda.

    Though, TBH, I think a lot his comedic characters fall flat. Grimwig is sort of funny, when you paint the whole picture, but his catchphrase “I’ll eat my head” is too over-the-top, IMO.

  766. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You need to look at what is being traded and to what benefit. Some stuff is essential, other optional. Look at US or UK supply chain issues today: many essentials are missing, but the so-called high-value items like "consulting", "social media advertising", flipping real estate, "security services" are plentiful. These are not equal: in an inflated virtual, bubble economy the high-level stuff explodes while the essentials become under-valued and slowly become scarce. Try some nuance, otherwise you get fooled by surface generalities.

    Regarding Russia and its not-happening "leap forward": we simply don't know, it will depend on many factors, price for resources, global developments. You could be right, or they could take-off by growing faster than the West. What nobody predicts any longer is a collapse of Russia (few years back that was all the rage). Countries with massive resources, security and almost no debt don't collapse.

    If the West experiences what looks like an increasingly likely "leap backwards" any country remaining stable will look great. The real, material stuff matters: food, energy, transportation, resources, etc...how it is valued or "traded" depends on circumstances. Today most assets in the West are astronomically over-valued and over-leveraged (debt!!!). The central banks are trying to inflate out of it and that will roll through the global economy like an earthquake...so I would be careful not to take today's relative GNP numbers at face value. If there is a "war", the West will benefit and buy itself more time. If there isn't, we may be surprised by how the GNP numbers look like in 2025.

    Replies: @AP

    Look at US or UK supply chain issues today: many essentials are missing

    It’s strange because here in the northeastern USA nothing is missing in stores. In contrast to the beginning of Covid when toilet paper and paper towels were hard to find (but not impossible).

    Is it a problem o the West Coast?

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @AP

    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent? Why the constant drum-beat, Amazon missing its numbers (badly), if there are no issues? There are also the backed-up ships in the LA port. But if you are not missing anything, good for you.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today? Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy, with a few "trillioners" owning everything in sight, censored media, gender and racial circus out of control - and geriocratic leaders. Maybe toilet paper won't be the main problem.

    Replies: @AP

  767. @German_reader
    @songbird

    thx, that's interesting, didn't know about this early Japanese history.


    What they really had in mind. Some of the barbarism of the Japanese, leads me to believe that they saw others as sub-human.
     
    They certainly had a superiority complex, but their official propaganda at least was based on the idea after all that they were "liberating" Asia from Western colonialism, for the benefit of their Asian brothers (who in exchange should be grateful and accept Japanese leadership).
    iirc they were more contemptuous of the swarthier Asians in southeast Asia who were more obviously racially different from the Japanese and didn't intend to assimilate them, unlike in Korea and Taiwan.
    There's some interesting information about Japanese attitudes and settlement plans in John Dower's War without mercy (even though I found his antiracism annoying and he's probably too biased in favour of the Japanese, presumably because of his Japanese wife). I don't know though if that's still current state of research or outdated, Japanese imperialism doesn't seem to get that much attention in Western academia.

    Replies: @songbird

    I think the March 1st Movement was one of the archetypes of these regime cycles, like the Shah in Iran or the Russian Revolution, where control was getting less repressive, leading to a greater outpouring of revolutionaries. Though, the resolution was certainly quite bloody.

    From a Western perspective, my understanding is that the Japanese were pretty harsh generally, but I once read a book from the ’50s (I think sponsored by the US government to get Americans to learn about Korea), and it seemed laudatory of the Japanese, with caveats. Standards of living and agricultural and industrial output were definitely increasing, during colonialism.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird

    Twitterer Nemets had an interesting thread with excerpts from a history of Korea. The section about Japanese rule starts here:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1135425524333891587
    So according to that book there was quite a lot of cultural destruction and repression, with intense pressure for assimilation to Japanese language and culture during the WW2 era.

    Replies: @songbird, @Eagle Eye

  768. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader

    I think the March 1st Movement was one of the archetypes of these regime cycles, like the Shah in Iran or the Russian Revolution, where control was getting less repressive, leading to a greater outpouring of revolutionaries. Though, the resolution was certainly quite bloody.

    From a Western perspective, my understanding is that the Japanese were pretty harsh generally, but I once read a book from the '50s (I think sponsored by the US government to get Americans to learn about Korea), and it seemed laudatory of the Japanese, with caveats. Standards of living and agricultural and industrial output were definitely increasing, during colonialism.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Twitterer Nemets had an interesting thread with excerpts from a history of Korea. The section about Japanese rule starts here:

    [MORE]


    So according to that book there was quite a lot of cultural destruction and repression, with intense pressure for assimilation to Japanese language and culture during the WW2 era.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    Thanks, that was interesting!

    I can see some parallels with Ireland, such as names being Anglicized. (Though in the Church first names were always Latinized) I strongly suspect some of my nearer ancestors still used the Irish forms, even nearly three hundred years after the Elizabethan Conquest, but only the flimsiest evidence survives. And they could have very well been illiterate, so probably difficult to change their habits. The original pronunciation of my last name is still sort of a puzzle and mystery to me - I have heard rumors about how it was pronounced, but can scarce believe them. And it is not helped by regionality, which adds another layer of disbelief.

    Re: the teachers wearing swords.

    Don't know exactly when the practice ended, but at least into the '70s, it was common for SK teachers to carry sticks for beating pupils. Maybe, not much of a lag from corporal punishment in classrooms in the West? But what was different was that parents often gifted them the sticks for beating their own children, and there was a very obsequious attitude to them. They could also be beaten for not buying Korean-made school supplies.

    I half-suspect that a native regime would have also been harsh by Western standards. Probably necessary due to the geography. Though, I won't claim as harsh as the Japanese.

    As an outsider, I think, "if they cooperated, they could accomplish a lot of things, and probably wouldn't have US garrisons over there." It is interesting to compare the idea with the EU. An archipelago and a peninsula would probably avoid this push for infinite expansion and easy infiltration. Also, I genuinely believe it would benefit China to have a non-woke competitor, at that scale. IMO, Japan should have sat on its gains, but they overreached.

    , @Eagle Eye
    @German_reader

    For ordinary Koreans, the Japanese takeover brought long-delayed agricultural and economic development, albeit from a very low base. The mass of Koreans had lived in hovels, often at risk of starvation and death from infectious diseases that had long receded in Japan.

    Korea's feudal elite was utterly and superciliously contemptuous of the fate of their lower-class subjects. By contrast, Japan was serious about wanting to develop its new territories. Even Korean untouchables (baekjeong) were in due course emancipated under Japanese rule.

    The Korean elite, of course, felt aggrieved at having been despoiled of their ancestor-given right to tax, abuse and starve their "compatriots."

    Much of the post-1945 "anti-colonial" posturing by Koreans and their "advocates" in Western academia is synthetic and rife with ex post facto rationalization.

  769. @songbird
    @A123


    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war.
     
    If he had wanted to start a war, I would suppose he would have attacked the US domestically.

    Replies: @A123

    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war.

    If he had wanted to start a war, I would suppose he would have attacked the US domestically

    To serve his personal PR narrative, Khamenei wanted a conflict:
    — Big enough to rally the Iranian people to his persona
    — Controlled enough to protect his personal wealth derived from oil and other SOE’s

    Trump wisely refused to put boots on the ground. Instead he enhanced the effective containment strategy. Limiting Khamenei’s resources was delivering results. It forced A choice between:
    — The Iranian people, or
    — Global aggression

    Of course, Not-The-President Biden managed to screw up a winning position by caving in…. No surprise there….

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

     

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123

    What do you think will happen with Trump's social network now that they seem to have licensing trouble with much of the code behind it?

    Replies: @A123

  770. @Max Demian
    @AaronB


    the supposedly immutable laws of physics actually change over time – iirc, gravity and certain other “constants” have to be constantly updated
     
    Is it the laws themselves that change, or merely our understanding of them?

    Then you have something like a Dickens novel, in which fifty percent of the words are superfluous and there purely for atmosphere and embellishment. His characters, too, are grotesques and caricatures.
     
    Embellishment and caricatures in a work of fiction?! You don't say!

    Do you consider it an indication of a lack of sophistication or refinement to delight in reading a Dickens novel? Embarrassingly pedestrian?

    (I confess, I have never been able to get through a Dickens novel lol).
     
    Have you ever tried Barnaby Rudge?

    Have you tried listening to a well-read audio-version of a work by Dickens?

    Replies: @songbird, @AaronB

    No, it’s the actual measurements that change. It’s something spooky that is just papered over. I don’t remember exactly but I remember finding it cool and spooky.

    I’d love to enjoy a Dickens novel. I love the idea of a Dickens novel. George Orwell’s essay on Dickens makes him sound so cool. I love neo-Gothic architecture.

    But I just can’t finish a Dickens novel. I’ve tried Barnaby Rudge. It’s like Proust – I love the idea of him, that he has this kind of melancholy Buddhist quality to his writing, but I just haven’t been able to get into Proust. One of my favorite travel writers, Pico Iyer, makes Proust sound so Buddhist and cool, just my kind of thing. But no.

    Maybe one day the key to all this literature will be unlocked for me. You have to be ready for certain books and writers.

    I couldn’t enjoy Joseph Conrad for a long time, and then he one day just “clicked” for me, and now I love him.

    However, I did really enjoy Dickens contemporary Thackeray, and found Vanity Fair sublime – especially the ending, where the heroine finally realizes that she enjoys the bohemian lifestyle and has no desire to return to “respectability” 🙂

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AaronB

    1. Christmas Carol is a quick read and it is an amazingly great story. The Scrooge strategy for personal improvement is a powerful one. If you are trying to quit smoking or something like that just take the time to sit down and visualize the ghost of Christmas in 20 years visiting your possible wreck of a life and it just might do the trick!

    2. The Dickens zealots I know tell me Great Expectations is the best starter novel.

    3. In the American school system it is very common to go with Tale of Two Cities. Maybe the committees who do the syllabuses thinks this is a two-birds-one-stone trick to teach the little monsters some Euro history at the same time but Tale of Two Cities is not a good novel and it wrecks Dickens for a lot of students.

  771. @German_reader
    @songbird

    Twitterer Nemets had an interesting thread with excerpts from a history of Korea. The section about Japanese rule starts here:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1135425524333891587
    So according to that book there was quite a lot of cultural destruction and repression, with intense pressure for assimilation to Japanese language and culture during the WW2 era.

    Replies: @songbird, @Eagle Eye

    Thanks, that was interesting!

    I can see some parallels with Ireland, such as names being Anglicized. (Though in the Church first names were always Latinized) I strongly suspect some of my nearer ancestors still used the Irish forms, even nearly three hundred years after the Elizabethan Conquest, but only the flimsiest evidence survives. And they could have very well been illiterate, so probably difficult to change their habits. The original pronunciation of my last name is still sort of a puzzle and mystery to me – I have heard rumors about how it was pronounced, but can scarce believe them. And it is not helped by regionality, which adds another layer of disbelief.

    Re: the teachers wearing swords.

    Don’t know exactly when the practice ended, but at least into the ’70s, it was common for SK teachers to carry sticks for beating pupils. Maybe, not much of a lag from corporal punishment in classrooms in the West? But what was different was that parents often gifted them the sticks for beating their own children, and there was a very obsequious attitude to them. They could also be beaten for not buying Korean-made school supplies.

    I half-suspect that a native regime would have also been harsh by Western standards. Probably necessary due to the geography. Though, I won’t claim as harsh as the Japanese.

    As an outsider, I think, “if they cooperated, they could accomplish a lot of things, and probably wouldn’t have US garrisons over there.” It is interesting to compare the idea with the EU. An archipelago and a peninsula would probably avoid this push for infinite expansion and easy infiltration. Also, I genuinely believe it would benefit China to have a non-woke competitor, at that scale. IMO, Japan should have sat on its gains, but they overreached.

  772. @AP
    @Dmitry


    Poland are religious (my church is full of recent immigrants,

    Your political viewpoint seems American in these areas, not in the conclusions, but the point of view
     
    How so? I do not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my cousins. Maybe it’s due to age differences?

    In Russia dogs are used as agricultural burglar alarms for generations
     
    My dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon while my wife calls the police.

    If you are immigrating to Western Europe, you won’t do this, and the attitude of Europe is very different. It’s impossible to imagine Italians of England, organizing “Colombus Day Parade” through Knightsbridge. It would be seen as very uncool.
     
    The Italian-American flagwavers mostly do not speak Italian and don’t visit Italy regularly. They have assimilated.

    My grandparents could have stayed in Germany or Austria. They left precisely because in Germany they would have felt obligated to become Germans whereas in America they did not have to become Americans.

    Your interesting claim is that because when living in America one need not be an American, the fact of not being an American makes one an American. So it is very American for a Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school. The fact that my kids didn't speak English until they started school shows how American they are. What could be more truly American than Chinatown? Etc.

    BTW circumstances are no different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA. It’s more of a universal phenomenon of settler-countries. Also Brazil:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ukrainian_Brazilians

    Are Ukrainians down there being Americans?

    Replies: @Dmitry

    when living in America one need not be an American

    Well, I’m a fanboy of Israel, and would like to try to win all the Israel fanboy competitions, and defeat everyone with some obscure knowledge of Hebrew grammar or Israeli politics.

    But this concept of a “Celebrate Israel parade” looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine “Celebrate Russia” doing parade (it’s an even more funny idea).

    I don’t think it is because of being myself idiosyncratic, but another measure of my cultural distance from America. I’m sure if I was assimilated in New England, I would understand these things more – that all the communities are supposed to have their own pride (even LGBT people can create such civic pride for their sexuality).

    Irish Americans also have the same (looking more working class version) of these parades, as the Zionist secular Jews.

    When you are Russian in Europe (I think this is true for almost everyone), you are walking around in Europe hoping people think you are natives, almost like an undercover agent when you at the supermarket.

    dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon

    Well there is America, with guns in the bedroom after the dog wakes you. (This is a classic scene in the film “Boyz n the Hood” (1991)).

    These dogs in Russian farms make circles of their own shit, because they are tied to small string which is pushed into the ground by hammer, and can be tied there for hours. Then returned the next day, with no-one cleaning their circle of shit.

    I’m opposed to it because I’m a bleeding heart person i.e. for the same reason I’m never going on hunting trips.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.

    Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school.

    But these young American Jews don’t go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.

    They’re not going to sit on the pavement like an Israeli person, put their feet on the bus seats, or go to the office wearing pajamas and underwear showing.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans. The reason is because Jews in America will have much a higher GDP per capita, than Jews in Israel. Therefore American Jews who go to Israel, can be selected as ones with the strongest “United States Foreign Service” idealism of changing the world, as opposed to the economic migration Israel received from Ukraine/Russia.

    There is another class of American Jews who just go to Israel to manage their families’ property portfolio – these people’s motivations are of course a bit less culturally distant from Russian elites’ perspective.

    not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my

    Mostly people are interested in religion, to calm their soul, because of difficult torturing spiritual questions, after their family have died, etc.

    Whereas in America, it of course includes this (especially in “born again” church), but it also how you build the local social life.

    A lot of discussion of religion in this forum, seemed to me blasphemous. But of course, in the American perspective it is not, because the church (or Jewish synagogue, or Mormon temple) is a form of “city square”, or “public sphere”, that is lacking in many other ways in the cultural life in America.

    Also notice that people with the world’s most un-Christian views, are often going to churches in America.

    By the way, I’m not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don’t socialize after the service – just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.

    different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their “melting pot”, encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.

    At the same time, the children are becoming incredibly well assimilated.

    I think about Conan O’Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it’s one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.

    At the same, he is of course culturally totally American culturally, from bodylanguage to his jokes, and the Irish peoples’ sense of humor will have some difficulty with him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2TlhQcOO8.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry

    A lot of these ethnic parades in the US have been subverted of any sense of nationalism, long ago.

    When I was a kid, we didn't exactly celebrate St. Patrick's Day in school, not officially, but sometimes it was mentioned, due to teachers with Irish roots. I think I remember hearing in school "On St. Patrick's Day, anyone can be Irish." I didn't really have a problem with it at the time, in my overwhelmingly Euro school, but that was before the gays in jackboots starting forcefully marching, not to mention the Hondurans, who being extremely obese and not Euro, I have at least some small sympathy for, as I think they are attracted to celebrations of Catholic saints, in a deeply secular and atheistic country. But, of course, it is a heresy for the gays to be marching.

    Believe it or not, St. Patrick's Day used to actually be a holiday in Boston, being the day the British evacuated. Though, I don't believe it is anymore. Just recently, in Boston, they changed the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples' Day.

    , @AP
    @Dmitry


    But this concept of a “Celebrate Israel parade” looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine “Celebrate Russia” doing parade (it’s an even more funny idea).
     
    They celebrate Ukraine in Ukraine though. People right off the boat often place tryzubs on their cars in the USA. Are they Americans right away? The Russian writer, Bykov, was at an Okean Elzy concert in England and was surprised at the emotional singing of the national anthem by the crowd, who were immigrants from Ukraine. Were they actually from America?

    Because this stuff is common and popular by non-Americans in America, you think it is somehow American.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.
     
    No, Americans just have more fences, so there is no need for a rope. There are huge numbers of working dogs in the USA. They often guard places with cars:

    https://bbandm.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/sleeping-pitbull.jpg

    https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/guard-dogs-shop-red-hook-260nw-1328641058.jpg

    Or help people with hunting.

    And plenty of Russians have house dogs like Americans do. My wife grew up with a bolonka. She would never eat a dog. Is it because she was in America too long?

    But these young American Jews don’t go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.
     
    In their idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel? It doesn't seem to be something specific to America.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans.
     
    By this logic, the least American people of all are actual Americans.

    By the way, I’m not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don’t socialize after the service – just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.
     
    Yes, I and most people go straight home after church. There are some pensioners who stay after, for coffee and deserts.

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their “melting pot”, encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.
     
    And Canada, and Australia, and even South America. Here is a Ukrainian parade in Argentina:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Ukrainianobera2.JPG

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Ukrainianobera3.JPG

    Are these people "Americans?"

    There is nothing specifically "American" about people maintaining their identity in exile, even over generations.

    What can be considered American is not ethnic self-identity but (compare dot those who were raised under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed to rip someone off, low tolerance for bureaucracy, acceptance of personal firearms, etc. But these are not enough to declare someone an American.

    I think about Conan O’Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it’s one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.
     
    Most Irish, like most Italians, can't be compared to Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, etc. They are highly assimilated, most are something like 1/4 Irish or less. There are pockets of actual Irish people but this would not characterize the average Irish-American.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  773. @A123
    @songbird



    Despite sociopath Khamenei’s attempt to start a war.
     
    If he had wanted to start a war, I would suppose he would have attacked the US domestically
     
    To serve his personal PR narrative, Khamenei wanted a conflict:
    -- Big enough to rally the Iranian people to his persona
    -- Controlled enough to protect his personal wealth derived from oil and other SOE's

    Trump wisely refused to put boots on the ground. Instead he enhanced the effective containment strategy. Limiting Khamenei's resources was delivering results. It forced A choice between:
    -- The Iranian people, or
    -- Global aggression


    Of course, Not-The-President Biden managed to screw up a winning position by caving in.... No surprise there....

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

     
    https://i.imgflip.com/5m04kp.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

    What do you think will happen with Trump’s social network now that they seem to have licensing trouble with much of the code behind it?

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird

    The code allegation (if true) is embarrassing but not a material liability. There is plenty of time and money to license or replace encumbered IP.

    The Equity side has run amok. I am not invested it. The original price was optimistic. The current value is absurd. A few people put in "donation" scale money very early and have since cashed out. I do not know of anyone betting "investment" scale funds.

    Hopefully the SPAC momentum consists of day traders fleecing other Blue State day traders. Enron was a Red State company, and the lesson has not been forgotten. I wish a map of trade activity versus investor location was available.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @songbird

  774. @Dmitry
    @AP


    when living in America one need not be an American
     
    Well, I'm a fanboy of Israel, and would like to try to win all the Israel fanboy competitions, and defeat everyone with some obscure knowledge of Hebrew grammar or Israeli politics.

    But this concept of a "Celebrate Israel parade" looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine "Celebrate Russia" doing parade (it's an even more funny idea).

    I don't think it is because of being myself idiosyncratic, but another measure of my cultural distance from America. I'm sure if I was assimilated in New England, I would understand these things more - that all the communities are supposed to have their own pride (even LGBT people can create such civic pride for their sexuality).

    Irish Americans also have the same (looking more working class version) of these parades, as the Zionist secular Jews.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8UCt9Ze5D4

    When you are Russian in Europe (I think this is true for almost everyone), you are walking around in Europe hoping people think you are natives, almost like an undercover agent when you at the supermarket.


    dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon

     

    Well there is America, with guns in the bedroom after the dog wakes you. (This is a classic scene in the film "Boyz n the Hood" (1991)).

    -

    These dogs in Russian farms make circles of their own shit, because they are tied to small string which is pushed into the ground by hammer, and can be tied there for hours. Then returned the next day, with no-one cleaning their circle of shit.

    I'm opposed to it because I'm a bleeding heart person i.e. for the same reason I'm never going on hunting trips.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.


    Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school.
     
    But these young American Jews don't go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.

    They're not going to sit on the pavement like an Israeli person, put their feet on the bus seats, or go to the office wearing pajamas and underwear showing.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans. The reason is because Jews in America will have much a higher GDP per capita, than Jews in Israel. Therefore American Jews who go to Israel, can be selected as ones with the strongest "United States Foreign Service" idealism of changing the world, as opposed to the economic migration Israel received from Ukraine/Russia.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkaFxQG4WHQ

    There is another class of American Jews who just go to Israel to manage their families' property portfolio - these people's motivations are of course a bit less culturally distant from Russian elites' perspective.


    not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my
     
    Mostly people are interested in religion, to calm their soul, because of difficult torturing spiritual questions, after their family have died, etc.

    Whereas in America, it of course includes this (especially in "born again" church), but it also how you build the local social life.

    A lot of discussion of religion in this forum, seemed to me blasphemous. But of course, in the American perspective it is not, because the church (or Jewish synagogue, or Mormon temple) is a form of "city square", or "public sphere", that is lacking in many other ways in the cultural life in America.

    Also notice that people with the world's most un-Christian views, are often going to churches in America.

    By the way, I'm not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don't socialize after the service - just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.


    different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA

     

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their "melting pot", encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.

    At the same time, the children are becoming incredibly well assimilated.


    -


    I think about Conan O'Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it's one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.

    At the same, he is of course culturally totally American culturally, from bodylanguage to his jokes, and the Irish peoples' sense of humor will have some difficulty with him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2TlhQcOO8.

    Replies: @songbird, @AP

    A lot of these ethnic parades in the US have been subverted of any sense of nationalism, long ago.

    When I was a kid, we didn’t exactly celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in school, not officially, but sometimes it was mentioned, due to teachers with Irish roots. I think I remember hearing in school “On St. Patrick’s Day, anyone can be Irish.” I didn’t really have a problem with it at the time, in my overwhelmingly Euro school, but that was before the gays in jackboots starting forcefully marching, not to mention the Hondurans, who being extremely obese and not Euro, I have at least some small sympathy for, as I think they are attracted to celebrations of Catholic saints, in a deeply secular and atheistic country. But, of course, it is a heresy for the gays to be marching.

    Believe it or not, St. Patrick’s Day used to actually be a holiday in Boston, being the day the British evacuated. Though, I don’t believe it is anymore. Just recently, in Boston, they changed the name of Columbus Day to Indigenous Peoples’ Day.

  775. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British…equivalent?(if that’s a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners?
     


    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don't quite know what to make of it. Might be the twisted mirror image of the pretensions to global hegemony which seem to come so naturally to many Americans. Powell's world view was a much more traditional and rational one, which imo only looks extreme if one thinks nations (at least European ones) are an illegitimate concept per se.
    But anyway, of course you're right that large percentages of Westerners today are fervent believers in multiculturalism and mass immigration, and I'd agree that Britain is one of the worse examples for this in Europe (maybe on the same level as Sweden and West Germany). But it's a historically fairly recent development. During my father's childhood and youth in Lancashire in the 1950s and 1960s it was an almost monoethnic environment (apart from some other white Europeans, like Poles and Balts who had fled from the Soviets; there also were already some colored immigrants, but they were clearly regarded as foreign and resented in a way the Eastern Europeans weren't), with a strong sense of British (or maybe rather English) nationhood. This sceptred isle, and all that. And it most definitely wasn't a racially inclusive concept of nationhood.
    There was also less personal experience of the empire than one could imagine, none of my relatives from the mid-19th century onwards had any experience of it, and as far as I can tell the same seems to be true for the families of all my father's friends and acquaintances. Regarding America, there was intense resentment of the US in post-war Britain. My English grandfather didn't like the Americans he encountered during WW2, he thought them arrogant and condescending, and there was a lot of envy of the material abundance the Americans enjoyed (and which they flaunted), while Britain was on food rationing until the early 1950s. And after WW2 there was a widespread sentiment that the US was intent on humiliating Britain and dismantling her great power status. Now on a surface level at least much of that criticism was probably unfair, given American assistance (though on a deeper level it probably wasn't incorrect). But that kind of sentiments wasn't uncommon, and obviously complicates any interpretation founded on natural convergence of British and American interests.
    Of course that's all somewhat anecdotal and probably not the whole story, but I find it difficult to reconcile the experiences of my father (or of his friends still living in England, most of whose horizons are basically limited to northwestern Europe) with all those notions of "global Britain" and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn't reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit voters.

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us
     
    I can see how Ukraine's position is very difficult. Personally I think it would be best if some kind of mutually acceptable agreement between Ukraine and Russia could be reached, but obviously that seems hardly possible when many Russians don't even accept that Ukraine is a separate nation. So I guess you'll have to try to exploit Westerners to your advantage, while keeping their nation-wrecking ideology at bay. We'll see if that's possible.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @Svidomyatheart

    “global Britain” and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn’t reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit

    Well it is written “Global Britain” – i.e. Britain, where the attitude of the ruling class to the lower classes, had reminded the former in the 19th century of the caste system of India.

    Although probably Brexit is helpful for the proletarian people as it reduces the supply of labour (so it was a good idea for them to vote for Brexit), Boris Johnson of Upper East Side Manhattan and Oxford, might have limited cultural similarity to the section of Brexit voters who are poor people in some unfashionable districts of the Kingdom.

    His idea of entertaining people, is singing Ancient Greek. I doubt his friendship group is including even many standard middle class professional.

    His childhood photos look like

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry


    His childhood photos look like

     

    https://i.imgur.com/7gmTaED.png

    https://i.imgur.com/dRCMgIS.jpg
  776. Eagle Eye says:
    @German_reader
    @songbird

    Twitterer Nemets had an interesting thread with excerpts from a history of Korea. The section about Japanese rule starts here:

    https://twitter.com/Peter_Nimitz/status/1135425524333891587
    So according to that book there was quite a lot of cultural destruction and repression, with intense pressure for assimilation to Japanese language and culture during the WW2 era.

    Replies: @songbird, @Eagle Eye

    For ordinary Koreans, the Japanese takeover brought long-delayed agricultural and economic development, albeit from a very low base. The mass of Koreans had lived in hovels, often at risk of starvation and death from infectious diseases that had long receded in Japan.

    Korea’s feudal elite was utterly and superciliously contemptuous of the fate of their lower-class subjects. By contrast, Japan was serious about wanting to develop its new territories. Even Korean untouchables (baekjeong) were in due course emancipated under Japanese rule.

    The Korean elite, of course, felt aggrieved at having been despoiled of their ancestor-given right to tax, abuse and starve their “compatriots.”

    Much of the post-1945 “anti-colonial” posturing by Koreans and their “advocates” in Western academia is synthetic and rife with ex post facto rationalization.

  777. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    “global Britain” and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn’t reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit

     

    Well it is written "Global Britain" - i.e. Britain, where the attitude of the ruling class to the lower classes, had reminded the former in the 19th century of the caste system of India.

    Although probably Brexit is helpful for the proletarian people as it reduces the supply of labour (so it was a good idea for them to vote for Brexit), Boris Johnson of Upper East Side Manhattan and Oxford, might have limited cultural similarity to the section of Brexit voters who are poor people in some unfashionable districts of the Kingdom.

    His idea of entertaining people, is singing Ancient Greek. I doubt his friendship group is including even many standard middle class professional.
    https://youtu.be/MaTAbfp-yrE?t=10

    His childhood photos look like
    https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/e7a002aca2babe12ae66d7620541a1c42811e748/0_0_1708_1208/master/1708.jpg

    Replies: @Dmitry

    His childhood photos look like

  778. Absolutely seminal article by Paul Kingsnorth.

    The supply chain disruptions we are seeing May not be temporary, but rather the beginning of the end of the growth model of industrial civilization.

    Apparently, someone in the 70s used simple computer modelling to see what when the world would begin running out of resources if the growth model was followed, and the timeline has been followed perfectly.

    There is a good chance, that this may be “it”, my friends. And Dmitry, your faith in materialism is about to review a severe shock 🙂

    I am excited by this!

    https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/intermission-the-machine-stops

    Intermission: The Machine Stops?
    ‘I have seen the hills of Wessex.’

    Paul Kingsnorth

    “The Machine,” they exclaimed, “feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.”

    – E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909

    Samhain, in old Ireland, was one of two annual festivals (the other was Beltaine, in May) in which the veil between the world of humans and the otherworld of the Aos sí – the ‘fairies’ in modern parlance – was said to be thin. Fires were lit, and the burial mounds were opened to allow the dead to move freely between the worlds. Some of the neolithic tombs here have portals which are aligned with the rising of the sun on the eve of Samhain – the 31st of October.

    Neopagans still take Samhain fairly seriously, but in today’s Ireland the tradition has been almost entirely subsumed by the modern American festival of Halloween. As across much of the Western world, Halloween has moved far from its origins in either Samhain or the Christian festival of All Hallows, and has mutated into a month-long deluge of consumer crap, built around a few Hollywood horror franchises and aimed at getting children to buy as many sweets, pumpkins, plastic witches’ hats, Harry Potter Quidditch broomsticks, inflatable ghost toys and zombie-themed biscuit selections as humanly possible.

    Not this year, though. This year, you couldn’t find a cheap, Chinese-made plastic vampire mask in the shops around here for love or money. You couldn’t find much at all, in fact. Usually whole supermarket aisles are decked out with disposable junk destined for the North Pacific gyre, but this year it was mostly noticeable by its absence. This was both strange and uplifting, as if the old spirits had come back to breathe some sanity into what we have made of ourselves.

    This absence of Halloween tat is only the most visible instance of the sudden collapse in the availability of stuff that is hitting large areas of the world right now. Examples are legion. In Britain recently, petrol shortages led to long queues at garages and violent scuffles at the pumps. Here in Ireland, we are being warned of possible power outages throughout the winter. Supermarket shelves from Spain to Brazil are running short on basics. And workers are suddenly, mysteriously, in short supply worldwide. In a country of nearly 70 million people, the UK government can’t find enough people to drive lorries, despite offering to pay them as much as some doctors. Container ships are queueing up at ports in America because not enough dockers are available to unload them.

    Most intriguingly of all, given the interconnected nature of the technological matrix we live in, there is a global shortage of semiconductors, the silicon chips which power every digital device. Given that a modern car contains between 1500 and 3000 of these – and that with even one of them unavailable, production will be halted or delayed – the disaster for the automobile industry alone is plain to see. It has led already to enforced plant shutdowns, with associated unemployment and government spending, as well as lines of half-built cars so big that they can be seen from space. This chip shortage, which is affecting everything from Internet connectivity to the production of gaming consoles, is projected to last for years.

    What is going on here? The answer depends on who you listen to. The global supply chain crisis is usually attributed to lockdowns and just-in-time delivery systems. The semiconductor shortage is variously blamed on the same lockdowns, an over-concentration of production in a few key regions (Taiwan apparently produces 50% of all the world’s silicon chips), lots of people working from home and ordering new gadgets, and even storms and fires hitting manufacturing plants. The worldwide worker shortage is sometimes blamed on vaccine mandates, though it is also happening in places where mandates are not in use.

    Sometimes the explanations are more localised. The problems with both supply and delivery in Britain are commonly blamed on Brexit, especially by those who always opposed it, but this fails to explain the existence of the same problems in the US or France. Where I live, the Irish government recently told us, with a straight face, that their inability to supply a mere five million people with regular electricity – a problem that might normally be associated with a ‘developing’ country – is due to some power plants being closed for maintenance as winter approaches.

    There might be truth in all of these explanations, but it seems to me that there is something fishy about them too. The overall message is that once these weirdly simultaneous and yet temporary problems are ironed out, everything will get back to ‘normal’ in perhaps a couple of years. Given that this argument is being made by the same people who told us that mass vaccination would put an end to the covid pandemic, it is hard to put a lot of faith in it. The events of the last several years have put a huge hole in public trust in authority on all sides of the fence, and plenty of people have stopped believing the official explanations for anything much. Suspicion, fear and mistrust: this is the grim zeitgeist of the 2020s.

    But if there is something else going on, what could it be? Well, one possibility is that something which has been long-predicted is beginning to make itself known. It is that what we are seeing is not a temporary glitch, but the beginning of the end of the ‘global economy’, which will see it shrink and begin to fall in the years and decades to come.

    There is nothing new about this idea. In fact, not only has it been long predicted, but it has shown up pretty much on schedule. Take a look at this simple little graph:

    This projection is half a century old: it’s from the Limits To Growth report, published in 1972, which used early computer modelling to lay out three possible scenarios for the future of

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB

    The guy was Paul R. Ehrlich and he is part of the Neo-Malthusians that is well-received among Globalist circle.

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/10/25/waiting-upon-structures-to-crack/

    It is probably as much intentional as inevitable.

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Thanks for your offer to help with the Shira Choir!

    Now, as for that article you found so exciting, the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since. I've had online debates with a doctor in physics and mathematics who adheres to the equally alarmist "peak-everything" thesis but he acknowledged that those predictions were quite laughable.

    But most of all I don't understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don't share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?

    To be perfectly honest, I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable. I actually need the majority of people to do exactly that so that I can travel around in my SUV, stay in hotels, buy mountain gear and implements for my hobby farm, visit my family in Europe regularly,... And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?

    With all this said, there's definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand. I haven't been able to hire anybody for my small building project since last May. Everybody's desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I've read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US. What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet? Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

  779. @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Thank you. Very good insights on what life must have been like at the dawn of civilization.

    I don't need to understand any word to perceive that this song is about something deep, spiritual, ancient. Hope to see this group singing one day, perhaps if I finally give in to my wife's idea of visiting NY, although I don't know if these people perform for outsiders.

    I have always wondered why religions in different parts of the world, from very ancient times, were so concerned with regulating people's day-to-day lives, especially what people can eat/drink and sexual norms, a part of which is what external looks are acceptable.

    There's probably something deep in these matters. I know several people who, as soon as they stopped being religious, became vegetarian and adopted some other lifestyle norms that they didn't have before. Essentially, they felt the need to regulate again their lives with different rituals and ironically they were much more observant than before, in spite of not having any religion now.

    Part of it must be the in-group/out-group thing, I guess. Hippies, punks, skinheads, antifas, lgbts, etc all follow some sort of external appearance norms to signal their belonging to their community. Sadly, Basque leftist separatists have also adopted some disgusting aesthetics of mullets and face-piercings. I cringe when I see them.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    If you ever make it to NYC, perhaps I can find out where this group are playing and I can get you in 🙂 I am sure they would be delighted if a non-Jew appreciated their music (as a secular Jew, in their eyes, I am hardly different than you, but I find the Hasidim quite tolerant of outsiders when it isn’t about marriage etc)

    Good points about regulating ones life. I think it might be a form of mental therapy, similar to Buddhist mindfulness. Rituals “ground” you in the present, and help you cease ruminations and probably reduce anxiety.

    Good points also on dress and on group/put group psychology. I am sure that is a huge part of it.

    I never understood why Hasidic dress “froze” in the 18th century – evidently, they were dressing like their Polish etc neighbors, but then stopped updating.

    But I wonder if it was a resistance to the growing influence of the Enlightenment and secularization, which began around that time.

  780. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    they are very different from the Hasidim.

     

    Haredi refers to the whole sector of "modernity rejecting" Jewish cults that lives in Israel. Fast growing sector of 1,2 million people.

    Chasids' stream (obviously with many rival cults between them) composes a significant proportion of Haredim that live in Israel.

    The political party "Yahadut hatorah" is called in English "United Torah Judaism".

    It is "united", because of the political level of the Lithuanian sects created alliance with the political level of many Chasidic sects in the early 1990s.

    Although the Chasids and the Litnaks hate each other theologically, they have the same religious requirements to demand from the state. So they united their political parties to increase their bargaining power in the Knesset (Israeli parliament).


    Hasidim of New York are in general anti-Zionist

     

    Many Haredi groups (regardless whether chasids or not) in Israel oppose Israeli state, and you can see on YouTube how some of the more extreme sects in Jerusalem are burning Israeli flags during their Lag b'omer festivals.

    However, there are Chasidic sects which are more conciliatory to Israel. Chabad-Lubavitch has developed friendly to Israeli authorities, perhaps because of idiosyncratic views of their cult leader Schneerson of New York - who had even donated money to Rabin.

    But even the friendly to Zionists Chabad are still banned from symbolic gestures to support Israel.
    https://www.timesofisrael.com/chabad-nepal-emissary-drops-independence-day-honor-on-rabbis-orders/


    the “mystical” Jews that descend from the Bal Shem Tov

     

    Lithuanian vs. Hasidic split was from the late 18th century. There is an article on Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misnagdim

    There is now an entire infantry battalion of Haredi

     

    This is a very small minority of the Haredi world.

    Haredi Jews have a population of 1,2 million people. Haredi Jews have a total fertility rate of 7-8. The median age of a Haredi Jew in Israel is - 17 years old. And yet the Haredi world send 2000 soldiers to the Israeli army. It's incredibly insignificant numbers considering their demographic compositions.

    These soldiers would often be socially considered the losers, outcasts and rebels of Haredi world.

    In Israel I talked to once a secular hipster looking girl (with nose ring, etc), who said her family were Haredim. When the average number of children is 7-8 and the median age is 17 - I guess the Haredi cults have to allow for a small "failure rate", or "acceptable casualties".

    Replies: @Max Demian

    Haredi refers to the whole sector of “modernity rejecting” Jewish cults that lives in Israel.

    “Cults”? As a categorical, unqualified categorization of the rather broad, diverse demographic category that is encompassed by the term Haredi? Isn’t that just a bit tendentious?

    Would it be any less tendentious to apply the characterization “cult” to Zionism itself, or at least any number of the many strains/ subsets thereof? (To say nothing of countless other entities both secular as well as religious; non-Jewish as well as Jewish; Left-wing as well as Right-wing, etc.)

    Chasids and the Litnaks [sic*] hate each other theologically,

    The last time that such a statement could have been said with any degree of accuracy might have been as much as a century ago or more.

    First,

    [MORE]
    it has been at least that long that the theological disputes (highly esoteric) between the Baal Shem Tov (1698-1760) and the Vilna Gaon (1720-1797) and their respective disciples have been mostly, if not entirely moot. (What differences remain between Hasidim and non-Hasidic Haredim are mostly cultural and more matters of style than substance).

    Second, it is true that that there have been and continue to this day to be considerable fracture, factionalization and at times quite bitter disputes between Orthodox Jews across-the-spectrum, however

    – (a) it’s been a long time since any of the significant fault lines have been Hasidim vs. non-Hasidim (aka Litvaks or Misnagdim) (at least per se; where said difference has been primary or critical)
    and,
    – (b) with perhaps some highly specific and limited exceptions, to categorically state, of any two groups within the Haredi umbrella that they “hate each other” would be inaccurate.

    Finally, to address some of the other topics raised in your post:

    – Views of Zionism and approaches toward the modern State of Israel among Orthodox Jews span a spectrum from vehemently pro- to vehemently anti-. A substantial number of Haredim maintain that a Jew is religiously forbidden to even so much as vote in any Israeli national election, let alone to serve to in any government or ruling coalition of the State.

    Chabad-Lubavitch are in a category unto themselves among Orthodox Jews, differing profoundly (both ideologically as well as culturally) from both all other Haredim as well as non-Haredim.

    When the average number of children is 7-8 and the median age is 17 – I guess the Haredi cults have to allow for a small “failure rate”, or “acceptable casualties”.

    Do you think any serious, committed Orthodox Jew would ever find it “acceptable” for a child of his to abandon Judaism? Do you think Haredim ever make a conscious calculation along the lines that you suggest?

    Aren’t the reasons for the high fertility rate among Orthodox Jews (and Haredim in particular) rather simple?
    Namely,
    1.)Belief that having as many children as reasonably possible is, if not an absolute obligation, at least highly desirable and praiseworthy;
    2.) Fact that they, as a rule, consider contraception to only be permitted in cases where conception would create rather severe problems (such as threats to the health the parents or any existing children);
    3.) Young age at marriage;
    and, finally,
    4.) Low rate of divorce.

  781. @songbird
    @A123

    What do you think will happen with Trump's social network now that they seem to have licensing trouble with much of the code behind it?

    Replies: @A123

    The code allegation (if true) is embarrassing but not a material liability. There is plenty of time and money to license or replace encumbered IP.

    The Equity side has run amok. I am not invested it. The original price was optimistic. The current value is absurd. A few people put in “donation” scale money very early and have since cashed out. I do not know of anyone betting “investment” scale funds.

    Hopefully the SPAC momentum consists of day traders fleecing other Blue State day traders. Enron was a Red State company, and the lesson has not been forgotten. I wish a map of trade activity versus investor location was available.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123

    I'm decidedly skeptical of TRUTH, since it seems late to the party. This is an area where Google tried to compete and then gave up on. Gab seems to have already carved out the partisan niche (no blame to them, people are self-organizing). And while the name may be cutting and memorable, and might be a 4D move to prevent the app from getting banned, I think it is also uncool and will turn people off from it.

    Secondary factor is it will be like red meat to ideologically-deranged hackers. Maybe, even state agencies with lots of resources. It is remarkable to see the media put their hatred of Trump onto an impersonal object, if an abstract one. Probably predicts stormy seas, with a lot of people (including deranged hackers) internalizing their dislike of it.

    I also suspect that it will have more stringent censorship than Gab.

  782. @AaronB
    @Dmitry


    If the collapse in the USA would be only to “Brazilian style country”, then I’m not sure the upper classes of New England have so much to worry about. Brazil is not exactly the France nightmare of “Submission” by Houellebecq.
     
    There was an article a few years back about how when the children of the Chinese elite come to study in American universities, what they can't stand the most is that they are treated like ordinary people and not shown any special deference or obsequiousness by the people they meet in daily life.

    If you go to a country like Thailand, an ordinary Westerner on a decent salary can briefly experience what it is like to live as an "elite", and even experience a level of deference and obsequiousness he will never get at home.

    As we know, beyond a certain rather low level of wealth, more wealth doesn't make you happier - the main reason people acquire wealth is to feel superior to other people lol.

    For a long time, America was not very good at providing this "experience of superiority" to it's elite class - that's why rich foreigners prefer London to NY, London with it's class system and tradition of deference to status.

    I am sure American elites, in a globalized world, realize they are getting a raw deal. They can't even act like lords and royalty to normal Americans, kind of the whole point of clawing your way to elite status.

    I am sure this is a big part of why the elites are pushing China lately, too.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    to feel superior to other people

    This large money also creates a very warm and pleasant multinational social experience.

    The most utopian multinational experience you can have in life, is if you go to a course to study with students from other countries (some of them will be children of billionaires, who understandably seem to become addicted to this kind of atmosphere – I think some of them almost live as permanent students for their 20ies, going across a course to another course, to another course).

    deference or obsequiousness by the people they meet in daily

    It’s also the freedom of “second life”. Almost all ultra-wealthy people of Russia, are socializing in Marbella, Monaco, London – they create their own world, with high entry costs, away from other peoples’ eyes, as well as some of the system their parents help create for controlling the ordinary people.

    London with it’s class

    Most of the world’s rich people invested in some property in London, and it has a good education system, so they can make friends. In the end, the young people like socializing, although in bubbles. I’m sceptical if you claim they are not investing in New York almost as much though.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    Nothing has fundamentally changed since that socialist class hierarchy caricature. (But a lot of cultural Marxist rhetoric is co-opted by the political establishment)

  783. @Dmitry
    @AP


    when living in America one need not be an American
     
    Well, I'm a fanboy of Israel, and would like to try to win all the Israel fanboy competitions, and defeat everyone with some obscure knowledge of Hebrew grammar or Israeli politics.

    But this concept of a "Celebrate Israel parade" looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine "Celebrate Russia" doing parade (it's an even more funny idea).

    I don't think it is because of being myself idiosyncratic, but another measure of my cultural distance from America. I'm sure if I was assimilated in New England, I would understand these things more - that all the communities are supposed to have their own pride (even LGBT people can create such civic pride for their sexuality).

    Irish Americans also have the same (looking more working class version) of these parades, as the Zionist secular Jews.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8UCt9Ze5D4

    When you are Russian in Europe (I think this is true for almost everyone), you are walking around in Europe hoping people think you are natives, almost like an undercover agent when you at the supermarket.


    dogs also have that function. Wake me up in time so I can prepare my weapon

     

    Well there is America, with guns in the bedroom after the dog wakes you. (This is a classic scene in the film "Boyz n the Hood" (1991)).

    -

    These dogs in Russian farms make circles of their own shit, because they are tied to small string which is pushed into the ground by hammer, and can be tied there for hours. Then returned the next day, with no-one cleaning their circle of shit.

    I'm opposed to it because I'm a bleeding heart person i.e. for the same reason I'm never going on hunting trips.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.


    Jewish kid to go to Hebrew school and volunteer for IDF after graduating high school.
     
    But these young American Jews don't go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.

    They're not going to sit on the pavement like an Israeli person, put their feet on the bus seats, or go to the office wearing pajamas and underwear showing.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans. The reason is because Jews in America will have much a higher GDP per capita, than Jews in Israel. Therefore American Jews who go to Israel, can be selected as ones with the strongest "United States Foreign Service" idealism of changing the world, as opposed to the economic migration Israel received from Ukraine/Russia.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkaFxQG4WHQ

    There is another class of American Jews who just go to Israel to manage their families' property portfolio - these people's motivations are of course a bit less culturally distant from Russian elites' perspective.


    not see much difference in views when speaking to priests from Ukraine, or my
     
    Mostly people are interested in religion, to calm their soul, because of difficult torturing spiritual questions, after their family have died, etc.

    Whereas in America, it of course includes this (especially in "born again" church), but it also how you build the local social life.

    A lot of discussion of religion in this forum, seemed to me blasphemous. But of course, in the American perspective it is not, because the church (or Jewish synagogue, or Mormon temple) is a form of "city square", or "public sphere", that is lacking in many other ways in the cultural life in America.

    Also notice that people with the world's most un-Christian views, are often going to churches in America.

    By the way, I'm not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don't socialize after the service - just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.


    different in Australia and Canada so this non-American “Americanism” isn’t limited to the USA

     

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their "melting pot", encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.

    At the same time, the children are becoming incredibly well assimilated.


    -


    I think about Conan O'Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it's one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.

    At the same, he is of course culturally totally American culturally, from bodylanguage to his jokes, and the Irish peoples' sense of humor will have some difficulty with him.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL2TlhQcOO8.

    Replies: @songbird, @AP

    But this concept of a “Celebrate Israel parade” looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine “Celebrate Russia” doing parade (it’s an even more funny idea).

    They celebrate Ukraine in Ukraine though. People right off the boat often place tryzubs on their cars in the USA. Are they Americans right away? The Russian writer, Bykov, was at an Okean Elzy concert in England and was surprised at the emotional singing of the national anthem by the crowd, who were immigrants from Ukraine. Were they actually from America?

    Because this stuff is common and popular by non-Americans in America, you think it is somehow American.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.

    No, Americans just have more fences, so there is no need for a rope. There are huge numbers of working dogs in the USA. They often guard places with cars:

    Or help people with hunting.

    And plenty of Russians have house dogs like Americans do. My wife grew up with a bolonka. She would never eat a dog. Is it because she was in America too long?

    But these young American Jews don’t go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.

    In their idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel? It doesn’t seem to be something specific to America.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans.

    By this logic, the least American people of all are actual Americans.

    By the way, I’m not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don’t socialize after the service – just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.

    Yes, I and most people go straight home after church. There are some pensioners who stay after, for coffee and deserts.

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their “melting pot”, encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.

    And Canada, and Australia, and even South America. Here is a Ukrainian parade in Argentina:

    Are these people “Americans?”

    There is nothing specifically “American” about people maintaining their identity in exile, even over generations.

    What can be considered American is not ethnic self-identity but (compare dot those who were raised under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed to rip someone off, low tolerance for bureaucracy, acceptance of personal firearms, etc. But these are not enough to declare someone an American.

    I think about Conan O’Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it’s one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.

    Most Irish, like most Italians, can’t be compared to Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, etc. They are highly assimilated, most are something like 1/4 Irish or less. There are pockets of actual Irish people but this would not characterize the average Irish-American.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    characterize the average Irish-American.

     

    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210314183705/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-s-evolving-funding-stream-from-irish-america-1.2125866

    A lot of their social media fans.
    https://www.irishcentral.com/news/tik-tok-teens-glorifying-provisional-ira


    under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed
     
    One of common joke of Polish people, is that "you know you're really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office". And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways. They are a culturally little halfway to Western Europeans.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America
     
    It's a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy. But 20th century America is clearly more successful at this melting pot, where people are encouraged to be proud of their home country.

    You said yourself - the Italian Americans often cannot speak Italian, and yet they are in Columbus Day parades.

    Similarly these more than half of American Jews never even visited Israel, and definitely don't speak Hebrew. More than half of American Jews are married to non-Jewish Americans.

    Some Irish Americans are supporting the Irish Republican Army, with no understanding of the political history in Ireland. And as you said, many of them are nowadays marrying other nationalities.

    So 20th century America encourages them to be fanboys of these countries, and at the same time they assimilated.

    -
    This is the story that is described a lot in the postwar 20th century films and novels - a compromise of each generation between their home country and their new country.

    Scorsese's theme is often relation of the lowest class of Italians, Irish and Jews, in the New York area. In "Goodfellas", there is Irish gangster (Robert Deniro), and main character who had to pretend to be half Jewish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWEfWEdQY0.), when he dates his working class Jewish wife of the future.

    Scorsese's interested in this idea that around the most exclusively Italian club, which only accept pure-blood Italians as "made men" - there is no resisting America's melting-pot.


    idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel
     
    They remind me more of Mitt Romney, who went living in France after university to promote the Mormon religion. It's like "bourgeois American personality disorder".

    They seem often to be idealistic people. They go to Israel for a kind of spiritual meaning or missionary activity (as Mormons after university), as they have lived in comfortable middle class lives in America, with material comfort, and feel they are perhaps needing to add the top parts of the Maslow pyramid.

    A small portion might settle in Israel, but they are clearly idealistic youth.

    They are mostly very different from the early pioneers in Palestine, who indeed often pretty brutal folk, like pioneers which developed Siberia and the Far East. Israeli pioneers were mostly analogous to the Jews who built Birobidzhan - i.e. desperate people from difficult environments, with real persecution.

    Whereas the American youth that go to Israel - a lot of them like to teach for free to Ethiopian Jewish children or Bedouins.

    These white American girl are paying money to do this work to help Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjlpUg9Bzo


    It doesn’t seem to be something specific to America.
     
    A large number of Russian young immigrants in Israel, are going to waste time while avoiding conscription in the Russian army, and trying to get free money from Israel (up to $10,000 of free money as repatriation funds). And one of the bureaucratic obstacles or fears in this community, is how to minimize the conscription to the Israeli army. This is what they even talk openly about on the groups like https://vk.com/loveisrael

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.

    It's not that easy to find young women from Russia, excited about teaching Ethiopian and Bedouin children for free. Whereas some American women are paying money for this.

    From YouTube, many of the kind looking American girls that volunteer in Israel, seem to have a kind "Mormon idealism" brainwashed expression in their eyes (unless I just have a strong imagination)? I'm wondering if Americans can recognize each other from the other side of Middle Eastern streets.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGjdomFYelo


    huge numbers of working dogs in the USA
     
    Perhaps you are right, and I overidealized about the American kindness to dogs. (Although kindness to one animal and not many others still, wouldn't be that impressive morally).

    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I'm not completely believing there is equivalence.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP

  784. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    From my end it’s the third generation born outside of Ukraine who speak Ukrainian (they are also first generation Russian-speakers born outside Russia).
     
    I'm not quite following you here. Are you inferring that your kids are third generationers who have learned Ukrainian, on your side? If so, I think that this is pretty rare, not the norm. They must have been born somewhere outside of the US to be first generation Russian speakers that emigrated to the US at some point?

    I'm glad to hear that your newbees can be seen in Church every Sunday. Not so in Phoenix. We currently have about 4 member families that fit the description. They rarely attend church services and the kids have an increasingly difficult time speaking in Ukrainian. I was, however, sitting next to one of the "kids" after church at a dinner , who is now 18, and has started to show a genuine interest in her native tongue. She actually speaks Ukrainian with a Ukrainian accent, unlike myself. I told her to find some Ukrainian blogs that align with her interests and start reading even a little bit every day, and that would help her get her skills to a higher level. Her younger sister is more interested in her green colored hair than speaking in Ukrainian. :-(

    Replies: @AP

    I’m glad to hear that your newbees can be seen in Church every Sunday. Not so in Phoenix. We currently have about 4 member families that fit the description.

    Ukrainians interested in preserving their heritage probably wouldn’t move to Phoenix, but to places with established communities with Ukrainian schools as well as churches etc. I would not have moved to a place without that infrastructure.

    I’m not quite following you here. Are you inferring that your kids are third generationers who have learned Ukrainian, on your side? If so, I think that this is pretty rare, not the norm. They must have been born somewhere outside of the US to be first generation Russian speakers that emigrated to the US at some point?

    [MORE]

    Me and my parents were born outside Ukraine so from me they are the third generation born abroad, away from Ukraine. But from my wife they are the first generation born outside Russia.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    I've heard from many older Phoenician Ukies that at one time (60's - 70's) there were a lot of active Ukrainians in the Phoenix area. It wouldn't be unusual for up to 100 worshipers to show up for services at the Catholic church. In the Orthodox church 60 - 70. SUM had 118 members and the local dance group had about 30 members. Today, you're lucky to get 30 to show up to the Catholic church and half that much to the Orthodox church. SUM and the dancing group quit existing sometime in the 1980's. A lot of the youngsters married out of the community and quit supporting the church and other cultural organizations. I think that these trends are not unusual except in cities like Cleveland/Parma where there's indeed some kind of renaissance of Ukrainian diaspora life (a lot of newbies, of the kind that you have in mind have moved to this area).

    Replies: @LatW

  785. @Dmitry
    @AaronB


    to feel superior to other people

     

    This large money also creates a very warm and pleasant multinational social experience.

    The most utopian multinational experience you can have in life, is if you go to a course to study with students from other countries (some of them will be children of billionaires, who understandably seem to become addicted to this kind of atmosphere - I think some of them almost live as permanent students for their 20ies, going across a course to another course, to another course).


    deference or obsequiousness by the people they meet in daily

     

    It's also the freedom of "second life". Almost all ultra-wealthy people of Russia, are socializing in Marbella, Monaco, London - they create their own world, with high entry costs, away from other peoples' eyes, as well as some of the system their parents help create for controlling the ordinary people.

    London with it’s class

     

    Most of the world's rich people invested in some property in London, and it has a good education system, so they can make friends. In the end, the young people like socializing, although in bubbles. I'm sceptical if you claim they are not investing in New York almost as much though.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W0INhtujvJc

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Nothing has fundamentally changed since that socialist class hierarchy caricature. (But a lot of cultural Marxist rhetoric is co-opted by the political establishment)

  786. @AaronB
    Absolutely seminal article by Paul Kingsnorth.

    The supply chain disruptions we are seeing May not be temporary, but rather the beginning of the end of the growth model of industrial civilization.

    Apparently, someone in the 70s used simple computer modelling to see what when the world would begin running out of resources if the growth model was followed, and the timeline has been followed perfectly.

    There is a good chance, that this may be "it", my friends. And Dmitry, your faith in materialism is about to review a severe shock :)

    I am excited by this!

    https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/intermission-the-machine-stops

    Intermission: The Machine Stops?
    'I have seen the hills of Wessex.'

    Paul Kingsnorth

    “The Machine,” they exclaimed, “feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.”

    - E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909

    Samhain, in old Ireland, was one of two annual festivals (the other was Beltaine, in May) in which the veil between the world of humans and the otherworld of the Aos sí - the ‘fairies’ in modern parlance - was said to be thin. Fires were lit, and the burial mounds were opened to allow the dead to move freely between the worlds. Some of the neolithic tombs here have portals which are aligned with the rising of the sun on the eve of Samhain - the 31st of October.

    Neopagans still take Samhain fairly seriously, but in today’s Ireland the tradition has been almost entirely subsumed by the modern American festival of Halloween. As across much of the Western world, Halloween has moved far from its origins in either Samhain or the Christian festival of All Hallows, and has mutated into a month-long deluge of consumer crap, built around a few Hollywood horror franchises and aimed at getting children to buy as many sweets, pumpkins, plastic witches’ hats, Harry Potter Quidditch broomsticks, inflatable ghost toys and zombie-themed biscuit selections as humanly possible.

    Not this year, though. This year, you couldn’t find a cheap, Chinese-made plastic vampire mask in the shops around here for love or money. You couldn’t find much at all, in fact. Usually whole supermarket aisles are decked out with disposable junk destined for the North Pacific gyre, but this year it was mostly noticeable by its absence. This was both strange and uplifting, as if the old spirits had come back to breathe some sanity into what we have made of ourselves.

    This absence of Halloween tat is only the most visible instance of the sudden collapse in the availability of stuff that is hitting large areas of the world right now. Examples are legion. In Britain recently, petrol shortages led to long queues at garages and violent scuffles at the pumps. Here in Ireland, we are being warned of possible power outages throughout the winter. Supermarket shelves from Spain to Brazil are running short on basics. And workers are suddenly, mysteriously, in short supply worldwide. In a country of nearly 70 million people, the UK government can’t find enough people to drive lorries, despite offering to pay them as much as some doctors. Container ships are queueing up at ports in America because not enough dockers are available to unload them.

    Most intriguingly of all, given the interconnected nature of the technological matrix we live in, there is a global shortage of semiconductors, the silicon chips which power every digital device. Given that a modern car contains between 1500 and 3000 of these - and that with even one of them unavailable, production will be halted or delayed - the disaster for the automobile industry alone is plain to see. It has led already to enforced plant shutdowns, with associated unemployment and government spending, as well as lines of half-built cars so big that they can be seen from space. This chip shortage, which is affecting everything from Internet connectivity to the production of gaming consoles, is projected to last for years.

    What is going on here? The answer depends on who you listen to. The global supply chain crisis is usually attributed to lockdowns and just-in-time delivery systems. The semiconductor shortage is variously blamed on the same lockdowns, an over-concentration of production in a few key regions (Taiwan apparently produces 50% of all the world’s silicon chips), lots of people working from home and ordering new gadgets, and even storms and fires hitting manufacturing plants. The worldwide worker shortage is sometimes blamed on vaccine mandates, though it is also happening in places where mandates are not in use.

    Sometimes the explanations are more localised. The problems with both supply and delivery in Britain are commonly blamed on Brexit, especially by those who always opposed it, but this fails to explain the existence of the same problems in the US or France. Where I live, the Irish government recently told us, with a straight face, that their inability to supply a mere five million people with regular electricity - a problem that might normally be associated with a ‘developing’ country - is due to some power plants being closed for maintenance as winter approaches.

    There might be truth in all of these explanations, but it seems to me that there is something fishy about them too. The overall message is that once these weirdly simultaneous and yet temporary problems are ironed out, everything will get back to ‘normal’ in perhaps a couple of years. Given that this argument is being made by the same people who told us that mass vaccination would put an end to the covid pandemic, it is hard to put a lot of faith in it. The events of the last several years have put a huge hole in public trust in authority on all sides of the fence, and plenty of people have stopped believing the official explanations for anything much. Suspicion, fear and mistrust: this is the grim zeitgeist of the 2020s.

    But if there is something else going on, what could it be? Well, one possibility is that something which has been long-predicted is beginning to make itself known. It is that what we are seeing is not a temporary glitch, but the beginning of the end of the ‘global economy’, which will see it shrink and begin to fall in the years and decades to come.

    There is nothing new about this idea. In fact, not only has it been long predicted, but it has shown up pretty much on schedule. Take a look at this simple little graph:


    This projection is half a century old: it’s from the Limits To Growth report, published in 1972, which used early computer modelling to lay out three possible scenarios for the future of

     

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mikel

    The guy was Paul R. Ehrlich and he is part of the Neo-Malthusians that is well-received among Globalist circle.

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/10/25/waiting-upon-structures-to-crack/

    It is probably as much intentional as inevitable.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    Kingsnorth seems to be talking about a report called Limits to Growth. From wiki -


    Commissioned by the Club of Rome, the findings of the study were first presented at international gatherings in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1971.[1]: 186  The report's authors are Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, representing a team of 17 researchers.[1]: 8 

    The report concludes that, without substantial changes in resource consumption, "the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity". Although its methods and premises were heavily challenged on its publication, subsequent work to validate its forecasts continue to confirm that insufficient changes have been made since 1972 to significantly alter their nature.
     

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader

  787. @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB

    The guy was Paul R. Ehrlich and he is part of the Neo-Malthusians that is well-received among Globalist circle.

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/10/25/waiting-upon-structures-to-crack/

    It is probably as much intentional as inevitable.

    Replies: @AaronB

    Kingsnorth seems to be talking about a report called Limits to Growth. From wiki –

    Commissioned by the Club of Rome, the findings of the study were first presented at international gatherings in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1971.[1]: 186  The report’s authors are Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, representing a team of 17 researchers.[1]: 8 

    The report concludes that, without substantial changes in resource consumption, “the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity”. Although its methods and premises were heavily challenged on its publication, subsequent work to validate its forecasts continue to confirm that insufficient changes have been made since 1972 to significantly alter their nature.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB

    This is what I'm talking about, and yes, this is commissioned by the Neo-Malthusians that inform strategic policy of the American Empire for the last 50 years, that leads to the civilization impasse we have. (Ehret at Strategic Culture has a lot of articles on this)

    I have been reading Roko's twitter and gave progressive ideals a rethink - but their scenarios have slipped us by, because of elite inaction.

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1452968025842454532

    If instead of procrastinating on finance, investment in R&D had continued on technological "hardware" like efficient energy, many breakthrus would have come sooner to avert the current hard landing of industrialism. You can argue they could open up new areas of control and artificial distortions, but in the long-term, technology might also have liberatory uses. Instead (or as they expect), resources are running out at an alarming pace as the exploratory impulse that characterized the world up to the 70s was given up for all-for-all class & cultural wars over everything. It is ultimately setting up civilizational goals, and then quitting when we are 80% there, because the elite it has created wants to keep the fabulous gains of power & wealth.

    Why do we get there?

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1453062271643566092

    Everyone, philosophers not excluded, have tunnel vision, and often they can only think & act while being flushed along the stream of time. Elites and peoples can't act outside of their worldview, except changing it radically, so any apparently "revolutionary" epochs must have a lot of prior build-up. And such a build-up must have its internal logic, which makes the agency of supposed conspirators less formidable. So maybe the direction is set from the beginning, maybe 4 or 5 centuries ago. And maybe we won't, unlike progressives' wishes but like the vast majority of the world's societies (and probably most of extreterristrial ones too), despite the possibility always being there.

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1452946627665219590

    The world recovered from WWII since the elites then believed in the future capitalist, or communist utopia, and everyone else were led by them. But the current elite has other priorities, and the Zeitgeist turns to anticipating a managed decline - traumatized like Europe was post-Rome and never been able to imagine the grandeur of Rome until Early Modenity.

    Maybe modernity (which says it is the terminus of history) have to pass away for new cultures, that might or might not consolidate the gains of modernism. Instead of an end of history, we can continue. But the greater moral is, we need to transcend the opposition between progress vs stasis, and realize the seeds are contained within each other - an end-state utopia was in pre-modern traditions, like the Christian post-apocalypse world or Maitreya. But in tradition there had been a factor that contains such enthusiasm (e.g. Katechon & Maitreya's coming being set at a point in the future), so things can go cyclically without a rush to the end. Modernity has removed it and made the rush too quickly. Modernity sees tradition as repressive & tradition sees modernity as decadent, but since things accumulate even during the Middle Ages, Modernity would eventually happen, with all its ills. The only way out might be either clinging on too much, or thinking like a Buddhist.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AaronB

    , @German_reader
    @AaronB

    People have been going on about that Club of Rome report for decades, I'm surprised you've never heard about it. That article by Kingsnorth is just the usual peak oil doomerism, he doesn't make a convincing argument at all that the current supply shortages are due to the cost of resource extraction, it's just an assertion without any real evidence provided, because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).

    Replies: @AaronB, @Yellowface Anon

  788. @Anatoly Karlin
    @Dmitry

    Checked, not in spam or deleted. There was a site update earlier today; that might have eaten the comment, unfortunately.

    Replies: @Max Demian

    Mr. Karlin,

    Within the past hour or so, I have made numerous attempts to post a detailed reply to one of Dmitry’s comments in this thread. Each time, the page refreshed with no trace of the comment I had submitted, and no message that would inform me of its fate. (I note my complete confidence that any minimally objective and reasonable reader of the comment of mine in question would surely concur that it was entirely civil, substantative, falling well within both your own as well as Mr. Unz’s stated rules and guidelines.)

    Using Tor Browser, I suspected that the problem may have been my exit nodes. I also considered the possibility that my pseudonymic handle/ fake email combination had somewhow gotten blacklisted. Neither of those possibile explanations appear to apply, however, as I was able to succesfully post (and subsequently delete) at least two brief test posts.

    Perhaps you could check any spam or other folders that may submitted comments may have landed-in? I would greatly appreciate that. If you are able to retrieve and post the first of my vanished submissions, all of the subsequent ones may (and indeed should) be discarded.

    Let me take this opportunity to express my appreciation for your work, my regret upon learning of your announced departure, and my best wishes for your future endeavors.

  789. @AP
    @Beckow


    Look at US or UK supply chain issues today: many essentials are missing
     
    It's strange because here in the northeastern USA nothing is missing in stores. In contrast to the beginning of Covid when toilet paper and paper towels were hard to find (but not impossible).

    Is it a problem o the West Coast?

    Replies: @Beckow

    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent? Why the constant drum-beat, Amazon missing its numbers (badly), if there are no issues? There are also the backed-up ships in the LA port. But if you are not missing anything, good for you.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today? Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy, with a few “trillioners” owning everything in sight, censored media, gender and racial circus out of control – and geriocratic leaders. Maybe toilet paper won’t be the main problem.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent?
     
    Yes, I've also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly such as milk, salmon or meat to grill (I read about a supposed meat shortage - where?), fruits, etc. Bought some gifts, didn't notice anything being hard to find or inflated in price. Only gasoline has become more expensive, though it has been worse in the past. Admittedly, I have not been shopping for refrigerators or other appliances. Or a house. The one I own has increased by 20% or so in value in a short amount of time. So now the % owned by the bank is smaller.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today?
     
    I'm not an economist, but so far it looks normal around here.

    Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy,
     
    USA still has massive gas and oil reserves. Westerners very stupidly abandoned nuclear but they have woken up to that problem and are ameliorating it.

    with a few “trillioners” owning everything in sight
     
    I don't see anything owned by trillionaires near me.

    censored media, gender and racial circus out of control
     
    Too early to tell if this will be stopped or not. The pushback has only begun, because until very recently the general population hadn't noticed how bad the problem was. We'll see what happens.

    and geriocratic leaders
     
    Biden is hopeless, but Macron and Johnson are not geriatric despite other problems.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow, @A123

  790. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    I’m glad to hear that your newbees can be seen in Church every Sunday. Not so in Phoenix. We currently have about 4 member families that fit the description.
     
    Ukrainians interested in preserving their heritage probably wouldn't move to Phoenix, but to places with established communities with Ukrainian schools as well as churches etc. I would not have moved to a place without that infrastructure.

    I’m not quite following you here. Are you inferring that your kids are third generationers who have learned Ukrainian, on your side? If so, I think that this is pretty rare, not the norm. They must have been born somewhere outside of the US to be first generation Russian speakers that emigrated to the US at some point?
     


    Me and my parents were born outside Ukraine so from me they are the third generation born abroad, away from Ukraine. But from my wife they are the first generation born outside Russia.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I’ve heard from many older Phoenician Ukies that at one time (60’s – 70’s) there were a lot of active Ukrainians in the Phoenix area. It wouldn’t be unusual for up to 100 worshipers to show up for services at the Catholic church. In the Orthodox church 60 – 70. SUM had 118 members and the local dance group had about 30 members. Today, you’re lucky to get 30 to show up to the Catholic church and half that much to the Orthodox church. SUM and the dancing group quit existing sometime in the 1980’s. A lot of the youngsters married out of the community and quit supporting the church and other cultural organizations. I think that these trends are not unusual except in cities like Cleveland/Parma where there’s indeed some kind of renaissance of Ukrainian diaspora life (a lot of newbies, of the kind that you have in mind have moved to this area).

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Mr. Hack

    Do you speak Ukrainian with an American accent? I've heard a few of such speakers, it sounds cute. It varies person to person how strong it is. Although in general it's best to retain a clean accent as much as possible. At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.

    Replies: @SafeNow, @Mr. Hack

  791. @AaronB
    @Max Demian

    No, it's the actual measurements that change. It's something spooky that is just papered over. I don't remember exactly but I remember finding it cool and spooky.

    I'd love to enjoy a Dickens novel. I love the idea of a Dickens novel. George Orwell's essay on Dickens makes him sound so cool. I love neo-Gothic architecture.

    But I just can't finish a Dickens novel. I've tried Barnaby Rudge. It's like Proust - I love the idea of him, that he has this kind of melancholy Buddhist quality to his writing, but I just haven't been able to get into Proust. One of my favorite travel writers, Pico Iyer, makes Proust sound so Buddhist and cool, just my kind of thing. But no.

    Maybe one day the key to all this literature will be unlocked for me. You have to be ready for certain books and writers.

    I couldn't enjoy Joseph Conrad for a long time, and then he one day just "clicked" for me, and now I love him.

    However, I did really enjoy Dickens contemporary Thackeray, and found Vanity Fair sublime - especially the ending, where the heroine finally realizes that she enjoys the bohemian lifestyle and has no desire to return to "respectability" :)

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard

    1. Christmas Carol is a quick read and it is an amazingly great story. The Scrooge strategy for personal improvement is a powerful one. If you are trying to quit smoking or something like that just take the time to sit down and visualize the ghost of Christmas in 20 years visiting your possible wreck of a life and it just might do the trick!

    2. The Dickens zealots I know tell me Great Expectations is the best starter novel.

    3. In the American school system it is very common to go with Tale of Two Cities. Maybe the committees who do the syllabuses thinks this is a two-birds-one-stone trick to teach the little monsters some Euro history at the same time but Tale of Two Cities is not a good novel and it wrecks Dickens for a lot of students.

    • Thanks: AaronB
  792. @Beckow
    @AP

    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent? Why the constant drum-beat, Amazon missing its numbers (badly), if there are no issues? There are also the backed-up ships in the LA port. But if you are not missing anything, good for you.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today? Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy, with a few "trillioners" owning everything in sight, censored media, gender and racial circus out of control - and geriocratic leaders. Maybe toilet paper won't be the main problem.

    Replies: @AP

    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent?

    Yes, I’ve also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly such as milk, salmon or meat to grill (I read about a supposed meat shortage – where?), fruits, etc. Bought some gifts, didn’t notice anything being hard to find or inflated in price. Only gasoline has become more expensive, though it has been worse in the past. Admittedly, I have not been shopping for refrigerators or other appliances. Or a house. The one I own has increased by 20% or so in value in a short amount of time. So now the % owned by the bank is smaller.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today?

    I’m not an economist, but so far it looks normal around here.

    Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy,

    USA still has massive gas and oil reserves. Westerners very stupidly abandoned nuclear but they have woken up to that problem and are ameliorating it.

    with a few “trillioners” owning everything in sight

    I don’t see anything owned by trillionaires near me.

    censored media, gender and racial circus out of control

    Too early to tell if this will be stopped or not. The pushback has only begun, because until very recently the general population hadn’t noticed how bad the problem was. We’ll see what happens.

    and geriocratic leaders

    Biden is hopeless, but Macron and Johnson are not geriatric despite other problems.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AP

    The shortages (so far) are more localized, and often appears to be less choices for the consumers or delays in shipping, instead of something Soviet-style with bread queues and black markets. We shouldn't rule out worse scenarios especially as supply chains continue to unravel, inflation picks up, and people are barred from entering shops for not having a vaccine passport.

    , @Beckow
    @AP

    There is always a place for optimism, why not? (Read Voltaire's Candide about how optimism often ends in a cul-de-sac). So let's write it off as the usual media exaggeration.


    ...the general population hadn’t noticed how bad the problem was.
     
    That's quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years. Performing a "pushback" will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power, it can take a generation to bring it under control.

    Macron is married to a geriatric and most EU leaders look like they are on a field-trip from an old people's home, so I will stay with my description. In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70's. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants. They don't plan to be around when the sh.t hits the fan.

    Replies: @AP

    , @A123
    @AP


    Yes, I’ve also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly
     
    I have seen occasional grocery shelf gaps, but it is not a problem. However, I shop 'opportunistically' and there are definitely fewer sales/discounts. The problem is expected to become worse. (1)

    The lack of spare parts is a bigger concern. If industrial machinery and tractor trailers cannot be repaired, there will be rather ugly consequences to the economy. There are definitely more commercial vehicles queued at service facilities.
    ___

    The solution to the problem is obvious. The U.S. needs to make stuff from U.S. raw materials powered by U.S. energy. This can be done. What has been lacking is, the will to make it happen.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/07/perfect-storm-coming-conagra-announces-food-price-inflation-likely-to-remain-around-11-percent-through-2022/

  793. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    I've heard from many older Phoenician Ukies that at one time (60's - 70's) there were a lot of active Ukrainians in the Phoenix area. It wouldn't be unusual for up to 100 worshipers to show up for services at the Catholic church. In the Orthodox church 60 - 70. SUM had 118 members and the local dance group had about 30 members. Today, you're lucky to get 30 to show up to the Catholic church and half that much to the Orthodox church. SUM and the dancing group quit existing sometime in the 1980's. A lot of the youngsters married out of the community and quit supporting the church and other cultural organizations. I think that these trends are not unusual except in cities like Cleveland/Parma where there's indeed some kind of renaissance of Ukrainian diaspora life (a lot of newbies, of the kind that you have in mind have moved to this area).

    Replies: @LatW

    Do you speak Ukrainian with an American accent? I’ve heard a few of such speakers, it sounds cute. It varies person to person how strong it is. Although in general it’s best to retain a clean accent as much as possible. At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.

    • Replies: @SafeNow
    @LatW


    At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.
     
    Here in Orange County California, I have seen a one-on-one approach work wonders in a matter of two or three hours. You need: (1) a teacher specifically trained in accent elimination; here’s where to put your tongue, etc.; and (2) a motivated, disciplined student willing to undergo fastidious, mind-numbing repetition with word lists. My anecdotal observation is that only Asian immigrants actually do this. And not many of them. Too bad. A few hours, and you’ve got your new accent, for life.

    Replies: @LatW

    , @Mr. Hack
    @LatW

    It's a very slight accent, but it's certainly there. My Ukrainian language skills are probably better than 95% of immigrant born offspring. I do still have to think about things, especially if it's something more complicated, but I usually get bye. My writing skills are actually quite good, as I have my native born roommate check for grammar and spelling mistakes, and I usually pass with flying colors. I speak with him in Ukrainian and English about 50/50. My accent is only noticeable when I'm among real native Ukrainian speakers. When in Ukraine, my speech, dress and even walking patterns quickly give away my origins. I grew up in an environment where I heard all sorts of Ukrainian dialects, including even Polish and Russian. I've had people in Ukraine say that they think that I'm from Zakarpattya. :-)

    Replies: @LatW

  794. @AP
    @Dmitry


    But this concept of a “Celebrate Israel parade” looks completely bizarre to me, and there is nothing I would like to go to. And imagine “Celebrate Russia” doing parade (it’s an even more funny idea).
     
    They celebrate Ukraine in Ukraine though. People right off the boat often place tryzubs on their cars in the USA. Are they Americans right away? The Russian writer, Bykov, was at an Okean Elzy concert in England and was surprised at the emotional singing of the national anthem by the crowd, who were immigrants from Ukraine. Were they actually from America?

    Because this stuff is common and popular by non-Americans in America, you think it is somehow American.

    But if Americans saw this use of dogs, they would be opposed I believe not always because of the generic animal cruelty, but because its dogs being treated in a utilitarian way they would accept for animals like chickens.
     
    No, Americans just have more fences, so there is no need for a rope. There are huge numbers of working dogs in the USA. They often guard places with cars:

    https://bbandm.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/sleeping-pitbull.jpg

    https://image.shutterstock.com/image-photo/guard-dogs-shop-red-hook-260nw-1328641058.jpg

    Or help people with hunting.

    And plenty of Russians have house dogs like Americans do. My wife grew up with a bolonka. She would never eat a dog. Is it because she was in America too long?

    But these young American Jews don’t go to Israel, like Israelis. But as very idealistic American people, with the wonderful American bourgeois idealism, and some of the Protestant messianic personality.
     
    In their idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel? It doesn't seem to be something specific to America.

    These American Jews who volunteer for Israel, are almost selected to be more American, than average Americans.
     
    By this logic, the least American people of all are actual Americans.

    By the way, I’m not expect, but my small sample size of Poles is that they go to church, but they don’t socialize after the service – just straight home. Socializing is for the bar.
     
    Yes, I and most people go straight home after church. There are some pensioners who stay after, for coffee and deserts.

    Yes but 20th century America is a very successful example as their “melting pot”, encourages the different communities to be proud of their home country, and use it to represent themselves.
     
    And Canada, and Australia, and even South America. Here is a Ukrainian parade in Argentina:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Ukrainianobera2.JPG

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d8/Ukrainianobera3.JPG

    Are these people "Americans?"

    There is nothing specifically "American" about people maintaining their identity in exile, even over generations.

    What can be considered American is not ethnic self-identity but (compare dot those who were raised under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed to rip someone off, low tolerance for bureaucracy, acceptance of personal firearms, etc. But these are not enough to declare someone an American.

    I think about Conan O’Brien as an symbolic example. He loves Ireland and it’s one of the main themes of his media career, is Irish pride and talking about his roots.
     
    Most Irish, like most Italians, can't be compared to Ukrainians, Jews, Armenians, etc. They are highly assimilated, most are something like 1/4 Irish or less. There are pockets of actual Irish people but this would not characterize the average Irish-American.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    characterize the average Irish-American.

    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210314183705/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-s-evolving-funding-stream-from-irish-america-1.2125866

    A lot of their social media fans.
    https://www.irishcentral.com/news/tik-tok-teens-glorifying-provisional-ira

    under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed

    One of common joke of Polish people, is that “you know you’re really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office”. And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways. They are a culturally little halfway to Western Europeans.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America

    It’s a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy. But 20th century America is clearly more successful at this melting pot, where people are encouraged to be proud of their home country.

    You said yourself – the Italian Americans often cannot speak Italian, and yet they are in Columbus Day parades.

    Similarly these more than half of American Jews never even visited Israel, and definitely don’t speak Hebrew. More than half of American Jews are married to non-Jewish Americans.

    Some Irish Americans are supporting the Irish Republican Army, with no understanding of the political history in Ireland. And as you said, many of them are nowadays marrying other nationalities.

    So 20th century America encourages them to be fanboys of these countries, and at the same time they assimilated.


    This is the story that is described a lot in the postwar 20th century films and novels – a compromise of each generation between their home country and their new country.

    Scorsese’s theme is often relation of the lowest class of Italians, Irish and Jews, in the New York area. In “Goodfellas”, there is Irish gangster (Robert Deniro), and main character who had to pretend to be half Jewish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWEfWEdQY0.), when he dates his working class Jewish wife of the future.

    Scorsese’s interested in this idea that around the most exclusively Italian club, which only accept pure-blood Italians as “made men” – there is no resisting America’s melting-pot.

    idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel

    They remind me more of Mitt Romney, who went living in France after university to promote the Mormon religion. It’s like “bourgeois American personality disorder”.

    They seem often to be idealistic people. They go to Israel for a kind of spiritual meaning or missionary activity (as Mormons after university), as they have lived in comfortable middle class lives in America, with material comfort, and feel they are perhaps needing to add the top parts of the Maslow pyramid.

    A small portion might settle in Israel, but they are clearly idealistic youth.

    They are mostly very different from the early pioneers in Palestine, who indeed often pretty brutal folk, like pioneers which developed Siberia and the Far East. Israeli pioneers were mostly analogous to the Jews who built Birobidzhan – i.e. desperate people from difficult environments, with real persecution.

    Whereas the American youth that go to Israel – a lot of them like to teach for free to Ethiopian Jewish children or Bedouins.

    These white American girl are paying money to do this work to help Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.

    It doesn’t seem to be something specific to America.

    A large number of Russian young immigrants in Israel, are going to waste time while avoiding conscription in the Russian army, and trying to get free money from Israel (up to \$10,000 of free money as repatriation funds). And one of the bureaucratic obstacles or fears in this community, is how to minimize the conscription to the Israeli army. This is what they even talk openly about on the groups like https://vk.com/loveisrael

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.

    It’s not that easy to find young women from Russia, excited about teaching Ethiopian and Bedouin children for free. Whereas some American women are paying money for this.

    From YouTube, many of the kind looking American girls that volunteer in Israel, seem to have a kind “Mormon idealism” brainwashed expression in their eyes (unless I just have a strong imagination)? I’m wondering if Americans can recognize each other from the other side of Middle Eastern streets.

    huge numbers of working dogs in the USA

    Perhaps you are right, and I overidealized about the American kindness to dogs. (Although kindness to one animal and not many others still, wouldn’t be that impressive morally).

    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I’m not completely believing there is equivalence.

    • Thanks: AP
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Dmitry


    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I’m not completely believing there is equivalence.

     

    Google image search shows nothing. Are those rope-length circles authentically factual in any locale?

    Lot of these though!

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81O33hBLEVL._AC_SX679_.jpg

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @AP
    @Dmitry


    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.
     
    There are millions and millions of Irish in the USA and among those are actual, less assimilated "diaspora" Irish comparable to Jews , or Ukrainians. America is rich and they have money to send to the IRA. But the majority are like 1/4 or less Irish who just have a flag and drink green beer on St. Patrick's Day.

    One of common joke of Polish people, is that “you know you’re really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office”. And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways.
     
    Soviet system only ruined them for 1-2 generations, much less than in Russia. Similarly, Galician from Ukraine are more civilized from this perspective than are people from the rest of Ukraine - but are still not quite as civilized as ones from the diaspora who never experienced Soviet demoralization.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America

    It’s a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy.
     
    I don't know if it is a policy but rather a state of being a settler-country. In such countries new waves of settlers come and they can choose to minimize assimilation, if it is their will. Germans tend to conform an assimilate, but ones inspired by nationalism such as Ukrainians or Zionist Jews, or religion such as Hasids or the Amish, have not assimilated.

    These settler countries lack the weight of history to prevent certain peoples from melting away.

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.
     
    The Jewish Americans are actual Jews, many of the Russians just came in because they have a Jewish grandparent are are simply Russian foreigners.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  795. @Svidomyatheart
    @German_reader

    I know im coming off rude and unpleasant but i assure you im just being realistic.
    See the core of the problem is that is a good 95% of Anglos are pro Empire and will defend it if push comes to shove.This article does read somewhat like cope because irrc Greeks are salty Anglos always support Turks over them but the core point is there ( https://unherd.com/2021/09/the-transatlantic-love-affair-is-over/ ) I think Brits see "oh man those Americans they used to be us...literally" and US is still a technological and cultural powerhouse and so Brits get taken over by all kinds of mind viruses otherwise they would not be in the situation they are now. Even now they want to make that 5 eyes club(those recent anti China shenanigans against France with Aussies+Brits+Americans). Blood is still thicker than water, I suppose.

    You just said it yourself that Britain is mentally occupied by America. And what happens when "Right Wing" Americans view Somalis as closer to them than Europeans and view having Somali businesses as the cornerstones of successful policy?
    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British...equivalent?(if that's a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners? I think the rot sets in at very early age where they get indoctrinated with race , minority worship, gay worship, etc.

    The issue is that the US will get more and more insane as time passes by. The problem is when an empire sees its weakening it can lash out. On whom will they lash out?
    USSR was killing its own citizens. Mostly. And USSR managed to cause extreme amounts of damage before it finally imploded. What will Anglos do? Nobody knows the amount of damage US empire will cause but they're definitely going to try something in Europe thats for sure, all signs point there. But thats for the future...2030s and 2040s I guess.


    Imagine we are getting stuck between 2 empires, both equally insane one wants to cannibalize and consume you and the other to flood you with unassimilable foreigners, there was an article about how Ukraine need to import Africans Pakistanis and Indians into its workforce by some think tank but unfortunately i have lost it.
    Of course the 4-6 billion Africans being buttressed by the US empire is going to be a headache in future. And yes by now everyone is aware of the Bantu genocidal expansion but Americans have this blank slate theory and an odd mindset "Oh man sure those blacks loot kill and riot haha but they're OUR based blacks".

    US wants Africans and the whole Global South in every part of the globe and especially Europe.(including parts Anglos didnt to colonize in the past) and Russia wants its Chechen and other Russian mystery meat SlavoFinnoUgricTurkic mutts to flood us. Both plans are incredibly devious and insidious.

    US destroys and sucks up dwindling resources from all over the world just so they can to prop up their favorite pets to the tune of 3000-4000 calories a day and housing, EBT, etc. Americans have poured everything into blacks giving money, power, status ,their women and so on yet with no return on investment whatsoever(except rap music and "black family values" aka extremely dysfunctional social norms).

    And on the other side Russia rips out precious metals and other minerals just to feed and sustain Kavkazoids and other ethnic minorities that murder(seriously blacks can be sort of placated with gibs and such but Chechens and other Caucasoids can and will just kill you for a slight offense like a Chechen slaying some child or a woman is a regular occurrence).
    At least blacks produce music and i dont know some sort of ?"culture"?(as degenerate and useless as it is) What do Chechens do? Slit throats and are massively involved into other shady things all those extremely clannish gold chain people do? They're like extremely dangerous gypsies with their ethnic mafias.


    I assure you things are not looking good here either. Even in the most far flung "province" of the empire( we arent even a province Ukraine isnt part of anything) Westerners are pushing this transgender and multiculturalism poison trying to destroy what little we have remaining of our world(after gomunism, Russian parasites, etc)
    Take a look at this stuff straight out of US State Department. Der Russe Nitichevski muss sterben, damit wir leben. Its like we have to substitute Russie for West....

    https://i.imgur.com/vePsaVo.jpg
    https://imgur.com/a/TGG4sEO
    these are not my hands btw

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @German_reader, @LatW

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us

    Ukraine is large enough that it can carve out its own policy, if there is political will. You have not signed into any serious obligations yet with the West. Even if Ukraine gets integrated into the Western security structures in some way, let’s say, through some kind of an enhanced cooperation, even then Ukraine does not have to fully comply with the woke ideology. The amount of support from the US, while important, is not enough to win a war for you plus there are geopolitical interests in the Black Sea that the West will never give up. What, the US will stop siding with you against Russia, just because you don’t introduce gender neutrality? No. Besides, if you look at Johnson’s “Global Britain” remarks, it seems that the British will not abandon you.

    Ukraine has shown that it has the will to stand up for itself. Recently the Ukrainian army has brought some potentially game changing elements to the front lines that could help enforce a real cease fire.

    Maybe Ukraine should model itself in a way that’s more similar to countries such as Japan, Turkey, Israel. All of these are Western partners, but they retain their own internal policies. You can always argue that you are freedom loving Cossacks who have their own Cossack way. 🙂 And always argue that Ukraine is a front line state that deserves all kinds of exceptions. Not exceptions in, let’s say, the rule of law which is good to observe for Ukraine’s own sake, but exceptions pertaining to the woke practices.

    Ideally, of course, a range of countries should come together and simply state that we can continue our friendship and cooperation, but that we will not be accepting the crazy parts. Frankly, last summer’s “pregnant people” really did it for me. Time to tactfully say “No thanks”.

    The excerpt you posted is very disturbing and if it indeed comes from the State Department then it’s very dangerous (not only encourages mutilating female children but teaches one not to accept or even dislike femininity). Of course, the State Department has been living in its own world for a long time. Again, you don’t have to comply in any way! You have enough bargaining power on your own. The more risky part is if people themselves start doing it, because parts of the world are now on track for this.

    • Agree: AP
    • Replies: @Svidomyatheart
    @LatW

    Latw, I had a 1000sih word response to your post that i typed since the weekend and I was getting ready to post it but lost it.

    I might be able to retype it

    Only thing I want to say is sure the Brits say they're going to do this and that to help Ukraine but how did that work out for Poland last time?

    Replies: @German_reader, @LatW

  796. In other Ukraine related news (and, hopefully, this will not anger the Russian readers too much):

    The Scythian Gold will be returning to Ukraine.

    https://www.rferl.org/a/ukraine-crimean-gold-returned-netherlands/31530121.html

    Among these artifacts there are fantastic pieces such as a golden ceremonial helmet from the 4th century BC, as well as a beautiful scabbard decorated with real and mythical animals, such as griffins, a common feature in Scythian art.

  797. @AP
    @Beckow


    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent?
     
    Yes, I've also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly such as milk, salmon or meat to grill (I read about a supposed meat shortage - where?), fruits, etc. Bought some gifts, didn't notice anything being hard to find or inflated in price. Only gasoline has become more expensive, though it has been worse in the past. Admittedly, I have not been shopping for refrigerators or other appliances. Or a house. The one I own has increased by 20% or so in value in a short amount of time. So now the % owned by the bank is smaller.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today?
     
    I'm not an economist, but so far it looks normal around here.

    Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy,
     
    USA still has massive gas and oil reserves. Westerners very stupidly abandoned nuclear but they have woken up to that problem and are ameliorating it.

    with a few “trillioners” owning everything in sight
     
    I don't see anything owned by trillionaires near me.

    censored media, gender and racial circus out of control
     
    Too early to tell if this will be stopped or not. The pushback has only begun, because until very recently the general population hadn't noticed how bad the problem was. We'll see what happens.

    and geriocratic leaders
     
    Biden is hopeless, but Macron and Johnson are not geriatric despite other problems.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow, @A123

    The shortages (so far) are more localized, and often appears to be less choices for the consumers or delays in shipping, instead of something Soviet-style with bread queues and black markets. We shouldn’t rule out worse scenarios especially as supply chains continue to unravel, inflation picks up, and people are barred from entering shops for not having a vaccine passport.

  798. @LatW
    @Mr. Hack

    Do you speak Ukrainian with an American accent? I've heard a few of such speakers, it sounds cute. It varies person to person how strong it is. Although in general it's best to retain a clean accent as much as possible. At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.

    Replies: @SafeNow, @Mr. Hack

    At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.

    Here in Orange County California, I have seen a one-on-one approach work wonders in a matter of two or three hours. You need: (1) a teacher specifically trained in accent elimination; here’s where to put your tongue, etc.; and (2) a motivated, disciplined student willing to undergo fastidious, mind-numbing repetition with word lists. My anecdotal observation is that only Asian immigrants actually do this. And not many of them. Too bad. A few hours, and you’ve got your new accent, for life.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @SafeNow


    a teacher specifically trained in accent elimination
     
    Thanks for sharing that. I'm aware of that specialty. But, as you note, the tougher part is the drills. Unless you have a really good ear. It also helps if the child is under 12.
  799. @LatW
    @Mr. Hack

    Do you speak Ukrainian with an American accent? I've heard a few of such speakers, it sounds cute. It varies person to person how strong it is. Although in general it's best to retain a clean accent as much as possible. At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.

    Replies: @SafeNow, @Mr. Hack

    It’s a very slight accent, but it’s certainly there. My Ukrainian language skills are probably better than 95% of immigrant born offspring. I do still have to think about things, especially if it’s something more complicated, but I usually get bye. My writing skills are actually quite good, as I have my native born roommate check for grammar and spelling mistakes, and I usually pass with flying colors. I speak with him in Ukrainian and English about 50/50. My accent is only noticeable when I’m among real native Ukrainian speakers. When in Ukraine, my speech, dress and even walking patterns quickly give away my origins. I grew up in an environment where I heard all sorts of Ukrainian dialects, including even Polish and Russian. I’ve had people in Ukraine say that they think that I’m from Zakarpattya. 🙂

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Mr. Hack


    My accent is only noticeable when I’m among real native Ukrainian speakers.
     
    Can you pronounce the "r" as a Ukrainian/Slav? If you mastered the writing part, you're a real champion.

    Btw, I like the Zakarpatya dialect very much, it sounds so familiar to my own language. It is definitely closer to the Lusatian dialects, it kind of helps map the whole Lusatian phonetic space from south to north.

    Btw, I hope your roommate tolerated the vaccine well.
  800. @SafeNow
    @LatW


    At Sunday schools or summer camps, you should invite teachers from Ukraine, so that the children can improve their accent.
     
    Here in Orange County California, I have seen a one-on-one approach work wonders in a matter of two or three hours. You need: (1) a teacher specifically trained in accent elimination; here’s where to put your tongue, etc.; and (2) a motivated, disciplined student willing to undergo fastidious, mind-numbing repetition with word lists. My anecdotal observation is that only Asian immigrants actually do this. And not many of them. Too bad. A few hours, and you’ve got your new accent, for life.

    Replies: @LatW

    a teacher specifically trained in accent elimination

    Thanks for sharing that. I’m aware of that specialty. But, as you note, the tougher part is the drills. Unless you have a really good ear. It also helps if the child is under 12.

  801. @Mr. Hack
    @LatW

    It's a very slight accent, but it's certainly there. My Ukrainian language skills are probably better than 95% of immigrant born offspring. I do still have to think about things, especially if it's something more complicated, but I usually get bye. My writing skills are actually quite good, as I have my native born roommate check for grammar and spelling mistakes, and I usually pass with flying colors. I speak with him in Ukrainian and English about 50/50. My accent is only noticeable when I'm among real native Ukrainian speakers. When in Ukraine, my speech, dress and even walking patterns quickly give away my origins. I grew up in an environment where I heard all sorts of Ukrainian dialects, including even Polish and Russian. I've had people in Ukraine say that they think that I'm from Zakarpattya. :-)

    Replies: @LatW

    My accent is only noticeable when I’m among real native Ukrainian speakers.

    Can you pronounce the “r” as a Ukrainian/Slav? If you mastered the writing part, you’re a real champion.

    Btw, I like the Zakarpatya dialect very much, it sounds so familiar to my own language. It is definitely closer to the Lusatian dialects, it kind of helps map the whole Lusatian phonetic space from south to north.

    Btw, I hope your roommate tolerated the vaccine well.

  802. When in Ukraine, my speech, dress and even walking patterns quickly give away my origins.

    You know what used to give away Westerners/Americans (at least back in the 90s, early 2000s), except for maybe a slightly softer demeanor? Their backpacks. Like, someone would be dressed smart casual but would carry this sporty backpack. Then you could immediately tell they’re from North America. The locals would carry different type of bags and purses.

    Btw, we often used to make fun of the Baltic American accents, we used to talk among each other in that accent. In a very endearing way. I wonder if Ukrainians do the same.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @LatW

    My "r's" are pretty decent overall. The worst thing about my Ukrainian speaking skills is that I occasionally will state something using English grammatical patterns, where the same utterance has more of a unique Ukrainian pattern/placement. I'm sure that I'm not unique in this, and have worked hard over the years to correct these Ukrainian language English patterns.

    I'm guilty of wearing a backpack when in Ukraine, especially if I'm going somewhere for a day trip or longer. Walking around with a tied up bundle looks more ridiculous to me, or putting everything into some sort of a bag. Some things are just too difficult to change. :-)

    , @Dmitry
    @LatW

    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.

    Perhaps it is just their bodylanguage and clothing styles, and face expressions, that creates this impression though.

    Many Americans also have a very distinctive mentality, that they don't export nearly as much as they might imagine. That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.

    You can love and consume American cultural exports all day, and the American mentality can still be a culture shock.

    -

    That is not a bad thing, from the American perspective. America should be proud it produces a very distinctive culture and strong culture "imprint" on its population, even as they arrive from diverse origins.

    Just if America understands that the rest of the world is culturally distinct from them, then it should celebrated that they are creating a distinctive nationality, with their unique perspectives (which American culture has no lack of unique perspectives on life).

    German Reader writes about his "negative view of America". But it's likely more a negative view of the relation of America to Europe that he experiences. Judged on its own, the American culture is of course one of the most interesting and vital worldcultures - probably the most innovative and productive of worldculture of the 20th century.

    Replies: @songbird, @LatW

  803. @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    Kingsnorth seems to be talking about a report called Limits to Growth. From wiki -


    Commissioned by the Club of Rome, the findings of the study were first presented at international gatherings in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1971.[1]: 186  The report's authors are Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, representing a team of 17 researchers.[1]: 8 

    The report concludes that, without substantial changes in resource consumption, "the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity". Although its methods and premises were heavily challenged on its publication, subsequent work to validate its forecasts continue to confirm that insufficient changes have been made since 1972 to significantly alter their nature.
     

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader

    This is what I’m talking about, and yes, this is commissioned by the Neo-Malthusians that inform strategic policy of the American Empire for the last 50 years, that leads to the civilization impasse we have. (Ehret at Strategic Culture has a lot of articles on this)

    I have been reading Roko’s twitter and gave progressive ideals a rethink – but their scenarios have slipped us by, because of elite inaction.

    If instead of procrastinating on finance, investment in R&D had continued on technological “hardware” like efficient energy, many breakthrus would have come sooner to avert the current hard landing of industrialism. You can argue they could open up new areas of control and artificial distortions, but in the long-term, technology might also have liberatory uses. Instead (or as they expect), resources are running out at an alarming pace as the exploratory impulse that characterized the world up to the 70s was given up for all-for-all class & cultural wars over everything. It is ultimately setting up civilizational goals, and then quitting when we are 80% there, because the elite it has created wants to keep the fabulous gains of power & wealth.

    Why do we get there?

    Everyone, philosophers not excluded, have tunnel vision, and often they can only think & act while being flushed along the stream of time. Elites and peoples can’t act outside of their worldview, except changing it radically, so any apparently “revolutionary” epochs must have a lot of prior build-up. And such a build-up must have its internal logic, which makes the agency of supposed conspirators less formidable. So maybe the direction is set from the beginning, maybe 4 or 5 centuries ago. And maybe we won’t, unlike progressives’ wishes but like the vast majority of the world’s societies (and probably most of extreterristrial ones too), despite the possibility always being there.

    The world recovered from WWII since the elites then believed in the future capitalist, or communist utopia, and everyone else were led by them. But the current elite has other priorities, and the Zeitgeist turns to anticipating a managed decline – traumatized like Europe was post-Rome and never been able to imagine the grandeur of Rome until Early Modenity.

    Maybe modernity (which says it is the terminus of history) have to pass away for new cultures, that might or might not consolidate the gains of modernism. Instead of an end of history, we can continue. But the greater moral is, we need to transcend the opposition between progress vs stasis, and realize the seeds are contained within each other – an end-state utopia was in pre-modern traditions, like the Christian post-apocalypse world or Maitreya. But in tradition there had been a factor that contains such enthusiasm (e.g. Katechon & Maitreya’s coming being set at a point in the future), so things can go cyclically without a rush to the end. Modernity has removed it and made the rush too quickly. Modernity sees tradition as repressive & tradition sees modernity as decadent, but since things accumulate even during the Middle Ages, Modernity would eventually happen, with all its ills. The only way out might be either clinging on too much, or thinking like a Buddhist.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    It seems to me you are saying our problem is that we did not go far enough along the line of technology, and what would have saved us is more technology. We lost our nerve somewhere in the 80s.

    While I do agree with you that at a certain point we lost the mindset needed to do revolutionary technology, I think that mindset was a mistake.

    Also I do not see the end of growth as a problem or a crisis, but as something wonderful. Better and more interesting lives will be opened up, instead of the monomaniacal focus on the future, an interesting engagement with the present.

    After all, what was technology all about? Power over things, and convenience. Look at Karlin crow over how the Moscow metro system now has contactless payment as if this is a big deal.

    Perhaps we need to go back to First Principles. What drives the quest for technology? The fear of death.

    But if you fear death, you cannot yet enjoy life. You must first secure life. That is why there is so little joy in technological civilization. On Maslow's hierarchy of needs, survival needs are the lowest needs. Only after you secure life, can you enjoy man's estate, and realize your full potential.

    The technological quest, came from a mindset that was on Maslow's lowest rung of human needs.

    What we always needed to allay our fear of death, was not technological control of the physical world - that doesn't even succeed in eliminating that fear, as you can never be certain, and the quest becomes endless, and anxiety actually increases the safer you are and the more you control - as we see, modernity is the safest but most anxious era.

    What we always needed was the right metaphysics - to reject the false metaphysics of Seperation, to reject our seperation from Nature, and to come home to it.

    I am uninterested in Power. What fascinates me is experience - life as an aesthetic experience, or a spiritual experience.

    There are moments of experience in a forest, that I would gladly give up all our technology for. That is the goal of life.

    Gaining Power is the antechamber of Life - it is where Life has not yet begun, as it first must be secured. Since modernity began, we have been in limbo in the antechamber of Life - Life was supposed to happen in the future. We worshipped Time.

    With the end of growth, Life can finally begin for us. And that is a wonderful thing.

    , @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    I think progress vs stasis, modernity vs tradition, is the wrong frame here.

    Both are "survival-concerns" - how most efficiently to organize society in order to best survive.

    But this is a very basic concern, perhaps our "lowest" concern.

    The problem with our culture for the last several hundred years, is that we had become increasingly trapped within the lowest rung of Maslow's hierarchy.

    But should the central organizing principle of society be survival? Or should it be the Good Life (however defined)?

    Should our main focus be on securing our state - or on enjoying it? Instead of putting all our energy into achieving a future state of security, is it not better to fully enjoy, realize, and explore, our current state?

    The answers depend entirely on ones metaphysics.

    If one genuinely sees oneself as a fragment cut off from the whole, then one imagines one can die, and one will be afraid and focus on securing survival - the technological quest.

    If one sees oneself as connected to Nature, as not a seperate fragment but part of a basic larger unity, and as an expression of a single underlying energy, one knows one cannot die - indeed, one was never born, as Zen says.

    In that case, one will make a reasonable effort to secure survival, but the focus of life will on enjoying man's estate, savoring it, and appreciating it, exploring it's depths and heights, the delight of being part of Nature and a larger unity. Such a culture will develop the aesthetic and spiritual side of life, and not accumulate Power.

    The choice is not entirely ours to make, and our intuitions are not entirely under our control. We should certainly seek to cultivate the right metaphysics, but our power to do so - in ourselves or others - is limited. Much is pre-rational intuition and inmate cognitive disposition.

    The people who see life solely as a struggle for survival, the techno-utopians and transhumanists, are not to be hated, but pitied and consoled, as theirs is a hard lot.

    Of course, when they try and impose their grim vision on those who see differently, they must be resisted.

  804. @AP
    @Beckow


    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent?
     
    Yes, I've also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly such as milk, salmon or meat to grill (I read about a supposed meat shortage - where?), fruits, etc. Bought some gifts, didn't notice anything being hard to find or inflated in price. Only gasoline has become more expensive, though it has been worse in the past. Admittedly, I have not been shopping for refrigerators or other appliances. Or a house. The one I own has increased by 20% or so in value in a short amount of time. So now the % owned by the bank is smaller.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today?
     
    I'm not an economist, but so far it looks normal around here.

    Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy,
     
    USA still has massive gas and oil reserves. Westerners very stupidly abandoned nuclear but they have woken up to that problem and are ameliorating it.

    with a few “trillioners” owning everything in sight
     
    I don't see anything owned by trillionaires near me.

    censored media, gender and racial circus out of control
     
    Too early to tell if this will be stopped or not. The pushback has only begun, because until very recently the general population hadn't noticed how bad the problem was. We'll see what happens.

    and geriocratic leaders
     
    Biden is hopeless, but Macron and Johnson are not geriatric despite other problems.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow, @A123

    There is always a place for optimism, why not? (Read Voltaire’s Candide about how optimism often ends in a cul-de-sac). So let’s write it off as the usual media exaggeration.

    …the general population hadn’t noticed how bad the problem was.

    That’s quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years. Performing a “pushback” will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power, it can take a generation to bring it under control.

    Macron is married to a geriatric and most EU leaders look like they are on a field-trip from an old people’s home, so I will stay with my description. In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants. They don’t plan to be around when the sh.t hits the fan.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    That’s quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years
     
    It’s been common knowledge on Unz, whose readership is mostly fringe, for a long time. Normal people living their lives haven’t begun to notice until a year or so ago. That’s very recent.

    Performing a “pushback” will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power
     
    It will be clear in the next 3 years.

    In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants
     
    Trump in his 70s rocked the boat hard as evidenced by the massive corporate and social campaign against him. And it was barely successful, and only so due to Covid. And now people are waking up to the scale of the nonsense (polls indicate he would win now).

    As for age of top leaders, it seems universal not just Western. Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71. In Ukraine, Poroshenko is 56 and Zelensky 43. Zelensky’s puppet master Kolomoysky is 58.

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow

  805. most EU leaders look like they are on a field-trip from an old people’s home, so I will stay with my description. In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants. They don’t plan to be around when the sh.t hits the fan.

    Agree, but then this begs the question – where is the middle generation? Why haven’t they / we appeared on the political scene at the highest levels. Granted, in Northern and Central Europe there are quite a few. In the US, there are a few in the middle political rungs (DeSantis, Masters in AZ), who are hypothetically awaiting their turn. And, while I would agree with you in the sense that gerontocracy is hard to beat and that 30,40 year olds have a lot on their plate besides politics and that private sector pays more, but still it begs the question – why so few? Isn’t there a lack of will, a lack of ambition in the middle generation? And, yet, so much is at stake exactly for that generation and their children and soon grandchildren.

    In order for the generational transfer to take place, there needs to be a strong and capable generation of heirs.

    We’ve talked about this before on this forum. Where are the younger generation of American conservative leaders? And where is the 40-50 year old Putin’s heir? Or at least successful heads of political parties who could break into the top tier politics. Besides Navalny & Zelensky.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LatW

    There are two sides to gerontocracy and "where is the middle generation" only highlights one. There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power - this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.

    There is also the new biological reality of a large number of elderly in their 80's and 90's: they are unproductive but extremely jealously guard their own safety and assets. To some extent that paralyzes a society - and this is gerontocracy in its pure form.

    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!). They are right on culture, borders, families, etc... but it gets devalued by then telling people to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "market will provide". A number of them have disappeared in the last few years because there are no votes in that. DeSantis may follow the same path...but by then running on "open up the stores" could be enough to win.

    Replies: @A123, @LatW

    , @Dmitry
    @LatW

    I was more concerned by the fashion for very young leaders like Sebastian Kurz - who was Foreign Minister of Austria at age 27, with no profession, and has never had a real job.

    Or Jacinda Ardern who was Prime Minister of New Zealand, at age 37, and has never had any profession or job before.

    Although surprisingly in both cases, they have actually been relatively competent leaders. Jacinda Ardern was one of the world's best leaders in the coronavirus pandemic.

    -

    Between young or old leaders, obviously old leaders, should be preferable, due to their experience.

    People criticizing politicians for being too old, seems strange. They are not professional athletes. They don't even have to produce much real work. They are simply the person who makes the final decision. Experience and judgement should be the most important criteria for them.

    Historically, old leaders or figureheads are even a little archetypical. How old was Queen Victoria when she retired (died)?


    US, there are a few
     
    In the US Republicans there are a lot of medium age politicians like Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio.

    While in the Democrats there is a prominence of some very young politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, where it is difficult to see if they ever had a job or profession.

    With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only impressive thing in her Wikipedia article is written: " took a job as a bartender and waitress" .

    So she has some experience of the real world, which is promising. But then the rest of her life is like "Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute. During the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign". I.e. it's nothing like real work, connected to real life.

    She has attained experience of life as a bartender for a short time, which will be useful for her to understand the situation of normal people. But all her life after is not connected to the real world and just useless things (i.e. working for political campaign).

    Replies: @LatW

  806. @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB

    This is what I'm talking about, and yes, this is commissioned by the Neo-Malthusians that inform strategic policy of the American Empire for the last 50 years, that leads to the civilization impasse we have. (Ehret at Strategic Culture has a lot of articles on this)

    I have been reading Roko's twitter and gave progressive ideals a rethink - but their scenarios have slipped us by, because of elite inaction.

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1452968025842454532

    If instead of procrastinating on finance, investment in R&D had continued on technological "hardware" like efficient energy, many breakthrus would have come sooner to avert the current hard landing of industrialism. You can argue they could open up new areas of control and artificial distortions, but in the long-term, technology might also have liberatory uses. Instead (or as they expect), resources are running out at an alarming pace as the exploratory impulse that characterized the world up to the 70s was given up for all-for-all class & cultural wars over everything. It is ultimately setting up civilizational goals, and then quitting when we are 80% there, because the elite it has created wants to keep the fabulous gains of power & wealth.

    Why do we get there?

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1453062271643566092

    Everyone, philosophers not excluded, have tunnel vision, and often they can only think & act while being flushed along the stream of time. Elites and peoples can't act outside of their worldview, except changing it radically, so any apparently "revolutionary" epochs must have a lot of prior build-up. And such a build-up must have its internal logic, which makes the agency of supposed conspirators less formidable. So maybe the direction is set from the beginning, maybe 4 or 5 centuries ago. And maybe we won't, unlike progressives' wishes but like the vast majority of the world's societies (and probably most of extreterristrial ones too), despite the possibility always being there.

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1452946627665219590

    The world recovered from WWII since the elites then believed in the future capitalist, or communist utopia, and everyone else were led by them. But the current elite has other priorities, and the Zeitgeist turns to anticipating a managed decline - traumatized like Europe was post-Rome and never been able to imagine the grandeur of Rome until Early Modenity.

    Maybe modernity (which says it is the terminus of history) have to pass away for new cultures, that might or might not consolidate the gains of modernism. Instead of an end of history, we can continue. But the greater moral is, we need to transcend the opposition between progress vs stasis, and realize the seeds are contained within each other - an end-state utopia was in pre-modern traditions, like the Christian post-apocalypse world or Maitreya. But in tradition there had been a factor that contains such enthusiasm (e.g. Katechon & Maitreya's coming being set at a point in the future), so things can go cyclically without a rush to the end. Modernity has removed it and made the rush too quickly. Modernity sees tradition as repressive & tradition sees modernity as decadent, but since things accumulate even during the Middle Ages, Modernity would eventually happen, with all its ills. The only way out might be either clinging on too much, or thinking like a Buddhist.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AaronB

    It seems to me you are saying our problem is that we did not go far enough along the line of technology, and what would have saved us is more technology. We lost our nerve somewhere in the 80s.

    While I do agree with you that at a certain point we lost the mindset needed to do revolutionary technology, I think that mindset was a mistake.

    Also I do not see the end of growth as a problem or a crisis, but as something wonderful. Better and more interesting lives will be opened up, instead of the monomaniacal focus on the future, an interesting engagement with the present.

    After all, what was technology all about? Power over things, and convenience. Look at Karlin crow over how the Moscow metro system now has contactless payment as if this is a big deal.

    Perhaps we need to go back to First Principles. What drives the quest for technology? The fear of death.

    But if you fear death, you cannot yet enjoy life. You must first secure life. That is why there is so little joy in technological civilization. On Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, survival needs are the lowest needs. Only after you secure life, can you enjoy man’s estate, and realize your full potential.

    The technological quest, came from a mindset that was on Maslow’s lowest rung of human needs.

    What we always needed to allay our fear of death, was not technological control of the physical world – that doesn’t even succeed in eliminating that fear, as you can never be certain, and the quest becomes endless, and anxiety actually increases the safer you are and the more you control – as we see, modernity is the safest but most anxious era.

    What we always needed was the right metaphysics – to reject the false metaphysics of Seperation, to reject our seperation from Nature, and to come home to it.

    I am uninterested in Power. What fascinates me is experience – life as an aesthetic experience, or a spiritual experience.

    There are moments of experience in a forest, that I would gladly give up all our technology for. That is the goal of life.

    Gaining Power is the antechamber of Life – it is where Life has not yet begun, as it first must be secured. Since modernity began, we have been in limbo in the antechamber of Life – Life was supposed to happen in the future. We worshipped Time.

    With the end of growth, Life can finally begin for us. And that is a wonderful thing.

  807. @Yellowface Anon
    @AaronB

    This is what I'm talking about, and yes, this is commissioned by the Neo-Malthusians that inform strategic policy of the American Empire for the last 50 years, that leads to the civilization impasse we have. (Ehret at Strategic Culture has a lot of articles on this)

    I have been reading Roko's twitter and gave progressive ideals a rethink - but their scenarios have slipped us by, because of elite inaction.

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1452968025842454532

    If instead of procrastinating on finance, investment in R&D had continued on technological "hardware" like efficient energy, many breakthrus would have come sooner to avert the current hard landing of industrialism. You can argue they could open up new areas of control and artificial distortions, but in the long-term, technology might also have liberatory uses. Instead (or as they expect), resources are running out at an alarming pace as the exploratory impulse that characterized the world up to the 70s was given up for all-for-all class & cultural wars over everything. It is ultimately setting up civilizational goals, and then quitting when we are 80% there, because the elite it has created wants to keep the fabulous gains of power & wealth.

    Why do we get there?

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1453062271643566092

    Everyone, philosophers not excluded, have tunnel vision, and often they can only think & act while being flushed along the stream of time. Elites and peoples can't act outside of their worldview, except changing it radically, so any apparently "revolutionary" epochs must have a lot of prior build-up. And such a build-up must have its internal logic, which makes the agency of supposed conspirators less formidable. So maybe the direction is set from the beginning, maybe 4 or 5 centuries ago. And maybe we won't, unlike progressives' wishes but like the vast majority of the world's societies (and probably most of extreterristrial ones too), despite the possibility always being there.

    https://twitter.com/RokoMijic/status/1452946627665219590

    The world recovered from WWII since the elites then believed in the future capitalist, or communist utopia, and everyone else were led by them. But the current elite has other priorities, and the Zeitgeist turns to anticipating a managed decline - traumatized like Europe was post-Rome and never been able to imagine the grandeur of Rome until Early Modenity.

    Maybe modernity (which says it is the terminus of history) have to pass away for new cultures, that might or might not consolidate the gains of modernism. Instead of an end of history, we can continue. But the greater moral is, we need to transcend the opposition between progress vs stasis, and realize the seeds are contained within each other - an end-state utopia was in pre-modern traditions, like the Christian post-apocalypse world or Maitreya. But in tradition there had been a factor that contains such enthusiasm (e.g. Katechon & Maitreya's coming being set at a point in the future), so things can go cyclically without a rush to the end. Modernity has removed it and made the rush too quickly. Modernity sees tradition as repressive & tradition sees modernity as decadent, but since things accumulate even during the Middle Ages, Modernity would eventually happen, with all its ills. The only way out might be either clinging on too much, or thinking like a Buddhist.

    Replies: @AaronB, @AaronB

    I think progress vs stasis, modernity vs tradition, is the wrong frame here.

    Both are “survival-concerns” – how most efficiently to organize society in order to best survive.

    But this is a very basic concern, perhaps our “lowest” concern.

    The problem with our culture for the last several hundred years, is that we had become increasingly trapped within the lowest rung of Maslow’s hierarchy.

    But should the central organizing principle of society be survival? Or should it be the Good Life (however defined)?

    Should our main focus be on securing our state – or on enjoying it? Instead of putting all our energy into achieving a future state of security, is it not better to fully enjoy, realize, and explore, our current state?

    The answers depend entirely on ones metaphysics.

    If one genuinely sees oneself as a fragment cut off from the whole, then one imagines one can die, and one will be afraid and focus on securing survival – the technological quest.

    If one sees oneself as connected to Nature, as not a seperate fragment but part of a basic larger unity, and as an expression of a single underlying energy, one knows one cannot die – indeed, one was never born, as Zen says.

    In that case, one will make a reasonable effort to secure survival, but the focus of life will on enjoying man’s estate, savoring it, and appreciating it, exploring it’s depths and heights, the delight of being part of Nature and a larger unity. Such a culture will develop the aesthetic and spiritual side of life, and not accumulate Power.

    The choice is not entirely ours to make, and our intuitions are not entirely under our control. We should certainly seek to cultivate the right metaphysics, but our power to do so – in ourselves or others – is limited. Much is pre-rational intuition and inmate cognitive disposition.

    The people who see life solely as a struggle for survival, the techno-utopians and transhumanists, are not to be hated, but pitied and consoled, as theirs is a hard lot.

    Of course, when they try and impose their grim vision on those who see differently, they must be resisted.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
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  809. @Beckow
    @AP

    There is always a place for optimism, why not? (Read Voltaire's Candide about how optimism often ends in a cul-de-sac). So let's write it off as the usual media exaggeration.


    ...the general population hadn’t noticed how bad the problem was.
     
    That's quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years. Performing a "pushback" will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power, it can take a generation to bring it under control.

    Macron is married to a geriatric and most EU leaders look like they are on a field-trip from an old people's home, so I will stay with my description. In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70's. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants. They don't plan to be around when the sh.t hits the fan.

    Replies: @AP

    That’s quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years

    It’s been common knowledge on Unz, whose readership is mostly fringe, for a long time. Normal people living their lives haven’t begun to notice until a year or so ago. That’s very recent.

    Performing a “pushback” will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power

    It will be clear in the next 3 years.

    In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants

    Trump in his 70s rocked the boat hard as evidenced by the massive corporate and social campaign against him. And it was barely successful, and only so due to Covid. And now people are waking up to the scale of the nonsense (polls indicate he would win now).

    As for age of top leaders, it seems universal not just Western. Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71. In Ukraine, Poroshenko is 56 and Zelensky 43. Zelensky’s puppet master Kolomoysky is 58.

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AP


    It will be clear in the next 3 years.
     
    It's already starting, all the vaccine mandate going Galt stuff. (not cultural, but still)

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).
     
    He can basically win on an "open everything up" platform.

    (no, it isn't gerontocratic thinking like Beckow allege since Macron also institutes a vaccine passport system. It's never about risk avoidance, or else they will consider the risks of COVID overreach on the economy.)

    Replies: @A123

    , @Beckow
    @AP


    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71
     
    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them. Elderly elites prefer light-weight odd-balls as potential competitors, often they pick a woman (pretty girls have always been favored, but these days any woman will do), a minority of some kind, men with "issues", etc... It is a way to keep the potential succession in check. And there is always nepotism.

    What is lacking is a coherent younger generation representing normal, family, national life. In that way the liberal freaks have succeeded - they have eliminated normal people over the years by control of key institutions. The society will pay a heavy price for it.

    Replies: @AP

  810. German_reader says:
    @AaronB
    @Yellowface Anon

    Kingsnorth seems to be talking about a report called Limits to Growth. From wiki -


    Commissioned by the Club of Rome, the findings of the study were first presented at international gatherings in Moscow and Rio de Janeiro in the summer of 1971.[1]: 186  The report's authors are Donella H. Meadows, Dennis L. Meadows, Jørgen Randers, and William W. Behrens III, representing a team of 17 researchers.[1]: 8 

    The report concludes that, without substantial changes in resource consumption, "the most probable result will be a rather sudden and uncontrollable decline in both population and industrial capacity". Although its methods and premises were heavily challenged on its publication, subsequent work to validate its forecasts continue to confirm that insufficient changes have been made since 1972 to significantly alter their nature.
     

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader

    People have been going on about that Club of Rome report for decades, I’m surprised you’ve never heard about it. That article by Kingsnorth is just the usual peak oil doomerism, he doesn’t make a convincing argument at all that the current supply shortages are due to the cost of resource extraction, it’s just an assertion without any real evidence provided, because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Ok, but things are happening according to the timetable set up by that report.

    It's not like China doomerism, for instance, where the anticipated event never happens when it's supposed to.

    Here, every deadline is met, and then people just dismiss it and wave it aside. If what that report says is true, it's almost guaranteed that our civilization will be in complete denial of it, and act exactly like that.

    Anyways, Kingsnorth doesn't say it's happening for sure - my initial enthusiasm was over the top. Just that events are unfolding uncannily like that report predicted.

    Anyways, time will tell, and we will know soon enough. Something spooky is definitely going on, in my opinion. What, I don't know.


    because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).
     
    Well, you have a point :)!

    Replies: @songbird

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @German_reader


    That article by Kingsnorth is just the usual peak oil doomerism, he doesn’t make a convincing argument at all that the current supply shortages are due to the cost of resource extraction, it’s just an assertion without any real evidence provided
     
    Would like to see argument about peak energy not happening and the current hiccups being transitory. But anyway, it's all about political & probably civilizational will - enough signs are here to suggest civilizational suicide.

    he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end
     
    I don't hate modern civilization myself, or else I wouldn't survive past 3. But I know every civilization has its "end", and this is the only iron law in this universe.
  811. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    People have been going on about that Club of Rome report for decades, I'm surprised you've never heard about it. That article by Kingsnorth is just the usual peak oil doomerism, he doesn't make a convincing argument at all that the current supply shortages are due to the cost of resource extraction, it's just an assertion without any real evidence provided, because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).

    Replies: @AaronB, @Yellowface Anon

    Ok, but things are happening according to the timetable set up by that report.

    It’s not like China doomerism, for instance, where the anticipated event never happens when it’s supposed to.

    Here, every deadline is met, and then people just dismiss it and wave it aside. If what that report says is true, it’s almost guaranteed that our civilization will be in complete denial of it, and act exactly like that.

    Anyways, Kingsnorth doesn’t say it’s happening for sure – my initial enthusiasm was over the top. Just that events are unfolding uncannily like that report predicted.

    Anyways, time will tell, and we will know soon enough. Something spooky is definitely going on, in my opinion. What, I don’t know.

    because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).

    Well, you have a point :)!

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    Tend to think that even if the availability of consumer goods somehow decreases, they will still be able to push those ones and zeros through optic cables or else through the air. There will still be video streaming, even if they have to take the resolution down a notch, and limit it to ARM processors on both ends.

    Hate to say it, but I think materialism doesn't need cheap plastic, or the cornucopia of supermarkets. All it needs is the internet. Petabytes of porn to simulate romantic relationships. Petabytes of movies and TV shows with ensemble casts to simulate having friends.

    Sometimes, I think it should all be forcefully taken down and replaced with high-resolution images of art by the masters, and archaeological finds. Still images to inspire, where you cannot mesmerize with the motion, only show the pregnant moment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

  812. @AP
    @Beckow


    Sources:

    https://www.ft.com/content/c7f19120-9442-497b-a328-36b22781006e

    https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/22/business/shortages-supply-chain.html

    As always, I suspect the media exaggerates, but is it non-existent?
     
    Yes, I've also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly such as milk, salmon or meat to grill (I read about a supposed meat shortage - where?), fruits, etc. Bought some gifts, didn't notice anything being hard to find or inflated in price. Only gasoline has become more expensive, though it has been worse in the past. Admittedly, I have not been shopping for refrigerators or other appliances. Or a house. The one I own has increased by 20% or so in value in a short amount of time. So now the % owned by the bank is smaller.

    Putting that aside, how stable do you think the Western economy is today?
     
    I'm not an economist, but so far it looks normal around here.

    Sitting on a mountain of debt, short of real resources, depending on China mfg and Russian energy,
     
    USA still has massive gas and oil reserves. Westerners very stupidly abandoned nuclear but they have woken up to that problem and are ameliorating it.

    with a few “trillioners” owning everything in sight
     
    I don't see anything owned by trillionaires near me.

    censored media, gender and racial circus out of control
     
    Too early to tell if this will be stopped or not. The pushback has only begun, because until very recently the general population hadn't noticed how bad the problem was. We'll see what happens.

    and geriocratic leaders
     
    Biden is hopeless, but Macron and Johnson are not geriatric despite other problems.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow, @A123

    Yes, I’ve also been reading about these shortages, but simply have not noticed anything around here. Stores are full. No difference in prices for stuff I buy regularly

    I have seen occasional grocery shelf gaps, but it is not a problem. However, I shop ‘opportunistically’ and there are definitely fewer sales/discounts. The problem is expected to become worse. (1)

    The lack of spare parts is a bigger concern. If industrial machinery and tractor trailers cannot be repaired, there will be rather ugly consequences to the economy. There are definitely more commercial vehicles queued at service facilities.
    ___

    The solution to the problem is obvious. The U.S. needs to make stuff from U.S. raw materials powered by U.S. energy. This can be done. What has been lacking is, the will to make it happen.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/07/perfect-storm-coming-conagra-announces-food-price-inflation-likely-to-remain-around-11-percent-through-2022/

  813. @Dmitry
    @AP


    characterize the average Irish-American.

     

    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210314183705/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-s-evolving-funding-stream-from-irish-america-1.2125866

    A lot of their social media fans.
    https://www.irishcentral.com/news/tik-tok-teens-glorifying-provisional-ira


    under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed
     
    One of common joke of Polish people, is that "you know you're really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office". And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways. They are a culturally little halfway to Western Europeans.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America
     
    It's a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy. But 20th century America is clearly more successful at this melting pot, where people are encouraged to be proud of their home country.

    You said yourself - the Italian Americans often cannot speak Italian, and yet they are in Columbus Day parades.

    Similarly these more than half of American Jews never even visited Israel, and definitely don't speak Hebrew. More than half of American Jews are married to non-Jewish Americans.

    Some Irish Americans are supporting the Irish Republican Army, with no understanding of the political history in Ireland. And as you said, many of them are nowadays marrying other nationalities.

    So 20th century America encourages them to be fanboys of these countries, and at the same time they assimilated.

    -
    This is the story that is described a lot in the postwar 20th century films and novels - a compromise of each generation between their home country and their new country.

    Scorsese's theme is often relation of the lowest class of Italians, Irish and Jews, in the New York area. In "Goodfellas", there is Irish gangster (Robert Deniro), and main character who had to pretend to be half Jewish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWEfWEdQY0.), when he dates his working class Jewish wife of the future.

    Scorsese's interested in this idea that around the most exclusively Italian club, which only accept pure-blood Italians as "made men" - there is no resisting America's melting-pot.


    idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel
     
    They remind me more of Mitt Romney, who went living in France after university to promote the Mormon religion. It's like "bourgeois American personality disorder".

    They seem often to be idealistic people. They go to Israel for a kind of spiritual meaning or missionary activity (as Mormons after university), as they have lived in comfortable middle class lives in America, with material comfort, and feel they are perhaps needing to add the top parts of the Maslow pyramid.

    A small portion might settle in Israel, but they are clearly idealistic youth.

    They are mostly very different from the early pioneers in Palestine, who indeed often pretty brutal folk, like pioneers which developed Siberia and the Far East. Israeli pioneers were mostly analogous to the Jews who built Birobidzhan - i.e. desperate people from difficult environments, with real persecution.

    Whereas the American youth that go to Israel - a lot of them like to teach for free to Ethiopian Jewish children or Bedouins.

    These white American girl are paying money to do this work to help Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjlpUg9Bzo


    It doesn’t seem to be something specific to America.
     
    A large number of Russian young immigrants in Israel, are going to waste time while avoiding conscription in the Russian army, and trying to get free money from Israel (up to $10,000 of free money as repatriation funds). And one of the bureaucratic obstacles or fears in this community, is how to minimize the conscription to the Israeli army. This is what they even talk openly about on the groups like https://vk.com/loveisrael

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.

    It's not that easy to find young women from Russia, excited about teaching Ethiopian and Bedouin children for free. Whereas some American women are paying money for this.

    From YouTube, many of the kind looking American girls that volunteer in Israel, seem to have a kind "Mormon idealism" brainwashed expression in their eyes (unless I just have a strong imagination)? I'm wondering if Americans can recognize each other from the other side of Middle Eastern streets.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGjdomFYelo


    huge numbers of working dogs in the USA
     
    Perhaps you are right, and I overidealized about the American kindness to dogs. (Although kindness to one animal and not many others still, wouldn't be that impressive morally).

    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I'm not completely believing there is equivalence.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP

    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I’m not completely believing there is equivalence.

    Google image search shows nothing. Are those rope-length circles authentically factual in any locale?

    Lot of these though!

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Discussing with AP about dogs (sometime ago) had just triggered a memory for me.

    I have relatives who are farmers and one of things which I remembered, is that they are connecting dogs with rope to different things that you have to leave around the land, in order to secure these equipment and capital.

    So you know the dog is running around on their rope, because the shit is in a circular shape. They are also shouting when you are near - obviously it's very lonely for dog to be tied with rope all day, and shitting in a circle. They are wasting their day connected with a 2 metre piece of rope to someone's capital, on some empty field.

    AP's views on this forum, I sometimes believe is the most pure representative of the American culture's attitude to certain things, such as dogs. So I was wondering if he would shocked about this story, as it would contravene the kind of treatment of dogs which is portrayed in American media.

    But perhaps they do this in America as well. Perhaps I just received an idealized image of America's dog-human relationship from Hollywood. I never visited American farms. I guess it wouldn't be that surprising that I'm ignorant and that American media has given me a stupid impression of the realities.

  814. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    People have been going on about that Club of Rome report for decades, I'm surprised you've never heard about it. That article by Kingsnorth is just the usual peak oil doomerism, he doesn't make a convincing argument at all that the current supply shortages are due to the cost of resource extraction, it's just an assertion without any real evidence provided, because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).

    Replies: @AaronB, @Yellowface Anon

    That article by Kingsnorth is just the usual peak oil doomerism, he doesn’t make a convincing argument at all that the current supply shortages are due to the cost of resource extraction, it’s just an assertion without any real evidence provided

    Would like to see argument about peak energy not happening and the current hiccups being transitory. But anyway, it’s all about political & probably civilizational will – enough signs are here to suggest civilizational suicide.

    he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end

    I don’t hate modern civilization myself, or else I wouldn’t survive past 3. But I know every civilization has its “end”, and this is the only iron law in this universe.

  815. @AP
    @Beckow


    That’s quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years
     
    It’s been common knowledge on Unz, whose readership is mostly fringe, for a long time. Normal people living their lives haven’t begun to notice until a year or so ago. That’s very recent.

    Performing a “pushback” will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power
     
    It will be clear in the next 3 years.

    In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants
     
    Trump in his 70s rocked the boat hard as evidenced by the massive corporate and social campaign against him. And it was barely successful, and only so due to Covid. And now people are waking up to the scale of the nonsense (polls indicate he would win now).

    As for age of top leaders, it seems universal not just Western. Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71. In Ukraine, Poroshenko is 56 and Zelensky 43. Zelensky’s puppet master Kolomoysky is 58.

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow

    It will be clear in the next 3 years.

    It’s already starting, all the vaccine mandate going Galt stuff. (not cultural, but still)

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).

    He can basically win on an “open everything up” platform.

    (no, it isn’t gerontocratic thinking like Beckow allege since Macron also institutes a vaccine passport system. It’s never about risk avoidance, or else they will consider the risks of COVID overreach on the economy.)

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon



    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).
     
    He can basically win on an “open everything up” platform.
     
    Despite having large numbers of retirees. Florida has low rates without Manda-vaxx overreach (1). DeSantis followed the science. Focusing on the treatment side opens up huge opportunities for success. Such responses are unavailable to extremist "Vaxx or Die" science deniers.

    He also demonstrates Trump like skills, bypassing Fake Media to deliver his messages directly to voters.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/27/florida-celebrates-lowest-covid-rates-in-nation-despite-biden-and-political-healthcare-system-attacks/
  816. @LatW

    most EU leaders look like they are on a field-trip from an old people’s home, so I will stay with my description. In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants. They don’t plan to be around when the sh.t hits the fan.
     
    Agree, but then this begs the question - where is the middle generation? Why haven't they / we appeared on the political scene at the highest levels. Granted, in Northern and Central Europe there are quite a few. In the US, there are a few in the middle political rungs (DeSantis, Masters in AZ), who are hypothetically awaiting their turn. And, while I would agree with you in the sense that gerontocracy is hard to beat and that 30,40 year olds have a lot on their plate besides politics and that private sector pays more, but still it begs the question - why so few? Isn't there a lack of will, a lack of ambition in the middle generation? And, yet, so much is at stake exactly for that generation and their children and soon grandchildren.

    In order for the generational transfer to take place, there needs to be a strong and capable generation of heirs.

    We've talked about this before on this forum. Where are the younger generation of American conservative leaders? And where is the 40-50 year old Putin's heir? Or at least successful heads of political parties who could break into the top tier politics. Besides Navalny & Zelensky.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Dmitry

    There are two sides to gerontocracy and “where is the middle generation” only highlights one. There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power – this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.

    There is also the new biological reality of a large number of elderly in their 80’s and 90’s: they are unproductive but extremely jealously guard their own safety and assets. To some extent that paralyzes a society – and this is gerontocracy in its pure form.

    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!). They are right on culture, borders, families, etc… but it gets devalued by then telling people to “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” and “market will provide”. A number of them have disappeared in the last few years because there are no votes in that. DeSantis may follow the same path…but by then running on “open up the stores” could be enough to win.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Beckow


    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!).
     
    MAGA is definitely not conservative. It is a Populist message that eschews the hopeless naivety of both libertarian and socialist extremes. MAGA is politically strong in times of stress. Reindustrialization is a policy with massive appeal to consumers and workers.

    Local capitalism works pretty well for individual transactions. However, capitalism is a huge liability when it is wielded against U.S. Citizens, by MegaCorporations and foreign owned SOE's. There has to be a level of societal organization above capitalism that can deal with non-economic risks and oligopoly/monopoly/foreign abuses.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @LatW
    @Beckow


    There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power – this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.
     
    It's nothing new. It's just that today they can hold on to the power longer. Confucius said: "A gentleman has three things to guard against. In the days of thy youth, ere thy strength is steady, beware of lust. When manhood is reached, in the fulness of strength, beware of strife. In old age, when thy strength is broken, beware of greed."

    A heterosexual man in his 40-50s is typically the most productive member of society. That one we agree on (although I'd say women contribute, too). Thus, he should have more say over things.

    What I was alluding to is more about why this gerontocracy is not being dismantled. There should be deliberate actions and it should be done firmly, but tactfully (lovingly, in accordance with Biblical principles). Otherwise, given how long the rich & UMC live these days, it can take forever, as you say. By then the ship will have sailed.

    One aspect here is that the Gen X was a relatively smaller generation in size.

    Btw, did you know that a very sizable percentage of grown American males in their prime are not even in the workforce right now?

    Replies: @Beckow

  817. @Yellowface Anon
    @AP


    It will be clear in the next 3 years.
     
    It's already starting, all the vaccine mandate going Galt stuff. (not cultural, but still)

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).
     
    He can basically win on an "open everything up" platform.

    (no, it isn't gerontocratic thinking like Beckow allege since Macron also institutes a vaccine passport system. It's never about risk avoidance, or else they will consider the risks of COVID overreach on the economy.)

    Replies: @A123

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).

    He can basically win on an “open everything up” platform.

    Despite having large numbers of retirees. Florida has low rates without Manda-vaxx overreach (1). DeSantis followed the science. Focusing on the treatment side opens up huge opportunities for success. Such responses are unavailable to extremist “Vaxx or Die” science deniers.

    He also demonstrates Trump like skills, bypassing Fake Media to deliver his messages directly to voters.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________________

    (1) https://theconservativetreehouse.com/blog/2021/10/27/florida-celebrates-lowest-covid-rates-in-nation-despite-biden-and-political-healthcare-system-attacks/

  818. @AP
    @Beckow


    That’s quite a population. I barely pay attention to it and it was hard not to notice in the last 2 years
     
    It’s been common knowledge on Unz, whose readership is mostly fringe, for a long time. Normal people living their lives haven’t begun to notice until a year or so ago. That’s very recent.

    Performing a “pushback” will be tricky, once the weirdos are out in force and have most of the political power
     
    It will be clear in the next 3 years.

    In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants
     
    Trump in his 70s rocked the boat hard as evidenced by the massive corporate and social campaign against him. And it was barely successful, and only so due to Covid. And now people are waking up to the scale of the nonsense (polls indicate he would win now).

    As for age of top leaders, it seems universal not just Western. Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71. In Ukraine, Poroshenko is 56 and Zelensky 43. Zelensky’s puppet master Kolomoysky is 58.

    If Trump doesn’t run, the likely choice is Desantis (age 43).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow

    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71

    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them. Elderly elites prefer light-weight odd-balls as potential competitors, often they pick a woman (pretty girls have always been favored, but these days any woman will do), a minority of some kind, men with “issues”, etc… It is a way to keep the potential succession in check. And there is always nepotism.

    What is lacking is a coherent younger generation representing normal, family, national life. In that way the liberal freaks have succeeded – they have eliminated normal people over the years by control of key institutions. The society will pay a heavy price for it.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71

    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.
     
    Biden will likely be gone in 3 years; either by Harris or some other Democrat (they used him as a placeholder, or Trojan Horse), or by Trump or some other Republican. Pelosi will likely lose power in 2 years. Fauci does not seem elderly and out of touch.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them.
     
    There is something unserious about any Westerner below a certain generation who has not served in the military. A life spent in easy times. Zelensky is of course a comedian, but his puppetmaster Kolomoysky is rather serious. As is their rival Poroshenko, one doesn't survive, thrive and get to the top in the post-Soviet 90s like these guys or the ones in charge in Russia and Belarus did, by being unserious (or decent).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow

  819. @Beckow
    @LatW

    There are two sides to gerontocracy and "where is the middle generation" only highlights one. There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power - this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.

    There is also the new biological reality of a large number of elderly in their 80's and 90's: they are unproductive but extremely jealously guard their own safety and assets. To some extent that paralyzes a society - and this is gerontocracy in its pure form.

    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!). They are right on culture, borders, families, etc... but it gets devalued by then telling people to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "market will provide". A number of them have disappeared in the last few years because there are no votes in that. DeSantis may follow the same path...but by then running on "open up the stores" could be enough to win.

    Replies: @A123, @LatW

    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!).

    MAGA is definitely not conservative. It is a Populist message that eschews the hopeless naivety of both libertarian and socialist extremes. MAGA is politically strong in times of stress. Reindustrialization is a policy with massive appeal to consumers and workers.

    Local capitalism works pretty well for individual transactions. However, capitalism is a huge liability when it is wielded against U.S. Citizens, by MegaCorporations and foreign owned SOE’s. There has to be a level of societal organization above capitalism that can deal with non-economic risks and oligopoly/monopoly/foreign abuses.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @A123

    We are making progress :)....let's call it conservative populism.


    Reindustrialization is a policy with massive appeal to consumers and workers.
     
    Right, but how can it happen if it literally expropriates today's global corporations and makes the oligarchs poorer? That fact is often not considered. I would compare it to the painful and lengthy transition from feudalism with its centralized land ownership (incl. owning the peasants) to post-feudal agriculture. It took about 100 years and was very bloody: the feudals first refused any changes and used force, then they asked for compensation, at the end most large feudal estates were simply expropriated and turned over to the peasants (but not in Britain). How does a state take wealth from a global oligarch who "owns" $100 billion? It is usually bloody, Trump didn't seem to realize that was what he was up against and underestimated the resistance. People like bezos or the walton family don't just roll over, the global corporatism made them very rich, they want to keep it.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  820. @Mr. Hack
    @Svidomyatheart

    Fortunately, most Ukrainian families that are rearing children don't have the time, nor the desire to read what's on the US State Department's website. Do you currently live in Ukraine, what part? Do you think that your pronounced angst towards Russians is characteristic of most Ukrainians in your area? It wasn't always so, and in the not too distant past, most Ukrainians held pretty positive feelings towards their neighbors...

    Replies: @Svidomyatheart, @Svidomyatheart

    Im itching to call you an idiot. You’ve been on the forum for how many years and still dont get it ? No its not on the State Department’s website, but its the work of US State Department because where else from would Negrolatry and gay/tranny worship come from?

    Its a “children’s book” for 3-5 year olds. This is just a text example of how Americans become Bantu loving and gay loving creatures that they are

    btw this is the 2nd image if people are scared to click that link im not sure how it didnt embed.

    View post on imgur.com

    Just like the ones they got in the States’

    View post on imgur.com

    • Agree: sher singh
  821. @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Ok, but things are happening according to the timetable set up by that report.

    It's not like China doomerism, for instance, where the anticipated event never happens when it's supposed to.

    Here, every deadline is met, and then people just dismiss it and wave it aside. If what that report says is true, it's almost guaranteed that our civilization will be in complete denial of it, and act exactly like that.

    Anyways, Kingsnorth doesn't say it's happening for sure - my initial enthusiasm was over the top. Just that events are unfolding uncannily like that report predicted.

    Anyways, time will tell, and we will know soon enough. Something spooky is definitely going on, in my opinion. What, I don't know.


    because he apparently hates modern civilization and consumerism and wants them to end (as do you).
     
    Well, you have a point :)!

    Replies: @songbird

    Tend to think that even if the availability of consumer goods somehow decreases, they will still be able to push those ones and zeros through optic cables or else through the air. There will still be video streaming, even if they have to take the resolution down a notch, and limit it to ARM processors on both ends.

    Hate to say it, but I think materialism doesn’t need cheap plastic, or the cornucopia of supermarkets. All it needs is the internet. Petabytes of porn to simulate romantic relationships. Petabytes of movies and TV shows with ensemble casts to simulate having friends.

    Sometimes, I think it should all be forcefully taken down and replaced with high-resolution images of art by the masters, and archaeological finds. Still images to inspire, where you cannot mesmerize with the motion, only show the pregnant moment.

    • LOL: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    Perceptive - frivolous superficiality is what's being consumed nowadays.

    , @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think materialism has to peak before it can collapse.

    And it hasn't peaked yet.

    But it is threatened, and you know this by the hysteria of materialists when you question materialism.

    But for now, there will be more denial, more insistence that the answer is yet more technology and control, the problem is we are committing "suicide" (see above) and not that there is something inherently wrong with the modern project and we are running up against constraints, etc.

    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes :)

    So ultimately, it's all good.

    Replies: @songbird, @German_reader

  822. @songbird
    @AaronB

    Tend to think that even if the availability of consumer goods somehow decreases, they will still be able to push those ones and zeros through optic cables or else through the air. There will still be video streaming, even if they have to take the resolution down a notch, and limit it to ARM processors on both ends.

    Hate to say it, but I think materialism doesn't need cheap plastic, or the cornucopia of supermarkets. All it needs is the internet. Petabytes of porn to simulate romantic relationships. Petabytes of movies and TV shows with ensemble casts to simulate having friends.

    Sometimes, I think it should all be forcefully taken down and replaced with high-resolution images of art by the masters, and archaeological finds. Still images to inspire, where you cannot mesmerize with the motion, only show the pregnant moment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    Perceptive – frivolous superficiality is what’s being consumed nowadays.

    • Thanks: songbird
  823. @songbird
    @AaronB

    Tend to think that even if the availability of consumer goods somehow decreases, they will still be able to push those ones and zeros through optic cables or else through the air. There will still be video streaming, even if they have to take the resolution down a notch, and limit it to ARM processors on both ends.

    Hate to say it, but I think materialism doesn't need cheap plastic, or the cornucopia of supermarkets. All it needs is the internet. Petabytes of porn to simulate romantic relationships. Petabytes of movies and TV shows with ensemble casts to simulate having friends.

    Sometimes, I think it should all be forcefully taken down and replaced with high-resolution images of art by the masters, and archaeological finds. Still images to inspire, where you cannot mesmerize with the motion, only show the pregnant moment.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    I think materialism has to peak before it can collapse.

    And it hasn’t peaked yet.

    But it is threatened, and you know this by the hysteria of materialists when you question materialism.

    But for now, there will be more denial, more insistence that the answer is yet more technology and control, the problem is we are committing “suicide” (see above) and not that there is something inherently wrong with the modern project and we are running up against constraints, etc.

    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes 🙂

    So ultimately, it’s all good.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AaronB

    Have you ever read Evola? You might like him more than you would first suppose.

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @German_reader
    @AaronB


    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes
     
    I'll probably regret asking, but what kind of society do you envision after the "explosion"?

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

  824. @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think materialism has to peak before it can collapse.

    And it hasn't peaked yet.

    But it is threatened, and you know this by the hysteria of materialists when you question materialism.

    But for now, there will be more denial, more insistence that the answer is yet more technology and control, the problem is we are committing "suicide" (see above) and not that there is something inherently wrong with the modern project and we are running up against constraints, etc.

    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes :)

    So ultimately, it's all good.

    Replies: @songbird, @German_reader

    Have you ever read Evola? You might like him more than you would first suppose.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @songbird

    I've read him a little bit, but overall I did not find him so congenial. Some of his ideas are good, but he does not seem to me to posses the joyful liberation of a truly spiritual person. He is too aggressive, angry, and serious, it seems to me. But it's probably just me. Evola's book on Buddhism tried to make it into an aggressive, hard, and dominating religion, but I think this is a misunderstanding of what spirituality is.

    Another Perennialist who has great ideas is Rene Guenon, I've read several books of his, but again he so conspicuously lacks the atmosphere of joyful liberation and serenity that comes from having "seen through" the world and attained to a spiritual vision, for all his eloquent and intelligent attacks on materialism, which I have learned from.

    Probably my favorite Perennialist is Ananda Coomaraswamy, who's half English and half Ceylonnese. To my mind, he has what is still the best description of the life of a "sage" - " a perpetual uncalculated life in the present". That's brilliant :)

    Old Lao Tzu couldn't have said it better himself..

  825. @Beckow
    @LatW

    There are two sides to gerontocracy and "where is the middle generation" only highlights one. There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power - this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.

    There is also the new biological reality of a large number of elderly in their 80's and 90's: they are unproductive but extremely jealously guard their own safety and assets. To some extent that paralyzes a society - and this is gerontocracy in its pure form.

    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!). They are right on culture, borders, families, etc... but it gets devalued by then telling people to "pull yourself up by your bootstraps" and "market will provide". A number of them have disappeared in the last few years because there are no votes in that. DeSantis may follow the same path...but by then running on "open up the stores" could be enough to win.

    Replies: @A123, @LatW

    There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power – this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.

    It’s nothing new. It’s just that today they can hold on to the power longer. Confucius said: “A gentleman has three things to guard against. In the days of thy youth, ere thy strength is steady, beware of lust. When manhood is reached, in the fulness of strength, beware of strife. In old age, when thy strength is broken, beware of greed.”

    A heterosexual man in his 40-50s is typically the most productive member of society. That one we agree on (although I’d say women contribute, too). Thus, he should have more say over things.

    What I was alluding to is more about why this gerontocracy is not being dismantled. There should be deliberate actions and it should be done firmly, but tactfully (lovingly, in accordance with Biblical principles). Otherwise, given how long the rich & UMC live these days, it can take forever, as you say. By then the ship will have sailed.

    One aspect here is that the Gen X was a relatively smaller generation in size.

    Btw, did you know that a very sizable percentage of grown American males in their prime are not even in the workforce right now?

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LatW

    I like that saying by Confucius...greed has its place, but elderly greed is both pointless and deeply immoral. I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US...that cannot be good for anybody.

    I would say that "heterosexual man in his 40-50s" should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to "traditional" family. Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It's fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don't).

    Replies: @LatW, @Mr. Hack

  826. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?

    https://c8.alamy.com/comp/D3B89M/the-heavyweight-boxer-wladimir-klitschko-in-action-during-the-wbo-D3B89M.jpg
    The heavyweight boxer Wladimir Klitschko in action during the WBO title fight vs. the US boxer Jameel McCline on 8 December 2002 in Las Vegas.

    Replies: @AP, @Emil Nikola Richard, @Mikhail

    Not all that long ago, the Klitshcko brothers ruled the heavyweight class of the boxing world for a solid 10 years. Did you ever get together with any of your Ukrainian friends either at a home or at a sports bar to watch any of their matches on cable TV? Who did you and your friends root for when either of the Klitschko brothers was fighting an American?

    How about this Ukrainian who I’ve been rooting for?

    https://www.dw.com/en/oleksander-usyk-ukraines-controversial-heavyweight-boxing-champion/a-59398411

    The kind of twisted DW slant which is to be expected from that venue.

    Three healthy alternatives:

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/08/10/olympic-afterthoughts/

    https://www.academia.edu/37358188/Michael_Averko_Consistency_and_Reality_Lacking_on_Crimea

    https://www.eurasiareview.com/19072021-getting-putins-intentions-wrong-again-on-russia-ukraine-oped/

  827. @AaronB
    Absolutely seminal article by Paul Kingsnorth.

    The supply chain disruptions we are seeing May not be temporary, but rather the beginning of the end of the growth model of industrial civilization.

    Apparently, someone in the 70s used simple computer modelling to see what when the world would begin running out of resources if the growth model was followed, and the timeline has been followed perfectly.

    There is a good chance, that this may be "it", my friends. And Dmitry, your faith in materialism is about to review a severe shock :)

    I am excited by this!

    https://paulkingsnorth.substack.com/p/intermission-the-machine-stops

    Intermission: The Machine Stops?
    'I have seen the hills of Wessex.'

    Paul Kingsnorth

    “The Machine,” they exclaimed, “feeds us and clothes us and houses us; through it we speak to one another, through it we see one another, in it we have our being. The Machine is the friend of ideas and the enemy of superstition: the Machine is omnipotent, eternal; blessed is the Machine.”

    - E. M. Forster, The Machine Stops, 1909

    Samhain, in old Ireland, was one of two annual festivals (the other was Beltaine, in May) in which the veil between the world of humans and the otherworld of the Aos sí - the ‘fairies’ in modern parlance - was said to be thin. Fires were lit, and the burial mounds were opened to allow the dead to move freely between the worlds. Some of the neolithic tombs here have portals which are aligned with the rising of the sun on the eve of Samhain - the 31st of October.

    Neopagans still take Samhain fairly seriously, but in today’s Ireland the tradition has been almost entirely subsumed by the modern American festival of Halloween. As across much of the Western world, Halloween has moved far from its origins in either Samhain or the Christian festival of All Hallows, and has mutated into a month-long deluge of consumer crap, built around a few Hollywood horror franchises and aimed at getting children to buy as many sweets, pumpkins, plastic witches’ hats, Harry Potter Quidditch broomsticks, inflatable ghost toys and zombie-themed biscuit selections as humanly possible.

    Not this year, though. This year, you couldn’t find a cheap, Chinese-made plastic vampire mask in the shops around here for love or money. You couldn’t find much at all, in fact. Usually whole supermarket aisles are decked out with disposable junk destined for the North Pacific gyre, but this year it was mostly noticeable by its absence. This was both strange and uplifting, as if the old spirits had come back to breathe some sanity into what we have made of ourselves.

    This absence of Halloween tat is only the most visible instance of the sudden collapse in the availability of stuff that is hitting large areas of the world right now. Examples are legion. In Britain recently, petrol shortages led to long queues at garages and violent scuffles at the pumps. Here in Ireland, we are being warned of possible power outages throughout the winter. Supermarket shelves from Spain to Brazil are running short on basics. And workers are suddenly, mysteriously, in short supply worldwide. In a country of nearly 70 million people, the UK government can’t find enough people to drive lorries, despite offering to pay them as much as some doctors. Container ships are queueing up at ports in America because not enough dockers are available to unload them.

    Most intriguingly of all, given the interconnected nature of the technological matrix we live in, there is a global shortage of semiconductors, the silicon chips which power every digital device. Given that a modern car contains between 1500 and 3000 of these - and that with even one of them unavailable, production will be halted or delayed - the disaster for the automobile industry alone is plain to see. It has led already to enforced plant shutdowns, with associated unemployment and government spending, as well as lines of half-built cars so big that they can be seen from space. This chip shortage, which is affecting everything from Internet connectivity to the production of gaming consoles, is projected to last for years.

    What is going on here? The answer depends on who you listen to. The global supply chain crisis is usually attributed to lockdowns and just-in-time delivery systems. The semiconductor shortage is variously blamed on the same lockdowns, an over-concentration of production in a few key regions (Taiwan apparently produces 50% of all the world’s silicon chips), lots of people working from home and ordering new gadgets, and even storms and fires hitting manufacturing plants. The worldwide worker shortage is sometimes blamed on vaccine mandates, though it is also happening in places where mandates are not in use.

    Sometimes the explanations are more localised. The problems with both supply and delivery in Britain are commonly blamed on Brexit, especially by those who always opposed it, but this fails to explain the existence of the same problems in the US or France. Where I live, the Irish government recently told us, with a straight face, that their inability to supply a mere five million people with regular electricity - a problem that might normally be associated with a ‘developing’ country - is due to some power plants being closed for maintenance as winter approaches.

    There might be truth in all of these explanations, but it seems to me that there is something fishy about them too. The overall message is that once these weirdly simultaneous and yet temporary problems are ironed out, everything will get back to ‘normal’ in perhaps a couple of years. Given that this argument is being made by the same people who told us that mass vaccination would put an end to the covid pandemic, it is hard to put a lot of faith in it. The events of the last several years have put a huge hole in public trust in authority on all sides of the fence, and plenty of people have stopped believing the official explanations for anything much. Suspicion, fear and mistrust: this is the grim zeitgeist of the 2020s.

    But if there is something else going on, what could it be? Well, one possibility is that something which has been long-predicted is beginning to make itself known. It is that what we are seeing is not a temporary glitch, but the beginning of the end of the ‘global economy’, which will see it shrink and begin to fall in the years and decades to come.

    There is nothing new about this idea. In fact, not only has it been long predicted, but it has shown up pretty much on schedule. Take a look at this simple little graph:


    This projection is half a century old: it’s from the Limits To Growth report, published in 1972, which used early computer modelling to lay out three possible scenarios for the future of

     

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Mikel

    Thanks for your offer to help with the Shira Choir!

    Now, as for that article you found so exciting, the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since. I’ve had online debates with a doctor in physics and mathematics who adheres to the equally alarmist “peak-everything” thesis but he acknowledged that those predictions were quite laughable.

    But most of all I don’t understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don’t share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?

    To be perfectly honest, I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable. I actually need the majority of people to do exactly that so that I can travel around in my SUV, stay in hotels, buy mountain gear and implements for my hobby farm, visit my family in Europe regularly,… And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?

    With all this said, there’s definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand. I haven’t been able to hire anybody for my small building project since last May. Everybody’s desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I’ve read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US. What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet? Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since.
     
    It isn't a prediction, it might be a roadplan. It isn't saying "we have limited resources for ever & keeping on growing will doom us" (there are indeed non-renewable resources but we can always figure out new ways to utilize or reclaim anything), but "let's give up exploring and let the carrying capacity close in". It's them quitting infinite growth (like, space colonies) to appropriate all the gains we have in the 19th & 20th centuries. They learnt what AaronB learnt 50 years ago and didn't go Taoist, but full Legalist.

    But the problem is, once we have capitalism, we have to go on accumulating as far as we can, or reach a steady-state at a sufficiently high level of development. But cliodynamics says otherwise, the historical pattern of societal emergence & decline says otherwise. We have to grapple with this sooner or later, and they chose the moment when we were 80% to a good take-off. And even if we had won, the outcomes might not have been pretty.

    And yeah, you might not be starving now, but ask the average Ukrainian Kulak in '30, or the queue outside Soviet stores in '89. It only takes ever worse supply chain breakdowns and enough farm/transport workers going Galt over the COVID vaccine mandates, and they are very willing to take the Biden/Johnson/Macron/Draghi/Merkel administrations down by grabbing strategic chokepoints. Which means possible famines next year or after that.


    I don’t understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.
     
    No one does, but it's coming. It's cope, it's hopium. Jews lived thru concentration camps, everyone on Earth got by during the Great Depression, late Medievals survived the Black Plague. No one ever wanted anything to do with all those. And if we came out of the other side of this crisis, that would be the best thing we'll experience in our life.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don’t share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?
     
    It's sad to say this to those finding comfort in modern lifestyles, but they will see times that are less comfortable.

    I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable.
     
    Well.

    And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?
     
    They aren't escaping to nature. They'll probably find a plot of land to farm or the rural areas to set up cottage industries, now that there won't be jobs in the urban area, tech levels have taken a dent, and law & order are discredited. In other words, Roman Europe in the 4-5th century. I really hope this scenario won't happen but it can't be dismissed out of hand especially at the current level of fragile complexity.

    Turns out going Galt means going Galt for this generation and a few more. Look at where Soviet professionals ended up - drained out of CIS labor markets and never coming back. There won't be loads of hermit geniuses waiting for liberation, coming out from the Gulch and making thing whole.


    there’s definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand.
     
    It's the New Normal, how is it difficult to understand?

    Everybody’s desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I’ve read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US.
     
    Because there are mismatch problems mainly caused by structural changes (think what's in demand, what's no longer in demand, COVID vaccines and the like). I think it will go up to tens of millions (like what happened in Italy) by October, or those will be written off as "quitting" the labor force (they won't be paid unemployment benefits), to keep the unemployment rate tidy. Again, going Galt over COVID vaccine mandates. This isn't solvable except asking DeSantis what he's been doing in FL.

    What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet?
     
    Starting antivaxx businesses, getting a trade account, going informal, drawing down savings, self-sufficiency in a homestead or living among like-minded. I dunno. But they are probably doing fine for now, as good as they want to be.

    Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?
     
    Both. Tell them those vaccine mandates, restrictions, etc. will be lifted when Trump's back (he started Operation Warpspeed), and failing that, tell them to hold out a little longer, and finally tell them they're the vanguard of a new LIBERTARIAN/OBJECTIVIST economy and stick to whatever they are doing/working on now. And Globalists like this because they are now out of sight.

    I sound a lot like A123 now but I'm speaking from what I'm read. I know COVID isn't the cold or the flu but it has a IFR of 0.5%. The current crop of COVID vaccines are probably not as effective as anticipated and expected for a black-or-white vaccine passport system, and there could be some bugs (mRNA yay), but those aren't significant on the wider scale. 1% boomers culled, another 0.5% or 1% of the young maimed, even 10% or 20%'s fertility being lowered for a while. Countries have gone thru worse depopulation during wars, and Puerto Rico had 35% of their women sterilized for decades, but the place is still standing with NINE MILLION Puerto Rican on the Island or outside (2 million in 1940 & 4.1 million in 1970, roughly when compulsory sterilization took place). But you know what, the vaccine passport system blows and this is why people are going Galt. I'm sick of this provaxx vs antivaxx, Davos vs mainstreamed libertarians/objectivists thing, but we're stuck with them. Turns out we aren't living in John's Apocalypse, but the building of the Babel Tower & the scattering of peoples.

    Thanks for listening to my rant, having people listening to be relieves my frustration for a while.

    Replies: @Mikel

    , @AaronB
    @Mikel

    You make excellent points as usual Mikel.

    I have often thought exactly as you outlined here, and indeed my own lifestyle depends on there being dull and boring "bourgeois" people out there :) Historically, the monk, the hermit, and the man of the mountains exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship to mainstream society.

    And of course I do not look forward to suffering and death of millions that might accompany any serious dislocation.

    However, there are a couple of issues.

    One, I would really like to live in a "re-enchanted" world, as I mentioned to German Reader, and one that is much more connected to Nature.

    Instead of driving through alienating and soulless urban landscapes, and eating processed food, I'd rather visit charming, beautiful, and more natural cities, with cool atmospheres, and have craft foods available everywhere.

    I'd rather see people dressed not in the drab modern costume, but in a more cool and interesting way as is done in many traditional cultures that don't focus exclusively on functionality etc. I can't - yet - unfortunately spend all my time in nature, and I dislike the "atmosphere" of modern cities, with people bent on dull work and not living on an aesthetic or spiritual plane.

    And so on and so forth in this vein.

    Next, there is the sad fact that I think the majority of humanity is unhappy today because of alienation from Nature forced on them by the fanatical few - the techno-utopians who have dominated the culture for several hundred years. They deserve to be "liberated" from the oppression of the techno-utopians :)

    Finally, my own love of nature is threatened by a culture that pollutes and destroys it in the name of "progress".

    But ultimately, perhaps I am just frustrated at being back in the city, so I imagine the destruction of the kind of civilization that is responsible for my frustration and unhappiness, and that I am trapped in currently ;)

    (And BTW, I am leaving again in less than two months, for a two month trip - I am looking forward).

    But you do make good points in the end.

    And yes, I agree the mysterious unavailability of workers is deeply weird and none of the usual explanations like the stimulus checks really explain it.

    I have also noticed that the power relationship between bosses and workers has significantly shifted, with workers being much more emboldened, and bosses having to polite implore - even plead - with workers to come in on off days or weekends, when before they would brusquely order it, and pay more for it.

    And of course, wages have risen dramatically.

    Is this a cultural shift?

    My sense is yes, and it's something big and important. But we shall see.

  828. @LatW
    @Beckow


    There is also the stubborn elderly people desire to hold on to power – this is relatively new, other then the royals and the latter-day commies elites used to leave in the past when they got too old.
     
    It's nothing new. It's just that today they can hold on to the power longer. Confucius said: "A gentleman has three things to guard against. In the days of thy youth, ere thy strength is steady, beware of lust. When manhood is reached, in the fulness of strength, beware of strife. In old age, when thy strength is broken, beware of greed."

    A heterosexual man in his 40-50s is typically the most productive member of society. That one we agree on (although I'd say women contribute, too). Thus, he should have more say over things.

    What I was alluding to is more about why this gerontocracy is not being dismantled. There should be deliberate actions and it should be done firmly, but tactfully (lovingly, in accordance with Biblical principles). Otherwise, given how long the rich & UMC live these days, it can take forever, as you say. By then the ship will have sailed.

    One aspect here is that the Gen X was a relatively smaller generation in size.

    Btw, did you know that a very sizable percentage of grown American males in their prime are not even in the workforce right now?

    Replies: @Beckow

    I like that saying by Confucius…greed has its place, but elderly greed is both pointless and deeply immoral. I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US…that cannot be good for anybody.

    I would say that “heterosexual man in his 40-50s” should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to “traditional” family. Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It’s fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don’t).

    • Agree: AP
    • Replies: @LatW
    @Beckow


    I like that saying by Confucius
     
    It's a great saying, you can see that he's warning against things that one could be prone to at a given stage in one's life. Namely, the risk of being lustful, bad tempered or greedy is different at each stage. These things change as one goes through one's life.

    I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US
     
    Not sure it's that high, I only meant working age. But there's this:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html

    If this is true, then this is quite new for the US. Along with other things that are new now, such as lower fertility, higher number of single households, it's like Europe.

    So if the labor participation of working age American men is 67%, then it's not much higher than that of Swedish women. Except Swedish women also have 1.7 children and American men don't. It's interesting because the stereotypical view of American men is that they're very hard working. Of course, I don't want to oppress anybody and tell them how they should live or that they cannot be free. It's just what are the repercussions for the society... who knows, maybe there are some positives, too. But women need to really be aware of this when they make choices in life.

    I would say that “heterosexual man in his 40-50s” should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to “traditional” family.
     
    Yes, 35-55. Btw, back in the day in the US, only married men could be promoted to certain positions.
    These views might be archaic, but they brought some stability. Society is very different now and it's interesting to see what survival strategies will be adopted. This gender fluidity thing might be some sort of a survival strategy, too.

    Replies: @Beckow

    , @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It’s fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don’t).

    • Agree: AP
     

    How in the world would you try and implement your "perfect recipe for a successful politician" in the world today? A simple litmus test? Besides, the whole concept is skewed way off. What makes you think that a married politician who has a family with children would make better political decisions than one without? Here in the US the percentage of dysfunctional families is immense. Not so in Slovakia? Yours is a naïve pie in the sky concept with no actual facts to sustain it. Relax, not all singles are overweight hedonists!

    https://youtu.be/kHG2FI2iI1M
    Perhaps Mr. Bundy is the perfect married specimen that you have in mind? After all he's "married with children". :-)

    Replies: @Beckow

  829. @A123
    @Beckow


    My view of the american younger conservatives is that they unfortunately bought into the libertarian market ideology and thus are not politically viable during the times of an economic stress (these are times of an economic stress!).
     
    MAGA is definitely not conservative. It is a Populist message that eschews the hopeless naivety of both libertarian and socialist extremes. MAGA is politically strong in times of stress. Reindustrialization is a policy with massive appeal to consumers and workers.

    Local capitalism works pretty well for individual transactions. However, capitalism is a huge liability when it is wielded against U.S. Citizens, by MegaCorporations and foreign owned SOE's. There has to be a level of societal organization above capitalism that can deal with non-economic risks and oligopoly/monopoly/foreign abuses.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @Beckow

    We are making progress :)….let’s call it conservative populism.

    Reindustrialization is a policy with massive appeal to consumers and workers.

    Right, but how can it happen if it literally expropriates today’s global corporations and makes the oligarchs poorer? That fact is often not considered. I would compare it to the painful and lengthy transition from feudalism with its centralized land ownership (incl. owning the peasants) to post-feudal agriculture. It took about 100 years and was very bloody: the feudals first refused any changes and used force, then they asked for compensation, at the end most large feudal estates were simply expropriated and turned over to the peasants (but not in Britain). How does a state take wealth from a global oligarch who “owns” \$100 billion? It is usually bloody, Trump didn’t seem to realize that was what he was up against and underestimated the resistance. People like bezos or the walton family don’t just roll over, the global corporatism made them very rich, they want to keep it.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Beckow


    How does a state take wealth from a global oligarch who “owns” $100 billion?
     
    A123 explained to me how a new Trumpist administration can screw over social media companies unscrupulously.

    Everything else can usually be nationalized (expropriated if you don't want to pay the oligarchs or are throwing them into jail), something left-wing governments often did.

    Replies: @Beckow

  830. Rutgers professor Brittney Cooper has provided me with some cool quotes for my proposed time-traveling game about Detroit:

    [MORE]
    “if time had a race, it would be white” and “white people own time”.

    The default character to start off would would be a Euro kid stuck in the public schools of Detroit being chased by about twenty black students with switchblades. He rounds the corner, just as some of the knives collide with the wall, and stumbles into a time traveler, who, in order to save him, takes him for a wild ride into both the past and the future.

    But since I want to reach the biggest possible audience with a message about the threats posed by relentless economic migration, it would be possible to choose a starting character of a different race, leading to a slightly different storyline. In such a case, I would modify Cooper’s phrase appropriately, in order to encourage future thinking and optimism.

    There would be some false starts in trying to change things, where, for example, the Chinese kid would travel to a future China, where Tienanmen Square is filled with Africans. Or the Mexican would travel to Zócalo and ditto. A lot of dialogue would be text, so it could be easily translated. (And it would be explained that the kid was in Detroit because his parents were fooled by its past glories and by Hollywood propaganda about blacks.)

  831. @Beckow
    @AP


    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71
     
    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them. Elderly elites prefer light-weight odd-balls as potential competitors, often they pick a woman (pretty girls have always been favored, but these days any woman will do), a minority of some kind, men with "issues", etc... It is a way to keep the potential succession in check. And there is always nepotism.

    What is lacking is a coherent younger generation representing normal, family, national life. In that way the liberal freaks have succeeded - they have eliminated normal people over the years by control of key institutions. The society will pay a heavy price for it.

    Replies: @AP

    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71

    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.

    Biden will likely be gone in 3 years; either by Harris or some other Democrat (they used him as a placeholder, or Trojan Horse), or by Trump or some other Republican. Pelosi will likely lose power in 2 years. Fauci does not seem elderly and out of touch.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them.

    There is something unserious about any Westerner below a certain generation who has not served in the military. A life spent in easy times. Zelensky is of course a comedian, but his puppetmaster Kolomoysky is rather serious. As is their rival Poroshenko, one doesn’t survive, thrive and get to the top in the post-Soviet 90s like these guys or the ones in charge in Russia and Belarus did, by being unserious (or decent).

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AP

    Look at Macron (43).

    It isn't generational conflict, it is one kind of those identity politics where mainly systemically economic ills are shifted on.

    , @Beckow
    @AP

    I am describing it as it is today, "likely" future events don't matter much. As of now it is a gerontocracy. (It's also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy...)

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don't change things. They make already bad problems worse. Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats - never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite....you know the "belly-over-the-belt" phase of life...

    Replies: @AP

  832. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Dmitry


    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I’m not completely believing there is equivalence.

     

    Google image search shows nothing. Are those rope-length circles authentically factual in any locale?

    Lot of these though!

    https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/81O33hBLEVL._AC_SX679_.jpg

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Discussing with AP about dogs (sometime ago) had just triggered a memory for me.

    I have relatives who are farmers and one of things which I remembered, is that they are connecting dogs with rope to different things that you have to leave around the land, in order to secure these equipment and capital.

    So you know the dog is running around on their rope, because the shit is in a circular shape. They are also shouting when you are near – obviously it’s very lonely for dog to be tied with rope all day, and shitting in a circle. They are wasting their day connected with a 2 metre piece of rope to someone’s capital, on some empty field.

    AP’s views on this forum, I sometimes believe is the most pure representative of the American culture’s attitude to certain things, such as dogs. So I was wondering if he would shocked about this story, as it would contravene the kind of treatment of dogs which is portrayed in American media.

    But perhaps they do this in America as well. Perhaps I just received an idealized image of America’s dog-human relationship from Hollywood. I never visited American farms. I guess it wouldn’t be that surprising that I’m ignorant and that American media has given me a stupid impression of the realities.

  833. @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Thanks for your offer to help with the Shira Choir!

    Now, as for that article you found so exciting, the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since. I've had online debates with a doctor in physics and mathematics who adheres to the equally alarmist "peak-everything" thesis but he acknowledged that those predictions were quite laughable.

    But most of all I don't understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don't share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?

    To be perfectly honest, I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable. I actually need the majority of people to do exactly that so that I can travel around in my SUV, stay in hotels, buy mountain gear and implements for my hobby farm, visit my family in Europe regularly,... And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?

    With all this said, there's definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand. I haven't been able to hire anybody for my small building project since last May. Everybody's desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I've read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US. What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet? Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since.

    It isn’t a prediction, it might be a roadplan. It isn’t saying “we have limited resources for ever & keeping on growing will doom us” (there are indeed non-renewable resources but we can always figure out new ways to utilize or reclaim anything), but “let’s give up exploring and let the carrying capacity close in”. It’s them quitting infinite growth (like, space colonies) to appropriate all the gains we have in the 19th & 20th centuries. They learnt what AaronB learnt 50 years ago and didn’t go Taoist, but full Legalist.

    But the problem is, once we have capitalism, we have to go on accumulating as far as we can, or reach a steady-state at a sufficiently high level of development. But cliodynamics says otherwise, the historical pattern of societal emergence & decline says otherwise. We have to grapple with this sooner or later, and they chose the moment when we were 80% to a good take-off. And even if we had won, the outcomes might not have been pretty.

    And yeah, you might not be starving now, but ask the average Ukrainian Kulak in ’30, or the queue outside Soviet stores in ’89. It only takes ever worse supply chain breakdowns and enough farm/transport workers going Galt over the COVID vaccine mandates, and they are very willing to take the Biden/Johnson/Macron/Draghi/Merkel administrations down by grabbing strategic chokepoints. Which means possible famines next year or after that.

    I don’t understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.

    No one does, but it’s coming. It’s cope, it’s hopium. Jews lived thru concentration camps, everyone on Earth got by during the Great Depression, late Medievals survived the Black Plague. No one ever wanted anything to do with all those. And if we came out of the other side of this crisis, that would be the best thing we’ll experience in our life.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don’t share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?

    It’s sad to say this to those finding comfort in modern lifestyles, but they will see times that are less comfortable.

    I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable.

    Well.

    And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?

    They aren’t escaping to nature. They’ll probably find a plot of land to farm or the rural areas to set up cottage industries, now that there won’t be jobs in the urban area, tech levels have taken a dent, and law & order are discredited. In other words, Roman Europe in the 4-5th century. I really hope this scenario won’t happen but it can’t be dismissed out of hand especially at the current level of fragile complexity.

    Turns out going Galt means going Galt for this generation and a few more. Look at where Soviet professionals ended up – drained out of CIS labor markets and never coming back. There won’t be loads of hermit geniuses waiting for liberation, coming out from the Gulch and making thing whole.

    there’s definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand.

    It’s the New Normal, how is it difficult to understand?

    Everybody’s desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I’ve read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US.

    Because there are mismatch problems mainly caused by structural changes (think what’s in demand, what’s no longer in demand, COVID vaccines and the like). I think it will go up to tens of millions (like what happened in Italy) by October, or those will be written off as “quitting” the labor force (they won’t be paid unemployment benefits), to keep the unemployment rate tidy. Again, going Galt over COVID vaccine mandates. This isn’t solvable except asking DeSantis what he’s been doing in FL.

    What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet?

    Starting antivaxx businesses, getting a trade account, going informal, drawing down savings, self-sufficiency in a homestead or living among like-minded. I dunno. But they are probably doing fine for now, as good as they want to be.

    Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?

    Both. Tell them those vaccine mandates, restrictions, etc. will be lifted when Trump’s back (he started Operation Warpspeed), and failing that, tell them to hold out a little longer, and finally tell them they’re the vanguard of a new LIBERTARIAN/OBJECTIVIST economy and stick to whatever they are doing/working on now. And Globalists like this because they are now out of sight.

    [MORE]

    I sound a lot like A123 now but I’m speaking from what I’m read. I know COVID isn’t the cold or the flu but it has a IFR of 0.5%. The current crop of COVID vaccines are probably not as effective as anticipated and expected for a black-or-white vaccine passport system, and there could be some bugs (mRNA yay), but those aren’t significant on the wider scale. 1% boomers culled, another 0.5% or 1% of the young maimed, even 10% or 20%’s fertility being lowered for a while. Countries have gone thru worse depopulation during wars, and Puerto Rico had 35% of their women sterilized for decades, but the place is still standing with NINE MILLION Puerto Rican on the Island or outside (2 million in 1940 & 4.1 million in 1970, roughly when compulsory sterilization took place). But you know what, the vaccine passport system blows and this is why people are going Galt. I’m sick of this provaxx vs antivaxx, Davos vs mainstreamed libertarians/objectivists thing, but we’re stuck with them. Turns out we aren’t living in John’s Apocalypse, but the building of the Babel Tower & the scattering of peoples.

    Thanks for listening to my rant, having people listening to be relieves my frustration for a while.

    • Replies: @Mikel
    @Yellowface Anon


    It isn’t a prediction, it might be a roadplan.
     
    They did make some specific projections under various scenarios and they all turned out to be dead wrong. Suffice to say that under their most optimistic scenario, we would have run out of oil next year and, under the most pessimistic one, by the year 2003.

    The Skeptical Environmentalist by Lomborg has a good rundown of all these gloomy predictions that we have been hearing over the years. I used to be a radical environmentalist in the 80s, by the way, and in a certain sense I still am, but I've seen enough failed predictions to take certain things seriously anymore.

    As for the rest, I'm not really seeing any big return to homesteading or anything of the like in the US. Certainly nothing like the back-to-the-land movement of the 70s-80s that did draw many people to hippie communes and other alternative lifestyles. But even that did not produce the widespread labor shortage that we're seeing now. Instead, the 70s and 80s were times of high unemployment in the West.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  834. @AP
    @Beckow


    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71

    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.
     
    Biden will likely be gone in 3 years; either by Harris or some other Democrat (they used him as a placeholder, or Trojan Horse), or by Trump or some other Republican. Pelosi will likely lose power in 2 years. Fauci does not seem elderly and out of touch.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them.
     
    There is something unserious about any Westerner below a certain generation who has not served in the military. A life spent in easy times. Zelensky is of course a comedian, but his puppetmaster Kolomoysky is rather serious. As is their rival Poroshenko, one doesn't survive, thrive and get to the top in the post-Soviet 90s like these guys or the ones in charge in Russia and Belarus did, by being unserious (or decent).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow

    Look at Macron (43).

    It isn’t generational conflict, it is one kind of those identity politics where mainly systemically economic ills are shifted on.

  835. @Beckow
    @A123

    We are making progress :)....let's call it conservative populism.


    Reindustrialization is a policy with massive appeal to consumers and workers.
     
    Right, but how can it happen if it literally expropriates today's global corporations and makes the oligarchs poorer? That fact is often not considered. I would compare it to the painful and lengthy transition from feudalism with its centralized land ownership (incl. owning the peasants) to post-feudal agriculture. It took about 100 years and was very bloody: the feudals first refused any changes and used force, then they asked for compensation, at the end most large feudal estates were simply expropriated and turned over to the peasants (but not in Britain). How does a state take wealth from a global oligarch who "owns" $100 billion? It is usually bloody, Trump didn't seem to realize that was what he was up against and underestimated the resistance. People like bezos or the walton family don't just roll over, the global corporatism made them very rich, they want to keep it.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    How does a state take wealth from a global oligarch who “owns” \$100 billion?

    A123 explained to me how a new Trumpist administration can screw over social media companies unscrupulously.

    Everything else can usually be nationalized (expropriated if you don’t want to pay the oligarchs or are throwing them into jail), something left-wing governments often did.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Yellowface Anon

    What "can" be done, often isn't done. Trump - or most anti-globalist populists - don't seem to realize the stakes they are playing for. This is not going to change with a few tax adjustments or better border paperwork, this is for all marbles.

    The globalist oligarchs made billions displacing workers in their home countries, shifting everything they could to China (and other places) and importing cheap labor. It has been a goldmine. When Trump and similar challenges appeared they panicked and closed ranks - they want to keep it as it is. If it means large population shifts and displacement, or "elections" become a virtual make-believe show, opinions are censored, whatever it takes...their control of institutions and plenty of money makes this into an uneven fight. Not understanding the stakes and holding back, and not be willing to "buy" peoples' support via social policies is a crippling error.

    Replies: @A123

  836. @LatW

    most EU leaders look like they are on a field-trip from an old people’s home, so I will stay with my description. In US it seems the average age among the top leaders is late 70’s. They are not going to rock the boat, they are going to mollify screamers from race hustlers to Third World migrants. They don’t plan to be around when the sh.t hits the fan.
     
    Agree, but then this begs the question - where is the middle generation? Why haven't they / we appeared on the political scene at the highest levels. Granted, in Northern and Central Europe there are quite a few. In the US, there are a few in the middle political rungs (DeSantis, Masters in AZ), who are hypothetically awaiting their turn. And, while I would agree with you in the sense that gerontocracy is hard to beat and that 30,40 year olds have a lot on their plate besides politics and that private sector pays more, but still it begs the question - why so few? Isn't there a lack of will, a lack of ambition in the middle generation? And, yet, so much is at stake exactly for that generation and their children and soon grandchildren.

    In order for the generational transfer to take place, there needs to be a strong and capable generation of heirs.

    We've talked about this before on this forum. Where are the younger generation of American conservative leaders? And where is the 40-50 year old Putin's heir? Or at least successful heads of political parties who could break into the top tier politics. Besides Navalny & Zelensky.

    Replies: @Beckow, @Dmitry

    I was more concerned by the fashion for very young leaders like Sebastian Kurz – who was Foreign Minister of Austria at age 27, with no profession, and has never had a real job.

    Or Jacinda Ardern who was Prime Minister of New Zealand, at age 37, and has never had any profession or job before.

    Although surprisingly in both cases, they have actually been relatively competent leaders. Jacinda Ardern was one of the world’s best leaders in the coronavirus pandemic.

    Between young or old leaders, obviously old leaders, should be preferable, due to their experience.

    People criticizing politicians for being too old, seems strange. They are not professional athletes. They don’t even have to produce much real work. They are simply the person who makes the final decision. Experience and judgement should be the most important criteria for them.

    Historically, old leaders or figureheads are even a little archetypical. How old was Queen Victoria when she retired (died)?

    US, there are a few

    In the US Republicans there are a lot of medium age politicians like Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio.

    While in the Democrats there is a prominence of some very young politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, where it is difficult to see if they ever had a job or profession.

    With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only impressive thing in her Wikipedia article is written: ” took a job as a bartender and waitress” .

    So she has some experience of the real world, which is promising. But then the rest of her life is like “Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute. During the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign”. I.e. it’s nothing like real work, connected to real life.

    She has attained experience of life as a bartender for a short time, which will be useful for her to understand the situation of normal people. But all her life after is not connected to the real world and just useless things (i.e. working for political campaign).

    • Agree: AP
    • Replies: @LatW
    @Dmitry


    I was more concerned by the fashion for very young leaders like Sebastian Kurz... Jacinda Ardern... Ocazio-Cortez...
     
    See that's another extreme. Although I don't dislike Kurz. Both 27-35 and 70+ are somewhat extreme. What about a straight while male in his late 40s or mid 50s?
  837. @Dmitry
    @AP


    characterize the average Irish-American.

     

    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.
    https://web.archive.org/web/20210314183705/https://www.irishtimes.com/news/politics/sinn-f%C3%A9in-s-evolving-funding-stream-from-irish-america-1.2125866

    A lot of their social media fans.
    https://www.irishcentral.com/news/tik-tok-teens-glorifying-provisional-ira


    under Soviets) things such as not knowing how to bribe people in daily life, being ashamed
     
    One of common joke of Polish people, is that "you know you're really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office". And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways. They are a culturally little halfway to Western Europeans.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America
     
    It's a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy. But 20th century America is clearly more successful at this melting pot, where people are encouraged to be proud of their home country.

    You said yourself - the Italian Americans often cannot speak Italian, and yet they are in Columbus Day parades.

    Similarly these more than half of American Jews never even visited Israel, and definitely don't speak Hebrew. More than half of American Jews are married to non-Jewish Americans.

    Some Irish Americans are supporting the Irish Republican Army, with no understanding of the political history in Ireland. And as you said, many of them are nowadays marrying other nationalities.

    So 20th century America encourages them to be fanboys of these countries, and at the same time they assimilated.

    -
    This is the story that is described a lot in the postwar 20th century films and novels - a compromise of each generation between their home country and their new country.

    Scorsese's theme is often relation of the lowest class of Italians, Irish and Jews, in the New York area. In "Goodfellas", there is Irish gangster (Robert Deniro), and main character who had to pretend to be half Jewish (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NWEfWEdQY0.), when he dates his working class Jewish wife of the future.

    Scorsese's interested in this idea that around the most exclusively Italian club, which only accept pure-blood Italians as "made men" - there is no resisting America's melting-pot.


    idealism and patriotism, are they very different from Canadian Jews, or from European Zionists who came to Israel
     
    They remind me more of Mitt Romney, who went living in France after university to promote the Mormon religion. It's like "bourgeois American personality disorder".

    They seem often to be idealistic people. They go to Israel for a kind of spiritual meaning or missionary activity (as Mormons after university), as they have lived in comfortable middle class lives in America, with material comfort, and feel they are perhaps needing to add the top parts of the Maslow pyramid.

    A small portion might settle in Israel, but they are clearly idealistic youth.

    They are mostly very different from the early pioneers in Palestine, who indeed often pretty brutal folk, like pioneers which developed Siberia and the Far East. Israeli pioneers were mostly analogous to the Jews who built Birobidzhan - i.e. desperate people from difficult environments, with real persecution.

    Whereas the American youth that go to Israel - a lot of them like to teach for free to Ethiopian Jewish children or Bedouins.

    These white American girl are paying money to do this work to help Ethiopian Jewish immigrants.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HcjlpUg9Bzo


    It doesn’t seem to be something specific to America.
     
    A large number of Russian young immigrants in Israel, are going to waste time while avoiding conscription in the Russian army, and trying to get free money from Israel (up to $10,000 of free money as repatriation funds). And one of the bureaucratic obstacles or fears in this community, is how to minimize the conscription to the Israeli army. This is what they even talk openly about on the groups like https://vk.com/loveisrael

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.

    It's not that easy to find young women from Russia, excited about teaching Ethiopian and Bedouin children for free. Whereas some American women are paying money for this.

    From YouTube, many of the kind looking American girls that volunteer in Israel, seem to have a kind "Mormon idealism" brainwashed expression in their eyes (unless I just have a strong imagination)? I'm wondering if Americans can recognize each other from the other side of Middle Eastern streets.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGjdomFYelo


    huge numbers of working dogs in the USA
     
    Perhaps you are right, and I overidealized about the American kindness to dogs. (Although kindness to one animal and not many others still, wouldn't be that impressive morally).

    However, until I see circles of shit that match the length of the rope of the exploited American dog proletariat, then I'm not completely believing there is equivalence.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @AP

    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.

    There are millions and millions of Irish in the USA and among those are actual, less assimilated “diaspora” Irish comparable to Jews , or Ukrainians. America is rich and they have money to send to the IRA. But the majority are like 1/4 or less Irish who just have a flag and drink green beer on St. Patrick’s Day.

    One of common joke of Polish people, is that “you know you’re really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office”. And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways.

    Soviet system only ruined them for 1-2 generations, much less than in Russia. Similarly, Galician from Ukraine are more civilized from this perspective than are people from the rest of Ukraine – but are still not quite as civilized as ones from the diaspora who never experienced Soviet demoralization.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America

    It’s a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy.

    I don’t know if it is a policy but rather a state of being a settler-country. In such countries new waves of settlers come and they can choose to minimize assimilation, if it is their will. Germans tend to conform an assimilate, but ones inspired by nationalism such as Ukrainians or Zionist Jews, or religion such as Hasids or the Amish, have not assimilated.

    These settler countries lack the weight of history to prevent certain peoples from melting away.

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.

    The Jewish Americans are actual Jews, many of the Russians just came in because they have a Jewish grandparent are are simply Russian foreigners.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    Soviet system only ruined
     
    It's because of the difference of income across countries, rather than "spiritual ruin". Badly designed communist policies has of course contributed to these relatively poor countries.

    Still I could imagine that David Chappelle, if he will read this forum, would steal the joke "You know you are black when you take.." Because African Americans have lower incomes.

    For example, if your salary is $60,000 per year (school teacher in the United States), you will have a different perspective about toilet paper, than people who have a salary of $6000 per year (average school teacher in Russia).

    If your salary is $6000 per year working 40 hours per week for 10 months, then a box of toilet paper might be equivalent of an hour of work (i.e. time of a school lesson), while for the teacher in America 6 minutes (i.e. time of counting the students' attendance at the beginning of the lesson) .

    I wouldn't even want to know the kinds of things people take from the office in Africa or India.


    nationalism such as Ukrainians or Zionist Jews, or religion
     
    Most Jews in America marry non-Jews, so they assimilate, and probably it doesn't match to Zionism (as the the non-Zionist Haredim in America will be the people who are endogamous, while the secular Jews can be Zionist).

    Jewish Americans are actual Jews, many of the Russians just came in because they have a Jewish grandparent

     

    It's the difference between American Jews selected for idealized filter who speak like Mormon missionaries, and normal young people doing economic immigration.

    Jews in the USSR have intermarriage rates with non-Jews like 80% by the 1980ies (https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/c__c/Tolts_EPC%20Milan,%2019951.pdf), while American Jews only went to high intermarriage a couple generations later (although today a majority).

    But I wouldn't be surprised if "pure Jews" from the post Soviet countries, try to scam Israel for free-money, even more than the non-pure people. The jokes about "Yiddishe kop" cannot be from nowhere.


    simply Russian foreigners
     
    You can't scam money from Israel, if you don't qualify in the Law of Return. You can work there (and it is enjoyable place to be an illegal immigrant), but you can't scam the $10,000.

    There are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, that live and work in Israel. But these people are working honestly for their money, rather than scamming (as the repatriants can). Often illegal immigrants, can be the most honest and hardworking people in the society.

    The Russians and Ukrainians who work illegally in Israel, are often more honest, hardworking, than the ones who come on "Law of Return".

    This is why it's an interesting example, because the idealistic American youth and the Russians/Ukrainians olim, are within the same bureaucracy and legal framework.

    But the Americans that go to Israel, are filtered for being idealists, with a missionary or "Peace Corps" mentality.

    -

    Even when they interview old religious nationalists, - there is the American bourgeois culture shock of the litter in the Middle East, and the "Peace Corps" mentality, and the messianic missionary view of the world.

    Look at what he says 1:45 and say honestly that the idealism that can be generated in America, is not a culture shock world standards.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZDU-EW_fk


    settler countries lack the weight of history to prevent certain peoples from melting away.
     
    Outside of an authoritarian system like North Korea, probably nobody in the world could assimilate Amish or Haredi Jews.

    But 20th century America assimilated all these (non-Amish, non-Haredi Jews) nationalities, almost better than any other country can. And America's melting pot involves that you encourage each nationality to celebrate their "ethnic pride".

    One of the culture shocks of seeing America, is precisely this strange attitude of parades and "ethnic pride", which looks pretty bizarre from my perspective (and really I expect of most people who work in Europe).

    On the other hand, in Europe, these different nationalities would not likely be able absorb so effectively, as 20th century America.

    The two things are not contradictory. America's melting pot, has people bizarrely celebrating their "ethnic pride", at the same time they are assimilating them better than you could achieve in most other countries.

    Replies: @AP

  838. @Yellowface Anon
    @Beckow


    How does a state take wealth from a global oligarch who “owns” $100 billion?
     
    A123 explained to me how a new Trumpist administration can screw over social media companies unscrupulously.

    Everything else can usually be nationalized (expropriated if you don't want to pay the oligarchs or are throwing them into jail), something left-wing governments often did.

    Replies: @Beckow

    What “can” be done, often isn’t done. Trump – or most anti-globalist populists – don’t seem to realize the stakes they are playing for. This is not going to change with a few tax adjustments or better border paperwork, this is for all marbles.

    The globalist oligarchs made billions displacing workers in their home countries, shifting everything they could to China (and other places) and importing cheap labor. It has been a goldmine. When Trump and similar challenges appeared they panicked and closed ranks – they want to keep it as it is. If it means large population shifts and displacement, or “elections” become a virtual make-believe show, opinions are censored, whatever it takes…their control of institutions and plenty of money makes this into an uneven fight. Not understanding the stakes and holding back, and not be willing to “buy” peoples’ support via social policies is a crippling error.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Beckow


    The globalist oligarchs made billions displacing workers in their home countries, shifting everything they could to China (and other places) and importing cheap labor. It has been a goldmine. When Trump and similar challenges appeared they panicked and closed ranks – they want to keep it as it is.
     
    Calling "the great game" permanently closed underestimates the ambition of those who are fighting their way up in the system. MAGA Reindustrialization offers all sorts of business upside to those willing to support it.

    Sun Tzu. 78. "When you surround an army, leave an outlet free.

    It took decades to dig the hole. It will take decades to fill it back in. There is no need to back all of the Globalist Oligarchs into a corner simultaneously. Everything cannot be reindustrialized simultaneously.

    Some of the Elites can be co-opted. Building semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. will generate revenue for tech companies. Building new assembly lines will require more U.S. made steel and other heavy materials. Developing reliable energy for the U.S. will reinvigorate existing hydrocarbon industry firms.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
  839. @AP
    @Beckow


    Putin is 69, Xi is 68, Modi is 71

    None of the three strikes me as acting as an elderly, out-of-touch man. The EU geriatric crowd and Biden&Pelosi-Fauci (average age 80!) do fit the gerontocracy profile.
     
    Biden will likely be gone in 3 years; either by Harris or some other Democrat (they used him as a placeholder, or Trojan Horse), or by Trump or some other Republican. Pelosi will likely lose power in 2 years. Fauci does not seem elderly and out of touch.

    Among the new, younger leaders there is a tendency to look and act like hired clowns, Zelensky, Johnson, Trudeau, even Macron. There is something unserious about them.
     
    There is something unserious about any Westerner below a certain generation who has not served in the military. A life spent in easy times. Zelensky is of course a comedian, but his puppetmaster Kolomoysky is rather serious. As is their rival Poroshenko, one doesn't survive, thrive and get to the top in the post-Soviet 90s like these guys or the ones in charge in Russia and Belarus did, by being unserious (or decent).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Beckow

    I am describing it as it is today, “likely” future events don’t matter much. As of now it is a gerontocracy. (It’s also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy…)

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don’t change things. They make already bad problems worse. Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats – never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite….you know the “belly-over-the-belt” phase of life…

    • Replies: @AP
    @Beckow


    I am describing it as it is today, “likely” future events don’t matter much.
     
    Right now Biden is not in charge. Judging by policy, the one in charge is a young wokeling of some sort.

    (It’s also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy…)
     
    I'm not a fan. I'm just pointing out that the guy is not a demented old person but is rather sharp...

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don’t change things.
     
    Johnson seems to be changing a lot of things.

    Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats – never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite
     
    I wouldn't trust any politician in a democratic system, nor anyone who achieved success in the post-Soviet 1990s. But Poroshenko has gotten lean after losing power:

    https://gdb.rferl.org/C6F3CF77-C940-46DD-959B-ECBFD8B2BFD0_cx16_cy9_cw83_w1200_r1.jpg

    Replies: @Aedib, @Beckow

  840. @LatW

    When in Ukraine, my speech, dress and even walking patterns quickly give away my origins.
     
    You know what used to give away Westerners/Americans (at least back in the 90s, early 2000s), except for maybe a slightly softer demeanor? Their backpacks. Like, someone would be dressed smart casual but would carry this sporty backpack. Then you could immediately tell they're from North America. The locals would carry different type of bags and purses.

    Btw, we often used to make fun of the Baltic American accents, we used to talk among each other in that accent. In a very endearing way. I wonder if Ukrainians do the same.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry

    My “r’s” are pretty decent overall. The worst thing about my Ukrainian speaking skills is that I occasionally will state something using English grammatical patterns, where the same utterance has more of a unique Ukrainian pattern/placement. I’m sure that I’m not unique in this, and have worked hard over the years to correct these Ukrainian language English patterns.

    I’m guilty of wearing a backpack when in Ukraine, especially if I’m going somewhere for a day trip or longer. Walking around with a tied up bundle looks more ridiculous to me, or putting everything into some sort of a bag. Some things are just too difficult to change. 🙂

  841. @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since.
     
    It isn't a prediction, it might be a roadplan. It isn't saying "we have limited resources for ever & keeping on growing will doom us" (there are indeed non-renewable resources but we can always figure out new ways to utilize or reclaim anything), but "let's give up exploring and let the carrying capacity close in". It's them quitting infinite growth (like, space colonies) to appropriate all the gains we have in the 19th & 20th centuries. They learnt what AaronB learnt 50 years ago and didn't go Taoist, but full Legalist.

    But the problem is, once we have capitalism, we have to go on accumulating as far as we can, or reach a steady-state at a sufficiently high level of development. But cliodynamics says otherwise, the historical pattern of societal emergence & decline says otherwise. We have to grapple with this sooner or later, and they chose the moment when we were 80% to a good take-off. And even if we had won, the outcomes might not have been pretty.

    And yeah, you might not be starving now, but ask the average Ukrainian Kulak in '30, or the queue outside Soviet stores in '89. It only takes ever worse supply chain breakdowns and enough farm/transport workers going Galt over the COVID vaccine mandates, and they are very willing to take the Biden/Johnson/Macron/Draghi/Merkel administrations down by grabbing strategic chokepoints. Which means possible famines next year or after that.


    I don’t understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.
     
    No one does, but it's coming. It's cope, it's hopium. Jews lived thru concentration camps, everyone on Earth got by during the Great Depression, late Medievals survived the Black Plague. No one ever wanted anything to do with all those. And if we came out of the other side of this crisis, that would be the best thing we'll experience in our life.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don’t share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?
     
    It's sad to say this to those finding comfort in modern lifestyles, but they will see times that are less comfortable.

    I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable.
     
    Well.

    And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?
     
    They aren't escaping to nature. They'll probably find a plot of land to farm or the rural areas to set up cottage industries, now that there won't be jobs in the urban area, tech levels have taken a dent, and law & order are discredited. In other words, Roman Europe in the 4-5th century. I really hope this scenario won't happen but it can't be dismissed out of hand especially at the current level of fragile complexity.

    Turns out going Galt means going Galt for this generation and a few more. Look at where Soviet professionals ended up - drained out of CIS labor markets and never coming back. There won't be loads of hermit geniuses waiting for liberation, coming out from the Gulch and making thing whole.


    there’s definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand.
     
    It's the New Normal, how is it difficult to understand?

    Everybody’s desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I’ve read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US.
     
    Because there are mismatch problems mainly caused by structural changes (think what's in demand, what's no longer in demand, COVID vaccines and the like). I think it will go up to tens of millions (like what happened in Italy) by October, or those will be written off as "quitting" the labor force (they won't be paid unemployment benefits), to keep the unemployment rate tidy. Again, going Galt over COVID vaccine mandates. This isn't solvable except asking DeSantis what he's been doing in FL.

    What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet?
     
    Starting antivaxx businesses, getting a trade account, going informal, drawing down savings, self-sufficiency in a homestead or living among like-minded. I dunno. But they are probably doing fine for now, as good as they want to be.

    Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?
     
    Both. Tell them those vaccine mandates, restrictions, etc. will be lifted when Trump's back (he started Operation Warpspeed), and failing that, tell them to hold out a little longer, and finally tell them they're the vanguard of a new LIBERTARIAN/OBJECTIVIST economy and stick to whatever they are doing/working on now. And Globalists like this because they are now out of sight.

    I sound a lot like A123 now but I'm speaking from what I'm read. I know COVID isn't the cold or the flu but it has a IFR of 0.5%. The current crop of COVID vaccines are probably not as effective as anticipated and expected for a black-or-white vaccine passport system, and there could be some bugs (mRNA yay), but those aren't significant on the wider scale. 1% boomers culled, another 0.5% or 1% of the young maimed, even 10% or 20%'s fertility being lowered for a while. Countries have gone thru worse depopulation during wars, and Puerto Rico had 35% of their women sterilized for decades, but the place is still standing with NINE MILLION Puerto Rican on the Island or outside (2 million in 1940 & 4.1 million in 1970, roughly when compulsory sterilization took place). But you know what, the vaccine passport system blows and this is why people are going Galt. I'm sick of this provaxx vs antivaxx, Davos vs mainstreamed libertarians/objectivists thing, but we're stuck with them. Turns out we aren't living in John's Apocalypse, but the building of the Babel Tower & the scattering of peoples.

    Thanks for listening to my rant, having people listening to be relieves my frustration for a while.

    Replies: @Mikel

    It isn’t a prediction, it might be a roadplan.

    They did make some specific projections under various scenarios and they all turned out to be dead wrong. Suffice to say that under their most optimistic scenario, we would have run out of oil next year and, under the most pessimistic one, by the year 2003.

    The Skeptical Environmentalist by Lomborg has a good rundown of all these gloomy predictions that we have been hearing over the years. I used to be a radical environmentalist in the 80s, by the way, and in a certain sense I still am, but I’ve seen enough failed predictions to take certain things seriously anymore.

    As for the rest, I’m not really seeing any big return to homesteading or anything of the like in the US. Certainly nothing like the back-to-the-land movement of the 70s-80s that did draw many people to hippie communes and other alternative lifestyles. But even that did not produce the widespread labor shortage that we’re seeing now. Instead, the 70s and 80s were times of high unemployment in the West.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    They did make some specific projections under various scenarios and they all turned out to be dead wrong. Suffice to say that under their most optimistic scenario, we would have run out of oil next year and, under the most pessimistic one, by the year 2003.
     
    It's right. But those are as much "projections" as statement of faith.

    As for the rest, I’m not really seeing any big return to homesteading or anything of the like in the US. Certainly nothing like the back-to-the-land movement of the 70s-80s that did draw many people to hippie communes and other alternative lifestyles.
     
    I just saw an email newsletter from Gab that says "The Fifth Great Awakening". This means the whole COVID agenda has changed realities enough for a significant chunk of Americans to buy into this. Granted Gab remains a relatively marginal platform, but it has definitely grown and embraced by much of the right since the start of 2021.

    Homesteading would be one of the lifestyles that this shift suggests, in addition to agorism (i.e. informalization of work) or community support. Those would be more of an adaption to such makeshift labor laws that disqualify employment based on personal convictions and ideology (as provaxx-antivaxx struggle has become).

    But even that did not produce the widespread labor shortage that we’re seeing now. Instead, the 70s and 80s were times of high unemployment in the West.
     
    70s & 80s unemployment occurred without COVID. There was definitely no vaccine mandates that disqualify a chunk of the labor force.

    As I said, I'm not antivaxx since vaccines currently have some benefits (reducing severity & hospitalizations) & some risks (side effects most of which seen in other type of vaccines & some of which is unknown in the long term; leakiness). These can be improved, but render the vaccines unsuitable for black-or-white vaccine mandates which assume vaccines to totally cut transmission & minimizes the death rate. Vaccines mandates as done for COVID also enables a degree of surveillance & micromanagement that was seen only in authoritarian regimes, and it is basically what people going Galt fears. This means I'm anti-mandavaxx - I had all the mandated vaccines in my grade school, and I'm still around ranting about COVID, but no one has ever asked for my childhood vaccination card of these diseases at work or going anywhere, not even during COVID.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  842. @AP
    @Dmitry


    A lot of money of the Irish Republican Army, is from Irish Americans.
     
    There are millions and millions of Irish in the USA and among those are actual, less assimilated "diaspora" Irish comparable to Jews , or Ukrainians. America is rich and they have money to send to the IRA. But the majority are like 1/4 or less Irish who just have a flag and drink green beer on St. Patrick's Day.

    One of common joke of Polish people, is that “you know you’re really Polish when you take the toilet paper home from the office”. And yet Poles are definitely not Soviet people in most ways.
     
    Soviet system only ruined them for 1-2 generations, much less than in Russia. Similarly, Galician from Ukraine are more civilized from this perspective than are people from the rest of Ukraine - but are still not quite as civilized as ones from the diaspora who never experienced Soviet demoralization.

    Canada, and Australia, and even South America

    It’s a good point you have said, as these other New World countries follow a similar policy.
     
    I don't know if it is a policy but rather a state of being a settler-country. In such countries new waves of settlers come and they can choose to minimize assimilation, if it is their will. Germans tend to conform an assimilate, but ones inspired by nationalism such as Ukrainians or Zionist Jews, or religion such as Hasids or the Amish, have not assimilated.

    These settler countries lack the weight of history to prevent certain peoples from melting away.

    So the American youth are indeed often behaving in a relative culture shock compared to typical Russian speaking youth in Israel.
     
    The Jewish Americans are actual Jews, many of the Russians just came in because they have a Jewish grandparent are are simply Russian foreigners.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Soviet system only ruined

    It’s because of the difference of income across countries, rather than “spiritual ruin”. Badly designed communist policies has of course contributed to these relatively poor countries.

    Still I could imagine that David Chappelle, if he will read this forum, would steal the joke “You know you are black when you take..” Because African Americans have lower incomes.

    For example, if your salary is \$60,000 per year (school teacher in the United States), you will have a different perspective about toilet paper, than people who have a salary of \$6000 per year (average school teacher in Russia).

    If your salary is \$6000 per year working 40 hours per week for 10 months, then a box of toilet paper might be equivalent of an hour of work (i.e. time of a school lesson), while for the teacher in America 6 minutes (i.e. time of counting the students’ attendance at the beginning of the lesson) .

    I wouldn’t even want to know the kinds of things people take from the office in Africa or India.

    nationalism such as Ukrainians or Zionist Jews, or religion

    Most Jews in America marry non-Jews, so they assimilate, and probably it doesn’t match to Zionism (as the the non-Zionist Haredim in America will be the people who are endogamous, while the secular Jews can be Zionist).

    Jewish Americans are actual Jews, many of the Russians just came in because they have a Jewish grandparent

    It’s the difference between American Jews selected for idealized filter who speak like Mormon missionaries, and normal young people doing economic immigration.

    Jews in the USSR have intermarriage rates with non-Jews like 80% by the 1980ies (https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/c__c/Tolts_EPC%20Milan,%2019951.pdf), while American Jews only went to high intermarriage a couple generations later (although today a majority).

    But I wouldn’t be surprised if “pure Jews” from the post Soviet countries, try to scam Israel for free-money, even more than the non-pure people. The jokes about “Yiddishe kop” cannot be from nowhere.

    simply Russian foreigners

    You can’t scam money from Israel, if you don’t qualify in the Law of Return. You can work there (and it is enjoyable place to be an illegal immigrant), but you can’t scam the \$10,000.

    There are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, that live and work in Israel. But these people are working honestly for their money, rather than scamming (as the repatriants can). Often illegal immigrants, can be the most honest and hardworking people in the society.

    The Russians and Ukrainians who work illegally in Israel, are often more honest, hardworking, than the ones who come on “Law of Return”.

    This is why it’s an interesting example, because the idealistic American youth and the Russians/Ukrainians olim, are within the same bureaucracy and legal framework.

    But the Americans that go to Israel, are filtered for being idealists, with a missionary or “Peace Corps” mentality.

    Even when they interview old religious nationalists, – there is the American bourgeois culture shock of the litter in the Middle East, and the “Peace Corps” mentality, and the messianic missionary view of the world.

    Look at what he says 1:45 and say honestly that the idealism that can be generated in America, is not a culture shock world standards.

    settler countries lack the weight of history to prevent certain peoples from melting away.

    Outside of an authoritarian system like North Korea, probably nobody in the world could assimilate Amish or Haredi Jews.

    But 20th century America assimilated all these (non-Amish, non-Haredi Jews) nationalities, almost better than any other country can. And America’s melting pot involves that you encourage each nationality to celebrate their “ethnic pride”.

    One of the culture shocks of seeing America, is precisely this strange attitude of parades and “ethnic pride”, which looks pretty bizarre from my perspective (and really I expect of most people who work in Europe).

    On the other hand, in Europe, these different nationalities would not likely be able absorb so effectively, as 20th century America.

    The two things are not contradictory. America’s melting pot, has people bizarrely celebrating their “ethnic pride”, at the same time they are assimilating them better than you could achieve in most other countries.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    Soviet system only ruined

    It’s because of the difference of income across countries, rather than “spiritual ruin”. Badly designed communist policies has of course contributed to these relatively poor countries....

    For example, if your salary is $60,000 per year (school teacher in the United States), you will have a different perspective about toilet paper, than people who have a salary of $6000 per year (average school teacher in Russia).

    If your salary is $6000 per year working 40 hours per week for 10 months, then a box of toilet paper might be equivalent of an hour of work (i.e. time of a school lesson), while for the teacher in America 6 minutes (i.e. time of counting the students’ attendance at the beginning of the lesson) .
     
    Galicia was no richer than the rest of Soviet Ukraine, but Galicians were much less criminal and sneaky (I can post pictures of crime rates if you'd like). So it isn't simply about money.

    Outside of an authoritarian system like North Korea, probably nobody in the world could assimilate Amish or Haredi Jews.
     
    The Amish left Europe exactly because in America but not in Europe they could avoid assimilation.

    The two things are not contradictory. America’s melting pot, has people bizarrely celebrating their “ethnic pride”, at the same time they are assimilating them better than you could achieve in most other countries.
     
    Only if "assimilation" is defined as retaining the foreign language and not feeling oneself as being a native.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  843. I occasionally will state something using English grammatical pattern

    Yes, this is common. We used to have a diaspora friend who would say things like “I have run out of flour”, which in our language sounds pretty hilarious, as in, you ran out of a pile of flour and are now covered in it.

    I’m guilty of wearing a backpack when in Ukraine

    It’s totally ok, I’m just saying that was one of the signs that could’ve given you away. Like a Jaysport type of backpack. One of our local professors very quickly adopted this style to look more “Western” (a suit and a sporty backpack). And, of course, it’s the typical look of a Brussels bureaucrat. Another thing that could give one away was relaxed West Coast style of dress. The clothing could be high quality and expensive, but casual in style, sneakers, etc. Back in the day when many people in EE considered dressing up to be a status symbol and many were overdressed. I don’t mean this in any bad way, it’s just funny to remember. Back then it was puzzling and novel. LOL

  844. @Beckow
    @AP

    I am describing it as it is today, "likely" future events don't matter much. As of now it is a gerontocracy. (It's also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy...)

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don't change things. They make already bad problems worse. Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats - never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite....you know the "belly-over-the-belt" phase of life...

    Replies: @AP

    I am describing it as it is today, “likely” future events don’t matter much.

    Right now Biden is not in charge. Judging by policy, the one in charge is a young wokeling of some sort.

    (It’s also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy…)

    I’m not a fan. I’m just pointing out that the guy is not a demented old person but is rather sharp…

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don’t change things.

    Johnson seems to be changing a lot of things.

    Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats – never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite

    I wouldn’t trust any politician in a democratic system, nor anyone who achieved success in the post-Soviet 1990s. But Poroshenko has gotten lean after losing power:

    • Replies: @Aedib
    @AP


    Right now Biden is not in charge. Judging by policy, the one in charge is a young wokeling of some sort.
     
    This sentence remember me Boris Yeltsin managed but younger neoliberal “smart guys ” and Mafiosos. In this subject I completely agree with you.
    , @Beckow
    @AP


    ...I’m not a fan. I’m just pointing out that the guy is not a demented old person but is rather sharp…
     
    Ok, Fauci is an un-demented old guy. I don't think he is sharp, more like well-trained to spout what pleases his sponsors of the moment. He also seems to suffer from megalomania, all the signs are there: he forcefully denies the obvious, changes his pronouncements with passion, and refers to himself in a third person...

    BoJo changes things, but he won't make things better. My point about BoJo-Macron-Trudeau-the EU clowns, is that they visibly lack gravitas, they are not serious people. Some are entertaining, some have verbal acumen, but none of them are the likes people who would rise to the top in normal societies. They are too fruity...
  845. @LatW

    When in Ukraine, my speech, dress and even walking patterns quickly give away my origins.
     
    You know what used to give away Westerners/Americans (at least back in the 90s, early 2000s), except for maybe a slightly softer demeanor? Their backpacks. Like, someone would be dressed smart casual but would carry this sporty backpack. Then you could immediately tell they're from North America. The locals would carry different type of bags and purses.

    Btw, we often used to make fun of the Baltic American accents, we used to talk among each other in that accent. In a very endearing way. I wonder if Ukrainians do the same.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Dmitry

    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.

    Perhaps it is just their bodylanguage and clothing styles, and face expressions, that creates this impression though.

    Many Americans also have a very distinctive mentality, that they don’t export nearly as much as they might imagine. That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.

    You can love and consume American cultural exports all day, and the American mentality can still be a culture shock.

    That is not a bad thing, from the American perspective. America should be proud it produces a very distinctive culture and strong culture “imprint” on its population, even as they arrive from diverse origins.

    Just if America understands that the rest of the world is culturally distinct from them, then it should celebrated that they are creating a distinctive nationality, with their unique perspectives (which American culture has no lack of unique perspectives on life).

    German Reader writes about his “negative view of America”. But it’s likely more a negative view of the relation of America to Europe that he experiences. Judged on its own, the American culture is of course one of the most interesting and vital worldcultures – probably the most innovative and productive of worldculture of the 20th century.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry


    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin.
     
    You are not the first one to observe this. IIRC, somewhere in the book The Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh excerpted a passage from a diary of his ancestress, who arriving in America for the first time, noted an unpleasant difference in the jawlines of American women.

    I myself have speculated on possible physical differences, mainly along two different lines.

    One, being the more major, is the way that Americans are undoubtedly more outbred. They are more likely to be mixes of Northern and Southern Europeans or Western and Eastern. IMO, this might help iron out some of the more deviant angles seen in a single nationality.

    Secondly, I have wondered at the possibility of selection effects. The idea that immigrants are smarter people, than those left behind, and that this leads to differences in physiognomy, even if you match for ethnicity.

    I don't know if anyone has tried to test these ideas. I constantly wish that we could revive the Victorian ethnographers to resolve some of these questions.
    , @LatW
    @Dmitry


    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.
     
    Well, I was talking purely about the clothing style of some diaspora types. But, yes, I would agree that there is a distinct heritage American look. I would call it "Atlantic". I'm thinking of Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very "American" there, he's ethnically English (he doesn't really look either Nordic or Central European, but Atlantic). He's supposed to be Roman there, but I think he's made to look like the "idealized American" (he might as well be in some college football team), and he's also talking with an American accent.

    That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.
     
    Some Americans have very niche tastes when it comes to consumption (locavore culture, all kinds of rare items you can't get in Europe), very different from what is considered the stereotypical American cultural export. The stereotype is also that they're very urban, which they are, but the majority live in small towns and many are outdoorsy.

    Americans are quite insular, even though they have representation everywhere and some of them want to be part of everything. :)

    Replies: @Dmitry

  846. @Dmitry
    @AP


    Soviet system only ruined
     
    It's because of the difference of income across countries, rather than "spiritual ruin". Badly designed communist policies has of course contributed to these relatively poor countries.

    Still I could imagine that David Chappelle, if he will read this forum, would steal the joke "You know you are black when you take.." Because African Americans have lower incomes.

    For example, if your salary is $60,000 per year (school teacher in the United States), you will have a different perspective about toilet paper, than people who have a salary of $6000 per year (average school teacher in Russia).

    If your salary is $6000 per year working 40 hours per week for 10 months, then a box of toilet paper might be equivalent of an hour of work (i.e. time of a school lesson), while for the teacher in America 6 minutes (i.e. time of counting the students' attendance at the beginning of the lesson) .

    I wouldn't even want to know the kinds of things people take from the office in Africa or India.


    nationalism such as Ukrainians or Zionist Jews, or religion
     
    Most Jews in America marry non-Jews, so they assimilate, and probably it doesn't match to Zionism (as the the non-Zionist Haredim in America will be the people who are endogamous, while the secular Jews can be Zionist).

    Jewish Americans are actual Jews, many of the Russians just came in because they have a Jewish grandparent

     

    It's the difference between American Jews selected for idealized filter who speak like Mormon missionaries, and normal young people doing economic immigration.

    Jews in the USSR have intermarriage rates with non-Jews like 80% by the 1980ies (https://www.bjpa.org/content/upload/bjpa/c__c/Tolts_EPC%20Milan,%2019951.pdf), while American Jews only went to high intermarriage a couple generations later (although today a majority).

    But I wouldn't be surprised if "pure Jews" from the post Soviet countries, try to scam Israel for free-money, even more than the non-pure people. The jokes about "Yiddishe kop" cannot be from nowhere.


    simply Russian foreigners
     
    You can't scam money from Israel, if you don't qualify in the Law of Return. You can work there (and it is enjoyable place to be an illegal immigrant), but you can't scam the $10,000.

    There are tens of thousands of illegal immigrants from Russia and Ukraine, that live and work in Israel. But these people are working honestly for their money, rather than scamming (as the repatriants can). Often illegal immigrants, can be the most honest and hardworking people in the society.

    The Russians and Ukrainians who work illegally in Israel, are often more honest, hardworking, than the ones who come on "Law of Return".

    This is why it's an interesting example, because the idealistic American youth and the Russians/Ukrainians olim, are within the same bureaucracy and legal framework.

    But the Americans that go to Israel, are filtered for being idealists, with a missionary or "Peace Corps" mentality.

    -

    Even when they interview old religious nationalists, - there is the American bourgeois culture shock of the litter in the Middle East, and the "Peace Corps" mentality, and the messianic missionary view of the world.

    Look at what he says 1:45 and say honestly that the idealism that can be generated in America, is not a culture shock world standards.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPZDU-EW_fk


    settler countries lack the weight of history to prevent certain peoples from melting away.
     
    Outside of an authoritarian system like North Korea, probably nobody in the world could assimilate Amish or Haredi Jews.

    But 20th century America assimilated all these (non-Amish, non-Haredi Jews) nationalities, almost better than any other country can. And America's melting pot involves that you encourage each nationality to celebrate their "ethnic pride".

    One of the culture shocks of seeing America, is precisely this strange attitude of parades and "ethnic pride", which looks pretty bizarre from my perspective (and really I expect of most people who work in Europe).

    On the other hand, in Europe, these different nationalities would not likely be able absorb so effectively, as 20th century America.

    The two things are not contradictory. America's melting pot, has people bizarrely celebrating their "ethnic pride", at the same time they are assimilating them better than you could achieve in most other countries.

    Replies: @AP

    Soviet system only ruined

    It’s because of the difference of income across countries, rather than “spiritual ruin”. Badly designed communist policies has of course contributed to these relatively poor countries….

    For example, if your salary is \$60,000 per year (school teacher in the United States), you will have a different perspective about toilet paper, than people who have a salary of \$6000 per year (average school teacher in Russia).

    If your salary is \$6000 per year working 40 hours per week for 10 months, then a box of toilet paper might be equivalent of an hour of work (i.e. time of a school lesson), while for the teacher in America 6 minutes (i.e. time of counting the students’ attendance at the beginning of the lesson) .

    Galicia was no richer than the rest of Soviet Ukraine, but Galicians were much less criminal and sneaky (I can post pictures of crime rates if you’d like). So it isn’t simply about money.

    Outside of an authoritarian system like North Korea, probably nobody in the world could assimilate Amish or Haredi Jews.

    The Amish left Europe exactly because in America but not in Europe they could avoid assimilation.

    The two things are not contradictory. America’s melting pot, has people bizarrely celebrating their “ethnic pride”, at the same time they are assimilating them better than you could achieve in most other countries.

    Only if “assimilation” is defined as retaining the foreign language and not feeling oneself as being a native.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    Amish left Europe exactly because in America but not in Europe

     

    Because in 18th century Europe. In the modern world, probably only somewhere very authoritarian would be able to assimilate them - it would require authoritarianism.

    retaining the foreign language

     

    What proportion of second generation Americans, are not speaking English?

    For example, Donald Trump is third/second generation American.

    He doesn't seem very culturally close to many people in Germany/Scotland, even though his mother was from Scotland, and his paternal grandparents from Germany.


    not feeling oneself as being a native.
     
    This is also part of American culture. Many people are not feeling very native, although perhaps the Cherokee are. Therefore "Transcendentalism" of the 19th century. Fake pseudoenglish people like Henry James and T.S. Eliot. A multiplicity of religious movements with their creation myths. Horror films about the curse of construction on indigenous peoples's sacred land ("Pet Sematary" "The Shining").

    But from it, America has created its own very distinctive culture.

    Look at this video above of the American Jewish Orthodox nationalist immigrant man, who is trying to organize against litter in his new city in Israel. Of course, he is exporting his American messianism. That is, American culture. In the local Israeli Jewish culture (and perhaps also the local Arab/Ottoman culture), the typical attitude is like "more you throw litter on the ground, the cooler you are".


    Galicians were much less criminal and sneaky (I can post pictures of crime rates
     
    I think in Ukraine there are things like relatively lower murder rates even today.

    But taking toilet paper from the office, is likely not so much criminal and sneaky, as an indication of culture that develops in the life of underpaid employees. And underpaid employees is what happens commonly in nowadays Europe, with anywhere East of Berlin.

    Rich, highly paid, employees, can hardly condemn it. People who are doing it, are likely from a working people culture - rather than elite hipster culture where you shop for organic Fiji water in Whole Foods.

    I'm sure if we outsourced our work by moving the office to villages in Africa, we might find all such "advanced technology" as pencils and Nescafe jars we provide for the local staff will disappear.

    But at the same time you would have to admit, that in general villagers in Africa are probably more hard working people than ourselves, and deserve pencils, more than we our ultra-high salaries.

    My own moral sense when I receive my salary, is that I might be robbing from a bank, because salaries sometimes don't necessarily match to how hard working (usually lazy in my case) you have been or what you deserve.

  847. @AaronB
    @songbird

    I think materialism has to peak before it can collapse.

    And it hasn't peaked yet.

    But it is threatened, and you know this by the hysteria of materialists when you question materialism.

    But for now, there will be more denial, more insistence that the answer is yet more technology and control, the problem is we are committing "suicide" (see above) and not that there is something inherently wrong with the modern project and we are running up against constraints, etc.

    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes :)

    So ultimately, it's all good.

    Replies: @songbird, @German_reader

    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes

    I’ll probably regret asking, but what kind of society do you envision after the “explosion”?

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Well I can't answer for AaronB, but his views have over the years sounded often like the ones of the American Transcendentalism views.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

    Although I believe Walden will sound too extreme as a solution for him.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon

    , @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Nothing so very crazy, don't worry :)

    In a way, my post-materialist society would indeed be in love with the physical world, and thus much more materialistic in a sense.

    For instance, today we build ugly buildings and are completely uninterested in making them beautiful - is that materialism or anti-materialism? In a way we hate the material world.

    What I object to, is our focus on the measurable aspect of things instead of the "quality" aspect of things - the "intangible".

    Most of what makes life meaningful, is intangible, and a huge reason modern lives are so empty is because we neglect the intangible.

    So again with beauty, the beauty aspect of a building is intangible and cannot be measured, so we ignore it - so we build alienating urban landscapes.

    So, my ideal post-materislist society would be one in which that whole rich intangible side of life that makes living meaningful and fun, would be the focus, and gaining power over physical things, would only be pursued in a limited way - some power is important, but should not be central. We have completely reversed the healthy relationship.

    This would completely shift the focus of human life - instead of growth and power, we would live on the aesthetic and spiritual plane, and instead of dominating nature, we would experience our deep connection to it and it's beauty.

    The natural world would not be seen as just physical "stuff" we can exploit to our ends, and instead of dominating nature we would build our lives in ways that cooperate with it.

    With the focus on the intangible, the modern sense of "alienation" would disappear, as it is the direct result of focusing on material things and not the connections between them.

    Life would be revolutionized.

    With the focus on the intangible, life would once again in a sense be "enchanted" - it would be the "re-enchantment of the world", a reversal of the disenchantment needed to gain power over it, and alienate ourselves from it. Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.

    We'd build different cities, live different lives, and think and experience life differently.

    Replies: @German_reader

  848. @Beckow
    @LatW

    I like that saying by Confucius...greed has its place, but elderly greed is both pointless and deeply immoral. I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US...that cannot be good for anybody.

    I would say that "heterosexual man in his 40-50s" should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to "traditional" family. Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It's fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don't).

    Replies: @LatW, @Mr. Hack

    I like that saying by Confucius

    It’s a great saying, you can see that he’s warning against things that one could be prone to at a given stage in one’s life. Namely, the risk of being lustful, bad tempered or greedy is different at each stage. These things change as one goes through one’s life.

    I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US

    Not sure it’s that high, I only meant working age. But there’s this:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html

    If this is true, then this is quite new for the US. Along with other things that are new now, such as lower fertility, higher number of single households, it’s like Europe.

    So if the labor participation of working age American men is 67%, then it’s not much higher than that of Swedish women. Except Swedish women also have 1.7 children and American men don’t. It’s interesting because the stereotypical view of American men is that they’re very hard working. Of course, I don’t want to oppress anybody and tell them how they should live or that they cannot be free. It’s just what are the repercussions for the society… who knows, maybe there are some positives, too. But women need to really be aware of this when they make choices in life.

    I would say that “heterosexual man in his 40-50s” should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to “traditional” family.

    Yes, 35-55. Btw, back in the day in the US, only married men could be promoted to certain positions.
    These views might be archaic, but they brought some stability. Society is very different now and it’s interesting to see what survival strategies will be adopted. This gender fluidity thing might be some sort of a survival strategy, too.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LatW

    The numbers can be calculated differently, suffice to say if 1/3 are not labor-participating, there is an issue. It destroys family formation, in that way it hurts women even more - the traditional family was an "archaic" invention that evolved to help women and child-raising.

    But what does it mean to be archaic? To many it has a negative connotation and maybe even you use it that way. Society structured around a traditional family, with married fathers doing their part and being rewarded, is indeed a very old, maybe archaic concept. It evolved over thousands of generations because it worked and the basic principles were thought through and implemented by the smartest among our ancestors.

    We have thrown all of it out with horrible consequences for the society. The people who threw it out in 2 generations are not the smartest or most viable - they are often clownish morons who used to in the past, at best to entertain. People who couldn't run their own lives, failed at the basic biological level, people who used the new surplus prosperity in the West and their own redundancy which gave them free time to play into oblivion. That's where we are today. I will take "archaic" any day, that's what embracing life means. If you don't embrace life, how do you live?

    Replies: @LatW

  849. @Dmitry
    @LatW

    I was more concerned by the fashion for very young leaders like Sebastian Kurz - who was Foreign Minister of Austria at age 27, with no profession, and has never had a real job.

    Or Jacinda Ardern who was Prime Minister of New Zealand, at age 37, and has never had any profession or job before.

    Although surprisingly in both cases, they have actually been relatively competent leaders. Jacinda Ardern was one of the world's best leaders in the coronavirus pandemic.

    -

    Between young or old leaders, obviously old leaders, should be preferable, due to their experience.

    People criticizing politicians for being too old, seems strange. They are not professional athletes. They don't even have to produce much real work. They are simply the person who makes the final decision. Experience and judgement should be the most important criteria for them.

    Historically, old leaders or figureheads are even a little archetypical. How old was Queen Victoria when she retired (died)?


    US, there are a few
     
    In the US Republicans there are a lot of medium age politicians like Nikki Haley and Marco Rubio.

    While in the Democrats there is a prominence of some very young politicians like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, where it is difficult to see if they ever had a job or profession.

    With Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the only impressive thing in her Wikipedia article is written: " took a job as a bartender and waitress" .

    So she has some experience of the real world, which is promising. But then the rest of her life is like "Ocasio-Cortez also worked for the nonprofit National Hispanic Institute. During the 2016 primary, Ocasio-Cortez worked as an organizer for Bernie Sanders's presidential campaign". I.e. it's nothing like real work, connected to real life.

    She has attained experience of life as a bartender for a short time, which will be useful for her to understand the situation of normal people. But all her life after is not connected to the real world and just useless things (i.e. working for political campaign).

    Replies: @LatW

    I was more concerned by the fashion for very young leaders like Sebastian Kurz… Jacinda Ardern… Ocazio-Cortez…

    See that’s another extreme. Although I don’t dislike Kurz. Both 27-35 and 70+ are somewhat extreme. What about a straight while male in his late 40s or mid 50s?

  850. @Dmitry
    @LatW

    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.

    Perhaps it is just their bodylanguage and clothing styles, and face expressions, that creates this impression though.

    Many Americans also have a very distinctive mentality, that they don't export nearly as much as they might imagine. That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.

    You can love and consume American cultural exports all day, and the American mentality can still be a culture shock.

    -

    That is not a bad thing, from the American perspective. America should be proud it produces a very distinctive culture and strong culture "imprint" on its population, even as they arrive from diverse origins.

    Just if America understands that the rest of the world is culturally distinct from them, then it should celebrated that they are creating a distinctive nationality, with their unique perspectives (which American culture has no lack of unique perspectives on life).

    German Reader writes about his "negative view of America". But it's likely more a negative view of the relation of America to Europe that he experiences. Judged on its own, the American culture is of course one of the most interesting and vital worldcultures - probably the most innovative and productive of worldculture of the 20th century.

    Replies: @songbird, @LatW

    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin.

    You are not the first one to observe this. IIRC, somewhere in the book The Spirit of St. Louis, Charles Lindbergh excerpted a passage from a diary of his ancestress, who arriving in America for the first time, noted an unpleasant difference in the jawlines of American women.

    I myself have speculated on possible physical differences, mainly along two different lines.

    One, being the more major, is the way that Americans are undoubtedly more outbred. They are more likely to be mixes of Northern and Southern Europeans or Western and Eastern. IMO, this might help iron out some of the more deviant angles seen in a single nationality.

    Secondly, I have wondered at the possibility of selection effects. The idea that immigrants are smarter people, than those left behind, and that this leads to differences in physiognomy, even if you match for ethnicity.

    I don’t know if anyone has tried to test these ideas. I constantly wish that we could revive the Victorian ethnographers to resolve some of these questions.

  851. @AP
    @Dmitry


    Soviet system only ruined

    It’s because of the difference of income across countries, rather than “spiritual ruin”. Badly designed communist policies has of course contributed to these relatively poor countries....

    For example, if your salary is $60,000 per year (school teacher in the United States), you will have a different perspective about toilet paper, than people who have a salary of $6000 per year (average school teacher in Russia).

    If your salary is $6000 per year working 40 hours per week for 10 months, then a box of toilet paper might be equivalent of an hour of work (i.e. time of a school lesson), while for the teacher in America 6 minutes (i.e. time of counting the students’ attendance at the beginning of the lesson) .
     
    Galicia was no richer than the rest of Soviet Ukraine, but Galicians were much less criminal and sneaky (I can post pictures of crime rates if you'd like). So it isn't simply about money.

    Outside of an authoritarian system like North Korea, probably nobody in the world could assimilate Amish or Haredi Jews.
     
    The Amish left Europe exactly because in America but not in Europe they could avoid assimilation.

    The two things are not contradictory. America’s melting pot, has people bizarrely celebrating their “ethnic pride”, at the same time they are assimilating them better than you could achieve in most other countries.
     
    Only if "assimilation" is defined as retaining the foreign language and not feeling oneself as being a native.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Amish left Europe exactly because in America but not in Europe

    Because in 18th century Europe. In the modern world, probably only somewhere very authoritarian would be able to assimilate them – it would require authoritarianism.

    retaining the foreign language

    What proportion of second generation Americans, are not speaking English?

    For example, Donald Trump is third/second generation American.

    He doesn’t seem very culturally close to many people in Germany/Scotland, even though his mother was from Scotland, and his paternal grandparents from Germany.

    not feeling oneself as being a native.

    This is also part of American culture. Many people are not feeling very native, although perhaps the Cherokee are. Therefore “Transcendentalism” of the 19th century. Fake pseudoenglish people like Henry James and T.S. Eliot. A multiplicity of religious movements with their creation myths. Horror films about the curse of construction on indigenous peoples’s sacred land (“Pet Sematary” “The Shining”).

    But from it, America has created its own very distinctive culture.

    Look at this video above of the American Jewish Orthodox nationalist immigrant man, who is trying to organize against litter in his new city in Israel. Of course, he is exporting his American messianism. That is, American culture. In the local Israeli Jewish culture (and perhaps also the local Arab/Ottoman culture), the typical attitude is like “more you throw litter on the ground, the cooler you are”.

    Galicians were much less criminal and sneaky (I can post pictures of crime rates

    I think in Ukraine there are things like relatively lower murder rates even today.

    But taking toilet paper from the office, is likely not so much criminal and sneaky, as an indication of culture that develops in the life of underpaid employees. And underpaid employees is what happens commonly in nowadays Europe, with anywhere East of Berlin.

    Rich, highly paid, employees, can hardly condemn it. People who are doing it, are likely from a working people culture – rather than elite hipster culture where you shop for organic Fiji water in Whole Foods.

    I’m sure if we outsourced our work by moving the office to villages in Africa, we might find all such “advanced technology” as pencils and Nescafe jars we provide for the local staff will disappear.

    But at the same time you would have to admit, that in general villagers in Africa are probably more hard working people than ourselves, and deserve pencils, more than we our ultra-high salaries.

    My own moral sense when I receive my salary, is that I might be robbing from a bank, because salaries sometimes don’t necessarily match to how hard working (usually lazy in my case) you have been or what you deserve.

  852. @A123
    @songbird

    The code allegation (if true) is embarrassing but not a material liability. There is plenty of time and money to license or replace encumbered IP.

    The Equity side has run amok. I am not invested it. The original price was optimistic. The current value is absurd. A few people put in "donation" scale money very early and have since cashed out. I do not know of anyone betting "investment" scale funds.

    Hopefully the SPAC momentum consists of day traders fleecing other Blue State day traders. Enron was a Red State company, and the lesson has not been forgotten. I wish a map of trade activity versus investor location was available.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    I’m decidedly skeptical of TRUTH, since it seems late to the party. This is an area where Google tried to compete and then gave up on. Gab seems to have already carved out the partisan niche (no blame to them, people are self-organizing). And while the name may be cutting and memorable, and might be a 4D move to prevent the app from getting banned, I think it is also uncool and will turn people off from it.

    Secondary factor is it will be like red meat to ideologically-deranged hackers. Maybe, even state agencies with lots of resources. It is remarkable to see the media put their hatred of Trump onto an impersonal object, if an abstract one. Probably predicts stormy seas, with a lot of people (including deranged hackers) internalizing their dislike of it.

    I also suspect that it will have more stringent censorship than Gab.

    • Agree: Not Raul
  853. @Dmitry
    @LatW

    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.

    Perhaps it is just their bodylanguage and clothing styles, and face expressions, that creates this impression though.

    Many Americans also have a very distinctive mentality, that they don't export nearly as much as they might imagine. That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.

    You can love and consume American cultural exports all day, and the American mentality can still be a culture shock.

    -

    That is not a bad thing, from the American perspective. America should be proud it produces a very distinctive culture and strong culture "imprint" on its population, even as they arrive from diverse origins.

    Just if America understands that the rest of the world is culturally distinct from them, then it should celebrated that they are creating a distinctive nationality, with their unique perspectives (which American culture has no lack of unique perspectives on life).

    German Reader writes about his "negative view of America". But it's likely more a negative view of the relation of America to Europe that he experiences. Judged on its own, the American culture is of course one of the most interesting and vital worldcultures - probably the most innovative and productive of worldculture of the 20th century.

    Replies: @songbird, @LatW

    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.

    Well, I was talking purely about the clothing style of some diaspora types. But, yes, I would agree that there is a distinct heritage American look. I would call it “Atlantic”. I’m thinking of Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very “American” there, he’s ethnically English (he doesn’t really look either Nordic or Central European, but Atlantic). He’s supposed to be Roman there, but I think he’s made to look like the “idealized American” (he might as well be in some college football team), and he’s also talking with an American accent.

    That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.

    Some Americans have very niche tastes when it comes to consumption (locavore culture, all kinds of rare items you can’t get in Europe), very different from what is considered the stereotypical American cultural export. The stereotype is also that they’re very urban, which they are, but the majority live in small towns and many are outdoorsy.

    Americans are quite insular, even though they have representation everywhere and some of them want to be part of everything. 🙂

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @LatW


    Americans have very niche tastes
     
    In my post, I mean to write that - "Americans export a lot of their culture, but it doesn't mean that the non-Americans who consume American culture are as close mentally to Americans as Americans might imagine".

    ^ It's kind of complicated sentence, so I guess I messed it.

    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.

    America can export its Levis, Coca Cola, MacDonald's, Jazz music, cowboy films, shopping malls, etc. But the consumers of this culture, will still likely encounter the American mentality as very distinctive and unusual from their own.

    We can enjoy foreign cultures (often more than our culture), partly because it gives us fresh and innovative perspectives.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.

    Cross-cultural communication is like a bridge that is established. So now among the Generation Z people, there is a nowadays wide taste for Japanese culture, and there are Japanese influences flowing over them. But developing taste for manga is not exactly going to flip most Italians and Brazilians into introverts; neither the Japanese interest in Italian fashion, make will make most Japanese people into extroverts.

    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn't exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.


    Americans are quite insular
     
    Yes, and they often seem to think people America are more like Americans, than they are.

    I want to see what happens with this messianic American Jewish Orthodox nationalist man's campaign to make Israelis stop throwing litter on the street (spoiler - it will fail). If you ask Middle Eastern people like Israelis about why they throw litter on the street, they would probably say "to feed the cockroaches".


    Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very “American” there, he’s ethnically English

     

    I only know him from the masterpiece film - "21 Jump Street".

    But he reminds us that many Americans, are also much more fans of lifting weights, rather than other sports. As a result, young people have a kind of much wider appearance. You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.


    and he’s also talking with an American accent.
     
    And compared to anywhere in Northern Europe, Americans are usually incredibly expressive when they speak. But perhaps if he trying to be a Roman, this will match.

    (he doesn’t really look either Nordic or Central European
     
    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of "Germans" though. Although I'm sure German Reader will consider me an idiot for saying this.

    If I sampled from a video of American students. If you turned off sound, the girl at 0:28 and the man at 0:32 both look "German" to my stereotypes? for the little my stereotypes are worth. But the culture of the people is so different.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkEQ_LFjvVE

    Replies: @LatW, @German_reader

  854. I find this idea that CNAS (Center for a New American Security) has of trying to turn the small islands near Taiwan into “poison frogs”, so China won’t “eat” them, fascinating.

    Not that I am in favor of it, but, to me, the rather forced color-signaling element of the analogy clearly seems to be inspired by the current American ideology. The gay flag, green-haired lesbians, or untouchable blacks. Or a combination thereof. Anyone in Washington would be deeply tapped into color-signaling – they would be eating it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It is half of the newspapers there and half of the laws.

    IMO, it has worked its way structurally into the military to the point where it is now affecting strategy directly, or soon will be.

  855. @German_reader
    @AaronB


    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes
     
    I'll probably regret asking, but what kind of society do you envision after the "explosion"?

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

    Well I can’t answer for AaronB, but his views have over the years sounded often like the ones of the American Transcendentalism views.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

    Although I believe Walden will sound too extreme as a solution for him.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Dmitry

    I give AaronB more credit than Thoreau:


    His mother famously helped him out with laundry and food over the two years, and he had guests over regularly. And the land itself was not the rugged frontier. “In reality,” writes Kathryn Schulz in the New Yorker, “Walden Pond in 1845 was scarcely more off the grid, relative to contemporaneous society, than Prospect Park is today. The commuter train to Boston ran along its southwest side; in summer the place swarmed with picnickers and swimmers, while in winter it was frequented by ice cutters and skaters.” She adds that it would take Thoreau but twenty minutes to walk from his cabin to his family home, were we to confuse the writer with Robinson Crusoe.
     
    , @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    He sounds Taoist at times but this seems to me the closet to the most idealistic reading of the Tao Te Ching (ch. 80 - 小國寡民). But that had never been realistic, not in 2 millenia of the Chinese Empire.

  856. @LatW
    @Dmitry


    It can be my imagination, but many Americans seem to look ethnically different than any nationality in Europe, even when they have a European origin. They have distinctive American appearances somehow.
     
    Well, I was talking purely about the clothing style of some diaspora types. But, yes, I would agree that there is a distinct heritage American look. I would call it "Atlantic". I'm thinking of Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very "American" there, he's ethnically English (he doesn't really look either Nordic or Central European, but Atlantic). He's supposed to be Roman there, but I think he's made to look like the "idealized American" (he might as well be in some college football team), and he's also talking with an American accent.

    That is, the rest of the world, and Americans, are thinking much more differently, than the international consumption patterns of American cultural exports might imply.
     
    Some Americans have very niche tastes when it comes to consumption (locavore culture, all kinds of rare items you can't get in Europe), very different from what is considered the stereotypical American cultural export. The stereotype is also that they're very urban, which they are, but the majority live in small towns and many are outdoorsy.

    Americans are quite insular, even though they have representation everywhere and some of them want to be part of everything. :)

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Americans have very niche tastes

    In my post, I mean to write that – “Americans export a lot of their culture, but it doesn’t mean that the non-Americans who consume American culture are as close mentally to Americans as Americans might imagine”.

    ^ It’s kind of complicated sentence, so I guess I messed it.

    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.

    America can export its Levis, Coca Cola, MacDonald’s, Jazz music, cowboy films, shopping malls, etc. But the consumers of this culture, will still likely encounter the American mentality as very distinctive and unusual from their own.

    We can enjoy foreign cultures (often more than our culture), partly because it gives us fresh and innovative perspectives.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.

    Cross-cultural communication is like a bridge that is established. So now among the Generation Z people, there is a nowadays wide taste for Japanese culture, and there are Japanese influences flowing over them. But developing taste for manga is not exactly going to flip most Italians and Brazilians into introverts; neither the Japanese interest in Italian fashion, make will make most Japanese people into extroverts.

    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn’t exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.

    Americans are quite insular

    Yes, and they often seem to think people America are more like Americans, than they are.

    I want to see what happens with this messianic American Jewish Orthodox nationalist man’s campaign to make Israelis stop throwing litter on the street (spoiler – it will fail). If you ask Middle Eastern people like Israelis about why they throw litter on the street, they would probably say “to feed the cockroaches”.

    Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very “American” there, he’s ethnically English

    I only know him from the masterpiece film – “21 Jump Street”.

    But he reminds us that many Americans, are also much more fans of lifting weights, rather than other sports. As a result, young people have a kind of much wider appearance. You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.

    and he’s also talking with an American accent.

    And compared to anywhere in Northern Europe, Americans are usually incredibly expressive when they speak. But perhaps if he trying to be a Roman, this will match.

    (he doesn’t really look either Nordic or Central European

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though. Although I’m sure German Reader will consider me an idiot for saying this.

    If I sampled from a video of American students. If you turned off sound, the girl at 0:28 and the man at 0:32 both look “German” to my stereotypes? for the little my stereotypes are worth. But the culture of the people is so different.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Dmitry


    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.
     
    Yes, absolutely. It's exotic. And there are Americans who consume lesser amounts of the stereotypical American culture than do outsiders. Or, they consume only the select parts of the American culture that are local, insular and not that widely known outside.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.
     
    It's captivating to imagine how their culture was, however, in the case of the Ancient Greek and Rome, it is also the universality of ideas and the classical beauty ideals that are appealing.

    I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn’t exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.
     
    Yes, it is the same with me, I have loved America since a young age, but as to the American worldview, some views resonate with me, some don't. What's funny is that you meet a lot of Americans who are that way, too! They'd say stuff like "This country was built on violence".

    You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.
     
    There are healthy and hot people in America, especially in parts of Mountain West and Inland NorthWest. As to Channing Tatum, I was referring more to his phenotype, the upper face looks very "Atlantic", that's how I imagine the heritage American ideal. With somewhat prominent eyebrows, another example would be Matt Dillon (who is Scottish, Irish, German). I'd say that look is definitely more British than Central European or even Scandinavian.

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.
     
    They're very German, but heritage Americans are more British. It's a different look.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child
     
    How would you even define American culture? Even if one thinks that the foundations from colonial America are still operative in some way, there's this Albion's seed thesis about four vastly different (and in some ways opposed) regional cultures, so which one do you love? And if those roots from early America don't play a role today anymore (as I suspect they might, and in any case they are now being systematically denigrated, in the fight against "white supremacy"), what is American culture today in your opinion? I mean, sure, I guess there's the stereotype of a conservative redneck who drives a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle. But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism coupled with a cult of democracy (even though the common man is in reality rather powerless against the power of oligarchs and lobbyists) and shallow consumerism.
    I know those are to some extent stereotypes, and unfortunately you can now make similar points about many European countries as well, but still, what do you think of when you write about "American culture"?

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.
     
    They don't look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains). Since they're students at BYU, I suppose they're Mormons, and aren't Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
    The stereotype about Germans being blond and blue-eyed is also only partially correct anyway, there are many ethnic Germans without any known immigrant background who don't look like that at all (especially in southern Germany).

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry

  857. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Well I can't answer for AaronB, but his views have over the years sounded often like the ones of the American Transcendentalism views.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

    Although I believe Walden will sound too extreme as a solution for him.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon

    I give AaronB more credit than Thoreau:

    His mother famously helped him out with laundry and food over the two years, and he had guests over regularly. And the land itself was not the rugged frontier. “In reality,” writes Kathryn Schulz in the New Yorker, “Walden Pond in 1845 was scarcely more off the grid, relative to contemporaneous society, than Prospect Park is today. The commuter train to Boston ran along its southwest side; in summer the place swarmed with picnickers and swimmers, while in winter it was frequented by ice cutters and skaters.” She adds that it would take Thoreau but twenty minutes to walk from his cabin to his family home, were we to confuse the writer with Robinson Crusoe.

    • LOL: Dmitry, AaronB
  858. @Beckow
    @Yellowface Anon

    What "can" be done, often isn't done. Trump - or most anti-globalist populists - don't seem to realize the stakes they are playing for. This is not going to change with a few tax adjustments or better border paperwork, this is for all marbles.

    The globalist oligarchs made billions displacing workers in their home countries, shifting everything they could to China (and other places) and importing cheap labor. It has been a goldmine. When Trump and similar challenges appeared they panicked and closed ranks - they want to keep it as it is. If it means large population shifts and displacement, or "elections" become a virtual make-believe show, opinions are censored, whatever it takes...their control of institutions and plenty of money makes this into an uneven fight. Not understanding the stakes and holding back, and not be willing to "buy" peoples' support via social policies is a crippling error.

    Replies: @A123

    The globalist oligarchs made billions displacing workers in their home countries, shifting everything they could to China (and other places) and importing cheap labor. It has been a goldmine. When Trump and similar challenges appeared they panicked and closed ranks – they want to keep it as it is.

    Calling “the great game” permanently closed underestimates the ambition of those who are fighting their way up in the system. MAGA Reindustrialization offers all sorts of business upside to those willing to support it.

    Sun Tzu. 78. “When you surround an army, leave an outlet free.

    It took decades to dig the hole. It will take decades to fill it back in. There is no need to back all of the Globalist Oligarchs into a corner simultaneously. Everything cannot be reindustrialized simultaneously.

    Some of the Elites can be co-opted. Building semiconductor fabrication in the U.S. will generate revenue for tech companies. Building new assembly lines will require more U.S. made steel and other heavy materials. Developing reliable energy for the U.S. will reinvigorate existing hydrocarbon industry firms.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  859. @Dmitry
    @LatW


    Americans have very niche tastes
     
    In my post, I mean to write that - "Americans export a lot of their culture, but it doesn't mean that the non-Americans who consume American culture are as close mentally to Americans as Americans might imagine".

    ^ It's kind of complicated sentence, so I guess I messed it.

    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.

    America can export its Levis, Coca Cola, MacDonald's, Jazz music, cowboy films, shopping malls, etc. But the consumers of this culture, will still likely encounter the American mentality as very distinctive and unusual from their own.

    We can enjoy foreign cultures (often more than our culture), partly because it gives us fresh and innovative perspectives.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.

    Cross-cultural communication is like a bridge that is established. So now among the Generation Z people, there is a nowadays wide taste for Japanese culture, and there are Japanese influences flowing over them. But developing taste for manga is not exactly going to flip most Italians and Brazilians into introverts; neither the Japanese interest in Italian fashion, make will make most Japanese people into extroverts.

    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn't exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.


    Americans are quite insular
     
    Yes, and they often seem to think people America are more like Americans, than they are.

    I want to see what happens with this messianic American Jewish Orthodox nationalist man's campaign to make Israelis stop throwing litter on the street (spoiler - it will fail). If you ask Middle Eastern people like Israelis about why they throw litter on the street, they would probably say "to feed the cockroaches".


    Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very “American” there, he’s ethnically English

     

    I only know him from the masterpiece film - "21 Jump Street".

    But he reminds us that many Americans, are also much more fans of lifting weights, rather than other sports. As a result, young people have a kind of much wider appearance. You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.


    and he’s also talking with an American accent.
     
    And compared to anywhere in Northern Europe, Americans are usually incredibly expressive when they speak. But perhaps if he trying to be a Roman, this will match.

    (he doesn’t really look either Nordic or Central European
     
    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of "Germans" though. Although I'm sure German Reader will consider me an idiot for saying this.

    If I sampled from a video of American students. If you turned off sound, the girl at 0:28 and the man at 0:32 both look "German" to my stereotypes? for the little my stereotypes are worth. But the culture of the people is so different.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkEQ_LFjvVE

    Replies: @LatW, @German_reader

    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.

    Yes, absolutely. It’s exotic. And there are Americans who consume lesser amounts of the stereotypical American culture than do outsiders. Or, they consume only the select parts of the American culture that are local, insular and not that widely known outside.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.

    It’s captivating to imagine how their culture was, however, in the case of the Ancient Greek and Rome, it is also the universality of ideas and the classical beauty ideals that are appealing.

    I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn’t exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.

    Yes, it is the same with me, I have loved America since a young age, but as to the American worldview, some views resonate with me, some don’t. What’s funny is that you meet a lot of Americans who are that way, too! They’d say stuff like “This country was built on violence”.

    You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.

    There are healthy and hot people in America, especially in parts of Mountain West and Inland NorthWest. As to Channing Tatum, I was referring more to his phenotype, the upper face looks very “Atlantic”, that’s how I imagine the heritage American ideal. With somewhat prominent eyebrows, another example would be Matt Dillon (who is Scottish, Irish, German). I’d say that look is definitely more British than Central European or even Scandinavian.

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.

    They’re very German, but heritage Americans are more British. It’s a different look.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @LatW


    Channing Tatum... American ideal

     

    Well in (to return to this masterpiece of sociology) "21 Jump Street" - the joke is that he conforms too much to the visual stereotype of "athletic American jock". While Jonah Hill - the visual stereotype of "nerdy American loser". I think in the sequel one of the jokes is that nobody can understand how someone who looks like him can even be friends with someone who looks like Jonah Hill, and this threatens to expose their undercover police work.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSa368X1Z2w

    Americans who consume lesser amounts of the stereotypical American culture than do outsiders
     
    Yes a lot of Americans (excluding those which go to "band camp") don't like things like jazz, or even classic American literature. (By the late 20th century, some of the funding and digitization for classic jazz is only because of the Japanese fans have been demanding it, or remastering the albums.)

    There was a very talented American pop music singer Eva Cassidy, who only became famous years after she died, after music fans in the UK discovered her recording.

    Sometimes foreigners understand your cultural treasures, better than the locals. And that's one of the advantages for Americans in exporting their culture everywhere - the foreigners can help to filter and critique for them.

    Replies: @LatW

  860. 😁Weekly Open Thread Humor😂

    Not gone yet so….. Additional below [MORE]

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

     

     
    ________

    How to scare children on Halloween!
     

    [MORE]

     

     

  861. @Mikel
    @Yellowface Anon


    It isn’t a prediction, it might be a roadplan.
     
    They did make some specific projections under various scenarios and they all turned out to be dead wrong. Suffice to say that under their most optimistic scenario, we would have run out of oil next year and, under the most pessimistic one, by the year 2003.

    The Skeptical Environmentalist by Lomborg has a good rundown of all these gloomy predictions that we have been hearing over the years. I used to be a radical environmentalist in the 80s, by the way, and in a certain sense I still am, but I've seen enough failed predictions to take certain things seriously anymore.

    As for the rest, I'm not really seeing any big return to homesteading or anything of the like in the US. Certainly nothing like the back-to-the-land movement of the 70s-80s that did draw many people to hippie communes and other alternative lifestyles. But even that did not produce the widespread labor shortage that we're seeing now. Instead, the 70s and 80s were times of high unemployment in the West.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    They did make some specific projections under various scenarios and they all turned out to be dead wrong. Suffice to say that under their most optimistic scenario, we would have run out of oil next year and, under the most pessimistic one, by the year 2003.

    It’s right. But those are as much “projections” as statement of faith.

    As for the rest, I’m not really seeing any big return to homesteading or anything of the like in the US. Certainly nothing like the back-to-the-land movement of the 70s-80s that did draw many people to hippie communes and other alternative lifestyles.

    I just saw an email newsletter from Gab that says “The Fifth Great Awakening”. This means the whole COVID agenda has changed realities enough for a significant chunk of Americans to buy into this. Granted Gab remains a relatively marginal platform, but it has definitely grown and embraced by much of the right since the start of 2021.

    Homesteading would be one of the lifestyles that this shift suggests, in addition to agorism (i.e. informalization of work) or community support. Those would be more of an adaption to such makeshift labor laws that disqualify employment based on personal convictions and ideology (as provaxx-antivaxx struggle has become).

    But even that did not produce the widespread labor shortage that we’re seeing now. Instead, the 70s and 80s were times of high unemployment in the West.

    70s & 80s unemployment occurred without COVID. There was definitely no vaccine mandates that disqualify a chunk of the labor force.

    As I said, I’m not antivaxx since vaccines currently have some benefits (reducing severity & hospitalizations) & some risks (side effects most of which seen in other type of vaccines & some of which is unknown in the long term; leakiness). These can be improved, but render the vaccines unsuitable for black-or-white vaccine mandates which assume vaccines to totally cut transmission & minimizes the death rate. Vaccines mandates as done for COVID also enables a degree of surveillance & micromanagement that was seen only in authoritarian regimes, and it is basically what people going Galt fears. This means I’m anti-mandavaxx – I had all the mandated vaccines in my grade school, and I’m still around ranting about COVID, but no one has ever asked for my childhood vaccination card of these diseases at work or going anywhere, not even during COVID.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    I would suspect one half or even 2/3 of the economy will go informal, the antivaxxers pulling those who are apathetic into informal markets, and it means small-scale production. This was one of the outcomes that destroyed much of Soviet Union's industries, the shift from large-scale to small-scale industries & services with all the lost value.

    The world will look like a global rust belt in 2030, with most interesting things happening outside of those formal edifices abandoned after 2020 or 2021. Poorer as in the tail-end of the Limits to Growth projections. We'll catch up the "gap" in a few year with vaccine mandates & passports.

  862. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Well I can't answer for AaronB, but his views have over the years sounded often like the ones of the American Transcendentalism views.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcendentalism

    Although I believe Walden will sound too extreme as a solution for him.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walden

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon

    He sounds Taoist at times but this seems to me the closet to the most idealistic reading of the Tao Te Ching (ch. 80 – 小國寡民). But that had never been realistic, not in 2 millenia of the Chinese Empire.

  863. @Yellowface Anon
    @Mikel


    They did make some specific projections under various scenarios and they all turned out to be dead wrong. Suffice to say that under their most optimistic scenario, we would have run out of oil next year and, under the most pessimistic one, by the year 2003.
     
    It's right. But those are as much "projections" as statement of faith.

    As for the rest, I’m not really seeing any big return to homesteading or anything of the like in the US. Certainly nothing like the back-to-the-land movement of the 70s-80s that did draw many people to hippie communes and other alternative lifestyles.
     
    I just saw an email newsletter from Gab that says "The Fifth Great Awakening". This means the whole COVID agenda has changed realities enough for a significant chunk of Americans to buy into this. Granted Gab remains a relatively marginal platform, but it has definitely grown and embraced by much of the right since the start of 2021.

    Homesteading would be one of the lifestyles that this shift suggests, in addition to agorism (i.e. informalization of work) or community support. Those would be more of an adaption to such makeshift labor laws that disqualify employment based on personal convictions and ideology (as provaxx-antivaxx struggle has become).

    But even that did not produce the widespread labor shortage that we’re seeing now. Instead, the 70s and 80s were times of high unemployment in the West.
     
    70s & 80s unemployment occurred without COVID. There was definitely no vaccine mandates that disqualify a chunk of the labor force.

    As I said, I'm not antivaxx since vaccines currently have some benefits (reducing severity & hospitalizations) & some risks (side effects most of which seen in other type of vaccines & some of which is unknown in the long term; leakiness). These can be improved, but render the vaccines unsuitable for black-or-white vaccine mandates which assume vaccines to totally cut transmission & minimizes the death rate. Vaccines mandates as done for COVID also enables a degree of surveillance & micromanagement that was seen only in authoritarian regimes, and it is basically what people going Galt fears. This means I'm anti-mandavaxx - I had all the mandated vaccines in my grade school, and I'm still around ranting about COVID, but no one has ever asked for my childhood vaccination card of these diseases at work or going anywhere, not even during COVID.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    I would suspect one half or even 2/3 of the economy will go informal, the antivaxxers pulling those who are apathetic into informal markets, and it means small-scale production. This was one of the outcomes that destroyed much of Soviet Union’s industries, the shift from large-scale to small-scale industries & services with all the lost value.

    The world will look like a global rust belt in 2030, with most interesting things happening outside of those formal edifices abandoned after 2020 or 2021. Poorer as in the tail-end of the Limits to Growth projections. We’ll catch up the “gap” in a few year with vaccine mandates & passports.

  864. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart


    I mean this rot is in issue in the whole Western world. Some exceptions would be William Pierce and his British…equivalent?(if that’s a proper word to use.. Powell was a statesman after all not some nobody) were out of how many? Hundreds of millions of Westerners?
     


    tbh Pierce seems somewhat unhinged to me, something like the Turner diaries (which advocates a global genocide of all non-whites) is so extreme I don't quite know what to make of it. Might be the twisted mirror image of the pretensions to global hegemony which seem to come so naturally to many Americans. Powell's world view was a much more traditional and rational one, which imo only looks extreme if one thinks nations (at least European ones) are an illegitimate concept per se.
    But anyway, of course you're right that large percentages of Westerners today are fervent believers in multiculturalism and mass immigration, and I'd agree that Britain is one of the worse examples for this in Europe (maybe on the same level as Sweden and West Germany). But it's a historically fairly recent development. During my father's childhood and youth in Lancashire in the 1950s and 1960s it was an almost monoethnic environment (apart from some other white Europeans, like Poles and Balts who had fled from the Soviets; there also were already some colored immigrants, but they were clearly regarded as foreign and resented in a way the Eastern Europeans weren't), with a strong sense of British (or maybe rather English) nationhood. This sceptred isle, and all that. And it most definitely wasn't a racially inclusive concept of nationhood.
    There was also less personal experience of the empire than one could imagine, none of my relatives from the mid-19th century onwards had any experience of it, and as far as I can tell the same seems to be true for the families of all my father's friends and acquaintances. Regarding America, there was intense resentment of the US in post-war Britain. My English grandfather didn't like the Americans he encountered during WW2, he thought them arrogant and condescending, and there was a lot of envy of the material abundance the Americans enjoyed (and which they flaunted), while Britain was on food rationing until the early 1950s. And after WW2 there was a widespread sentiment that the US was intent on humiliating Britain and dismantling her great power status. Now on a surface level at least much of that criticism was probably unfair, given American assistance (though on a deeper level it probably wasn't incorrect). But that kind of sentiments wasn't uncommon, and obviously complicates any interpretation founded on natural convergence of British and American interests.
    Of course that's all somewhat anecdotal and probably not the whole story, but I find it difficult to reconcile the experiences of my father (or of his friends still living in England, most of whose horizons are basically limited to northwestern Europe) with all those notions of "global Britain" and shared destiny with the US, which seems a bit like a manufactured narrative to me and probably doesn't reflect the genuine wishes of a majority of Brexit voters.

    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us
     
    I can see how Ukraine's position is very difficult. Personally I think it would be best if some kind of mutually acceptable agreement between Ukraine and Russia could be reached, but obviously that seems hardly possible when many Russians don't even accept that Ukraine is a separate nation. So I guess you'll have to try to exploit Westerners to your advantage, while keeping their nation-wrecking ideology at bay. We'll see if that's possible.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry, @Svidomyatheart

    tbh I used Pierce(as extreme as he was) because I couldn’t think of any other American and my English is quite rudimentary so sometimes its hard to lay out my thoughts .

    Ofc he comes off as unhinged but America was 90% white and dropped to 50%ish during his lifetime too maybe that immerse transformation may have affected him psychologically?
    possibly all the diversity had gotten to him maybe?

    So but instead of Central Asians US is focusing on Africans.

    They are not doing anything differently from the USSR when it was going through and destroying all kinds of talented people and commoners just to “educate and equalize” Central Asian tribesemen and other minorities(ofc it was all a fluke and a fail).

    Of course later on for unbeknownst reasons?(Russia has all the keys in the archives but we will probably never have access to those) Stalin turned on quite lot of them(unsure if that was due to revolts and danger of secession or need to industrialize(but there was no Hitler at that time unless Soviet intelligence services were god tier 666 psychic fortunetellers and knew Hitler was going to get elected and lead to WW2 or something else).

    The other issue once again im probably repeating myself but most actually support these ideas unlike a lot of citizens of the USSR(but i guess a lot of idiots also supported USSR in its initial stages before the mass bloodletting and repressions happened and it became much more clear)

  865. @Mr. Hack
    @Svidomyatheart

    Fortunately, most Ukrainian families that are rearing children don't have the time, nor the desire to read what's on the US State Department's website. Do you currently live in Ukraine, what part? Do you think that your pronounced angst towards Russians is characteristic of most Ukrainians in your area? It wasn't always so, and in the not too distant past, most Ukrainians held pretty positive feelings towards their neighbors...

    Replies: @Svidomyatheart, @Svidomyatheart

    Yeah I think we’re preoccupied about the real fight in the East which overrides everything else and makes it secondary. (pehaps too busy? while all kinds of enemies and vultures circle by).

    I still dont think anything will come out of that propaganda though but the trends are unsettling as more and more will be pushed forth. Even in the most distant parts of the world like Iraq or Syria and Afghanistan (lol) you have people from there putting pronouns and BLM on their twitter handle .

    And what is there to like about Russians? They’re like the Turks who want to kill and destroy. What if they come into your home?

    You see Finalnd did mostly OK with Finlandization, Even now if NATO somehow magically imploded Russia would be offering Poland Finlandization and autonomy but nothing for us. Russia seems to have accepted that Poland, the Baltic states, Czech and Slovak republics are now aligned with the West but they have other plans for us.

    It wasnt always so because I figured they’d back they have plenty of land. Live and let live and al lthat

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I dont know? say Ivan Ilyin’s about how we’re always supposed to be chained ot them?? Like this one?

    Малороссия и Великороссия связаны воедино верой, племенем, исторической судьбой, географическим положением, хозяйством, культурой и политикой

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Svidomyatheart


    Малороссия и Великороссия связаны воедино верой, племенем, исторической судьбой, географическим положением, хозяйством, культурой и политикой”
     
    Well, as painful as it may be for you to admit, there's more than a little truth in what Ivan Ilyin states. It's been my hopes for a while now, that the relationship between Ukraine and Russia could evolve into something like the one the Scandinavians enjoy. Similar languages, shared history and borders, religion etc; and yet each country is allowed to have its own inviable borders and develop its own culture and language. I realize that I'm probably being naïve in hoping that something like this is possible.
    , @LatW
    @Svidomyatheart


    Finland did mostly OK with Finlandization
     
    Finland recently published a new defense white paper. In brief, it calls for strengthening of the territorial forces and a general increase in troops. It talks about Russia very explicitly. Remember that they also have conscription.

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I don't know? say Ivan Ilyin’s about how we’re always supposed to be chained to them
     
    And do what (besides the current stuff which is, admittedly, awful enough)? Right now, his options are actually quite limited (not sure about 20-30-50 years from now). He can't move further because then the whole world will see it for what it is. Help the rebels more? Sure. But then the new drones will fly in -- the Ukrainians just started using them. This talk about how "we don't acknowledge the illegal regime and we'll be talking to the real Ukrainians who will eventually overthrow it" is completely futile. That won't happen anymore. In the meanwhile, Ukrainization is proceeding.

    And btw, recently there's a new meme going around... mostly voiced by Arestovich. That if Russia were to start a full fledged invasion of Ukraine, it would be so devastating, that it could even partially cripple the Russian army and thus create a huge security risk for Russia and that the generalshtab apparently knows this. Granted, one can call BS on what Arestovich says, but still...

    Replies: @Beckow

  866. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/spike-in-energy-prices-suggests-that-sharp-changes-are-ahead.html

    This is actually a structural analysis of energy & the complexity of the economy, that reaches the conclusion of “doomerism”.

    Interesting observation:

    Also, the world’s reaction to the pandemic acted, in many ways, like oil rationing…

  867. @Svidomyatheart
    @Mr. Hack

    Yeah I think we're preoccupied about the real fight in the East which overrides everything else and makes it secondary. (pehaps too busy? while all kinds of enemies and vultures circle by).

    I still dont think anything will come out of that propaganda though but the trends are unsettling as more and more will be pushed forth. Even in the most distant parts of the world like Iraq or Syria and Afghanistan (lol) you have people from there putting pronouns and BLM on their twitter handle .

    And what is there to like about Russians? They're like the Turks who want to kill and destroy. What if they come into your home?

    You see Finalnd did mostly OK with Finlandization, Even now if NATO somehow magically imploded Russia would be offering Poland Finlandization and autonomy but nothing for us. Russia seems to have accepted that Poland, the Baltic states, Czech and Slovak republics are now aligned with the West but they have other plans for us.

    It wasnt always so because I figured they'd back they have plenty of land. Live and let live and al lthat

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I dont know? say Ivan Ilyin's about how we're always supposed to be chained ot them?? Like this one?

    "Малороссия и Великороссия связаны воедино верой, племенем, исторической судьбой, географическим положением, хозяйством, культурой и политикой"

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @LatW

    Малороссия и Великороссия связаны воедино верой, племенем, исторической судьбой, географическим положением, хозяйством, культурой и политикой”

    Well, as painful as it may be for you to admit, there’s more than a little truth in what Ivan Ilyin states. It’s been my hopes for a while now, that the relationship between Ukraine and Russia could evolve into something like the one the Scandinavians enjoy. Similar languages, shared history and borders, religion etc; and yet each country is allowed to have its own inviable borders and develop its own culture and language. I realize that I’m probably being naïve in hoping that something like this is possible.

  868. @Beckow
    @LatW

    I like that saying by Confucius...greed has its place, but elderly greed is both pointless and deeply immoral. I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US...that cannot be good for anybody.

    I would say that "heterosexual man in his 40-50s" should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to "traditional" family. Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It's fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don't).

    Replies: @LatW, @Mr. Hack

    Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It’s fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don’t).

    • Agree: AP

    How in the world would you try and implement your “perfect recipe for a successful politician” in the world today? A simple litmus test? Besides, the whole concept is skewed way off. What makes you think that a married politician who has a family with children would make better political decisions than one without? Here in the US the percentage of dysfunctional families is immense. Not so in Slovakia? Yours is a naïve pie in the sky concept with no actual facts to sustain it. Relax, not all singles are overweight hedonists!

    Perhaps Mr. Bundy is the perfect married specimen that you have in mind? After all he’s “married with children”. 🙂

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    It seems like I hit a sore spot....single, overweight, hedonist? Let's see, I am guessing you are only 2 out 3...and who is the toothy guy? why should I care?

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn't invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?

    Same can be done with taxes, business, etc...the people who choose to live separate lives - outside of the normal flow of a multi-generational society will be treated as such. That was the way it used to be for thousands of years, it has only changed in the last 1-2 generations. The "socialism", that you like to deride so much, unfortunately also make the free-loading easier. We can fix that.

    What is "dysfunctional" is not to have a family. Families don't always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative. Maybe you should try harder. (There are quite a few marriageable Ukie girls around, running away from the Maidan fiasco, too many dropping their moral standards, maybe you can try save at least one of them?)

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  869. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @LatW


    Americans have very niche tastes
     
    In my post, I mean to write that - "Americans export a lot of their culture, but it doesn't mean that the non-Americans who consume American culture are as close mentally to Americans as Americans might imagine".

    ^ It's kind of complicated sentence, so I guess I messed it.

    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.

    America can export its Levis, Coca Cola, MacDonald's, Jazz music, cowboy films, shopping malls, etc. But the consumers of this culture, will still likely encounter the American mentality as very distinctive and unusual from their own.

    We can enjoy foreign cultures (often more than our culture), partly because it gives us fresh and innovative perspectives.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.

    Cross-cultural communication is like a bridge that is established. So now among the Generation Z people, there is a nowadays wide taste for Japanese culture, and there are Japanese influences flowing over them. But developing taste for manga is not exactly going to flip most Italians and Brazilians into introverts; neither the Japanese interest in Italian fashion, make will make most Japanese people into extroverts.

    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn't exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.


    Americans are quite insular
     
    Yes, and they often seem to think people America are more like Americans, than they are.

    I want to see what happens with this messianic American Jewish Orthodox nationalist man's campaign to make Israelis stop throwing litter on the street (spoiler - it will fail). If you ask Middle Eastern people like Israelis about why they throw litter on the street, they would probably say "to feed the cockroaches".


    Channing Tatum in the movie The Eagle. He just seems very “American” there, he’s ethnically English

     

    I only know him from the masterpiece film - "21 Jump Street".

    But he reminds us that many Americans, are also much more fans of lifting weights, rather than other sports. As a result, young people have a kind of much wider appearance. You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.


    and he’s also talking with an American accent.
     
    And compared to anywhere in Northern Europe, Americans are usually incredibly expressive when they speak. But perhaps if he trying to be a Roman, this will match.

    (he doesn’t really look either Nordic or Central European
     
    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of "Germans" though. Although I'm sure German Reader will consider me an idiot for saying this.

    If I sampled from a video of American students. If you turned off sound, the girl at 0:28 and the man at 0:32 both look "German" to my stereotypes? for the little my stereotypes are worth. But the culture of the people is so different.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkEQ_LFjvVE

    Replies: @LatW, @German_reader

    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child

    How would you even define American culture? Even if one thinks that the foundations from colonial America are still operative in some way, there’s this Albion’s seed thesis about four vastly different (and in some ways opposed) regional cultures, so which one do you love? And if those roots from early America don’t play a role today anymore (as I suspect they might, and in any case they are now being systematically denigrated, in the fight against “white supremacy”), what is American culture today in your opinion? I mean, sure, I guess there’s the stereotype of a conservative redneck who drives a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle. But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism coupled with a cult of democracy (even though the common man is in reality rather powerless against the power of oligarchs and lobbyists) and shallow consumerism.
    I know those are to some extent stereotypes, and unfortunately you can now make similar points about many European countries as well, but still, what do you think of when you write about “American culture”?

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.

    They don’t look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains). Since they’re students at BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons, and aren’t Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
    The stereotype about Germans being blond and blue-eyed is also only partially correct anyway, there are many ethnic Germans without any known immigrant background who don’t look like that at all (especially in southern Germany).

    • Agree: Mikhail
    • Replies: @AP
    @German_reader


    But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism
     
    About 40% (at least) of Americans, "native" ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies. Just as Bolsheviks, while trying to conquer other nations, were also struggling against their own interior also.

    They don’t look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains).
     
    The "standard" non-ethnic American is basically a combination of English, Scottish and totally assimilated German (I think Germany contributed slightly more ancestry to America's mix than has England, but not as much as England plus Scotland). As a result he or she will look vaguely northern European without resembling a German or Englishman specifically.

    Since they’re students at BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons, and aren’t Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
     
    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock. Utah is very proud of its Shakespeare festival:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Shakespeare_Festival

    They have recreated the Globe theater there.

    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.

    Replies: @AP, @German_reader, @Mikel

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    define American culture
     
    I guess I mean more like American literature, American music and American visual culture.

    There is also a wider sense of culture in sense of urban design, clothing, business culture, legal system, politics, food, consumer products.

    I don't mean I'm unreserved fanboy of American culture in terms of its political and legal oppressions, and self-centred transportation methods, but more in the former (narrow sense) of the specific cultural production.

    Even where they have been comparatively weak - American painting, philosophy, or classical music, is very interesting. I'm not going to say I am supporter of Andy Warhol.


    a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle
     
    It's the most alien to European culture in the American culture, and exciting for that reason.

    There is libertarian or self-reliance aspect of "crawfish brawl" and protecting yourself with a gun, which Emerson and Thoreau would approve of.

    But then (as boring people in Europe will say) there is the contribution to wider problems when everyone wants to have a large pickup truck, use endless petroleum and energy, and be "self-reliant", and not go on a bus - there is loss of public sphere. The cities become spaces in more and more distant ways, the roads become wider.

    It includes a vision of being an unusually spiky version of Schopenhauer's hedgehogs, and there is certainly something a little misanthropic there (although it matches conveniently well to the free-market ideologies).


    multiculturalist globalism
     
    I would say the opposite, although the country has quite a lot of internal homogenization, and the people are internally displacing themselves moving from city to city.

    One of the features of American culture is insularity and provincialism, in relation to other cultures. Perhaps this will be changing slowly with the exposure to the internet and access to foreign visual cultures in netflix, or the fact Hollywood now makes films for primarily the Chinese audiences.

    Still, it is not just that they use their own system for measuring distances or weighing things, or they refuse to learn another language - but it's also the only country I've visited where people like waitresses seemed like they couldn't understand my English. Lol this is despite the fact I speak basically perfect English, with the certified highest rating in the Common European Framework - I cannot communicate with American waitresses.

    Also if you drive about 20 kilometres away from the coast, it feels like you are entering somekind of 1970s America.

    And they have to do almost everything in their own unique way. Even the street paraphernalia is all badly designed and far too large, but perfect matches American peoples' visual culture.

    -

    20th century American culture has a lot of aspects where they say "behave like a teenager all your life".

    So the moment they learn everyone can slide around in automobiles (and that it would be profitable for the oligarchs to build one for everyone) by the middle of the 20th century, somehow they allow building cities like the whole world was a drive-through, and that human ambulation was a ruin of history. It reminds of a child who has to carry their favourite new toy everywhere.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZbqFzvptU


    BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons
     
    Yes lol I was watching videos on YouTube of BYU, because I was a little interested in the Mormons. I think I'm not the only one here who was surprised and interested when they discovered the existence of these people.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  870. I hope that Japanese plans to increase military spending are really just a preliminary to kicking the US out, and then banning rap and jazz.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird


    Japanese plans to increase military spending are really just a preliminary to kicking the US out
     
    It's about containing China, CHAYNA, CHEENA!!!

    banning rap and jazz
     
    They are BANNING this pedo trash and getting rid of all those degen otakus who are fans of them:

    https://www.lovelive-anime.jp/yuigaoka/live/sp_1stlive/
    https://ib.eplus.jp/superstar1st-go_ol
    https://i.imgur.com/KIXvI1V.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

    , @iffen
    @songbird

    just a preliminary to kicking the US out

    I don't think that will be what they want.

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

  871. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child
     
    How would you even define American culture? Even if one thinks that the foundations from colonial America are still operative in some way, there's this Albion's seed thesis about four vastly different (and in some ways opposed) regional cultures, so which one do you love? And if those roots from early America don't play a role today anymore (as I suspect they might, and in any case they are now being systematically denigrated, in the fight against "white supremacy"), what is American culture today in your opinion? I mean, sure, I guess there's the stereotype of a conservative redneck who drives a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle. But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism coupled with a cult of democracy (even though the common man is in reality rather powerless against the power of oligarchs and lobbyists) and shallow consumerism.
    I know those are to some extent stereotypes, and unfortunately you can now make similar points about many European countries as well, but still, what do you think of when you write about "American culture"?

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.
     
    They don't look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains). Since they're students at BYU, I suppose they're Mormons, and aren't Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
    The stereotype about Germans being blond and blue-eyed is also only partially correct anyway, there are many ethnic Germans without any known immigrant background who don't look like that at all (especially in southern Germany).

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry

    But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism

    About 40% (at least) of Americans, “native” ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies. Just as Bolsheviks, while trying to conquer other nations, were also struggling against their own interior also.

    They don’t look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains).

    The “standard” non-ethnic American is basically a combination of English, Scottish and totally assimilated German (I think Germany contributed slightly more ancestry to America’s mix than has England, but not as much as England plus Scotland). As a result he or she will look vaguely northern European without resembling a German or Englishman specifically.

    Since they’re students at BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons, and aren’t Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?

    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock. Utah is very proud of its Shakespeare festival:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Shakespeare_Festival

    They have recreated the Globe theater there.

    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.

    • Replies: @AP
    @AP


    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock.
     
    Map of highest ancestry, by county in the USA:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg/1280px-Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

    Utah and neighboring Mormon-settled parts of Idaho and Nevada are an island of Englishness, more so even than New England, whose southern parts had been flooded by Italians and Irish. These are the best-managed parts of the USA.

    On the map, "American" is probably Scotch-Irish.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard

    , @German_reader
    @AP


    About 40% (at least) of Americans, “native” ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies.
     
    I'm aware of that, and similar divisions exist within many European countries as well (as Coconuts has explained regarding the contrast between "somewheres" and "anywheres" in Britain; similar dynamics are at play in Germany, reinforced by the split between West and East Germany). Obviously I'm more on the side of the "native" Americans who object to the denigration of their way of life and the permanent cultural revolution that is being imposed on them. I just think it's regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult (as if an NY con man really were their champion). Far too many of them also still support military action abroad. This unthinking jingoism imo indicates that they haven't quite internalized the reality of their own status (i.e. that the American state isn't theirs anymore and that American elites are a far greater threat to them than any Arab or Iranian could ever be).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @iffen

    , @Mikel
    @AP


    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.
     
    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don't drink alcohol but I don't think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons. Probably the contrary is the case. Mormons (including many non-observant ones) spend every single Sunday gathered with their immediate or extended families, mostly indoors after church, and eating hearty meals. Obesity is quite common.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there's hardly any people of English-only origins. After the initial settlement from New England they brought large amounts of Mormon converts from Britain, Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland. There are Swiss and Scandinavian festivals in different towns, neighborhoods called Little Denmark, Swiss style villages in the mountains settled by contingents of Swiss, there's even a few Icelandic speakers somewhere in Northern Utah, not sure how they arrived there.

    After the initial Mormon settlement many other groups from all over the US came as well. There is also a Greek festival in Salt Lake City, an Indian (South Asian) one in Utah County, even a small community of Basques in the SLC area. The last SLC mayor's last name was Biskupski (Polish) and the current one's is Mendenhall (German, Scandi?). Plenty of Irish too and of course lots of Latinos.

    On top of that, there is now a constant influx of outsiders (American and foreign) attracted by the booming economy in Utah. Californians, in particular, are fueling a big housing crisis.

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They'll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry. Although I spent a month in a rural location of Northern Iowa as a teenager and it's difficult to say after such a long time but I think there were more blonds over there. Most everybody was of Scandinavian or German origins.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God. And the other part is socio-religious: get married early in order to have many kids. Even though Mormon religion strongly encourages modest dressing and you find "modest dressing stores" at the malls, it is quite remarkable how women, especially the young ones, dress up for church. It really looks as if they were going to a party. Guys also wear impeccable suits for the church services.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are "much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself". Perhaps in general that's true. But I happen to think that British women are the prettiest in Europe. Lots of Dolores O'Riordan type of faces on the British Islands:

    https://youtu.be/Yam5uK6e-bQ

    Replies: @AP

  872. @songbird
    I hope that Japanese plans to increase military spending are really just a preliminary to kicking the US out, and then banning rap and jazz.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @iffen

    Japanese plans to increase military spending are really just a preliminary to kicking the US out

    It’s about containing China, CHAYNA, CHEENA!!!

    banning rap and jazz

    They are BANNING this pedo trash and getting rid of all those degen otakus who are fans of them:

    https://www.lovelive-anime.jp/yuigaoka/live/sp_1stlive/
    https://ib.eplus.jp/superstar1st-go_ol

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    I think that, because Japanese are very neotonous (maybe, the most in the world?), and so for example, older women who may be infertile don't look very old, that that pushes the Japanese ideal of beauty down on an evolutionary level to people who look, or are, even younger.

    Obviously, this has some unfortunate aspects on the extreme end, though I think in totality, as a trend (leaving off the obscene stuff), it is slightly overestimated as an evil. Maybe, I am naive, but I think that part of it is about idealizing innocence, so, for example, a younger character, in juxtaposition to older characters of the same sex, is meant to represent the universal (or nonsexual) aspect of innocence in them, not matter their age. Something that might be necessary, in a way due to the way that anime is often drawn with idealized proportions.

    I also suspect that because the Japanese are more K-selected, they probably appreciate more K-selected traits, such as women with smaller busts, which to a certain extent can be conflated with underage women. (I think I recall hearing Australia or NZ banned porn with small-chested women many years back)

    And I think the Japanese are also a bit more honest, to the point where they can acknowledge that a 16-17 year old girl can be attractive. Where in the West, we play this strange game, where we pretend that anyone is a sicko for thinking so. (Certainly, not how I felt when I was a teenager!) I think it represents our perversely feminist culture, in which we can't make the distinction that you can think someone is beautiful without exploiting them.

    BTW, on a semi-related note, I've been reading this wikipedia article about banned films. It is absolutely fascinating. A few highlights:

    In Western Germany, all copies of Jud Süß were ordered destroyed. It only survived in Eastern Germany, where there is some thought that the Soviets were copying it to send to Arab countries, as part of the regional struggle in the Cold War.

    I also note how many films that were critical of colonialism were banned, at one time. This may help explain why the attack on European identity seemed to manifest so quickly, once colonialism ended. A Turkish film Valley of the Wolves: Palestine (2011) is banned in Germany, for its themes which are seen as anti-Israeli and anti-American. District 9 is banned in Nigeria, for being perceived as racist against Nigerians. Oliver Twist (1948) was originally banned in Israel because of the character of Fagin. The film 300 is banned in Iran! The Soviets banned Star Wars.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_films

  873. @AP
    @German_reader


    But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism
     
    About 40% (at least) of Americans, "native" ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies. Just as Bolsheviks, while trying to conquer other nations, were also struggling against their own interior also.

    They don’t look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains).
     
    The "standard" non-ethnic American is basically a combination of English, Scottish and totally assimilated German (I think Germany contributed slightly more ancestry to America's mix than has England, but not as much as England plus Scotland). As a result he or she will look vaguely northern European without resembling a German or Englishman specifically.

    Since they’re students at BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons, and aren’t Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
     
    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock. Utah is very proud of its Shakespeare festival:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Shakespeare_Festival

    They have recreated the Globe theater there.

    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.

    Replies: @AP, @German_reader, @Mikel

    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock.

    Map of highest ancestry, by county in the USA:

    Utah and neighboring Mormon-settled parts of Idaho and Nevada are an island of Englishness, more so even than New England, whose southern parts had been flooded by Italians and Irish. These are the best-managed parts of the USA.

    On the map, “American” is probably Scotch-Irish.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AP


    Italians and Irish
     
    Are you sure places with them are well-managed? They have shook of the stigma from the 19th century, but I don't know if their competence have improved enough in the meanwhile.
    , @German_reader
    @AP

    iirc there's the argument though that British ancestry is massively underestimated in more recent censuses because it's often seen as boring, and presumably those giving their origin as "American" in the south are mostly of British ancestry too. But Mormons may be of more "recent" (mid 19th century) English origin (iirc many of their ancestors were recruited by Mormon missionaries in England, I believe that was the case with Mitt Romney's ancestors), so maybe they're more aware of that than people whose ancestors came from Britain in colonial times.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AP

    Very interesting map.

    The errors in it are probably huge.

    German American as any coherent group was destroyed by the government + the society + the culture in 1914. All four of my mother's grandparents were German born and immigrated to the United States as adults. The language and everything else except the accent vanished in 1914. They didn't want to get lynched, disappeared, gulag'd &c and they mixed in as inconspicuously as possible. My mother never learned a word of German and my grandparents never spoke it. Not a word.

    So that 23 states colored German descent looks meaningful but I don't believe it means a thing.

    Replies: @AP

  874. @AP
    @AP


    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock.
     
    Map of highest ancestry, by county in the USA:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg/1280px-Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

    Utah and neighboring Mormon-settled parts of Idaho and Nevada are an island of Englishness, more so even than New England, whose southern parts had been flooded by Italians and Irish. These are the best-managed parts of the USA.

    On the map, "American" is probably Scotch-Irish.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Italians and Irish

    Are you sure places with them are well-managed? They have shook of the stigma from the 19th century, but I don’t know if their competence have improved enough in the meanwhile.

  875. German_reader says:
    @AP
    @German_reader


    But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism
     
    About 40% (at least) of Americans, "native" ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies. Just as Bolsheviks, while trying to conquer other nations, were also struggling against their own interior also.

    They don’t look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains).
     
    The "standard" non-ethnic American is basically a combination of English, Scottish and totally assimilated German (I think Germany contributed slightly more ancestry to America's mix than has England, but not as much as England plus Scotland). As a result he or she will look vaguely northern European without resembling a German or Englishman specifically.

    Since they’re students at BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons, and aren’t Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
     
    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock. Utah is very proud of its Shakespeare festival:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Shakespeare_Festival

    They have recreated the Globe theater there.

    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.

    Replies: @AP, @German_reader, @Mikel

    About 40% (at least) of Americans, “native” ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies.

    I’m aware of that, and similar divisions exist within many European countries as well (as Coconuts has explained regarding the contrast between “somewheres” and “anywheres” in Britain; similar dynamics are at play in Germany, reinforced by the split between West and East Germany). Obviously I’m more on the side of the “native” Americans who object to the denigration of their way of life and the permanent cultural revolution that is being imposed on them. I just think it’s regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult (as if an NY con man really were their champion). Far too many of them also still support military action abroad. This unthinking jingoism imo indicates that they haven’t quite internalized the reality of their own status (i.e. that the American state isn’t theirs anymore and that American elites are a far greater threat to them than any Arab or Iranian could ever be).

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @German_reader


    Obviously I’m more on the side of the “native” Americans who object to the denigration of their way of life and the permanent cultural revolution that is being imposed on them.
     
    Native Americans (Amerindians) are mostly gone or assimilated.
    , @iffen
    @German_reader

    I just think it’s regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult

    Peons have to latch onto and try to use whatever is available.

    Replies: @A123

  876. German_reader says:
    @AP
    @AP


    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock.
     
    Map of highest ancestry, by county in the USA:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg/1280px-Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

    Utah and neighboring Mormon-settled parts of Idaho and Nevada are an island of Englishness, more so even than New England, whose southern parts had been flooded by Italians and Irish. These are the best-managed parts of the USA.

    On the map, "American" is probably Scotch-Irish.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard

    iirc there’s the argument though that British ancestry is massively underestimated in more recent censuses because it’s often seen as boring, and presumably those giving their origin as “American” in the south are mostly of British ancestry too. But Mormons may be of more “recent” (mid 19th century) English origin (iirc many of their ancestors were recruited by Mormon missionaries in England, I believe that was the case with Mitt Romney’s ancestors), so maybe they’re more aware of that than people whose ancestors came from Britain in colonial times.

    • Replies: @AP
    @German_reader


    iirc there’s the argument though that British ancestry is massively underestimated in more recent censuses because it’s often seen as boring, and presumably those giving their origin as “American” in the south are mostly of British ancestry too.
     
    Could be, but the Scotch-Irish presence in Appalachia is very large. They self identify as "American" on the map.

    But Mormons may be of more “recent” (mid 19th century) English origin (iirc many of their ancestors were recruited by Mormon missionaries in England, I believe that was the case with Mitt Romney’s ancestors), so maybe they’re more aware of that than people whose ancestors came from Britain in colonial times.
     
    They are both. The original Mormons were from English-settled parts of upstate New York, west of New England. But they actively recruited large numbers of English people in the 19th century. Romney (like many Mormons, I think) has roots from both places. The Romneys converted to Mormonism in England and arrived in the 19th century. However, from another line he is also descended from one of the "witches" executed in Salem Massachusetts in the 17th century:

    https://littlethings.com/lifestyle/rebecca-nurse-salem-witch
  877. @German_reader
    @AaronB


    So in the short term, you will see a hysterical intensification of materialism and control, until it all peaks and then explodes
     
    I'll probably regret asking, but what kind of society do you envision after the "explosion"?

    Replies: @Dmitry, @AaronB

    Nothing so very crazy, don’t worry 🙂

    In a way, my post-materialist society would indeed be in love with the physical world, and thus much more materialistic in a sense.

    For instance, today we build ugly buildings and are completely uninterested in making them beautiful – is that materialism or anti-materialism? In a way we hate the material world.

    What I object to, is our focus on the measurable aspect of things instead of the “quality” aspect of things – the “intangible”.

    Most of what makes life meaningful, is intangible, and a huge reason modern lives are so empty is because we neglect the intangible.

    So again with beauty, the beauty aspect of a building is intangible and cannot be measured, so we ignore it – so we build alienating urban landscapes.

    So, my ideal post-materislist society would be one in which that whole rich intangible side of life that makes living meaningful and fun, would be the focus, and gaining power over physical things, would only be pursued in a limited way – some power is important, but should not be central. We have completely reversed the healthy relationship.

    This would completely shift the focus of human life – instead of growth and power, we would live on the aesthetic and spiritual plane, and instead of dominating nature, we would experience our deep connection to it and it’s beauty.

    The natural world would not be seen as just physical “stuff” we can exploit to our ends, and instead of dominating nature we would build our lives in ways that cooperate with it.

    With the focus on the intangible, the modern sense of “alienation” would disappear, as it is the direct result of focusing on material things and not the connections between them.

    Life would be revolutionized.

    With the focus on the intangible, life would once again in a sense be “enchanted” – it would be the “re-enchantment of the world”, a reversal of the disenchantment needed to gain power over it, and alienate ourselves from it. Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.

    We’d build different cities, live different lives, and think and experience life differently.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @AaronB

    thx, but that's still pretty vague, and imo rather too optimistic about what a collapse of the present economic system would entail.


    Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.
     
    Sounds overly romantic to me. I mean just look at some more backward parts of the world, which still have an enchanted view of the universe and where many people believe in spirits, magical spells and witchcraft, to deal with their existential fears about the world and their precarious dependence on nature. I think the potential consequences of such a world view could be rather shocking to your bourgeois sensibilities.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird, @AaronB

  878. @German_reader
    @AP


    About 40% (at least) of Americans, “native” ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies.
     
    I'm aware of that, and similar divisions exist within many European countries as well (as Coconuts has explained regarding the contrast between "somewheres" and "anywheres" in Britain; similar dynamics are at play in Germany, reinforced by the split between West and East Germany). Obviously I'm more on the side of the "native" Americans who object to the denigration of their way of life and the permanent cultural revolution that is being imposed on them. I just think it's regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult (as if an NY con man really were their champion). Far too many of them also still support military action abroad. This unthinking jingoism imo indicates that they haven't quite internalized the reality of their own status (i.e. that the American state isn't theirs anymore and that American elites are a far greater threat to them than any Arab or Iranian could ever be).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @iffen

    Obviously I’m more on the side of the “native” Americans who object to the denigration of their way of life and the permanent cultural revolution that is being imposed on them.

    Native Americans (Amerindians) are mostly gone or assimilated.

  879. @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird


    Japanese plans to increase military spending are really just a preliminary to kicking the US out
     
    It's about containing China, CHAYNA, CHEENA!!!

    banning rap and jazz
     
    They are BANNING this pedo trash and getting rid of all those degen otakus who are fans of them:

    https://www.lovelive-anime.jp/yuigaoka/live/sp_1stlive/
    https://ib.eplus.jp/superstar1st-go_ol
    https://i.imgur.com/KIXvI1V.jpg

    Replies: @songbird

    I think that, because Japanese are very neotonous (maybe, the most in the world?), and so for example, older women who may be infertile don’t look very old, that that pushes the Japanese ideal of beauty down on an evolutionary level to people who look, or are, even younger.

    [MORE]

    Obviously, this has some unfortunate aspects on the extreme end, though I think in totality, as a trend (leaving off the obscene stuff), it is slightly overestimated as an evil. Maybe, I am naive, but I think that part of it is about idealizing innocence, so, for example, a younger character, in juxtaposition to older characters of the same sex, is meant to represent the universal (or nonsexual) aspect of innocence in them, not matter their age. Something that might be necessary, in a way due to the way that anime is often drawn with idealized proportions.

    I also suspect that because the Japanese are more K-selected, they probably appreciate more K-selected traits, such as women with smaller busts, which to a certain extent can be conflated with underage women. (I think I recall hearing Australia or NZ banned porn with small-chested women many years back)

    And I think the Japanese are also a bit more honest, to the point where they can acknowledge that a 16-17 year old girl can be attractive. Where in the West, we play this strange game, where we pretend that anyone is a sicko for thinking so. (Certainly, not how I felt when I was a teenager!) I think it represents our perversely feminist culture, in which we can’t make the distinction that you can think someone is beautiful without exploiting them.

    BTW, on a semi-related note, I’ve been reading this wikipedia article about banned films. It is absolutely fascinating. A few highlights:

    In Western Germany, all copies of Jud Süß were ordered destroyed. It only survived in Eastern Germany, where there is some thought that the Soviets were copying it to send to Arab countries, as part of the regional struggle in the Cold War.

    I also note how many films that were critical of colonialism were banned, at one time. This may help explain why the attack on European identity seemed to manifest so quickly, once colonialism ended. A Turkish film Valley of the Wolves: Palestine (2011) is banned in Germany, for its themes which are seen as anti-Israeli and anti-American. District 9 is banned in Nigeria, for being perceived as racist against Nigerians. Oliver Twist (1948) was originally banned in Israel because of the character of Fagin. The film 300 is banned in Iran! The Soviets banned Star Wars.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_banned_films

  880. @AP
    @Beckow


    I am describing it as it is today, “likely” future events don’t matter much.
     
    Right now Biden is not in charge. Judging by policy, the one in charge is a young wokeling of some sort.

    (It’s also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy…)
     
    I'm not a fan. I'm just pointing out that the guy is not a demented old person but is rather sharp...

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don’t change things.
     
    Johnson seems to be changing a lot of things.

    Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats – never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite
     
    I wouldn't trust any politician in a democratic system, nor anyone who achieved success in the post-Soviet 1990s. But Poroshenko has gotten lean after losing power:

    https://gdb.rferl.org/C6F3CF77-C940-46DD-959B-ECBFD8B2BFD0_cx16_cy9_cw83_w1200_r1.jpg

    Replies: @Aedib, @Beckow

    Right now Biden is not in charge. Judging by policy, the one in charge is a young wokeling of some sort.

    This sentence remember me Boris Yeltsin managed but younger neoliberal “smart guys ” and Mafiosos. In this subject I completely agree with you.

  881. @LatW
    @Beckow


    I like that saying by Confucius
     
    It's a great saying, you can see that he's warning against things that one could be prone to at a given stage in one's life. Namely, the risk of being lustful, bad tempered or greedy is different at each stage. These things change as one goes through one's life.

    I have seen a number that 90 million adults in their prime are not in the workforce in US
     
    Not sure it's that high, I only meant working age. But there's this:

    https://finance.yahoo.com/news/7-ways-men-live-without-working-in-america-092147068.html

    If this is true, then this is quite new for the US. Along with other things that are new now, such as lower fertility, higher number of single households, it's like Europe.

    So if the labor participation of working age American men is 67%, then it's not much higher than that of Swedish women. Except Swedish women also have 1.7 children and American men don't. It's interesting because the stereotypical view of American men is that they're very hard working. Of course, I don't want to oppress anybody and tell them how they should live or that they cannot be free. It's just what are the repercussions for the society... who knows, maybe there are some positives, too. But women need to really be aware of this when they make choices in life.

    I would say that “heterosexual man in his 40-50s” should be both slightly enlarged to younger people and also limit it to “traditional” family.
     
    Yes, 35-55. Btw, back in the day in the US, only married men could be promoted to certain positions.
    These views might be archaic, but they brought some stability. Society is very different now and it's interesting to see what survival strategies will be adopted. This gender fluidity thing might be some sort of a survival strategy, too.

    Replies: @Beckow

    The numbers can be calculated differently, suffice to say if 1/3 are not labor-participating, there is an issue. It destroys family formation, in that way it hurts women even more – the traditional family was an “archaic” invention that evolved to help women and child-raising.

    But what does it mean to be archaic? To many it has a negative connotation and maybe even you use it that way. Society structured around a traditional family, with married fathers doing their part and being rewarded, is indeed a very old, maybe archaic concept. It evolved over thousands of generations because it worked and the basic principles were thought through and implemented by the smartest among our ancestors.

    We have thrown all of it out with horrible consequences for the society. The people who threw it out in 2 generations are not the smartest or most viable – they are often clownish morons who used to in the past, at best to entertain. People who couldn’t run their own lives, failed at the basic biological level, people who used the new surplus prosperity in the West and their own redundancy which gave them free time to play into oblivion. That’s where we are today. I will take “archaic” any day, that’s what embracing life means. If you don’t embrace life, how do you live?

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Beckow


    in that way it hurts women even more – the traditional family was an “archaic” invention that evolved to help women and child-raising
     
    That's what I alluded to above. Women can be hurt in unexpected ways because of this. The younger women need to be aware.

    But what does it mean to be archaic? To many it has a negative connotation and maybe even you use it that way.
     

    Not at all, to me it's not negative. The traditional family is not even "archaic", it's a universal value.

    I just used it as a description compared to the rest of society today. To think that only 30-40 or so years ago, only married men could be promoted, paints a very different picture from today and I see how many today would find that scary or whatever. Granted this was in the US, the rest of the world, Europe, SU, etc., were way more liberal.

    And since most people will no longer accept that, then what are the survival strategies going forward. And what the effects are in terms of leadership challenges, especially when the childless or others, will have full discretion to use power over more traditional people.

  882. @Mikel
    @AaronB

    Thanks for your offer to help with the Shira Choir!

    Now, as for that article you found so exciting, the Limits To Growth by the Club of Rome must be one of the most ridiculed pieces of failed catastrophist predictions in history. If the projections of that study would have resembled reality, we would all be starving long since. I've had online debates with a doctor in physics and mathematics who adheres to the equally alarmist "peak-everything" thesis but he acknowledged that those predictions were quite laughable.

    But most of all I don't understand why you would find it positive to live through an economic debacle that would almost certainly be accompanied by social unrest and widespread poverty.

    I can perfectly understand why you like escaping to nature and living an alternative lifestyle. I am a nature-loving nutter myself. But does it really matter that the majority of people don't share our interests and lead an opposite lifestyle?

    To be perfectly honest, I am very happy with most people living in cities and working in boring jobs to make my life comfortable. I actually need the majority of people to do exactly that so that I can travel around in my SUV, stay in hotels, buy mountain gear and implements for my hobby farm, visit my family in Europe regularly,... And when I finally quit my job, how am I going to get rental income and dividends if everybody tries to escape to nature and the economy goes bust? Where would you find your gig jobs to be able to keep camping and exploring nature?

    With all this said, there's definitely something odd going on. Most of the supply chain problems are very likely a consequence of the Covid-imposed lockdowns and lifestyle changes but the labor shortage, very acute around here, is more difficult to understand. I haven't been able to hire anybody for my small building project since last May. Everybody's desperate to get workers and none of the multiple articles I've read trying to explain the phenomenon makes too much sense. Just the other day a report was published saying that 4 million people quit their jobs last August in the US. What are they doing now? How are people making ends meet? Is there really some kind of deep social transformation going on or is it just that the changes imposed by Covid regulations have made people value things differently and everything will slowly return to some new equilibrium with more people working from home or flexible hours?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AaronB

    You make excellent points as usual Mikel.

    I have often thought exactly as you outlined here, and indeed my own lifestyle depends on there being dull and boring “bourgeois” people out there 🙂 Historically, the monk, the hermit, and the man of the mountains exist in a sort of symbiotic relationship to mainstream society.

    And of course I do not look forward to suffering and death of millions that might accompany any serious dislocation.

    However, there are a couple of issues.

    One, I would really like to live in a “re-enchanted” world, as I mentioned to German Reader, and one that is much more connected to Nature.

    Instead of driving through alienating and soulless urban landscapes, and eating processed food, I’d rather visit charming, beautiful, and more natural cities, with cool atmospheres, and have craft foods available everywhere.

    I’d rather see people dressed not in the drab modern costume, but in a more cool and interesting way as is done in many traditional cultures that don’t focus exclusively on functionality etc. I can’t – yet – unfortunately spend all my time in nature, and I dislike the “atmosphere” of modern cities, with people bent on dull work and not living on an aesthetic or spiritual plane.

    And so on and so forth in this vein.

    Next, there is the sad fact that I think the majority of humanity is unhappy today because of alienation from Nature forced on them by the fanatical few – the techno-utopians who have dominated the culture for several hundred years. They deserve to be “liberated” from the oppression of the techno-utopians 🙂

    Finally, my own love of nature is threatened by a culture that pollutes and destroys it in the name of “progress”.

    But ultimately, perhaps I am just frustrated at being back in the city, so I imagine the destruction of the kind of civilization that is responsible for my frustration and unhappiness, and that I am trapped in currently 😉

    (And BTW, I am leaving again in less than two months, for a two month trip – I am looking forward).

    But you do make good points in the end.

    And yes, I agree the mysterious unavailability of workers is deeply weird and none of the usual explanations like the stimulus checks really explain it.

    I have also noticed that the power relationship between bosses and workers has significantly shifted, with workers being much more emboldened, and bosses having to polite implore – even plead – with workers to come in on off days or weekends, when before they would brusquely order it, and pay more for it.

    And of course, wages have risen dramatically.

    Is this a cultural shift?

    My sense is yes, and it’s something big and important. But we shall see.

  883. I’d like to see Visegrád invade Germany up through Belgium (I count it as as part). I think they have certainly been given enough provocation. I wonder if they could do it, if America didn’t pile on? Especially, if they acted like liberators. Or would France and UK use nukes?

    • Replies: @AP
    @songbird

    Well, Poland is beefing up it's army to 300,000 - making it the largest in Europe. And Poles are a lot more willing to fight for their country than Germans are:

    https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/fighters-1024x896-1280x720.png

    Replies: @songbird

  884. German_reader says:
    @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Nothing so very crazy, don't worry :)

    In a way, my post-materialist society would indeed be in love with the physical world, and thus much more materialistic in a sense.

    For instance, today we build ugly buildings and are completely uninterested in making them beautiful - is that materialism or anti-materialism? In a way we hate the material world.

    What I object to, is our focus on the measurable aspect of things instead of the "quality" aspect of things - the "intangible".

    Most of what makes life meaningful, is intangible, and a huge reason modern lives are so empty is because we neglect the intangible.

    So again with beauty, the beauty aspect of a building is intangible and cannot be measured, so we ignore it - so we build alienating urban landscapes.

    So, my ideal post-materislist society would be one in which that whole rich intangible side of life that makes living meaningful and fun, would be the focus, and gaining power over physical things, would only be pursued in a limited way - some power is important, but should not be central. We have completely reversed the healthy relationship.

    This would completely shift the focus of human life - instead of growth and power, we would live on the aesthetic and spiritual plane, and instead of dominating nature, we would experience our deep connection to it and it's beauty.

    The natural world would not be seen as just physical "stuff" we can exploit to our ends, and instead of dominating nature we would build our lives in ways that cooperate with it.

    With the focus on the intangible, the modern sense of "alienation" would disappear, as it is the direct result of focusing on material things and not the connections between them.

    Life would be revolutionized.

    With the focus on the intangible, life would once again in a sense be "enchanted" - it would be the "re-enchantment of the world", a reversal of the disenchantment needed to gain power over it, and alienate ourselves from it. Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.

    We'd build different cities, live different lives, and think and experience life differently.

    Replies: @German_reader

    thx, but that’s still pretty vague, and imo rather too optimistic about what a collapse of the present economic system would entail.

    Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.

    Sounds overly romantic to me. I mean just look at some more backward parts of the world, which still have an enchanted view of the universe and where many people believe in spirits, magical spells and witchcraft, to deal with their existential fears about the world and their precarious dependence on nature. I think the potential consequences of such a world view could be rather shocking to your bourgeois sensibilities.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @German_reader

    People will always see something wrong with the world. But the less complex a civilization is, the more content people will be.

    , @songbird
    @German_reader

    I wonder if AaronB would have any sympathy with The Dawn of Everything. A new book co-authored by David Graeber, who I believe he has referenced before. (I presume he has not had time to read it, yet)
    ____
    BTW, I like what the Turks are doing, if the rumors are true about them deporting Syrians seen eating bananas. Possibly a useful precedent for Germany.

    https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/10/syrians-be-deported-eating-bananas-provocatively-turkey

    Replies: @AaronB

    , @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Well, I am purposefully vague, because when humans ease back and surrender some amount of control, the new culture that will arise will be unpredictable.

    An "organic" culture is always unpredictable - and a post-materislist culture that respected the intangible, would not be a planned thing.

    As for a more enchanted world, I've spent time in lost-in-time villages in the Indian Himalayas and the Laotian countryside, so I have an idea. I'm not romanticizing it, and it has it's drawbacks, but on the whole it's a deeper and richer life than that offered by modernity.

    But I'm not proposing we go back to that level of primitiveness - that would be impossible, and not even necessary. While I do think we should scale back our technology use to have a richer experience of life - George Orwell avoided electric light and loved candlelight - we can keep much of it. Although yes, we'd have to vastly reduce our use and consumption.

    In reality, cutting edge Quantum science already suggests a more enchanted and spooky world than our 19th century Positivism, we just haven't caught up yet.

    And countries that heavily use technology, like Japan, have an animist strain and superstitious strain that I find attractive, and can be developed.

    Japan often integrates a respect for the intangible side of life with technology - many extremely modern Japanese store and bar interiors somehow achieve an intimate warmth instead of being soulless and alienating as modern interiors tend to be in the West (we have to turn to old styles and architecture to achieve warmth and intimacy).

    Replies: @Dmitry

  885. @German_reader
    @AP


    About 40% (at least) of Americans, “native” ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies.
     
    I'm aware of that, and similar divisions exist within many European countries as well (as Coconuts has explained regarding the contrast between "somewheres" and "anywheres" in Britain; similar dynamics are at play in Germany, reinforced by the split between West and East Germany). Obviously I'm more on the side of the "native" Americans who object to the denigration of their way of life and the permanent cultural revolution that is being imposed on them. I just think it's regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult (as if an NY con man really were their champion). Far too many of them also still support military action abroad. This unthinking jingoism imo indicates that they haven't quite internalized the reality of their own status (i.e. that the American state isn't theirs anymore and that American elites are a far greater threat to them than any Arab or Iranian could ever be).

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @iffen

    I just think it’s regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult

    Peons have to latch onto and try to use whatever is available.

    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen


    Peons have to latch onto and try to use whatever is available.
     
    SJW peons have latched onto Trump as "The Enemy" and keep flailing in his general direction. Part of successful MAGA strategy is keeping these low-IQ, #NeverTrump "hate ragers" agitated. As SJW cult zealots become (or at least sound) extreme & offensive, they push swing voters to the MAGA GOP.

    Appealing to women, parents, and high-IQ swing voters with clever phrases such as #LetsGoBrandon is a double win. Not only is it good on the merits, it drives low-IQ types to excess.
    ____

    Trump's skills at rolling the Fake Stream Media are impressive, and he deserves a massive amount of credit for launching MAGA. However, the bulk of those supporting the New GOP seek to establish a permanent MAGA Populist party.

    Judeo-Christian values drive long term thinking. Parents want to give a better country to their children. It is right there in the Constitution:

    -- secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity --

    By definition, the MAGA vision reaches out into the future, beyond the political career of any one individual.

    PEACE 😇
  886. @songbird
    @AaronB

    Have you ever read Evola? You might like him more than you would first suppose.

    Replies: @AaronB

    I’ve read him a little bit, but overall I did not find him so congenial. Some of his ideas are good, but he does not seem to me to posses the joyful liberation of a truly spiritual person. He is too aggressive, angry, and serious, it seems to me. But it’s probably just me. Evola’s book on Buddhism tried to make it into an aggressive, hard, and dominating religion, but I think this is a misunderstanding of what spirituality is.

    Another Perennialist who has great ideas is Rene Guenon, I’ve read several books of his, but again he so conspicuously lacks the atmosphere of joyful liberation and serenity that comes from having “seen through” the world and attained to a spiritual vision, for all his eloquent and intelligent attacks on materialism, which I have learned from.

    Probably my favorite Perennialist is Ananda Coomaraswamy, who’s half English and half Ceylonnese. To my mind, he has what is still the best description of the life of a “sage” – ” a perpetual uncalculated life in the present”. That’s brilliant 🙂

    Old Lao Tzu couldn’t have said it better himself..

    • Thanks: songbird
  887. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    In my own life, I have loved American culture since I was a young child
     
    How would you even define American culture? Even if one thinks that the foundations from colonial America are still operative in some way, there's this Albion's seed thesis about four vastly different (and in some ways opposed) regional cultures, so which one do you love? And if those roots from early America don't play a role today anymore (as I suspect they might, and in any case they are now being systematically denigrated, in the fight against "white supremacy"), what is American culture today in your opinion? I mean, sure, I guess there's the stereotype of a conservative redneck who drives a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle. But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism coupled with a cult of democracy (even though the common man is in reality rather powerless against the power of oligarchs and lobbyists) and shallow consumerism.
    I know those are to some extent stereotypes, and unfortunately you can now make similar points about many European countries as well, but still, what do you think of when you write about "American culture"?

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.
     
    They don't look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains). Since they're students at BYU, I suppose they're Mormons, and aren't Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
    The stereotype about Germans being blond and blue-eyed is also only partially correct anyway, there are many ethnic Germans without any known immigrant background who don't look like that at all (especially in southern Germany).

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry

    define American culture

    I guess I mean more like American literature, American music and American visual culture.

    There is also a wider sense of culture in sense of urban design, clothing, business culture, legal system, politics, food, consumer products.

    I don’t mean I’m unreserved fanboy of American culture in terms of its political and legal oppressions, and self-centred transportation methods, but more in the former (narrow sense) of the specific cultural production.

    Even where they have been comparatively weak – American painting, philosophy, or classical music, is very interesting. I’m not going to say I am supporter of Andy Warhol.

    a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle

    It’s the most alien to European culture in the American culture, and exciting for that reason.

    There is libertarian or self-reliance aspect of “crawfish brawl” and protecting yourself with a gun, which Emerson and Thoreau would approve of.

    But then (as boring people in Europe will say) there is the contribution to wider problems when everyone wants to have a large pickup truck, use endless petroleum and energy, and be “self-reliant”, and not go on a bus – there is loss of public sphere. The cities become spaces in more and more distant ways, the roads become wider.

    It includes a vision of being an unusually spiky version of Schopenhauer’s hedgehogs, and there is certainly something a little misanthropic there (although it matches conveniently well to the free-market ideologies).

    multiculturalist globalism

    I would say the opposite, although the country has quite a lot of internal homogenization, and the people are internally displacing themselves moving from city to city.

    One of the features of American culture is insularity and provincialism, in relation to other cultures. Perhaps this will be changing slowly with the exposure to the internet and access to foreign visual cultures in netflix, or the fact Hollywood now makes films for primarily the Chinese audiences.

    Still, it is not just that they use their own system for measuring distances or weighing things, or they refuse to learn another language – but it’s also the only country I’ve visited where people like waitresses seemed like they couldn’t understand my English. Lol this is despite the fact I speak basically perfect English, with the certified highest rating in the Common European Framework – I cannot communicate with American waitresses.

    Also if you drive about 20 kilometres away from the coast, it feels like you are entering somekind of 1970s America.

    And they have to do almost everything in their own unique way. Even the street paraphernalia is all badly designed and far too large, but perfect matches American peoples’ visual culture.

    20th century American culture has a lot of aspects where they say “behave like a teenager all your life”.

    So the moment they learn everyone can slide around in automobiles (and that it would be profitable for the oligarchs to build one for everyone) by the middle of the 20th century, somehow they allow building cities like the whole world was a drive-through, and that human ambulation was a ruin of history. It reminds of a child who has to carry their favourite new toy everywhere.

    BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons

    Yes lol I was watching videos on YouTube of BYU, because I was a little interested in the Mormons. I think I’m not the only one here who was surprised and interested when they discovered the existence of these people.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    It’s the most alien to European culture in the American culture, and exciting for that reason.

    There is libertarian or self-reliance aspect of “crawfish brawl” and protecting yourself with a gun, which Emerson and Thoreau would approve of.
     
    Hunting was also a part of 19th century bourgeois culture, that modelled itself after aristocratic tastes. Nothing needs to be said of church-going, just that secularization in Europe is more thoro & earlier.

    A lot of frontier cultures will also emphasize self-reliance too, in contrast to mutual support in more communitarian cultures.

    there is certainly something a little misanthropic there
     
    It explains a lot of mistrust of a central authority in American & Americanized cultures, that stems from this attitude from the bottom-up, as opposed to regular assessment of top-down repressions.

    Can rigid top-down repressions leads to the internalization of that attitude?

    One of the features of American culture is insularity and provincialism, in relation to other cultures.
     
    Pre-colonial US was a patchwork of tribes each holding relatively small areas and having peculiar customs and traditions. Certainly the environmental influences conductive to this are still here.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  888. @LatW
    @Dmitry


    That is, you can consume a lot of American culture, but meeting Americans (or visiting America) can still be a culture shock for both sides.
     
    Yes, absolutely. It's exotic. And there are Americans who consume lesser amounts of the stereotypical American culture than do outsiders. Or, they consume only the select parts of the American culture that are local, insular and not that widely known outside.

    When you read Ancient Greek, Roman or Biblical literature, a lot of beauty is because of how different those old people were, than us today.
     
    It's captivating to imagine how their culture was, however, in the case of the Ancient Greek and Rome, it is also the universality of ideas and the classical beauty ideals that are appealing.

    I have loved American culture since I was a young child, and yet it doesn’t exactly make me agree with many views of Americans.
     
    Yes, it is the same with me, I have loved America since a young age, but as to the American worldview, some views resonate with me, some don't. What's funny is that you meet a lot of Americans who are that way, too! They'd say stuff like "This country was built on violence".

    You know from the American perspective, half of Europeans will seem unhealthily skinny.
     
    There are healthy and hot people in America, especially in parts of Mountain West and Inland NorthWest. As to Channing Tatum, I was referring more to his phenotype, the upper face looks very "Atlantic", that's how I imagine the heritage American ideal. With somewhat prominent eyebrows, another example would be Matt Dillon (who is Scottish, Irish, German). I'd say that look is definitely more British than Central European or even Scandinavian.

    Some Americans look kind of like my stereotype of “Germans” though.
     
    They're very German, but heritage Americans are more British. It's a different look.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Channing Tatum… American ideal

    Well in (to return to this masterpiece of sociology) “21 Jump Street” – the joke is that he conforms too much to the visual stereotype of “athletic American jock”. While Jonah Hill – the visual stereotype of “nerdy American loser”. I think in the sequel one of the jokes is that nobody can understand how someone who looks like him can even be friends with someone who looks like Jonah Hill, and this threatens to expose their undercover police work.

    Americans who consume lesser amounts of the stereotypical American culture than do outsiders

    Yes a lot of Americans (excluding those which go to “band camp”) don’t like things like jazz, or even classic American literature. (By the late 20th century, some of the funding and digitization for classic jazz is only because of the Japanese fans have been demanding it, or remastering the albums.)

    There was a very talented American pop music singer Eva Cassidy, who only became famous years after she died, after music fans in the UK discovered her recording.

    Sometimes foreigners understand your cultural treasures, better than the locals. And that’s one of the advantages for Americans in exporting their culture everywhere – the foreigners can help to filter and critique for them.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Dmitry


    nobody can understand how someone who looks like him can even be friends with someone who looks like Jonah Hill,
     
    Maybe the jock isn't as "dumb" as they believe? Maybe he enjoys reading? Not in this movie, but in such a friendship in real life.

    Yes a lot of Americans (excluding those which go to “band camp”) don’t like things like jazz, or even classic American literature.
     
    I've never met anyone who doesn't like American literature, but what I meant was more along the lines -- they don't listen to pop music too much and they don't eat fast food. They listen to classical or alternative music, eat local organic food, take rare supplements, etc. Go to their own clubs, etc. Wear earth tone colored hoodies, etc.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  889. @songbird
    I hope that Japanese plans to increase military spending are really just a preliminary to kicking the US out, and then banning rap and jazz.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @iffen

    just a preliminary to kicking the US out

    I don’t think that will be what they want.

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen

    I think you're right - anti-American sentiment doesn't manifest very well on the elite level of Japan. Not sure about the wider public currently, but I was pretty shocked the first time I heard about the Anpo Protests and saw the pictures of the massive crowds. (I wonder if there was anything close to that in West Germany? Guessing not.)


    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.
     
    I'd also like to see this happen. As is, I could potentially see US forces being used to suppress revolutions, some years in the future.
    , @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    ... to Asia!

    Seriously, military spending should really be cut heavily, because no one except neocons want an empire now.

    , @A123
    @iffen


    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.
     
    Why would Christian America cut ties with Christian Populist European nations like Hungary & Poland? There is no reason to walk a way from nations with a similar vision for the future.

    How about this as a compromise:

    Hope that Trump in his 2nd term dissolves NATO thus:
        • Ending the dangerous entanglement with Turkey, and
        • Forcing Germany to fund an actual defense force.

     
    The next MAGA president will not be burdened with -- The bogus "Russia, Russia, Russia" myth, Impeachment, and a rouge Special Counsel investigation. Hopefully, this will open the door for better relations with Christian Russia.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
  890. @AP
    @Beckow


    I am describing it as it is today, “likely” future events don’t matter much.
     
    Right now Biden is not in charge. Judging by policy, the one in charge is a young wokeling of some sort.

    (It’s also amusing to find a Fauci fan, 81-year old funder of the Wuhan research, O boy…)
     
    I'm not a fan. I'm just pointing out that the guy is not a demented old person but is rather sharp...

    Macron, Johnson, Trudeau are unserious people and unserious people don’t change things.
     
    Johnson seems to be changing a lot of things.

    Porky strikes me as a re-tread of a usual career opportunist, marching from communism to liberalism to nationalism. He also clearly overeats – never trust a leader who cannot even control his/her own appetite
     
    I wouldn't trust any politician in a democratic system, nor anyone who achieved success in the post-Soviet 1990s. But Poroshenko has gotten lean after losing power:

    https://gdb.rferl.org/C6F3CF77-C940-46DD-959B-ECBFD8B2BFD0_cx16_cy9_cw83_w1200_r1.jpg

    Replies: @Aedib, @Beckow

    …I’m not a fan. I’m just pointing out that the guy is not a demented old person but is rather sharp…

    Ok, Fauci is an un-demented old guy. I don’t think he is sharp, more like well-trained to spout what pleases his sponsors of the moment. He also seems to suffer from megalomania, all the signs are there: he forcefully denies the obvious, changes his pronouncements with passion, and refers to himself in a third person…

    BoJo changes things, but he won’t make things better. My point about BoJo-Macron-Trudeau-the EU clowns, is that they visibly lack gravitas, they are not serious people. Some are entertaining, some have verbal acumen, but none of them are the likes people who would rise to the top in normal societies. They are too fruity…

  891. @AP
    @AP


    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock.
     
    Map of highest ancestry, by county in the USA:

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/45/Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg/1280px-Census-2000-Data-Top-US-Ancestries-by-County.jpg

    Utah and neighboring Mormon-settled parts of Idaho and Nevada are an island of Englishness, more so even than New England, whose southern parts had been flooded by Italians and Irish. These are the best-managed parts of the USA.

    On the map, "American" is probably Scotch-Irish.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Very interesting map.

    The errors in it are probably huge.

    German American as any coherent group was destroyed by the government + the society + the culture in 1914. All four of my mother’s grandparents were German born and immigrated to the United States as adults. The language and everything else except the accent vanished in 1914. They didn’t want to get lynched, disappeared, gulag’d &c and they mixed in as inconspicuously as possible. My mother never learned a word of German and my grandparents never spoke it. Not a word.

    So that 23 states colored German descent looks meaningful but I don’t believe it means a thing.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Correct. Germans are among the most assimilated of people in the USA. But they are the largest single group, outnumbering the English into whose culture they have completely assimilated.

    The standard "non-ethnic" American is basically someone of mixed English, Scottish and German descent.

    However the Germans have not had zero influence on American culture. Grilling burgers and hot dogs and the type of music played in American carousels are German rather than British. Americans also have adopted their beer drinking habits from Germany, albeit in a literally watered-down way:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/why-most-american-beer-is-so-dull-and-watery/400427/

    ...Americans didn’t develop a more unified taste in beer until the mid-1800s, when huge numbers of German immigrants—including David G. Yuengling, whose brewery still operates today, outside of Philadelphia—arrived and brought lager with them. Less intense in flavor than porters, stouts, and ales, lagers were a hit with America’s growing number of factory workers and miners, who ate at saloons near where they worked. “It was normal to get a beer with your meal, but not allowable to be tipsy on the job,” says Dighe. “So if you wanted a beer, your safest option was a weak beer.” As more and more immigrants came to the U.S. and unemployment stayed high, the stiff competition for jobs made this pressure for sobriety even higher.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  892. @iffen
    @songbird

    just a preliminary to kicking the US out

    I don't think that will be what they want.

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    I think you’re right – anti-American sentiment doesn’t manifest very well on the elite level of Japan. Not sure about the wider public currently, but I was pretty shocked the first time I heard about the Anpo Protests and saw the pictures of the massive crowds. (I wonder if there was anything close to that in West Germany? Guessing not.)

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    I’d also like to see this happen. As is, I could potentially see US forces being used to suppress revolutions, some years in the future.

  893. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    thx, but that's still pretty vague, and imo rather too optimistic about what a collapse of the present economic system would entail.


    Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.
     
    Sounds overly romantic to me. I mean just look at some more backward parts of the world, which still have an enchanted view of the universe and where many people believe in spirits, magical spells and witchcraft, to deal with their existential fears about the world and their precarious dependence on nature. I think the potential consequences of such a world view could be rather shocking to your bourgeois sensibilities.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird, @AaronB

    People will always see something wrong with the world. But the less complex a civilization is, the more content people will be.

  894. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    define American culture
     
    I guess I mean more like American literature, American music and American visual culture.

    There is also a wider sense of culture in sense of urban design, clothing, business culture, legal system, politics, food, consumer products.

    I don't mean I'm unreserved fanboy of American culture in terms of its political and legal oppressions, and self-centred transportation methods, but more in the former (narrow sense) of the specific cultural production.

    Even where they have been comparatively weak - American painting, philosophy, or classical music, is very interesting. I'm not going to say I am supporter of Andy Warhol.


    a pickup truck, goes to church, listens to country music, owns guns, likes to hunt etc., and I even have some sympathy for elements of that lifestyle
     
    It's the most alien to European culture in the American culture, and exciting for that reason.

    There is libertarian or self-reliance aspect of "crawfish brawl" and protecting yourself with a gun, which Emerson and Thoreau would approve of.

    But then (as boring people in Europe will say) there is the contribution to wider problems when everyone wants to have a large pickup truck, use endless petroleum and energy, and be "self-reliant", and not go on a bus - there is loss of public sphere. The cities become spaces in more and more distant ways, the roads become wider.

    It includes a vision of being an unusually spiky version of Schopenhauer's hedgehogs, and there is certainly something a little misanthropic there (although it matches conveniently well to the free-market ideologies).


    multiculturalist globalism
     
    I would say the opposite, although the country has quite a lot of internal homogenization, and the people are internally displacing themselves moving from city to city.

    One of the features of American culture is insularity and provincialism, in relation to other cultures. Perhaps this will be changing slowly with the exposure to the internet and access to foreign visual cultures in netflix, or the fact Hollywood now makes films for primarily the Chinese audiences.

    Still, it is not just that they use their own system for measuring distances or weighing things, or they refuse to learn another language - but it's also the only country I've visited where people like waitresses seemed like they couldn't understand my English. Lol this is despite the fact I speak basically perfect English, with the certified highest rating in the Common European Framework - I cannot communicate with American waitresses.

    Also if you drive about 20 kilometres away from the coast, it feels like you are entering somekind of 1970s America.

    And they have to do almost everything in their own unique way. Even the street paraphernalia is all badly designed and far too large, but perfect matches American peoples' visual culture.

    -

    20th century American culture has a lot of aspects where they say "behave like a teenager all your life".

    So the moment they learn everyone can slide around in automobiles (and that it would be profitable for the oligarchs to build one for everyone) by the middle of the 20th century, somehow they allow building cities like the whole world was a drive-through, and that human ambulation was a ruin of history. It reminds of a child who has to carry their favourite new toy everywhere.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRZbqFzvptU


    BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons
     
    Yes lol I was watching videos on YouTube of BYU, because I was a little interested in the Mormons. I think I'm not the only one here who was surprised and interested when they discovered the existence of these people.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    It’s the most alien to European culture in the American culture, and exciting for that reason.

    There is libertarian or self-reliance aspect of “crawfish brawl” and protecting yourself with a gun, which Emerson and Thoreau would approve of.

    Hunting was also a part of 19th century bourgeois culture, that modelled itself after aristocratic tastes. Nothing needs to be said of church-going, just that secularization in Europe is more thoro & earlier.

    A lot of frontier cultures will also emphasize self-reliance too, in contrast to mutual support in more communitarian cultures.

    there is certainly something a little misanthropic there

    It explains a lot of mistrust of a central authority in American & Americanized cultures, that stems from this attitude from the bottom-up, as opposed to regular assessment of top-down repressions.

    Can rigid top-down repressions leads to the internalization of that attitude?

    One of the features of American culture is insularity and provincialism, in relation to other cultures.

    Pre-colonial US was a patchwork of tribes each holding relatively small areas and having peculiar customs and traditions. Certainly the environmental influences conductive to this are still here.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    Hunting was also a part of 19th century.. aristocratic tastes
     
    Although the European was a different culture than the American -
    https://i.imgur.com/aG88u1S.jpg

    The American culture emerged from the New World equivalent "poachers", although at least in recent decades it's transformed into a primarily sport.

    Of course the "poachers", are morally acceptable or even admirable for most people, whereas these "sports people" trying to entertain themselves or remove their boredom - less


    church-going, just that secularization in Europe

     

    It has a different role in Europe and America. That is, the church in America becomes one of the most important parts of a diminished public sphere.

    For comparison, in country like Denmark, the public sphere is extending in many more ways into your life already, whether you would go to a church or not.


    mistrust of a central authority
     
    And this American culture of mistrust is not exactly "maladaptive", when we see 20th century history in Europe, and Hitler and Stalin, et al.

    But the "misanthropic hedgehog" view can also seem to conveniently match the free-market ideologies of 20th century America a little too "co-incidentally" to seem to be completely "bottom-up".

    If you look at the 20th century transportation and urban planning in America (which includes massive closing down of railway systems by the mid-20th century), it matches a seeming preference of private transport, self-reliance, autonomy in movement, etc. But it was "co-incidentally" also very profitable for America's automobile industry.


    US was a patchwork of tribes each holding relatively small areas and having peculiar customs and traditions. Certainly the environmental influences
     
    By the early 20th century America becomes internally very homogenized.

    In the 1933, Bertrand Russell is writing about this internal homogenization process.

    He identifies it as a most strong feature that Europeans will notice about America of early 20th century - extreme homogenization internally, as a result of the technological uniformity.

    There is this chapter he wrote in the 1930s. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458601/page/n185/mode/2up

    I'm not sure we could even update this for the 21st century. It seems today as Bertrand Russell wrote almost a century ago.
    https://i.imgur.com/zwA6t9P.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/FLBFm2J.jpg

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  895. @Beckow
    @LatW

    The numbers can be calculated differently, suffice to say if 1/3 are not labor-participating, there is an issue. It destroys family formation, in that way it hurts women even more - the traditional family was an "archaic" invention that evolved to help women and child-raising.

    But what does it mean to be archaic? To many it has a negative connotation and maybe even you use it that way. Society structured around a traditional family, with married fathers doing their part and being rewarded, is indeed a very old, maybe archaic concept. It evolved over thousands of generations because it worked and the basic principles were thought through and implemented by the smartest among our ancestors.

    We have thrown all of it out with horrible consequences for the society. The people who threw it out in 2 generations are not the smartest or most viable - they are often clownish morons who used to in the past, at best to entertain. People who couldn't run their own lives, failed at the basic biological level, people who used the new surplus prosperity in the West and their own redundancy which gave them free time to play into oblivion. That's where we are today. I will take "archaic" any day, that's what embracing life means. If you don't embrace life, how do you live?

    Replies: @LatW

    in that way it hurts women even more – the traditional family was an “archaic” invention that evolved to help women and child-raising

    That’s what I alluded to above. Women can be hurt in unexpected ways because of this. The younger women need to be aware.

    But what does it mean to be archaic? To many it has a negative connotation and maybe even you use it that way.

    Not at all, to me it’s not negative. The traditional family is not even “archaic”, it’s a universal value.

    I just used it as a description compared to the rest of society today. To think that only 30-40 or so years ago, only married men could be promoted, paints a very different picture from today and I see how many today would find that scary or whatever. Granted this was in the US, the rest of the world, Europe, SU, etc., were way more liberal.

    And since most people will no longer accept that, then what are the survival strategies going forward. And what the effects are in terms of leadership challenges, especially when the childless or others, will have full discretion to use power over more traditional people.

  896. @iffen
    @songbird

    just a preliminary to kicking the US out

    I don't think that will be what they want.

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    … to Asia!

    Seriously, military spending should really be cut heavily, because no one except neocons want an empire now.

    • Disagree: iffen
  897. @Dmitry
    @LatW


    Channing Tatum... American ideal

     

    Well in (to return to this masterpiece of sociology) "21 Jump Street" - the joke is that he conforms too much to the visual stereotype of "athletic American jock". While Jonah Hill - the visual stereotype of "nerdy American loser". I think in the sequel one of the jokes is that nobody can understand how someone who looks like him can even be friends with someone who looks like Jonah Hill, and this threatens to expose their undercover police work.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSa368X1Z2w

    Americans who consume lesser amounts of the stereotypical American culture than do outsiders
     
    Yes a lot of Americans (excluding those which go to "band camp") don't like things like jazz, or even classic American literature. (By the late 20th century, some of the funding and digitization for classic jazz is only because of the Japanese fans have been demanding it, or remastering the albums.)

    There was a very talented American pop music singer Eva Cassidy, who only became famous years after she died, after music fans in the UK discovered her recording.

    Sometimes foreigners understand your cultural treasures, better than the locals. And that's one of the advantages for Americans in exporting their culture everywhere - the foreigners can help to filter and critique for them.

    Replies: @LatW

    nobody can understand how someone who looks like him can even be friends with someone who looks like Jonah Hill,

    Maybe the jock isn’t as “dumb” as they believe? Maybe he enjoys reading? Not in this movie, but in such a friendship in real life.

    Yes a lot of Americans (excluding those which go to “band camp”) don’t like things like jazz, or even classic American literature.

    I’ve never met anyone who doesn’t like American literature, but what I meant was more along the lines — they don’t listen to pop music too much and they don’t eat fast food. They listen to classical or alternative music, eat local organic food, take rare supplements, etc. Go to their own clubs, etc. Wear earth tone colored hoodies, etc.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @LatW


    jock isn’t as “dumb” as they believe
     
    That's part of the trope, including in the 21 Jump Street (they swap identities, and the jock has to become a nerd, etc - I think this is the story for a lot of these films).

    Although the notable thing in the film, is the identification of the cultural features of Generation Z, even though it is made 10 years ago, and written more than 10 years ago.

    Like he says at 42:45 -
    https://putlockernew.site/watch-movie/21-jump-street-2012_cwgr6e4x3/gj9w0o4-full-movie-online?watchnow=1

    -


    Although the nerds' stereotype in these films seems to be eternal and unchanging, and definitely reminds a lot of being in Karlin's blog.

    listen to classical or alternative music, eat local organic food, take rare supplements, etc. Go to their own clubs, etc.
     
    This sounds like the "New Yuppie" stereotype?

    "This new elite is typified by the brownstone-dweller traipsing through Whole Foods with a yoga mat peeping from the top of her NPR tote; the new Prospect Heights mother who stops in at the lactation consultant before her Y7 class; the tech startup employee with the neatly trimmed beard and Everlane button-down who announces on Facebook that he’s “bumping the new Kendrick.” They buy green cleaning products, ethically made clothes, and small-batch everything."

    "Now that conspicuous consumption has lost its prestige, today’s elites express their status through inconspicuous consumption. Their understated expenditures signal that they are knowledgeable and moral—most often to other members of the same class."

    "While a desire to buy organic root vegetables might seem innocuous enough, there is a disquieting side to inconspicuous consumption. Aspirational-class parents reproduce their class position for their children in ways that are even less visible, but far more significant and expensive, than dressing them in artisan-made organic cotton tees. They buy their kids boutique health care, take them on enriching trips to the Galápagos, and—most importantly—equip them with every educational advantage, from high-end preschools to SAT tutors to Ivy League tuition. "

    https://newrepublic.com/article/143609/new-yuppies-how-aspirational-class-expresses-status-age-inequality

    Replies: @LatW

  898. @iffen
    @German_reader

    I just think it’s regrettable that their justified anger mostly takes idiotic forms like the Trump personality cult

    Peons have to latch onto and try to use whatever is available.

    Replies: @A123

    Peons have to latch onto and try to use whatever is available.

    SJW peons have latched onto Trump as “The Enemy” and keep flailing in his general direction. Part of successful MAGA strategy is keeping these low-IQ, #NeverTrump “hate ragers” agitated. As SJW cult zealots become (or at least sound) extreme & offensive, they push swing voters to the MAGA GOP.

    Appealing to women, parents, and high-IQ swing voters with clever phrases such as #LetsGoBrandon is a double win. Not only is it good on the merits, it drives low-IQ types to excess.
    ____

    Trump’s skills at rolling the Fake Stream Media are impressive, and he deserves a massive amount of credit for launching MAGA. However, the bulk of those supporting the New GOP seek to establish a permanent MAGA Populist party.

    Judeo-Christian values drive long term thinking. Parents want to give a better country to their children. It is right there in the Constitution:

    — secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity —

    By definition, the MAGA vision reaches out into the future, beyond the political career of any one individual.

    PEACE 😇

  899. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @AP

    Very interesting map.

    The errors in it are probably huge.

    German American as any coherent group was destroyed by the government + the society + the culture in 1914. All four of my mother's grandparents were German born and immigrated to the United States as adults. The language and everything else except the accent vanished in 1914. They didn't want to get lynched, disappeared, gulag'd &c and they mixed in as inconspicuously as possible. My mother never learned a word of German and my grandparents never spoke it. Not a word.

    So that 23 states colored German descent looks meaningful but I don't believe it means a thing.

    Replies: @AP

    Correct. Germans are among the most assimilated of people in the USA. But they are the largest single group, outnumbering the English into whose culture they have completely assimilated.

    The standard “non-ethnic” American is basically someone of mixed English, Scottish and German descent.

    However the Germans have not had zero influence on American culture. Grilling burgers and hot dogs and the type of music played in American carousels are German rather than British. Americans also have adopted their beer drinking habits from Germany, albeit in a literally watered-down way:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/why-most-american-beer-is-so-dull-and-watery/400427/

    …Americans didn’t develop a more unified taste in beer until the mid-1800s, when huge numbers of German immigrants—including David G. Yuengling, whose brewery still operates today, outside of Philadelphia—arrived and brought lager with them. Less intense in flavor than porters, stouts, and ales, lagers were a hit with America’s growing number of factory workers and miners, who ate at saloons near where they worked. “It was normal to get a beer with your meal, but not allowable to be tipsy on the job,” says Dighe. “So if you wanted a beer, your safest option was a weak beer.” As more and more immigrants came to the U.S. and unemployment stayed high, the stiff competition for jobs made this pressure for sobriety even higher.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    I viewed this documentary on PBS about 10 years ago. It's a great expose exploring the German input to American society. I did a quick look and couldn't locate a free showing of it anywhere, but did find this short clip. I remember it stating that up towards 40% of Americans have some German ancestry (it was produced in the 1980's) I think that you and others here would enjoy seeing it:

    https://youtu.be/liswxJxtJm0

  900. @iffen
    @songbird

    just a preliminary to kicking the US out

    I don't think that will be what they want.

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    On this subject, I hope that Trump in his 2nd term withdraws all U. S. forces from Europe, thereby forcing Germany and France to create actual defense forces.

    Why would Christian America cut ties with Christian Populist European nations like Hungary & Poland? There is no reason to walk a way from nations with a similar vision for the future.

    How about this as a compromise:

    Hope that Trump in his 2nd term dissolves NATO thus:
        • Ending the dangerous entanglement with Turkey, and
        • Forcing Germany to fund an actual defense force.

    The next MAGA president will not be burdened with — The bogus “Russia, Russia, Russia” myth, Impeachment, and a rouge Special Counsel investigation. Hopefully, this will open the door for better relations with Christian Russia.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  901. @German_reader
    @AP

    iirc there's the argument though that British ancestry is massively underestimated in more recent censuses because it's often seen as boring, and presumably those giving their origin as "American" in the south are mostly of British ancestry too. But Mormons may be of more "recent" (mid 19th century) English origin (iirc many of their ancestors were recruited by Mormon missionaries in England, I believe that was the case with Mitt Romney's ancestors), so maybe they're more aware of that than people whose ancestors came from Britain in colonial times.

    Replies: @AP

    iirc there’s the argument though that British ancestry is massively underestimated in more recent censuses because it’s often seen as boring, and presumably those giving their origin as “American” in the south are mostly of British ancestry too.

    Could be, but the Scotch-Irish presence in Appalachia is very large. They self identify as “American” on the map.

    But Mormons may be of more “recent” (mid 19th century) English origin (iirc many of their ancestors were recruited by Mormon missionaries in England, I believe that was the case with Mitt Romney’s ancestors), so maybe they’re more aware of that than people whose ancestors came from Britain in colonial times.

    They are both. The original Mormons were from English-settled parts of upstate New York, west of New England. But they actively recruited large numbers of English people in the 19th century. Romney (like many Mormons, I think) has roots from both places. The Romneys converted to Mormonism in England and arrived in the 19th century. However, from another line he is also descended from one of the “witches” executed in Salem Massachusetts in the 17th century:

    https://littlethings.com/lifestyle/rebecca-nurse-salem-witch

    • Thanks: German_reader
  902. @songbird
    I'd like to see Visegrád invade Germany up through Belgium (I count it as as part). I think they have certainly been given enough provocation. I wonder if they could do it, if America didn't pile on? Especially, if they acted like liberators. Or would France and UK use nukes?

    Replies: @AP

    Well, Poland is beefing up it’s army to 300,000 – making it the largest in Europe. And Poles are a lot more willing to fight for their country than Germans are:

    • Replies: @songbird
    @AP

    From what I've seen, Poland also seems to have a surprising number of tanks, compared to Germany. About 4x.

    Replies: @AP

  903. @Svidomyatheart
    @Mr. Hack

    Yeah I think we're preoccupied about the real fight in the East which overrides everything else and makes it secondary. (pehaps too busy? while all kinds of enemies and vultures circle by).

    I still dont think anything will come out of that propaganda though but the trends are unsettling as more and more will be pushed forth. Even in the most distant parts of the world like Iraq or Syria and Afghanistan (lol) you have people from there putting pronouns and BLM on their twitter handle .

    And what is there to like about Russians? They're like the Turks who want to kill and destroy. What if they come into your home?

    You see Finalnd did mostly OK with Finlandization, Even now if NATO somehow magically imploded Russia would be offering Poland Finlandization and autonomy but nothing for us. Russia seems to have accepted that Poland, the Baltic states, Czech and Slovak republics are now aligned with the West but they have other plans for us.

    It wasnt always so because I figured they'd back they have plenty of land. Live and let live and al lthat

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I dont know? say Ivan Ilyin's about how we're always supposed to be chained ot them?? Like this one?

    "Малороссия и Великороссия связаны воедино верой, племенем, исторической судьбой, географическим положением, хозяйством, культурой и политикой"

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @LatW

    Finland did mostly OK with Finlandization

    Finland recently published a new defense white paper. In brief, it calls for strengthening of the territorial forces and a general increase in troops. It talks about Russia very explicitly. Remember that they also have conscription.

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I don’t know? say Ivan Ilyin’s about how we’re always supposed to be chained to them

    And do what (besides the current stuff which is, admittedly, awful enough)? Right now, his options are actually quite limited (not sure about 20-30-50 years from now). He can’t move further because then the whole world will see it for what it is. Help the rebels more? Sure. But then the new drones will fly in — the Ukrainians just started using them. This talk about how “we don’t acknowledge the illegal regime and we’ll be talking to the real Ukrainians who will eventually overthrow it” is completely futile. That won’t happen anymore. In the meanwhile, Ukrainization is proceeding.

    And btw, recently there’s a new meme going around… mostly voiced by Arestovich. That if Russia were to start a full fledged invasion of Ukraine, it would be so devastating, that it could even partially cripple the Russian army and thus create a huge security risk for Russia and that the generalshtab apparently knows this. Granted, one can call BS on what Arestovich says, but still…

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LatW

    First, we mostly agree on the "archaic" family dilemma. I am a bit more optimistic, but that is based on a more family-friendly CE environment. I see how in the West this is an uphill fight.


    He can’t move further because then the whole world will see it for what it is...Arestovich: if Russia were to start a full fledged invasion of Ukraine...it would create a huge security risk for Russia
     
    The current situation is already a huge security risk for Russia. They can't let it go, their choices are between bad alternatives. On the plus side, they can lose a lot and still come out of it better of than they are today. Russia has a complete heavy weapons and air superiority, they can destroy parts of Ukraine at will. The constraint is that they don't want to kill Ukrainians - that would sour the local relations for decades. But when not given a better option they will do it. There is not much Ukraine or the West could do to stop it. It would a turkey shoot, they can take out airfields, bases, Lviv...Ugly, but certainly possible. (By the way, careful with Arestovich, he plays for more than one team.)

    Regarding the 'world seeing it for what it is...', have you been paying attention to the Western politicians and media? They claim it has already happened, many times. If one has a reputation for brutality, they may as well do it - there is no gain in holding back.

    Russia is waiting for the right time and for a few blocks to fall in place. They may also wait for a distracting event elsewhere or for US being preoccupied domestically. But they will move, they have to - the behaviour by Kiev and their noisy sponsors makes it inevitable. I don't think it is good, I think the Minsk regional autonomy deal was a fantastic deal for Kiev - all they had to do is to take it and then wait. But Washington wanted more...and they get what they want.

    Replies: @LatW

  904. @AP
    @songbird

    Well, Poland is beefing up it's army to 300,000 - making it the largest in Europe. And Poles are a lot more willing to fight for their country than Germans are:

    https://vividmaps.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/fighters-1024x896-1280x720.png

    Replies: @songbird

    From what I’ve seen, Poland also seems to have a surprising number of tanks, compared to Germany. About 4x.

    • Replies: @AP
    @songbird

    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.

    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)

    Replies: @A123, @Dmitry

  905. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    Men and women in their prime need to have and raise children (together) to have a say in how the society is run. There are too many pro-forma hetero men in their prime who either go extinct (dead-enders genetically) or refuse to take on the biological role of raising their own children. It’s fine, they can live their own lives on the side, but a society has to treat them as what they are: redundant narcissists. The fact that almost all EU leaders are childless says a lot about how we have allowed this loser group take over (they had the time, parents often don’t).

    • Agree: AP
     

    How in the world would you try and implement your "perfect recipe for a successful politician" in the world today? A simple litmus test? Besides, the whole concept is skewed way off. What makes you think that a married politician who has a family with children would make better political decisions than one without? Here in the US the percentage of dysfunctional families is immense. Not so in Slovakia? Yours is a naïve pie in the sky concept with no actual facts to sustain it. Relax, not all singles are overweight hedonists!

    https://youtu.be/kHG2FI2iI1M
    Perhaps Mr. Bundy is the perfect married specimen that you have in mind? After all he's "married with children". :-)

    Replies: @Beckow

    It seems like I hit a sore spot….single, overweight, hedonist? Let’s see, I am guessing you are only 2 out 3…and who is the toothy guy? why should I care?

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn’t invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?

    Same can be done with taxes, business, etc…the people who choose to live separate lives – outside of the normal flow of a multi-generational society will be treated as such. That was the way it used to be for thousands of years, it has only changed in the last 1-2 generations. The “socialism”, that you like to deride so much, unfortunately also make the free-loading easier. We can fix that.

    What is “dysfunctional” is not to have a family. Families don’t always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative. Maybe you should try harder. (There are quite a few marriageable Ukie girls around, running away from the Maidan fiasco, too many dropping their moral standards, maybe you can try save at least one of them?)

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    It seems like I hit a sore spot….single, overweight, hedonist?
     
    You're the one who is continually griping about elderly folks being overweight, and now, that singles are all worthless hedonists. I'm just repeating some of your common memes as of late. Oh, and of course, there's always your perennial prognostication of doom and gloom for Ukraine, unless it ties its future and fortune with Russia's.

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn’t invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?
     
    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world? Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family? To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat in the middle dividing up and dispersing the funds? And if such a single person does indeed pay his share of the tax burden to support such unneeded miscreants, why should he not be allowed to obtain social security benefits that he's been paying to receive for the majority of his working life? Are you suggesting that these individuals should be eliminated at some certain age?

    Families don’t always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative.

     

    Perhaps, the reality is that families seldom really work these days. It's not encouraging when I hear about all of the problems that families are having today. Children that use all manner of drugs, overdoses, suicides, listless and pointless lives...I hope that this isn't the case for you, but I think that it's the height of folly to think that the family life is the perfect lifestyle for everybody out there.

    A lot of the major politicians today have indeed managed to raise children. How do their family profiles stack up? Biden, with his son being photographed in bed with hookers and a crack pipe in his mouth. How about Putin? You only hear about his kids through tabloid features. Is he married? How many kids does he really have. And on and on....

    Replies: @Beckow, @AP

  906. @LatW
    @Svidomyatheart


    Finland did mostly OK with Finlandization
     
    Finland recently published a new defense white paper. In brief, it calls for strengthening of the territorial forces and a general increase in troops. It talks about Russia very explicitly. Remember that they also have conscription.

    but they just wont let go what happens when those Russians read some passages from I don't know? say Ivan Ilyin’s about how we’re always supposed to be chained to them
     
    And do what (besides the current stuff which is, admittedly, awful enough)? Right now, his options are actually quite limited (not sure about 20-30-50 years from now). He can't move further because then the whole world will see it for what it is. Help the rebels more? Sure. But then the new drones will fly in -- the Ukrainians just started using them. This talk about how "we don't acknowledge the illegal regime and we'll be talking to the real Ukrainians who will eventually overthrow it" is completely futile. That won't happen anymore. In the meanwhile, Ukrainization is proceeding.

    And btw, recently there's a new meme going around... mostly voiced by Arestovich. That if Russia were to start a full fledged invasion of Ukraine, it would be so devastating, that it could even partially cripple the Russian army and thus create a huge security risk for Russia and that the generalshtab apparently knows this. Granted, one can call BS on what Arestovich says, but still...

    Replies: @Beckow

    First, we mostly agree on the “archaic” family dilemma. I am a bit more optimistic, but that is based on a more family-friendly CE environment. I see how in the West this is an uphill fight.

    He can’t move further because then the whole world will see it for what it is…Arestovich: if Russia were to start a full fledged invasion of Ukraine…it would create a huge security risk for Russia

    The current situation is already a huge security risk for Russia. They can’t let it go, their choices are between bad alternatives. On the plus side, they can lose a lot and still come out of it better of than they are today. Russia has a complete heavy weapons and air superiority, they can destroy parts of Ukraine at will. The constraint is that they don’t want to kill Ukrainians – that would sour the local relations for decades. But when not given a better option they will do it. There is not much Ukraine or the West could do to stop it. It would a turkey shoot, they can take out airfields, bases, Lviv…Ugly, but certainly possible. (By the way, careful with Arestovich, he plays for more than one team.)

    Regarding the ‘world seeing it for what it is…‘, have you been paying attention to the Western politicians and media? They claim it has already happened, many times. If one has a reputation for brutality, they may as well do it – there is no gain in holding back.

    Russia is waiting for the right time and for a few blocks to fall in place. They may also wait for a distracting event elsewhere or for US being preoccupied domestically. But they will move, they have to – the behaviour by Kiev and their noisy sponsors makes it inevitable. I don’t think it is good, I think the Minsk regional autonomy deal was a fantastic deal for Kiev – all they had to do is to take it and then wait. But Washington wanted more…and they get what they want.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Beckow


    The current situation is already a huge security risk for Russia. They can’t let it go, their choices are between bad alternatives.
     
    Agree, it's not a good situation when your closest buffers are being penetrated. Although this whole buffer thing might become obsolete and archaic as well in the future with developing technologies.

    Regarding the ‘world seeing it for what it is…‘, have you been paying attention to the Western politicians and media? They claim it has already happened, many times. If one has a reputation for brutality, they may as well do it – there is no gain in holding back.
     
    Well, the gain is that your troops are being spared. And just because the situation is bad doesn't mean it can't get worse. The West is a factor, but remember that Russia's official position is that they are not a party to the conflict, their leaders are communicating that to their own audience, too. So they have to tell their own public that they'll be invading and killing Ukrainians and that tens of thousands on both sides could possibly die. It might even be harder psychologically than militarily. But, of course, if Ukraine develops its missiles or if the US will place some serious infrastructure there (which is doubtful) or if Ukraine starts taking over the breakaway territories, then Russia might attack. Or... eventually Russia will have to accept that Ukraine is gone.

    By the way, careful with Arestovich, he plays for more than one team.

     

    What do you mean? Right now he plays for Team UA, Team Zelensky. You mean that he hung out with some Russian Eurasianists 15 years ago in some conference or that he's not as pro-Western as the Poroshenko people? Or that there is some other actor? He seems like someone who is personally invested in Ukraine being sovereign and winning. He may be too much of a freestyler to be given important political posts, but a lot of his analysis is quite sound. He was in the military intelligence (a major which is a very high rank) and was in the East, too.

    I think the Minsk regional autonomy deal was a fantastic deal for Kiev – all they had to do is to take it and then wait. But Washington wanted more…and they get what they want.
     
    If the Ukrainian side had been able to regain control of the border and re-absorb but politically disfranchise the Donbass, then it would be a good deal for Kyiv. But it looks like Minsk was a stillborn to begin with as it was never really acceptable to the Ukrainian side, regardless of what Washington's influence may be.

    Replies: @Beckow

  907. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    thx, but that's still pretty vague, and imo rather too optimistic about what a collapse of the present economic system would entail.


    Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.
     
    Sounds overly romantic to me. I mean just look at some more backward parts of the world, which still have an enchanted view of the universe and where many people believe in spirits, magical spells and witchcraft, to deal with their existential fears about the world and their precarious dependence on nature. I think the potential consequences of such a world view could be rather shocking to your bourgeois sensibilities.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird, @AaronB

    I wonder if AaronB would have any sympathy with The Dawn of Everything. A new book co-authored by David Graeber, who I believe he has referenced before. (I presume he has not had time to read it, yet)
    ____
    BTW, I like what the Turks are doing, if the rumors are true about them deporting Syrians seen eating bananas. Possibly a useful precedent for Germany.

    • Replies: @AaronB
    @songbird

    I am a fan of Grabber, and that sounds like an amazing book that I will read as soon as I can.

    It seems to be challenging both the official narrative of Hobbesian primitivism leading to enlightened modernity, and the counter narrative of idyllic hunter gatherers being plunged into hierarchy and domination by the rise of agriculture.

    In other words, fresh, optimistic thinking of just the kind we need right now.


    A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution―from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality―and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

    For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike―either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

    Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.
     
  908. It seems that the Russian anti-missile shield is a healthy kid and is growing. While Russia surpassed the West in hypersonic technology, it is also speedily narrowing the gap in the ABM/ASAT sphere.

    https://www.thespacereview.com/article/4262/1

    So, Western claims about its tech superiority are becoming, more and more, just empty words.

  909. @German_reader
    @AaronB

    thx, but that's still pretty vague, and imo rather too optimistic about what a collapse of the present economic system would entail.


    Beauty and magic, and the natural world, would come rushing back into our lives.
     
    Sounds overly romantic to me. I mean just look at some more backward parts of the world, which still have an enchanted view of the universe and where many people believe in spirits, magical spells and witchcraft, to deal with their existential fears about the world and their precarious dependence on nature. I think the potential consequences of such a world view could be rather shocking to your bourgeois sensibilities.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird, @AaronB

    Well, I am purposefully vague, because when humans ease back and surrender some amount of control, the new culture that will arise will be unpredictable.

    An “organic” culture is always unpredictable – and a post-materislist culture that respected the intangible, would not be a planned thing.

    As for a more enchanted world, I’ve spent time in lost-in-time villages in the Indian Himalayas and the Laotian countryside, so I have an idea. I’m not romanticizing it, and it has it’s drawbacks, but on the whole it’s a deeper and richer life than that offered by modernity.

    But I’m not proposing we go back to that level of primitiveness – that would be impossible, and not even necessary. While I do think we should scale back our technology use to have a richer experience of life – George Orwell avoided electric light and loved candlelight – we can keep much of it. Although yes, we’d have to vastly reduce our use and consumption.

    In reality, cutting edge Quantum science already suggests a more enchanted and spooky world than our 19th century Positivism, we just haven’t caught up yet.

    And countries that heavily use technology, like Japan, have an animist strain and superstitious strain that I find attractive, and can be developed.

    Japan often integrates a respect for the intangible side of life with technology – many extremely modern Japanese store and bar interiors somehow achieve an intimate warmth instead of being soulless and alienating as modern interiors tend to be in the West (we have to turn to old styles and architecture to achieve warmth and intimacy).

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AaronB

    A distinctive aspect of Japan is balancing modernity with a connection to the Ancient World - I wrote this explanation here https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4974943


    heavily use technology, like Japan, have an animist strain and superstitious strain that I find attractive
     
    Only in some cultures, usually with a unusual kind of historical contiguity.

    As I discussed earlier, Japanese culture's relation to insects might be an indication.
  910. I hope this will be published here as my reply to #137 and #134 from ‘Review: Dune, Part I’.

    Thanks for good answers. Pls, let me add few things. ‘Sard’ is a name for Serbs and many toponyms start with ‘Sard’ (or Ser or Sir), especially in India where Aryans brought Sanskrit and many toponyms. ‘Iranian’=’Aryan’. Sard(is) in Lydia/Phrygia also come from ‘Serbs’ (tribe Brigians=Phrygians) who came there from Balkan. Sardinia also got name from this Asia Minor’s Sard. Sardans (Serdans – Sea People; ‘Marines’ were the original name in the novel before changed to ‘Sardaukar’) were Ramses’ elite guard, poets wrote poems about them. ‘Sardar’ is an old Serbian military title (like ‘duke’), used until recently and now is frequent (sur)name in Serbia and India. ‘Shah’ is a derivative of Serbian ‘tsar’. Spartans, Alexander and his army, elite Roman Illyrian legions and Janissaries (excellent observations!) – all of them were Serbs. I think that ‘dune’ is also a Serbian word considering that their previous name for Babylon was ‘Vardun’ (‘tower on sand’). Throat singing, presented in the movie as chanting, is the ancient Serbian style of singing originated in Dinaric Alps. It is still practised in rural areas of this region. In the mountains of the Balkans we find a peculiar type of “old style” singing which can only be compared with the howling of wolfs.

  911. @songbird
    @German_reader

    I wonder if AaronB would have any sympathy with The Dawn of Everything. A new book co-authored by David Graeber, who I believe he has referenced before. (I presume he has not had time to read it, yet)
    ____
    BTW, I like what the Turks are doing, if the rumors are true about them deporting Syrians seen eating bananas. Possibly a useful precedent for Germany.

    https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/10/syrians-be-deported-eating-bananas-provocatively-turkey

    Replies: @AaronB

    I am a fan of Grabber, and that sounds like an amazing book that I will read as soon as I can.

    It seems to be challenging both the official narrative of Hobbesian primitivism leading to enlightened modernity, and the counter narrative of idyllic hunter gatherers being plunged into hierarchy and domination by the rise of agriculture.

    In other words, fresh, optimistic thinking of just the kind we need right now.

    A dramatically new understanding of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution―from the development of agriculture and cities to the origins of the state, democracy, and inequality―and revealing new possibilities for human emancipation.

    For generations, our remote ancestors have been cast as primitive and childlike―either free and equal innocents, or thuggish and warlike. Civilization, we are told, could be achieved only by sacrificing those original freedoms or, alternatively, by taming our baser instincts. David Graeber and David Wengrow show how such theories first emerged in the eighteenth century as a conservative reaction to powerful critiques of European society posed by Indigenous observers and intellectuals. Revisiting this encounter has startling implications for how we make sense of human history today, including the origins of farming, property, cities, democracy, slavery, and civilization itself.

    Drawing on pathbreaking research in archaeology and anthropology, the authors show how history becomes a far more interesting place once we learn to throw off our conceptual shackles and perceive what’s really there. If humans did not spend 95 percent of their evolutionary past in tiny bands of hunter-gatherers, what were they doing all that time? If agriculture, and cities, did not mean a plunge into hierarchy and domination, then what kinds of social and economic organization did they lead to? The answers are often unexpected, and suggest that the course of human history may be less set in stone, and more full of playful, hopeful possibilities, than we tend to assume.

    • Thanks: songbird
  912. @LatW
    @Dmitry


    nobody can understand how someone who looks like him can even be friends with someone who looks like Jonah Hill,
     
    Maybe the jock isn't as "dumb" as they believe? Maybe he enjoys reading? Not in this movie, but in such a friendship in real life.

    Yes a lot of Americans (excluding those which go to “band camp”) don’t like things like jazz, or even classic American literature.
     
    I've never met anyone who doesn't like American literature, but what I meant was more along the lines -- they don't listen to pop music too much and they don't eat fast food. They listen to classical or alternative music, eat local organic food, take rare supplements, etc. Go to their own clubs, etc. Wear earth tone colored hoodies, etc.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    jock isn’t as “dumb” as they believe

    That’s part of the trope, including in the 21 Jump Street (they swap identities, and the jock has to become a nerd, etc – I think this is the story for a lot of these films).

    Although the notable thing in the film, is the identification of the cultural features of Generation Z, even though it is made 10 years ago, and written more than 10 years ago.

    Like he says at 42:45 –
    https://putlockernew.site/watch-movie/21-jump-street-2012_cwgr6e4x3/gj9w0o4-full-movie-online?watchnow=1

    Although the nerds’ stereotype in these films seems to be eternal and unchanging, and definitely reminds a lot of being in Karlin’s blog.

    listen to classical or alternative music, eat local organic food, take rare supplements, etc. Go to their own clubs, etc.

    This sounds like the “New Yuppie” stereotype?

    “This new elite is typified by the brownstone-dweller traipsing through Whole Foods with a yoga mat peeping from the top of her NPR tote; the new Prospect Heights mother who stops in at the lactation consultant before her Y7 class; the tech startup employee with the neatly trimmed beard and Everlane button-down who announces on Facebook that he’s “bumping the new Kendrick.” They buy green cleaning products, ethically made clothes, and small-batch everything.”

    “Now that conspicuous consumption has lost its prestige, today’s elites express their status through inconspicuous consumption. Their understated expenditures signal that they are knowledgeable and moral—most often to other members of the same class.”

    “While a desire to buy organic root vegetables might seem innocuous enough, there is a disquieting side to inconspicuous consumption. Aspirational-class parents reproduce their class position for their children in ways that are even less visible, but far more significant and expensive, than dressing them in artisan-made organic cotton tees. They buy their kids boutique health care, take them on enriching trips to the Galápagos, and—most importantly—equip them with every educational advantage, from high-end preschools to SAT tutors to Ivy League tuition. ”

    https://newrepublic.com/article/143609/new-yuppies-how-aspirational-class-expresses-status-age-inequality

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Dmitry


    “Now that conspicuous consumption has lost its prestige, today’s elites express their status through inconspicuous consumption. Their understated expenditures signal that they are knowledgeable and moral—most often to other members of the same class.”
     
    Well, that exists, but there are totally normal people that live that way without the need to signal some status, they just live that way because they enjoy it or those are their preferences, oblivious to the mainstream American culture.
  913. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    It’s the most alien to European culture in the American culture, and exciting for that reason.

    There is libertarian or self-reliance aspect of “crawfish brawl” and protecting yourself with a gun, which Emerson and Thoreau would approve of.
     
    Hunting was also a part of 19th century bourgeois culture, that modelled itself after aristocratic tastes. Nothing needs to be said of church-going, just that secularization in Europe is more thoro & earlier.

    A lot of frontier cultures will also emphasize self-reliance too, in contrast to mutual support in more communitarian cultures.

    there is certainly something a little misanthropic there
     
    It explains a lot of mistrust of a central authority in American & Americanized cultures, that stems from this attitude from the bottom-up, as opposed to regular assessment of top-down repressions.

    Can rigid top-down repressions leads to the internalization of that attitude?

    One of the features of American culture is insularity and provincialism, in relation to other cultures.
     
    Pre-colonial US was a patchwork of tribes each holding relatively small areas and having peculiar customs and traditions. Certainly the environmental influences conductive to this are still here.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Hunting was also a part of 19th century.. aristocratic tastes

    Although the European was a different culture than the American –
    The American culture emerged from the New World equivalent “poachers”, although at least in recent decades it’s transformed into a primarily sport.

    Of course the “poachers”, are morally acceptable or even admirable for most people, whereas these “sports people” trying to entertain themselves or remove their boredom – less

    church-going, just that secularization in Europe

    It has a different role in Europe and America. That is, the church in America becomes one of the most important parts of a diminished public sphere.

    For comparison, in country like Denmark, the public sphere is extending in many more ways into your life already, whether you would go to a church or not.

    mistrust of a central authority

    And this American culture of mistrust is not exactly “maladaptive”, when we see 20th century history in Europe, and Hitler and Stalin, et al.

    But the “misanthropic hedgehog” view can also seem to conveniently match the free-market ideologies of 20th century America a little too “co-incidentally” to seem to be completely “bottom-up”.

    If you look at the 20th century transportation and urban planning in America (which includes massive closing down of railway systems by the mid-20th century), it matches a seeming preference of private transport, self-reliance, autonomy in movement, etc. But it was “co-incidentally” also very profitable for America’s automobile industry.

    US was a patchwork of tribes each holding relatively small areas and having peculiar customs and traditions. Certainly the environmental influences

    By the early 20th century America becomes internally very homogenized.

    In the 1933, Bertrand Russell is writing about this internal homogenization process.

    He identifies it as a most strong feature that Europeans will notice about America of early 20th century – extreme homogenization internally, as a result of the technological uniformity.

    There is this chapter he wrote in the 1930s. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458601/page/n185/mode/2up

    I’m not sure we could even update this for the 21st century. It seems today as Bertrand Russell wrote almost a century ago.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    And this American culture of mistrust is not exactly “maladaptive”, when we see 20th century history in Europe, and Hitler and Stalin, et al.

    But the “misanthropic hedgehog” view can also seem to conveniently match the free-market ideologies of 20th century America a little too “co-incidentally” to seem to be completely “bottom-up”.
     
    I suspect it will be globalized as the main impact of the COVID agenda.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  914. @AaronB
    @German_reader

    Well, I am purposefully vague, because when humans ease back and surrender some amount of control, the new culture that will arise will be unpredictable.

    An "organic" culture is always unpredictable - and a post-materislist culture that respected the intangible, would not be a planned thing.

    As for a more enchanted world, I've spent time in lost-in-time villages in the Indian Himalayas and the Laotian countryside, so I have an idea. I'm not romanticizing it, and it has it's drawbacks, but on the whole it's a deeper and richer life than that offered by modernity.

    But I'm not proposing we go back to that level of primitiveness - that would be impossible, and not even necessary. While I do think we should scale back our technology use to have a richer experience of life - George Orwell avoided electric light and loved candlelight - we can keep much of it. Although yes, we'd have to vastly reduce our use and consumption.

    In reality, cutting edge Quantum science already suggests a more enchanted and spooky world than our 19th century Positivism, we just haven't caught up yet.

    And countries that heavily use technology, like Japan, have an animist strain and superstitious strain that I find attractive, and can be developed.

    Japan often integrates a respect for the intangible side of life with technology - many extremely modern Japanese store and bar interiors somehow achieve an intimate warmth instead of being soulless and alienating as modern interiors tend to be in the West (we have to turn to old styles and architecture to achieve warmth and intimacy).

    Replies: @Dmitry

    A distinctive aspect of Japan is balancing modernity with a connection to the Ancient World – I wrote this explanation here https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4974943

    heavily use technology, like Japan, have an animist strain and superstitious strain that I find attractive

    Only in some cultures, usually with a unusual kind of historical contiguity.

    As I discussed earlier, Japanese culture’s relation to insects might be an indication.

    • Agree: AaronB
  915. [MORE]

    Open threads belong here

    Not substack

    Putin agrees.

  916. @Beckow
    @LatW

    First, we mostly agree on the "archaic" family dilemma. I am a bit more optimistic, but that is based on a more family-friendly CE environment. I see how in the West this is an uphill fight.


    He can’t move further because then the whole world will see it for what it is...Arestovich: if Russia were to start a full fledged invasion of Ukraine...it would create a huge security risk for Russia
     
    The current situation is already a huge security risk for Russia. They can't let it go, their choices are between bad alternatives. On the plus side, they can lose a lot and still come out of it better of than they are today. Russia has a complete heavy weapons and air superiority, they can destroy parts of Ukraine at will. The constraint is that they don't want to kill Ukrainians - that would sour the local relations for decades. But when not given a better option they will do it. There is not much Ukraine or the West could do to stop it. It would a turkey shoot, they can take out airfields, bases, Lviv...Ugly, but certainly possible. (By the way, careful with Arestovich, he plays for more than one team.)

    Regarding the 'world seeing it for what it is...', have you been paying attention to the Western politicians and media? They claim it has already happened, many times. If one has a reputation for brutality, they may as well do it - there is no gain in holding back.

    Russia is waiting for the right time and for a few blocks to fall in place. They may also wait for a distracting event elsewhere or for US being preoccupied domestically. But they will move, they have to - the behaviour by Kiev and their noisy sponsors makes it inevitable. I don't think it is good, I think the Minsk regional autonomy deal was a fantastic deal for Kiev - all they had to do is to take it and then wait. But Washington wanted more...and they get what they want.

    Replies: @LatW

    The current situation is already a huge security risk for Russia. They can’t let it go, their choices are between bad alternatives.

    Agree, it’s not a good situation when your closest buffers are being penetrated. Although this whole buffer thing might become obsolete and archaic as well in the future with developing technologies.

    Regarding the ‘world seeing it for what it is…‘, have you been paying attention to the Western politicians and media? They claim it has already happened, many times. If one has a reputation for brutality, they may as well do it – there is no gain in holding back.

    Well, the gain is that your troops are being spared. And just because the situation is bad doesn’t mean it can’t get worse. The West is a factor, but remember that Russia’s official position is that they are not a party to the conflict, their leaders are communicating that to their own audience, too. So they have to tell their own public that they’ll be invading and killing Ukrainians and that tens of thousands on both sides could possibly die. It might even be harder psychologically than militarily. But, of course, if Ukraine develops its missiles or if the US will place some serious infrastructure there (which is doubtful) or if Ukraine starts taking over the breakaway territories, then Russia might attack. Or… eventually Russia will have to accept that Ukraine is gone.

    By the way, careful with Arestovich, he plays for more than one team.

    What do you mean? Right now he plays for Team UA, Team Zelensky. You mean that he hung out with some Russian Eurasianists 15 years ago in some conference or that he’s not as pro-Western as the Poroshenko people? Or that there is some other actor? He seems like someone who is personally invested in Ukraine being sovereign and winning. He may be too much of a freestyler to be given important political posts, but a lot of his analysis is quite sound. He was in the military intelligence (a major which is a very high rank) and was in the East, too.

    I think the Minsk regional autonomy deal was a fantastic deal for Kiev – all they had to do is to take it and then wait. But Washington wanted more…and they get what they want.

    If the Ukrainian side had been able to regain control of the border and re-absorb but politically disfranchise the Donbass, then it would be a good deal for Kyiv. But it looks like Minsk was a stillborn to begin with as it was never really acceptable to the Ukrainian side, regardless of what Washington’s influence may be.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LatW

    I didn't say it couldn't get worse. It will - there are no good options left. It is not black-and-white: is Ukraine really split between Ukrainians and pro-Russians, isn't there a large middle 50% group that wants peace and relative friendship with both EU and Russia? at what point is the Western "Nato infrastructure" a threat to Russia? to what extent would US support Kiev in an actual war? would it even be a war, or just massive bombing-surrender? would EU cut-off Russia, for how long? what would be the consequences for each? this is a complex continuum.

    Minsk offered a compromise: autonomy and peace. Ambiguity always outlasts clear-cut solutions and Kiev didn't take the gift. Russia in 2014 wanted to put it behind and move on. You always take a deal when the other side (Donbas) was getting vague temporary benefits, and Kiev was getting back control. It was a mistake by Kiev to refuse, so were the self-defeating language laws and totally unnecessary military provocations with Nato.You pick an area to fight where you are stronger, for Kiev that was the administration-autonomy-sovereignity-law. Not in military or economy where Russia is much stronger and the West is too far. But that is no longer an option.

    Arestovich has interesting ideas, but with his background (and family background) he is not what he appears to be. Just think it through.

    Replies: @LatW

  917. @Dmitry
    @LatW


    jock isn’t as “dumb” as they believe
     
    That's part of the trope, including in the 21 Jump Street (they swap identities, and the jock has to become a nerd, etc - I think this is the story for a lot of these films).

    Although the notable thing in the film, is the identification of the cultural features of Generation Z, even though it is made 10 years ago, and written more than 10 years ago.

    Like he says at 42:45 -
    https://putlockernew.site/watch-movie/21-jump-street-2012_cwgr6e4x3/gj9w0o4-full-movie-online?watchnow=1

    -


    Although the nerds' stereotype in these films seems to be eternal and unchanging, and definitely reminds a lot of being in Karlin's blog.

    listen to classical or alternative music, eat local organic food, take rare supplements, etc. Go to their own clubs, etc.
     
    This sounds like the "New Yuppie" stereotype?

    "This new elite is typified by the brownstone-dweller traipsing through Whole Foods with a yoga mat peeping from the top of her NPR tote; the new Prospect Heights mother who stops in at the lactation consultant before her Y7 class; the tech startup employee with the neatly trimmed beard and Everlane button-down who announces on Facebook that he’s “bumping the new Kendrick.” They buy green cleaning products, ethically made clothes, and small-batch everything."

    "Now that conspicuous consumption has lost its prestige, today’s elites express their status through inconspicuous consumption. Their understated expenditures signal that they are knowledgeable and moral—most often to other members of the same class."

    "While a desire to buy organic root vegetables might seem innocuous enough, there is a disquieting side to inconspicuous consumption. Aspirational-class parents reproduce their class position for their children in ways that are even less visible, but far more significant and expensive, than dressing them in artisan-made organic cotton tees. They buy their kids boutique health care, take them on enriching trips to the Galápagos, and—most importantly—equip them with every educational advantage, from high-end preschools to SAT tutors to Ivy League tuition. "

    https://newrepublic.com/article/143609/new-yuppies-how-aspirational-class-expresses-status-age-inequality

    Replies: @LatW

    “Now that conspicuous consumption has lost its prestige, today’s elites express their status through inconspicuous consumption. Their understated expenditures signal that they are knowledgeable and moral—most often to other members of the same class.”

    Well, that exists, but there are totally normal people that live that way without the need to signal some status, they just live that way because they enjoy it or those are their preferences, oblivious to the mainstream American culture.

  918. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    It seems like I hit a sore spot....single, overweight, hedonist? Let's see, I am guessing you are only 2 out 3...and who is the toothy guy? why should I care?

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn't invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?

    Same can be done with taxes, business, etc...the people who choose to live separate lives - outside of the normal flow of a multi-generational society will be treated as such. That was the way it used to be for thousands of years, it has only changed in the last 1-2 generations. The "socialism", that you like to deride so much, unfortunately also make the free-loading easier. We can fix that.

    What is "dysfunctional" is not to have a family. Families don't always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative. Maybe you should try harder. (There are quite a few marriageable Ukie girls around, running away from the Maidan fiasco, too many dropping their moral standards, maybe you can try save at least one of them?)

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    It seems like I hit a sore spot….single, overweight, hedonist?

    You’re the one who is continually griping about elderly folks being overweight, and now, that singles are all worthless hedonists. I’m just repeating some of your common memes as of late. Oh, and of course, there’s always your perennial prognostication of doom and gloom for Ukraine, unless it ties its future and fortune with Russia’s.

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn’t invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?

    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world? Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family? To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat in the middle dividing up and dispersing the funds? And if such a single person does indeed pay his share of the tax burden to support such unneeded miscreants, why should he not be allowed to obtain social security benefits that he’s been paying to receive for the majority of his working life? Are you suggesting that these individuals should be eliminated at some certain age?

    Families don’t always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative.

    Perhaps, the reality is that families seldom really work these days. It’s not encouraging when I hear about all of the problems that families are having today. Children that use all manner of drugs, overdoses, suicides, listless and pointless lives…I hope that this isn’t the case for you, but I think that it’s the height of folly to think that the family life is the perfect lifestyle for everybody out there.

    A lot of the major politicians today have indeed managed to raise children. How do their family profiles stack up? Biden, with his son being photographed in bed with hookers and a crack pipe in his mouth. How about Putin? You only hear about his kids through tabloid features. Is he married? How many kids does he really have. And on and on….

    • LOL: sher singh
    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should the benefits be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    I guess that is your way of turning down the shapely Ukie brides that are joyfully leaving the post-Maidan paradise in Ukraine (definitely no gloom and doom there).

    To answer your questions: there actually are not enough people in the countries that matter, not enough kids. You allude to replacing them with plentiful Third World mobs, we prefer no to.

    The benefits should not go to people who bailed on the society by living selfish single-LBTQ lives. Answer my question: why should my or other normal parents' children take care of you when you are old? How exactly are you going to force them if they laugh in your face about all the stupid "benefits" that you voted for yourself? Life happens only in the present, you can't demand benefits from people who were too young to agree to them.

    There is an order of magnitude more problems with people outside of normal families. Your belly-aching that family life is not ideal, that there are always some Hunters, is just whinging: the other side of the society, the dead-end LGBT losers cause exponentially more problems for us, normal family people. If we would separate into two societies living side by side, we would be much better off. So why exactly should I, or my kids, subsidise the losers in their old age? The inevitable logic of a market-ruled society will demand that the freeloading will stop.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime?
     
    It costs $233,000 to raise a child in the USA (not that I or most parents care, we would have our children regardless of expense, unless it came to a point of starvation or something).

    Children continue society and culture. People who have them, have taken great expense for the benefit of others. Those who do not, are often in essence freeloaders. They spend most the money indulging themselves.

    A just solution would be to impose a $233,000 tax across the lifetime of each childless person, starting at age thirty, which would be refunded once the person has a child (a married couple would have to have two children for full credit). In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share. If someone just doesn't like children, can't attract a spouse or isn't interested in such relationships, or doesn't want to raise kids it is fine, as long as they pay their fair share. The tax can pay for schools or to feed poor kids or whatever.

    I suppose proof of donation equal to $233,000 can substitute for the tax.

    Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don't you care about it?

    Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family?
     
    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat
     
    This is true. There will be waste. Which is why it's better for people to have kids than to pay the tax. But money spent to make a bureaucracy fat, is still better than money spent to make a lifetime single person fat. The bureaucrat will still raise kids onto whom he or she will pass on the culture.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack, @Barbarossa

  919. @AP
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    Correct. Germans are among the most assimilated of people in the USA. But they are the largest single group, outnumbering the English into whose culture they have completely assimilated.

    The standard "non-ethnic" American is basically someone of mixed English, Scottish and German descent.

    However the Germans have not had zero influence on American culture. Grilling burgers and hot dogs and the type of music played in American carousels are German rather than British. Americans also have adopted their beer drinking habits from Germany, albeit in a literally watered-down way:

    https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/08/why-most-american-beer-is-so-dull-and-watery/400427/

    ...Americans didn’t develop a more unified taste in beer until the mid-1800s, when huge numbers of German immigrants—including David G. Yuengling, whose brewery still operates today, outside of Philadelphia—arrived and brought lager with them. Less intense in flavor than porters, stouts, and ales, lagers were a hit with America’s growing number of factory workers and miners, who ate at saloons near where they worked. “It was normal to get a beer with your meal, but not allowable to be tipsy on the job,” says Dighe. “So if you wanted a beer, your safest option was a weak beer.” As more and more immigrants came to the U.S. and unemployment stayed high, the stiff competition for jobs made this pressure for sobriety even higher.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I viewed this documentary on PBS about 10 years ago. It’s a great expose exploring the German input to American society. I did a quick look and couldn’t locate a free showing of it anywhere, but did find this short clip. I remember it stating that up towards 40% of Americans have some German ancestry (it was produced in the 1980’s) I think that you and others here would enjoy seeing it:

  920. @Dmitry
    @Yellowface Anon


    Hunting was also a part of 19th century.. aristocratic tastes
     
    Although the European was a different culture than the American -
    https://i.imgur.com/aG88u1S.jpg

    The American culture emerged from the New World equivalent "poachers", although at least in recent decades it's transformed into a primarily sport.

    Of course the "poachers", are morally acceptable or even admirable for most people, whereas these "sports people" trying to entertain themselves or remove their boredom - less


    church-going, just that secularization in Europe

     

    It has a different role in Europe and America. That is, the church in America becomes one of the most important parts of a diminished public sphere.

    For comparison, in country like Denmark, the public sphere is extending in many more ways into your life already, whether you would go to a church or not.


    mistrust of a central authority
     
    And this American culture of mistrust is not exactly "maladaptive", when we see 20th century history in Europe, and Hitler and Stalin, et al.

    But the "misanthropic hedgehog" view can also seem to conveniently match the free-market ideologies of 20th century America a little too "co-incidentally" to seem to be completely "bottom-up".

    If you look at the 20th century transportation and urban planning in America (which includes massive closing down of railway systems by the mid-20th century), it matches a seeming preference of private transport, self-reliance, autonomy in movement, etc. But it was "co-incidentally" also very profitable for America's automobile industry.


    US was a patchwork of tribes each holding relatively small areas and having peculiar customs and traditions. Certainly the environmental influences
     
    By the early 20th century America becomes internally very homogenized.

    In the 1933, Bertrand Russell is writing about this internal homogenization process.

    He identifies it as a most strong feature that Europeans will notice about America of early 20th century - extreme homogenization internally, as a result of the technological uniformity.

    There is this chapter he wrote in the 1930s. https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.458601/page/n185/mode/2up

    I'm not sure we could even update this for the 21st century. It seems today as Bertrand Russell wrote almost a century ago.
    https://i.imgur.com/zwA6t9P.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/FLBFm2J.jpg

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    And this American culture of mistrust is not exactly “maladaptive”, when we see 20th century history in Europe, and Hitler and Stalin, et al.

    But the “misanthropic hedgehog” view can also seem to conveniently match the free-market ideologies of 20th century America a little too “co-incidentally” to seem to be completely “bottom-up”.

    I suspect it will be globalized as the main impact of the COVID agenda.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    Some interesting posts from Naked Capitalism:

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/im-doc-on-medication-medical-supply-shortages-and-political-backlash.html

    Turns out A123 might be right. We'll see GOP single-party rule in 2022-24. What's sad is the elimination of entire ideologies from the political space, even if they are maladaptative because some marginally relevant mistakes are done.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/bob-pollin-stop-subsidizing-wall-st-start-subsidizing-workers-for-high-energy-costs.html

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Emil Nikola Richard

  921. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    And this American culture of mistrust is not exactly “maladaptive”, when we see 20th century history in Europe, and Hitler and Stalin, et al.

    But the “misanthropic hedgehog” view can also seem to conveniently match the free-market ideologies of 20th century America a little too “co-incidentally” to seem to be completely “bottom-up”.
     
    I suspect it will be globalized as the main impact of the COVID agenda.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Some interesting posts from Naked Capitalism:

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/im-doc-on-medication-medical-supply-shortages-and-political-backlash.html

    Turns out A123 might be right. We’ll see GOP single-party rule in 2022-24. What’s sad is the elimination of entire ideologies from the political space, even if they are maladaptative because some marginally relevant mistakes are done.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/bob-pollin-stop-subsidizing-wall-st-start-subsidizing-workers-for-high-energy-costs.html

    • Thanks: A123
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    A123, PBUYT, and no need to thank me. I need to clarify what I've said: if political discourse is dominated by something like your worldview, it will at least as bad as mainstreamed wokeness, if not worse. Instead of radical Dems sending Trumpists like you to re-education (indefinite quarantine?), it will be radical GOPers sending wokes to re-education. Bloodshed is inevitable, and it is now a matter of who'll end up dead.

    Replies: @iffen

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @Yellowface Anon

    The commenter IM Doc on Naked Capitalism has been one of the most valuable sources on the entire internet for a year. If Yves had Ron Unz's user widget where you could look at somebody's comments I would read every word this person wrote.

    If I ever find out he was a CIA agent all along I am going to be really bummed. The other day I saw on Peter Levenda's Amazon.com about page he is a spook. That info was nearly sufficient to wreck my whole damn day even though I always had my suspicions.

  922. Here is another good example of Trump connecting with Voters. He is not terribly committed to the Atlanta Braves, Tomahawk Chop. However, he is from NYC (∆). Presumably his MLB affiliation is to one of the NY teams. The willingness to side openly side with fans is a win.

    The bigger victory is likely to be — Wingnut over reaction from low-IQ, #NeverTrump “hate ragers”. Rejecting tradition and attacking sports fans is guaranteed failure for the SJW/DNC.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    ____________

    (∆) Technically, Trump is a Florida Resident. If he goes to a Florida State Seminoles game he will have to deliver a much better “home state” chop.

  923. @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    Some interesting posts from Naked Capitalism:

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/im-doc-on-medication-medical-supply-shortages-and-political-backlash.html

    Turns out A123 might be right. We'll see GOP single-party rule in 2022-24. What's sad is the elimination of entire ideologies from the political space, even if they are maladaptative because some marginally relevant mistakes are done.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/bob-pollin-stop-subsidizing-wall-st-start-subsidizing-workers-for-high-energy-costs.html

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Emil Nikola Richard

    A123, PBUYT, and no need to thank me. I need to clarify what I’ve said: if political discourse is dominated by something like your worldview, it will at least as bad as mainstreamed wokeness, if not worse. Instead of radical Dems sending Trumpists like you to re-education (indefinite quarantine?), it will be radical GOPers sending wokes to re-education. Bloodshed is inevitable, and it is now a matter of who’ll end up dead.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Bloodshed is inevitable, and it is now a matter of who’ll end up dead.

    You do not have a good understanding of the American political scene.

    The elites lost control of the electoral outcome in 2016. That is all. An analogous event would have been if instead of the elites placing FDR as President in 1932, the yahoos had been able to elect Huey Long as President. Populist demagogues cannot be "manufactured" or duplicated. The best that can be hoped for in the U. S. is that one of the major parties will adopt some of populist demands. This does not address the question of whether the said populist demands are "good" for the country.

    Trump provides very little in the way of policies or plans that will benefit the yahoos in the long run. Yahoos do not have any special insight into the future. Many are very short-sighted and believe that being able to have a yard sign that says "Fuck Joe Biden" is the bee's knees.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  924. @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    A123, PBUYT, and no need to thank me. I need to clarify what I've said: if political discourse is dominated by something like your worldview, it will at least as bad as mainstreamed wokeness, if not worse. Instead of radical Dems sending Trumpists like you to re-education (indefinite quarantine?), it will be radical GOPers sending wokes to re-education. Bloodshed is inevitable, and it is now a matter of who'll end up dead.

    Replies: @iffen

    Bloodshed is inevitable, and it is now a matter of who’ll end up dead.

    You do not have a good understanding of the American political scene.

    The elites lost control of the electoral outcome in 2016. That is all. An analogous event would have been if instead of the elites placing FDR as President in 1932, the yahoos had been able to elect Huey Long as President. Populist demagogues cannot be “manufactured” or duplicated. The best that can be hoped for in the U. S. is that one of the major parties will adopt some of populist demands. This does not address the question of whether the said populist demands are “good” for the country.

    Trump provides very little in the way of policies or plans that will benefit the yahoos in the long run. Yahoos do not have any special insight into the future. Many are very short-sighted and believe that being able to have a yard sign that says “Fuck Joe Biden” is the bee’s knees.

    • Agree: sher singh
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Yes, they are indeed short-sighted, and they focus on their personal security. I guess you underestimate the impact of the recent vaccine mandates on everyone's political thinking.

    Anyone can tolerate bullsh*t as long as they are mostly gesturing/virtue signalling. Once the mess crosses into everyone's livelihoods, they will immediately flee to an option that enables self-preservation. Right now, it is Trumpist and/or libertarian. This is why I said a Trumpist or DeSantis can run on a platform of only "open everything up" and receive a bipartisan 70% popular vote.

    What happens after that won't be pretty. It isn't after Biden's election.

    Replies: @A123

  925. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Bloodshed is inevitable, and it is now a matter of who’ll end up dead.

    You do not have a good understanding of the American political scene.

    The elites lost control of the electoral outcome in 2016. That is all. An analogous event would have been if instead of the elites placing FDR as President in 1932, the yahoos had been able to elect Huey Long as President. Populist demagogues cannot be "manufactured" or duplicated. The best that can be hoped for in the U. S. is that one of the major parties will adopt some of populist demands. This does not address the question of whether the said populist demands are "good" for the country.

    Trump provides very little in the way of policies or plans that will benefit the yahoos in the long run. Yahoos do not have any special insight into the future. Many are very short-sighted and believe that being able to have a yard sign that says "Fuck Joe Biden" is the bee's knees.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Yes, they are indeed short-sighted, and they focus on their personal security. I guess you underestimate the impact of the recent vaccine mandates on everyone’s political thinking.

    Anyone can tolerate bullsh*t as long as they are mostly gesturing/virtue signalling. Once the mess crosses into everyone’s livelihoods, they will immediately flee to an option that enables self-preservation. Right now, it is Trumpist and/or libertarian. This is why I said a Trumpist or DeSantis can run on a platform of only “open everything up” and receive a bipartisan 70% popular vote.

    What happens after that won’t be pretty. It isn’t after Biden’s election.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Yellowface Anon

    Low-IQ and short sightedness are the reasons why Yahoos like @iffen exist.

    Let us examine the history of low-IQ "F-Bombs" during the Trump administration: (1)


    This sort of thing just isn’t done, is it? I mean, using a vulgar expletive in any connection with a beloved president like Joe Biden is beyond redemption. It’s unprecedented. It’s dangerous.

    Except when the same exact insult is applied to Donald Trump.

    Los Angeles Magazine:

    On Sunday, June 14, the Echo Park-based creative production studio and art gallery iam8bit launched fu**trump.art, a hybrid virtual exhibition and protest where all of the works read “F**k Trump” and are available to download for free as web and print resolution files so that anyone can share the message online or IRL.
     

     
    The difference between low-IQ Leftoids and intellectually advantaged MAGA is pretty clear. The "Yahoo's for Biden" team want their F-Bombs. Savvy MAGA supporters immediately replaced vulgarity with witty irony.

    As a side note, who claims NASCAR is dumb? A clever driver, Brandon Brown, successfully covered something that should not have been transmitted. As a reward for doing the right thing, he is now permanently associated with the popular movement against vulgarity.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇



    (1) https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/30/the-ap-discovers-the-code-behind-lets-go-brandon-cheer-n1528198
  926. What is Zuck’s goal with “Meta?”

    Upon viewing his demo, my impression was that he wants to take a substantial cut out of the funds devoted to the maintenance of blacks, by warehousing them in VR, thus reducing schooling, policing, and welfare costs, and opening up the cities to tourists again. Furthermore, I got the impression that he wants to solve the integration problem by using white chat bots, so as to achieve the proper ratios for socially pressuring them to adopt white normative behavior.

  927. I have consistently argued that bathroom humor should be banned from the public sphere.

    Even though there may be some historical precedent for it (ex: James II of England’s nickname in Ireland), I really feel that American politics has descended to the level of kindergarten. Hopefully, it is a regression before a rebirth. But, more likely, I think it is just a hint of the decline yet to come, and I can imagine worse. Like the ANC slogan, “Shoot the Boer!”

  928. dominated by something like your worldview, it will at least as bad as mainstreamed wokeness, if not worse.

    It is hard to envision any situation worse than what we have now.

    MAGA Reindustrialization will create good paying jobs in the U.S. Crack down on international firms who outsource (more jobs) & dodge taxes. Deal with trade exploitation (even more jobs).

    I would love to see tariffs, which are hard to avoid, come back as source of revenue. That would allow reduction or replacement of the income tax system, which is easily manipulated. Sadly, this is not part of MAGA doctrine, but it could eventually be added to the platform.

    Instead of radical Dems sending Trumpists like you to re-education (indefinite quarantine?), it will be radical GOPers sending wokes to re-education. Bloodshed is inevitable,

    Fixing the educational system does not require bloodshed. Bringing justice to those who abused FISA, FBI, etc. Does not require bloodshed.

    There is a real problem with anti-civilization Leftoids. For example, they stalked one of their own Senators and invaded after a wedding ceremony [see below]. It is the low-IQ yahoos, screaming #NeverTrump slurs, who will start the fights. These groups did not appear out of thin air. Elite backers provide funding and organization. Use criminal and civil fines to make them penniless, and they will stop creating terrorists.

    What is your ideal solution for handling the Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa, BLM, and similar groups bent on violence?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @AP
    @A123

    If I were her I would be tempted to, out of spite, become a Republican and publicly give credit to the protesters for bringing Mitch McConnell to power in the Senate.

    Replies: @A123

  929. Open threads should remain on Unz.

    The 60 or so comments there vs 900+ here is evidence enough.

    Fk Substack,

    That is all.

  930. @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    Some interesting posts from Naked Capitalism:

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/im-doc-on-medication-medical-supply-shortages-and-political-backlash.html

    Turns out A123 might be right. We'll see GOP single-party rule in 2022-24. What's sad is the elimination of entire ideologies from the political space, even if they are maladaptative because some marginally relevant mistakes are done.

    https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2021/10/bob-pollin-stop-subsidizing-wall-st-start-subsidizing-workers-for-high-energy-costs.html

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Emil Nikola Richard

    The commenter IM Doc on Naked Capitalism has been one of the most valuable sources on the entire internet for a year. If Yves had Ron Unz’s user widget where you could look at somebody’s comments I would read every word this person wrote.

    If I ever find out he was a CIA agent all along I am going to be really bummed. The other day I saw on Peter Levenda’s Amazon.com about page he is a spook. That info was nearly sufficient to wreck my whole damn day even though I always had my suspicions.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • LOL: sher singh
  931. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    It seems like I hit a sore spot….single, overweight, hedonist?
     
    You're the one who is continually griping about elderly folks being overweight, and now, that singles are all worthless hedonists. I'm just repeating some of your common memes as of late. Oh, and of course, there's always your perennial prognostication of doom and gloom for Ukraine, unless it ties its future and fortune with Russia's.

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn’t invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?
     
    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world? Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family? To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat in the middle dividing up and dispersing the funds? And if such a single person does indeed pay his share of the tax burden to support such unneeded miscreants, why should he not be allowed to obtain social security benefits that he's been paying to receive for the majority of his working life? Are you suggesting that these individuals should be eliminated at some certain age?

    Families don’t always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative.

     

    Perhaps, the reality is that families seldom really work these days. It's not encouraging when I hear about all of the problems that families are having today. Children that use all manner of drugs, overdoses, suicides, listless and pointless lives...I hope that this isn't the case for you, but I think that it's the height of folly to think that the family life is the perfect lifestyle for everybody out there.

    A lot of the major politicians today have indeed managed to raise children. How do their family profiles stack up? Biden, with his son being photographed in bed with hookers and a crack pipe in his mouth. How about Putin? You only hear about his kids through tabloid features. Is he married? How many kids does he really have. And on and on....

    Replies: @Beckow, @AP

    Why should the benefits be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world?

    I guess that is your way of turning down the shapely Ukie brides that are joyfully leaving the post-Maidan paradise in Ukraine (definitely no gloom and doom there).

    To answer your questions: there actually are not enough people in the countries that matter, not enough kids. You allude to replacing them with plentiful Third World mobs, we prefer no to.

    The benefits should not go to people who bailed on the society by living selfish single-LBTQ lives. Answer my question: why should my or other normal parents’ children take care of you when you are old? How exactly are you going to force them if they laugh in your face about all the stupid “benefits” that you voted for yourself? Life happens only in the present, you can’t demand benefits from people who were too young to agree to them.

    There is an order of magnitude more problems with people outside of normal families. Your belly-aching that family life is not ideal, that there are always some Hunters, is just whinging: the other side of the society, the dead-end LGBT losers cause exponentially more problems for us, normal family people. If we would separate into two societies living side by side, we would be much better off. So why exactly should I, or my kids, subsidise the losers in their old age? The inevitable logic of a market-ruled society will demand that the freeloading will stop.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    Answer my question: why should my or other normal parents’ children take care of you when you are old? How exactly are you going to force them if they laugh in your face about all the stupid “benefits” that you voted for yourself? Life happens only in the present, you can’t demand benefits from people who were too young to agree to them.
     
    Easy to answer. People who approach retirement age, who are probably financially better off, should make sure that they have purchased long term care insurance and an appropriate financial tool to fund such a plan like an annuity. Beside, in the States Medicare and Medicaid benefits, although not perfect do cover a broad range of debilitating health issues. Europe, with its longer infatuation with socialism should have developed even better ways to help cover the needs of its own retirees. You shouldn't have to have any ridiculous conversations with health care aides about the viability of ones personal lifestyle choices.

    So why exactly should I, or my kids, subsidize the losers in their old age? The inevitable logic of a market-ruled society will demand that the freeloading will stop.
     
    The system here in the states is much more market oriented than the one you and your fellow socialists have put together in Europe. Now you answer this to me: Why should I or any other American who faithfully contributed to the social security system throughout his working life have to give up these benefits once he reaches retirement age? If he was fortunate to save more, he should be in a position to pay the costs of even better health care provisions afforded to those that own a long term care policy.

    Replies: @Beckow

  932. @songbird
    @AP

    From what I've seen, Poland also seems to have a surprising number of tanks, compared to Germany. About 4x.

    Replies: @AP

    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.

    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)

    • Replies: @A123
    @AP



    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.
     
    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)
     
    GW Bush showed the world that post-war is when everything falls apart. Taking part of Germany is straightforward. What would Poland do with it?

    A UK-France-Poland alliance could break up German into smaller, less dangerous protectorates. However, neither BoJo nor Macron positioned for such a move. And, there would be massive downside risk.
    ___

    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively). Superior sovereign national courts should consistently rule against subordinate EU lower authorities.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Dmitry
    @AP

    How could Poland invade Germany. For example, the modern tanks in Poland's army, are free donations of reserve tanks from Germany, which the German companies are maintaining and training.
    https://defence24.com/breakthrough-polish-army-takes-delivery-of-leopard-2pl-tanks


    -


    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland's industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers. Even much of the exports to Czech Republic, will be to Volkswagen owned brands.

    https://i.imgur.com/RpXsWuY.jpg

    Replies: @A123, @songbird

  933. @A123

    dominated by something like your worldview, it will at least as bad as mainstreamed wokeness, if not worse.
     
    It is hard to envision any situation worse than what we have now.

    MAGA Reindustrialization will create good paying jobs in the U.S. Crack down on international firms who outsource (more jobs) & dodge taxes. Deal with trade exploitation (even more jobs).

    I would love to see tariffs, which are hard to avoid, come back as source of revenue. That would allow reduction or replacement of the income tax system, which is easily manipulated. Sadly, this is not part of MAGA doctrine, but it could eventually be added to the platform.


    Instead of radical Dems sending Trumpists like you to re-education (indefinite quarantine?), it will be radical GOPers sending wokes to re-education. Bloodshed is inevitable,
     
    Fixing the educational system does not require bloodshed. Bringing justice to those who abused FISA, FBI, etc. Does not require bloodshed.

    There is a real problem with anti-civilization Leftoids. For example, they stalked one of their own Senators and invaded after a wedding ceremony [see below]. It is the low-IQ yahoos, screaming #NeverTrump slurs, who will start the fights. These groups did not appear out of thin air. Elite backers provide funding and organization. Use criminal and civil fines to make them penniless, and they will stop creating terrorists.

    What is your ideal solution for handling the Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa, BLM, and similar groups bent on violence?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇


    https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1454201915668008963?s=20

    Replies: @AP

    If I were her I would be tempted to, out of spite, become a Republican and publicly give credit to the protesters for bringing Mitch McConnell to power in the Senate.

    • Replies: @A123
    @AP


    If I were her I would be tempted to, out of spite, become a Republican and publicly give credit to the protesters for bringing Mitch McConnell to power in the Senate
     
    A party switch is unlikely, however every senator is a "free agent".

    She could stay in the DNC, call a vote of no confidence in Schumer, and caucus for McConnell as bipartisan Senate leader to advance bipartisan Biden's policies. That leaves Pelosi & Schumer groveling at her feet to get back to 50 votes.

    I believe there is precedent for this. Arlen Spectre perhaps?
    ___

    Her best power move is... Requesting Secret Service protection due to "domestic terrorist" threats.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
  934. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Yes, they are indeed short-sighted, and they focus on their personal security. I guess you underestimate the impact of the recent vaccine mandates on everyone's political thinking.

    Anyone can tolerate bullsh*t as long as they are mostly gesturing/virtue signalling. Once the mess crosses into everyone's livelihoods, they will immediately flee to an option that enables self-preservation. Right now, it is Trumpist and/or libertarian. This is why I said a Trumpist or DeSantis can run on a platform of only "open everything up" and receive a bipartisan 70% popular vote.

    What happens after that won't be pretty. It isn't after Biden's election.

    Replies: @A123

    Low-IQ and short sightedness are the reasons why Yahoos like exist.

    Let us examine the history of low-IQ “F-Bombs” during the Trump administration: (1)

    This sort of thing just isn’t done, is it? I mean, using a vulgar expletive in any connection with a beloved president like Joe Biden is beyond redemption. It’s unprecedented. It’s dangerous.

    Except when the same exact insult is applied to Donald Trump.

    Los Angeles Magazine:

    On Sunday, June 14, the Echo Park-based creative production studio and art gallery iam8bit launched fu**trump.art, a hybrid virtual exhibition and protest where all of the works read “F**k Trump” and are available to download for free as web and print resolution files so that anyone can share the message online or IRL.

    The difference between low-IQ Leftoids and intellectually advantaged MAGA is pretty clear. The “Yahoo’s for Biden” team want their F-Bombs. Savvy MAGA supporters immediately replaced vulgarity with witty irony.

    As a side note, who claims NASCAR is dumb? A clever driver, Brandon Brown, successfully covered something that should not have been transmitted. As a reward for doing the right thing, he is now permanently associated with the popular movement against vulgarity.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    (1) https://pjmedia.com/news-and-politics/rick-moran/2021/10/30/the-ap-discovers-the-code-behind-lets-go-brandon-cheer-n1528198

  935. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    It seems like I hit a sore spot….single, overweight, hedonist?
     
    You're the one who is continually griping about elderly folks being overweight, and now, that singles are all worthless hedonists. I'm just repeating some of your common memes as of late. Oh, and of course, there's always your perennial prognostication of doom and gloom for Ukraine, unless it ties its future and fortune with Russia's.

    The implementation is simple: economic activities, taxes, retirements, need to reflect whether the people are a normal family raising a future generation. I mentioned previously that there is no reason to pay full pensions and provide free medical care to the elderly single or LGBT: they didn’t invest when younger in the society, thus my children owe them nothing. Anything they get is charity. All life takes place in the present, why should families pay for the freeloaders?
     
    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world? Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family? To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat in the middle dividing up and dispersing the funds? And if such a single person does indeed pay his share of the tax burden to support such unneeded miscreants, why should he not be allowed to obtain social security benefits that he's been paying to receive for the majority of his working life? Are you suggesting that these individuals should be eliminated at some certain age?

    Families don’t always work, and never work perfectly, there are also cases when it makes sense to separate, but as an institution they are far preferable to any alternative.

     

    Perhaps, the reality is that families seldom really work these days. It's not encouraging when I hear about all of the problems that families are having today. Children that use all manner of drugs, overdoses, suicides, listless and pointless lives...I hope that this isn't the case for you, but I think that it's the height of folly to think that the family life is the perfect lifestyle for everybody out there.

    A lot of the major politicians today have indeed managed to raise children. How do their family profiles stack up? Biden, with his son being photographed in bed with hookers and a crack pipe in his mouth. How about Putin? You only hear about his kids through tabloid features. Is he married? How many kids does he really have. And on and on....

    Replies: @Beckow, @AP

    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime?

    It costs \$233,000 to raise a child in the USA (not that I or most parents care, we would have our children regardless of expense, unless it came to a point of starvation or something).

    Children continue society and culture. People who have them, have taken great expense for the benefit of others. Those who do not, are often in essence freeloaders. They spend most the money indulging themselves.

    A just solution would be to impose a \$233,000 tax across the lifetime of each childless person, starting at age thirty, which would be refunded once the person has a child (a married couple would have to have two children for full credit). In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share. If someone just doesn’t like children, can’t attract a spouse or isn’t interested in such relationships, or doesn’t want to raise kids it is fine, as long as they pay their fair share. The tax can pay for schools or to feed poor kids or whatever.

    I suppose proof of donation equal to \$233,000 can substitute for the tax.

    Is there a lack of people in the world?

    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don’t you care about it?

    Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family?

    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat

    This is true. There will be waste. Which is why it’s better for people to have kids than to pay the tax. But money spent to make a bureaucracy fat, is still better than money spent to make a lifetime single person fat. The bureaucrat will still raise kids onto whom he or she will pass on the culture.

    • Agree: sher singh, Beckow, Coconuts
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @AP

    Whoever wants to be childless after those on the margin leave will think of emigration.

    Let's see how this does in Japan.

    , @Dmitry
    @AP


    $233,000 tax
     
    That would be the worst policy psychologically, as it would turn not having children into a status symbol of being middle class.

    It would instantly become a flex, when you know the people without children must have a good income, like buying a BMW. "They must be doing well, as they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege". It also implies that not having children is very desirable, if it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid.

    Although if enforced in a strict way (requiring a little authoritarianism), it would force most poor people to have children.

    -

    If we want to learn from policies that had no effect e.g. look at Putin's maternity capital. Maternity capital policy has had exactly zero effect on the real fertility rate in Russia, even though most people in Russia have very low incomes - but it has changed the birth calendar for women and reduced the poverty rate.

    Why doesn't it work in its intended way (although it has the side-effect of reducing poverty rates) in modern populations with access to birth control?

    Because having children is almost always a sacrifice for the parents, and middle class people are not going to be that incentivized to sacrifice for tax breaks, or government payments. It would be a self-contradiction.

    On the other hand, most people actually want to have sacrifices, if they think it will give more meaning to their life, or improve the world. If it is a noble sacrifice, then people want to do that.

    The idea of having kind, self-sacrificing children that could help the world, and contribute values to the future, would be inspiring for most middle class couples. Whereas appealing to selfish motives not only contradicts it, but is also only going to incentivize poor or a little selfish people - i.e. people who wouldn't pay for their children's music lessons.

    Secular people in Israel are above replacement fertility (maybe the only secular, post-industrialized, contraceptive using couples in the world), perhaps partly because of a perspective that maintaining their community life and values, is a self-sacrificing, idealistic activity, and therefore it becomes attractive - it allows you to escape your ego, and self-serving motives, and to focus on larger values in life. It's the same reason that more of the secular young people volunteer for combat units than there are places to accept them. Because young people will often want to sacrifice themselves, as long as they think it could give more meaning to their life or be "noble sacrifice".

    Modern secular people will be looking for opportunities to sacrifices for the greater good, if it appears to be actually meaningful to them.

    -

    One of the problems of the middle class couples with access to contraception today, is that although most young people want children, to add a sense of meaning; it can provided by having one child, if you thought the child is going to be kind person, who helps to improve the world, etc.

    Whereas of the country's social/political layer requires an average of 2,1 children per woman, in order to continue the current tax base. 89,5% of women in Russia have children. The issue for the government, is that only a much smaller proportion have 2 children.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP

    , @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share.
     
    Look AP, I hope that you don't get the idea that I hate children or don't appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum. As much as I do appreciate children, I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional $233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society. More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks! You can't take it with you, and any funds in my estate may very well end up helping to fund scholarships, where I can have some input in who and how much any recipient may recive. What's wrong with that?

    What's wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing? Then there are those who have made a business out of having children, for they count on being remunerated by government subsidies, already in place. A one parent home with 4 children can receive up to $1,400 per month, not counting food stamps, subsidized rent and who knows what other benefits. Certainly not enough to induce somebody in your socio-economic class to feel the need for more children, but for many this is an inducement to have more children.


    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don’t you care about it?
     
    Is there really? Technology should lessen the need for human bodies to do work. We hear this so much, that we fail to critically and rationally question whether this is really so. More workers are needed for what? To manufacture more products so that the oligarchs can become even richer? Sam Walton and Jeff Bezos need more profits to help increase their ROI? :-) If Europe needs more workers, then the market should redirect North Americans there to take advantage of higher wages. But what we see, is just the opposite. Maybe Europe can get along just fine with the populations that it has?...

    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.
     
    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children is very one dimensional. Put on your thinking cap, I'm sure you can come up with some other ideas. :-)

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @AP

    , @Barbarossa
    @AP


    It costs $233,000 to raise a child in the USA
     
    I have 5 kids and I assure you, that number is insane. The biggest cost I have is food, quite honestly. There are massive amounts of basically unused second hand kids clothes for pennies on the dollar and my kids don't have mountains of toys or electronics.

    We do homeschool, so that is an added cost, but not excessive.

    I suppose a lot of this figure includes college, but I'm certainly not planning to encourage my kids to go to college unless they have something specific and necessary in mind. College is not the investment it once was...

    I suppose it would be possible to spend that much money on raising a child...if one really tried, but that would require doing a lot of stupid excessive things that aren't necessarily in a child's best interest anyhow.
  936. @AP
    @A123

    If I were her I would be tempted to, out of spite, become a Republican and publicly give credit to the protesters for bringing Mitch McConnell to power in the Senate.

    Replies: @A123

    If I were her I would be tempted to, out of spite, become a Republican and publicly give credit to the protesters for bringing Mitch McConnell to power in the Senate

    A party switch is unlikely, however every senator is a “free agent”.

    She could stay in the DNC, call a vote of no confidence in Schumer, and caucus for McConnell as bipartisan Senate leader to advance bipartisan Biden’s policies. That leaves Pelosi & Schumer groveling at her feet to get back to 50 votes.

    I believe there is precedent for this. Arlen Spectre perhaps?
    ___

    Her best power move is… Requesting Secret Service protection due to “domestic terrorist” threats.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  937. @AP
    @songbird

    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.

    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)

    Replies: @A123, @Dmitry

    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.

    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)

    GW Bush showed the world that post-war is when everything falls apart. Taking part of Germany is straightforward. What would Poland do with it?

    A UK-France-Poland alliance could break up German into smaller, less dangerous protectorates. However, neither BoJo nor Macron positioned for such a move. And, there would be massive downside risk.
    ___

    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively). Superior sovereign national courts should consistently rule against subordinate EU lower authorities.

    PEACE 😇

    • LOL: German_reader
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively).
     
    Poland is one of the main recipients of EU funds. Now I get the argument that this isn't pure altruism by the net payers and that German and other Western companies extract considerable profits from Poland. But still, just leaving the EU would undoubtedly be difficult for Poland.
    However, on a basic level I even agree with you, the EU project as it is now, as a cosmopolitan project aimed at eroding national sovereignty and facilitating mass immigration from outside the EU deserves to fail. My hope would be that it is replaced by some other form of cooperation between European nations for common interests, but there are probably few grounds for optimism.

    Replies: @A123, @songbird

  938. @LatW
    @Beckow


    The current situation is already a huge security risk for Russia. They can’t let it go, their choices are between bad alternatives.
     
    Agree, it's not a good situation when your closest buffers are being penetrated. Although this whole buffer thing might become obsolete and archaic as well in the future with developing technologies.

    Regarding the ‘world seeing it for what it is…‘, have you been paying attention to the Western politicians and media? They claim it has already happened, many times. If one has a reputation for brutality, they may as well do it – there is no gain in holding back.
     
    Well, the gain is that your troops are being spared. And just because the situation is bad doesn't mean it can't get worse. The West is a factor, but remember that Russia's official position is that they are not a party to the conflict, their leaders are communicating that to their own audience, too. So they have to tell their own public that they'll be invading and killing Ukrainians and that tens of thousands on both sides could possibly die. It might even be harder psychologically than militarily. But, of course, if Ukraine develops its missiles or if the US will place some serious infrastructure there (which is doubtful) or if Ukraine starts taking over the breakaway territories, then Russia might attack. Or... eventually Russia will have to accept that Ukraine is gone.

    By the way, careful with Arestovich, he plays for more than one team.

     

    What do you mean? Right now he plays for Team UA, Team Zelensky. You mean that he hung out with some Russian Eurasianists 15 years ago in some conference or that he's not as pro-Western as the Poroshenko people? Or that there is some other actor? He seems like someone who is personally invested in Ukraine being sovereign and winning. He may be too much of a freestyler to be given important political posts, but a lot of his analysis is quite sound. He was in the military intelligence (a major which is a very high rank) and was in the East, too.

    I think the Minsk regional autonomy deal was a fantastic deal for Kiev – all they had to do is to take it and then wait. But Washington wanted more…and they get what they want.
     
    If the Ukrainian side had been able to regain control of the border and re-absorb but politically disfranchise the Donbass, then it would be a good deal for Kyiv. But it looks like Minsk was a stillborn to begin with as it was never really acceptable to the Ukrainian side, regardless of what Washington's influence may be.

    Replies: @Beckow

    I didn’t say it couldn’t get worse. It will – there are no good options left. It is not black-and-white: is Ukraine really split between Ukrainians and pro-Russians, isn’t there a large middle 50% group that wants peace and relative friendship with both EU and Russia? at what point is the Western “Nato infrastructure” a threat to Russia? to what extent would US support Kiev in an actual war? would it even be a war, or just massive bombing-surrender? would EU cut-off Russia, for how long? what would be the consequences for each? this is a complex continuum.

    Minsk offered a compromise: autonomy and peace. Ambiguity always outlasts clear-cut solutions and Kiev didn’t take the gift. Russia in 2014 wanted to put it behind and move on. You always take a deal when the other side (Donbas) was getting vague temporary benefits, and Kiev was getting back control. It was a mistake by Kiev to refuse, so were the self-defeating language laws and totally unnecessary military provocations with Nato.You pick an area to fight where you are stronger, for Kiev that was the administration-autonomy-sovereignity-law. Not in military or economy where Russia is much stronger and the West is too far. But that is no longer an option.

    Arestovich has interesting ideas, but with his background (and family background) he is not what he appears to be. Just think it through.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Beckow


    this is a complex continuum
     
    Of course, it's a huge mess. And it's very disturbing to see things such as Ukrainians being worried that an attack could come from Belarus, out of all places. That's just not right on so many levels. Ideally, everyone should work hard to avoid a large war between Russians and Ukrainians. But unfortunately these kinds of situations are typically solved with one side winning and taking over.

    Minsk offered a compromise: autonomy and peace.
     

    Even if it were acceptable to the Ukrainian side, the problem with Minsk is on the implementation side. If Ukraine accepted it, there could be a risk of major internal upheaval, mass protests within the country that can be destabilizing. The Ukrainian civil society, the volunteers are a serious force. Likewise, would the Donbas militia be willing to disarm (I guess you're saying that during the times of signing of the Minsk accords they would've)? Hypothetically, some kind of a neutral peace keeping force could be sent there, but who? And would Russia even allow that.

    And above all, even if Minsk were adopted, where are the long term security guarantees for Ukraine? That's the real key, the Kashchei's needle inside the egg, as Russians say (the crux of the matter). And creating these guarantees could have, hopefully, a positive effect on the whole region. Granted, full security guarantees are probably impossible and, frankly, I don't really see any such guarantees except the strengthening of the Ukraine's own military. But that of course creates a lot of screeching, including now from Germany. You see, everyone can arm themselves but not Ukraine!


    Arestovich has interesting ideas, but with his background (and family background) he is not what he appears to be. Just think it through.
     
    Not sure what you mean by family background, but I think it's telling that someone such as him, who was raised as a typical post-Soviet Russophone, in 2014, when so many went over to the Russian side, sided with Ukraine and became a Ukrainian patriot. That phenomenon is probably the brightest symbol of that war. Of course, in that region you always have to be careful about people's loyalties, but right now I'm more interested purely in the ideas he presents.

    Replies: @Beckow

  939. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @AP



    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.
     
    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)
     
    GW Bush showed the world that post-war is when everything falls apart. Taking part of Germany is straightforward. What would Poland do with it?

    A UK-France-Poland alliance could break up German into smaller, less dangerous protectorates. However, neither BoJo nor Macron positioned for such a move. And, there would be massive downside risk.
    ___

    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively). Superior sovereign national courts should consistently rule against subordinate EU lower authorities.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively).

    Poland is one of the main recipients of EU funds. Now I get the argument that this isn’t pure altruism by the net payers and that German and other Western companies extract considerable profits from Poland. But still, just leaving the EU would undoubtedly be difficult for Poland.
    However, on a basic level I even agree with you, the EU project as it is now, as a cosmopolitan project aimed at eroding national sovereignty and facilitating mass immigration from outside the EU deserves to fail. My hope would be that it is replaced by some other form of cooperation between European nations for common interests, but there are probably few grounds for optimism.

    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader


    leaving the EU would undoubtedly be difficult for Poland.
     
    Leaving the EU would be suicidal for Poland.

    The rules of the EU provide an effective veto to each member country. The Elites pass fines that are a joke because there is no way to collect or sanction. Without a member veto, there would be nothing to check SJW Globalist aggression.

    the EU project as it is now, as a cosmopolitan project aimed at eroding national sovereignty and facilitating mass immigration from outside the EU deserves to fail.
     
    I concur.

    Brexit provided the EU an opportunity for self reflection and reform. Instead, EU Leaders choose to undermine democracy and embrace authoritarianism. There is no hope for the failed union. And, its continued existence blocks progress towards anything better.

    PEACE 😇
    , @songbird
    @German_reader

    The Great Migration in the US was basically the same phenomenon as in Europe but on a different level. Similarly, the US states were bribed several ways with Federal funds into giving up their power. My fear is that this is also happening within the EU.

  940. @Beckow
    @LatW

    I didn't say it couldn't get worse. It will - there are no good options left. It is not black-and-white: is Ukraine really split between Ukrainians and pro-Russians, isn't there a large middle 50% group that wants peace and relative friendship with both EU and Russia? at what point is the Western "Nato infrastructure" a threat to Russia? to what extent would US support Kiev in an actual war? would it even be a war, or just massive bombing-surrender? would EU cut-off Russia, for how long? what would be the consequences for each? this is a complex continuum.

    Minsk offered a compromise: autonomy and peace. Ambiguity always outlasts clear-cut solutions and Kiev didn't take the gift. Russia in 2014 wanted to put it behind and move on. You always take a deal when the other side (Donbas) was getting vague temporary benefits, and Kiev was getting back control. It was a mistake by Kiev to refuse, so were the self-defeating language laws and totally unnecessary military provocations with Nato.You pick an area to fight where you are stronger, for Kiev that was the administration-autonomy-sovereignity-law. Not in military or economy where Russia is much stronger and the West is too far. But that is no longer an option.

    Arestovich has interesting ideas, but with his background (and family background) he is not what he appears to be. Just think it through.

    Replies: @LatW

    this is a complex continuum

    Of course, it’s a huge mess. And it’s very disturbing to see things such as Ukrainians being worried that an attack could come from Belarus, out of all places. That’s just not right on so many levels. Ideally, everyone should work hard to avoid a large war between Russians and Ukrainians. But unfortunately these kinds of situations are typically solved with one side winning and taking over.

    Minsk offered a compromise: autonomy and peace.

    Even if it were acceptable to the Ukrainian side, the problem with Minsk is on the implementation side. If Ukraine accepted it, there could be a risk of major internal upheaval, mass protests within the country that can be destabilizing. The Ukrainian civil society, the volunteers are a serious force. Likewise, would the Donbas militia be willing to disarm (I guess you’re saying that during the times of signing of the Minsk accords they would’ve)? Hypothetically, some kind of a neutral peace keeping force could be sent there, but who? And would Russia even allow that.

    And above all, even if Minsk were adopted, where are the long term security guarantees for Ukraine? That’s the real key, the Kashchei’s needle inside the egg, as Russians say (the crux of the matter). And creating these guarantees could have, hopefully, a positive effect on the whole region. Granted, full security guarantees are probably impossible and, frankly, I don’t really see any such guarantees except the strengthening of the Ukraine’s own military. But that of course creates a lot of screeching, including now from Germany. You see, everyone can arm themselves but not Ukraine!

    Arestovich has interesting ideas, but with his background (and family background) he is not what he appears to be. Just think it through.

    Not sure what you mean by family background, but I think it’s telling that someone such as him, who was raised as a typical post-Soviet Russophone, in 2014, when so many went over to the Russian side, sided with Ukraine and became a Ukrainian patriot. That phenomenon is probably the brightest symbol of that war. Of course, in that region you always have to be careful about people’s loyalties, but right now I’m more interested purely in the ideas he presents.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @LatW

    Those are good points and today there is almost no chance that Minsk would be accepted by any of the sides, no matter what they say publicly. In 2014-15 it was possible. Kiev needed to pick its poison and they were strong enough to control the domestic nationalists. They chose not to. There were potential peacekeepers from a number of countries from Belarus, Kazakstan, Nepal, Argentina...

    It was blocked by Washington-London because it would stabilise Russia (and Ukraine), and it would accept the loss of Crimea. I don't think most people realize how much Washington wanted Crimea, to get Russia navy out, to put US navy there - it was a wild dream that seemed within reach. When Putin beat them to it, the shock and anger were enormous. We are still living with that. (And we could die with it too.)

    Today any increase in Ukraine's security directly lowers Russia's security. In 2014-15 it wasn't that clear-cut. Russia is waiting for the domestic situation in Ukraine to get so bad, that they can benefit. Kiev is waiting for the West to attack Russia - either economically-politically or in a real war. The West would love to see a neat little, bloody war between Russia and Ukraine. Let's see who will get their wish. The worst case scenario is that we get all three.

  941. Some interesting comments by BoJo at the Colosseum:

    When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration. The empire could no longer control its borders, people came in…and Europe went into a dark ages that lasted a very long time. The point is that it can happen again

    But The National, paper of the Scots, had this headline: Boris Johnson’s bogus claim about Roman Empire rubbished by historians. Quoted was author Mik Duncan, who rebuffed Bojo and blamed the fall on “incompetent and cowardly leaders at Court clinging to self-destructive xenophobia.”

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    Quoted was author Mik Duncan
     
    A "podcaster" with a degree in political science, an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?):

    https://twitter.com/mikeduncan/status/1454849426980212741

    Obviously Johnson is way more correct, however I still disagree with him on two points, 1) while climate change could be catastrophically bad, there would be immense migration pressure anyway for purely demographic reasons, 2) the loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants, there is no real attempt at controlling borders and turning migrants back.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    , @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    There is a great debate between Boris Johnson and Mary Beard on Romans versus Greeks on youtube. BJ took the classics program when he was in school and he knows a good bit of ancient history. They ought to get Johnson and one of these people who thinks he knows more about it to debate the subject in the parliament. It could be very entertaining.

    Replies: @German_reader

  942. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime?
     
    It costs $233,000 to raise a child in the USA (not that I or most parents care, we would have our children regardless of expense, unless it came to a point of starvation or something).

    Children continue society and culture. People who have them, have taken great expense for the benefit of others. Those who do not, are often in essence freeloaders. They spend most the money indulging themselves.

    A just solution would be to impose a $233,000 tax across the lifetime of each childless person, starting at age thirty, which would be refunded once the person has a child (a married couple would have to have two children for full credit). In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share. If someone just doesn't like children, can't attract a spouse or isn't interested in such relationships, or doesn't want to raise kids it is fine, as long as they pay their fair share. The tax can pay for schools or to feed poor kids or whatever.

    I suppose proof of donation equal to $233,000 can substitute for the tax.

    Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don't you care about it?

    Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family?
     
    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat
     
    This is true. There will be waste. Which is why it's better for people to have kids than to pay the tax. But money spent to make a bureaucracy fat, is still better than money spent to make a lifetime single person fat. The bureaucrat will still raise kids onto whom he or she will pass on the culture.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack, @Barbarossa

    Whoever wants to be childless after those on the margin leave will think of emigration.

    Let’s see how this does in Japan.

  943. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime?
     
    It costs $233,000 to raise a child in the USA (not that I or most parents care, we would have our children regardless of expense, unless it came to a point of starvation or something).

    Children continue society and culture. People who have them, have taken great expense for the benefit of others. Those who do not, are often in essence freeloaders. They spend most the money indulging themselves.

    A just solution would be to impose a $233,000 tax across the lifetime of each childless person, starting at age thirty, which would be refunded once the person has a child (a married couple would have to have two children for full credit). In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share. If someone just doesn't like children, can't attract a spouse or isn't interested in such relationships, or doesn't want to raise kids it is fine, as long as they pay their fair share. The tax can pay for schools or to feed poor kids or whatever.

    I suppose proof of donation equal to $233,000 can substitute for the tax.

    Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don't you care about it?

    Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family?
     
    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat
     
    This is true. There will be waste. Which is why it's better for people to have kids than to pay the tax. But money spent to make a bureaucracy fat, is still better than money spent to make a lifetime single person fat. The bureaucrat will still raise kids onto whom he or she will pass on the culture.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack, @Barbarossa

    \$233,000 tax

    That would be the worst policy psychologically, as it would turn not having children into a status symbol of being middle class.

    It would instantly become a flex, when you know the people without children must have a good income, like buying a BMW. “They must be doing well, as they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege”. It also implies that not having children is very desirable, if it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid.

    Although if enforced in a strict way (requiring a little authoritarianism), it would force most poor people to have children.

    If we want to learn from policies that had no effect e.g. look at Putin’s maternity capital. Maternity capital policy has had exactly zero effect on the real fertility rate in Russia, even though most people in Russia have very low incomes – but it has changed the birth calendar for women and reduced the poverty rate.

    Why doesn’t it work in its intended way (although it has the side-effect of reducing poverty rates) in modern populations with access to birth control?

    Because having children is almost always a sacrifice for the parents, and middle class people are not going to be that incentivized to sacrifice for tax breaks, or government payments. It would be a self-contradiction.

    On the other hand, most people actually want to have sacrifices, if they think it will give more meaning to their life, or improve the world. If it is a noble sacrifice, then people want to do that.

    The idea of having kind, self-sacrificing children that could help the world, and contribute values to the future, would be inspiring for most middle class couples. Whereas appealing to selfish motives not only contradicts it, but is also only going to incentivize poor or a little selfish people – i.e. people who wouldn’t pay for their children’s music lessons.

    Secular people in Israel are above replacement fertility (maybe the only secular, post-industrialized, contraceptive using couples in the world), perhaps partly because of a perspective that maintaining their community life and values, is a self-sacrificing, idealistic activity, and therefore it becomes attractive – it allows you to escape your ego, and self-serving motives, and to focus on larger values in life. It’s the same reason that more of the secular young people volunteer for combat units than there are places to accept them. Because young people will often want to sacrifice themselves, as long as they think it could give more meaning to their life or be “noble sacrifice”.

    Modern secular people will be looking for opportunities to sacrifices for the greater good, if it appears to be actually meaningful to them.

    One of the problems of the middle class couples with access to contraception today, is that although most young people want children, to add a sense of meaning; it can provided by having one child, if you thought the child is going to be kind person, who helps to improve the world, etc.

    Whereas of the country’s social/political layer requires an average of 2,1 children per woman, in order to continue the current tax base. 89,5% of women in Russia have children. The issue for the government, is that only a much smaller proportion have 2 children.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    I wanted to say promoting a natalist culture is far more important than any incentivizing/coercive policies, but you put it better than me.

    , @AP
    @Dmitry


    That would be the worst policy psychologically, as it would turn not having children into a status symbol of being middle class.

    It would instantly become a flex, when you know the people without children must have a good income, like buying a BMW. “They must be doing well, as they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege
     
    Is that why wealthy Americans refuse to hire accountants in order to minimize their tax load, and habitually overpay the taxes? Lol.

    It also implies that not having children is very desirable, if it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid.
     
    Currently having children involves paying $233,000 per child. Financially, there is a strong incentive for non poor people to avoid having them (poor people get paid to have kids, in contrast). The childless save $233,000 by choosing not to have kids. A tax on the childless would remove this perverse incentive. It’s not about punishing the childless, but about evening the playing field and removing money from the equation of whether or not to have children, and how many to have.

    I agree with you that ultimately promoting a pronatalist culture is necessary. The tax would be about justice most of all.
  944. @LatW
    @Beckow


    this is a complex continuum
     
    Of course, it's a huge mess. And it's very disturbing to see things such as Ukrainians being worried that an attack could come from Belarus, out of all places. That's just not right on so many levels. Ideally, everyone should work hard to avoid a large war between Russians and Ukrainians. But unfortunately these kinds of situations are typically solved with one side winning and taking over.

    Minsk offered a compromise: autonomy and peace.
     

    Even if it were acceptable to the Ukrainian side, the problem with Minsk is on the implementation side. If Ukraine accepted it, there could be a risk of major internal upheaval, mass protests within the country that can be destabilizing. The Ukrainian civil society, the volunteers are a serious force. Likewise, would the Donbas militia be willing to disarm (I guess you're saying that during the times of signing of the Minsk accords they would've)? Hypothetically, some kind of a neutral peace keeping force could be sent there, but who? And would Russia even allow that.

    And above all, even if Minsk were adopted, where are the long term security guarantees for Ukraine? That's the real key, the Kashchei's needle inside the egg, as Russians say (the crux of the matter). And creating these guarantees could have, hopefully, a positive effect on the whole region. Granted, full security guarantees are probably impossible and, frankly, I don't really see any such guarantees except the strengthening of the Ukraine's own military. But that of course creates a lot of screeching, including now from Germany. You see, everyone can arm themselves but not Ukraine!


    Arestovich has interesting ideas, but with his background (and family background) he is not what he appears to be. Just think it through.
     
    Not sure what you mean by family background, but I think it's telling that someone such as him, who was raised as a typical post-Soviet Russophone, in 2014, when so many went over to the Russian side, sided with Ukraine and became a Ukrainian patriot. That phenomenon is probably the brightest symbol of that war. Of course, in that region you always have to be careful about people's loyalties, but right now I'm more interested purely in the ideas he presents.

    Replies: @Beckow

    Those are good points and today there is almost no chance that Minsk would be accepted by any of the sides, no matter what they say publicly. In 2014-15 it was possible. Kiev needed to pick its poison and they were strong enough to control the domestic nationalists. They chose not to. There were potential peacekeepers from a number of countries from Belarus, Kazakstan, Nepal, Argentina…

    It was blocked by Washington-London because it would stabilise Russia (and Ukraine), and it would accept the loss of Crimea. I don’t think most people realize how much Washington wanted Crimea, to get Russia navy out, to put US navy there – it was a wild dream that seemed within reach. When Putin beat them to it, the shock and anger were enormous. We are still living with that. (And we could die with it too.)

    Today any increase in Ukraine’s security directly lowers Russia’s security. In 2014-15 it wasn’t that clear-cut. Russia is waiting for the domestic situation in Ukraine to get so bad, that they can benefit. Kiev is waiting for the West to attack Russia – either economically-politically or in a real war. The West would love to see a neat little, bloody war between Russia and Ukraine. Let’s see who will get their wish. The worst case scenario is that we get all three.

  945. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    Some interesting comments by BoJo at the Colosseum:

    When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration. The empire could no longer control its borders, people came in…and Europe went into a dark ages that lasted a very long time. The point is that it can happen again
     
    But The National, paper of the Scots, had this headline: Boris Johnson's bogus claim about Roman Empire rubbished by historians. Quoted was author Mik Duncan, who rebuffed Bojo and blamed the fall on "incompetent and cowardly leaders at Court clinging to self-destructive xenophobia."

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/19684872.boris-johnsons-bogus-claim-roman-empire-rubbished-historians/

    Replies: @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard

    Quoted was author Mik Duncan

    A “podcaster” with a degree in political science, an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?):

    [MORE]

    Obviously Johnson is way more correct, however I still disagree with him on two points, 1) while climate change could be catastrophically bad, there would be immense migration pressure anyway for purely demographic reasons, 2) the loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants, there is no real attempt at controlling borders and turning migrants back.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader


    an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?
     
    My part of the country is pretty deranged too. Would ban poli-sci.

    Don't know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past. My favorite was when the Greenland Vikings were denounced for not being open-minded enough to ask the Eskimo (who completely genocided the Dorset) to share their cold weather technology with them. i'm sure that is why they spread into Northern Greenland - not because they were tough-as-nails barbarians living at the Malthusian limit of the incredibly harsh Arctic zone - but because they wanted to make friends with different racial groups, and share hunting grounds with them.

    Immigration seems to be tacked on to BoJo's global warming speech. Don't know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants
     
    State (and nowadays also non-state) capacity for tracking people is increasing all the time. Look at the history of fingerprinting.

    In QR coding in Russia and Social Credit System in China, you can start to see that wolf has teeth.

    -

    One of the nightmares caused by the Islamist terrorism in Europe is that it is raising the social tolerances for this.

    With the trend of the technological changes, it's seeming like the future will not exactly be one of "less control" by the powers. We are at a stage now where we have to hope all these "Chekhov's guns" we see being prepared by technology, will not be used in the future (and of course one of the best policies to achieve this will be reducing the things which make it easier to establish precedent use them - e.g. if Islamist terrorism could have been prevented using civilized things like more intelligent immigration policy, then there perhaps wouldn't be as much pressure for raising the tolerance for introduction of these uncivilized new technologies).

    Replies: @German_reader

  946. @AP
    @songbird

    Poland could probably sweep into Berlin easily. However, if Poland were to invade Germany, Russia would invade Poland in order to save Germany and cement the Russo-German alliance.

    (not that there is any chance that Poland would choose to invade Germany)

    Replies: @A123, @Dmitry

    How could Poland invade Germany. For example, the modern tanks in Poland’s army, are free donations of reserve tanks from Germany, which the German companies are maintaining and training.
    https://defence24.com/breakthrough-polish-army-takes-delivery-of-leopard-2pl-tanks

    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland’s industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers. Even much of the exports to Czech Republic, will be to Volkswagen owned brands.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Dmitry


    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland’s industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers.
     
    Who is more vulnerable in this relationship?

    Imagine what would happen if Poland nationalized the factories and associated brands operating in their sovereign nation.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @songbird
    @Dmitry

    Could they not use the Schengen to move to Germany, and then join its army?

  947. It is unbelievable the CENSORSHIP by TREVOR LYNCH (Review: Dune, Part I). He even stopped one-line comment/reply with one UNZ link. The other time, he moderated one comment, published for 15 minutes and deleted after that. It seems, he has some problems.

  948. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should the benefits be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime? Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    I guess that is your way of turning down the shapely Ukie brides that are joyfully leaving the post-Maidan paradise in Ukraine (definitely no gloom and doom there).

    To answer your questions: there actually are not enough people in the countries that matter, not enough kids. You allude to replacing them with plentiful Third World mobs, we prefer no to.

    The benefits should not go to people who bailed on the society by living selfish single-LBTQ lives. Answer my question: why should my or other normal parents' children take care of you when you are old? How exactly are you going to force them if they laugh in your face about all the stupid "benefits" that you voted for yourself? Life happens only in the present, you can't demand benefits from people who were too young to agree to them.

    There is an order of magnitude more problems with people outside of normal families. Your belly-aching that family life is not ideal, that there are always some Hunters, is just whinging: the other side of the society, the dead-end LGBT losers cause exponentially more problems for us, normal family people. If we would separate into two societies living side by side, we would be much better off. So why exactly should I, or my kids, subsidise the losers in their old age? The inevitable logic of a market-ruled society will demand that the freeloading will stop.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Answer my question: why should my or other normal parents’ children take care of you when you are old? How exactly are you going to force them if they laugh in your face about all the stupid “benefits” that you voted for yourself? Life happens only in the present, you can’t demand benefits from people who were too young to agree to them.

    Easy to answer. People who approach retirement age, who are probably financially better off, should make sure that they have purchased long term care insurance and an appropriate financial tool to fund such a plan like an annuity. Beside, in the States Medicare and Medicaid benefits, although not perfect do cover a broad range of debilitating health issues. Europe, with its longer infatuation with socialism should have developed even better ways to help cover the needs of its own retirees. You shouldn’t have to have any ridiculous conversations with health care aides about the viability of ones personal lifestyle choices.

    So why exactly should I, or my kids, subsidize the losers in their old age? The inevitable logic of a market-ruled society will demand that the freeloading will stop.

    The system here in the states is much more market oriented than the one you and your fellow socialists have put together in Europe. Now you answer this to me: Why should I or any other American who faithfully contributed to the social security system throughout his working life have to give up these benefits once he reaches retirement age? If he was fortunate to save more, he should be in a position to pay the costs of even better health care provisions afforded to those that own a long term care policy.

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should I or any other American who faithfully contributed to the social security system throughout his working life have to give up these benefits once he reaches retirement age?
     
    It is by definition an inter-generational contract. If you choose not to help with future generations (single, LGBT...) you are not a part of that contract. So you have a contract with yourself, there is no requirement that society's children should honor it. If they do, it is pure charity - or they can give you a minimum.

    These kids were raised by people who sacrificed to have them, as AP showed you, it costs around $230k to raise a child in today's America. You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That's the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?

    By the way, this is the way it has been in all human societies since the time immemorial. Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don't provide for the children in the next generation. We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won't be - you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits. That will have consequences and a piece of electronic paper ("contract") will mean very little. We can inflate out of it very easily.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  949. Here is the H-1B visa effect – Indian Americans are now the bourgeoisie of the Asian American people, while Asian nationalities that arrive to the USA from refugee backgrounds are the proletariat.

    Selective immigration is the main reason for the difference.

    Although it looks like almost similar in Western Europe, with some generational delay, when you look at the student composition in the elite universities. So many of the students are Indian (mostly Hindu) or Chinese people.

  950. @German_reader
    @A123


    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively).
     
    Poland is one of the main recipients of EU funds. Now I get the argument that this isn't pure altruism by the net payers and that German and other Western companies extract considerable profits from Poland. But still, just leaving the EU would undoubtedly be difficult for Poland.
    However, on a basic level I even agree with you, the EU project as it is now, as a cosmopolitan project aimed at eroding national sovereignty and facilitating mass immigration from outside the EU deserves to fail. My hope would be that it is replaced by some other form of cooperation between European nations for common interests, but there are probably few grounds for optimism.

    Replies: @A123, @songbird

    leaving the EU would undoubtedly be difficult for Poland.

    Leaving the EU would be suicidal for Poland.

    The rules of the EU provide an effective veto to each member country. The Elites pass fines that are a joke because there is no way to collect or sanction. Without a member veto, there would be nothing to check SJW Globalist aggression.

    the EU project as it is now, as a cosmopolitan project aimed at eroding national sovereignty and facilitating mass immigration from outside the EU deserves to fail.

    I concur.

    Brexit provided the EU an opportunity for self reflection and reform. Instead, EU Leaders choose to undermine democracy and embrace authoritarianism. There is no hope for the failed union. And, its continued existence blocks progress towards anything better.

    PEACE 😇

  951. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Quoted was author Mik Duncan
     
    A "podcaster" with a degree in political science, an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?):

    https://twitter.com/mikeduncan/status/1454849426980212741

    Obviously Johnson is way more correct, however I still disagree with him on two points, 1) while climate change could be catastrophically bad, there would be immense migration pressure anyway for purely demographic reasons, 2) the loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants, there is no real attempt at controlling borders and turning migrants back.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?

    My part of the country is pretty deranged too. Would ban poli-sci.

    Don’t know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past. My favorite was when the Greenland Vikings were denounced for not being open-minded enough to ask the Eskimo (who completely genocided the Dorset) to share their cold weather technology with them. i’m sure that is why they spread into Northern Greenland – not because they were tough-as-nails barbarians living at the Malthusian limit of the incredibly harsh Arctic zone – but because they wanted to make friends with different racial groups, and share hunting grounds with them.

    Immigration seems to be tacked on to BoJo’s global warming speech. Don’t know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    Would ban poli-sci.
     
    I'm also deeply suspicious of the subject. I guess one might learn some useful statistical skills (doesn't AK have a political science degree?), but much of it must be pure ideology. I recently looked up the new young members of the Bundestag for Germany's Greens, and almost all of them have got degrees in political science, social science, international relations etc. (a few also in Islamwissenschaften), which I found rather telling.

    Don’t know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past.
     
    tbf there have also been long attempts by right-wingers to compare the current migration issue to the barbarian migrations in late antiquity. But there's also a multiculti interpretation of the Roman empire, I remember a German leftie wrote an entire book a few years ago about how the Romans were a model for the contemporary world, because they were so open to foreigners and constantly integrated new groups. Admittedly that isn't a total construct (to some extent the Romans did emphasize the heterogeneity of their origins and their openness to immigrants and freedmen, in contrast to Athenians, Spartans and other Greeks with their pride of blood and restrictive citizenship laws; and in the end "Roman" became a universal identity encompassing the entire empire)...but when your model is what was basically a military despotism that frequently employed extreme violence against resistance...

    Don’t know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.
     
    Seems quite likely as an explanation to me. Debate in France seems to be shifting steadily to the right, even the former Brexit negotiator Barnier recently called for an immigration moratorium. But I suspect much of that is just rhetoric to keep people from voting for the hard right (don't know what exactly motivates Johnson, since he doesn't face such a threat in Britain).

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts, @songbird

  952. @Dmitry
    @AP

    How could Poland invade Germany. For example, the modern tanks in Poland's army, are free donations of reserve tanks from Germany, which the German companies are maintaining and training.
    https://defence24.com/breakthrough-polish-army-takes-delivery-of-leopard-2pl-tanks


    -


    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland's industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers. Even much of the exports to Czech Republic, will be to Volkswagen owned brands.

    https://i.imgur.com/RpXsWuY.jpg

    Replies: @A123, @songbird

    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland’s industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers.

    Who is more vulnerable in this relationship?

    Imagine what would happen if Poland nationalized the factories and associated brands operating in their sovereign nation.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @A123


    Poland nationalized ... brands
     
    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland that are upgrading and maintaining the German tanks that Germany has donated to Poland, then probably Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.

    Replies: @LatW, @A123

  953. @German_reader
    @A123


    The more practical, non-violent option is ending the EU (officially or effectively).
     
    Poland is one of the main recipients of EU funds. Now I get the argument that this isn't pure altruism by the net payers and that German and other Western companies extract considerable profits from Poland. But still, just leaving the EU would undoubtedly be difficult for Poland.
    However, on a basic level I even agree with you, the EU project as it is now, as a cosmopolitan project aimed at eroding national sovereignty and facilitating mass immigration from outside the EU deserves to fail. My hope would be that it is replaced by some other form of cooperation between European nations for common interests, but there are probably few grounds for optimism.

    Replies: @A123, @songbird

    The Great Migration in the US was basically the same phenomenon as in Europe but on a different level. Similarly, the US states were bribed several ways with Federal funds into giving up their power. My fear is that this is also happening within the EU.

  954. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime?
     
    It costs $233,000 to raise a child in the USA (not that I or most parents care, we would have our children regardless of expense, unless it came to a point of starvation or something).

    Children continue society and culture. People who have them, have taken great expense for the benefit of others. Those who do not, are often in essence freeloaders. They spend most the money indulging themselves.

    A just solution would be to impose a $233,000 tax across the lifetime of each childless person, starting at age thirty, which would be refunded once the person has a child (a married couple would have to have two children for full credit). In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share. If someone just doesn't like children, can't attract a spouse or isn't interested in such relationships, or doesn't want to raise kids it is fine, as long as they pay their fair share. The tax can pay for schools or to feed poor kids or whatever.

    I suppose proof of donation equal to $233,000 can substitute for the tax.

    Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don't you care about it?

    Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family?
     
    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat
     
    This is true. There will be waste. Which is why it's better for people to have kids than to pay the tax. But money spent to make a bureaucracy fat, is still better than money spent to make a lifetime single person fat. The bureaucrat will still raise kids onto whom he or she will pass on the culture.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack, @Barbarossa

    In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share.

    Look AP, I hope that you don’t get the idea that I hate children or don’t appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum. As much as I do appreciate children, I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional \$233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society. More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks! You can’t take it with you, and any funds in my estate may very well end up helping to fund scholarships, where I can have some input in who and how much any recipient may recive. What’s wrong with that?

    What’s wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing? Then there are those who have made a business out of having children, for they count on being remunerated by government subsidies, already in place. A one parent home with 4 children can receive up to \$1,400 per month, not counting food stamps, subsidized rent and who knows what other benefits. Certainly not enough to induce somebody in your socio-economic class to feel the need for more children, but for many this is an inducement to have more children.

    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don’t you care about it?

    Is there really? Technology should lessen the need for human bodies to do work. We hear this so much, that we fail to critically and rationally question whether this is really so. More workers are needed for what? To manufacture more products so that the oligarchs can become even richer? Sam Walton and Jeff Bezos need more profits to help increase their ROI? 🙂 If Europe needs more workers, then the market should redirect North Americans there to take advantage of higher wages. But what we see, is just the opposite. Maybe Europe can get along just fine with the populations that it has?…

    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children is very one dimensional. Put on your thinking cap, I’m sure you can come up with some other ideas. 🙂

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack


    More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks!
     
    https://media.patriots.win/post/wReq00RA.jpeg

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    , @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Look AP, I hope that you don’t get the idea that I hate children or don’t appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum
     
    Sure, it isn’t my business why you chose not to contribute to the physical existence of the Ukrainian people. But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with $233,000 by doing so.

    I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional $233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society
     
    Or you could donate $233,000 for scholarships or private schools, help with medical care for sick kids, etc.

    What’s wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing?
     
    The child free tax would remove this incentive to not have kids, because choosing not to have them would no longer result in money savings.

    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children
     
    There is no humanity without humans.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  955. @Dmitry
    @AP

    How could Poland invade Germany. For example, the modern tanks in Poland's army, are free donations of reserve tanks from Germany, which the German companies are maintaining and training.
    https://defence24.com/breakthrough-polish-army-takes-delivery-of-leopard-2pl-tanks


    -


    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don't think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland's industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers. Even much of the exports to Czech Republic, will be to Volkswagen owned brands.

    https://i.imgur.com/RpXsWuY.jpg

    Replies: @A123, @songbird

    Could they not use the Schengen to move to Germany, and then join its army?

  956. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Quoted was author Mik Duncan
     
    A "podcaster" with a degree in political science, an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?):

    https://twitter.com/mikeduncan/status/1454849426980212741

    Obviously Johnson is way more correct, however I still disagree with him on two points, 1) while climate change could be catastrophically bad, there would be immense migration pressure anyway for purely demographic reasons, 2) the loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants, there is no real attempt at controlling borders and turning migrants back.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants

    State (and nowadays also non-state) capacity for tracking people is increasing all the time. Look at the history of fingerprinting.

    In QR coding in Russia and Social Credit System in China, you can start to see that wolf has teeth.

    One of the nightmares caused by the Islamist terrorism in Europe is that it is raising the social tolerances for this.

    With the trend of the technological changes, it’s seeming like the future will not exactly be one of “less control” by the powers. We are at a stage now where we have to hope all these “Chekhov’s guns” we see being prepared by technology, will not be used in the future (and of course one of the best policies to achieve this will be reducing the things which make it easier to establish precedent use them – e.g. if Islamist terrorism could have been prevented using civilized things like more intelligent immigration policy, then there perhaps wouldn’t be as much pressure for raising the tolerance for introduction of these uncivilized new technologies).

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    State (and nowadays also non-state) capacity for tracking people is increasing all the time.
     
    That's true, but also irrelevant, there simply isn't the political will in major EU countries (especially in Germany) to stop illegal immigration. You'd have to abolish much of the asylum system and enforce deportations (both against recalcitrant migrants and their countries of origin, if they aren't cooperative in taking their citizens back), and something like that isn't even really discussed.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  957. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader


    an American from the Pacific Northwest (are the people up there all insufferable leftie shitheads?
     
    My part of the country is pretty deranged too. Would ban poli-sci.

    Don't know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past. My favorite was when the Greenland Vikings were denounced for not being open-minded enough to ask the Eskimo (who completely genocided the Dorset) to share their cold weather technology with them. i'm sure that is why they spread into Northern Greenland - not because they were tough-as-nails barbarians living at the Malthusian limit of the incredibly harsh Arctic zone - but because they wanted to make friends with different racial groups, and share hunting grounds with them.

    Immigration seems to be tacked on to BoJo's global warming speech. Don't know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Would ban poli-sci.

    I’m also deeply suspicious of the subject. I guess one might learn some useful statistical skills (doesn’t AK have a political science degree?), but much of it must be pure ideology. I recently looked up the new young members of the Bundestag for Germany’s Greens, and almost all of them have got degrees in political science, social science, international relations etc. (a few also in Islamwissenschaften), which I found rather telling.

    Don’t know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past.

    tbf there have also been long attempts by right-wingers to compare the current migration issue to the barbarian migrations in late antiquity. But there’s also a multiculti interpretation of the Roman empire, I remember a German leftie wrote an entire book a few years ago about how the Romans were a model for the contemporary world, because they were so open to foreigners and constantly integrated new groups. Admittedly that isn’t a total construct (to some extent the Romans did emphasize the heterogeneity of their origins and their openness to immigrants and freedmen, in contrast to Athenians, Spartans and other Greeks with their pride of blood and restrictive citizenship laws; and in the end “Roman” became a universal identity encompassing the entire empire)…but when your model is what was basically a military despotism that frequently employed extreme violence against resistance…

    Don’t know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.

    Seems quite likely as an explanation to me. Debate in France seems to be shifting steadily to the right, even the former Brexit negotiator Barnier recently called for an immigration moratorium. But I suspect much of that is just rhetoric to keep people from voting for the hard right (don’t know what exactly motivates Johnson, since he doesn’t face such a threat in Britain).

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    My impression of the tertiary education system in Germany is that it is much more limited in frivolity than the American one. That a much smaller percentage of people go through it. But, maybe, this is changing?

    In some Euro countries, it seems like the state gives people a free apartment to go to university and they can go for five years or more, while not really doing anything substantial. if this is the case, then maybe the scale isn't as important.

    I imagine that attacks on the track system in Germany must be increasing. In the US, recently, there is huge movement against gifted programs, and elite test schools in major cities.

    When I was in Germany I was really struck by what I perceived as the cultural differences in the way kids are treated at schools. In the US, my overwhelming impression was that we were being warehoused, even if we went to school for fewer days total. The minutes of every day were counted miserly, and more added. Not the case, in my father's day. But blank-slatism has gotten worse, with the demographics. (The Covid shut-downs have been an interesting disruptor, IMO)

    The US throws staggering sums into education. Mostly wasted, unless one looks at it through a political lens. Pretty sure that the average person in the US doesn't benefit past the 8th grade.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Coconuts
    @German_reader

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5pozMZdTdo&t=1430s

    There is a good Zemmour video with English subtitles here.

    It contains some of his usual talking points, he is helping to push the debate rightwards with various outspoken takes about replacement migration and the creolisation of France. This is probably easier to achieve in France because as Zemmour mentions multiple times in his talk, the concept of 'French Civilisation' is still something politically (spiritually?) meaningful in the cultural mainstream.

    Whereas, I guess it is the case in Germany that the equivalent idea is considered more suspect and the content has been altered to include historically heterogenous elements. In the UK something like this definitely used to exist in a quieter way, but it is under attack at the moment, and there isn't any politician who speaks openly about things like Zemmour.

    , @songbird
    @German_reader

    Any thoughts on Gaetano Mosca's idea that Germans of that time were morally superior to the Romans? (such as being more chaste)

    Replies: @German_reader

  958. @A123
    @Dmitry


    Poland is in many ways a dependency of Germany, with nominal political independence.

    I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that Poland’s industry is a branch of the Germany economy, and their largest export are German automakers.
     
    Who is more vulnerable in this relationship?

    Imagine what would happen if Poland nationalized the factories and associated brands operating in their sovereign nation.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Poland nationalized … brands

    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland that are upgrading and maintaining the German tanks that Germany has donated to Poland, then probably Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Dmitry


    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland
     
    If this ridiculous scenario were to take place, there would first be court action before it even came to tanks.. btw, Poland has American tanks and other rather new weapons. But anyway... I don't want to speak for Poland, since there are some unhealthy anti-German undercurrents there (maybe understandable to some extent), but in general that's not how this relationship works. Even though there is a bit of a takeover by German and Scandinavian businesses in EE, these businesses are welcomed. They bring in capital, German business culture, some level of stability.

    Poland and others should create their own successful brands, maybe expand their businesses into wider geographies. And, yes, it would help for the EE countries to be a little bit more protectionist (as much or as little as the EU regulation allows). Also, the relationships on the ground are quite amicable. A lot of Germans visit EE, people go to the same clubs, resorts, etc. To show unnecessary hostility towards Germany seems really idiotic.

    As to the aggressive spreading of the woke ideologies, which are indeed annoying... a healthier approach would be to encourage Germany and other Western countries to change their tone when it comes to "educating" the "backward E.Europeans" about civilizational and "human rights" standards. The standard has so far been that "the West knows best what's right", the way to change that would be for EE to speak in a common voice - not aggressively, but sternly enough. Just state: We are simply different and, please, accept that. Basic human rights standards are met.

    And, btw, a similar approach should be taken to explain to German (and France) the situation around Russia.

    However, even this may not be enough, because a lot of the minority, refugee, etc., related policies and obligations are regulated by broader international laws that go beyond the EU.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @A123
    @Dmitry


    Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.
     
    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW's using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.

    German corporations and banks need subordinate states. The EU is supposed to be a collection of equals. This contradiction needs to be resolved, and it is unlikely that sovereign nations will choose subordination.

    -- The EU was founded on a false premise, "Everyone will become more European".
    -- Each joiner heard that as, "Other nations will become more like us".
    -- What they got is, "All nations will become more like Germany".

    You can accuse small nations of naivety. At some level it was inevitable that the largest nations would have outsized influence. Payments within the EU have been corrupted, and are being wielded against democracy & sovereignty.

    Poland is not going to abandon its veto by leaving the EU. Constitutionally superior Polish courts will continue to overrule subordinate EU treaty courts. Enforcement powers within the EU are very weak, so there is little treaty courts can do to overcome their positional inferiority. Wielding intra-EU payments as a club is against both the spirit and the rules of the EU. If the EU can break its own rules, then Poland can too.

    Fundamentally the EU will reform, dissolve, or explode.

    -- The current path is towards a disorderly end.
    -- I doubt reform is possible. Member nations want diametrically opposed things.
    -- The wisest choice would be and orderly and peaceful dissolution.

    Hopefully, nations will cooperate enough to end the failed EU experiment in a non-hostile manner.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LatW

  959. @songbird
    Some interesting comments by BoJo at the Colosseum:

    When the Roman Empire fell, it was largely as a result of uncontrolled immigration. The empire could no longer control its borders, people came in…and Europe went into a dark ages that lasted a very long time. The point is that it can happen again
     
    But The National, paper of the Scots, had this headline: Boris Johnson's bogus claim about Roman Empire rubbished by historians. Quoted was author Mik Duncan, who rebuffed Bojo and blamed the fall on "incompetent and cowardly leaders at Court clinging to self-destructive xenophobia."

    https://www.thenational.scot/news/19684872.boris-johnsons-bogus-claim-roman-empire-rubbished-historians/

    Replies: @German_reader, @Emil Nikola Richard

    There is a great debate between Boris Johnson and Mary Beard on Romans versus Greeks on youtube. BJ took the classics program when he was in school and he knows a good bit of ancient history. They ought to get Johnson and one of these people who thinks he knows more about it to debate the subject in the parliament. It could be very entertaining.

    • Thanks: songbird
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    BJ took the classics program when he was in school and he knows a good bit of ancient history.
     
    I think that's an understatement, iirc he's obsessed with antiquity and actually able to recite Homer from memory, which probably few other politicians of his generation would be able to do.

    Replies: @AP

  960. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    loss of control is what the political establishment in many Western countries actually wants
     
    State (and nowadays also non-state) capacity for tracking people is increasing all the time. Look at the history of fingerprinting.

    In QR coding in Russia and Social Credit System in China, you can start to see that wolf has teeth.

    -

    One of the nightmares caused by the Islamist terrorism in Europe is that it is raising the social tolerances for this.

    With the trend of the technological changes, it's seeming like the future will not exactly be one of "less control" by the powers. We are at a stage now where we have to hope all these "Chekhov's guns" we see being prepared by technology, will not be used in the future (and of course one of the best policies to achieve this will be reducing the things which make it easier to establish precedent use them - e.g. if Islamist terrorism could have been prevented using civilized things like more intelligent immigration policy, then there perhaps wouldn't be as much pressure for raising the tolerance for introduction of these uncivilized new technologies).

    Replies: @German_reader

    State (and nowadays also non-state) capacity for tracking people is increasing all the time.

    That’s true, but also irrelevant, there simply isn’t the political will in major EU countries (especially in Germany) to stop illegal immigration. You’d have to abolish much of the asylum system and enforce deportations (both against recalcitrant migrants and their countries of origin, if they aren’t cooperative in taking their citizens back), and something like that isn’t even really discussed.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Yes but you could even open all prisons, if you have the state (and also private - which can be equally scary) capacity to track everyone like they were prisoners.

    If there is capacity to track everyone like prisoners, then opening borders would begin to seem less utopian idealism, and more an expansion of the prison population.

    The technological changes are pessimistically "Chekhov's guns". These are precedents that are being prepared that there (fortunately) might not be political will or political capital to use for now, and this political will depend on the civilization level that the population might be able to use its bargaining power to demand in Europe.

    In Russia, there is beginning a QR code system to access services and shopping malls, in order to control the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a system already existing now, but which the political will is fortunately only applying to anti-pandemic functions.

    Fortunately, it's only here as a temporary anti-pandemic response. Unfortunately, there is already installed a system to run the country as a large prison, if that was ever required or there was "political will". And "political will" for these things might not always be lacking, if the past is any guide for the future.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  961. German_reader says:
    @Emil Nikola Richard
    @songbird

    There is a great debate between Boris Johnson and Mary Beard on Romans versus Greeks on youtube. BJ took the classics program when he was in school and he knows a good bit of ancient history. They ought to get Johnson and one of these people who thinks he knows more about it to debate the subject in the parliament. It could be very entertaining.

    Replies: @German_reader

    BJ took the classics program when he was in school and he knows a good bit of ancient history.

    I think that’s an understatement, iirc he’s obsessed with antiquity and actually able to recite Homer from memory, which probably few other politicians of his generation would be able to do.

    • Replies: @AP
    @German_reader

    I like him more now

    Replies: @Dmitry

  962. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    State (and nowadays also non-state) capacity for tracking people is increasing all the time.
     
    That's true, but also irrelevant, there simply isn't the political will in major EU countries (especially in Germany) to stop illegal immigration. You'd have to abolish much of the asylum system and enforce deportations (both against recalcitrant migrants and their countries of origin, if they aren't cooperative in taking their citizens back), and something like that isn't even really discussed.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Yes but you could even open all prisons, if you have the state (and also private – which can be equally scary) capacity to track everyone like they were prisoners.

    If there is capacity to track everyone like prisoners, then opening borders would begin to seem less utopian idealism, and more an expansion of the prison population.

    The technological changes are pessimistically “Chekhov’s guns”. These are precedents that are being prepared that there (fortunately) might not be political will or political capital to use for now, and this political will depend on the civilization level that the population might be able to use its bargaining power to demand in Europe.

    In Russia, there is beginning a QR code system to access services and shopping malls, in order to control the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a system already existing now, but which the political will is fortunately only applying to anti-pandemic functions.

    Fortunately, it’s only here as a temporary anti-pandemic response. Unfortunately, there is already installed a system to run the country as a large prison, if that was ever required or there was “political will”. And “political will” for these things might not always be lacking, if the past is any guide for the future.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry


    Yes but you could even open all prisons, if you have the state (and also private – which can be equally scary) capacity to track everyone like they were prisoners.
     
    Google already has the capabilities, it depends on whether they'll hand the database over to a gov'tal agency.

    it’s only here as a temporary anti-pandemic response
     
    It will be there indefinitely because COVID is going endemic & there are many "variants" succeeding boosters (and continued use of vaccine passports). After that, rolling lockdowns to ration energy (control GHG emissions).

    Parallel (caste-based) societies are the wave of the future it seems.
  963. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Would ban poli-sci.
     
    I'm also deeply suspicious of the subject. I guess one might learn some useful statistical skills (doesn't AK have a political science degree?), but much of it must be pure ideology. I recently looked up the new young members of the Bundestag for Germany's Greens, and almost all of them have got degrees in political science, social science, international relations etc. (a few also in Islamwissenschaften), which I found rather telling.

    Don’t know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past.
     
    tbf there have also been long attempts by right-wingers to compare the current migration issue to the barbarian migrations in late antiquity. But there's also a multiculti interpretation of the Roman empire, I remember a German leftie wrote an entire book a few years ago about how the Romans were a model for the contemporary world, because they were so open to foreigners and constantly integrated new groups. Admittedly that isn't a total construct (to some extent the Romans did emphasize the heterogeneity of their origins and their openness to immigrants and freedmen, in contrast to Athenians, Spartans and other Greeks with their pride of blood and restrictive citizenship laws; and in the end "Roman" became a universal identity encompassing the entire empire)...but when your model is what was basically a military despotism that frequently employed extreme violence against resistance...

    Don’t know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.
     
    Seems quite likely as an explanation to me. Debate in France seems to be shifting steadily to the right, even the former Brexit negotiator Barnier recently called for an immigration moratorium. But I suspect much of that is just rhetoric to keep people from voting for the hard right (don't know what exactly motivates Johnson, since he doesn't face such a threat in Britain).

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts, @songbird

    My impression of the tertiary education system in Germany is that it is much more limited in frivolity than the American one. That a much smaller percentage of people go through it. But, maybe, this is changing?

    In some Euro countries, it seems like the state gives people a free apartment to go to university and they can go for five years or more, while not really doing anything substantial. if this is the case, then maybe the scale isn’t as important.

    I imagine that attacks on the track system in Germany must be increasing. In the US, recently, there is huge movement against gifted programs, and elite test schools in major cities.

    When I was in Germany I was really struck by what I perceived as the cultural differences in the way kids are treated at schools. In the US, my overwhelming impression was that we were being warehoused, even if we went to school for fewer days total. The minutes of every day were counted miserly, and more added. Not the case, in my father’s day. But blank-slatism has gotten worse, with the demographics. (The Covid shut-downs have been an interesting disruptor, IMO)

    The US throws staggering sums into education. Mostly wasted, unless one looks at it through a political lens. Pretty sure that the average person in the US doesn’t benefit past the 8th grade.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    I imagine that attacks on the track system in Germany must be increasing.
     
    Sure, replacing it with comprehensive schools has been a goal of left-wingers for decades.
    And in general, the trajectory for educational standards is clearly downwards. In some states like North-Rhine-Westphalia you've already got 50% or more of each cohort who pass the Abitur, with many then presumably going on to university. That's just a joke imo and basically renders the track system meaningless.

    Replies: @songbird

  964. It’s actually a bit analogous to the coronavirus pandemic.

    In New Zealand, they chose to stop a virus entering a country. In Russia, open the borders (in this example to a virus); but there is also installed anti-pandemic state capacity to track everyone, and control their access to public spaces.

    When the social system has new technological capacities – control at the border might not be so relevant when you can control inside the border.

    Maybe you could even open all the shopping malls, with such new capacities.

    As in such an analogy, perhaps in the future even opening the border becomes less idealistic utopianism “refugees welcome and we hope you won’t kill us”, and becomes more “welcome into the walls of our digitized society, and don’t worry we know everything everyone can be doing anyway”.

    From the example of the coronavirus pandemic, the pressures of these new systems are at least useful for encouraging a population to do behaviours like being vaccinated, not so much for social distancing. In Russia the need for a QR code caused a flood into the (IKEA owned) shopping mall in Ekaterinburg for vaccination.

    People who didn’t want to be vaccinated before, now want their QR codes, and will be vaccinated, so they can access things like shopping malls.

  965. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share.
     
    Look AP, I hope that you don't get the idea that I hate children or don't appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum. As much as I do appreciate children, I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional $233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society. More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks! You can't take it with you, and any funds in my estate may very well end up helping to fund scholarships, where I can have some input in who and how much any recipient may recive. What's wrong with that?

    What's wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing? Then there are those who have made a business out of having children, for they count on being remunerated by government subsidies, already in place. A one parent home with 4 children can receive up to $1,400 per month, not counting food stamps, subsidized rent and who knows what other benefits. Certainly not enough to induce somebody in your socio-economic class to feel the need for more children, but for many this is an inducement to have more children.


    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don’t you care about it?
     
    Is there really? Technology should lessen the need for human bodies to do work. We hear this so much, that we fail to critically and rationally question whether this is really so. More workers are needed for what? To manufacture more products so that the oligarchs can become even richer? Sam Walton and Jeff Bezos need more profits to help increase their ROI? :-) If Europe needs more workers, then the market should redirect North Americans there to take advantage of higher wages. But what we see, is just the opposite. Maybe Europe can get along just fine with the populations that it has?...

    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.
     
    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children is very one dimensional. Put on your thinking cap, I'm sure you can come up with some other ideas. :-)

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @AP

    More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks!

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    You can actually have pronatal socialism like what Ceaușescu did in Romania, and CRT is in no way relevant to anyone's fertility outside of compulsorily sterilizing White people at one extreme (not yet happening).

    AK discussed how the proliferation of LGBTQ identities have eluded breeders: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/wokeness-as-white-supremacism/


    16% of Gen Z in the US now identify as LGBT. So “child-free” is likely to soar to German levels over the next decades. OTOH, Western countries have had a century or more of selection for “breeders”. Amongst those who do have children, the average birth sequence is soaring ahead of Latin America, India, multiple Muslim countries.
     
    A lot of those LGBTQ people can have non-adopted children given the incentive and/or technologies, and still more will eventually grow out of the sh*t when they become more mature and responsible.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  966. @Dmitry
    @A123


    Poland nationalized ... brands
     
    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland that are upgrading and maintaining the German tanks that Germany has donated to Poland, then probably Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.

    Replies: @LatW, @A123

    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland

    If this ridiculous scenario were to take place, there would first be court action before it even came to tanks.. btw, Poland has American tanks and other rather new weapons. But anyway… I don’t want to speak for Poland, since there are some unhealthy anti-German undercurrents there (maybe understandable to some extent), but in general that’s not how this relationship works. Even though there is a bit of a takeover by German and Scandinavian businesses in EE, these businesses are welcomed. They bring in capital, German business culture, some level of stability.

    Poland and others should create their own successful brands, maybe expand their businesses into wider geographies. And, yes, it would help for the EE countries to be a little bit more protectionist (as much or as little as the EU regulation allows). Also, the relationships on the ground are quite amicable. A lot of Germans visit EE, people go to the same clubs, resorts, etc. To show unnecessary hostility towards Germany seems really idiotic.

    As to the aggressive spreading of the woke ideologies, which are indeed annoying… a healthier approach would be to encourage Germany and other Western countries to change their tone when it comes to “educating” the “backward E.Europeans” about civilizational and “human rights” standards. The standard has so far been that “the West knows best what’s right”, the way to change that would be for EE to speak in a common voice – not aggressively, but sternly enough. Just state: We are simply different and, please, accept that. Basic human rights standards are met.

    And, btw, a similar approach should be taken to explain to German (and France) the situation around Russia.

    However, even this may not be enough, because a lot of the minority, refugee, etc., related policies and obligations are regulated by broader international laws that go beyond the EU.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @LatW

    Poles always want to say they hate Russians and Germans equally - the most way to annoy them is to say they are similar to Germans. (I think Polish culture has some stereotypical traits similar to Germany culture, such as being punctual, pedantic and conscientious).

    But of course, the orientation of the country is that they are extremely integrating with Germany, so any anti-Germany attitude they talk about is a fake in the geopolitical and economic context.


    few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael,
     
    Before the pandemic, Poland is also the largest proportionally growth market for tourism to Israel.

    https://i.imgur.com/noEoljQ.jpg
    Unlike Romanian tourism, I think there is much more secular tourism from Poland.

    On the other hand, Israeli politicians don't prioritize at all about Poland and enjoy trolling Poland in relation to the Polish behavior (where there were the most people who saved Jews, but also many who betrayed) during the holocaust.

    In general, Israeli politicians are not prioritizing tourism. I was excited that Israel is opening to tourism this month, but then saw the requirements for entry which will still be one of the strictest in the world - that you need three doses of vaccine, and can still be quarantined. Even when I am vaccinated, probably I won't be able to visit there for another 9 months or something like that. They don't seem very worried about the loss of tourism business there; their attitude is like it is "your problem" if you want enter the country.

    Replies: @LatW

  967. @Dmitry
    @AP


    $233,000 tax
     
    That would be the worst policy psychologically, as it would turn not having children into a status symbol of being middle class.

    It would instantly become a flex, when you know the people without children must have a good income, like buying a BMW. "They must be doing well, as they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege". It also implies that not having children is very desirable, if it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid.

    Although if enforced in a strict way (requiring a little authoritarianism), it would force most poor people to have children.

    -

    If we want to learn from policies that had no effect e.g. look at Putin's maternity capital. Maternity capital policy has had exactly zero effect on the real fertility rate in Russia, even though most people in Russia have very low incomes - but it has changed the birth calendar for women and reduced the poverty rate.

    Why doesn't it work in its intended way (although it has the side-effect of reducing poverty rates) in modern populations with access to birth control?

    Because having children is almost always a sacrifice for the parents, and middle class people are not going to be that incentivized to sacrifice for tax breaks, or government payments. It would be a self-contradiction.

    On the other hand, most people actually want to have sacrifices, if they think it will give more meaning to their life, or improve the world. If it is a noble sacrifice, then people want to do that.

    The idea of having kind, self-sacrificing children that could help the world, and contribute values to the future, would be inspiring for most middle class couples. Whereas appealing to selfish motives not only contradicts it, but is also only going to incentivize poor or a little selfish people - i.e. people who wouldn't pay for their children's music lessons.

    Secular people in Israel are above replacement fertility (maybe the only secular, post-industrialized, contraceptive using couples in the world), perhaps partly because of a perspective that maintaining their community life and values, is a self-sacrificing, idealistic activity, and therefore it becomes attractive - it allows you to escape your ego, and self-serving motives, and to focus on larger values in life. It's the same reason that more of the secular young people volunteer for combat units than there are places to accept them. Because young people will often want to sacrifice themselves, as long as they think it could give more meaning to their life or be "noble sacrifice".

    Modern secular people will be looking for opportunities to sacrifices for the greater good, if it appears to be actually meaningful to them.

    -

    One of the problems of the middle class couples with access to contraception today, is that although most young people want children, to add a sense of meaning; it can provided by having one child, if you thought the child is going to be kind person, who helps to improve the world, etc.

    Whereas of the country's social/political layer requires an average of 2,1 children per woman, in order to continue the current tax base. 89,5% of women in Russia have children. The issue for the government, is that only a much smaller proportion have 2 children.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP

    I wanted to say promoting a natalist culture is far more important than any incentivizing/coercive policies, but you put it better than me.

  968. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Yes but you could even open all prisons, if you have the state (and also private - which can be equally scary) capacity to track everyone like they were prisoners.

    If there is capacity to track everyone like prisoners, then opening borders would begin to seem less utopian idealism, and more an expansion of the prison population.

    The technological changes are pessimistically "Chekhov's guns". These are precedents that are being prepared that there (fortunately) might not be political will or political capital to use for now, and this political will depend on the civilization level that the population might be able to use its bargaining power to demand in Europe.

    In Russia, there is beginning a QR code system to access services and shopping malls, in order to control the coronavirus pandemic. Here is a system already existing now, but which the political will is fortunately only applying to anti-pandemic functions.

    Fortunately, it's only here as a temporary anti-pandemic response. Unfortunately, there is already installed a system to run the country as a large prison, if that was ever required or there was "political will". And "political will" for these things might not always be lacking, if the past is any guide for the future.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Yes but you could even open all prisons, if you have the state (and also private – which can be equally scary) capacity to track everyone like they were prisoners.

    Google already has the capabilities, it depends on whether they’ll hand the database over to a gov’tal agency.

    it’s only here as a temporary anti-pandemic response

    It will be there indefinitely because COVID is going endemic & there are many “variants” succeeding boosters (and continued use of vaccine passports). After that, rolling lockdowns to ration energy (control GHG emissions).

    Parallel (caste-based) societies are the wave of the future it seems.

  969. @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack


    More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks!
     
    https://media.patriots.win/post/wReq00RA.jpeg

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    You can actually have pronatal socialism like what Ceaușescu did in Romania, and CRT is in no way relevant to anyone’s fertility outside of compulsorily sterilizing White people at one extreme (not yet happening).

    AK discussed how the proliferation of LGBTQ identities have eluded breeders: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/wokeness-as-white-supremacism/

    16% of Gen Z in the US now identify as LGBT. So “child-free” is likely to soar to German levels over the next decades. OTOH, Western countries have had a century or more of selection for “breeders”. Amongst those who do have children, the average birth sequence is soaring ahead of Latin America, India, multiple Muslim countries.

    A lot of those LGBTQ people can have non-adopted children given the incentive and/or technologies, and still more will eventually grow out of the sh*t when they become more mature and responsible.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Yellowface Anon


    A lot of those LGBTQ people can have non-adopted children given the incentive and/or technologies, and still more will eventually grow out of the sh*t when they become more mature and responsible.
     
    Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Think of how messed up these children will become...
  970. I shall throw out my highly-offensive theory about modern invasions vs. past ones, before it is too late:

    To a certain extent, one can think of the PIE invasion of India, or the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica as invasions by the Northern Y-chromosome. That is how ancient, barbarian invasions usually worked. Men conquered, bringing relatively few women, but seizing local ones.

    But the modern invasion of the UK by Indians (And the earlier invasion by the Gypsies) or the invasion of the US by Central Americans, or Africans, is more like invasion by the Southern X-chromosome (whether carried by males or females).

    Instead of invasion by swords or testosterone, it is invasion by bringing wombs and by nagging. By estrogen. This is the reason that the rhetoric of foreigners denouncing past colonialism or Euro ethnocentrism (which they call “racism”), whether coming from males or females, often seems so whorish and bitchy, so sickeningly debased. It is not warrior rhetoric about strength and brave deeds, but nagging, concubine rhetoric about gibs and “fairness.”

    Call it, revenge of the Dravidian X-chromosome. (Or of the Maya, or Bantu one, etc. as the case may be.)

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Thanks: Almost Missouri
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @songbird

    I honest don't think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United KIngdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.

    When you saw all so many well-behaving, nerdy, quiet Indian/Chinese youth in the elite universities. They seem like they will be future professional nerds (i.e. engineers, scientists, doctors), if they did not return to their home country. These students will mostly be probably in the future middle class - i.e. perhaps significantly below the local hipsters economically or in terms of social status, but many will be contributing in practical jobs for the economy.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    , @Beckow
    @songbird


    ...invasion by nagging. By estrogen.
     
    It is even stronger, there is an undercurrent of deep hatred, an attempt to overcome one's sense of inadequacy, to bring others down - others perceived as better and hated for it. Whether Bantu, Dravidian, Moor, Semitic, mestizo, right under the surface there is hatred of Europe and Europeans because they have done so much better, and because Europe's success highlights their own failure.

    Any interaction with people who hate you, good or bad, is pointless. Discussions with them lead nowhere, more Europeans give in, more they escalate - that's the way hatred works.
    , @sher singh
    @songbird

    Are you suggesting Anglos aren't passive-aggressive homosexuals?
    Feminism, LGBT aren't these all your cultural products?

    Why would any proud race not hold in contempt a conqueror who demands you fuck his daughter?
    We hold you to the same standard,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @songbird

  971. This clip’s title goes something like “child-bearing mandates debated in Japanese Diet elections”, but I can’t find anything relevant in English. Can anyone with more than a passing knowledge in Japanese watch it for the main points:

    https://youtube.com/watch?v=3HlXpTQLziY

  972. @LatW
    @Svidomyatheart


    We shall see what will come out of our Faustian deal with ZOGUSA but whatever will come of it its better than sitting with Russia which wants to destroy us
     
    Ukraine is large enough that it can carve out its own policy, if there is political will. You have not signed into any serious obligations yet with the West. Even if Ukraine gets integrated into the Western security structures in some way, let's say, through some kind of an enhanced cooperation, even then Ukraine does not have to fully comply with the woke ideology. The amount of support from the US, while important, is not enough to win a war for you plus there are geopolitical interests in the Black Sea that the West will never give up. What, the US will stop siding with you against Russia, just because you don't introduce gender neutrality? No. Besides, if you look at Johnson's "Global Britain" remarks, it seems that the British will not abandon you.

    Ukraine has shown that it has the will to stand up for itself. Recently the Ukrainian army has brought some potentially game changing elements to the front lines that could help enforce a real cease fire.

    Maybe Ukraine should model itself in a way that's more similar to countries such as Japan, Turkey, Israel. All of these are Western partners, but they retain their own internal policies. You can always argue that you are freedom loving Cossacks who have their own Cossack way. :) And always argue that Ukraine is a front line state that deserves all kinds of exceptions. Not exceptions in, let's say, the rule of law which is good to observe for Ukraine's own sake, but exceptions pertaining to the woke practices.

    Ideally, of course, a range of countries should come together and simply state that we can continue our friendship and cooperation, but that we will not be accepting the crazy parts. Frankly, last summer's "pregnant people" really did it for me. Time to tactfully say "No thanks".

    The excerpt you posted is very disturbing and if it indeed comes from the State Department then it's very dangerous (not only encourages mutilating female children but teaches one not to accept or even dislike femininity). Of course, the State Department has been living in its own world for a long time. Again, you don't have to comply in any way! You have enough bargaining power on your own. The more risky part is if people themselves start doing it, because parts of the world are now on track for this.

    Replies: @Svidomyatheart

    Latw, I had a 1000sih word response to your post that i typed since the weekend and I was getting ready to post it but lost it.

    I might be able to retype it

    Only thing I want to say is sure the Brits say they’re going to do this and that to help Ukraine but how did that work out for Poland last time?

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart

    Britain isn't able to do anything for Ukraine in case of a Russian invasion even if they wanted to. I mean, ok, they're going to have some shiny new aircraft carrier soon, but the British army is now down to around 100 000 active soldiers, or less (who for two decades have been geared towards counter-insurgency actions like in Afghanistan). You don't fight a serious ground war with that kind of force.
    The same applies even more for the Europeans of course. Germany is a total joke. France may be better, but my impression is their forces are basically meant just for kicking around natives in West Africa, not for a real war against a country like Russia.
    As for the Americans, the basic argument by Anatol Lieven here seems sound to me:
    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/10/27/divining-putin-what-russia-is-willing-to-do-or-not-for-its-own-interests/

    Lieven is kind of pro-Russian (in the sense that he thinks there's no point to antagonism with Russia), but he's probably right that in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, China will also invade Taiwan. So a war on two theatres, which may well be too much even for America's capabilities (and of course much of the US public will probably have no stomach for such a kind of war).
    So any talk by Westerners about real military support for Ukraine in case of war is probably just for show.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @LatW
    @Svidomyatheart

    Dear Svidomy,

    I understand very well what you're trying to say (I'm mostly in agreement with you and you have great instincts).

    What I meant about the Brits is not that they will physically be there with troops, etc., but that they will support diplomatically and maybe with some equipment. The ideal picture would be that Ukraine would bolster its own forces and create both long term and situational alliances (regional and also with the Western world), the allied relationships would only be a backup.

    Тримайся, козаче.

  973. German_reader says:
    @Svidomyatheart
    @LatW

    Latw, I had a 1000sih word response to your post that i typed since the weekend and I was getting ready to post it but lost it.

    I might be able to retype it

    Only thing I want to say is sure the Brits say they're going to do this and that to help Ukraine but how did that work out for Poland last time?

    Replies: @German_reader, @LatW

    Britain isn’t able to do anything for Ukraine in case of a Russian invasion even if they wanted to. I mean, ok, they’re going to have some shiny new aircraft carrier soon, but the British army is now down to around 100 000 active soldiers, or less (who for two decades have been geared towards counter-insurgency actions like in Afghanistan). You don’t fight a serious ground war with that kind of force.
    The same applies even more for the Europeans of course. Germany is a total joke. France may be better, but my impression is their forces are basically meant just for kicking around natives in West Africa, not for a real war against a country like Russia.
    As for the Americans, the basic argument by Anatol Lieven here seems sound to me:
    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/10/27/divining-putin-what-russia-is-willing-to-do-or-not-for-its-own-interests/

    Lieven is kind of pro-Russian (in the sense that he thinks there’s no point to antagonism with Russia), but he’s probably right that in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, China will also invade Taiwan. So a war on two theatres, which may well be too much even for America’s capabilities (and of course much of the US public will probably have no stomach for such a kind of war).
    So any talk by Westerners about real military support for Ukraine in case of war is probably just for show.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @German_reader

    I get the feeling that Ukraine isn't really interested in having direct US intervention in Ukrainian military affairs, outside of a few military advisors and definitely access to military weapons and technology. Ukrainians have shown that they're now able and willing to take up the fight on their own. Direct NATO involvement there may be another story. The ability to receive help from an amalgamation of different nations support, including the US, would be enough to scare the Russians away. Nobody wants to start WWIII over Ukraine. I don't think that most European countries are interested in seeing Ukraine join NATO though...

  974. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader

    My impression of the tertiary education system in Germany is that it is much more limited in frivolity than the American one. That a much smaller percentage of people go through it. But, maybe, this is changing?

    In some Euro countries, it seems like the state gives people a free apartment to go to university and they can go for five years or more, while not really doing anything substantial. if this is the case, then maybe the scale isn't as important.

    I imagine that attacks on the track system in Germany must be increasing. In the US, recently, there is huge movement against gifted programs, and elite test schools in major cities.

    When I was in Germany I was really struck by what I perceived as the cultural differences in the way kids are treated at schools. In the US, my overwhelming impression was that we were being warehoused, even if we went to school for fewer days total. The minutes of every day were counted miserly, and more added. Not the case, in my father's day. But blank-slatism has gotten worse, with the demographics. (The Covid shut-downs have been an interesting disruptor, IMO)

    The US throws staggering sums into education. Mostly wasted, unless one looks at it through a political lens. Pretty sure that the average person in the US doesn't benefit past the 8th grade.

    Replies: @German_reader

    I imagine that attacks on the track system in Germany must be increasing.

    Sure, replacing it with comprehensive schools has been a goal of left-wingers for decades.
    And in general, the trajectory for educational standards is clearly downwards. In some states like North-Rhine-Westphalia you’ve already got 50% or more of each cohort who pass the Abitur, with many then presumably going on to university. That’s just a joke imo and basically renders the track system meaningless.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    Terrible thing about blank-slatism is that it is self-reinforcing, at the regime level. Once they go in for it for a penny, they will go in for it for a pound.

    So, for example, blank-slatists genuinely believe the formula: more education=better. Not only in students, but in teachers. They promote greater requirements for public school teachers. Degrees instead of tests of knowledge or ability, and then eventually, higher degrees, often with a minor component about teaching.

    Each further change is an ideological filter. The longer that people are in school, the more they are brainwashed. Each year, each higher degree moves one further left and further into blank-slatism. The people who are skeptical of education, or the least susceptible, are often the first ones to drop out of the system. Leaving the soyjacks and the cat ladies wanting to breed more cat ladies.

    Whether consciously or unconsciously, blank-slatism and credentialism, are tools for capturing institutions. BTW, I wonder how many media operations require someone to have a degree in journalism (such a degree appeals to leftists).

  975. @Yellowface Anon
    @Mr. Hack

    You can actually have pronatal socialism like what Ceaușescu did in Romania, and CRT is in no way relevant to anyone's fertility outside of compulsorily sterilizing White people at one extreme (not yet happening).

    AK discussed how the proliferation of LGBTQ identities have eluded breeders: https://www.unz.com/akarlin/wokeness-as-white-supremacism/


    16% of Gen Z in the US now identify as LGBT. So “child-free” is likely to soar to German levels over the next decades. OTOH, Western countries have had a century or more of selection for “breeders”. Amongst those who do have children, the average birth sequence is soaring ahead of Latin America, India, multiple Muslim countries.
     
    A lot of those LGBTQ people can have non-adopted children given the incentive and/or technologies, and still more will eventually grow out of the sh*t when they become more mature and responsible.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    A lot of those LGBTQ people can have non-adopted children given the incentive and/or technologies, and still more will eventually grow out of the sh*t when they become more mature and responsible.

    Unfortunately, the damage has already been done. Think of how messed up these children will become…

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    In the first one minute of this video our friendly you tube physical therapist shows you how to do this with absolutely no special equipment!

    My old gym used to have a rig they called a hamstring curl. Not sure differences in effectiveness one versus the other. At first glance the results of these movements should be almost identical. On the hamstrings at least. The top of the glute and the bottom of the back don’t get much work on the hamstring curl rig.

    • Thanks: sher singh
  977. @German_reader
    @Svidomyatheart

    Britain isn't able to do anything for Ukraine in case of a Russian invasion even if they wanted to. I mean, ok, they're going to have some shiny new aircraft carrier soon, but the British army is now down to around 100 000 active soldiers, or less (who for two decades have been geared towards counter-insurgency actions like in Afghanistan). You don't fight a serious ground war with that kind of force.
    The same applies even more for the Europeans of course. Germany is a total joke. France may be better, but my impression is their forces are basically meant just for kicking around natives in West Africa, not for a real war against a country like Russia.
    As for the Americans, the basic argument by Anatol Lieven here seems sound to me:
    https://responsiblestatecraft.org/2021/10/27/divining-putin-what-russia-is-willing-to-do-or-not-for-its-own-interests/

    Lieven is kind of pro-Russian (in the sense that he thinks there's no point to antagonism with Russia), but he's probably right that in case of a Russian invasion of Ukraine, China will also invade Taiwan. So a war on two theatres, which may well be too much even for America's capabilities (and of course much of the US public will probably have no stomach for such a kind of war).
    So any talk by Westerners about real military support for Ukraine in case of war is probably just for show.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I get the feeling that Ukraine isn’t really interested in having direct US intervention in Ukrainian military affairs, outside of a few military advisors and definitely access to military weapons and technology. Ukrainians have shown that they’re now able and willing to take up the fight on their own. Direct NATO involvement there may be another story. The ability to receive help from an amalgamation of different nations support, including the US, would be enough to scare the Russians away. Nobody wants to start WWIII over Ukraine. I don’t think that most European countries are interested in seeing Ukraine join NATO though…

  978. @German_reader
    @songbird


    I imagine that attacks on the track system in Germany must be increasing.
     
    Sure, replacing it with comprehensive schools has been a goal of left-wingers for decades.
    And in general, the trajectory for educational standards is clearly downwards. In some states like North-Rhine-Westphalia you've already got 50% or more of each cohort who pass the Abitur, with many then presumably going on to university. That's just a joke imo and basically renders the track system meaningless.

    Replies: @songbird

    Terrible thing about blank-slatism is that it is self-reinforcing, at the regime level. Once they go in for it for a penny, they will go in for it for a pound.

    So, for example, blank-slatists genuinely believe the formula: more education=better. Not only in students, but in teachers. They promote greater requirements for public school teachers. Degrees instead of tests of knowledge or ability, and then eventually, higher degrees, often with a minor component about teaching.

    Each further change is an ideological filter. The longer that people are in school, the more they are brainwashed. Each year, each higher degree moves one further left and further into blank-slatism. The people who are skeptical of education, or the least susceptible, are often the first ones to drop out of the system. Leaving the soyjacks and the cat ladies wanting to breed more cat ladies.

    Whether consciously or unconsciously, blank-slatism and credentialism, are tools for capturing institutions. BTW, I wonder how many media operations require someone to have a degree in journalism (such a degree appeals to leftists).

  979. @Dmitry
    @A123


    Poland nationalized ... brands
     
    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland that are upgrading and maintaining the German tanks that Germany has donated to Poland, then probably Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.

    Replies: @LatW, @A123

    Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.

    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW’s using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.

    German corporations and banks need subordinate states. The EU is supposed to be a collection of equals. This contradiction needs to be resolved, and it is unlikely that sovereign nations will choose subordination.

    — The EU was founded on a false premise, “Everyone will become more European”.
    — Each joiner heard that as, “Other nations will become more like us”.
    — What they got is, “All nations will become more like Germany”.

    You can accuse small nations of naivety. At some level it was inevitable that the largest nations would have outsized influence. Payments within the EU have been corrupted, and are being wielded against democracy & sovereignty.

    Poland is not going to abandon its veto by leaving the EU. Constitutionally superior Polish courts will continue to overrule subordinate EU treaty courts. Enforcement powers within the EU are very weak, so there is little treaty courts can do to overcome their positional inferiority. Wielding intra-EU payments as a club is against both the spirit and the rules of the EU. If the EU can break its own rules, then Poland can too.

    Fundamentally the EU will reform, dissolve, or explode.

    — The current path is towards a disorderly end.
    — I doubt reform is possible. Member nations want diametrically opposed things.
    — The wisest choice would be and orderly and peaceful dissolution.

    Hopefully, nations will cooperate enough to end the failed EU experiment in a non-hostile manner.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @LatW
    @A123


    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW’s using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.
     
    From what I understood, they're now starting to even build their own air defense system (Narew). Not sure if it will be built by foreigners or themselves, but it looks like there will be local military producers involved.

    Replies: @AP, @A123

  980. @German_reader
    @Emil Nikola Richard


    BJ took the classics program when he was in school and he knows a good bit of ancient history.
     
    I think that's an understatement, iirc he's obsessed with antiquity and actually able to recite Homer from memory, which probably few other politicians of his generation would be able to do.

    Replies: @AP

    I like him more now

    • Agree: sher singh
    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Because Johnson is a hereditary English elite.

    This is how they show their dominance against the English professional slaves that do not have time to learn the Iliad in Ancient Greek (engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7N5MSlSTo

    It also allows him to communicate with English children nerds i.e. the demographic that inspired Harry Potter films.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYeG05WNGTI

    Replies: @Dmitry

  981. @Dmitry
    @AP


    $233,000 tax
     
    That would be the worst policy psychologically, as it would turn not having children into a status symbol of being middle class.

    It would instantly become a flex, when you know the people without children must have a good income, like buying a BMW. "They must be doing well, as they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege". It also implies that not having children is very desirable, if it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid.

    Although if enforced in a strict way (requiring a little authoritarianism), it would force most poor people to have children.

    -

    If we want to learn from policies that had no effect e.g. look at Putin's maternity capital. Maternity capital policy has had exactly zero effect on the real fertility rate in Russia, even though most people in Russia have very low incomes - but it has changed the birth calendar for women and reduced the poverty rate.

    Why doesn't it work in its intended way (although it has the side-effect of reducing poverty rates) in modern populations with access to birth control?

    Because having children is almost always a sacrifice for the parents, and middle class people are not going to be that incentivized to sacrifice for tax breaks, or government payments. It would be a self-contradiction.

    On the other hand, most people actually want to have sacrifices, if they think it will give more meaning to their life, or improve the world. If it is a noble sacrifice, then people want to do that.

    The idea of having kind, self-sacrificing children that could help the world, and contribute values to the future, would be inspiring for most middle class couples. Whereas appealing to selfish motives not only contradicts it, but is also only going to incentivize poor or a little selfish people - i.e. people who wouldn't pay for their children's music lessons.

    Secular people in Israel are above replacement fertility (maybe the only secular, post-industrialized, contraceptive using couples in the world), perhaps partly because of a perspective that maintaining their community life and values, is a self-sacrificing, idealistic activity, and therefore it becomes attractive - it allows you to escape your ego, and self-serving motives, and to focus on larger values in life. It's the same reason that more of the secular young people volunteer for combat units than there are places to accept them. Because young people will often want to sacrifice themselves, as long as they think it could give more meaning to their life or be "noble sacrifice".

    Modern secular people will be looking for opportunities to sacrifices for the greater good, if it appears to be actually meaningful to them.

    -

    One of the problems of the middle class couples with access to contraception today, is that although most young people want children, to add a sense of meaning; it can provided by having one child, if you thought the child is going to be kind person, who helps to improve the world, etc.

    Whereas of the country's social/political layer requires an average of 2,1 children per woman, in order to continue the current tax base. 89,5% of women in Russia have children. The issue for the government, is that only a much smaller proportion have 2 children.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @AP

    That would be the worst policy psychologically, as it would turn not having children into a status symbol of being middle class.

    It would instantly become a flex, when you know the people without children must have a good income, like buying a BMW. “They must be doing well, as they can pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this privilege

    Is that why wealthy Americans refuse to hire accountants in order to minimize their tax load, and habitually overpay the taxes? Lol.

    It also implies that not having children is very desirable, if it was worth paying hundreds of thousands of dollars to avoid.

    Currently having children involves paying \$233,000 per child. Financially, there is a strong incentive for non poor people to avoid having them (poor people get paid to have kids, in contrast). The childless save \$233,000 by choosing not to have kids. A tax on the childless would remove this perverse incentive. It’s not about punishing the childless, but about evening the playing field and removing money from the equation of whether or not to have children, and how many to have.

    I agree with you that ultimately promoting a pronatalist culture is necessary. The tax would be about justice most of all.

  982. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share.
     
    Look AP, I hope that you don't get the idea that I hate children or don't appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum. As much as I do appreciate children, I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional $233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society. More money for the bureaucrats to teach and enforce their Critical Race theories? No thanks! You can't take it with you, and any funds in my estate may very well end up helping to fund scholarships, where I can have some input in who and how much any recipient may recive. What's wrong with that?

    What's wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing? Then there are those who have made a business out of having children, for they count on being remunerated by government subsidies, already in place. A one parent home with 4 children can receive up to $1,400 per month, not counting food stamps, subsidized rent and who knows what other benefits. Certainly not enough to induce somebody in your socio-economic class to feel the need for more children, but for many this is an inducement to have more children.


    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don’t you care about it?
     
    Is there really? Technology should lessen the need for human bodies to do work. We hear this so much, that we fail to critically and rationally question whether this is really so. More workers are needed for what? To manufacture more products so that the oligarchs can become even richer? Sam Walton and Jeff Bezos need more profits to help increase their ROI? :-) If Europe needs more workers, then the market should redirect North Americans there to take advantage of higher wages. But what we see, is just the opposite. Maybe Europe can get along just fine with the populations that it has?...

    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.
     
    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children is very one dimensional. Put on your thinking cap, I'm sure you can come up with some other ideas. :-)

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @AP

    Look AP, I hope that you don’t get the idea that I hate children or don’t appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum

    Sure, it isn’t my business why you chose not to contribute to the physical existence of the Ukrainian people. But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with \$233,000 by doing so.

    I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional \$233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society

    Or you could donate \$233,000 for scholarships or private schools, help with medical care for sick kids, etc.

    What’s wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing?

    The child free tax would remove this incentive to not have kids, because choosing not to have them would no longer result in money savings.

    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children

    There is no humanity without humans.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with $233,000 by doing so.
     
    My avoidance of having any children had absolutely nothing to do with scheming to avoid the costs of child rearing, or saving $233,000. Perhaps, you're sorry now that you've had to spend $233,000 per child and have missed out on some material comforts that you've had to forgo if not for these costs?

    Or you could donate $233,000 for scholarships or private schools, help with medical care for sick kids, etc.
     
    You're more on to the right track here, and this is something that I've already brought up above. I still don't like the idea of being told by anybody how and to whom I'm supposed to divide up my estate after I pass. Do you?

    The child free tax would remove this incentive to not have kids, because choosing not to have them would no longer result in money savings.
     
    Back to the "money savings" scheme of those who do not want, or cannot have children? Seriously,
    you can't understand that for some folks, having any children just isn't in the cards? Would you also apply this tax to those that aren't even married? Sounds like you're advocating for having children out of wedlock? Ah, ya yai! Perhaps, some sort of tax should be assessed on those that choose to remain single?

    There is no humanity without humans.
     
    True. But populations around the world are increasing all of the time. Last I checked, the world's population was about 8 billion people. Do we really need to incentivize people to produce more offspring?

    I've always pictured you as a real level headed conservative who probably questions the need for more and greater taxes, and here you seem to be advocating for close to a quarter of a million in new taxes per single individual? I've never ever heard of anything so drastic even from the most liberal of think tank promoters?.........

    To me, using tax policies to help enforce social programs like child rearing is a slippery slope leading to a totalitarian system.

    Replies: @AP

  983. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    Answer my question: why should my or other normal parents’ children take care of you when you are old? How exactly are you going to force them if they laugh in your face about all the stupid “benefits” that you voted for yourself? Life happens only in the present, you can’t demand benefits from people who were too young to agree to them.
     
    Easy to answer. People who approach retirement age, who are probably financially better off, should make sure that they have purchased long term care insurance and an appropriate financial tool to fund such a plan like an annuity. Beside, in the States Medicare and Medicaid benefits, although not perfect do cover a broad range of debilitating health issues. Europe, with its longer infatuation with socialism should have developed even better ways to help cover the needs of its own retirees. You shouldn't have to have any ridiculous conversations with health care aides about the viability of ones personal lifestyle choices.

    So why exactly should I, or my kids, subsidize the losers in their old age? The inevitable logic of a market-ruled society will demand that the freeloading will stop.
     
    The system here in the states is much more market oriented than the one you and your fellow socialists have put together in Europe. Now you answer this to me: Why should I or any other American who faithfully contributed to the social security system throughout his working life have to give up these benefits once he reaches retirement age? If he was fortunate to save more, he should be in a position to pay the costs of even better health care provisions afforded to those that own a long term care policy.

    Replies: @Beckow

    Why should I or any other American who faithfully contributed to the social security system throughout his working life have to give up these benefits once he reaches retirement age?

    It is by definition an inter-generational contract. If you choose not to help with future generations (single, LGBT…) you are not a part of that contract. So you have a contract with yourself, there is no requirement that society’s children should honor it. If they do, it is pure charity – or they can give you a minimum.

    These kids were raised by people who sacrificed to have them, as AP showed you, it costs around \$230k to raise a child in today’s America. You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That’s the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?

    By the way, this is the way it has been in all human societies since the time immemorial. Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don’t provide for the children in the next generation. We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won’t be – you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits. That will have consequences and a piece of electronic paper (“contract”) will mean very little. We can inflate out of it very easily.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That’s the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?
     
    But I'm not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I've paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn't I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning? In fact, the social security trust fund has been depleted by being ransacked by the government to help pay for a large part of the general population's need for various programs, for which I've never given my blessings. So you see, it's those like your offspring that have already benefited from my social security contributions. If I I' hadn't saved even more, I'd end up living an economically diminished lifestyle.

    Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don’t provide for the children in the next generation.
     
    Good luck to you, if you expect your kids totake care of you when you cease your working life. I've seen way too many cases of retired parents still helping to pay for the needs of their kids,who for whatever reason can't get it together financially. These kids are lucky that their parents can still help them out.

    We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won’t be – you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits.

     

    Another variation of "eat the rich" I think. Good luck! The largest and most well financed lobbying groups in the US, anyway, are organized to look after the needs of those retired. The elderly have armies of lawyers and politicians that are ready to bend over and shine the shoes of these constituents, so don't hold your breath. :-)

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow

  984. @AP
    @German_reader


    But to me the dominant American culture today is just multiculturalist globalism
     
    About 40% (at least) of Americans, "native" ones living away from the coasts, hate this with a passion. There is not only attempts to dominate foreign lands but also a struggle against internal enemies. Just as Bolsheviks, while trying to conquer other nations, were also struggling against their own interior also.

    They don’t look specifically German to me at all, just vaguely Northern European (or maybe a blend of different Northern European strains).
     
    The "standard" non-ethnic American is basically a combination of English, Scottish and totally assimilated German (I think Germany contributed slightly more ancestry to America's mix than has England, but not as much as England plus Scotland). As a result he or she will look vaguely northern European without resembling a German or Englishman specifically.

    Since they’re students at BYU, I suppose they’re Mormons, and aren’t Mormons a group with especially high levels of British ancestry?
     
    Yes. Mormons, particularly in Utah, are heavily of English stock. Utah is very proud of its Shakespeare festival:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utah_Shakespeare_Festival

    They have recreated the Globe theater there.

    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.

    Replies: @AP, @German_reader, @Mikel

    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.

    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don’t drink alcohol but I don’t think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons. Probably the contrary is the case. Mormons (including many non-observant ones) spend every single Sunday gathered with their immediate or extended families, mostly indoors after church, and eating hearty meals. Obesity is quite common.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there’s hardly any people of English-only origins. After the initial settlement from New England they brought large amounts of Mormon converts from Britain, Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland. There are Swiss and Scandinavian festivals in different towns, neighborhoods called Little Denmark, Swiss style villages in the mountains settled by contingents of Swiss, there’s even a few Icelandic speakers somewhere in Northern Utah, not sure how they arrived there.

    After the initial Mormon settlement many other groups from all over the US came as well. There is also a Greek festival in Salt Lake City, an Indian (South Asian) one in Utah County, even a small community of Basques in the SLC area. The last SLC mayor’s last name was Biskupski (Polish) and the current one’s is Mendenhall (German, Scandi?). Plenty of Irish too and of course lots of Latinos.

    On top of that, there is now a constant influx of outsiders (American and foreign) attracted by the booming economy in Utah. Californians, in particular, are fueling a big housing crisis.

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They’ll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry. Although I spent a month in a rural location of Northern Iowa as a teenager and it’s difficult to say after such a long time but I think there were more blonds over there. Most everybody was of Scandinavian or German origins.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God. And the other part is socio-religious: get married early in order to have many kids. Even though Mormon religion strongly encourages modest dressing and you find “modest dressing stores” at the malls, it is quite remarkable how women, especially the young ones, dress up for church. It really looks as if they were going to a party. Guys also wear impeccable suits for the church services.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are “much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself”. Perhaps in general that’s true. But I happen to think that British women are the prettiest in Europe. Lots of Dolores O’Riordan type of faces on the British Islands:

    • LOL: sher singh
    • Replies: @AP
    @Mikel


    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don’t drink alcohol but I don’t think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons
     
    They probably aren’t but the combination of outdoorsiness and clean living results in a very healthy and healthy-looking population.

    I’ve been in small Mormon towns in rural Utah and was very surprised by how healthy and attractive the locals were. Compare them to, say, the obese unhealthy folks one sees in small town Appalachia.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there’s hardly any people of English-only origins
     
    Utah is the most English state in America but it is only about 28% English. English is the single largest ethnic origin in Utah (Scandinavian is in second place with 15% combined for Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, Germans are in third place with 12%).

    In contrast, New England is 18% Irish, 12% Italian, 12% French-Canadian, and 11% English.

    http://www.lostinthepond.com/2016/09/this-state-has-highest-percentage-of.html

    “In total, 29% of Utah's population self-reported English Ancestry, while the state also houses 15 of the top 20 Anglo-American cities in the nation. Indeed, with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States“

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They’ll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry
     
    I was unclear. By Uber-English I meant super-healthy, fit and attractive English physiognomy. Culturally speaking, Utah is very American in a sort of retro religious way. I think New Zeakand is probably more English than England.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God.
     
    Yes, the Mormons also believe that since the body is a temple they have to keep it in good condition and beautiful. My wife and I have visited Utah many times (we are in love with the desert) and we are struck by how beautiful the people are. They are no less beautiful in Moscow of course, but it is a very different kind of beauty. Not particularly sophisticated as in urban Europe (this tradition has largely died in Western Europe but has been retained in Moscow and at times in Montreal), but exuding simple health and wholesomeness, plus a sort of beauty contest aesthetic. Utah girls don’t look like people from fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow. Instead, they look like they’ve stepped out of an American movie, an American Ideal (which doesn’t contrast English background). It’s a bit exotic.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are “much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself”. Perhaps in general that’s true
     
    People in Britain tend to be overweight - not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth (the stereotype is true). People in Utah with their religious devotion to keeping the body beautiful for God, have perfect teeth of course. I find the British accents to be charming though.

    Lots of Dolores O’Riordan type
     
    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mikel

  985. @Svidomyatheart
    @LatW

    Latw, I had a 1000sih word response to your post that i typed since the weekend and I was getting ready to post it but lost it.

    I might be able to retype it

    Only thing I want to say is sure the Brits say they're going to do this and that to help Ukraine but how did that work out for Poland last time?

    Replies: @German_reader, @LatW

    Dear Svidomy,

    I understand very well what you’re trying to say (I’m mostly in agreement with you and you have great instincts).

    What I meant about the Brits is not that they will physically be there with troops, etc., but that they will support diplomatically and maybe with some equipment. The ideal picture would be that Ukraine would bolster its own forces and create both long term and situational alliances (regional and also with the Western world), the allied relationships would only be a backup.

    Тримайся, козаче.

  986. @A123
    @Dmitry


    Germany would decide to stop donating these tanks to Poland. And the German engineers might find work somewhere else.
     
    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW's using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.

    German corporations and banks need subordinate states. The EU is supposed to be a collection of equals. This contradiction needs to be resolved, and it is unlikely that sovereign nations will choose subordination.

    -- The EU was founded on a false premise, "Everyone will become more European".
    -- Each joiner heard that as, "Other nations will become more like us".
    -- What they got is, "All nations will become more like Germany".

    You can accuse small nations of naivety. At some level it was inevitable that the largest nations would have outsized influence. Payments within the EU have been corrupted, and are being wielded against democracy & sovereignty.

    Poland is not going to abandon its veto by leaving the EU. Constitutionally superior Polish courts will continue to overrule subordinate EU treaty courts. Enforcement powers within the EU are very weak, so there is little treaty courts can do to overcome their positional inferiority. Wielding intra-EU payments as a club is against both the spirit and the rules of the EU. If the EU can break its own rules, then Poland can too.

    Fundamentally the EU will reform, dissolve, or explode.

    -- The current path is towards a disorderly end.
    -- I doubt reform is possible. Member nations want diametrically opposed things.
    -- The wisest choice would be and orderly and peaceful dissolution.

    Hopefully, nations will cooperate enough to end the failed EU experiment in a non-hostile manner.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LatW

    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW’s using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.

    From what I understood, they’re now starting to even build their own air defense system (Narew). Not sure if it will be built by foreigners or themselves, but it looks like there will be local military producers involved.

    • Replies: @AP
    @LatW

    If Poland were richer it could finance a joint development with Ukraine of ballistic missiles.

    Replies: @iffen

    , @A123
    @LatW


    From what I understood, they’re now starting to even build their own air defense system (Narew). Not sure if it will be built by foreigners or themselves, but it looks like there will be local military producers involved.
     
    The goal of the Narew program is intended to maximize Polish design and construction. Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.

    The stated range, 15-20km, is remarkably similar to the Russian Pantsir. It will be interesting to hear if radar controlled guns are added to the mix at some point.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://breakingdefense.com/2021/10/poland-kicks-off-homegrown-shorad-system-narew/
  987. @Mikel
    @AP


    The healthy Mormon lifestyle (no drinking, plus lots of outdoor physical activity) has produced, in Utah, English people who are much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself. Uber-English, so to speak.
     
    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don't drink alcohol but I don't think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons. Probably the contrary is the case. Mormons (including many non-observant ones) spend every single Sunday gathered with their immediate or extended families, mostly indoors after church, and eating hearty meals. Obesity is quite common.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there's hardly any people of English-only origins. After the initial settlement from New England they brought large amounts of Mormon converts from Britain, Scandinavia, Germany and Switzerland. There are Swiss and Scandinavian festivals in different towns, neighborhoods called Little Denmark, Swiss style villages in the mountains settled by contingents of Swiss, there's even a few Icelandic speakers somewhere in Northern Utah, not sure how they arrived there.

    After the initial Mormon settlement many other groups from all over the US came as well. There is also a Greek festival in Salt Lake City, an Indian (South Asian) one in Utah County, even a small community of Basques in the SLC area. The last SLC mayor's last name was Biskupski (Polish) and the current one's is Mendenhall (German, Scandi?). Plenty of Irish too and of course lots of Latinos.

    On top of that, there is now a constant influx of outsiders (American and foreign) attracted by the booming economy in Utah. Californians, in particular, are fueling a big housing crisis.

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They'll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry. Although I spent a month in a rural location of Northern Iowa as a teenager and it's difficult to say after such a long time but I think there were more blonds over there. Most everybody was of Scandinavian or German origins.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God. And the other part is socio-religious: get married early in order to have many kids. Even though Mormon religion strongly encourages modest dressing and you find "modest dressing stores" at the malls, it is quite remarkable how women, especially the young ones, dress up for church. It really looks as if they were going to a party. Guys also wear impeccable suits for the church services.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are "much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself". Perhaps in general that's true. But I happen to think that British women are the prettiest in Europe. Lots of Dolores O'Riordan type of faces on the British Islands:

    https://youtu.be/Yam5uK6e-bQ

    Replies: @AP

    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don’t drink alcohol but I don’t think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons

    They probably aren’t but the combination of outdoorsiness and clean living results in a very healthy and healthy-looking population.

    I’ve been in small Mormon towns in rural Utah and was very surprised by how healthy and attractive the locals were. Compare them to, say, the obese unhealthy folks one sees in small town Appalachia.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there’s hardly any people of English-only origins

    Utah is the most English state in America but it is only about 28% English. English is the single largest ethnic origin in Utah (Scandinavian is in second place with 15% combined for Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, Germans are in third place with 12%).

    In contrast, New England is 18% Irish, 12% Italian, 12% French-Canadian, and 11% English.

    http://www.lostinthepond.com/2016/09/this-state-has-highest-percentage-of.html

    “In total, 29% of Utah’s population self-reported English Ancestry, while the state also houses 15 of the top 20 Anglo-American cities in the nation. Indeed, with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States“

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They’ll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry

    I was unclear. By Uber-English I meant super-healthy, fit and attractive English physiognomy. Culturally speaking, Utah is very American in a sort of retro religious way. I think New Zeakand is probably more English than England.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God.

    Yes, the Mormons also believe that since the body is a temple they have to keep it in good condition and beautiful. My wife and I have visited Utah many times (we are in love with the desert) and we are struck by how beautiful the people are. They are no less beautiful in Moscow of course, but it is a very different kind of beauty. Not particularly sophisticated as in urban Europe (this tradition has largely died in Western Europe but has been retained in Moscow and at times in Montreal), but exuding simple health and wholesomeness, plus a sort of beauty contest aesthetic. Utah girls don’t look like people from fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow. Instead, they look like they’ve stepped out of an American movie, an American Ideal (which doesn’t contrast English background). It’s a bit exotic.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are “much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself”. Perhaps in general that’s true

    People in Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth (the stereotype is true). People in Utah with their religious devotion to keeping the body beautiful for God, have perfect teeth of course. I find the British accents to be charming though.

    Lots of Dolores O’Riordan type

    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    wealthy Americans refuse to hire accountants in

     

    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don't want, with people they don't like. It's a problem of encouraging a growing a welfare lower class, and more positions in the orphanage.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a "flex", as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.

    There would be an intermediate of lower income middle people who couldn't afford to pay the tax, and some might have children (probably using websites to match each other up) - but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.


    money from the equation of whether or not to have children, and how many to have.

    I agree with you that ultimately promoting a pronatalist culture is necessary. The tax would be about justice most of all.
     
    We are in a new historical stage with this topic - first time in history when everyone has access to contraception.

    Religious cults like Haredi Jews or Amish, are not too relevant, as they simply ban contraception.

    Pronatalist culture among couples with access to contracept, would require giving couples a sense that sacrifice will give meaning to their lives.

    Young people do want to do this kind of "sacrifice", but perhaps it requires cultural context in which they view it as meaningful beyond having one child (which the vast majority of women today are still having at least one child).

    My parents had 3 children while they were still quite young, only because my mother thought that we would be lonely.

    And they certainly experienced it as a little difficult, as they didn't enjoy themselves that much. (They're happy we are adults and moving away, so they can experience more freedom).

    fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow
     
    Because most glamorous, fashionable young women in the country, are attracted to where there is glamour, fashion and wealth. And nowadays people can move freely for the price of a ticket.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.

    Mormons have a secret for stopping their young women escaping presumably - so there is such an advantage being a religious cult.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth
     
    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn't.


    Dolores O’Riordan type

     

    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..
     
    She was very musically talented, but not exactly good looking - from the perspective of being a pop musician. I mean, her career success was because of singing talent, which everyone knew since she was at school.

    She looked like any women working in a supermarket.

    The really beautiful Irish singer of this epoch is Sinead O`Connor - who was less musically talented, but has looked like a anime cartoon. Looking like a (bald) Helen of Troy in your youth doesn't protect people from serious mental illness of course.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlC_VE-G7bY

    Replies: @AP, @LatW

    , @Mikel
    @AP


    with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States
     
    I've been to Hildale, the town of the Mormon Fundamentalists. We actually spent one night there. It was very interesting to see all these people with prairie dresses and early pioneer looks, I found it more exotic than my trip to the Amazon jungle, where I didn't see any proper Indians. Such is the variety of people you find in the US. But it was a bit of a freak show too. Mormon Fundamentalists not only continue practicing polygamy but they also have a problem of endogamy due to no or little inflow from outside. You could see that clearly on some faces. Apparently, they have a large number of miscarriages due to this reason but nobody keeps too much track of what they do in their closed communities.

    Mainstream Mormons don't want to be associated with these people at all. They tend to change the subject when you ask about them.

    People in Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah.
     
    I'm pretty certain that morbid obesity is more prevalent in Utah overall than in England or any other European country.

    Replies: @AP

  988. @LatW
    @A123


    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW’s using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.
     
    From what I understood, they're now starting to even build their own air defense system (Narew). Not sure if it will be built by foreigners or themselves, but it looks like there will be local military producers involved.

    Replies: @AP, @A123

    If Poland were richer it could finance a joint development with Ukraine of ballistic missiles.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @AP

    Why stop there?

    Let's just re-create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

  989. @LatW
    @A123


    And, Poland would make its own tanks and its own VW’s using Polish Engineers. Poland does not need Germany.
     
    From what I understood, they're now starting to even build their own air defense system (Narew). Not sure if it will be built by foreigners or themselves, but it looks like there will be local military producers involved.

    Replies: @AP, @A123

    From what I understood, they’re now starting to even build their own air defense system (Narew). Not sure if it will be built by foreigners or themselves, but it looks like there will be local military producers involved.

    The goal of the Narew program is intended to maximize Polish design and construction. Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.

    The stated range, 15-20km, is remarkably similar to the Russian Pantsir. It will be interesting to hear if radar controlled guns are added to the mix at some point.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://breakingdefense.com/2021/10/poland-kicks-off-homegrown-shorad-system-narew/

  990. Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.

    Well, regardless of politics, there are quite a few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael, because Israel has a very good weapons industry (not just these big projects but also anti-tank missiles, for example).

    • Replies: @A123
    @LatW



    Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.
     
    Well, regardless of politics, there are quite a few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael, because Israel has a very good weapons industry (not just these big projects but also anti-tank missiles, for example).
     
    You are of course correct.

    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country who incorrectly believes that WW II property claims will soon escalate to WAR between Poland and Israel. Rational thinkers see the kerfuffle for what it actually was.... Domestic politicians playing to domestic constituencies.

    Apologies are rare here, so I am not expecting one. For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LatW

  991. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Look AP, I hope that you don’t get the idea that I hate children or don’t appreciate being around them. I was not fortunate enough to have any children in my life, there were many reasons for this, none of which I wish o reveal here at this public forum
     
    Sure, it isn’t my business why you chose not to contribute to the physical existence of the Ukrainian people. But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with $233,000 by doing so.

    I do not feel any need be saddled with an additional $233,000 tax bill, that will somehow benefit society
     
    Or you could donate $233,000 for scholarships or private schools, help with medical care for sick kids, etc.

    What’s wrong with folks thinking ahead and acting responsibly and think about whether or not they can afford the cost of child rearing?
     
    The child free tax would remove this incentive to not have kids, because choosing not to have them would no longer result in money savings.

    Your inability to consider other ways to help promote a better future for humanity besides having children
     
    There is no humanity without humans.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with \$233,000 by doing so.

    My avoidance of having any children had absolutely nothing to do with scheming to avoid the costs of child rearing, or saving \$233,000. Perhaps, you’re sorry now that you’ve had to spend \$233,000 per child and have missed out on some material comforts that you’ve had to forgo if not for these costs?

    Or you could donate \$233,000 for scholarships or private schools, help with medical care for sick kids, etc.

    You’re more on to the right track here, and this is something that I’ve already brought up above. I still don’t like the idea of being told by anybody how and to whom I’m supposed to divide up my estate after I pass. Do you?

    The child free tax would remove this incentive to not have kids, because choosing not to have them would no longer result in money savings.

    Back to the “money savings” scheme of those who do not want, or cannot have children? Seriously,
    you can’t understand that for some folks, having any children just isn’t in the cards? Would you also apply this tax to those that aren’t even married? Sounds like you’re advocating for having children out of wedlock? Ah, ya yai! Perhaps, some sort of tax should be assessed on those that choose to remain single?

    There is no humanity without humans.

    True. But populations around the world are increasing all of the time. Last I checked, the world’s population was about 8 billion people. Do we really need to incentivize people to produce more offspring?

    I’ve always pictured you as a real level headed conservative who probably questions the need for more and greater taxes, and here you seem to be advocating for close to a quarter of a million in new taxes per single individual? I’ve never ever heard of anything so drastic even from the most liberal of think tank promoters?………

    To me, using tax policies to help enforce social programs like child rearing is a slippery slope leading to a totalitarian system.

    • Disagree: sher singh
    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with $233,000 by doing so.

    My avoidance of having any children had absolutely nothing to do with scheming to avoid the costs of child rearing, or saving $233,000
     
    I never claimed it did. But the reality is that by avoiding the duty of bringing forth another generation you have rewarded yourself with an extra $233,000 that people who did not shirk this basic duty have not. By being taxed this amount (or donating an equivalent) for the purpose of helping those who have not chosen to avoid having children, the financial benefit of evading a basic responsibility as a member of society is removed from the equation. Financially at least, one's debt to society has been paid.

    People were raised by their parents, as they were raised themselves. Each generation passed on their hard hard work, knowledge and money to their offspring. Until it got to the ones who chose not to have children. They didn't pass it on, they kept it to themselves. They broke the circle, and were rewarded financially for this. They got money to indulge themselves, through the betrayal of all of their ancestors.

    Perhaps, you’re sorry now that you’ve had to spend $233,000 per child and have missed out on some material comforts that you’ve had to forgo if not for these costs?
     
    No. Bad behavior often pays. Pointing out that some behavior is bad and lucrative does not imply the wish that one would also have done the bad thing and benefited financially for doing so.

    Back to the “money savings” scheme of those who do not want, or cannot have children?
     
    If the discussion is about the tax, then the focus will be on the financial aspect. There is also, of course, the moral aspect of shirking one's duty. But people who have done this can be redeemed by at least helping those who have not avoided their responsibility.

    you can’t understand that for some folks, having any children just isn’t in the cards?
     
    If it is their choice, then they must take responsibility for their decision.

    Sounds like you’re advocating for having children out of wedlock?
     
    Unless health prevents marriage than there is choice involved here, too.

    Perhaps, some sort of tax should be assessed on those that choose to remain single?
     
    Such people should be penalized. When America was more functional, for example, single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single. It was once considered bad to be "an old maid" and single men were routinely passed over for promotions.

    There is no humanity without humans.

    True. But populations around the world are increasing all of the time. Last I checked, the world’s population was about 8 billion people
     
    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    I’ve always pictured you as a real level headed conservative who probably questions the need for more and greater taxes, and here you seem to be advocating for close to a quarter of a million in new taxes per single individual?
     
    I don't conflate conservatism with "selfish hedonism." I am not a libertarian. There are such things as duty, responsibility, etc. If one chooses to forego one's duty to have children, one ought to take responsibility for this decision by at least helping the next generation from those who have made the right choice (i.e., by perhaps paying for scholarships, or paying for medical care of sick kids, or whatever). A single person who spends as much time and resources on his or her nieces and nephews as he or she would have on his or her own children if they had them has, I think, redeemed themselves.

    People who lack the decency to give back on their own volition, should be forced to do it via taxation for the same amount.

    I’ve never ever heard of anything so drastic even from the most liberal of think tank promoters?………
     
    Because liberals don't believe in responsibility and duty. They love hedonism. This is one thing that libertarians and liberals agree on.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  992. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should I or any other American who faithfully contributed to the social security system throughout his working life have to give up these benefits once he reaches retirement age?
     
    It is by definition an inter-generational contract. If you choose not to help with future generations (single, LGBT...) you are not a part of that contract. So you have a contract with yourself, there is no requirement that society's children should honor it. If they do, it is pure charity - or they can give you a minimum.

    These kids were raised by people who sacrificed to have them, as AP showed you, it costs around $230k to raise a child in today's America. You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That's the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?

    By the way, this is the way it has been in all human societies since the time immemorial. Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don't provide for the children in the next generation. We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won't be - you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits. That will have consequences and a piece of electronic paper ("contract") will mean very little. We can inflate out of it very easily.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That’s the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?

    But I’m not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I’ve paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn’t I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning? In fact, the social security trust fund has been depleted by being ransacked by the government to help pay for a large part of the general population’s need for various programs, for which I’ve never given my blessings. So you see, it’s those like your offspring that have already benefited from my social security contributions. If I I’ hadn’t saved even more, I’d end up living an economically diminished lifestyle.

    Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don’t provide for the children in the next generation.

    Good luck to you, if you expect your kids totake care of you when you cease your working life. I’ve seen way too many cases of retired parents still helping to pay for the needs of their kids,who for whatever reason can’t get it together financially. These kids are lucky that their parents can still help them out.

    We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won’t be – you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits.

    Another variation of “eat the rich” I think. Good luck! The largest and most well financed lobbying groups in the US, anyway, are organized to look after the needs of those retired. The elderly have armies of lawyers and politicians that are ready to bend over and shine the shoes of these constituents, so don’t hold your breath. 🙂

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    But I’m not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I’ve paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn’t I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning?
     
    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, "it's my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong."

    Also, I have done consultations in nursing homes. Some people do indeed die quickly and never need that care. But a lot of people get chronically ill. Over time, their $100,000s savings get depleted (average cost for a private room is $105,000 per year, and that's without medical fees), their care exceeds the social security payments, and eventually when their money runs out they are indeed supported by society because it would be wrong and illegal to throw them out into the streets or forests. If they had produced kids who were working and paying taxes then taking that onto account - they are not parasites. But if not - then yes, they are being financially supported by other peoples' kids. Other people spent $233,000 raising each of those kids, who are now supporting the childless ones. I don't hate such people or wish them any ill, there are worse vices and none of us are sinless anyways. But what they chose to do is objectively wrong.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack, @Yellowface Anon

    , @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You are missing the point: all that happens, happens in the present. Your deal, "contract" with our children is nonsense - you made that contract with yourself, within your own generation. They had nothing to do with it - and it is entirely up to them to decide whether to give you anything, or give all to the people who raised them. There is nothing you can do about it; you will be an elderly, frail begging recipient. (Whether children take care of their own parents is a different question - the odds are much better that they will, but there are exceptions. I will take the odds.)

    You need to understand this is the "market solution" - and the market says that you have nothing to offer once old and your "paper wealth" is of no interest. You are doing nothing to keep the society going, same as the endless LGBTQ people, why should the society care about you?

    But I suspect you are unable to understand these points because you are invested in who you are and it is too scary to contemplate. But that is the way biology works.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  993. @LatW

    Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.
     
    Well, regardless of politics, there are quite a few contracts between EE countries and Israel's Rafael, because Israel has a very good weapons industry (not just these big projects but also anti-tank missiles, for example).

    Replies: @A123

    Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.

    Well, regardless of politics, there are quite a few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael, because Israel has a very good weapons industry (not just these big projects but also anti-tank missiles, for example).

    You are of course correct.

    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country who incorrectly believes that WW II property claims will soon escalate to WAR between Poland and Israel. Rational thinkers see the kerfuffle for what it actually was…. Domestic politicians playing to domestic constituencies.

    Apologies are rare here, so I am not expecting one. For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @LatW
    @A123


    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country
     
    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one. :)

    For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.
     
    Well, the property restitution issue is not a very pleasant topic....

    Btw, I wanted to ask you.... do you support Poland's sovereignty because you don't want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don't want wokeness to spread? If both, then which one more?

    P.s. Thanks for posting those weekly humor threads, they are hilarious.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

  994. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with $233,000 by doing so.
     
    My avoidance of having any children had absolutely nothing to do with scheming to avoid the costs of child rearing, or saving $233,000. Perhaps, you're sorry now that you've had to spend $233,000 per child and have missed out on some material comforts that you've had to forgo if not for these costs?

    Or you could donate $233,000 for scholarships or private schools, help with medical care for sick kids, etc.
     
    You're more on to the right track here, and this is something that I've already brought up above. I still don't like the idea of being told by anybody how and to whom I'm supposed to divide up my estate after I pass. Do you?

    The child free tax would remove this incentive to not have kids, because choosing not to have them would no longer result in money savings.
     
    Back to the "money savings" scheme of those who do not want, or cannot have children? Seriously,
    you can't understand that for some folks, having any children just isn't in the cards? Would you also apply this tax to those that aren't even married? Sounds like you're advocating for having children out of wedlock? Ah, ya yai! Perhaps, some sort of tax should be assessed on those that choose to remain single?

    There is no humanity without humans.
     
    True. But populations around the world are increasing all of the time. Last I checked, the world's population was about 8 billion people. Do we really need to incentivize people to produce more offspring?

    I've always pictured you as a real level headed conservative who probably questions the need for more and greater taxes, and here you seem to be advocating for close to a quarter of a million in new taxes per single individual? I've never ever heard of anything so drastic even from the most liberal of think tank promoters?.........

    To me, using tax policies to help enforce social programs like child rearing is a slippery slope leading to a totalitarian system.

    Replies: @AP

    But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with \$233,000 by doing so.

    My avoidance of having any children had absolutely nothing to do with scheming to avoid the costs of child rearing, or saving \$233,000

    I never claimed it did. But the reality is that by avoiding the duty of bringing forth another generation you have rewarded yourself with an extra \$233,000 that people who did not shirk this basic duty have not. By being taxed this amount (or donating an equivalent) for the purpose of helping those who have not chosen to avoid having children, the financial benefit of evading a basic responsibility as a member of society is removed from the equation. Financially at least, one’s debt to society has been paid.

    People were raised by their parents, as they were raised themselves. Each generation passed on their hard hard work, knowledge and money to their offspring. Until it got to the ones who chose not to have children. They didn’t pass it on, they kept it to themselves. They broke the circle, and were rewarded financially for this. They got money to indulge themselves, through the betrayal of all of their ancestors.

    Perhaps, you’re sorry now that you’ve had to spend \$233,000 per child and have missed out on some material comforts that you’ve had to forgo if not for these costs?

    No. Bad behavior often pays. Pointing out that some behavior is bad and lucrative does not imply the wish that one would also have done the bad thing and benefited financially for doing so.

    Back to the “money savings” scheme of those who do not want, or cannot have children?

    If the discussion is about the tax, then the focus will be on the financial aspect. There is also, of course, the moral aspect of shirking one’s duty. But people who have done this can be redeemed by at least helping those who have not avoided their responsibility.

    you can’t understand that for some folks, having any children just isn’t in the cards?

    If it is their choice, then they must take responsibility for their decision.

    Sounds like you’re advocating for having children out of wedlock?

    Unless health prevents marriage than there is choice involved here, too.

    Perhaps, some sort of tax should be assessed on those that choose to remain single?

    Such people should be penalized. When America was more functional, for example, single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single. It was once considered bad to be “an old maid” and single men were routinely passed over for promotions.

    There is no humanity without humans.

    True. But populations around the world are increasing all of the time. Last I checked, the world’s population was about 8 billion people

    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    I’ve always pictured you as a real level headed conservative who probably questions the need for more and greater taxes, and here you seem to be advocating for close to a quarter of a million in new taxes per single individual?

    I don’t conflate conservatism with “selfish hedonism.” I am not a libertarian. There are such things as duty, responsibility, etc. If one chooses to forego one’s duty to have children, one ought to take responsibility for this decision by at least helping the next generation from those who have made the right choice (i.e., by perhaps paying for scholarships, or paying for medical care of sick kids, or whatever). A single person who spends as much time and resources on his or her nieces and nephews as he or she would have on his or her own children if they had them has, I think, redeemed themselves.

    People who lack the decency to give back on their own volition, should be forced to do it via taxation for the same amount.

    I’ve never ever heard of anything so drastic even from the most liberal of think tank promoters?………

    Because liberals don’t believe in responsibility and duty. They love hedonism. This is one thing that libertarians and liberals agree on.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.
     
    This one is kind of hitting below the belt AP, and actually makes little or no sense. You know that I'm an American, born here, although I have a strong attachment to the country of origin of both of my parents. If I ever would have had children, it would be unusual for me to think that they'd ever pull up their roots in America and move to Ukraine. How about your own children? After the s__t hits the fan here in America, and they first move to Russia, do you think that they'd then move to Ukraine?

    I think that I defend the right of Ukraine and Ukrainians to live their independent life as well as most Americans of Ukrainian descent. I'm in my Ukrainian church most every Sunday playing a key role in the celebration of mass. Oh, did I mention that I've financially helped several orphans in Ukraine?

    Am I absolved for not having any children of my own? Do I still need to atone by paying the$233,000 tax?

    Replies: @AP

  995. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That’s the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?
     
    But I'm not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I've paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn't I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning? In fact, the social security trust fund has been depleted by being ransacked by the government to help pay for a large part of the general population's need for various programs, for which I've never given my blessings. So you see, it's those like your offspring that have already benefited from my social security contributions. If I I' hadn't saved even more, I'd end up living an economically diminished lifestyle.

    Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don’t provide for the children in the next generation.
     
    Good luck to you, if you expect your kids totake care of you when you cease your working life. I've seen way too many cases of retired parents still helping to pay for the needs of their kids,who for whatever reason can't get it together financially. These kids are lucky that their parents can still help them out.

    We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won’t be – you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits.

     

    Another variation of "eat the rich" I think. Good luck! The largest and most well financed lobbying groups in the US, anyway, are organized to look after the needs of those retired. The elderly have armies of lawyers and politicians that are ready to bend over and shine the shoes of these constituents, so don't hold your breath. :-)

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow

    But I’m not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I’ve paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn’t I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning?

    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, “it’s my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong.”

    Also, I have done consultations in nursing homes. Some people do indeed die quickly and never need that care. But a lot of people get chronically ill. Over time, their \$100,000s savings get depleted (average cost for a private room is \$105,000 per year, and that’s without medical fees), their care exceeds the social security payments, and eventually when their money runs out they are indeed supported by society because it would be wrong and illegal to throw them out into the streets or forests. If they had produced kids who were working and paying taxes then taking that onto account – they are not parasites. But if not – then yes, they are being financially supported by other peoples’ kids. Other people spent \$233,000 raising each of those kids, who are now supporting the childless ones. I don’t hate such people or wish them any ill, there are worse vices and none of us are sinless anyways. But what they chose to do is objectively wrong.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    But the reality is that by avoiding the duty of bringing forth another generation you have rewarded yourself with an extra $233,000 that people who did not shirk this basic duty have not.
     
    It's hard to be rewarded with this astronomical figure, if one isn't gainfully employed throughout his lifetime. I'm guessing that a high IQ individual as yourself has never experienced any lengthy time being unemployed? People forget that there have been long periods of time where the economy has been in decline, recessions etc. when finding a decent paying job has been very difficult? This is just one possible reason for putting off bringing a new child into the world. I can think of many more.

    the financial benefit of evading a basic responsibility as a member of society is removed from the equation.
     
    Where is it written that having children is a basic responsibility of societal membership anyway?

    But people who have done this can be redeemed by at least helping those who have not avoided their responsibility.
     
    So, people who decide to have children should count on the increased tax receipts of those that don't? How have they managed so far until this magical moment comes to fruition?

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single.
     
    I'm glad to know that the Christian faith is more lenient in its assessment of the morality between those that choose marriage and those that do not. No "stigmatization" is assigned to either group.

    single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

     

    I think that a person's talents should count more in the decision as to who runs a company or not. Not if they're married or not. Besides, one could have been married without any children.

    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves.
     
    Once again, you're making assumptions based on your own preconceived notions. Who's to say if the children will turn out to be responsible earners or not. Perhaps, they'll grow up to be irresponsible sycophants that actually spend most of their lives burdening the psychiatric institutions funded by state or federal taxes. Also, the assessment that all singles only spend money on themselves is another reflection of your tunnel vision. I've helped family members generously when the need arose. I helped fund my mother's stay in an assisted living center for several years. More recently, I sent my sister a large check to help her and her family pay for some unexpected bills that they experienced after a fire put them out of theor home for a three month period. We're not all greedy hedonists. I give generously to my church, more than most family parishioners. As you well know, I'm planning the dispossession of my estate, fully aware of my mortality and the fleeting nature of money and all earthly possessions.

    Replies: @AP

    , @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, “it’s my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong.”
     
    There are many types of seeds that can be scattered, that can bring many types of fruit into the world. Somebody might devote their life to the pursuit of science, possibly inventing a new cure for disease. Or perhaps a single science teacher spends an inordinate amount of time helping students pass their exams in order to allow them to later attain meaningful and needed vocations that help society.

    Then there is the celibate priesthood of monks that inhabit the monastic lifestyle. They're there to help people who experience psychological and spiritual anguish, that need prayer and counseling. They don't replace or add to the world's population, should we tax them too? Who's really capable of making these sorts of decisions? "Let sleeping dogs lie".

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @AP

    Rather than suggesting such an explicit amount, it makes sense for you to study actual historical examples:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770

    Again it's far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul or mandating child birth (not that I will want to live in such societies). You've overlooked simple changes such as banning contraceptives and any forms of abortion.

    But seriously:
    https://pep.vse.cz/pdfs/pep/2003/03/05.pdf
    https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag

    Replies: @AP, @songbird

  996. @AP
    @Mikel


    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don’t drink alcohol but I don’t think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons
     
    They probably aren’t but the combination of outdoorsiness and clean living results in a very healthy and healthy-looking population.

    I’ve been in small Mormon towns in rural Utah and was very surprised by how healthy and attractive the locals were. Compare them to, say, the obese unhealthy folks one sees in small town Appalachia.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there’s hardly any people of English-only origins
     
    Utah is the most English state in America but it is only about 28% English. English is the single largest ethnic origin in Utah (Scandinavian is in second place with 15% combined for Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, Germans are in third place with 12%).

    In contrast, New England is 18% Irish, 12% Italian, 12% French-Canadian, and 11% English.

    http://www.lostinthepond.com/2016/09/this-state-has-highest-percentage-of.html

    “In total, 29% of Utah's population self-reported English Ancestry, while the state also houses 15 of the top 20 Anglo-American cities in the nation. Indeed, with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States“

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They’ll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry
     
    I was unclear. By Uber-English I meant super-healthy, fit and attractive English physiognomy. Culturally speaking, Utah is very American in a sort of retro religious way. I think New Zeakand is probably more English than England.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God.
     
    Yes, the Mormons also believe that since the body is a temple they have to keep it in good condition and beautiful. My wife and I have visited Utah many times (we are in love with the desert) and we are struck by how beautiful the people are. They are no less beautiful in Moscow of course, but it is a very different kind of beauty. Not particularly sophisticated as in urban Europe (this tradition has largely died in Western Europe but has been retained in Moscow and at times in Montreal), but exuding simple health and wholesomeness, plus a sort of beauty contest aesthetic. Utah girls don’t look like people from fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow. Instead, they look like they’ve stepped out of an American movie, an American Ideal (which doesn’t contrast English background). It’s a bit exotic.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are “much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself”. Perhaps in general that’s true
     
    People in Britain tend to be overweight - not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth (the stereotype is true). People in Utah with their religious devotion to keeping the body beautiful for God, have perfect teeth of course. I find the British accents to be charming though.

    Lots of Dolores O’Riordan type
     
    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mikel

    wealthy Americans refuse to hire accountants in

    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want, with people they don’t like. It’s a problem of encouraging a growing a welfare lower class, and more positions in the orphanage.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a “flex”, as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.

    There would be an intermediate of lower income middle people who couldn’t afford to pay the tax, and some might have children (probably using websites to match each other up) – but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.

    money from the equation of whether or not to have children, and how many to have.

    I agree with you that ultimately promoting a pronatalist culture is necessary. The tax would be about justice most of all.

    We are in a new historical stage with this topic – first time in history when everyone has access to contraception.

    Religious cults like Haredi Jews or Amish, are not too relevant, as they simply ban contraception.

    Pronatalist culture among couples with access to contracept, would require giving couples a sense that sacrifice will give meaning to their lives.

    Young people do want to do this kind of “sacrifice”, but perhaps it requires cultural context in which they view it as meaningful beyond having one child (which the vast majority of women today are still having at least one child).

    My parents had 3 children while they were still quite young, only because my mother thought that we would be lonely.

    And they certainly experienced it as a little difficult, as they didn’t enjoy themselves that much. (They’re happy we are adults and moving away, so they can experience more freedom).

    fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow

    Because most glamorous, fashionable young women in the country, are attracted to where there is glamour, fashion and wealth. And nowadays people can move freely for the price of a ticket.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.

    Mormons have a secret for stopping their young women escaping presumably – so there is such an advantage being a religious cult.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth

    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn’t.

    Dolores O’Riordan type

    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..

    She was very musically talented, but not exactly good looking – from the perspective of being a pop musician. I mean, her career success was because of singing talent, which everyone knew since she was at school.

    She looked like any women working in a supermarket.

    The really beautiful Irish singer of this epoch is Sinead O`Connor – who was less musically talented, but has looked like a anime cartoon. Looking like a (bald) Helen of Troy in your youth doesn’t protect people from serious mental illness of course.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want, with people they don’t like.
     
    Such people wouldn't be able to afford to pay a tax. Most of them are getting paid by the government to have kids in the form of welfare. The tax wouldn't affect rich people, either - they could afford it. Rich people tend to have many children. The tax would affect middle class hedonists though.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a “flex”, as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.
     
    They can view it as they want. At least they would not be parasites.

    The tax should start at age 30. Not sure how "cool" it would be seen by a 30 or 40 year to be giving $233,000 to the government.

    However is doubtful that giving the government $233,000 would be seen as "cool" by anyone. Not be 20 year old, nor 30 more 40 year olds.

    but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.
     
    Good riddance. Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth

    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn’t.
     
    I've noticed this about British tourists, even in expensive places - bad teeth. I'm not alone, though this guy claims that bad teeth is only for those over 45. It affects even the wealthy:

    https://capcitydental.co.uk/bad-british-teeth-myth-or-reality/

    I have been in general practice, albeit in quite ‘high end’ areas in both Sydney and London, as well as having worked in (a wealthy suburb of ) Tel Aviv, Israel and spent two years doing post graduate study in Central Chicago, USA. So, I do have experience and opinions.

    The real differences between Britain and often much of the rest of the ‘western’ world, in relation to dentistry actually, surprisingly, is fairly Classless. The English upper classes (of a certain age), don’t have much better looking teeth than those traditionally ‘further down the ladder’.




    So what really is the state of the British smiles Vis a Vis the North American or European and what are the main differences based on? It seems, the roots are socio-economic and educational in nature and not just based on money or affordability.

    Take, for example one group: the middle class, educated, professional, white collar type of people. In Britain, the elderly, over their seventies simply expected to lose their teeth by their fifties and indeed it became a self-fulfilling prophesy for many. They were brought up on the concept of post war NHS where everyone is entitled to their NHS dentistry irrespective whether it is of good enough quality or not. For some it may be better not to know. So, many people lost their teeth and in fact they still feel that they can live without them (so long as they are not the upper front six).

    The young, those generally under thirty five, have straight, healthy good looking teeth, much like their North American or West European counterparts. They have benefitted from a more sensible diet, better oral hygiene, generally improved professional dental care (often ‘private’) and the increased use of orthodontics (‘braces’).

    The biggest differences still seen are in the middle aged … forty five to seventy year olds. They are likely to have been exposed to good quality , and so relatively expensive dentistry as mature adults after, often having experienced the ravages of ‘tons of fillings’ from when they were kids, poor quality or an absence of tooth straightening orthodontics, and parents who themselves didn’t have high expectations of tooth retention and aesthetics.

    I am still surprised by how many middle aged educated, comfortably off professionals are resistant to ‘fixing their own smiles’.

    These people, including the relative affluent professionals such as bankers, lawyers, accountants, doctors and even dentists themselves, accept what their West European, but particularly their North American counterparts would consider ‘ugly’ teeth. They often don’t seem to mind showing the odd black hole (missing tooth), as long as it isn’t right in the front. They don’t mind having crooked, yellowed teeth, often with unaesthetic obvious dentistry, visible. When confronted, they often will say that they won’t pander to the ‘Hollywood standard’. Their appearance is not a priority, they have neither the time nor the money nor need to expend on, often perceived to be expensive, extensive dentistry. Moreover, they are, they claim, quite apprehensive of going to the dentist, recounting horror stories of NHS dentistry from their distant youth. They give all the reasons for sweeping the issue of smile aesthetics under the carpet.

    One good way of seeing comparisons, as they are more often ‘in the public eye’ is to look at politicians from different countries. It’s quite funny how it hits the headlines in the UK press when a political leader has had their smiles fixed … Maggie Thatcher, Gordon Brown etc. It actually makes news here!

    I have been working in the heart of the UK financial district, the City of London for almost two decades. I am still surprised by how many middle aged educated, comfortably off professionals are resistant to ‘fixing their own smiles’. These are the same people who often made sure their own children had lovely straight teeth.

    So having said that, these views are a generalisation, but they still hold true today. With the passage of time as the mature younger adults do become middle aged, the British attitudes to smile aesthetics will change and the ‘ugly British teeth’ will become more of a ‘historical’ myth.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    , @LatW
    @Dmitry


    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want
     
    Women want children, often by the time they're 23-25, East Slavic women possibly even earlier.

    with people they don’t like
     
    Again, women, if they have intimacy with somebody already like him enough to desire a relationship or for him to at least stick around for a while. That's just female psychology. Men are different and I don't know if there's a solution there, lol. There used to be back in the day.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.
     
    Ever wonder why they're "glamorous"? It's not just to drink champagne with girlfriends, but because they're looking for somebody special. The goal is still the same. Maybe they don't want several children, but rather 1 or 2 with a guy who they are attracted to and who can simultaneously give them a nice living standard (the only problem is that those kinds of guys are a little scarce, hence "glamorous"). Eventually those types of women will want to move out of the city anyway, hopefully, to a nice neighborhood in the outskirts of the city.

    These childless taxes were in place in stricter societies, to keep those societies functional. Btw, there was such a tax in the SU as well. Our current societies are too diverse for that. Now there are real obstacles to family formation for many people even if they actually want it.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  997. @LatW
    @Dmitry


    If somehow Poland nationalized the branches of German brands in Poland
     
    If this ridiculous scenario were to take place, there would first be court action before it even came to tanks.. btw, Poland has American tanks and other rather new weapons. But anyway... I don't want to speak for Poland, since there are some unhealthy anti-German undercurrents there (maybe understandable to some extent), but in general that's not how this relationship works. Even though there is a bit of a takeover by German and Scandinavian businesses in EE, these businesses are welcomed. They bring in capital, German business culture, some level of stability.

    Poland and others should create their own successful brands, maybe expand their businesses into wider geographies. And, yes, it would help for the EE countries to be a little bit more protectionist (as much or as little as the EU regulation allows). Also, the relationships on the ground are quite amicable. A lot of Germans visit EE, people go to the same clubs, resorts, etc. To show unnecessary hostility towards Germany seems really idiotic.

    As to the aggressive spreading of the woke ideologies, which are indeed annoying... a healthier approach would be to encourage Germany and other Western countries to change their tone when it comes to "educating" the "backward E.Europeans" about civilizational and "human rights" standards. The standard has so far been that "the West knows best what's right", the way to change that would be for EE to speak in a common voice - not aggressively, but sternly enough. Just state: We are simply different and, please, accept that. Basic human rights standards are met.

    And, btw, a similar approach should be taken to explain to German (and France) the situation around Russia.

    However, even this may not be enough, because a lot of the minority, refugee, etc., related policies and obligations are regulated by broader international laws that go beyond the EU.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Poles always want to say they hate Russians and Germans equally – the most way to annoy them is to say they are similar to Germans. (I think Polish culture has some stereotypical traits similar to Germany culture, such as being punctual, pedantic and conscientious).

    But of course, the orientation of the country is that they are extremely integrating with Germany, so any anti-Germany attitude they talk about is a fake in the geopolitical and economic context.

    few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael,

    Before the pandemic, Poland is also the largest proportionally growth market for tourism to Israel.

    Unlike Romanian tourism, I think there is much more secular tourism from Poland.

    On the other hand, Israeli politicians don’t prioritize at all about Poland and enjoy trolling Poland in relation to the Polish behavior (where there were the most people who saved Jews, but also many who betrayed) during the holocaust.

    In general, Israeli politicians are not prioritizing tourism. I was excited that Israel is opening to tourism this month, but then saw the requirements for entry which will still be one of the strictest in the world – that you need three doses of vaccine, and can still be quarantined. Even when I am vaccinated, probably I won’t be able to visit there for another 9 months or something like that. They don’t seem very worried about the loss of tourism business there; their attitude is like it is “your problem” if you want enter the country.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @Dmitry


    Before the pandemic, Poland is also the largest proportionally growth market for tourism to Israel.
     
    Oh, I bet those Dead Sea spas are really nice. There is a special rejuvenating mud or some type of mineral from the Dead Sea that they use in their cosmetics.

    It would be great to have more cooperation with Israel in tech, they have some great higher ed institutions there, as well as tech startups.

    the requirements for entry which will still be one of the strictest in the world – that you need three doses of vaccine, and can still be quarantined
     
    That's a real bummer, that's just a lot to ask. You mean two original doses and a booster? I'm not too psyched about getting a booster shot every 6 months or so. That's just a little much.
  998. @songbird
    I shall throw out my highly-offensive theory about modern invasions vs. past ones, before it is too late:

    To a certain extent, one can think of the PIE invasion of India, or the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica as invasions by the Northern Y-chromosome. That is how ancient, barbarian invasions usually worked. Men conquered, bringing relatively few women, but seizing local ones.

    But the modern invasion of the UK by Indians (And the earlier invasion by the Gypsies) or the invasion of the US by Central Americans, or Africans, is more like invasion by the Southern X-chromosome (whether carried by males or females).

    Instead of invasion by swords or testosterone, it is invasion by bringing wombs and by nagging. By estrogen. This is the reason that the rhetoric of foreigners denouncing past colonialism or Euro ethnocentrism (which they call "racism"), whether coming from males or females, often seems so whorish and bitchy, so sickeningly debased. It is not warrior rhetoric about strength and brave deeds, but nagging, concubine rhetoric about gibs and "fairness."

    Call it, revenge of the Dravidian X-chromosome. (Or of the Maya, or Bantu one, etc. as the case may be.)

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Beckow, @sher singh

    I honest don’t think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United KIngdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.

    When you saw all so many well-behaving, nerdy, quiet Indian/Chinese youth in the elite universities. They seem like they will be future professional nerds (i.e. engineers, scientists, doctors), if they did not return to their home country. These students will mostly be probably in the future middle class – i.e. perhaps significantly below the local hipsters economically or in terms of social status, but many will be contributing in practical jobs for the economy.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    To the hardcore anti-immigration people, ethnic purity and/or national sovereignty is the key, no matter if the immigrants are a race of geniuses. Heck, those geniuses are stealing top positions!

    Replies: @songbird

    , @songbird
    @Dmitry


    I honest don’t think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United Kingdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.
     
    TBH, I think high-performing minorities are already a serious problem in the UK. (It is more than just about crime or terrorism.) They gain political influence which they then use to further their own interests at the expense of the natives.

    Right now, the natives are economically discriminated against, while they are banned from excluding others. They have got to be really careful what they say, for criticizing other groups seems to be legally banned whenever it is inconvenient (usually is). They are on the cusp of becoming minorities due to open borders. And my impression is that the high-performing minorities have had a lot to do with these policies/are incapable of subordinating their own selfish interests, to the problems of natives.

    Even if they swore off politics (seems unlikely), they still might not be desirable because of their effects on rent (the UK has very limited real estate - it is already food negative and the countryside is being developed). And their effects on susceptible natives, causing them to say diversity and open borders are good, and anyone with a British address is British, so no group cohesion for defense.

    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK's open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out...

    Replies: @sudden death

  999. If we believe YouTube, the Chinese EVs are going to be mass exporting soon and dominating some of the traditional automakers. I’m sure I’m being gullible to YouTube propaganda (although Sandy Munro is regarded as an expert), but as a clueless observer I’m starting feel I should be investing in BYD stocks.

  1000. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    But I’m not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I’ve paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn’t I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning?
     
    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, "it's my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong."

    Also, I have done consultations in nursing homes. Some people do indeed die quickly and never need that care. But a lot of people get chronically ill. Over time, their $100,000s savings get depleted (average cost for a private room is $105,000 per year, and that's without medical fees), their care exceeds the social security payments, and eventually when their money runs out they are indeed supported by society because it would be wrong and illegal to throw them out into the streets or forests. If they had produced kids who were working and paying taxes then taking that onto account - they are not parasites. But if not - then yes, they are being financially supported by other peoples' kids. Other people spent $233,000 raising each of those kids, who are now supporting the childless ones. I don't hate such people or wish them any ill, there are worse vices and none of us are sinless anyways. But what they chose to do is objectively wrong.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack, @Yellowface Anon

    But the reality is that by avoiding the duty of bringing forth another generation you have rewarded yourself with an extra \$233,000 that people who did not shirk this basic duty have not.

    It’s hard to be rewarded with this astronomical figure, if one isn’t gainfully employed throughout his lifetime. I’m guessing that a high IQ individual as yourself has never experienced any lengthy time being unemployed? People forget that there have been long periods of time where the economy has been in decline, recessions etc. when finding a decent paying job has been very difficult? This is just one possible reason for putting off bringing a new child into the world. I can think of many more.

    the financial benefit of evading a basic responsibility as a member of society is removed from the equation.

    Where is it written that having children is a basic responsibility of societal membership anyway?

    But people who have done this can be redeemed by at least helping those who have not avoided their responsibility.

    So, people who decide to have children should count on the increased tax receipts of those that don’t? How have they managed so far until this magical moment comes to fruition?

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single.

    I’m glad to know that the Christian faith is more lenient in its assessment of the morality between those that choose marriage and those that do not. No “stigmatization” is assigned to either group.

    single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

    I think that a person’s talents should count more in the decision as to who runs a company or not. Not if they’re married or not. Besides, one could have been married without any children.

    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves.

    Once again, you’re making assumptions based on your own preconceived notions. Who’s to say if the children will turn out to be responsible earners or not. Perhaps, they’ll grow up to be irresponsible sycophants that actually spend most of their lives burdening the psychiatric institutions funded by state or federal taxes. Also, the assessment that all singles only spend money on themselves is another reflection of your tunnel vision. I’ve helped family members generously when the need arose. I helped fund my mother’s stay in an assisted living center for several years. More recently, I sent my sister a large check to help her and her family pay for some unexpected bills that they experienced after a fire put them out of theor home for a three month period. We’re not all greedy hedonists. I give generously to my church, more than most family parishioners. As you well know, I’m planning the dispossession of my estate, fully aware of my mortality and the fleeting nature of money and all earthly possessions.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Where is it written that having children is a basic responsibility of societal membership anyway?
     
    Well, the Christian faith teaches that unless someone can be a celibate devoted to God, one should marry, and marriage should lead to children. So those who are not monks or nuns should marry and have children.

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single.

    I’m glad to know that the Christian faith is more lenient in its assessment of the morality between those that choose marriage and those that do not. No “stigmatization” is assigned to either group.
     
    Those who are celibate and devote themselves to God are okay.

    single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

    I think that a person’s talents should count more in the decision as to who runs a company or not.
     
    An amoral position, that doesn't take into account what is better for society (and perhaps the company too). People with families may be more future-oriented and are more worthy of support. In those days, companies took care of employees and employees were loyal to their companies. Those days are of course in the past.

    For similar reasons, I wouldn't trust a childless politician.

    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves.

    Once again, you’re making assumptions based on your own preconceived notions. Who’s to say if the children will turn out to be responsible earners or not. Perhaps, they’ll grow up to be irresponsible sycophants that actually spend most of their lives burdening the psychiatric institutions funded by state or federal taxes.
     
    Most people in such facilities are sick and not moral degenerates. Schizophrenia isn't a choice.

    The majority of adults work and pay taxes. So producing people will produce workers and taxpayers.

    I’ve helped family members generously when the need arose. I helped fund my mother’s stay in an assisted living center for several years. More recently, I sent my sister a large check to help her and her family pay for some unexpected bills that they experienced after a fire put them out of theor home for a three month period. We’re not all greedy hedonists. I give generously to my church, more than most family parishioners.
     
    As I made clear, childless people who have devoted time and resources to those who have had children or to organization that raise future people such as schools or the Church equal to or above the $233,000 should not be subjected to the tax because they have paid their fair share. If you are one of those people than you are not a parasite.
  1001. @A123
    @LatW



    Two of the three main contenders for the foreign component of the build are Israeli (1). So much for the histrionic few, desperately seeking to transform silence into imminent collapse of Israel-Poland relations.
     
    Well, regardless of politics, there are quite a few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael, because Israel has a very good weapons industry (not just these big projects but also anti-tank missiles, for example).
     
    You are of course correct.

    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country who incorrectly believes that WW II property claims will soon escalate to WAR between Poland and Israel. Rational thinkers see the kerfuffle for what it actually was.... Domestic politicians playing to domestic constituencies.

    Apologies are rare here, so I am not expecting one. For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LatW

    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country

    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one. 🙂

    For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.

    Well, the property restitution issue is not a very pleasant topic….

    Btw, I wanted to ask you…. do you support Poland’s sovereignty because you don’t want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don’t want wokeness to spread? If both, then which one more?

    P.s. Thanks for posting those weekly humor threads, they are hilarious.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @LatW


    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one.
     
    He's referring to me.

    Btw, I wanted to ask you…. do you support Poland’s sovereignty because you don’t want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don’t want wokeness to spread?
     
    The two are linked in his mind. Germany is the center of evil for him (along with Iran, I suppose), and is actually trying to force wokeness not just on Poland and Hungary, but on the US herself.
    I've encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.

    Replies: @LatW

    , @A123
    @LatW


    Btw, I wanted to ask you…. do you support Poland’s sovereignty because you don’t want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don’t want wokeness to spread? If both, then which one more?
     
    Under Merkel, Germany has become the global leader of the SJW movement. So you are sort of the asking the same question twice. If forced to choose, the Wokeness is worse than simple over reach.

    The fact that Germany is pushing crazy will break up the EU fairly soon. If Germany becomes more sane (though this look unlikely) the crippled union would likely survive longer. However, the power and currency imbalances in favour of Germany will still eventually be fatal to the EU treaty.

    PEACE 😇
  1002. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    But I’m not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I’ve paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn’t I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning?
     
    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, "it's my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong."

    Also, I have done consultations in nursing homes. Some people do indeed die quickly and never need that care. But a lot of people get chronically ill. Over time, their $100,000s savings get depleted (average cost for a private room is $105,000 per year, and that's without medical fees), their care exceeds the social security payments, and eventually when their money runs out they are indeed supported by society because it would be wrong and illegal to throw them out into the streets or forests. If they had produced kids who were working and paying taxes then taking that onto account - they are not parasites. But if not - then yes, they are being financially supported by other peoples' kids. Other people spent $233,000 raising each of those kids, who are now supporting the childless ones. I don't hate such people or wish them any ill, there are worse vices and none of us are sinless anyways. But what they chose to do is objectively wrong.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack, @Yellowface Anon

    Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, “it’s my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong.”

    There are many types of seeds that can be scattered, that can bring many types of fruit into the world. Somebody might devote their life to the pursuit of science, possibly inventing a new cure for disease. Or perhaps a single science teacher spends an inordinate amount of time helping students pass their exams in order to allow them to later attain meaningful and needed vocations that help society.

    Then there is the celibate priesthood of monks that inhabit the monastic lifestyle. They’re there to help people who experience psychological and spiritual anguish, that need prayer and counseling. They don’t replace or add to the world’s population, should we tax them too? Who’s really capable of making these sorts of decisions? “Let sleeping dogs lie”.

    • Thanks: Yellowface Anon
  1003. @Dmitry
    @LatW

    Poles always want to say they hate Russians and Germans equally - the most way to annoy them is to say they are similar to Germans. (I think Polish culture has some stereotypical traits similar to Germany culture, such as being punctual, pedantic and conscientious).

    But of course, the orientation of the country is that they are extremely integrating with Germany, so any anti-Germany attitude they talk about is a fake in the geopolitical and economic context.


    few contracts between EE countries and Israel’s Rafael,
     
    Before the pandemic, Poland is also the largest proportionally growth market for tourism to Israel.

    https://i.imgur.com/noEoljQ.jpg
    Unlike Romanian tourism, I think there is much more secular tourism from Poland.

    On the other hand, Israeli politicians don't prioritize at all about Poland and enjoy trolling Poland in relation to the Polish behavior (where there were the most people who saved Jews, but also many who betrayed) during the holocaust.

    In general, Israeli politicians are not prioritizing tourism. I was excited that Israel is opening to tourism this month, but then saw the requirements for entry which will still be one of the strictest in the world - that you need three doses of vaccine, and can still be quarantined. Even when I am vaccinated, probably I won't be able to visit there for another 9 months or something like that. They don't seem very worried about the loss of tourism business there; their attitude is like it is "your problem" if you want enter the country.

    Replies: @LatW

    Before the pandemic, Poland is also the largest proportionally growth market for tourism to Israel.

    Oh, I bet those Dead Sea spas are really nice. There is a special rejuvenating mud or some type of mineral from the Dead Sea that they use in their cosmetics.

    It would be great to have more cooperation with Israel in tech, they have some great higher ed institutions there, as well as tech startups.

    the requirements for entry which will still be one of the strictest in the world – that you need three doses of vaccine, and can still be quarantined

    That’s a real bummer, that’s just a lot to ask. You mean two original doses and a booster? I’m not too psyched about getting a booster shot every 6 months or so. That’s just a little much.

  1004. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    But unless you have some medical condition, that is what you have chosen to do, and have rewarded your avoidance of this responsibility with $233,000 by doing so.

    My avoidance of having any children had absolutely nothing to do with scheming to avoid the costs of child rearing, or saving $233,000
     
    I never claimed it did. But the reality is that by avoiding the duty of bringing forth another generation you have rewarded yourself with an extra $233,000 that people who did not shirk this basic duty have not. By being taxed this amount (or donating an equivalent) for the purpose of helping those who have not chosen to avoid having children, the financial benefit of evading a basic responsibility as a member of society is removed from the equation. Financially at least, one's debt to society has been paid.

    People were raised by their parents, as they were raised themselves. Each generation passed on their hard hard work, knowledge and money to their offspring. Until it got to the ones who chose not to have children. They didn't pass it on, they kept it to themselves. They broke the circle, and were rewarded financially for this. They got money to indulge themselves, through the betrayal of all of their ancestors.

    Perhaps, you’re sorry now that you’ve had to spend $233,000 per child and have missed out on some material comforts that you’ve had to forgo if not for these costs?
     
    No. Bad behavior often pays. Pointing out that some behavior is bad and lucrative does not imply the wish that one would also have done the bad thing and benefited financially for doing so.

    Back to the “money savings” scheme of those who do not want, or cannot have children?
     
    If the discussion is about the tax, then the focus will be on the financial aspect. There is also, of course, the moral aspect of shirking one's duty. But people who have done this can be redeemed by at least helping those who have not avoided their responsibility.

    you can’t understand that for some folks, having any children just isn’t in the cards?
     
    If it is their choice, then they must take responsibility for their decision.

    Sounds like you’re advocating for having children out of wedlock?
     
    Unless health prevents marriage than there is choice involved here, too.

    Perhaps, some sort of tax should be assessed on those that choose to remain single?
     
    Such people should be penalized. When America was more functional, for example, single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single. It was once considered bad to be "an old maid" and single men were routinely passed over for promotions.

    There is no humanity without humans.

    True. But populations around the world are increasing all of the time. Last I checked, the world’s population was about 8 billion people
     
    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    I’ve always pictured you as a real level headed conservative who probably questions the need for more and greater taxes, and here you seem to be advocating for close to a quarter of a million in new taxes per single individual?
     
    I don't conflate conservatism with "selfish hedonism." I am not a libertarian. There are such things as duty, responsibility, etc. If one chooses to forego one's duty to have children, one ought to take responsibility for this decision by at least helping the next generation from those who have made the right choice (i.e., by perhaps paying for scholarships, or paying for medical care of sick kids, or whatever). A single person who spends as much time and resources on his or her nieces and nephews as he or she would have on his or her own children if they had them has, I think, redeemed themselves.

    People who lack the decency to give back on their own volition, should be forced to do it via taxation for the same amount.

    I’ve never ever heard of anything so drastic even from the most liberal of think tank promoters?………
     
    Because liberals don't believe in responsibility and duty. They love hedonism. This is one thing that libertarians and liberals agree on.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    This one is kind of hitting below the belt AP, and actually makes little or no sense. You know that I’m an American, born here, although I have a strong attachment to the country of origin of both of my parents. If I ever would have had children, it would be unusual for me to think that they’d ever pull up their roots in America and move to Ukraine. How about your own children? After the s__t hits the fan here in America, and they first move to Russia, do you think that they’d then move to Ukraine?

    I think that I defend the right of Ukraine and Ukrainians to live their independent life as well as most Americans of Ukrainian descent. I’m in my Ukrainian church most every Sunday playing a key role in the celebration of mass. Oh, did I mention that I’ve financially helped several orphans in Ukraine?

    Am I absolved for not having any children of my own? Do I still need to atone by paying the\$233,000 tax?

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    This one is kind of hitting below the belt AP, and actually makes little or no sense. You know that I’m an American, born here, although I have a strong attachment to the country of origin of both of my parents.
     
    You can (and seem to have) redeemed yourself in other ways, but the fact that you chose not to add to the shrinking number of Ukrainians is in itself a bad thing. There is no way to defend it, although you can compensate through good works in other ways.

    If I ever would have had children, it would be unusual for me to think that they’d ever pull up their roots in America and move to Ukraine.
     
    Ukrainians in the diaspora can be and are helpful also. They probably can be individually at least as helpful as random people in Ukraine.

    How about your own children? After the s__t hits the fan here in America, and they first move to Russia, do you think that they’d then move to Ukraine?
     
    I am raising Ukrainian speaking, Christian kids. What they choose to do will be up to them, but I fulfilled my obligation as best I could.

    I’m in my Ukrainian church most every Sunday playing a key role in the celebration of mass. Oh, did I mention that I’ve financially helped several orphans in Ukraine?
     
    That is a huge credit to you and it seems like you are doing what is right for childless people to do - devote as much time and resources to others as someone would devote to the kids they have. It can be considered redemption for not having kids. How many childless people you figure devote as much to others as you do? I suspect not that many. At least the ones I've come across have tended to be hedonistic, enjoying themselves through travels, restaurants, etc. An LGTB lifestyle, as Beckow put it (I disagree with his vindictiveness and lack of mercy, but he is right about how wrong it is).

    Replies: @LatW

  1005. @Dmitry
    @songbird

    I honest don't think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United KIngdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.

    When you saw all so many well-behaving, nerdy, quiet Indian/Chinese youth in the elite universities. They seem like they will be future professional nerds (i.e. engineers, scientists, doctors), if they did not return to their home country. These students will mostly be probably in the future middle class - i.e. perhaps significantly below the local hipsters economically or in terms of social status, but many will be contributing in practical jobs for the economy.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    To the hardcore anti-immigration people, ethnic purity and/or national sovereignty is the key, no matter if the immigrants are a race of geniuses. Heck, those geniuses are stealing top positions!

    • Replies: @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon


    To the hardcore anti-immigration people, ethnic purity and/or national sovereignty is the key, no matter if the immigrants are a race of geniuses. Heck, those geniuses are stealing top positions!
     
    The one multiracial society that sort of works is Singapore. To the extent it works, it is because the Chinese maintain their dominance, with authoritarianism and immigration quotas. Not true of anywhere in the West, hence the dysfunction. (Denmark maybe heading in this direction? Though I think not.)

    Personally, I find parts of Singapore's system distasteful (mandated integration/multiculturalism), while quite admiring many others (health, retirement, and housing systems/ squashing racial grievance hustlers/ corporal punishment).

    But I'm not sure it is really a functional society, though. Very low TFR - it survives on immigration. My personal opinion is that multiculturalism cannot solve low TFR - solving it requires a cultural identity on an organizational level (not necessarily the state.) My superficial impression of young Singaporeans is that they do not have one, that the schools have brainwashed them, into believing diversity is good and that they are all "Singaporeans." And, so the Chinese there cannot try to solve Chinese TFR, but must try to solve Singaporean TFR, which, IMO, is an impossible task.

    Of course, this is very hard to disaggregate ideas about TFR from the highly constrained living space there.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  1006. @Dmitry
    @songbird

    I honest don't think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United KIngdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.

    When you saw all so many well-behaving, nerdy, quiet Indian/Chinese youth in the elite universities. They seem like they will be future professional nerds (i.e. engineers, scientists, doctors), if they did not return to their home country. These students will mostly be probably in the future middle class - i.e. perhaps significantly below the local hipsters economically or in terms of social status, but many will be contributing in practical jobs for the economy.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    I honest don’t think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United Kingdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.

    TBH, I think high-performing minorities are already a serious problem in the UK. (It is more than just about crime or terrorism.) They gain political influence which they then use to further their own interests at the expense of the natives.

    Right now, the natives are economically discriminated against, while they are banned from excluding others. They have got to be really careful what they say, for criticizing other groups seems to be legally banned whenever it is inconvenient (usually is). They are on the cusp of becoming minorities due to open borders. And my impression is that the high-performing minorities have had a lot to do with these policies/are incapable of subordinating their own selfish interests, to the problems of natives.

    Even if they swore off politics (seems unlikely), they still might not be desirable because of their effects on rent (the UK has very limited real estate – it is already food negative and the countryside is being developed). And their effects on susceptible natives, causing them to say diversity and open borders are good, and anyone with a British address is British, so no group cohesion for defense.

    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…

    • Replies: @sudden death
    @songbird


    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…
     
    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop :)

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Dmitry

  1007. AP says:
    @Dmitry
    @AP


    wealthy Americans refuse to hire accountants in

     

    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don't want, with people they don't like. It's a problem of encouraging a growing a welfare lower class, and more positions in the orphanage.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a "flex", as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.

    There would be an intermediate of lower income middle people who couldn't afford to pay the tax, and some might have children (probably using websites to match each other up) - but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.


    money from the equation of whether or not to have children, and how many to have.

    I agree with you that ultimately promoting a pronatalist culture is necessary. The tax would be about justice most of all.
     
    We are in a new historical stage with this topic - first time in history when everyone has access to contraception.

    Religious cults like Haredi Jews or Amish, are not too relevant, as they simply ban contraception.

    Pronatalist culture among couples with access to contracept, would require giving couples a sense that sacrifice will give meaning to their lives.

    Young people do want to do this kind of "sacrifice", but perhaps it requires cultural context in which they view it as meaningful beyond having one child (which the vast majority of women today are still having at least one child).

    My parents had 3 children while they were still quite young, only because my mother thought that we would be lonely.

    And they certainly experienced it as a little difficult, as they didn't enjoy themselves that much. (They're happy we are adults and moving away, so they can experience more freedom).

    fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow
     
    Because most glamorous, fashionable young women in the country, are attracted to where there is glamour, fashion and wealth. And nowadays people can move freely for the price of a ticket.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.

    Mormons have a secret for stopping their young women escaping presumably - so there is such an advantage being a religious cult.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth
     
    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn't.


    Dolores O’Riordan type

     

    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..
     
    She was very musically talented, but not exactly good looking - from the perspective of being a pop musician. I mean, her career success was because of singing talent, which everyone knew since she was at school.

    She looked like any women working in a supermarket.

    The really beautiful Irish singer of this epoch is Sinead O`Connor - who was less musically talented, but has looked like a anime cartoon. Looking like a (bald) Helen of Troy in your youth doesn't protect people from serious mental illness of course.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlC_VE-G7bY

    Replies: @AP, @LatW

    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want, with people they don’t like.

    Such people wouldn’t be able to afford to pay a tax. Most of them are getting paid by the government to have kids in the form of welfare. The tax wouldn’t affect rich people, either – they could afford it. Rich people tend to have many children. The tax would affect middle class hedonists though.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a “flex”, as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.

    They can view it as they want. At least they would not be parasites.

    The tax should start at age 30. Not sure how “cool” it would be seen by a 30 or 40 year to be giving \$233,000 to the government.

    However is doubtful that giving the government \$233,000 would be seen as “cool” by anyone. Not be 20 year old, nor 30 more 40 year olds.

    but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.

    Good riddance. Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth

    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn’t.

    I’ve noticed this about British tourists, even in expensive places – bad teeth. I’m not alone, though this guy claims that bad teeth is only for those over 45. It affects even the wealthy:

    https://capcitydental.co.uk/bad-british-teeth-myth-or-reality/

    I have been in general practice, albeit in quite ‘high end’ areas in both Sydney and London, as well as having worked in (a wealthy suburb of ) Tel Aviv, Israel and spent two years doing post graduate study in Central Chicago, USA. So, I do have experience and opinions.

    The real differences between Britain and often much of the rest of the ‘western’ world, in relation to dentistry actually, surprisingly, is fairly Classless. The English upper classes (of a certain age), don’t have much better looking teeth than those traditionally ‘further down the ladder’.

    [MORE]

    So what really is the state of the British smiles Vis a Vis the North American or European and what are the main differences based on? It seems, the roots are socio-economic and educational in nature and not just based on money or affordability.

    Take, for example one group: the middle class, educated, professional, white collar type of people. In Britain, the elderly, over their seventies simply expected to lose their teeth by their fifties and indeed it became a self-fulfilling prophesy for many. They were brought up on the concept of post war NHS where everyone is entitled to their NHS dentistry irrespective whether it is of good enough quality or not. For some it may be better not to know. So, many people lost their teeth and in fact they still feel that they can live without them (so long as they are not the upper front six).

    The young, those generally under thirty five, have straight, healthy good looking teeth, much like their North American or West European counterparts. They have benefitted from a more sensible diet, better oral hygiene, generally improved professional dental care (often ‘private’) and the increased use of orthodontics (‘braces’).

    The biggest differences still seen are in the middle aged … forty five to seventy year olds. They are likely to have been exposed to good quality , and so relatively expensive dentistry as mature adults after, often having experienced the ravages of ‘tons of fillings’ from when they were kids, poor quality or an absence of tooth straightening orthodontics, and parents who themselves didn’t have high expectations of tooth retention and aesthetics.

    I am still surprised by how many middle aged educated, comfortably off professionals are resistant to ‘fixing their own smiles’.

    These people, including the relative affluent professionals such as bankers, lawyers, accountants, doctors and even dentists themselves, accept what their West European, but particularly their North American counterparts would consider ‘ugly’ teeth. They often don’t seem to mind showing the odd black hole (missing tooth), as long as it isn’t right in the front. They don’t mind having crooked, yellowed teeth, often with unaesthetic obvious dentistry, visible. When confronted, they often will say that they won’t pander to the ‘Hollywood standard’. Their appearance is not a priority, they have neither the time nor the money nor need to expend on, often perceived to be expensive, extensive dentistry. Moreover, they are, they claim, quite apprehensive of going to the dentist, recounting horror stories of NHS dentistry from their distant youth. They give all the reasons for sweeping the issue of smile aesthetics under the carpet.

    One good way of seeing comparisons, as they are more often ‘in the public eye’ is to look at politicians from different countries. It’s quite funny how it hits the headlines in the UK press when a political leader has had their smiles fixed … Maggie Thatcher, Gordon Brown etc. It actually makes news here!

    I have been working in the heart of the UK financial district, the City of London for almost two decades. I am still surprised by how many middle aged educated, comfortably off professionals are resistant to ‘fixing their own smiles’. These are the same people who often made sure their own children had lovely straight teeth.

    So having said that, these views are a generalisation, but they still hold true today. With the passage of time as the mature younger adults do become middle aged, the British attitudes to smile aesthetics will change and the ‘ugly British teeth’ will become more of a ‘historical’ myth.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP

    Lol because you didn't add quotation indicators (" ") I thought for a few seconds that you were an international dentist who has worked in Sydney, Tel Aviv, London and Chicago (I was going to say "wow your career is interesting").

    Dentists notice peoples' teeth as they have to see them all the time.

    But the teeth of the middle people in the United Kingdom, are not something scary enough that normal people would notice. It's a developed country with a high level of health by international standards - i.e. the people just look like in developed countries.

    -

    In terms of women, of course most young women are attractive in any (developed) country.

    The important thing is always whether you know any which found you attractive, rather than the other way round - as women are usually deciding in the end not men.

    So I never understood people arguing about this. Young women mostly look attractive everywhere in the developed world. (The sad thing is that youth is short, and most everyone doesn't look good forever).


    young, those generally under thirty five, have straight, healthy good looking teeth, much like their

     

    Well those are usually the people who need to care about being romantically attractive.

    . Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.
     
    It would be good for Europe - to receive immigration of young American single women.

    Also it might encourage some very educated American women to exit America. For example, Condoleezza Rice did not have children, but has things like successful career and education.


    how “cool” it would be seen by a 30 or 40 year to be giving $233,000 to the government.

    However is doubtful that giving the government $233,000 would be seen as “cool” by anyone. Not be 20 year old, nor 30 more 40 year olds.
     

    It means that people without children would be doing well financially, so it would be status symbol and sign of being an elite caste.

    Giving money to the government is not pleasant, but being able to afford it would be.

    Replies: @AP

  1008. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    But I’m not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I’ve paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn’t I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning?
     
    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves. It is the difference between planting grain that will grow into crops that everyone to use in the future, versus using it to make oneself a nice cake and saying, "it's my grain and cake, I did nothing wrong."

    Also, I have done consultations in nursing homes. Some people do indeed die quickly and never need that care. But a lot of people get chronically ill. Over time, their $100,000s savings get depleted (average cost for a private room is $105,000 per year, and that's without medical fees), their care exceeds the social security payments, and eventually when their money runs out they are indeed supported by society because it would be wrong and illegal to throw them out into the streets or forests. If they had produced kids who were working and paying taxes then taking that onto account - they are not parasites. But if not - then yes, they are being financially supported by other peoples' kids. Other people spent $233,000 raising each of those kids, who are now supporting the childless ones. I don't hate such people or wish them any ill, there are worse vices and none of us are sinless anyways. But what they chose to do is objectively wrong.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack, @Yellowface Anon

    Rather than suggesting such an explicit amount, it makes sense for you to study actual historical examples:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770

    Again it’s far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul or mandating child birth (not that I will want to live in such societies). You’ve overlooked simple changes such as banning contraceptives and any forms of abortion.

    But seriously:
    https://pep.vse.cz/pdfs/pep/2003/03/05.pdf
    https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag

    • Replies: @AP
    @Yellowface Anon


    Again it’s far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul
     
    I agree. I was t approaching this from a public policy perspective with an eye towards improving birth rate, but from a moral one. Choosing not to have kids is a bad thing, and people should not be financially rewarded for doing bad things. The tax would remove that reward and would help out those who did the right thing. Whether birth rate would improve is irrelevant to that point (but it would be nice if it did).

    Replies: @iffen

    , @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    I'm against a bachelor tax because I think that healthy cultures have always utilized childless people by harnessing their desire to pass on their genes collaterally, through nephews and nieces, etc, or through the wider volk.

    That said, I do think society should do a lot more to encourage men, especially intelligent men, to marry. And I would like to see a lot of radical system changes to encourage this, from public education, to perks, and propaganda, not only aimed at women but also men.

  1009. @Yellowface Anon
    @Dmitry

    To the hardcore anti-immigration people, ethnic purity and/or national sovereignty is the key, no matter if the immigrants are a race of geniuses. Heck, those geniuses are stealing top positions!

    Replies: @songbird

    To the hardcore anti-immigration people, ethnic purity and/or national sovereignty is the key, no matter if the immigrants are a race of geniuses. Heck, those geniuses are stealing top positions!

    The one multiracial society that sort of works is Singapore. To the extent it works, it is because the Chinese maintain their dominance, with authoritarianism and immigration quotas. Not true of anywhere in the West, hence the dysfunction. (Denmark maybe heading in this direction? Though I think not.)

    Personally, I find parts of Singapore’s system distasteful (mandated integration/multiculturalism), while quite admiring many others (health, retirement, and housing systems/ squashing racial grievance hustlers/ corporal punishment).

    But I’m not sure it is really a functional society, though. Very low TFR – it survives on immigration. My personal opinion is that multiculturalism cannot solve low TFR – solving it requires a cultural identity on an organizational level (not necessarily the state.) My superficial impression of young Singaporeans is that they do not have one, that the schools have brainwashed them, into believing diversity is good and that they are all “Singaporeans.” And, so the Chinese there cannot try to solve Chinese TFR, but must try to solve Singaporean TFR, which, IMO, is an impossible task.

    Of course, this is very hard to disaggregate ideas about TFR from the highly constrained living space there.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    Singapore has 3.5M citizens (that's where the 74% Chinese number comes from), 0.5M immigrants and 1.7M "Guest Workers", which means it's now only barely Chinese (53%) overall.

    Even HK (my native place) has been in demographic replacement mode for 25 years. Good thing they are mainly Chinese co-ethnics from mainland China substituting local emigrants, bad thing lots of Americanized separatists are wrathful to those "subhumans" while turning a blind eye to the 400k Austronesian domestic servants who are imported to spoil and ruin their middle class children.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

  1010. @Dmitry
    @AP


    wealthy Americans refuse to hire accountants in

     

    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don't want, with people they don't like. It's a problem of encouraging a growing a welfare lower class, and more positions in the orphanage.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a "flex", as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.

    There would be an intermediate of lower income middle people who couldn't afford to pay the tax, and some might have children (probably using websites to match each other up) - but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.


    money from the equation of whether or not to have children, and how many to have.

    I agree with you that ultimately promoting a pronatalist culture is necessary. The tax would be about justice most of all.
     
    We are in a new historical stage with this topic - first time in history when everyone has access to contraception.

    Religious cults like Haredi Jews or Amish, are not too relevant, as they simply ban contraception.

    Pronatalist culture among couples with access to contracept, would require giving couples a sense that sacrifice will give meaning to their lives.

    Young people do want to do this kind of "sacrifice", but perhaps it requires cultural context in which they view it as meaningful beyond having one child (which the vast majority of women today are still having at least one child).

    My parents had 3 children while they were still quite young, only because my mother thought that we would be lonely.

    And they certainly experienced it as a little difficult, as they didn't enjoy themselves that much. (They're happy we are adults and moving away, so they can experience more freedom).

    fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow
     
    Because most glamorous, fashionable young women in the country, are attracted to where there is glamour, fashion and wealth. And nowadays people can move freely for the price of a ticket.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.

    Mormons have a secret for stopping their young women escaping presumably - so there is such an advantage being a religious cult.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth
     
    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn't.


    Dolores O’Riordan type

     

    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..
     
    She was very musically talented, but not exactly good looking - from the perspective of being a pop musician. I mean, her career success was because of singing talent, which everyone knew since she was at school.

    She looked like any women working in a supermarket.

    The really beautiful Irish singer of this epoch is Sinead O`Connor - who was less musically talented, but has looked like a anime cartoon. Looking like a (bald) Helen of Troy in your youth doesn't protect people from serious mental illness of course.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlC_VE-G7bY

    Replies: @AP, @LatW

    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want

    Women want children, often by the time they’re 23-25, East Slavic women possibly even earlier.

    with people they don’t like

    Again, women, if they have intimacy with somebody already like him enough to desire a relationship or for him to at least stick around for a while. That’s just female psychology. Men are different and I don’t know if there’s a solution there, lol. There used to be back in the day.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.

    Ever wonder why they’re “glamorous”? It’s not just to drink champagne with girlfriends, but because they’re looking for somebody special. The goal is still the same. Maybe they don’t want several children, but rather 1 or 2 with a guy who they are attracted to and who can simultaneously give them a nice living standard (the only problem is that those kinds of guys are a little scarce, hence “glamorous”). Eventually those types of women will want to move out of the city anyway, hopefully, to a nice neighborhood in the outskirts of the city.

    These childless taxes were in place in stricter societies, to keep those societies functional. Btw, there was such a tax in the SU as well. Our current societies are too diverse for that. Now there are real obstacles to family formation for many people even if they actually want it.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @LatW


    Women want children, often by the time they’re 23-25, East Slavic
     
    Most of the women don't have their first children until almost 30 now.

    East Slavic women
     
    Most slavic women in Russia nowadays only have one child.

    This is the problem - almost 90% of women in Russia have children, but the majority slavic women are only one child.

    Under AP's policy, the $233,000 tax would have to be adjusted for Russian incomes of course, otherwise more than half the population that fails to attain replacement fertility, will be in debt for life.


    why they’re “glamorous”? It’s not just to drink champagne with girlfriends, but because they’re looking for somebody special. The goal is still the same. Maybe they don’t want several children, but rather 1 or 2 with a guy who they are attracted to and who can simultaneously give them a nice living standard
     
    Of course they want a boyfriend. But the situation in Russia where young women are flooding into the wealthy large cities, especially like Moscow (and at even much higher rates than young men who are also flooding) - is going to further down pressure on the fertility rate.

    The country is becoming mega-cities, with glamorous people in the centre, and young women flooding into the successful cities. While in the unsuccessful cities - the opposite happens.

    So a median successful place in Russia like Kurgan region, that "donates" young people to Sverdlovsk region, will have a tsunami of aging population.


    those Dead Sea spas are really nice. There is a special rejuvenating mud or some type of mineral from the Dead Sea
     
    Resorts there like Ein Bokek are actually really anti-glamorous and underinvested.

    It's also sad what happens with the Dead Sea, because it's drying so fast, as well as being damaged by industry, and the governments (Israel and Jordan) are unable to co-operate to save it.

    If they could solve the problems, it should have natural advantages for tourism - aside from floating, you don't sun burn there much because it's the lowest place in the world.


    You mean two original doses and a booster? I’m not too psyched about getting a booster shot every 6 months
     
    I think you need to have a certificate for 2 doses and booster within 6 months of entering the airport for Israel.

    I haven't been in Israel for more than 3 years now, and started to get withdrawal symptoms. I just want to walk around Bat Yam and experience its dystopia again.
    -


    Why secular Poles were suddenly mass vacationing there is a bit mysterious for me (apart from fall in the plane ticket price). Most Poles seem to hate their current government, so maybe Israel was doing good tourism advertising by attacking the current Polish government?

    Actually ever Polish person I've heard from, hates their government, is socially very liberal and are extreme nationalists. I don't think anyone will understand them.

  1011. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    But the reality is that by avoiding the duty of bringing forth another generation you have rewarded yourself with an extra $233,000 that people who did not shirk this basic duty have not.
     
    It's hard to be rewarded with this astronomical figure, if one isn't gainfully employed throughout his lifetime. I'm guessing that a high IQ individual as yourself has never experienced any lengthy time being unemployed? People forget that there have been long periods of time where the economy has been in decline, recessions etc. when finding a decent paying job has been very difficult? This is just one possible reason for putting off bringing a new child into the world. I can think of many more.

    the financial benefit of evading a basic responsibility as a member of society is removed from the equation.
     
    Where is it written that having children is a basic responsibility of societal membership anyway?

    But people who have done this can be redeemed by at least helping those who have not avoided their responsibility.
     
    So, people who decide to have children should count on the increased tax receipts of those that don't? How have they managed so far until this magical moment comes to fruition?

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single.
     
    I'm glad to know that the Christian faith is more lenient in its assessment of the morality between those that choose marriage and those that do not. No "stigmatization" is assigned to either group.

    single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

     

    I think that a person's talents should count more in the decision as to who runs a company or not. Not if they're married or not. Besides, one could have been married without any children.

    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves.
     
    Once again, you're making assumptions based on your own preconceived notions. Who's to say if the children will turn out to be responsible earners or not. Perhaps, they'll grow up to be irresponsible sycophants that actually spend most of their lives burdening the psychiatric institutions funded by state or federal taxes. Also, the assessment that all singles only spend money on themselves is another reflection of your tunnel vision. I've helped family members generously when the need arose. I helped fund my mother's stay in an assisted living center for several years. More recently, I sent my sister a large check to help her and her family pay for some unexpected bills that they experienced after a fire put them out of theor home for a three month period. We're not all greedy hedonists. I give generously to my church, more than most family parishioners. As you well know, I'm planning the dispossession of my estate, fully aware of my mortality and the fleeting nature of money and all earthly possessions.

    Replies: @AP

    Where is it written that having children is a basic responsibility of societal membership anyway?

    Well, the Christian faith teaches that unless someone can be a celibate devoted to God, one should marry, and marriage should lead to children. So those who are not monks or nuns should marry and have children.

    A healthy society should stigmatize those who chose to be childless and single.

    I’m glad to know that the Christian faith is more lenient in its assessment of the morality between those that choose marriage and those that do not. No “stigmatization” is assigned to either group.

    Those who are celibate and devote themselves to God are okay.

    single people were typically denied promotions in most reputable companies.

    I think that a person’s talents should count more in the decision as to who runs a company or not.

    An amoral position, that doesn’t take into account what is better for society (and perhaps the company too). People with families may be more future-oriented and are more worthy of support. In those days, companies took care of employees and employees were loyal to their companies. Those days are of course in the past.

    For similar reasons, I wouldn’t trust a childless politician.

    People who raise responsible children will have produced a generation of earners who will be paying taxes and supporting society for their entire lives. Others have only spent on themselves.

    Once again, you’re making assumptions based on your own preconceived notions. Who’s to say if the children will turn out to be responsible earners or not. Perhaps, they’ll grow up to be irresponsible sycophants that actually spend most of their lives burdening the psychiatric institutions funded by state or federal taxes.

    Most people in such facilities are sick and not moral degenerates. Schizophrenia isn’t a choice.

    The majority of adults work and pay taxes. So producing people will produce workers and taxpayers.

    I’ve helped family members generously when the need arose. I helped fund my mother’s stay in an assisted living center for several years. More recently, I sent my sister a large check to help her and her family pay for some unexpected bills that they experienced after a fire put them out of theor home for a three month period. We’re not all greedy hedonists. I give generously to my church, more than most family parishioners.

    As I made clear, childless people who have devoted time and resources to those who have had children or to organization that raise future people such as schools or the Church equal to or above the \$233,000 should not be subjected to the tax because they have paid their fair share. If you are one of those people than you are not a parasite.

  1012. @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon


    To the hardcore anti-immigration people, ethnic purity and/or national sovereignty is the key, no matter if the immigrants are a race of geniuses. Heck, those geniuses are stealing top positions!
     
    The one multiracial society that sort of works is Singapore. To the extent it works, it is because the Chinese maintain their dominance, with authoritarianism and immigration quotas. Not true of anywhere in the West, hence the dysfunction. (Denmark maybe heading in this direction? Though I think not.)

    Personally, I find parts of Singapore's system distasteful (mandated integration/multiculturalism), while quite admiring many others (health, retirement, and housing systems/ squashing racial grievance hustlers/ corporal punishment).

    But I'm not sure it is really a functional society, though. Very low TFR - it survives on immigration. My personal opinion is that multiculturalism cannot solve low TFR - solving it requires a cultural identity on an organizational level (not necessarily the state.) My superficial impression of young Singaporeans is that they do not have one, that the schools have brainwashed them, into believing diversity is good and that they are all "Singaporeans." And, so the Chinese there cannot try to solve Chinese TFR, but must try to solve Singaporean TFR, which, IMO, is an impossible task.

    Of course, this is very hard to disaggregate ideas about TFR from the highly constrained living space there.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Singapore has 3.5M citizens (that’s where the 74% Chinese number comes from), 0.5M immigrants and 1.7M “Guest Workers”, which means it’s now only barely Chinese (53%) overall.

    Even HK (my native place) has been in demographic replacement mode for 25 years. Good thing they are mainly Chinese co-ethnics from mainland China substituting local emigrants, bad thing lots of Americanized separatists are wrathful to those “subhumans” while turning a blind eye to the 400k Austronesian domestic servants who are imported to spoil and ruin their middle class children.

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @Yellowface Anon

    Correction: the figures I cited are correct, but the overall percentage is calculated by multiplying the resident population (citizens + immigrants) x 74%, because the ethnic composition in their population reports is meant to be interpreted like this.

    , @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    It is an interesting question whether city-sates have the scale capacity to resolve problems with migration.

    For example, does Singapore have the military force necessary to compel countries to accept returnees? I'd guess not. (Worth noting only time the powerful US got serious was when Mexico wanted the labor back.) How well would they handle mass crowds on the street? (maybe, China could pull off a "little green men" stunt?) Could they load them onto boats and force the boats out? Maybe, the financial sector could provide enough leverage? Or, maybe, they could raise rents on them? Or penalize companies more?

    Reading a bit into Singapore's situation, it seems as though there have been very minimal efforts to decrease the number of migrants, so far, so no real test.

    BTW, I think Spandrell is right about HK: it is all about status. Quite similar to progressive urbanites disparaging rednecks. Or maybe house slaves disparaging the field hands.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  1013. German_reader says:
    @LatW
    @A123


    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country
     
    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one. :)

    For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.
     
    Well, the property restitution issue is not a very pleasant topic....

    Btw, I wanted to ask you.... do you support Poland's sovereignty because you don't want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don't want wokeness to spread? If both, then which one more?

    P.s. Thanks for posting those weekly humor threads, they are hilarious.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one.

    He’s referring to me.

    Btw, I wanted to ask you…. do you support Poland’s sovereignty because you don’t want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don’t want wokeness to spread?

    The two are linked in his mind. Germany is the center of evil for him (along with Iran, I suppose), and is actually trying to force wokeness not just on Poland and Hungary, but on the US herself.
    I’ve encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.

    • Agree: sher singh
    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @LatW
    @German_reader


    He’s referring to me.
     
    Oh, ok. I was thinking of someone else. WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched... your comments are typically way more rational than that.

    The two are linked in his mind.
     
    I know but I kind of wanted to tease it out of him, which one bothers him more, Germany being in a dominant position per se, or just the multiculti stuff. I mean it's not like he cares about Poland's sovereignty because it serves Poland's own wellbeing or because it's some "just cause", but who knows.

    I’ve encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.
     

    "Fundies say the darndest things". :)

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

  1014. @Mr. Hack
    @AP


    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.
     
    This one is kind of hitting below the belt AP, and actually makes little or no sense. You know that I'm an American, born here, although I have a strong attachment to the country of origin of both of my parents. If I ever would have had children, it would be unusual for me to think that they'd ever pull up their roots in America and move to Ukraine. How about your own children? After the s__t hits the fan here in America, and they first move to Russia, do you think that they'd then move to Ukraine?

    I think that I defend the right of Ukraine and Ukrainians to live their independent life as well as most Americans of Ukrainian descent. I'm in my Ukrainian church most every Sunday playing a key role in the celebration of mass. Oh, did I mention that I've financially helped several orphans in Ukraine?

    Am I absolved for not having any children of my own? Do I still need to atone by paying the$233,000 tax?

    Replies: @AP

    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    This one is kind of hitting below the belt AP, and actually makes little or no sense. You know that I’m an American, born here, although I have a strong attachment to the country of origin of both of my parents.

    You can (and seem to have) redeemed yourself in other ways, but the fact that you chose not to add to the shrinking number of Ukrainians is in itself a bad thing. There is no way to defend it, although you can compensate through good works in other ways.

    If I ever would have had children, it would be unusual for me to think that they’d ever pull up their roots in America and move to Ukraine.

    Ukrainians in the diaspora can be and are helpful also. They probably can be individually at least as helpful as random people in Ukraine.

    How about your own children? After the s__t hits the fan here in America, and they first move to Russia, do you think that they’d then move to Ukraine?

    I am raising Ukrainian speaking, Christian kids. What they choose to do will be up to them, but I fulfilled my obligation as best I could.

    I’m in my Ukrainian church most every Sunday playing a key role in the celebration of mass. Oh, did I mention that I’ve financially helped several orphans in Ukraine?

    That is a huge credit to you and it seems like you are doing what is right for childless people to do – devote as much time and resources to others as someone would devote to the kids they have. It can be considered redemption for not having kids. How many childless people you figure devote as much to others as you do? I suspect not that many. At least the ones I’ve come across have tended to be hedonistic, enjoying themselves through travels, restaurants, etc. An LGTB lifestyle, as Beckow put it (I disagree with his vindictiveness and lack of mercy, but he is right about how wrong it is).

    • Replies: @LatW
    @AP


    Ukrainians in the diaspora can be and are helpful also. They probably can be individually at least as helpful as random people in Ukraine.
     
    Well, in his defense, if he's taking care of someone who's parent was the secretary of Yevhen Konovalets, then that might actually "redeem" him (not that it's my place to judge). It must have been a strong family back in the day to have gone through those times. To his family's credit, he can be given a break. But keep helping Ukraine.

    Replies: @AP

  1015. @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    Singapore has 3.5M citizens (that's where the 74% Chinese number comes from), 0.5M immigrants and 1.7M "Guest Workers", which means it's now only barely Chinese (53%) overall.

    Even HK (my native place) has been in demographic replacement mode for 25 years. Good thing they are mainly Chinese co-ethnics from mainland China substituting local emigrants, bad thing lots of Americanized separatists are wrathful to those "subhumans" while turning a blind eye to the 400k Austronesian domestic servants who are imported to spoil and ruin their middle class children.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    Correction: the figures I cited are correct, but the overall percentage is calculated by multiplying the resident population (citizens + immigrants) x 74%, because the ethnic composition in their population reports is meant to be interpreted like this.

  1016. @German_reader
    @LatW


    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one.
     
    He's referring to me.

    Btw, I wanted to ask you…. do you support Poland’s sovereignty because you don’t want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don’t want wokeness to spread?
     
    The two are linked in his mind. Germany is the center of evil for him (along with Iran, I suppose), and is actually trying to force wokeness not just on Poland and Hungary, but on the US herself.
    I've encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.

    Replies: @LatW

    He’s referring to me.

    Oh, ok. I was thinking of someone else. WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched… your comments are typically way more rational than that.

    The two are linked in his mind.

    I know but I kind of wanted to tease it out of him, which one bothers him more, Germany being in a dominant position per se, or just the multiculti stuff. I mean it’s not like he cares about Poland’s sovereignty because it serves Poland’s own wellbeing or because it’s some “just cause”, but who knows.

    I’ve encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.

    “Fundies say the darndest things”. 🙂

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @LatW


    WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched
     
    Yeah, I didn't write anything about war, that's A123's usual misrepresentation. I just asked him whether he thinks Poland should accede to those demands for restitution of heirless property. Of course he didn't really answer that either, just claims it's a non-issue, since supposedly those demands are just for show anyway.

    Replies: @A123

    , @A123
    @LatW

    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the "Poland invades Germany" scenario:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4981272

    I argued against it.

    I pointed out that such a move would likely be an undesirable mess for Poland. GW Bush proved that post-war issues are often worse than the war. Grabbing a chunk of Germany with no plan for the aftermath would be a fiasco.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

  1017. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    The population of Ukrainian humans has been declining. You have admittedly chosen to play a role in this decline.

    This one is kind of hitting below the belt AP, and actually makes little or no sense. You know that I’m an American, born here, although I have a strong attachment to the country of origin of both of my parents.
     
    You can (and seem to have) redeemed yourself in other ways, but the fact that you chose not to add to the shrinking number of Ukrainians is in itself a bad thing. There is no way to defend it, although you can compensate through good works in other ways.

    If I ever would have had children, it would be unusual for me to think that they’d ever pull up their roots in America and move to Ukraine.
     
    Ukrainians in the diaspora can be and are helpful also. They probably can be individually at least as helpful as random people in Ukraine.

    How about your own children? After the s__t hits the fan here in America, and they first move to Russia, do you think that they’d then move to Ukraine?
     
    I am raising Ukrainian speaking, Christian kids. What they choose to do will be up to them, but I fulfilled my obligation as best I could.

    I’m in my Ukrainian church most every Sunday playing a key role in the celebration of mass. Oh, did I mention that I’ve financially helped several orphans in Ukraine?
     
    That is a huge credit to you and it seems like you are doing what is right for childless people to do - devote as much time and resources to others as someone would devote to the kids they have. It can be considered redemption for not having kids. How many childless people you figure devote as much to others as you do? I suspect not that many. At least the ones I've come across have tended to be hedonistic, enjoying themselves through travels, restaurants, etc. An LGTB lifestyle, as Beckow put it (I disagree with his vindictiveness and lack of mercy, but he is right about how wrong it is).

    Replies: @LatW

    Ukrainians in the diaspora can be and are helpful also. They probably can be individually at least as helpful as random people in Ukraine.

    Well, in his defense, if he’s taking care of someone who’s parent was the secretary of Yevhen Konovalets, then that might actually “redeem” him (not that it’s my place to judge). It must have been a strong family back in the day to have gone through those times. To his family’s credit, he can be given a break. But keep helping Ukraine.

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @AP
    @LatW

    By his words, it really seems that he personally has adequately compensated for the wrong of not having brought children into the world. He has done much good and has redeemed himself. So he shouldn’t be criticized as a person, on balance he is virtuous. But that part, not having had children, was still wrong. And most childless people have not been as virtuous as he has been.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1018. German_reader says:
    @LatW
    @German_reader


    He’s referring to me.
     
    Oh, ok. I was thinking of someone else. WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched... your comments are typically way more rational than that.

    The two are linked in his mind.
     
    I know but I kind of wanted to tease it out of him, which one bothers him more, Germany being in a dominant position per se, or just the multiculti stuff. I mean it's not like he cares about Poland's sovereignty because it serves Poland's own wellbeing or because it's some "just cause", but who knows.

    I’ve encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.
     

    "Fundies say the darndest things". :)

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched

    Yeah, I didn’t write anything about war, that’s A123’s usual misrepresentation. I just asked him whether he thinks Poland should accede to those demands for restitution of heirless property. Of course he didn’t really answer that either, just claims it’s a non-issue, since supposedly those demands are just for show anyway.

    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader

    GR,

    Your deception is quite amazing. Let me recap the events as they actually happened:
    ___

    I said that the issue was effectively settled. You asserted that silence on the issue was an indication of imminent, pressing and critical concern.

    I asked for evidence of your position. You provided none.

    I provide proof that Poland-Israel relations are good to the point of military cooperation. You engage in misdirection.
    ____

    Lets try again. And, please ANSWER the question this time:

    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the "claims issue" is impending?

    Or, do you agree with me, that all parties believe it is in a satisfactory state? One that will not interfere with military partnership.
    ____

    I would like to blame German Elites rather than the German people. However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.

    -- What % of the vote did the big 4 "Woke" parties (Red-Black-Green-Yellow) receive? 75%+? And, everyone in Germany has a reasonable non Woke alternative.
    -- What % of the vote will go to "Woke" McAuliffe vs. "Sane" Youngkin in today's Virginia election. It looks to be about 50%-50&?

    Again objective facts support my position.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

  1019. @AP
    @LatW

    If Poland were richer it could finance a joint development with Ukraine of ballistic missiles.

    Replies: @iffen

    Why stop there?

    Let’s just re-create the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.

    • Agree: AP
  1020. @LatW
    @AP


    Ukrainians in the diaspora can be and are helpful also. They probably can be individually at least as helpful as random people in Ukraine.
     
    Well, in his defense, if he's taking care of someone who's parent was the secretary of Yevhen Konovalets, then that might actually "redeem" him (not that it's my place to judge). It must have been a strong family back in the day to have gone through those times. To his family's credit, he can be given a break. But keep helping Ukraine.

    Replies: @AP

    By his words, it really seems that he personally has adequately compensated for the wrong of not having brought children into the world. He has done much good and has redeemed himself. So he shouldn’t be criticized as a person, on balance he is virtuous. But that part, not having had children, was still wrong. And most childless people have not been as virtuous as he has been.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Much more important than the state of my virtuousness, is my participation in the process of Theosis. I've left the address of this little booklet here at least three times over the years, for all to read, especially those individuals that are spiritually inclined ( Bashibuzuk, Aaron, Daniel Chieh, A-123) including yourself. In fact, I remember recently you asking me to provide the coordinates of this tract once again so that you could presumably read it. It saddens me to know that nobody has taken the time to read this easily comprehensible book and reply back to me regarding their thoughts about it. BTW, nowhere in the book does it state that childrearing is a requirement to be deified. :-)

    http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis.aspx
    The last time that I'll leave these coordinates here at this website.

    Thanks AK for the opportunity to share this booklet here at your website. It would give me immeasurable joy to know that you've read it. Starting at the bottom rung of Theosis can be as enlightening and valuable as taking the final step! Peace to all of you that I've been blessed to communicate with here over the years!

    Replies: @AaronB

  1021. @Yellowface Anon
    @AP

    Rather than suggesting such an explicit amount, it makes sense for you to study actual historical examples:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770

    Again it's far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul or mandating child birth (not that I will want to live in such societies). You've overlooked simple changes such as banning contraceptives and any forms of abortion.

    But seriously:
    https://pep.vse.cz/pdfs/pep/2003/03/05.pdf
    https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag

    Replies: @AP, @songbird

    Again it’s far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul

    I agree. I was t approaching this from a public policy perspective with an eye towards improving birth rate, but from a moral one. Choosing not to have kids is a bad thing, and people should not be financially rewarded for doing bad things. The tax would remove that reward and would help out those who did the right thing. Whether birth rate would improve is irrelevant to that point (but it would be nice if it did).

    • Disagree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @iffen
    @AP

    Choosing not to have kids is a bad thing,

    The Dude: Yeah, well, you know, that's just, like, your opinion, man.

  1022. @AP
    @Yellowface Anon


    Again it’s far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul
     
    I agree. I was t approaching this from a public policy perspective with an eye towards improving birth rate, but from a moral one. Choosing not to have kids is a bad thing, and people should not be financially rewarded for doing bad things. The tax would remove that reward and would help out those who did the right thing. Whether birth rate would improve is irrelevant to that point (but it would be nice if it did).

    Replies: @iffen

    Choosing not to have kids is a bad thing,

    The Dude: Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.

  1023. @songbird
    @Dmitry


    I honest don’t think the (non-Islamist) Indian and Chinese immigration to the United Kingdom, will be seen as very bad for the Kingdom.
     
    TBH, I think high-performing minorities are already a serious problem in the UK. (It is more than just about crime or terrorism.) They gain political influence which they then use to further their own interests at the expense of the natives.

    Right now, the natives are economically discriminated against, while they are banned from excluding others. They have got to be really careful what they say, for criticizing other groups seems to be legally banned whenever it is inconvenient (usually is). They are on the cusp of becoming minorities due to open borders. And my impression is that the high-performing minorities have had a lot to do with these policies/are incapable of subordinating their own selfish interests, to the problems of natives.

    Even if they swore off politics (seems unlikely), they still might not be desirable because of their effects on rent (the UK has very limited real estate - it is already food negative and the countryside is being developed). And their effects on susceptible natives, causing them to say diversity and open borders are good, and anyone with a British address is British, so no group cohesion for defense.

    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK's open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out...

    Replies: @sudden death

    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…

    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop 🙂

    • Agree: songbird
    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @sudden death

    It is tending to zombie thread.

    Did you ever wake up with a zombie wolf behind your eyes?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ksnwEsPKO5s

    , @A123
    @sudden death



    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…
     
    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop 🙂
     
    I do not think the site will break. Some of the Unz authorized pieces have huge numbers of posts.

    The length of the thread is creating browser issues for me. I am hoping that AK, or Mr. Unz, will start Open Thread 169.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    , @Dmitry
    @sudden death

    Perhaps we could just ask Unz if he can make an "Open thread" for us every month? He doesn't have to write a starter post for us and we are kind of well-behaving people so we almost moderated ourselves, it wouldn't be more than 1 minute extra work for him per month.

    Does anyone here have "good rapport" with Unz? (German Reader?) We could send you as the diplomat of our community, to approach Unz and see if he can make open threads for us.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1024. @LatW
    @A123


    However, on this site there is a certain reader from a certain country
     
    No idea who, but there is a poster that I mostly scroll through because reading him might give me a headache. Might be the same one. :)

    For me, it is enough that the TRUTH about Israel-Poland relations are visible to everyone.
     
    Well, the property restitution issue is not a very pleasant topic....

    Btw, I wanted to ask you.... do you support Poland's sovereignty because you don't want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don't want wokeness to spread? If both, then which one more?

    P.s. Thanks for posting those weekly humor threads, they are hilarious.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    Btw, I wanted to ask you…. do you support Poland’s sovereignty because you don’t want Germany to have too much power in Central Europe or because you don’t want wokeness to spread? If both, then which one more?

    Under Merkel, Germany has become the global leader of the SJW movement. So you are sort of the asking the same question twice. If forced to choose, the Wokeness is worse than simple over reach.

    The fact that Germany is pushing crazy will break up the EU fairly soon. If Germany becomes more sane (though this look unlikely) the crippled union would likely survive longer. However, the power and currency imbalances in favour of Germany will still eventually be fatal to the EU treaty.

    PEACE 😇

  1025. @AP
    @LatW

    By his words, it really seems that he personally has adequately compensated for the wrong of not having brought children into the world. He has done much good and has redeemed himself. So he shouldn’t be criticized as a person, on balance he is virtuous. But that part, not having had children, was still wrong. And most childless people have not been as virtuous as he has been.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Much more important than the state of my virtuousness, is my participation in the process of Theosis. I’ve left the address of this little booklet here at least three times over the years, for all to read, especially those individuals that are spiritually inclined ( Bashibuzuk, Aaron, Daniel Chieh, A-123) including yourself. In fact, I remember recently you asking me to provide the coordinates of this tract once again so that you could presumably read it. It saddens me to know that nobody has taken the time to read this easily comprehensible book and reply back to me regarding their thoughts about it. BTW, nowhere in the book does it state that childrearing is a requirement to be deified. 🙂

    http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis.aspx
    The last time that I’ll leave these coordinates here at this website.

    Thanks AK for the opportunity to share this booklet here at your website. It would give me immeasurable joy to know that you’ve read it. Starting at the bottom rung of Theosis can be as enlightening and valuable as taking the final step! Peace to all of you that I’ve been blessed to communicate with here over the years!

    • Thanks: AP
    • Replies: @AaronB
    @Mr. Hack

    Thanks, Mr Hack, I took the time to read the entire pamphlet through. It is very good - brief and to the point.

    I am in substance in agreement with it, and can understand why you value this so much.

    My only difference is that I take the more "mystic" view that we are already in theosis, and spirituality is about becoming "aware" of this fact.

    While we agree on the most desirable end state, we disagree over how to reach it. I understand this is a significant difference, but I feel that doesn't diminish the basic sympathy between our views on another level.

    As for marriage and children, I agree with you that this is a secondary goal from a spiritual perspective.

    Indeed, many spiritual traditions view unmarried men and women as performing a valuable role in reminding people that family life is a worldly thing, and not the primary goal of man.

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it's a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment - this creates a very "anti-natalist" atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    When seen as a duty, it pertains to worldly success and the wealth and power of the community, and not man's ultimate aim in theosis, or even man proper enjoyment of life on earth in the form of joy.

    Replies: @AP, @LatW, @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

  1026. @sudden death
    @songbird


    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…
     
    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop :)

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Dmitry

    It is tending to zombie thread.

    Did you ever wake up with a zombie wolf behind your eyes?

  1027. @German_reader
    @LatW


    WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched
     
    Yeah, I didn't write anything about war, that's A123's usual misrepresentation. I just asked him whether he thinks Poland should accede to those demands for restitution of heirless property. Of course he didn't really answer that either, just claims it's a non-issue, since supposedly those demands are just for show anyway.

    Replies: @A123

    GR,

    Your deception is quite amazing. Let me recap the events as they actually happened:
    ___

    I said that the issue was effectively settled. You asserted that silence on the issue was an indication of imminent, pressing and critical concern.

    I asked for evidence of your position. You provided none.

    I provide proof that Poland-Israel relations are good to the point of military cooperation. You engage in misdirection.
    ____

    Lets try again. And, please ANSWER the question this time:

    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?

    Or, do you agree with me, that all parties believe it is in a satisfactory state? One that will not interfere with military partnership.
    ____

    I would like to blame German Elites rather than the German people. However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.

    — What % of the vote did the big 4 “Woke” parties (Red-Black-Green-Yellow) receive? 75%+? And, everyone in Germany has a reasonable non Woke alternative.
    — What % of the vote will go to “Woke” McAuliffe vs. “Sane” Youngkin in today’s Virginia election. It looks to be about 50%-50&?

    Again objective facts support my position.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?
     
    I have no idea, I just don't find your claim that it's a total non-issue convincing.

    However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.
     
    I doubt that. I think I've cited polls here in the past (too lazy to look for it now) that show even Republican voters are way more positive about multiculturalism and high levels of immigration than pretty much all Europeans, including Germans (also, look at that book "Eurotrash" I mentioned in an earlier comment in this thread...this is American "conservatives" bragging about how successful Somalis are in the US, unlike in racist Europe...are these "conservatives" also agents of the IslamoSoros?).
    And some absurdly high number of young Americans (15% or something among that range iirc) now identify as LBGTQ+ (or whatever, I'm not sure what the current state of the acronym is). I suppose Germany will eventually get there as well, but the US is clearly the leader among many degenerate trends.

    Replies: @A123

  1028. @sudden death
    @songbird


    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…
     
    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop :)

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Dmitry

    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…

    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop 🙂

    I do not think the site will break. Some of the Unz authorized pieces have huge numbers of posts.

    The length of the thread is creating browser issues for me. I am hoping that AK, or Mr. Unz, will start Open Thread 169.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  1029. @LatW
    @German_reader


    He’s referring to me.
     
    Oh, ok. I was thinking of someone else. WW3 starting out of Poland being reluctant to respond to property restitution claims is a bit far fetched... your comments are typically way more rational than that.

    The two are linked in his mind.
     
    I know but I kind of wanted to tease it out of him, which one bothers him more, Germany being in a dominant position per se, or just the multiculti stuff. I mean it's not like he cares about Poland's sovereignty because it serves Poland's own wellbeing or because it's some "just cause", but who knows.

    I’ve encountered quite a few anti-German commenters on this site, but his level of obsession is unusual. Very peculiar views.
     

    "Fundies say the darndest things". :)

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123

    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the “Poland invades Germany” scenario:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4981272

    I argued against it.

    I pointed out that such a move would likely be an undesirable mess for Poland. GW Bush proved that post-war issues are often worse than the war. Grabbing a chunk of Germany with no plan for the aftermath would be a fiasco.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123


    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the “Poland invades Germany” scenario:
     
    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.

    To be clear, I don't think Europe has the TFR necessary to facilitate wide-scale war. Even the countries with the greatest PIE percentage seem to be pozzed today. And, I believe even if Poles were so inclined (I am sure they are not), they still understand that they would inevitably come up against Pax Americana and possibly Russia (unless they came to some agreement first about spheres of influence), not to mention, in all likelihood, the Turks.

    Still, as a hypothetical, it is quite engaging. I have often said that I believe that Germans need to be invaded by a benevolent power in order to reform their system. And I don't know that German commentors here would necessarily object to being Policized (the right form?) or rather Slavicized, if Poland was based enough (I doubt it myself), and if it meant being saved from the multicult nightmare they are on track to experience. Wouldn't German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.

    Not to mention, I think it would be quite a humorous trick for Poles to subvert anti-Nazi rhetoric in order to deport non-Euros, and their multicult collaborators, who did not support their new status in the union.

    Replies: @A123, @LatW

  1030. @Anatoly Karlin
    This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes - within reason.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

    Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.

    Replies: @Mike in Boston, @Che Guava

    I am sorry to hear it Anatoly. Not that I have been a noteworthy on the open threads.

    Have watched for the first times, the BBC’s old version, teleplay from 1954.

    The Anglo-USA version from 1956. Crap.

    There is no film of We, but I will give rough rankings to versions of 1984.

    1. Gilliam’s Brazil

    2. BBC teleplay from 1954

    3. Never made take of We

    4. Electro-pop version from 1984, to say the least, as O’Brien, it was the last great role by Richard Burton.

    5. Useless 1956 Anglo-American version

  1031. @A123
    @LatW

    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the "Poland invades Germany" scenario:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-168/#comment-4981272

    I argued against it.

    I pointed out that such a move would likely be an undesirable mess for Poland. GW Bush proved that post-war issues are often worse than the war. Grabbing a chunk of Germany with no plan for the aftermath would be a fiasco.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the “Poland invades Germany” scenario:

    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.

    To be clear, I don’t think Europe has the TFR necessary to facilitate wide-scale war. Even the countries with the greatest PIE percentage seem to be pozzed today. And, I believe even if Poles were so inclined (I am sure they are not), they still understand that they would inevitably come up against Pax Americana and possibly Russia (unless they came to some agreement first about spheres of influence), not to mention, in all likelihood, the Turks.

    Still, as a hypothetical, it is quite engaging. I have often said that I believe that Germans need to be invaded by a benevolent power in order to reform their system. And I don’t know that German commentors here would necessarily object to being Policized (the right form?) or rather Slavicized, if Poland was based enough (I doubt it myself), and if it meant being saved from the multicult nightmare they are on track to experience. Wouldn’t German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.

    Not to mention, I think it would be quite a humorous trick for Poles to subvert anti-Nazi rhetoric in order to deport non-Euros, and their multicult collaborators, who did not support their new status in the union.

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird


    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.
     
    The recent use of the WW III phrase tracks back to Poland's Prime Minister in response to German misbehavior via their servants in the EU: (1)

    Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times was not accidental, and the strong words which he used whie speaking with the paper were also no accident. Morawiecki has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head” and warned that if the European Commission *“starts the third world war”* by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would "defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal."

    These words were meant to be heard. They are meant to echo through the corridors of Brussels for weeks to come.

    ...

    This is the background of Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times, in which he clearly pointed to the line behind which the government would not retreat. He also warned Brussels that if it tries to cheat the government and would not unblock the National Recovery Plan after the Disciplinary Chamber’s abolition or would try to restrict it, then Poland would not hesitate to block, for example, the EU climate package.

    Yes, this would truly be a “Third World War” — a political one, of course.”
     
    I have been a consistent voice for PEACE. It is both obvious and feeble misdirection when advocates of German aggression try to flip the situation to cover their authoritarianism. The more Merkel loses, the more vociferous her woke acolytes become.

    What can one do other than shine the light of TRUTH upon the Decepticons?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/commentary/eu-makes-demands-with-a-gun-to-our-head-polish-pms-interview-with-ft-was-meant-to-be-heard-throughout-in-europe/

    Replies: @Che Guava, @songbird

    , @LatW
    @songbird


    Wouldn’t German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.
     
    OMG, given all the nastiness German_reader has had to endure from "Judeo-Christian" fanatics here, he deserves to live in a newly remodeled German manor somewhere in Kurland. Or even a modest wooden house in Memel. :) With lots of home brewed beer that we could deliver to him in one of those vintage motorcycles with a sidecar. Ok, just kidding. Sorry, couldn't resist.

    Replies: @A123

  1032. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @German_reader

    GR,

    Your deception is quite amazing. Let me recap the events as they actually happened:
    ___

    I said that the issue was effectively settled. You asserted that silence on the issue was an indication of imminent, pressing and critical concern.

    I asked for evidence of your position. You provided none.

    I provide proof that Poland-Israel relations are good to the point of military cooperation. You engage in misdirection.
    ____

    Lets try again. And, please ANSWER the question this time:

    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the "claims issue" is impending?

    Or, do you agree with me, that all parties believe it is in a satisfactory state? One that will not interfere with military partnership.
    ____

    I would like to blame German Elites rather than the German people. However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.

    -- What % of the vote did the big 4 "Woke" parties (Red-Black-Green-Yellow) receive? 75%+? And, everyone in Germany has a reasonable non Woke alternative.
    -- What % of the vote will go to "Woke" McAuliffe vs. "Sane" Youngkin in today's Virginia election. It looks to be about 50%-50&?

    Again objective facts support my position.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @German_reader

    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?

    I have no idea, I just don’t find your claim that it’s a total non-issue convincing.

    However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.

    I doubt that. I think I’ve cited polls here in the past (too lazy to look for it now) that show even Republican voters are way more positive about multiculturalism and high levels of immigration than pretty much all Europeans, including Germans (also, look at that book “Eurotrash” I mentioned in an earlier comment in this thread…this is American “conservatives” bragging about how successful Somalis are in the US, unlike in racist Europe…are these “conservatives” also agents of the IslamoSoros?).
    And some absurdly high number of young Americans (15% or something among that range iirc) now identify as LBGTQ+ (or whatever, I’m not sure what the current state of the acronym is). I suppose Germany will eventually get there as well, but the US is clearly the leader among many degenerate trends.

    • Replies: @A123
    @German_reader



    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?
     
    I have no idea, I just don’t find your claim that it’s a total non-issue convincing
     
    Let me try AGAIN to get you to ANSWER the question. Pick A or B.

    --A-- WW II claims are an issue. Military cooperation is impossible.
    --B-- WW II claims are non-issue. Military cooperation is possible.

    You keep wordsmithing your way into ambiguity. Try simple language.

    -- If it is an issue, you need to explain how military cooperation is possible.
    -- If it is not an issue, you agree with me and we can move on.



    However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.
     
    I doubt that. I think I’ve cited polls here in the past (too lazy to look for it now)
     
    Actions speak louder than words. ~80% of Germans vote woke. Hopefully today's election results will show that less than 50% of Americans vote woke.

    Yes. The recent actions by White House occupier, Not-The-President Biden, have been doozies. However, actions by an illegitimate leader imposed via the Blue Coup do not represent America.
    ___

    I am not saying that America is a paragon of virtue. However, your idea that America is inflicting Wokeness on Germany is absurd. Your Ultra-Woke Merkel came up with "Welcome Rape-ugees" on her own. If you want Germany to improve, step #1 is -- Stop blaming America for German Wokeness.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LatW

  1033. @songbird
    @A123


    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the “Poland invades Germany” scenario:
     
    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.

    To be clear, I don't think Europe has the TFR necessary to facilitate wide-scale war. Even the countries with the greatest PIE percentage seem to be pozzed today. And, I believe even if Poles were so inclined (I am sure they are not), they still understand that they would inevitably come up against Pax Americana and possibly Russia (unless they came to some agreement first about spheres of influence), not to mention, in all likelihood, the Turks.

    Still, as a hypothetical, it is quite engaging. I have often said that I believe that Germans need to be invaded by a benevolent power in order to reform their system. And I don't know that German commentors here would necessarily object to being Policized (the right form?) or rather Slavicized, if Poland was based enough (I doubt it myself), and if it meant being saved from the multicult nightmare they are on track to experience. Wouldn't German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.

    Not to mention, I think it would be quite a humorous trick for Poles to subvert anti-Nazi rhetoric in order to deport non-Euros, and their multicult collaborators, who did not support their new status in the union.

    Replies: @A123, @LatW

    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.

    The recent use of the WW III phrase tracks back to Poland’s Prime Minister in response to German misbehavior via their servants in the EU: (1)

    Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times was not accidental, and the strong words which he used whie speaking with the paper were also no accident. Morawiecki has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head” and warned that if the European Commission *“starts the third world war”* by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would “defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal.”

    These words were meant to be heard. They are meant to echo through the corridors of Brussels for weeks to come.

    This is the background of Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times, in which he clearly pointed to the line behind which the government would not retreat. He also warned Brussels that if it tries to cheat the government and would not unblock the National Recovery Plan after the Disciplinary Chamber’s abolition or would try to restrict it, then Poland would not hesitate to block, for example, the EU climate package.

    Yes, this would truly be a “Third World War” — a political one, of course.”

    I have been a consistent voice for PEACE. It is both obvious and feeble misdirection when advocates of German aggression try to flip the situation to cover their authoritarianism. The more Merkel loses, the more vociferous her woke acolytes become.

    What can one do other than shine the light of TRUTH upon the Decepticons?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/commentary/eu-makes-demands-with-a-gun-to-our-head-polish-pms-interview-with-ft-was-meant-to-be-heard-throughout-in-europe/

    • Replies: @Che Guava
    @A123

    It would seem obvious that Moraviecki could achieve a little more by renewing ties with Russia, and playing that against the EU. It is not as if the Jewish Bolsheviks are in power now. Sure, after murdering Stalin, it took a few decades to manouvre to destroy and loot the USSR, but it seems to be in the past now.

    , @songbird
    @A123


    The length of the thread is creating browser issues for me. I am hoping that AK, or Mr. Unz, will start Open Thread 169.
     
    When it comes to phones, I think it starts to get a bit awkward at around the 650 mark. But maybe only if you are a cheapskate like me. PC seems to be handling it very well, so far. Can't count number of tabs I have open.

    Would like to respectfully suggest that the most senior commentor (who?) be forcefully conscripted to take over, with a respectful sticky directing traffic to AK's substack and a boilerplate disclaimer about any further connection with AK.

    I feel like AK's departure really weakens the HBD sphere on UNZ, much as I honestly do enjoy the scurrilous content of improbable noms de guerre like Lance Welton. BTW, I really liked AK's policy of banning commentors who didn't bother to come up with a handle (I think it shows his understanding of IQ)

    Not to mention, I feel like there were great, long-running debates and clashes going on, Russians vs. Ukrainians, Daniel vs. Aaron, upon which the fate of the cosmos seems to rest. And I was hoping, seemingly vainly, to see their resolution in this thread.
    ________

    BTW, any thoughts on Trump's recent comments on the Ari Hoffman show?:
    "Israel literally owned Congress”, "but now that’s changed with AOC and Ilhan Omar", “Israel had such power, and rightfully, over Congress.”

    Or on the much more heavily promoted campaign to promote a law against "anti-Semitism" in the small nation of Ireland?
    https://gearoidmurphy.substack.com/p/international-zionism-declares-war?justPublished=true

    Replies: @A123

  1034. @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    Singapore has 3.5M citizens (that's where the 74% Chinese number comes from), 0.5M immigrants and 1.7M "Guest Workers", which means it's now only barely Chinese (53%) overall.

    Even HK (my native place) has been in demographic replacement mode for 25 years. Good thing they are mainly Chinese co-ethnics from mainland China substituting local emigrants, bad thing lots of Americanized separatists are wrathful to those "subhumans" while turning a blind eye to the 400k Austronesian domestic servants who are imported to spoil and ruin their middle class children.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @songbird

    It is an interesting question whether city-sates have the scale capacity to resolve problems with migration.

    For example, does Singapore have the military force necessary to compel countries to accept returnees? I’d guess not. (Worth noting only time the powerful US got serious was when Mexico wanted the labor back.) How well would they handle mass crowds on the street? (maybe, China could pull off a “little green men” stunt?) Could they load them onto boats and force the boats out? Maybe, the financial sector could provide enough leverage? Or, maybe, they could raise rents on them? Or penalize companies more?

    Reading a bit into Singapore’s situation, it seems as though there have been very minimal efforts to decrease the number of migrants, so far, so no real test.

    BTW, I think Spandrell is right about HK: it is all about status. Quite similar to progressive urbanites disparaging rednecks. Or maybe house slaves disparaging the field hands.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @songbird

    They do - they have conscription and a lot of military hardware that gives them an Israeli-like position in SE Asia (and of course, securing Straits-Chinese independence in a sea of Austronesians). But they are already like Persian Gulf states in the treatment of guest workers - near-indentured servants.

    It's probably very ironic that HKers supporting Trump and reading a lot of Epoch Times-fueled half-truths are most similar in socio-economic position to where you've pinned. But the "rednecks" here are even more fervent in their separatist cause. (The biggest stereotypes of mainland Chinese immigrants in HK are poor middle-age housewifes or cramming drones, neither of them having any classiness HKers see in themselves)

  1035. @A123
    @songbird


    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.
     
    The recent use of the WW III phrase tracks back to Poland's Prime Minister in response to German misbehavior via their servants in the EU: (1)

    Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times was not accidental, and the strong words which he used whie speaking with the paper were also no accident. Morawiecki has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head” and warned that if the European Commission *“starts the third world war”* by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would "defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal."

    These words were meant to be heard. They are meant to echo through the corridors of Brussels for weeks to come.

    ...

    This is the background of Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times, in which he clearly pointed to the line behind which the government would not retreat. He also warned Brussels that if it tries to cheat the government and would not unblock the National Recovery Plan after the Disciplinary Chamber’s abolition or would try to restrict it, then Poland would not hesitate to block, for example, the EU climate package.

    Yes, this would truly be a “Third World War” — a political one, of course.”
     
    I have been a consistent voice for PEACE. It is both obvious and feeble misdirection when advocates of German aggression try to flip the situation to cover their authoritarianism. The more Merkel loses, the more vociferous her woke acolytes become.

    What can one do other than shine the light of TRUTH upon the Decepticons?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/commentary/eu-makes-demands-with-a-gun-to-our-head-polish-pms-interview-with-ft-was-meant-to-be-heard-throughout-in-europe/

    Replies: @Che Guava, @songbird

    It would seem obvious that Moraviecki could achieve a little more by renewing ties with Russia, and playing that against the EU. It is not as if the Jewish Bolsheviks are in power now. Sure, after murdering Stalin, it took a few decades to manouvre to destroy and loot the USSR, but it seems to be in the past now.

  1036. @German_reader
    @A123


    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?
     
    I have no idea, I just don't find your claim that it's a total non-issue convincing.

    However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.
     
    I doubt that. I think I've cited polls here in the past (too lazy to look for it now) that show even Republican voters are way more positive about multiculturalism and high levels of immigration than pretty much all Europeans, including Germans (also, look at that book "Eurotrash" I mentioned in an earlier comment in this thread...this is American "conservatives" bragging about how successful Somalis are in the US, unlike in racist Europe...are these "conservatives" also agents of the IslamoSoros?).
    And some absurdly high number of young Americans (15% or something among that range iirc) now identify as LBGTQ+ (or whatever, I'm not sure what the current state of the acronym is). I suppose Germany will eventually get there as well, but the US is clearly the leader among many degenerate trends.

    Replies: @A123

    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?

    I have no idea, I just don’t find your claim that it’s a total non-issue convincing

    Let me try AGAIN to get you to ANSWER the question. Pick A or B.

    –A– WW II claims are an issue. Military cooperation is impossible.
    –B– WW II claims are non-issue. Military cooperation is possible.

    You keep wordsmithing your way into ambiguity. Try simple language.

    — If it is an issue, you need to explain how military cooperation is possible.
    — If it is not an issue, you agree with me and we can move on.

    However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.

    I doubt that. I think I’ve cited polls here in the past (too lazy to look for it now)

    Actions speak louder than words. ~80% of Germans vote woke. Hopefully today’s election results will show that less than 50% of Americans vote woke.

    Yes. The recent actions by White House occupier, Not-The-President Biden, have been doozies. However, actions by an illegitimate leader imposed via the Blue Coup do not represent America.
    ___

    I am not saying that America is a paragon of virtue. However, your idea that America is inflicting Wokeness on Germany is absurd. Your Ultra-Woke Merkel came up with “Welcome Rape-ugees” on her own. If you want Germany to improve, step #1 is — Stop blaming America for German Wokeness.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @LatW
    @A123


    WW II claims are non-issue. Military cooperation is possible.
     
    Just to clarify my original point: Yes, military procurement with Israel is totally possible, because those are good weapons systems. At this point, we're seeing the biggest contracts in 30 years, so I'm thinking the Israeli side is also very interested in participating.

    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste. Years and years of what I simply call persistent high level bullying and meddling will not go unnoticed, and can possibly be more destabilizing than the US side may realize. Or maybe they simply don't care.

    What I meant was that even this will not ruin the military contracts, because they need to be taking place regardless of these spats. Ideally, V4 et al would keep building up their resources, including troops and eventually stand in a united front against any kind of outside bullying from either side (and that's why these contracts are important). In fact, if Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up (Ukraine has engineers, prototypes, actual war tested weapons -- and much cheaper!).
    This would only improve the relationship with the US and eventually with Russia.

    There are obstacles to this though, one of the main ones is that even within V4 / EE there are now woke forces. Small but nasty enough.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel "the global SJWL leader" when she's only one of them. Poland and Germany have their disputes, but when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse. Germany is actually quite discreet, with things like Friedrich Ebert Stiftung which is hardly noticeable. And as to Germany being woke, they have always had very conservative people but also a certain type of a liberal person, even something seemingly benign like the "White Rose" group back in the 1930s-40s (among them Sophie Scholl who was even guillotined). But do they stand out as the worst among all the other ones today?

    Replies: @A123

  1037. @A123
    @songbird


    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.
     
    The recent use of the WW III phrase tracks back to Poland's Prime Minister in response to German misbehavior via their servants in the EU: (1)

    Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times was not accidental, and the strong words which he used whie speaking with the paper were also no accident. Morawiecki has accused the EU of making demands of Warsaw with a “gun to our head” and warned that if the European Commission *“starts the third world war”* by withholding promised cash to Warsaw, he would "defend our rights with any weapons which are at our disposal."

    These words were meant to be heard. They are meant to echo through the corridors of Brussels for weeks to come.

    ...

    This is the background of Morawiecki’s interview for the Financial Times, in which he clearly pointed to the line behind which the government would not retreat. He also warned Brussels that if it tries to cheat the government and would not unblock the National Recovery Plan after the Disciplinary Chamber’s abolition or would try to restrict it, then Poland would not hesitate to block, for example, the EU climate package.

    Yes, this would truly be a “Third World War” — a political one, of course.”
     
    I have been a consistent voice for PEACE. It is both obvious and feeble misdirection when advocates of German aggression try to flip the situation to cover their authoritarianism. The more Merkel loses, the more vociferous her woke acolytes become.

    What can one do other than shine the light of TRUTH upon the Decepticons?

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/commentary/eu-makes-demands-with-a-gun-to-our-head-polish-pms-interview-with-ft-was-meant-to-be-heard-throughout-in-europe/

    Replies: @Che Guava, @songbird

    The length of the thread is creating browser issues for me. I am hoping that AK, or Mr. Unz, will start Open Thread 169.

    When it comes to phones, I think it starts to get a bit awkward at around the 650 mark. But maybe only if you are a cheapskate like me. PC seems to be handling it very well, so far. Can’t count number of tabs I have open.

    Would like to respectfully suggest that the most senior commentor (who?) be forcefully conscripted to take over, with a respectful sticky directing traffic to AK’s substack and a boilerplate disclaimer about any further connection with AK.

    I feel like AK’s departure really weakens the HBD sphere on UNZ, much as I honestly do enjoy the scurrilous content of improbable noms de guerre like Lance Welton. BTW, I really liked AK’s policy of banning commentors who didn’t bother to come up with a handle (I think it shows his understanding of IQ)

    Not to mention, I feel like there were great, long-running debates and clashes going on, Russians vs. Ukrainians, Daniel vs. Aaron, upon which the fate of the cosmos seems to rest. And I was hoping, seemingly vainly, to see their resolution in this thread.

    [MORE]

    ________

    BTW, any thoughts on Trump’s recent comments on the Ari Hoffman show?:
    “Israel literally owned Congress”, “but now that’s changed with AOC and Ilhan Omar”, “Israel had such power, and rightfully, over Congress.”

    Or on the much more heavily promoted campaign to promote a law against “anti-Semitism” in the small nation of Ireland?
    https://gearoidmurphy.substack.com/p/international-zionism-declares-war?justPublished=true

    • Replies: @A123
    @songbird

    I am using a mobile device, and I am having to suppress aides to get the thread loaded. Perhaps the most recent phones can cope readily, but I suspect a number of people are having issues at 1,000+ comments.

    Ireland has a severe problem with embracing Muslim terrorist organizations. They also have an extremely small Muslim population, so the topic can easily be romanticized in mistaken association with their own anti UK struggles. Combine this with SJW intolerance, and it becomes serious problem leading to discrimination and potentially violence.

    There is a serious imbalance where charges of "Islamophobia" can be wielded against Judeo-Christians, while any Judeo-Christian response is mislabeled racism. Things like this should not require laws, but SJW Fascism is outrageous in terms of censorship & intimidation. Regulations are, sadly, necessary to protect Judeo-Christians against Orwellian Muslim extremists.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

  1038. @AP
    @Mikel


    No, not really. Observant Mormons (roughly 50% of the current Utah population, maybe less) don’t drink alcohol but I don’t think they are more outdoorsy than non-Mormons
     
    They probably aren’t but the combination of outdoorsiness and clean living results in a very healthy and healthy-looking population.

    I’ve been in small Mormon towns in rural Utah and was very surprised by how healthy and attractive the locals were. Compare them to, say, the obese unhealthy folks one sees in small town Appalachia.

    On the other hand, it is true that English ancestry is higher than in most other parts of the US but there’s hardly any people of English-only origins
     
    Utah is the most English state in America but it is only about 28% English. English is the single largest ethnic origin in Utah (Scandinavian is in second place with 15% combined for Norwegians, Swedes and Danes, Germans are in third place with 12%).

    In contrast, New England is 18% Irish, 12% Italian, 12% French-Canadian, and 11% English.

    http://www.lostinthepond.com/2016/09/this-state-has-highest-percentage-of.html

    “In total, 29% of Utah's population self-reported English Ancestry, while the state also houses 15 of the top 20 Anglo-American cities in the nation. Indeed, with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States“

    So anyone expecting to find a Utah full of Uber-English Sirs is going to get pretty disappointed. They’ll just find the usual American melting-pot, perhaps with a higher percentage of Northern European ancestry
     
    I was unclear. By Uber-English I meant super-healthy, fit and attractive English physiognomy. Culturally speaking, Utah is very American in a sort of retro religious way. I think New Zeakand is probably more English than England.

    At any rate, there is a high proportion of very good looking ladies in Utah. Part of it is religious in nature. There is this old thinking that if you happen to die you want to show your best appearance to God.
     
    Yes, the Mormons also believe that since the body is a temple they have to keep it in good condition and beautiful. My wife and I have visited Utah many times (we are in love with the desert) and we are struck by how beautiful the people are. They are no less beautiful in Moscow of course, but it is a very different kind of beauty. Not particularly sophisticated as in urban Europe (this tradition has largely died in Western Europe but has been retained in Moscow and at times in Montreal), but exuding simple health and wholesomeness, plus a sort of beauty contest aesthetic. Utah girls don’t look like people from fashion magazines as are girls that one often sees in central Moscow. Instead, they look like they’ve stepped out of an American movie, an American Ideal (which doesn’t contrast English background). It’s a bit exotic.

    I am also not sure that Utahns, in general, are “much more physically attractive and fit than are people in England itself”. Perhaps in general that’s true
     
    People in Britain tend to be overweight - not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth (the stereotype is true). People in Utah with their religious devotion to keeping the body beautiful for God, have perfect teeth of course. I find the British accents to be charming though.

    Lots of Dolores O’Riordan type
     
    She is cute, such a shame what happened to her..

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Mikel

    with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States

    I’ve been to Hildale, the town of the Mormon Fundamentalists. We actually spent one night there. It was very interesting to see all these people with prairie dresses and early pioneer looks, I found it more exotic than my trip to the Amazon jungle, where I didn’t see any proper Indians. Such is the variety of people you find in the US. But it was a bit of a freak show too. Mormon Fundamentalists not only continue practicing polygamy but they also have a problem of endogamy due to no or little inflow from outside. You could see that clearly on some faces. Apparently, they have a large number of miscarriages due to this reason but nobody keeps too much track of what they do in their closed communities.

    Mainstream Mormons don’t want to be associated with these people at all. They tend to change the subject when you ask about them.

    People in Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah.

    I’m pretty certain that morbid obesity is more prevalent in Utah overall than in England or any other European country.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Mikel


    I’ve been to Hildale, the town of the Mormon Fundamentalists. We actually spent one night there.
     
    I've been there too. I agree it is a very interesting place.

    I’m pretty certain that morbid obesity is more prevalent in Utah overall than in England or any other European country.
     
    Obesity rate in Utah is 25.3% (24.7% for people of European descent):

    https://www.deseret.com/2018/9/13/20653364/here-s-where-utah-ranks-among-the-most-obese-states

    and in England it is 31%:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_Kingdom

  1039. @Yellowface Anon
    @AP

    Rather than suggesting such an explicit amount, it makes sense for you to study actual historical examples:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bachelor_tax
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_on_childlessness
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decree_770

    Again it's far more effective to have cultural changes than the state robbing Peter to pay Paul or mandating child birth (not that I will want to live in such societies). You've overlooked simple changes such as banning contraceptives and any forms of abortion.

    But seriously:
    https://pep.vse.cz/pdfs/pep/2003/03/05.pdf
    https://ifstudies.org/blog/pro-natal-policies-work-but-they-come-with-a-hefty-price-tag

    Replies: @AP, @songbird

    I’m against a bachelor tax because I think that healthy cultures have always utilized childless people by harnessing their desire to pass on their genes collaterally, through nephews and nieces, etc, or through the wider volk.

    That said, I do think society should do a lot more to encourage men, especially intelligent men, to marry. And I would like to see a lot of radical system changes to encourage this, from public education, to perks, and propaganda, not only aimed at women but also men.

  1040. @songbird
    @A123


    The length of the thread is creating browser issues for me. I am hoping that AK, or Mr. Unz, will start Open Thread 169.
     
    When it comes to phones, I think it starts to get a bit awkward at around the 650 mark. But maybe only if you are a cheapskate like me. PC seems to be handling it very well, so far. Can't count number of tabs I have open.

    Would like to respectfully suggest that the most senior commentor (who?) be forcefully conscripted to take over, with a respectful sticky directing traffic to AK's substack and a boilerplate disclaimer about any further connection with AK.

    I feel like AK's departure really weakens the HBD sphere on UNZ, much as I honestly do enjoy the scurrilous content of improbable noms de guerre like Lance Welton. BTW, I really liked AK's policy of banning commentors who didn't bother to come up with a handle (I think it shows his understanding of IQ)

    Not to mention, I feel like there were great, long-running debates and clashes going on, Russians vs. Ukrainians, Daniel vs. Aaron, upon which the fate of the cosmos seems to rest. And I was hoping, seemingly vainly, to see their resolution in this thread.
    ________

    BTW, any thoughts on Trump's recent comments on the Ari Hoffman show?:
    "Israel literally owned Congress”, "but now that’s changed with AOC and Ilhan Omar", “Israel had such power, and rightfully, over Congress.”

    Or on the much more heavily promoted campaign to promote a law against "anti-Semitism" in the small nation of Ireland?
    https://gearoidmurphy.substack.com/p/international-zionism-declares-war?justPublished=true

    Replies: @A123

    I am using a mobile device, and I am having to suppress aides to get the thread loaded. Perhaps the most recent phones can cope readily, but I suspect a number of people are having issues at 1,000+ comments.

    [MORE]

    Ireland has a severe problem with embracing Muslim terrorist organizations. They also have an extremely small Muslim population, so the topic can easily be romanticized in mistaken association with their own anti UK struggles. Combine this with SJW intolerance, and it becomes serious problem leading to discrimination and potentially violence.

    There is a serious imbalance where charges of “Islamophobia” can be wielded against Judeo-Christians, while any Judeo-Christian response is mislabeled racism. Things like this should not require laws, but SJW Fascism is outrageous in terms of censorship & intimidation. Regulations are, sadly, necessary to protect Judeo-Christians against Orwellian Muslim extremists.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    I am having to suppress aides to get the thread loaded.

    Is there any way that I can send you a dime?

  1041. [MORE]

    Guru Arjan Dev Ji set up Sikh horse trading & everyone knows result||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  1042. @A123
    @songbird

    I am using a mobile device, and I am having to suppress aides to get the thread loaded. Perhaps the most recent phones can cope readily, but I suspect a number of people are having issues at 1,000+ comments.

    Ireland has a severe problem with embracing Muslim terrorist organizations. They also have an extremely small Muslim population, so the topic can easily be romanticized in mistaken association with their own anti UK struggles. Combine this with SJW intolerance, and it becomes serious problem leading to discrimination and potentially violence.

    There is a serious imbalance where charges of "Islamophobia" can be wielded against Judeo-Christians, while any Judeo-Christian response is mislabeled racism. Things like this should not require laws, but SJW Fascism is outrageous in terms of censorship & intimidation. Regulations are, sadly, necessary to protect Judeo-Christians against Orwellian Muslim extremists.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    I am having to suppress aides to get the thread loaded.

    Is there any way that I can send you a dime?

    • LOL: A123
  1043. @songbird
    @A123


    For the record it was *songbird* who posited the “Poland invades Germany” scenario:
     
    Tongue-in-cheek. And, for further clarification, my first proposed scenario was V4 invading.

    To be clear, I don't think Europe has the TFR necessary to facilitate wide-scale war. Even the countries with the greatest PIE percentage seem to be pozzed today. And, I believe even if Poles were so inclined (I am sure they are not), they still understand that they would inevitably come up against Pax Americana and possibly Russia (unless they came to some agreement first about spheres of influence), not to mention, in all likelihood, the Turks.

    Still, as a hypothetical, it is quite engaging. I have often said that I believe that Germans need to be invaded by a benevolent power in order to reform their system. And I don't know that German commentors here would necessarily object to being Policized (the right form?) or rather Slavicized, if Poland was based enough (I doubt it myself), and if it meant being saved from the multicult nightmare they are on track to experience. Wouldn't German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.

    Not to mention, I think it would be quite a humorous trick for Poles to subvert anti-Nazi rhetoric in order to deport non-Euros, and their multicult collaborators, who did not support their new status in the union.

    Replies: @A123, @LatW

    Wouldn’t German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.

    OMG, given all the nastiness German_reader has had to endure from “Judeo-Christian” fanatics here, he deserves to live in a newly remodeled German manor somewhere in Kurland. Or even a modest wooden house in Memel. 🙂 With lots of home brewed beer that we could deliver to him in one of those vintage motorcycles with a sidecar. Ok, just kidding. Sorry, couldn’t resist.

    • Thanks: German_reader
    • LOL: songbird
    • Replies: @A123
    @LatW

    LatW,

    I am willing to give GR a hard time...

    But the Allo Allo treatment? That seems a bit much... Are you British?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇


    https://youtu.be/72Yh7bkwQQo

    Replies: @Coconuts, @LatW, @LatW

  1044. @LatW
    @songbird


    Wouldn’t German_reader like living in West Prussia or East Upper Silesia? I know I would, if my relations were nearby.
     
    OMG, given all the nastiness German_reader has had to endure from "Judeo-Christian" fanatics here, he deserves to live in a newly remodeled German manor somewhere in Kurland. Or even a modest wooden house in Memel. :) With lots of home brewed beer that we could deliver to him in one of those vintage motorcycles with a sidecar. Ok, just kidding. Sorry, couldn't resist.

    Replies: @A123

    LatW,

    I am willing to give GR a hard time…

    But the Allo Allo treatment? That seems a bit much… Are you British?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Thanks: Coconuts
    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @A123

    'Allo 'Allo was great; the foundation of my education about WW2. The mood around WW2 Germans must have changed sometime after that...

    , @LatW
    @A123

    Er... no, the image I conjured up was much more dignifying than the above tasteless series. I wouldn't mind taking a ride in one of those sidecars myself, going through a pine tree forest on a nice sunny day.

    , @LatW
    @A123

    And, btw, it's also because of this type of denigration of Germany that we are where we are today.

    Replies: @A123

  1045. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Would ban poli-sci.
     
    I'm also deeply suspicious of the subject. I guess one might learn some useful statistical skills (doesn't AK have a political science degree?), but much of it must be pure ideology. I recently looked up the new young members of the Bundestag for Germany's Greens, and almost all of them have got degrees in political science, social science, international relations etc. (a few also in Islamwissenschaften), which I found rather telling.

    Don’t know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past.
     
    tbf there have also been long attempts by right-wingers to compare the current migration issue to the barbarian migrations in late antiquity. But there's also a multiculti interpretation of the Roman empire, I remember a German leftie wrote an entire book a few years ago about how the Romans were a model for the contemporary world, because they were so open to foreigners and constantly integrated new groups. Admittedly that isn't a total construct (to some extent the Romans did emphasize the heterogeneity of their origins and their openness to immigrants and freedmen, in contrast to Athenians, Spartans and other Greeks with their pride of blood and restrictive citizenship laws; and in the end "Roman" became a universal identity encompassing the entire empire)...but when your model is what was basically a military despotism that frequently employed extreme violence against resistance...

    Don’t know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.
     
    Seems quite likely as an explanation to me. Debate in France seems to be shifting steadily to the right, even the former Brexit negotiator Barnier recently called for an immigration moratorium. But I suspect much of that is just rhetoric to keep people from voting for the hard right (don't know what exactly motivates Johnson, since he doesn't face such a threat in Britain).

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts, @songbird

    There is a good Zemmour video with English subtitles here.

    It contains some of his usual talking points, he is helping to push the debate rightwards with various outspoken takes about replacement migration and the creolisation of France. This is probably easier to achieve in France because as Zemmour mentions multiple times in his talk, the concept of ‘French Civilisation’ is still something politically (spiritually?) meaningful in the cultural mainstream.

    Whereas, I guess it is the case in Germany that the equivalent idea is considered more suspect and the content has been altered to include historically heterogenous elements. In the UK something like this definitely used to exist in a quieter way, but it is under attack at the moment, and there isn’t any politician who speaks openly about things like Zemmour.

  1046. @A123
    @German_reader



    Do you still believe that serious fallout from the “claims issue” is impending?
     
    I have no idea, I just don’t find your claim that it’s a total non-issue convincing
     
    Let me try AGAIN to get you to ANSWER the question. Pick A or B.

    --A-- WW II claims are an issue. Military cooperation is impossible.
    --B-- WW II claims are non-issue. Military cooperation is possible.

    You keep wordsmithing your way into ambiguity. Try simple language.

    -- If it is an issue, you need to explain how military cooperation is possible.
    -- If it is not an issue, you agree with me and we can move on.



    However, evidence shows that the German people are vastly more Woke than Americans.
     
    I doubt that. I think I’ve cited polls here in the past (too lazy to look for it now)
     
    Actions speak louder than words. ~80% of Germans vote woke. Hopefully today's election results will show that less than 50% of Americans vote woke.

    Yes. The recent actions by White House occupier, Not-The-President Biden, have been doozies. However, actions by an illegitimate leader imposed via the Blue Coup do not represent America.
    ___

    I am not saying that America is a paragon of virtue. However, your idea that America is inflicting Wokeness on Germany is absurd. Your Ultra-Woke Merkel came up with "Welcome Rape-ugees" on her own. If you want Germany to improve, step #1 is -- Stop blaming America for German Wokeness.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @LatW

    WW II claims are non-issue. Military cooperation is possible.

    Just to clarify my original point: Yes, military procurement with Israel is totally possible, because those are good weapons systems. At this point, we’re seeing the biggest contracts in 30 years, so I’m thinking the Israeli side is also very interested in participating.

    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste. Years and years of what I simply call persistent high level bullying and meddling will not go unnoticed, and can possibly be more destabilizing than the US side may realize. Or maybe they simply don’t care.

    What I meant was that even this will not ruin the military contracts, because they need to be taking place regardless of these spats. Ideally, V4 et al would keep building up their resources, including troops and eventually stand in a united front against any kind of outside bullying from either side (and that’s why these contracts are important). In fact, if Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up (Ukraine has engineers, prototypes, actual war tested weapons — and much cheaper!).
    This would only improve the relationship with the US and eventually with Russia.

    There are obstacles to this though, one of the main ones is that even within V4 / EE there are now woke forces. Small but nasty enough.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel “the global SJWL leader” when she’s only one of them. Poland and Germany have their disputes, but when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse. Germany is actually quite discreet, with things like Friedrich Ebert Stiftung which is hardly noticeable. And as to Germany being woke, they have always had very conservative people but also a certain type of a liberal person, even something seemingly benign like the “White Rose” group back in the 1930s-40s (among them Sophie Scholl who was even guillotined). But do they stand out as the worst among all the other ones today?

    • Replies: @A123
    @LatW


    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste.
     
    Your accusation is internally inconsistent. Is it:
    -- A serious matter that will blow up relations?
    -- A trivial matter that can easily be ignored as mere aftertaste?

    If Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up
     
    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy. Putin's personal endorsement of Merkel's WokeStream 2 anti-Poland policy is a serious problem. However, I doubt it has pushed Poland into openly declaring against Russia.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel “the global SJW leader” when she’s only one of them.
     
    I never said she was the only SJW leader. However, she is certainly first among European equals. All others must *come to Europe, and bend the knee* at the WEF Davos conference that annually reinforces, SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany.... So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.

    when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse
     
    So... Showy, inept, and 100% ineffectual?

    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of 'important' families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.

    Has Chelsea Clinton joined the 'State Department' yet? Or, is she still in 'journalism'?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @LatW, @LatW

  1047. @A123
    @LatW

    LatW,

    I am willing to give GR a hard time...

    But the Allo Allo treatment? That seems a bit much... Are you British?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇


    https://youtu.be/72Yh7bkwQQo

    Replies: @Coconuts, @LatW, @LatW

    ‘Allo ‘Allo was great; the foundation of my education about WW2. The mood around WW2 Germans must have changed sometime after that…

  1048. @A123
    @LatW

    LatW,

    I am willing to give GR a hard time...

    But the Allo Allo treatment? That seems a bit much... Are you British?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇


    https://youtu.be/72Yh7bkwQQo

    Replies: @Coconuts, @LatW, @LatW

    Er… no, the image I conjured up was much more dignifying than the above tasteless series. I wouldn’t mind taking a ride in one of those sidecars myself, going through a pine tree forest on a nice sunny day.

  1049. But do they stand out as the worst among all the other ones today?

    It seems the general view that the Woke movement originated on elite US university campuses, most of the scholars who created it did so in that environment. You even see a range of new English neologisms entering French as a result of its influence, like ‘les womens’ for Anglo style feminists, ‘speak white’ for something like the ‘discourse of whiteness’ and what sounds most strange, ‘le French Theory’. This is the term used to describe the end product of the Anglo recycling of the work of various prominent French post-modernist thinkers (Foucault, Derrida etc.).

  1050. @A123
    @LatW

    LatW,

    I am willing to give GR a hard time...

    But the Allo Allo treatment? That seems a bit much... Are you British?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇


    https://youtu.be/72Yh7bkwQQo

    Replies: @Coconuts, @LatW, @LatW

    And, btw, it’s also because of this type of denigration of Germany that we are where we are today.

    • Replies: @A123
    @LatW


    And, btw, it’s also because of this type of denigration of Germany that we are where we are today.
     
    My understanding is that German actors rather enthusiastically came across the channel to denigrate Nazis via Allo Allo. It helped that BBC pay was vastly higher than German TV at the time. However, it was not a career damaging decision to make some money in a very silly overseas role. Mocking Nazis was popular then, and remains popular today.

    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis. Everyone else, including the German people, never want to go back to that horror.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

  1051. @LatW
    @A123


    WW II claims are non-issue. Military cooperation is possible.
     
    Just to clarify my original point: Yes, military procurement with Israel is totally possible, because those are good weapons systems. At this point, we're seeing the biggest contracts in 30 years, so I'm thinking the Israeli side is also very interested in participating.

    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste. Years and years of what I simply call persistent high level bullying and meddling will not go unnoticed, and can possibly be more destabilizing than the US side may realize. Or maybe they simply don't care.

    What I meant was that even this will not ruin the military contracts, because they need to be taking place regardless of these spats. Ideally, V4 et al would keep building up their resources, including troops and eventually stand in a united front against any kind of outside bullying from either side (and that's why these contracts are important). In fact, if Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up (Ukraine has engineers, prototypes, actual war tested weapons -- and much cheaper!).
    This would only improve the relationship with the US and eventually with Russia.

    There are obstacles to this though, one of the main ones is that even within V4 / EE there are now woke forces. Small but nasty enough.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel "the global SJWL leader" when she's only one of them. Poland and Germany have their disputes, but when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse. Germany is actually quite discreet, with things like Friedrich Ebert Stiftung which is hardly noticeable. And as to Germany being woke, they have always had very conservative people but also a certain type of a liberal person, even something seemingly benign like the "White Rose" group back in the 1930s-40s (among them Sophie Scholl who was even guillotined). But do they stand out as the worst among all the other ones today?

    Replies: @A123

    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste.

    Your accusation is internally inconsistent. Is it:
    — A serious matter that will blow up relations?
    — A trivial matter that can easily be ignored as mere aftertaste?

    If Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up

    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy. Putin’s personal endorsement of Merkel’s WokeStream 2 anti-Poland policy is a serious problem. However, I doubt it has pushed Poland into openly declaring against Russia.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel “the global SJW leader” when she’s only one of them.

    I never said she was the only SJW leader. However, she is certainly first among European equals. All others must *come to Europe, and bend the knee* at the WEF Davos conference that annually reinforces, SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany…. So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.

    when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse

    So… Showy, inept, and 100% ineffectual?

    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of ‘important’ families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.

    Has Chelsea Clinton joined the ‘State Department’ yet? Or, is she still in ‘journalism’?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    • Replies: @LatW
    @A123


    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy.
     
    Who knows, if Americans and Brits were not in the picture (hypothetically), and it were a purely regional cooperation, Russia may not be as angry or agitated by it.

    It might be that what really angers Russia is that relatively weak states that used to be under her dominion try to act "equal" and occasionally show disrespect for Russia. If those states were stronger (economically and militarily) and learned to show at least a little bit of respect towards Russia or at least be quiet -- of course, without giving up their self-respect-- then Russia might no longer be as angry.

    In the EU.... SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.
     
    For this to change what I said above needs to be met. Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany…. So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.
     
    This kind of a tone reminds me of how some conservative Americans used to dislike the Scandinavian model. They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.


    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of ‘important’ families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.
     
    You have a point there. However, just the very fact that they put the restitution issue so high on the agenda for so many years... is alienating. And there will most likely be other such "campaigns" in the future. Let's say, meddling with our newly budding tech industries -- in order to keep them away from "third actors". Sure... maybe that's needed, but the lack of respect there... is just not that pleasant. It could be done in a more delicate and fraternal way, horizontal way, rather. Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.

    Replies: @A123

    , @LatW
    @A123


    I never said she was the only SJW leader.
     
    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others. Because she did that back in 2015, there are now economic migrants walking out of the woods and hanging around in the meadows on the Polish border where the Polish border guards have to shoo them away. And who keep yelling "No Belarus, No Poland! Germany, Germany!".

    Poor Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1052. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Much more important than the state of my virtuousness, is my participation in the process of Theosis. I've left the address of this little booklet here at least three times over the years, for all to read, especially those individuals that are spiritually inclined ( Bashibuzuk, Aaron, Daniel Chieh, A-123) including yourself. In fact, I remember recently you asking me to provide the coordinates of this tract once again so that you could presumably read it. It saddens me to know that nobody has taken the time to read this easily comprehensible book and reply back to me regarding their thoughts about it. BTW, nowhere in the book does it state that childrearing is a requirement to be deified. :-)

    http://orthodoxinfo.com/general/theosis.aspx
    The last time that I'll leave these coordinates here at this website.

    Thanks AK for the opportunity to share this booklet here at your website. It would give me immeasurable joy to know that you've read it. Starting at the bottom rung of Theosis can be as enlightening and valuable as taking the final step! Peace to all of you that I've been blessed to communicate with here over the years!

    Replies: @AaronB

    Thanks, Mr Hack, I took the time to read the entire pamphlet through. It is very good – brief and to the point.

    I am in substance in agreement with it, and can understand why you value this so much.

    My only difference is that I take the more “mystic” view that we are already in theosis, and spirituality is about becoming “aware” of this fact.

    While we agree on the most desirable end state, we disagree over how to reach it. I understand this is a significant difference, but I feel that doesn’t diminish the basic sympathy between our views on another level.

    As for marriage and children, I agree with you that this is a secondary goal from a spiritual perspective.

    Indeed, many spiritual traditions view unmarried men and women as performing a valuable role in reminding people that family life is a worldly thing, and not the primary goal of man.

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it’s a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment – this creates a very “anti-natalist” atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    When seen as a duty, it pertains to worldly success and the wealth and power of the community, and not man’s ultimate aim in theosis, or even man proper enjoyment of life on earth in the form of joy.

    • Thanks: Mr. Hack
    • Replies: @AP
    @AaronB


    grim duty
     
    Why did you add "grim" to "duty?"

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    , @LatW
    @AaronB


    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it’s a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment – this creates a very “anti-natalist” atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.
     
    It's not a grim duty, but what most people have desired for millennia. If not marriage, then some kind of a permanent heterosexual companionship involving the perpetuation of one's genes. The joy does not need to "be stressed", it comes on its own, naturally. And as to punishment, as you say, in many cases it is actually mothers that are punished with smaller retirement funds at the end of their lives.

    And now this woke "pregnant people" concept is another slap in the women's face. Now they're going to try to take credit away from motherhood. Truly infuriating.

    , @Mr. Hack
    @AaronB


    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it’s a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment – this creates a very “anti-natalist” atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.
     
    I couldn't be more in agreement with you. Children can be a real blessing not only to their parents, but to the whole community. I'm actually very pro-family, but realize that for many reasons, it's not the optimal solution for everyone. I'm not opposed to the tax code allowing certain right offs and preferences for families with young children, to hep them out with the extra financial burdens that they face. Helping folks out with families somehow seems less onerous than penalizing those that are single or are married without children.
    , @Mr. Hack
    @AaronB

    I'm glad that you found the little booklet worthwhile and attractive. I hope you pick it up and read it again sometime. I've read it about a half dozen times, and always find something new in it to think about. The beauty of the book is that on one level it's easy to read and understand, but yet on another level it's full of very profound ideas and concepts. I plan to use the footnotes leading to direct biblical quotations as a study guide for reading the bible. I've been reading a lot of your comments above, and you seem even more well read and knowledgeable about things than I thought, and I always thought that you were quite erudite to begin with. Are you planning to move over to Karlin's new blog? I don't know how much longer this one will last?.................

  1053. @LatW
    @A123

    And, btw, it's also because of this type of denigration of Germany that we are where we are today.

    Replies: @A123

    And, btw, it’s also because of this type of denigration of Germany that we are where we are today.

    My understanding is that German actors rather enthusiastically came across the channel to denigrate Nazis via Allo Allo. It helped that BBC pay was vastly higher than German TV at the time. However, it was not a career damaging decision to make some money in a very silly overseas role. Mocking Nazis was popular then, and remains popular today.

    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis. Everyone else, including the German people, never want to go back to that horror.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @songbird
    @A123


    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis.
     
    It is not a question of revering them. It is a question of what is the design and effect of making them the go to villains of the entire cultural sphere of the West, at least 10x more than any other group?

    The CCP has a design in endlessly portraying the Japanese as villains, both comically and otherwise. No seriously-minded person would suppose that it is to prevent WW3, or a modern invasion of China by the Japanese. But one can laugh at the endless villainous portrayals of the Japanese in Chinese media because Japan has its own cultural sphere. They don't consume a lot of Chinese media (nor, for the most part, does anyone else currently. especially WW2-themed), and any negative effects, if they exist, must be indirect.

    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn't a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn't been called a Nazi. In fact, I'll go beyond that, I'm not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn't been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.

    Replies: @iffen, @A123

  1054. @AP
    @Dmitry


    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want, with people they don’t like.
     
    Such people wouldn't be able to afford to pay a tax. Most of them are getting paid by the government to have kids in the form of welfare. The tax wouldn't affect rich people, either - they could afford it. Rich people tend to have many children. The tax would affect middle class hedonists though.

    On the other hand, middle class young people would be encouraged to view it as a “flex”, as not having children would become an indication of being wealthy.
     
    They can view it as they want. At least they would not be parasites.

    The tax should start at age 30. Not sure how "cool" it would be seen by a 30 or 40 year to be giving $233,000 to the government.

    However is doubtful that giving the government $233,000 would be seen as "cool" by anyone. Not be 20 year old, nor 30 more 40 year olds.

    but a lot would also emigrate to Europe. It would encourage a lot of these secular young single American women with professions that do not pay so much (artists, etc) going to Europe.
     
    Good riddance. Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah. They also tend to have bad teeth

    I think this is not true for the middle class people. Maybe in the working class area though. Although they have nationalized health so they shouldn’t.
     
    I've noticed this about British tourists, even in expensive places - bad teeth. I'm not alone, though this guy claims that bad teeth is only for those over 45. It affects even the wealthy:

    https://capcitydental.co.uk/bad-british-teeth-myth-or-reality/

    I have been in general practice, albeit in quite ‘high end’ areas in both Sydney and London, as well as having worked in (a wealthy suburb of ) Tel Aviv, Israel and spent two years doing post graduate study in Central Chicago, USA. So, I do have experience and opinions.

    The real differences between Britain and often much of the rest of the ‘western’ world, in relation to dentistry actually, surprisingly, is fairly Classless. The English upper classes (of a certain age), don’t have much better looking teeth than those traditionally ‘further down the ladder’.




    So what really is the state of the British smiles Vis a Vis the North American or European and what are the main differences based on? It seems, the roots are socio-economic and educational in nature and not just based on money or affordability.

    Take, for example one group: the middle class, educated, professional, white collar type of people. In Britain, the elderly, over their seventies simply expected to lose their teeth by their fifties and indeed it became a self-fulfilling prophesy for many. They were brought up on the concept of post war NHS where everyone is entitled to their NHS dentistry irrespective whether it is of good enough quality or not. For some it may be better not to know. So, many people lost their teeth and in fact they still feel that they can live without them (so long as they are not the upper front six).

    The young, those generally under thirty five, have straight, healthy good looking teeth, much like their North American or West European counterparts. They have benefitted from a more sensible diet, better oral hygiene, generally improved professional dental care (often ‘private’) and the increased use of orthodontics (‘braces’).

    The biggest differences still seen are in the middle aged … forty five to seventy year olds. They are likely to have been exposed to good quality , and so relatively expensive dentistry as mature adults after, often having experienced the ravages of ‘tons of fillings’ from when they were kids, poor quality or an absence of tooth straightening orthodontics, and parents who themselves didn’t have high expectations of tooth retention and aesthetics.

    I am still surprised by how many middle aged educated, comfortably off professionals are resistant to ‘fixing their own smiles’.

    These people, including the relative affluent professionals such as bankers, lawyers, accountants, doctors and even dentists themselves, accept what their West European, but particularly their North American counterparts would consider ‘ugly’ teeth. They often don’t seem to mind showing the odd black hole (missing tooth), as long as it isn’t right in the front. They don’t mind having crooked, yellowed teeth, often with unaesthetic obvious dentistry, visible. When confronted, they often will say that they won’t pander to the ‘Hollywood standard’. Their appearance is not a priority, they have neither the time nor the money nor need to expend on, often perceived to be expensive, extensive dentistry. Moreover, they are, they claim, quite apprehensive of going to the dentist, recounting horror stories of NHS dentistry from their distant youth. They give all the reasons for sweeping the issue of smile aesthetics under the carpet.

    One good way of seeing comparisons, as they are more often ‘in the public eye’ is to look at politicians from different countries. It’s quite funny how it hits the headlines in the UK press when a political leader has had their smiles fixed … Maggie Thatcher, Gordon Brown etc. It actually makes news here!

    I have been working in the heart of the UK financial district, the City of London for almost two decades. I am still surprised by how many middle aged educated, comfortably off professionals are resistant to ‘fixing their own smiles’. These are the same people who often made sure their own children had lovely straight teeth.

    So having said that, these views are a generalisation, but they still hold true today. With the passage of time as the mature younger adults do become middle aged, the British attitudes to smile aesthetics will change and the ‘ugly British teeth’ will become more of a ‘historical’ myth.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Lol because you didn’t add quotation indicators (” “) I thought for a few seconds that you were an international dentist who has worked in Sydney, Tel Aviv, London and Chicago (I was going to say “wow your career is interesting”).

    Dentists notice peoples’ teeth as they have to see them all the time.

    But the teeth of the middle people in the United Kingdom, are not something scary enough that normal people would notice. It’s a developed country with a high level of health by international standards – i.e. the people just look like in developed countries.

    In terms of women, of course most young women are attractive in any (developed) country.

    The important thing is always whether you know any which found you attractive, rather than the other way round – as women are usually deciding in the end not men.

    So I never understood people arguing about this. Young women mostly look attractive everywhere in the developed world. (The sad thing is that youth is short, and most everyone doesn’t look good forever).

    young, those generally under thirty five, have straight, healthy good looking teeth, much like their

    Well those are usually the people who need to care about being romantically attractive.

    . Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    It would be good for Europe – to receive immigration of young American single women.

    Also it might encourage some very educated American women to exit America. For example, Condoleezza Rice did not have children, but has things like successful career and education.

    how “cool” it would be seen by a 30 or 40 year to be giving \$233,000 to the government.

    However is doubtful that giving the government \$233,000 would be seen as “cool” by anyone. Not be 20 year old, nor 30 more 40 year olds.

    It means that people without children would be doing well financially, so it would be status symbol and sign of being an elite caste.

    Giving money to the government is not pleasant, but being able to afford it would be.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    Dentists notice peoples’ teeth as they have to see them all the time.

    But the teeth of the middle people in the United Kingdom, are not something scary enough that normal people would notice.

     

    I've noticed. It's quite jarring. I am over 45 so these people had bad teeth when they were young too.

    English teeth are so bad that even Mexicans have an expression abut bad teeth:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/60z21s/til_in_mexico_they_have_a_term_for_bad_teeth/

    "in Mexico they have a term for bad teeth, dientes Ingles, which translates as English teeth."

    Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    It would be good for Europe – to receive immigration of young American single women
     
    You would get open borders and other terrible policies then have to take care of them in their old age. Good luck.

    It means that people without children would be doing well financially, so it would be status symbol and sign of being an elite caste.

    Giving money to the government is not pleasant, but being able to afford it would be.
     
    So would a Lamborghini or something. The idea of rich people (who tend to have large families) choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government is fantastically absurd.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  1055. @Mikel
    @AP


    with a percentage of 66.9% Anglo-Americans, the small city of Hildale, UT, is the most ethnically English city in the entire United States
     
    I've been to Hildale, the town of the Mormon Fundamentalists. We actually spent one night there. It was very interesting to see all these people with prairie dresses and early pioneer looks, I found it more exotic than my trip to the Amazon jungle, where I didn't see any proper Indians. Such is the variety of people you find in the US. But it was a bit of a freak show too. Mormon Fundamentalists not only continue practicing polygamy but they also have a problem of endogamy due to no or little inflow from outside. You could see that clearly on some faces. Apparently, they have a large number of miscarriages due to this reason but nobody keeps too much track of what they do in their closed communities.

    Mainstream Mormons don't want to be associated with these people at all. They tend to change the subject when you ask about them.

    People in Britain tend to be overweight – not as much as American midwesterners and southerners, but more so than people from Utah.
     
    I'm pretty certain that morbid obesity is more prevalent in Utah overall than in England or any other European country.

    Replies: @AP

    I’ve been to Hildale, the town of the Mormon Fundamentalists. We actually spent one night there.

    I’ve been there too. I agree it is a very interesting place.

    I’m pretty certain that morbid obesity is more prevalent in Utah overall than in England or any other European country.

    Obesity rate in Utah is 25.3% (24.7% for people of European descent):

    https://www.deseret.com/2018/9/13/20653364/here-s-where-utah-ranks-among-the-most-obese-states

    and in England it is 31%:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_Kingdom

  1056. @German_reader
    @songbird


    Would ban poli-sci.
     
    I'm also deeply suspicious of the subject. I guess one might learn some useful statistical skills (doesn't AK have a political science degree?), but much of it must be pure ideology. I recently looked up the new young members of the Bundestag for Germany's Greens, and almost all of them have got degrees in political science, social science, international relations etc. (a few also in Islamwissenschaften), which I found rather telling.

    Don’t know what it is with these people, who try to project their virtue-signaling about racism into the past.
     
    tbf there have also been long attempts by right-wingers to compare the current migration issue to the barbarian migrations in late antiquity. But there's also a multiculti interpretation of the Roman empire, I remember a German leftie wrote an entire book a few years ago about how the Romans were a model for the contemporary world, because they were so open to foreigners and constantly integrated new groups. Admittedly that isn't a total construct (to some extent the Romans did emphasize the heterogeneity of their origins and their openness to immigrants and freedmen, in contrast to Athenians, Spartans and other Greeks with their pride of blood and restrictive citizenship laws; and in the end "Roman" became a universal identity encompassing the entire empire)...but when your model is what was basically a military despotism that frequently employed extreme violence against resistance...

    Don’t know whether to think of it as lip service, or whether he and Macron, etc, are genuinely worried about much faster inflows, for reasons of regime stability, though they are obviously not against replacement migration at the current (breakneck) rate.
     
    Seems quite likely as an explanation to me. Debate in France seems to be shifting steadily to the right, even the former Brexit negotiator Barnier recently called for an immigration moratorium. But I suspect much of that is just rhetoric to keep people from voting for the hard right (don't know what exactly motivates Johnson, since he doesn't face such a threat in Britain).

    Replies: @songbird, @Coconuts, @songbird

    Any thoughts on Gaetano Mosca’s idea that Germans of that time were morally superior to the Romans? (such as being more chaste)

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird

    I don't think one can really know anything about that with certainty. Sure, Tacitus writes things like "there isn't much adultery among the Germanic peoples, and adulteresses are publicly shamed and are unable to find another husband". But he may not have had any personal experience at all of Germany, and it may be mostly just a moralizing discourse aimed at criticizing Roman society through the contrast with Germanic "noble savages".
    This is probably a general problem. Earlier this year I read Tacitus' Agricola, and the ethnographic material about Britain is mostly pretty vague and unspecific. So it's not really clear if it's just a rehash of topoi about barbarian societies and what its relation to actual reality was.

    Replies: @songbird

  1057. @Dmitry
    @AP

    Lol because you didn't add quotation indicators (" ") I thought for a few seconds that you were an international dentist who has worked in Sydney, Tel Aviv, London and Chicago (I was going to say "wow your career is interesting").

    Dentists notice peoples' teeth as they have to see them all the time.

    But the teeth of the middle people in the United Kingdom, are not something scary enough that normal people would notice. It's a developed country with a high level of health by international standards - i.e. the people just look like in developed countries.

    -

    In terms of women, of course most young women are attractive in any (developed) country.

    The important thing is always whether you know any which found you attractive, rather than the other way round - as women are usually deciding in the end not men.

    So I never understood people arguing about this. Young women mostly look attractive everywhere in the developed world. (The sad thing is that youth is short, and most everyone doesn't look good forever).


    young, those generally under thirty five, have straight, healthy good looking teeth, much like their

     

    Well those are usually the people who need to care about being romantically attractive.

    . Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.
     
    It would be good for Europe - to receive immigration of young American single women.

    Also it might encourage some very educated American women to exit America. For example, Condoleezza Rice did not have children, but has things like successful career and education.


    how “cool” it would be seen by a 30 or 40 year to be giving $233,000 to the government.

    However is doubtful that giving the government $233,000 would be seen as “cool” by anyone. Not be 20 year old, nor 30 more 40 year olds.
     

    It means that people without children would be doing well financially, so it would be status symbol and sign of being an elite caste.

    Giving money to the government is not pleasant, but being able to afford it would be.

    Replies: @AP

    Dentists notice peoples’ teeth as they have to see them all the time.

    But the teeth of the middle people in the United Kingdom, are not something scary enough that normal people would notice.

    I’ve noticed. It’s quite jarring. I am over 45 so these people had bad teeth when they were young too.

    English teeth are so bad that even Mexicans have an expression abut bad teeth:

    TIL in Mexico they have a term for bad teeth, dientes Ingles, which translates as English teeth. from todayilearned

    “in Mexico they have a term for bad teeth, dientes Ingles, which translates as English teeth.”

    Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    It would be good for Europe – to receive immigration of young American single women

    You would get open borders and other terrible policies then have to take care of them in their old age. Good luck.

    It means that people without children would be doing well financially, so it would be status symbol and sign of being an elite caste.

    Giving money to the government is not pleasant, but being able to afford it would be.

    So would a Lamborghini or something. The idea of rich people (who tend to have large families) choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government is fantastically absurd.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @AP


    choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government
     
    It just means that not having children would become a "flex" - because poor people would be forced to have children.

    It might be stupid, but that's how "flexes" are made. You charge $40,000 tuition to study a non-practical "Political science" in Dartmouth or Brown University, and then it becomes prestigious.

    English teeth are so bad
     
    But it's not something I noticed. Perhaps I am not interested in teeth?


    -
    I don't think I ever heard anyone worry about English people because of their teeth. Actually if you come to work in the Kingdom, it will be their personality you might have some issues with, rather than their teeth (which I didn't notice anything special there).

    It reminds me yesterday, I was watching the BBC documentary "Rich Russian Living in London" on YouTube, and the children are even saying to the BBC that they cannot understand English peoples' personality. https://youtu.be/fDuSONULNXk?t=1399. What they told the BBC is every guest worker will notice. English people's personality is usually seeming friendly, but then can sometimes be more cold than you expected. This is the impression compared to the other nationalities working or studying in the United Kingdom.

    But all the immigrants are friendly with each other there.

    Replies: @AP

  1058. @LatW
    @Dmitry


    Such a tax would only effect poor young people, who would be forced to have children they don’t want
     
    Women want children, often by the time they're 23-25, East Slavic women possibly even earlier.

    with people they don’t like
     
    Again, women, if they have intimacy with somebody already like him enough to desire a relationship or for him to at least stick around for a while. That's just female psychology. Men are different and I don't know if there's a solution there, lol. There used to be back in the day.

    Glamorous young women of the 21st century, will not usually be wanting to stay in the village, having lots of children and changing diapers.
     
    Ever wonder why they're "glamorous"? It's not just to drink champagne with girlfriends, but because they're looking for somebody special. The goal is still the same. Maybe they don't want several children, but rather 1 or 2 with a guy who they are attracted to and who can simultaneously give them a nice living standard (the only problem is that those kinds of guys are a little scarce, hence "glamorous"). Eventually those types of women will want to move out of the city anyway, hopefully, to a nice neighborhood in the outskirts of the city.

    These childless taxes were in place in stricter societies, to keep those societies functional. Btw, there was such a tax in the SU as well. Our current societies are too diverse for that. Now there are real obstacles to family formation for many people even if they actually want it.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Women want children, often by the time they’re 23-25, East Slavic

    Most of the women don’t have their first children until almost 30 now.

    East Slavic women

    Most slavic women in Russia nowadays only have one child.

    This is the problem – almost 90% of women in Russia have children, but the majority slavic women are only one child.

    Under AP’s policy, the \$233,000 tax would have to be adjusted for Russian incomes of course, otherwise more than half the population that fails to attain replacement fertility, will be in debt for life.

    why they’re “glamorous”? It’s not just to drink champagne with girlfriends, but because they’re looking for somebody special. The goal is still the same. Maybe they don’t want several children, but rather 1 or 2 with a guy who they are attracted to and who can simultaneously give them a nice living standard

    Of course they want a boyfriend. But the situation in Russia where young women are flooding into the wealthy large cities, especially like Moscow (and at even much higher rates than young men who are also flooding) – is going to further down pressure on the fertility rate.

    The country is becoming mega-cities, with glamorous people in the centre, and young women flooding into the successful cities. While in the unsuccessful cities – the opposite happens.

    So a median successful place in Russia like Kurgan region, that “donates” young people to Sverdlovsk region, will have a tsunami of aging population.

    those Dead Sea spas are really nice. There is a special rejuvenating mud or some type of mineral from the Dead Sea

    Resorts there like Ein Bokek are actually really anti-glamorous and underinvested.

    It’s also sad what happens with the Dead Sea, because it’s drying so fast, as well as being damaged by industry, and the governments (Israel and Jordan) are unable to co-operate to save it.

    If they could solve the problems, it should have natural advantages for tourism – aside from floating, you don’t sun burn there much because it’s the lowest place in the world.

    You mean two original doses and a booster? I’m not too psyched about getting a booster shot every 6 months

    I think you need to have a certificate for 2 doses and booster within 6 months of entering the airport for Israel.

    I haven’t been in Israel for more than 3 years now, and started to get withdrawal symptoms. I just want to walk around Bat Yam and experience its dystopia again.

    Why secular Poles were suddenly mass vacationing there is a bit mysterious for me (apart from fall in the plane ticket price). Most Poles seem to hate their current government, so maybe Israel was doing good tourism advertising by attacking the current Polish government?

    Actually ever Polish person I’ve heard from, hates their government, is socially very liberal and are extreme nationalists. I don’t think anyone will understand them.

  1059. @AaronB
    @Mr. Hack

    Thanks, Mr Hack, I took the time to read the entire pamphlet through. It is very good - brief and to the point.

    I am in substance in agreement with it, and can understand why you value this so much.

    My only difference is that I take the more "mystic" view that we are already in theosis, and spirituality is about becoming "aware" of this fact.

    While we agree on the most desirable end state, we disagree over how to reach it. I understand this is a significant difference, but I feel that doesn't diminish the basic sympathy between our views on another level.

    As for marriage and children, I agree with you that this is a secondary goal from a spiritual perspective.

    Indeed, many spiritual traditions view unmarried men and women as performing a valuable role in reminding people that family life is a worldly thing, and not the primary goal of man.

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it's a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment - this creates a very "anti-natalist" atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    When seen as a duty, it pertains to worldly success and the wealth and power of the community, and not man's ultimate aim in theosis, or even man proper enjoyment of life on earth in the form of joy.

    Replies: @AP, @LatW, @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

    grim duty

    Why did you add “grim” to “duty?”

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Even though it sounds like you find immense pleasure in child rearing, it appears that many don't, if a large segment of society has to be coerced to consider the negative consequences of not taking up this "duty". A penalty tax (and there's really no other way to describe it) of $233,000 is quite a bit, especially if you consider that most Americans, single or married, have very meager resources put away in savings. The mean average in 2021 is $41,600 whereas the median average is only $5,300. $5,300 is really only one small heartbeat away from a disaster leading to bankruptcy. Bankruptcies are probably way up too.

    Even if you divide the $233,000 tax into 30 years of even payments, that would take care of the $5,300 that many folks have in savings (or even less) for the entire 30 year period. I wouldn't want to be the politician pitching this extra onerous tax and expect to be reelected.

    Replies: @AP

  1060. @AP
    @Dmitry


    Dentists notice peoples’ teeth as they have to see them all the time.

    But the teeth of the middle people in the United Kingdom, are not something scary enough that normal people would notice.

     

    I've noticed. It's quite jarring. I am over 45 so these people had bad teeth when they were young too.

    English teeth are so bad that even Mexicans have an expression abut bad teeth:

    https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/60z21s/til_in_mexico_they_have_a_term_for_bad_teeth/

    "in Mexico they have a term for bad teeth, dientes Ingles, which translates as English teeth."

    Childless women are the worst voters imaginable.

    It would be good for Europe – to receive immigration of young American single women
     
    You would get open borders and other terrible policies then have to take care of them in their old age. Good luck.

    It means that people without children would be doing well financially, so it would be status symbol and sign of being an elite caste.

    Giving money to the government is not pleasant, but being able to afford it would be.
     
    So would a Lamborghini or something. The idea of rich people (who tend to have large families) choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government is fantastically absurd.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government

    It just means that not having children would become a “flex” – because poor people would be forced to have children.

    It might be stupid, but that’s how “flexes” are made. You charge \$40,000 tuition to study a non-practical “Political science” in Dartmouth or Brown University, and then it becomes prestigious.

    English teeth are so bad

    But it’s not something I noticed. Perhaps I am not interested in teeth?


    I don’t think I ever heard anyone worry about English people because of their teeth. Actually if you come to work in the Kingdom, it will be their personality you might have some issues with, rather than their teeth (which I didn’t notice anything special there).

    It reminds me yesterday, I was watching the BBC documentary “Rich Russian Living in London” on YouTube, and the children are even saying to the BBC that they cannot understand English peoples’ personality. https://youtu.be/fDuSONULNXk?t=1399. What they told the BBC is every guest worker will notice. English people’s personality is usually seeming friendly, but then can sometimes be more cold than you expected. This is the impression compared to the other nationalities working or studying in the United Kingdom.

    But all the immigrants are friendly with each other there.

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry


    choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government

    It just means that not having children would become a “flex” – because poor people would be forced to have children.
     
    Flexes involve showing off - diamond jewelry, Patek Phillipe watch, flashy car, attending an expensive gala where a ticket costs $20,000 and one gets one's picture in the paper. Not overpaying to the government lol. BTW, one can do that now - one can choose not to have accountants minimize taxes and overpay them instead.

    Also, of course, rich people like to have lots of kids. Flexing typically involves self-indulgence of some sort, not deprivation.

    You charge $40,000 tuition to study a non-practical “Political science” in Dartmouth or Brown University, and then it becomes prestigious.
     
    This is done for purposes of connections, to make sure one's kid has the right friends and spouses.

    English teeth are so bad

    But it’s not something I noticed. Perhaps I am not interested in teeth?
     
    Teeth were pretty bad in the USSR too, so that which is very noticeable for a Westerner might not be for an ex-Soviet. However everything was bad in the USSR so it wasn't as noticeable, whereas Britain is a first world country and the bad teeth stand out.
  1061. @songbird
    I shall throw out my highly-offensive theory about modern invasions vs. past ones, before it is too late:

    To a certain extent, one can think of the PIE invasion of India, or the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica as invasions by the Northern Y-chromosome. That is how ancient, barbarian invasions usually worked. Men conquered, bringing relatively few women, but seizing local ones.

    But the modern invasion of the UK by Indians (And the earlier invasion by the Gypsies) or the invasion of the US by Central Americans, or Africans, is more like invasion by the Southern X-chromosome (whether carried by males or females).

    Instead of invasion by swords or testosterone, it is invasion by bringing wombs and by nagging. By estrogen. This is the reason that the rhetoric of foreigners denouncing past colonialism or Euro ethnocentrism (which they call "racism"), whether coming from males or females, often seems so whorish and bitchy, so sickeningly debased. It is not warrior rhetoric about strength and brave deeds, but nagging, concubine rhetoric about gibs and "fairness."

    Call it, revenge of the Dravidian X-chromosome. (Or of the Maya, or Bantu one, etc. as the case may be.)

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Beckow, @sher singh

    …invasion by nagging. By estrogen.

    It is even stronger, there is an undercurrent of deep hatred, an attempt to overcome one’s sense of inadequacy, to bring others down – others perceived as better and hated for it. Whether Bantu, Dravidian, Moor, Semitic, mestizo, right under the surface there is hatred of Europe and Europeans because they have done so much better, and because Europe’s success highlights their own failure.

    Any interaction with people who hate you, good or bad, is pointless. Discussions with them lead nowhere, more Europeans give in, more they escalate – that’s the way hatred works.

    • Agree: songbird
  1062. @sudden death
    @songbird


    BTW, well done on claiming the 1000th comment spot! I wonder if that is a first(/last) for AK’s open thread on UNZ? I wonder how many would break the page? Maybe, we will find out…
     
    lol, it seems nobody really wants to migrate to that primitive substack commenting system and all are milking way more convenient possibility to the last possible drop :)

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @A123, @Dmitry

    Perhaps we could just ask Unz if he can make an “Open thread” for us every month? He doesn’t have to write a starter post for us and we are kind of well-behaving people so we almost moderated ourselves, it wouldn’t be more than 1 minute extra work for him per month.

    Does anyone here have “good rapport” with Unz? (German Reader?) We could send you as the diplomat of our community, to approach Unz and see if he can make open threads for us.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    Does anyone here have “good rapport” with Unz? (German Reader?)
     
    I don't have any special rapport with Ron Unz (actually he once suggested I might be a Jewish activist only pretending to be German, because I had made some rather mild criticism of his WW2 pieces). But I like your idea, maybe one should indeed ask for it. Not sure though if it's fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @iffen

  1063. @songbird
    I shall throw out my highly-offensive theory about modern invasions vs. past ones, before it is too late:

    To a certain extent, one can think of the PIE invasion of India, or the Spanish invasion of Mesoamerica as invasions by the Northern Y-chromosome. That is how ancient, barbarian invasions usually worked. Men conquered, bringing relatively few women, but seizing local ones.

    But the modern invasion of the UK by Indians (And the earlier invasion by the Gypsies) or the invasion of the US by Central Americans, or Africans, is more like invasion by the Southern X-chromosome (whether carried by males or females).

    Instead of invasion by swords or testosterone, it is invasion by bringing wombs and by nagging. By estrogen. This is the reason that the rhetoric of foreigners denouncing past colonialism or Euro ethnocentrism (which they call "racism"), whether coming from males or females, often seems so whorish and bitchy, so sickeningly debased. It is not warrior rhetoric about strength and brave deeds, but nagging, concubine rhetoric about gibs and "fairness."

    Call it, revenge of the Dravidian X-chromosome. (Or of the Maya, or Bantu one, etc. as the case may be.)

    Replies: @Dmitry, @Beckow, @sher singh

    Are you suggesting Anglos aren’t passive-aggressive homosexuals?
    Feminism, LGBT aren’t these all your cultural products?

    Why would any proud race not hold in contempt a conqueror who demands you fuck his daughter?
    We hold you to the same standard,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Replies: @songbird
    @sher singh


    Are you suggesting Anglos aren’t passive-aggressive homosexuals?
    Feminism, LGBT aren’t these all your cultural products?
     
    LMAO. For the last time - I am not an Anglo!

    But, nevertheless, your comments about homosexuals, miscegenation, and pride have struck close to home. The nation of my blood has been ruled by a gay Indian mischling, who calls my people, who trace their main descent in the land back about 1000 years before the Aryans arrived in India, "white." What greater degradation than that?

    Replies: @sher singh

  1064. @songbird
    @Yellowface Anon

    It is an interesting question whether city-sates have the scale capacity to resolve problems with migration.

    For example, does Singapore have the military force necessary to compel countries to accept returnees? I'd guess not. (Worth noting only time the powerful US got serious was when Mexico wanted the labor back.) How well would they handle mass crowds on the street? (maybe, China could pull off a "little green men" stunt?) Could they load them onto boats and force the boats out? Maybe, the financial sector could provide enough leverage? Or, maybe, they could raise rents on them? Or penalize companies more?

    Reading a bit into Singapore's situation, it seems as though there have been very minimal efforts to decrease the number of migrants, so far, so no real test.

    BTW, I think Spandrell is right about HK: it is all about status. Quite similar to progressive urbanites disparaging rednecks. Or maybe house slaves disparaging the field hands.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    They do – they have conscription and a lot of military hardware that gives them an Israeli-like position in SE Asia (and of course, securing Straits-Chinese independence in a sea of Austronesians). But they are already like Persian Gulf states in the treatment of guest workers – near-indentured servants.

    It’s probably very ironic that HKers supporting Trump and reading a lot of Epoch Times-fueled half-truths are most similar in socio-economic position to where you’ve pinned. But the “rednecks” here are even more fervent in their separatist cause. (The biggest stereotypes of mainland Chinese immigrants in HK are poor middle-age housewifes or cramming drones, neither of them having any classiness HKers see in themselves)

  1065. @A123
    @LatW


    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste.
     
    Your accusation is internally inconsistent. Is it:
    -- A serious matter that will blow up relations?
    -- A trivial matter that can easily be ignored as mere aftertaste?

    If Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up
     
    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy. Putin's personal endorsement of Merkel's WokeStream 2 anti-Poland policy is a serious problem. However, I doubt it has pushed Poland into openly declaring against Russia.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel “the global SJW leader” when she’s only one of them.
     
    I never said she was the only SJW leader. However, she is certainly first among European equals. All others must *come to Europe, and bend the knee* at the WEF Davos conference that annually reinforces, SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany.... So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.

    when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse
     
    So... Showy, inept, and 100% ineffectual?

    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of 'important' families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.

    Has Chelsea Clinton joined the 'State Department' yet? Or, is she still in 'journalism'?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @LatW, @LatW

    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy.

    Who knows, if Americans and Brits were not in the picture (hypothetically), and it were a purely regional cooperation, Russia may not be as angry or agitated by it.

    It might be that what really angers Russia is that relatively weak states that used to be under her dominion try to act “equal” and occasionally show disrespect for Russia. If those states were stronger (economically and militarily) and learned to show at least a little bit of respect towards Russia or at least be quiet — of course, without giving up their self-respect– then Russia might no longer be as angry.

    In the EU…. SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.

    For this to change what I said above needs to be met. Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany…. So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.

    This kind of a tone reminds me of how some conservative Americans used to dislike the Scandinavian model. They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.

    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of ‘important’ families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.

    You have a point there. However, just the very fact that they put the restitution issue so high on the agenda for so many years… is alienating. And there will most likely be other such “campaigns” in the future. Let’s say, meddling with our newly budding tech industries — in order to keep them away from “third actors”. Sure… maybe that’s needed, but the lack of respect there… is just not that pleasant. It could be done in a more delicate and fraternal way, horizontal way, rather. Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.

    • Replies: @A123
    @LatW


    They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.
     
    A poorly chosen example on my part. I withdraw it.

    It is obvious that Germany's "Open Muslim Borders" policy, created by Merkel with 0% input from America, is the reason why Sweden is the Murder capital of Europe (1)

    Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe,’ writes Germany’s top-selling newspaper

    The former model country has turned into a real nightmare since 2005 as violent crime has exploded
    ...

    “In the EU, an average of eight people per million people are victims of fatal violence. In Sweden, the number in 2020 was twelve people per million inhabitants. When it comes to the victims of firearms, the difference between Europe and Sweden is even greater. In the EU, an average of 1.6 people per million people die from gunshot wounds – in Sweden the figure is four, almost three times as many,” Bild writes.

    While murders have been steadily falling in other European countries, in Sweden they are rising. Much of the crime is fueled by migrants and migrant clans, which operate in the country’s biggest cities.
     
    The problem is woke Germany. 80% of Germans vote Woke, because they like Woke, and want more Woke. I will not believe otherwise until AfD, or another non Woke party, wins a German election.

    Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.
     
    I do not see Christian Poland or Christian Hungary changing to be like Germany. Germany's SJW Muslim beliefs and V4 Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no way that any Christian country can accept Open Muslim Borders and survive.

    Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.
     
    Do you believe the State Department has something to do with foreign relations? That is very naive on you part. In practice the State Department is about U.S. domestic policy.

    No one serious is 'alienated' or deems it severely 'unpleasant'. They recognize it for what it is. A place where wealthy donors and the scions of society receive clever titles. To be offensive at a policy level, one must first have credibility. And, you will not find credibility at the State Department.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/article/sweden-is-the-most-dangerous-country-in-europe-writes-germanys-top-selling-newspaper/

    Replies: @LatW, @LatW

  1066. @A123
    @LatW


    And, btw, it’s also because of this type of denigration of Germany that we are where we are today.
     
    My understanding is that German actors rather enthusiastically came across the channel to denigrate Nazis via Allo Allo. It helped that BBC pay was vastly higher than German TV at the time. However, it was not a career damaging decision to make some money in a very silly overseas role. Mocking Nazis was popular then, and remains popular today.

    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis. Everyone else, including the German people, never want to go back to that horror.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @songbird

    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis.

    It is not a question of revering them. It is a question of what is the design and effect of making them the go to villains of the entire cultural sphere of the West, at least 10x more than any other group?

    The CCP has a design in endlessly portraying the Japanese as villains, both comically and otherwise. No seriously-minded person would suppose that it is to prevent WW3, or a modern invasion of China by the Japanese. But one can laugh at the endless villainous portrayals of the Japanese in Chinese media because Japan has its own cultural sphere. They don’t consume a lot of Chinese media (nor, for the most part, does anyone else currently. especially WW2-themed), and any negative effects, if they exist, must be indirect.

    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn’t a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn’t been called a Nazi. In fact, I’ll go beyond that, I’m not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn’t been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.

    • Thanks: LatW
    • Replies: @iffen
    @songbird

    Poor Nazis, the Charlie Brown of villains.

    Replies: @songbird

    , @A123
    @songbird


    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn’t a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn’t been called a Nazi. In fact, I’ll go beyond that, I’m not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn’t been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.
     
    You are attempting to connect two different things. There is always a 'most hated' group. If it was not the Nazis it would be something else.

    The SJW Lügenpresse would be using that 'most hated' group name to smear those who oppose Open Muslim Borders. Thus the fact that it is Nazi rather than something else bears no relevance to your argument.
    ____

    Orwell is a correct reference, but the touchpoint is rather different:

    SJW = NAZI

    Why does SJW Fascism deploys the term Nazi against its foes? It us an attempt to "muddy the water" thus impeding effective communication. They do not want it accurately used about them. The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.

    This is not new. Leftoids have been damaging the language for some time. You cannot have National Socialism without 'left' Socialism. In any rational paradigm, National Socialism would be correctly aligned as an 'extreme left' belief system. SJW Orwellian manipulation has moved the term to be 'far right' even though that makes no sense for a Socialist belief system.
    _______

    I keep hoping that people of Europe will wake up. (1) (2)

    Germany: Muslim Afghan ‘refugee’ destroys statue of Christ inside pro-migrant Lutheran church

    Any German vandalizing a mosque could expect to be charged with hate crimes, yet the German media only spoke of “religious differences” in explaining the possible motives behind the attack, writes Daniel Deme
     

    In Witzenhausen-Gertenbach, Germany, a Turkish national plowed his car into a group of schoolchildren on Friday, Oct. 29. An eight-year-old girl was transferred to a hospital but died hours later, and two girls aged seven and eight were seriously injured. Although the police initially believed it was an accident, new evidence has come to light, and the 30-year-old driver is now being investigated for murder, the HNA news portal reports.

    Police believe the man drove into the group of elementary school students on purpose, according to Der Tagesspiegel. Therefore, the case is now being investigated as a case of murder and dangerous bodily harm.
     
    Whether you agree with me that SJW is a Muslim belief. Or, naively believe SJW's are importing Muslims for some other reason:

    The horror of Islamic violence against defenseless Christian children is unacceptable. Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.

    The only solution to save Christianity in Europe is "Muslim Zero". Merely closing Merkel's Open Muslim Borders and reversing Merkel's Welcome Rape-ugees, is not enough. Those incapable of Judeo-Christian assimilation must be sent home.

    Step #1 in fixing the SJW problem in Europe is reducing the number of SJW aligned migrants. And, everyone should be able to easily agree on that point. If nothing else, they are damaging to the continent's future on an HBD basis.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://rmx.news/egyeb/germany-afghan-muslim-refugee-destroys-statue-of-jesus-christ-inside-pro-migrant-lutheran-church/

    (2) https://rmx.news/article/germany-turkish-man-accused-of-intentionally-driving-into-group-of-children-killing-an-8-year-old-girl-in-witzenhausen-gertenbach/

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird

  1067. @AP
    @German_reader

    I like him more now

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Because Johnson is a hereditary English elite.

    This is how they show their dominance against the English professional slaves that do not have time to learn the Iliad in Ancient Greek (engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc).

    It also allows him to communicate with English children nerds i.e. the demographic that inspired Harry Potter films.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Dmitry

    Even Wikipedia does not understand his number of children.

    https://i.imgur.com/mdNwvEN.jpg



    And there are issues with violence
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWIUp19bBoA

    Replies: @AP

  1068. @AaronB
    @Mr. Hack

    Thanks, Mr Hack, I took the time to read the entire pamphlet through. It is very good - brief and to the point.

    I am in substance in agreement with it, and can understand why you value this so much.

    My only difference is that I take the more "mystic" view that we are already in theosis, and spirituality is about becoming "aware" of this fact.

    While we agree on the most desirable end state, we disagree over how to reach it. I understand this is a significant difference, but I feel that doesn't diminish the basic sympathy between our views on another level.

    As for marriage and children, I agree with you that this is a secondary goal from a spiritual perspective.

    Indeed, many spiritual traditions view unmarried men and women as performing a valuable role in reminding people that family life is a worldly thing, and not the primary goal of man.

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it's a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment - this creates a very "anti-natalist" atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    When seen as a duty, it pertains to worldly success and the wealth and power of the community, and not man's ultimate aim in theosis, or even man proper enjoyment of life on earth in the form of joy.

    Replies: @AP, @LatW, @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it’s a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment – this creates a very “anti-natalist” atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    It’s not a grim duty, but what most people have desired for millennia. If not marriage, then some kind of a permanent heterosexual companionship involving the perpetuation of one’s genes. The joy does not need to “be stressed”, it comes on its own, naturally. And as to punishment, as you say, in many cases it is actually mothers that are punished with smaller retirement funds at the end of their lives.

    And now this woke “pregnant people” concept is another slap in the women’s face. Now they’re going to try to take credit away from motherhood. Truly infuriating.

  1069. @Dmitry
    @AP

    Because Johnson is a hereditary English elite.

    This is how they show their dominance against the English professional slaves that do not have time to learn the Iliad in Ancient Greek (engineers, accountants, doctors, lawyers, etc).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia7N5MSlSTo

    It also allows him to communicate with English children nerds i.e. the demographic that inspired Harry Potter films.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYeG05WNGTI

    Replies: @Dmitry

    Even Wikipedia does not understand his number of children.

    And there are issues with violence

    • Replies: @AP
    @Dmitry

    An awseome guy.

    Replies: @Not Raul

  1070. @A123
    @LatW


    However, the WWII claims, unfortunately, are an issue. Not between Israel and EE, but the US and EE. Even though Poland did well, it leaves a very bad aftertaste.
     
    Your accusation is internally inconsistent. Is it:
    -- A serious matter that will blow up relations?
    -- A trivial matter that can easily be ignored as mere aftertaste?

    If Poland collaborated with Ukraine more this could be sped up
     
    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy. Putin's personal endorsement of Merkel's WokeStream 2 anti-Poland policy is a serious problem. However, I doubt it has pushed Poland into openly declaring against Russia.

    As to Germany, you called Merkel “the global SJW leader” when she’s only one of them.
     
    I never said she was the only SJW leader. However, she is certainly first among European equals. All others must *come to Europe, and bend the knee* at the WEF Davos conference that annually reinforces, SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany.... So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.

    when it comes to woke projections into the EE, the State Dept is worse
     
    So... Showy, inept, and 100% ineffectual?

    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of 'important' families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.

    Has Chelsea Clinton joined the 'State Department' yet? Or, is she still in 'journalism'?

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

    Replies: @LatW, @LatW

    I never said she was the only SJW leader.

    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others. Because she did that back in 2015, there are now economic migrants walking out of the woods and hanging around in the meadows on the Polish border where the Polish border guards have to shoo them away. And who keep yelling “No Belarus, No Poland! Germany, Germany!”.

    Poor Germany.

    • LOL: A123
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @LatW


    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others.
     
    It's really bad on those Greek islands where large numbers of migrants keep landing, must be hell for the natives. I can understand that the local Greeks hate the German (and other Northern European) NGO types active there.
    So while I would argue that Germany's asylum policy is above all insanely self-destructive, you're right, it does have highly negative effects on other Europeans too and cannot but strain relations of transit countries with Germany.

    Replies: @LatW, @A123

  1071. @sher singh
    @songbird

    Are you suggesting Anglos aren't passive-aggressive homosexuals?
    Feminism, LGBT aren't these all your cultural products?

    Why would any proud race not hold in contempt a conqueror who demands you fuck his daughter?
    We hold you to the same standard,

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    Replies: @songbird

    Are you suggesting Anglos aren’t passive-aggressive homosexuals?
    Feminism, LGBT aren’t these all your cultural products?

    LMAO. For the last time – I am not an Anglo!

    But, nevertheless, your comments about homosexuals, miscegenation, and pride have struck close to home. The nation of my blood has been ruled by a gay Indian mischling, who calls my people, who trace their main descent in the land back about 1000 years before the Aryans arrived in India, “white.” What greater degradation than that?

    • Replies: @sher singh
    @songbird

    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/857977247289442335/905670186374414396/unknown.png



    https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/640459736919048202/905675895744892928/unknown.png

    https://scottishsikh.wordpress.com/2020/04/20/nihang-baba-tara-singh/

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  1072. @songbird
    @A123


    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis.
     
    It is not a question of revering them. It is a question of what is the design and effect of making them the go to villains of the entire cultural sphere of the West, at least 10x more than any other group?

    The CCP has a design in endlessly portraying the Japanese as villains, both comically and otherwise. No seriously-minded person would suppose that it is to prevent WW3, or a modern invasion of China by the Japanese. But one can laugh at the endless villainous portrayals of the Japanese in Chinese media because Japan has its own cultural sphere. They don't consume a lot of Chinese media (nor, for the most part, does anyone else currently. especially WW2-themed), and any negative effects, if they exist, must be indirect.

    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn't a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn't been called a Nazi. In fact, I'll go beyond that, I'm not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn't been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.

    Replies: @iffen, @A123

    Poor Nazis, the Charlie Brown of villains.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen

    The Peanuts would not have been such a popular strip, if they worshiped Franklin, called Charlie Brown a "Nazi", and sued Linus for quoting from Luke.

    But that is the strange world that we live in. I, for one, am for asking how we got here, and for trying to figure out a way where Charlie Brown would not be called a "Nazi."

    Replies: @iffen

  1073. @AP
    @AaronB


    grim duty
     
    Why did you add "grim" to "duty?"

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Even though it sounds like you find immense pleasure in child rearing, it appears that many don’t, if a large segment of society has to be coerced to consider the negative consequences of not taking up this “duty”. A penalty tax (and there’s really no other way to describe it) of \$233,000 is quite a bit, especially if you consider that most Americans, single or married, have very meager resources put away in savings. The mean average in 2021 is \$41,600 whereas the median average is only \$5,300. \$5,300 is really only one small heartbeat away from a disaster leading to bankruptcy. Bankruptcies are probably way up too.

    Even if you divide the \$233,000 tax into 30 years of even payments, that would take care of the \$5,300 that many folks have in savings (or even less) for the entire 30 year period. I wouldn’t want to be the politician pitching this extra onerous tax and expect to be reelected.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Even if you divide the $233,000 tax into 30 years of even payments, that would take care of the $5,300 that many folks have in savings (or even less) for the entire 30 year period
     
    What some people have been saving (or spending on themselves), others have been spending on the future of society.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1074. @AaronB
    @Mr. Hack

    Thanks, Mr Hack, I took the time to read the entire pamphlet through. It is very good - brief and to the point.

    I am in substance in agreement with it, and can understand why you value this so much.

    My only difference is that I take the more "mystic" view that we are already in theosis, and spirituality is about becoming "aware" of this fact.

    While we agree on the most desirable end state, we disagree over how to reach it. I understand this is a significant difference, but I feel that doesn't diminish the basic sympathy between our views on another level.

    As for marriage and children, I agree with you that this is a secondary goal from a spiritual perspective.

    Indeed, many spiritual traditions view unmarried men and women as performing a valuable role in reminding people that family life is a worldly thing, and not the primary goal of man.

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it's a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment - this creates a very "anti-natalist" atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    When seen as a duty, it pertains to worldly success and the wealth and power of the community, and not man's ultimate aim in theosis, or even man proper enjoyment of life on earth in the form of joy.

    Replies: @AP, @LatW, @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it’s a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment – this creates a very “anti-natalist” atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    I couldn’t be more in agreement with you. Children can be a real blessing not only to their parents, but to the whole community. I’m actually very pro-family, but realize that for many reasons, it’s not the optimal solution for everyone. I’m not opposed to the tax code allowing certain right offs and preferences for families with young children, to hep them out with the extra financial burdens that they face. Helping folks out with families somehow seems less onerous than penalizing those that are single or are married without children.

  1075. @AaronB
    @Mr. Hack

    Thanks, Mr Hack, I took the time to read the entire pamphlet through. It is very good - brief and to the point.

    I am in substance in agreement with it, and can understand why you value this so much.

    My only difference is that I take the more "mystic" view that we are already in theosis, and spirituality is about becoming "aware" of this fact.

    While we agree on the most desirable end state, we disagree over how to reach it. I understand this is a significant difference, but I feel that doesn't diminish the basic sympathy between our views on another level.

    As for marriage and children, I agree with you that this is a secondary goal from a spiritual perspective.

    Indeed, many spiritual traditions view unmarried men and women as performing a valuable role in reminding people that family life is a worldly thing, and not the primary goal of man.

    Marriage and children can be excellent and enjoyable things, but I feel it's a serious mistake to regard it as a grim duty and as the subject of coercion and punishment - this creates a very "anti-natalist" atmosphere. One should stress the joy and pleasure in it.

    When seen as a duty, it pertains to worldly success and the wealth and power of the community, and not man's ultimate aim in theosis, or even man proper enjoyment of life on earth in the form of joy.

    Replies: @AP, @LatW, @Mr. Hack, @Mr. Hack

    I’m glad that you found the little booklet worthwhile and attractive. I hope you pick it up and read it again sometime. I’ve read it about a half dozen times, and always find something new in it to think about. The beauty of the book is that on one level it’s easy to read and understand, but yet on another level it’s full of very profound ideas and concepts. I plan to use the footnotes leading to direct biblical quotations as a study guide for reading the bible. I’ve been reading a lot of your comments above, and you seem even more well read and knowledgeable about things than I thought, and I always thought that you were quite erudite to begin with. Are you planning to move over to Karlin’s new blog? I don’t know how much longer this one will last?……………..

  1076. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    You would be a freeloader if you demand that they provide for you when you are no longer productive. That’s the way market works, why should parents subsidise you?
     
    But I'm not asking anybody to subsidize me after retirement. I've paid into the social security program my whole working life, so why shouldn't I be able to collect the benefits that I paid for out of my earning? In fact, the social security trust fund has been depleted by being ransacked by the government to help pay for a large part of the general population's need for various programs, for which I've never given my blessings. So you see, it's those like your offspring that have already benefited from my social security contributions. If I I' hadn't saved even more, I'd end up living an economically diminished lifestyle.

    Life is lived in the present, there is no such thing as reserving work and resources if you don’t provide for the children in the next generation.
     
    Good luck to you, if you expect your kids totake care of you when you cease your working life. I've seen way too many cases of retired parents still helping to pay for the needs of their kids,who for whatever reason can't get it together financially. These kids are lucky that their parents can still help them out.

    We have been very nice to the likes of you, in Europe and in US, but the next generation won’t be – you loaded up all the costs on them and took away most benefits.

     

    Another variation of "eat the rich" I think. Good luck! The largest and most well financed lobbying groups in the US, anyway, are organized to look after the needs of those retired. The elderly have armies of lawyers and politicians that are ready to bend over and shine the shoes of these constituents, so don't hold your breath. :-)

    Replies: @AP, @Beckow

    You are missing the point: all that happens, happens in the present. Your deal, “contract” with our children is nonsense – you made that contract with yourself, within your own generation. They had nothing to do with it – and it is entirely up to them to decide whether to give you anything, or give all to the people who raised them. There is nothing you can do about it; you will be an elderly, frail begging recipient. (Whether children take care of their own parents is a different question – the odds are much better that they will, but there are exceptions. I will take the odds.)

    You need to understand this is the “market solution” – and the market says that you have nothing to offer once old and your “paper wealth” is of no interest. You are doing nothing to keep the society going, same as the endless LGBTQ people, why should the society care about you?

    But I suspect you are unable to understand these points because you are invested in who you are and it is too scary to contemplate. But that is the way biology works.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    you made that contract with yourself, within your own generation.
     
    No, I made it with the government, not with myself. The government took taxes out of my paycheck every single pay period to be used to fund my retirement. I'm still working and putting money into it.

    There is nothing you can do about it; you will be an elderly, frail begging recipient.
     
    No, you're wrong again. I can do a lot about it, and I and others like myself have already banded together to keep social security benefits intact. You just don't realize how powerful the elederly are in the US, and how many powerful lobbying groups that they have to look after issues that directly relate to their retirement. Younger folks aren't nearly as well organized. Social Security benefits are a sacred cow in the US, and whoa to those politicians who try to limit benefits. AARP, although quite large, is only one of many well funded lobbying groups working to ensure the welfare of its elderly constituents:

    The face of today's elderly constituents:

    https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/01/29/USAT/7dff364b-e271-47df-b4e5-ce2f1ce60959-0001.jpg

    https://press.aarp.org/file.php/178341/JL+cover-large.jpg?thumbnail=asset

    "Frail and Begging?"

    Replies: @Beckow

  1077. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You are missing the point: all that happens, happens in the present. Your deal, "contract" with our children is nonsense - you made that contract with yourself, within your own generation. They had nothing to do with it - and it is entirely up to them to decide whether to give you anything, or give all to the people who raised them. There is nothing you can do about it; you will be an elderly, frail begging recipient. (Whether children take care of their own parents is a different question - the odds are much better that they will, but there are exceptions. I will take the odds.)

    You need to understand this is the "market solution" - and the market says that you have nothing to offer once old and your "paper wealth" is of no interest. You are doing nothing to keep the society going, same as the endless LGBTQ people, why should the society care about you?

    But I suspect you are unable to understand these points because you are invested in who you are and it is too scary to contemplate. But that is the way biology works.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    you made that contract with yourself, within your own generation.

    No, I made it with the government, not with myself. The government took taxes out of my paycheck every single pay period to be used to fund my retirement. I’m still working and putting money into it.

    There is nothing you can do about it; you will be an elderly, frail begging recipient.

    No, you’re wrong again. I can do a lot about it, and I and others like myself have already banded together to keep social security benefits intact. You just don’t realize how powerful the elederly are in the US, and how many powerful lobbying groups that they have to look after issues that directly relate to their retirement. Younger folks aren’t nearly as well organized. Social Security benefits are a sacred cow in the US, and whoa to those politicians who try to limit benefits. AARP, although quite large, is only one of many well funded lobbying groups working to ensure the welfare of its elderly constituents:

    The face of today’s elderly constituents:

    [MORE]


    “Frail and Begging?”

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You don't get the point: there is no way to demand a fulfilment of a contract from a party that wasn't a part to the contract - by definition, children are too young to contract for anything, so it is up to them in the future to decide. They have zillions of ways to change it, devalue it, tax it, etc...if they think they are being screwed by what you put in place, they will change it and there is nothing you and your feeble army of elderly no-kids-LGBT can do about it. It is a pyramid scheme and that depends on the willingness of the new people - young people in this case - to keep it going. Once they quit, there is no scheme, no contract.

    Your argument that politically this is an untouchable "sacred cow" holds today. But I can list for you dozens of previous sacred cows that were discarded or modified. It happens all the time when a society changes and a new generation sees no benefit in obeying the sacred cow. It is driven by self-interest and markets. Yours and your elderly cohort power in that market in the future will be very weak, if you think voting decides these things you have not been paying attention to human history. Voting only validates what those in charge want to happen - if the young ones in the future decide that you get less, you will get less. Period.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1078. @LatW
    @A123


    Trying to work with Ukraine guarantees Russia as an enemy.
     
    Who knows, if Americans and Brits were not in the picture (hypothetically), and it were a purely regional cooperation, Russia may not be as angry or agitated by it.

    It might be that what really angers Russia is that relatively weak states that used to be under her dominion try to act "equal" and occasionally show disrespect for Russia. If those states were stronger (economically and militarily) and learned to show at least a little bit of respect towards Russia or at least be quiet -- of course, without giving up their self-respect-- then Russia might no longer be as angry.

    In the EU.... SJW Europe Leads! Others Regions Follow.
     
    For this to change what I said above needs to be met. Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.

    It is incredibly obvious, SJW Globalism is a Europe led phenomenon. If you want to say the French, Belgians, or Swedes lead Germany…. So be it. The key point is that Europe contaminates America, not the other way around.
     
    This kind of a tone reminds me of how some conservative Americans used to dislike the Scandinavian model. They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.


    The State Department is like journalism. There are branches reserved for the failed progeny of ‘important’ families. There they flail with neither form nor function. It is part of how they are given salaries with minimal damage.
     
    You have a point there. However, just the very fact that they put the restitution issue so high on the agenda for so many years... is alienating. And there will most likely be other such "campaigns" in the future. Let's say, meddling with our newly budding tech industries -- in order to keep them away from "third actors". Sure... maybe that's needed, but the lack of respect there... is just not that pleasant. It could be done in a more delicate and fraternal way, horizontal way, rather. Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.

    Replies: @A123

    They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.

    A poorly chosen example on my part. I withdraw it.

    It is obvious that Germany’s “Open Muslim Borders” policy, created by Merkel with 0% input from America, is the reason why Sweden is the Murder capital of Europe (1)

    Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe,’ writes Germany’s top-selling newspaper

    The former model country has turned into a real nightmare since 2005 as violent crime has exploded

    “In the EU, an average of eight people per million people are victims of fatal violence. In Sweden, the number in 2020 was twelve people per million inhabitants. When it comes to the victims of firearms, the difference between Europe and Sweden is even greater. In the EU, an average of 1.6 people per million people die from gunshot wounds – in Sweden the figure is four, almost three times as many,” Bild writes.

    While murders have been steadily falling in other European countries, in Sweden they are rising. Much of the crime is fueled by migrants and migrant clans, which operate in the country’s biggest cities.

    The problem is woke Germany. 80% of Germans vote Woke, because they like Woke, and want more Woke. I will not believe otherwise until AfD, or another non Woke party, wins a German election.

    Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.

    I do not see Christian Poland or Christian Hungary changing to be like Germany. Germany’s SJW Muslim beliefs and V4 Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no way that any Christian country can accept Open Muslim Borders and survive.

    Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.

    Do you believe the State Department has something to do with foreign relations? That is very naive on you part. In practice the State Department is about U.S. domestic policy.

    No one serious is ‘alienated’ or deems it severely ‘unpleasant’. They recognize it for what it is. A place where wealthy donors and the scions of society receive clever titles. To be offensive at a policy level, one must first have credibility. And, you will not find credibility at the State Department.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/article/sweden-is-the-most-dangerous-country-in-europe-writes-germanys-top-selling-newspaper/

    • Replies: @LatW
    @A123


    Sweden... The former model country has turned into a real nightmare since 2005 as violent crime has exploded
     
    Oh, do not blame Germany for Sweden's destiny! That's Sweden's own responsibility. I think they were liberal already in the 1980s. Kind of like the Dutch, just their own flavor. Notice also that violent crime exploded in 2005, that's right after the EU enlargement, it was a globalization wave.


    Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.
     
    I do not see Christian Poland or Christian Hungary changing to be like Germany. Germany’s SJW Muslim beliefs and V4 Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no way that any Christian country can accept Open Muslim Borders and survive.
     
    I didn't mean that Poland at el would change to become woke or pro-open borders like Germany. This was regarding the dominant position of Western countries and the paradigm where what Western countries say is always right and it's by default assumed that the East has to accept that and model itself in that image.

    My point was: Germany will not back down in its wokeness or in promoting its commercial interests. Nobody who's in that position does. But what the EE can do is improve their bargaining position, improve their status and become more equal. This cannot be done in a decade, it's a long, grueling process that takes years and years of hard work. This is the work that Germany did for 50 years before we all got reunited -- Germany laid down its rules and elaborate systems to become economically and thus politically dominant. The EE won't be able to do it at the German level, but they can still level out the playing field in the future. Both the rise in GDP and the improvements in military will help with this. Another thing that could help would be an increase in the size and skills of troops. The EE troops are still small in numbers compared to the Cold War period.
    , @LatW
    @A123



    They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.
     
    A poorly chosen example on my part. I withdraw it
     
    .

    Actually, no, I totally get it. I used to be puzzled why these American conservatives were so obsessed with Sweden. There seemed to be a lot of resentment and also what almost looked like fear or concern. I was always, like, America is so much bigger, why the heck do you care about Sweden? But then I saw how American liberals, feminists, etc., started making comparisons to Sweden, elevating it, etc., then it becomes understandable.
  1079. @songbird
    @A123


    It takes a very limited type of damaged mind, like Raches the Troll, to revere the Nazis.
     
    It is not a question of revering them. It is a question of what is the design and effect of making them the go to villains of the entire cultural sphere of the West, at least 10x more than any other group?

    The CCP has a design in endlessly portraying the Japanese as villains, both comically and otherwise. No seriously-minded person would suppose that it is to prevent WW3, or a modern invasion of China by the Japanese. But one can laugh at the endless villainous portrayals of the Japanese in Chinese media because Japan has its own cultural sphere. They don't consume a lot of Chinese media (nor, for the most part, does anyone else currently. especially WW2-themed), and any negative effects, if they exist, must be indirect.

    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn't a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn't been called a Nazi. In fact, I'll go beyond that, I'm not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn't been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.

    Replies: @iffen, @A123

    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn’t a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn’t been called a Nazi. In fact, I’ll go beyond that, I’m not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn’t been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.

    You are attempting to connect two different things. There is always a ‘most hated’ group. If it was not the Nazis it would be something else.

    The SJW Lügenpresse would be using that ‘most hated’ group name to smear those who oppose Open Muslim Borders. Thus the fact that it is Nazi rather than something else bears no relevance to your argument.
    ____

    Orwell is a correct reference, but the touchpoint is rather different:

    SJW = NAZI

    Why does SJW Fascism deploys the term Nazi against its foes? It us an attempt to “muddy the water” thus impeding effective communication. They do not want it accurately used about them. The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.

    This is not new. Leftoids have been damaging the language for some time. You cannot have National Socialism without ‘left’ Socialism. In any rational paradigm, National Socialism would be correctly aligned as an ‘extreme left’ belief system. SJW Orwellian manipulation has moved the term to be ‘far right’ even though that makes no sense for a Socialist belief system.
    _______

    I keep hoping that people of Europe will wake up. (1) (2)

    Germany: Muslim Afghan ‘refugee’ destroys statue of Christ inside pro-migrant Lutheran church

    Any German vandalizing a mosque could expect to be charged with hate crimes, yet the German media only spoke of “religious differences” in explaining the possible motives behind the attack, writes Daniel Deme

    In Witzenhausen-Gertenbach, Germany, a Turkish national plowed his car into a group of schoolchildren on Friday, Oct. 29. An eight-year-old girl was transferred to a hospital but died hours later, and two girls aged seven and eight were seriously injured. Although the police initially believed it was an accident, new evidence has come to light, and the 30-year-old driver is now being investigated for murder, the HNA news portal reports.

    Police believe the man drove into the group of elementary school students on purpose, according to Der Tagesspiegel. Therefore, the case is now being investigated as a case of murder and dangerous bodily harm.

    Whether you agree with me that SJW is a Muslim belief. Or, naively believe SJW’s are importing Muslims for some other reason:

    The horror of Islamic violence against defenseless Christian children is unacceptable. Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.

    The only solution to save Christianity in Europe is “Muslim Zero”. Merely closing Merkel’s Open Muslim Borders and reversing Merkel’s Welcome Rape-ugees, is not enough. Those incapable of Judeo-Christian assimilation must be sent home.

    Step #1 in fixing the SJW problem in Europe is reducing the number of SJW aligned migrants. And, everyone should be able to easily agree on that point. If nothing else, they are damaging to the continent’s future on an HBD basis.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://rmx.news/egyeb/germany-afghan-muslim-refugee-destroys-statue-of-jesus-christ-inside-pro-migrant-lutheran-church/

    (2) https://rmx.news/article/germany-turkish-man-accused-of-intentionally-driving-into-group-of-children-killing-an-8-year-old-girl-in-witzenhausen-gertenbach/

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @A123


    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.
     
    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren't fascists, they're communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of "fascism" only reinforces the framing that "fascism" is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.
     
    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a "book of migration", and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it's unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @Coconuts, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    , @songbird
    @A123


    The only solution to save Christianity in Europe is “Muslim Zero”.
     
    Not sure what the most efficient way to remediate Europe might be. Send the Somalis away first? Or gather them together in one place, cutting off all subsidies, and threatening to send non-Somalis there, unless they get on the plane voluntarily by a certain date. (Send the Somalis out last, but use them as a tool).

    Again, the best solution is to rent North African land for a Welcome & Containment Center that will house 100% of asylum applicants.
     
    Granted, Trump's rumored comments about Haiti could probably be extended to North Africa, if one considers per capita, still I believe that God created the Sahara to prevent sub-Saharans from using MENA as a stepping stone into actual civilization.
  1080. @Dmitry
    @AP


    choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government
     
    It just means that not having children would become a "flex" - because poor people would be forced to have children.

    It might be stupid, but that's how "flexes" are made. You charge $40,000 tuition to study a non-practical "Political science" in Dartmouth or Brown University, and then it becomes prestigious.

    English teeth are so bad
     
    But it's not something I noticed. Perhaps I am not interested in teeth?


    -
    I don't think I ever heard anyone worry about English people because of their teeth. Actually if you come to work in the Kingdom, it will be their personality you might have some issues with, rather than their teeth (which I didn't notice anything special there).

    It reminds me yesterday, I was watching the BBC documentary "Rich Russian Living in London" on YouTube, and the children are even saying to the BBC that they cannot understand English peoples' personality. https://youtu.be/fDuSONULNXk?t=1399. What they told the BBC is every guest worker will notice. English people's personality is usually seeming friendly, but then can sometimes be more cold than you expected. This is the impression compared to the other nationalities working or studying in the United Kingdom.

    But all the immigrants are friendly with each other there.

    Replies: @AP

    choosing to not have large families because it is cool to give money to the government

    It just means that not having children would become a “flex” – because poor people would be forced to have children.

    Flexes involve showing off – diamond jewelry, Patek Phillipe watch, flashy car, attending an expensive gala where a ticket costs \$20,000 and one gets one’s picture in the paper. Not overpaying to the government lol. BTW, one can do that now – one can choose not to have accountants minimize taxes and overpay them instead.

    Also, of course, rich people like to have lots of kids. Flexing typically involves self-indulgence of some sort, not deprivation.

    You charge \$40,000 tuition to study a non-practical “Political science” in Dartmouth or Brown University, and then it becomes prestigious.

    This is done for purposes of connections, to make sure one’s kid has the right friends and spouses.

    English teeth are so bad

    But it’s not something I noticed. Perhaps I am not interested in teeth?

    Teeth were pretty bad in the USSR too, so that which is very noticeable for a Westerner might not be for an ex-Soviet. However everything was bad in the USSR so it wasn’t as noticeable, whereas Britain is a first world country and the bad teeth stand out.

  1081. @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    Even though it sounds like you find immense pleasure in child rearing, it appears that many don't, if a large segment of society has to be coerced to consider the negative consequences of not taking up this "duty". A penalty tax (and there's really no other way to describe it) of $233,000 is quite a bit, especially if you consider that most Americans, single or married, have very meager resources put away in savings. The mean average in 2021 is $41,600 whereas the median average is only $5,300. $5,300 is really only one small heartbeat away from a disaster leading to bankruptcy. Bankruptcies are probably way up too.

    Even if you divide the $233,000 tax into 30 years of even payments, that would take care of the $5,300 that many folks have in savings (or even less) for the entire 30 year period. I wouldn't want to be the politician pitching this extra onerous tax and expect to be reelected.

    Replies: @AP

    Even if you divide the \$233,000 tax into 30 years of even payments, that would take care of the \$5,300 that many folks have in savings (or even less) for the entire 30 year period

    What some people have been saving (or spending on themselves), others have been spending on the future of society.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @AP

    I applaud your choice to spend your hard earned funds on the welfare of your wife and kids. It's a noble cause that you've chosen to embrace, but nobody forced you to make this choice, nor threatened you with large tax penalties if you decided to not make this choice.

    Another consideration that we haven't touched on while discussing this interesting topic is the great intrusion into somebody's personal life that one would expect to crop up by very willing government revisioners:

    "So Mr. Jones, we can see from your tax filings that you've been married now for three years, and still have not produced any children? What's the problem, trouble in the bedroom?

    Or:

    "Since last year, you've been seeking medical help and have been put on viagra to help you "straighten" things out. Still no luck? It couldn't be because you're one of those radical subversives that doesn't feel a desire to have any children at this time, as your wife has indicated to us about your feelings? We're going to have to implement the $233,000penalty tax on you this year. Will you be paying all at once, or would you prefer the 30 year payment plan?"

    I'm not a libertarian either, but I do have very strong feelings about limiting the role of government in meddling in people's private lifes. You'd be opening up a huge can of worms that isn't necessary.

  1082. @Dmitry
    @Dmitry

    Even Wikipedia does not understand his number of children.

    https://i.imgur.com/mdNwvEN.jpg



    And there are issues with violence
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWIUp19bBoA

    Replies: @AP

    An awseome guy.

    • Replies: @Not Raul
    @AP

    Boris probably has a higher Cromartie Index than any other British PM from the last century.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/ci-cromartie-index/

    Replies: @Coconuts

  1083. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Even if you divide the $233,000 tax into 30 years of even payments, that would take care of the $5,300 that many folks have in savings (or even less) for the entire 30 year period
     
    What some people have been saving (or spending on themselves), others have been spending on the future of society.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    I applaud your choice to spend your hard earned funds on the welfare of your wife and kids. It’s a noble cause that you’ve chosen to embrace, but nobody forced you to make this choice, nor threatened you with large tax penalties if you decided to not make this choice.

    Another consideration that we haven’t touched on while discussing this interesting topic is the great intrusion into somebody’s personal life that one would expect to crop up by very willing government revisioners:

    “So Mr. Jones, we can see from your tax filings that you’ve been married now for three years, and still have not produced any children? What’s the problem, trouble in the bedroom?

    Or:

    “Since last year, you’ve been seeking medical help and have been put on viagra to help you “straighten” things out. Still no luck? It couldn’t be because you’re one of those radical subversives that doesn’t feel a desire to have any children at this time, as your wife has indicated to us about your feelings? We’re going to have to implement the \$233,000penalty tax on you this year. Will you be paying all at once, or would you prefer the 30 year payment plan?”

    I’m not a libertarian either, but I do have very strong feelings about limiting the role of government in meddling in people’s private lifes. You’d be opening up a huge can of worms that isn’t necessary.

  1084. The sheer desperation of low-IQ #NeverTrump yahoos in Virginia is is almost amusing to watch.

    -1- First they send a group to ambush a Youngkin campaign bus with a “tiki” protest. Aren’t tiki torches Hawaiian, and thus non-white. Perhaps they were suggesting “Yun Kim”? It is hard to tell.

    -2- Then the Nazi-crats send a smoker who does not match the crowd to flaunt a Confederate flag to media co-conspirators. Apparently, he is easily recognized as a Fed operative or informant and is cut off. [see below]

    -3- More worryingly, poll workers lied and illegally turned away non-mask wearing voters. We are still waiting for a clear count on the number of Civil Rights crimes committed.

    -4- McAuliffe left the door open for Fultoning (a.k.a. ballot fabrication). However at 2% behind, it is hard to see how they can fake enough ballots to alter the outcome. They may try though.

    Despite all of this chicanery, they still lost…. Badly. No amount of #NeverTrump yahooism will allow the Leftoids to triumph.


    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  1085. German_reader says:
    @A123
    @songbird


    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn’t a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn’t been called a Nazi. In fact, I’ll go beyond that, I’m not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn’t been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.
     
    You are attempting to connect two different things. There is always a 'most hated' group. If it was not the Nazis it would be something else.

    The SJW Lügenpresse would be using that 'most hated' group name to smear those who oppose Open Muslim Borders. Thus the fact that it is Nazi rather than something else bears no relevance to your argument.
    ____

    Orwell is a correct reference, but the touchpoint is rather different:

    SJW = NAZI

    Why does SJW Fascism deploys the term Nazi against its foes? It us an attempt to "muddy the water" thus impeding effective communication. They do not want it accurately used about them. The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.

    This is not new. Leftoids have been damaging the language for some time. You cannot have National Socialism without 'left' Socialism. In any rational paradigm, National Socialism would be correctly aligned as an 'extreme left' belief system. SJW Orwellian manipulation has moved the term to be 'far right' even though that makes no sense for a Socialist belief system.
    _______

    I keep hoping that people of Europe will wake up. (1) (2)

    Germany: Muslim Afghan ‘refugee’ destroys statue of Christ inside pro-migrant Lutheran church

    Any German vandalizing a mosque could expect to be charged with hate crimes, yet the German media only spoke of “religious differences” in explaining the possible motives behind the attack, writes Daniel Deme
     

    In Witzenhausen-Gertenbach, Germany, a Turkish national plowed his car into a group of schoolchildren on Friday, Oct. 29. An eight-year-old girl was transferred to a hospital but died hours later, and two girls aged seven and eight were seriously injured. Although the police initially believed it was an accident, new evidence has come to light, and the 30-year-old driver is now being investigated for murder, the HNA news portal reports.

    Police believe the man drove into the group of elementary school students on purpose, according to Der Tagesspiegel. Therefore, the case is now being investigated as a case of murder and dangerous bodily harm.
     
    Whether you agree with me that SJW is a Muslim belief. Or, naively believe SJW's are importing Muslims for some other reason:

    The horror of Islamic violence against defenseless Christian children is unacceptable. Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.

    The only solution to save Christianity in Europe is "Muslim Zero". Merely closing Merkel's Open Muslim Borders and reversing Merkel's Welcome Rape-ugees, is not enough. Those incapable of Judeo-Christian assimilation must be sent home.

    Step #1 in fixing the SJW problem in Europe is reducing the number of SJW aligned migrants. And, everyone should be able to easily agree on that point. If nothing else, they are damaging to the continent's future on an HBD basis.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://rmx.news/egyeb/germany-afghan-muslim-refugee-destroys-statue-of-jesus-christ-inside-pro-migrant-lutheran-church/

    (2) https://rmx.news/article/germany-turkish-man-accused-of-intentionally-driving-into-group-of-children-killing-an-8-year-old-girl-in-witzenhausen-gertenbach/

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird

    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.

    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren’t fascists, they’re communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of “fascism” only reinforces the framing that “fascism” is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.

    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops’ conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a “book of migration”, and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it’s unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    • Agree: iffen
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @German_reader

    I have another "gem" indicative of the state of the Christian churches in Germany. Since I'm formally still a member of the Lutheran church, the local Lutheran church sends me a circular letter about their activities. The last one not only contained a barely veiled recommendation to vote for the Greens in the federal election ("one should carefully consider which democratic party will do most to avert catastrophic climate change and preserve creation"), I also learned that the local teenagers preparing for their confirmation are reading the Quran, for the sake of finding common ground with Islam in a pluralistic society or whatever.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @A123
    @German_reader


    Antifas aren’t fascists, they’re communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such.
     
    Far left radicals is of course correct. Socialism = Left. National Socialism = Far Left.

    As to the direct connection between Antifa and Far Left Nazi beliefs. (1)


    In discussing why militant socialists would flock together, Delzell offered this explanation: “Fascists and Communists often found themselves appealing to the same kinds of alienated people.” Other historians, like Zeev Sternhell, agreed: explaining that fascism was a “direct result of very specific revision of Marxism.” UC Berkeley political scientist A. James Gregor regards “Fascism as a variant of Marxism.”

    As can be plainly seen, Antifa is not anti-fascist; they are the true successors of fascism, considering their propensity for mob violence and the “fanatical socialism” that Hitler proclaimed in 1941. Moreover, the comrades of Antifa could be described “anarcho-statist militants,” who bully, terrorize, and attack anyone who will not join their crusade. That is because Mussolini was not only an “authoritarian communist’ who believed in a big state, but advocated street violence as an “anarcho-syndicalist.” Modern-day Antifa echo similar demagogic and contrived sentiments. They repeatedly engage in the sort of militarized street theatrics that were fashionable among Fascist and Communist mobs prior to World War II. In fact, Hitler’s Brownshirts emulated the Italian Blackshirts, attacking and violently disrupting other political groups, such as conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) in the early 1930s, knocking down, kicking down and throwing “stink bombs and tear gas” during violent scuffles. Astonishingly, theAntifa shock-troop rioters continue to behave like Fascists in order to oppose fascism, which illustrates their complete ignorance of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism
     

    Low-IQ use of Leftoid terminology gives away your attempt to dumb down the dialog. No one with an above room temperature IQ would try to use the term "normiecon". Such brow beating is very Merkel fascist though.....

    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.
     
    Surprisingly, I will agree to a certain extent.

    Non-churches that are Apostate, having turned against God, deserve what they get. I am somewhat concerned that in many organizations the decision to become an SJW Mosque has been made over the objection of their Christian parishioners.

    The example I provided about property destruction intersects with this Apostasy.

    PEACE 😇
    __________


    (1) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lk-samuels/the-fascist-history-of-antifa/

    , @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops’ conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a “book of migration”, and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus...
     
    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism. I have seen eminent British historians of the Third Reich like Michael Burleigh obliquely touch on this point 'OT content in Hitler's speeches would be an interesting topic for research, but...' It is a spicy theme, given how widely read the Old Testament was in Europe, its spiritual authority and what it contains, it seems improbable that it didn't influence European ideas on nation and ethnicity.

    Replies: @German_reader

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    churches ... promoters of mass immigration
     
    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions whenever you are unfortunate to come home with their furniture sets to assemble.

    I'm not saying it is sensible to outsource your critical thinking skills to religious cults, but if you have agreed to do this - then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said "Love your neighbor as yourself". But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication - as your neighbor would be part of your tribe.
    https://i.imgur.com/9JWFGbB.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/jFacMtM.jpg

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if "your neighbor" is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus's instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    https://i.imgur.com/iMbRwNt.jpg

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways - but nothing can be more clear here.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the refugee crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages - that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc.


    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

     

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul it's best to be not married, but that married is second best option only if you cannot control "sexual immorality".

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling "sexual immorality" (let's assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Jognson), then he is in ideal position according to the most clear instructions.

    https://i.imgur.com/9PZDLVH.jpg

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc - all are united "children of God through faith".

    https://i.imgur.com/WYoSpZq.jpg


    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus
     
    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is "eternal truths". Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    "Exodus" has a lot of various eternal message (it's one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.

    -
    You can see why "Exodus" was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    churches … promoters of mass immigration

     

    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions.

    This is perhaps an argument against too much outsourcing of your critical thinking skills to religion, but if you have agreed to do this – then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said “Love your neighbor as yourself”. But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication – as your neighbor would be part of your tribe.

    https://i.imgur.com/jFacMtM.jpg

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    https://i.imgur.com/9JWFGbB.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/gBlxhJZ.jpg

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways – but it is one of the most carefully written of his views.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the "refugee" crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages – that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc. (Of course, many of these people are more economic migrants, than real refugees).


    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

     

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul writes that it best to be not married, but that married is second best option ("concession") if you cannot control “sexual immorality”.

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.

    https://i.imgur.com/9PZDLVH.jpg

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in national self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc – all should be united “children of God through faith” and descendants of Abraham, according to Paul.


    https://i.imgur.com/WYoSpZq.jpg


    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus
     
    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is “eternal truths”. Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    “Exodus” has a lot of various eternal message (it’s one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.


    You can see why “Exodus” was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @AP

  1086. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @sudden death

    Perhaps we could just ask Unz if he can make an "Open thread" for us every month? He doesn't have to write a starter post for us and we are kind of well-behaving people so we almost moderated ourselves, it wouldn't be more than 1 minute extra work for him per month.

    Does anyone here have "good rapport" with Unz? (German Reader?) We could send you as the diplomat of our community, to approach Unz and see if he can make open threads for us.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Does anyone here have “good rapport” with Unz? (German Reader?)

    I don’t have any special rapport with Ron Unz (actually he once suggested I might be a Jewish activist only pretending to be German, because I had made some rather mild criticism of his WW2 pieces). But I like your idea, maybe one should indeed ask for it. Not sure though if it’s fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.

    • Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard
    @German_reader

    Both Ron Unz and Anatoly Karlin have said that publishing the AK substacks on Unz is possible -> probable and totally permissible.

    Idea: (don't know if it's any good) get Sailer or Anglin to crosspost AK substack open pieces under their slot. It would scroll off but would be intermittently accessible. Also any newcomers who saw the occasional Karlin Open post under their heading would be utterly befuddled how this arcana drew 500 comments.

    That probably doesn't work but whatever could work will need to be some similar kludge.

    Replies: @A123

    , @iffen
    @German_reader

    maybe one should indeed ask for it

    It was clear to me after we went through this with the end of AE's blog that R. Unz is not interested in expending any time or effort on moderating a comment section that appeals to us.

  1087. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader

    Any thoughts on Gaetano Mosca's idea that Germans of that time were morally superior to the Romans? (such as being more chaste)

    Replies: @German_reader

    I don’t think one can really know anything about that with certainty. Sure, Tacitus writes things like “there isn’t much adultery among the Germanic peoples, and adulteresses are publicly shamed and are unable to find another husband”. But he may not have had any personal experience at all of Germany, and it may be mostly just a moralizing discourse aimed at criticizing Roman society through the contrast with Germanic “noble savages”.
    This is probably a general problem. Earlier this year I read Tacitus’ Agricola, and the ethnographic material about Britain is mostly pretty vague and unspecific. So it’s not really clear if it’s just a rehash of topoi about barbarian societies and what its relation to actual reality was.

    • Agree: iffen
    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader


    Not sure though if it’s fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.
     
    I was thinking this too. Maybe, a name change? Difficulty is coming up with a formula that creates a similar environment. (HBD/geopolitics/what else?) Something that leaves us with the eccentrics but keeps the normies and the full on psychotics away.

    One idea I had would be to suggest something similar to the news aggregator, but maybe with a few more lines, where people could share HBD posts from twitter and geopolitics news stories, while leaving it open to comments. Something that would not run continuously but be weekly or biweekly.
    _____
    Recently been wondering about how the Germans and the barbarians to the north of China were able to form larger confederations at about the same time. Could it have been purely technological? (the stirrup, better agriculture, or trade networks) Or might it have been something social? (culture can be a type of technology.)

    It is tempting to draw parallels to the Arab conquests, and their well-known propensity to punish adultery, which I would argue helped make the men more cooperative and militarily effective. But I don't really know if that was a factor regarding Rome and China, or, if practiced, whether it would have been something even more ancient anyway. Though I am referring to earlier barbarians, I note that the Mongols had pretty stringent laws against adultery.

    Of course, one idea might be that Muslims got it from the Jews. IIRC, Tolkien really admired their martial spirit (why he modeled the Dwarves after them), but they did not seem to be successful against Rome. Though, that was Rome of a different era, and, no doubt, there were other factors.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1088. @iffen
    @songbird

    Poor Nazis, the Charlie Brown of villains.

    Replies: @songbird

    The Peanuts would not have been such a popular strip, if they worshiped Franklin, called Charlie Brown a “Nazi”, and sued Linus for quoting from Luke.

    But that is the strange world that we live in. I, for one, am for asking how we got here, and for trying to figure out a way where Charlie Brown would not be called a “Nazi.”

    • Replies: @iffen
    @songbird

    Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum I smell smoke in the auditorium
    Charlie Brown Charlie Brown he's a clown that Charlie Brown
    He's gonna get caught just you wait and see
    (Why's everybody always picking on me)

    Replies: @songbird

  1089. German_reader says:
    @German_reader
    @A123


    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.
     
    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren't fascists, they're communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of "fascism" only reinforces the framing that "fascism" is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.
     
    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a "book of migration", and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it's unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @Coconuts, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    I have another “gem” indicative of the state of the Christian churches in Germany. Since I’m formally still a member of the Lutheran church, the local Lutheran church sends me a circular letter about their activities. The last one not only contained a barely veiled recommendation to vote for the Greens in the federal election (“one should carefully consider which democratic party will do most to avert catastrophic climate change and preserve creation”), I also learned that the local teenagers preparing for their confirmation are reading the Quran, for the sake of finding common ground with Islam in a pluralistic society or whatever.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    I also learned that the local teenagers preparing for their confirmation are reading the Quran, for the sake of finding common ground with Islam in a pluralistic society or whatever.
     
    If you are Catholic at least there are a variety of interesting parallels between Islamic religio-political thinking and traditional Catholic views. For example, studying Jihad will lead to the old 'doctrine of the two swords'; that part of the reason Christ founded the Church was to carry out the struggle against Satan and his power in the spiritual realm, while God had raised up Caesar and other kings to protect against and to wage war on Satan and his human minions in the temporal, political realm. This was why dying for a just cause, especially in a Crusade or for the defence of Christendom, would bring with it various spiritual benefits and speed up a person's journey to heaven.

    Although IMO probably this (and other interesting parallels of a similar kind) won't be part of what is studied in those confirmation classes.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1090. @German_reader
    @A123


    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.
     
    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren't fascists, they're communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of "fascism" only reinforces the framing that "fascism" is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.
     
    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a "book of migration", and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it's unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @Coconuts, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    Antifas aren’t fascists, they’re communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such.

    Far left radicals is of course correct. Socialism = Left. National Socialism = Far Left.

    As to the direct connection between Antifa and Far Left Nazi beliefs. (1)

    In discussing why militant socialists would flock together, Delzell offered this explanation: “Fascists and Communists often found themselves appealing to the same kinds of alienated people.” Other historians, like Zeev Sternhell, agreed: explaining that fascism was a “direct result of very specific revision of Marxism.” UC Berkeley political scientist A. James Gregor regards “Fascism as a variant of Marxism.”

    As can be plainly seen, Antifa is not anti-fascist; they are the true successors of fascism, considering their propensity for mob violence and the “fanatical socialism” that Hitler proclaimed in 1941. Moreover, the comrades of Antifa could be described “anarcho-statist militants,” who bully, terrorize, and attack anyone who will not join their crusade. That is because Mussolini was not only an “authoritarian communist’ who believed in a big state, but advocated street violence as an “anarcho-syndicalist.” Modern-day Antifa echo similar demagogic and contrived sentiments. They repeatedly engage in the sort of militarized street theatrics that were fashionable among Fascist and Communist mobs prior to World War II. In fact, Hitler’s Brownshirts emulated the Italian Blackshirts, attacking and violently disrupting other political groups, such as conservative German National People’s Party (DNVP) in the early 1930s, knocking down, kicking down and throwing “stink bombs and tear gas” during violent scuffles. Astonishingly, theAntifa shock-troop rioters continue to behave like Fascists in order to oppose fascism, which illustrates their complete ignorance of Italian Fascism and German National Socialism

    Low-IQ use of Leftoid terminology gives away your attempt to dumb down the dialog. No one with an above room temperature IQ would try to use the term “normiecon”. Such brow beating is very Merkel fascist though…..

    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Surprisingly, I will agree to a certain extent.

    Non-churches that are Apostate, having turned against God, deserve what they get. I am somewhat concerned that in many organizations the decision to become an SJW Mosque has been made over the objection of their Christian parishioners.

    The example I provided about property destruction intersects with this Apostasy.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://www.lewrockwell.com/2019/08/lk-samuels/the-fascist-history-of-antifa/

  1091. German_reader says:
    @LatW
    @A123


    I never said she was the only SJW leader.
     
    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others. Because she did that back in 2015, there are now economic migrants walking out of the woods and hanging around in the meadows on the Polish border where the Polish border guards have to shoo them away. And who keep yelling "No Belarus, No Poland! Germany, Germany!".

    Poor Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others.

    It’s really bad on those Greek islands where large numbers of migrants keep landing, must be hell for the natives. I can understand that the local Greeks hate the German (and other Northern European) NGO types active there.
    So while I would argue that Germany’s asylum policy is above all insanely self-destructive, you’re right, it does have highly negative effects on other Europeans too and cannot but strain relations of transit countries with Germany.

    • Replies: @LatW
    @German_reader

    I've always felt so bad for those Greek island folks and other folks in the South. They will simply have no capacity to control it all.

    The NGO types in general are totally "out there", in their own world.

    And, btw, when we think of Germany we think of something bigger than the current situation. This is not the real Germany for us.

    , @A123
    @German_reader


    It’s really bad on those Greek islands where large numbers of migrants keep landing, must be hell for the natives. I can understand that the local Greeks hate the German (and other Northern European) NGO types active there.
     
    Open Muslim Borders are likely to end sooner rather than later.

    Italy is already past 50% for closed borders. The last gasp holding actions are a weird & unstable coalition plus a strong Catholic church influence. Both are about to be dropped over the proverbial edge. France and Austria are also approaching crossover points.

    Germany is about to be surrounded on three sides. This will open a number options to control the Dark Heart Of Europe. Interfering with road & rail transport is a direct prod at the true troublemakers -- Germany's mercantile Elite. Threatening the personal fortunes of Globalists Elites is an optimum strategy for moving policy while minimizing harm to blue/pink collar workers.

    Old war was about crushing everyone. New surgical efforts are about shaping how surviving decision makers act. It is much cleaner.
    _____

    Again, the best solution is to rent North African land for a Welcome & Containment Center that will house 100% of asylum applicants. Regardless of where they enter the EU, all asylum claimants are transported to North Africa until they [A] Receive asylum, and [B] Are accepted by a goat country. Until then the "Stay in Africa" policy applies.

    PEACE 😇
  1092. @A123
    @LatW


    They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.
     
    A poorly chosen example on my part. I withdraw it.

    It is obvious that Germany's "Open Muslim Borders" policy, created by Merkel with 0% input from America, is the reason why Sweden is the Murder capital of Europe (1)

    Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe,’ writes Germany’s top-selling newspaper

    The former model country has turned into a real nightmare since 2005 as violent crime has exploded
    ...

    “In the EU, an average of eight people per million people are victims of fatal violence. In Sweden, the number in 2020 was twelve people per million inhabitants. When it comes to the victims of firearms, the difference between Europe and Sweden is even greater. In the EU, an average of 1.6 people per million people die from gunshot wounds – in Sweden the figure is four, almost three times as many,” Bild writes.

    While murders have been steadily falling in other European countries, in Sweden they are rising. Much of the crime is fueled by migrants and migrant clans, which operate in the country’s biggest cities.
     
    The problem is woke Germany. 80% of Germans vote Woke, because they like Woke, and want more Woke. I will not believe otherwise until AfD, or another non Woke party, wins a German election.

    Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.
     
    I do not see Christian Poland or Christian Hungary changing to be like Germany. Germany's SJW Muslim beliefs and V4 Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no way that any Christian country can accept Open Muslim Borders and survive.

    Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.
     
    Do you believe the State Department has something to do with foreign relations? That is very naive on you part. In practice the State Department is about U.S. domestic policy.

    No one serious is 'alienated' or deems it severely 'unpleasant'. They recognize it for what it is. A place where wealthy donors and the scions of society receive clever titles. To be offensive at a policy level, one must first have credibility. And, you will not find credibility at the State Department.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/article/sweden-is-the-most-dangerous-country-in-europe-writes-germanys-top-selling-newspaper/

    Replies: @LatW, @LatW

    Sweden… The former model country has turned into a real nightmare since 2005 as violent crime has exploded

    Oh, do not blame Germany for Sweden’s destiny! That’s Sweden’s own responsibility. I think they were liberal already in the 1980s. Kind of like the Dutch, just their own flavor. Notice also that violent crime exploded in 2005, that’s right after the EU enlargement, it was a globalization wave.

    Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.

    I do not see Christian Poland or Christian Hungary changing to be like Germany. Germany’s SJW Muslim beliefs and V4 Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no way that any Christian country can accept Open Muslim Borders and survive.

    I didn’t mean that Poland at el would change to become woke or pro-open borders like Germany. This was regarding the dominant position of Western countries and the paradigm where what Western countries say is always right and it’s by default assumed that the East has to accept that and model itself in that image.

    My point was: Germany will not back down in its wokeness or in promoting its commercial interests. Nobody who’s in that position does. But what the EE can do is improve their bargaining position, improve their status and become more equal. This cannot be done in a decade, it’s a long, grueling process that takes years and years of hard work. This is the work that Germany did for 50 years before we all got reunited — Germany laid down its rules and elaborate systems to become economically and thus politically dominant. The EE won’t be able to do it at the German level, but they can still level out the playing field in the future. Both the rise in GDP and the improvements in military will help with this. Another thing that could help would be an increase in the size and skills of troops. The EE troops are still small in numbers compared to the Cold War period.

  1093. @A123
    @LatW


    They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.
     
    A poorly chosen example on my part. I withdraw it.

    It is obvious that Germany's "Open Muslim Borders" policy, created by Merkel with 0% input from America, is the reason why Sweden is the Murder capital of Europe (1)

    Sweden is the most dangerous country in Europe,’ writes Germany’s top-selling newspaper

    The former model country has turned into a real nightmare since 2005 as violent crime has exploded
    ...

    “In the EU, an average of eight people per million people are victims of fatal violence. In Sweden, the number in 2020 was twelve people per million inhabitants. When it comes to the victims of firearms, the difference between Europe and Sweden is even greater. In the EU, an average of 1.6 people per million people die from gunshot wounds – in Sweden the figure is four, almost three times as many,” Bild writes.

    While murders have been steadily falling in other European countries, in Sweden they are rising. Much of the crime is fueled by migrants and migrant clans, which operate in the country’s biggest cities.
     
    The problem is woke Germany. 80% of Germans vote Woke, because they like Woke, and want more Woke. I will not believe otherwise until AfD, or another non Woke party, wins a German election.

    Germany is not going to change. But Poland and others could.
     
    I do not see Christian Poland or Christian Hungary changing to be like Germany. Germany's SJW Muslim beliefs and V4 Christian beliefs are diametrically opposed. There is no way that any Christian country can accept Open Muslim Borders and survive.

    Maybe the State Dept feels that America really helped out EE, and maybe America wants to reap some rewards for it, that may be understandable.
     
    Do you believe the State Department has something to do with foreign relations? That is very naive on you part. In practice the State Department is about U.S. domestic policy.

    No one serious is 'alienated' or deems it severely 'unpleasant'. They recognize it for what it is. A place where wealthy donors and the scions of society receive clever titles. To be offensive at a policy level, one must first have credibility. And, you will not find credibility at the State Department.

    PEACE 😇
    __________

    (1) https://rmx.news/article/sweden-is-the-most-dangerous-country-in-europe-writes-germanys-top-selling-newspaper/

    Replies: @LatW, @LatW

    They used to particularly obsess over Sweden.

    A poorly chosen example on my part. I withdraw it

    .

    Actually, no, I totally get it. I used to be puzzled why these American conservatives were so obsessed with Sweden. There seemed to be a lot of resentment and also what almost looked like fear or concern. I was always, like, America is so much bigger, why the heck do you care about Sweden? But then I saw how American liberals, feminists, etc., started making comparisons to Sweden, elevating it, etc., then it becomes understandable.

  1094. @German_reader
    @LatW


    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others.
     
    It's really bad on those Greek islands where large numbers of migrants keep landing, must be hell for the natives. I can understand that the local Greeks hate the German (and other Northern European) NGO types active there.
    So while I would argue that Germany's asylum policy is above all insanely self-destructive, you're right, it does have highly negative effects on other Europeans too and cannot but strain relations of transit countries with Germany.

    Replies: @LatW, @A123

    I’ve always felt so bad for those Greek island folks and other folks in the South. They will simply have no capacity to control it all.

    The NGO types in general are totally “out there”, in their own world.

    And, btw, when we think of Germany we think of something bigger than the current situation. This is not the real Germany for us.

  1095. @German_reader
    @songbird

    I don't think one can really know anything about that with certainty. Sure, Tacitus writes things like "there isn't much adultery among the Germanic peoples, and adulteresses are publicly shamed and are unable to find another husband". But he may not have had any personal experience at all of Germany, and it may be mostly just a moralizing discourse aimed at criticizing Roman society through the contrast with Germanic "noble savages".
    This is probably a general problem. Earlier this year I read Tacitus' Agricola, and the ethnographic material about Britain is mostly pretty vague and unspecific. So it's not really clear if it's just a rehash of topoi about barbarian societies and what its relation to actual reality was.

    Replies: @songbird

    Not sure though if it’s fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.

    I was thinking this too. Maybe, a name change? Difficulty is coming up with a formula that creates a similar environment. (HBD/geopolitics/what else?) Something that leaves us with the eccentrics but keeps the normies and the full on psychotics away.

    One idea I had would be to suggest something similar to the news aggregator, but maybe with a few more lines, where people could share HBD posts from twitter and geopolitics news stories, while leaving it open to comments. Something that would not run continuously but be weekly or biweekly.
    _____
    Recently been wondering about how the Germans and the barbarians to the north of China were able to form larger confederations at about the same time. Could it have been purely technological? (the stirrup, better agriculture, or trade networks) Or might it have been something social? (culture can be a type of technology.)

    It is tempting to draw parallels to the Arab conquests, and their well-known propensity to punish adultery, which I would argue helped make the men more cooperative and militarily effective. But I don’t really know if that was a factor regarding Rome and China, or, if practiced, whether it would have been something even more ancient anyway. Though I am referring to earlier barbarians, I note that the Mongols had pretty stringent laws against adultery.

    Of course, one idea might be that Muslims got it from the Jews. IIRC, Tolkien really admired their martial spirit (why he modeled the Dwarves after them), but they did not seem to be successful against Rome. Though, that was Rome of a different era, and, no doubt, there were other factors.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    It is tempting to draw parallels to the Arab conquests, and their well-known propensity to punish adultery, which I would argue helped make the men more cooperative and militarily effective.
     
    On the other hand, Arabs have practiced polygamy which increases competition among men and undermines their cooperation (I think there's an argument that the monogamy typical of even many ancient European peoples comes down to European geography, which led to many political units and intense military rivalry...which made widespread polygamy unpracticable since it was necessary to give men serving in war the chance of getting a wife of their own).
    But I admit I know almost nothing about the social mores of Arabia during Mohammed's time, or if they even can be reconstructed with any certainty (there seems to be considerable uncertainty after all even about the religious landscape of the region, whether it was primarily pagan, or already strongly Christian and Jewish).

    Replies: @songbird

  1096. WEF has some pretty good ideas, if you apply them to the right people – such as their own members.

  1097. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    Does anyone here have “good rapport” with Unz? (German Reader?)
     
    I don't have any special rapport with Ron Unz (actually he once suggested I might be a Jewish activist only pretending to be German, because I had made some rather mild criticism of his WW2 pieces). But I like your idea, maybe one should indeed ask for it. Not sure though if it's fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @iffen

    Both Ron Unz and Anatoly Karlin have said that publishing the AK substacks on Unz is possible -> probable and totally permissible.

    Idea: (don’t know if it’s any good) get Sailer or Anglin to crosspost AK substack open pieces under their slot. It would scroll off but would be intermittently accessible. Also any newcomers who saw the occasional Karlin Open post under their heading would be utterly befuddled how this arcana drew 500 comments.

    That probably doesn’t work but whatever could work will need to be some similar kludge.

    • Replies: @A123
    @Emil Nikola Richard

    I suspect that AK is taking some well earned weeks off.
    ___

    I have asked Mr. Unz to start OT169 on AK's behalf

    https://www.unz.com/announcement/bugs-suggestions-2/#comment-4986328

    If multiple people add affirming requests, it is much more likely to happen.
    _____

    My thinking is that AK could promote substack content via Open Threads here.

    I have not used Discord. Perhaps that will work as a medium. Clearly the comment system at substack is not up to the task.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  1098. @German_reader
    @LatW


    Where I would agree with you is that her invitation to the refugees has hurt or inconvenienced others.
     
    It's really bad on those Greek islands where large numbers of migrants keep landing, must be hell for the natives. I can understand that the local Greeks hate the German (and other Northern European) NGO types active there.
    So while I would argue that Germany's asylum policy is above all insanely self-destructive, you're right, it does have highly negative effects on other Europeans too and cannot but strain relations of transit countries with Germany.

    Replies: @LatW, @A123

    It’s really bad on those Greek islands where large numbers of migrants keep landing, must be hell for the natives. I can understand that the local Greeks hate the German (and other Northern European) NGO types active there.

    Open Muslim Borders are likely to end sooner rather than later.

    Italy is already past 50% for closed borders. The last gasp holding actions are a weird & unstable coalition plus a strong Catholic church influence. Both are about to be dropped over the proverbial edge. France and Austria are also approaching crossover points.

    Germany is about to be surrounded on three sides. This will open a number options to control the Dark Heart Of Europe. Interfering with road & rail transport is a direct prod at the true troublemakers — Germany’s mercantile Elite. Threatening the personal fortunes of Globalists Elites is an optimum strategy for moving policy while minimizing harm to blue/pink collar workers.

    Old war was about crushing everyone. New surgical efforts are about shaping how surviving decision makers act. It is much cleaner.
    _____

    Again, the best solution is to rent North African land for a Welcome & Containment Center that will house 100% of asylum applicants. Regardless of where they enter the EU, all asylum claimants are transported to North Africa until they [A] Receive asylum, and [B] Are accepted by a goat country. Until then the “Stay in Africa” policy applies.

    PEACE 😇

  1099. @Emil Nikola Richard
    @German_reader

    Both Ron Unz and Anatoly Karlin have said that publishing the AK substacks on Unz is possible -> probable and totally permissible.

    Idea: (don't know if it's any good) get Sailer or Anglin to crosspost AK substack open pieces under their slot. It would scroll off but would be intermittently accessible. Also any newcomers who saw the occasional Karlin Open post under their heading would be utterly befuddled how this arcana drew 500 comments.

    That probably doesn't work but whatever could work will need to be some similar kludge.

    Replies: @A123

    I suspect that AK is taking some well earned weeks off.
    ___

    I have asked Mr. Unz to start OT169 on AK’s behalf

    https://www.unz.com/announcement/bugs-suggestions-2/#comment-4986328

    If multiple people add affirming requests, it is much more likely to happen.
    _____

    My thinking is that AK could promote substack content via Open Threads here.

    I have not used Discord. Perhaps that will work as a medium. Clearly the comment system at substack is not up to the task.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇

  1100. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    you made that contract with yourself, within your own generation.
     
    No, I made it with the government, not with myself. The government took taxes out of my paycheck every single pay period to be used to fund my retirement. I'm still working and putting money into it.

    There is nothing you can do about it; you will be an elderly, frail begging recipient.
     
    No, you're wrong again. I can do a lot about it, and I and others like myself have already banded together to keep social security benefits intact. You just don't realize how powerful the elederly are in the US, and how many powerful lobbying groups that they have to look after issues that directly relate to their retirement. Younger folks aren't nearly as well organized. Social Security benefits are a sacred cow in the US, and whoa to those politicians who try to limit benefits. AARP, although quite large, is only one of many well funded lobbying groups working to ensure the welfare of its elderly constituents:

    The face of today's elderly constituents:

    https://www.gannett-cdn.com/presto/2021/01/29/USAT/7dff364b-e271-47df-b4e5-ce2f1ce60959-0001.jpg

    https://press.aarp.org/file.php/178341/JL+cover-large.jpg?thumbnail=asset

    "Frail and Begging?"

    Replies: @Beckow

    You don’t get the point: there is no way to demand a fulfilment of a contract from a party that wasn’t a part to the contract – by definition, children are too young to contract for anything, so it is up to them in the future to decide. They have zillions of ways to change it, devalue it, tax it, etc…if they think they are being screwed by what you put in place, they will change it and there is nothing you and your feeble army of elderly no-kids-LGBT can do about it. It is a pyramid scheme and that depends on the willingness of the new people – young people in this case – to keep it going. Once they quit, there is no scheme, no contract.

    Your argument that politically this is an untouchable “sacred cow” holds today. But I can list for you dozens of previous sacred cows that were discarded or modified. It happens all the time when a society changes and a new generation sees no benefit in obeying the sacred cow. It is driven by self-interest and markets. Yours and your elderly cohort power in that market in the future will be very weak, if you think voting decides these things you have not been paying attention to human history. Voting only validates what those in charge want to happen – if the young ones in the future decide that you get less, you will get less. Period.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    if the young ones in the future decide that you get less, you will get less. Period.
     
    If the young in the future decide that I should get less, then they'll get less too (but they never will). Have you ever thought about that? I guarantee you that the government will continue to make payments till the end of time. Taxpayers that are employed have been paying 3% of their earning since 1949, strangely enough, there's been no talk about increasing this rate? There's already no money within the social security trust fund, it's continuously being ransacked to pay for other reckless spending projects, and there's no end in sight. The social security payments are already being funded by huge IOU's that the government puts into the trust fund that will be paid into the future... It's been doing this for quite some time now, and they will continue to do this into the future, staving off any large scale riots. The government will not abscond on its promises to me or to your kids or anybody else, they'll just keep on printing checks. One thing to keep in mind is that at some point, inflation will hit the fan bigtime. The government never promised anybody that a gallon of milk will never cost $5, $10, $15 or even $20 dollars. Better tell your kids to go into dairy farming - it could become very lucrative. :-)

    Replies: @Beckow

  1101. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    Does anyone here have “good rapport” with Unz? (German Reader?)
     
    I don't have any special rapport with Ron Unz (actually he once suggested I might be a Jewish activist only pretending to be German, because I had made some rather mild criticism of his WW2 pieces). But I like your idea, maybe one should indeed ask for it. Not sure though if it's fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.

    Replies: @Emil Nikola Richard, @iffen

    maybe one should indeed ask for it

    It was clear to me after we went through this with the end of AE’s blog that R. Unz is not interested in expending any time or effort on moderating a comment section that appeals to us.

  1102. @songbird
    @iffen

    The Peanuts would not have been such a popular strip, if they worshiped Franklin, called Charlie Brown a "Nazi", and sued Linus for quoting from Luke.

    But that is the strange world that we live in. I, for one, am for asking how we got here, and for trying to figure out a way where Charlie Brown would not be called a "Nazi."

    Replies: @iffen

    Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum I smell smoke in the auditorium
    Charlie Brown Charlie Brown he’s a clown that Charlie Brown
    He’s gonna get caught just you wait and see
    (Why’s everybody always picking on me)

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen

    I wanted to add Schroeder too, being told "I hope you don't play anything by a dead white male." (I once observed a classical musician I know being told that.) But it was to long to be part of a trifecta.

    R&B might have been the earliest sign of black worship in the US, after jazz. Like, jazz it was something really pushed on the public without high demand for it, at first. A lot of the lyrics, even in the '50s are shockingly thinly veiled sexual analogies.

    Not to mention, music was also the excuse they used to put blacks on television, where the visual medium provided the ultimate tool for low budget color-signaling, which soon became a runaway process, of super-intense propaganda, ultimately proliferating into the monstrosities of advertising that one sees today. That is why I do not like to evidence of such acts on Chinese or Russian TV.

  1103. @AP
    @Dmitry

    An awseome guy.

    Replies: @Not Raul

    Boris probably has a higher Cromartie Index than any other British PM from the last century.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/ci-cromartie-index/

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Not Raul

    There is Lloyd George to consider, he was supposed to be an insatiable swordsman and it was pre-modern contraception so he may have had a certain number of unknown love children.

    Maybe not enough to outcompete Johnson, I have heard numbers in the 13+ range for him.

  1104. @German_reader
    @German_reader

    I have another "gem" indicative of the state of the Christian churches in Germany. Since I'm formally still a member of the Lutheran church, the local Lutheran church sends me a circular letter about their activities. The last one not only contained a barely veiled recommendation to vote for the Greens in the federal election ("one should carefully consider which democratic party will do most to avert catastrophic climate change and preserve creation"), I also learned that the local teenagers preparing for their confirmation are reading the Quran, for the sake of finding common ground with Islam in a pluralistic society or whatever.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    I also learned that the local teenagers preparing for their confirmation are reading the Quran, for the sake of finding common ground with Islam in a pluralistic society or whatever.

    If you are Catholic at least there are a variety of interesting parallels between Islamic religio-political thinking and traditional Catholic views. For example, studying Jihad will lead to the old ‘doctrine of the two swords’; that part of the reason Christ founded the Church was to carry out the struggle against Satan and his power in the spiritual realm, while God had raised up Caesar and other kings to protect against and to wage war on Satan and his human minions in the temporal, political realm. This was why dying for a just cause, especially in a Crusade or for the defence of Christendom, would bring with it various spiritual benefits and speed up a person’s journey to heaven.

    Although IMO probably this (and other interesting parallels of a similar kind) won’t be part of what is studied in those confirmation classes.

    • Agree: Yellowface Anon
    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    For example, studying Jihad will lead to the old ‘doctrine of the two swords’; that part of the reason Christ founded the Church was to carry out the struggle against Satan and his power in the spiritual realm, while God had raised up Caesar and other kings to protect against and to wage war on Satan and his human minions in the temporal, political realm.
     
    But that's in fact a major difference between the development of Latin Christendom and the Islamic world: The two swords theory was developed during the Investiture contest in the struggle between the papacy and the emperor, and was used to argue for the autonomy of each power from the other (I have forgotten which side first developed it - probably the Church reformers, though Gregory VII soon went beyond it and sought submission of temporal rulers -, but if it interests you, there's detailed discussion of it in The Cambridge history of medieval political thought). Of course that's a bit of a simplification, and in many Western states church and state are intertwined even today. But in Islam's political theology there isn't even a concept of the distinction (let alone separation) of spiritual and secular powers, in an ideal Islamic society everything would be under the caliph, who's pope and emperor in one person, and all law Islamic law.
    Anyway, it's one thing to argue against demonization of Muslims as persons. But a lot of Christians (at least in Germany, and probably other Western countries too) go well beyond that and seem downright sympathetic to Islam as a religion, or even entertain ideas of an alliance with Muslims against secularization, which imo is lunacy.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  1105. @Not Raul
    @AP

    Boris probably has a higher Cromartie Index than any other British PM from the last century.

    https://www.unz.com/isteve/ci-cromartie-index/

    Replies: @Coconuts

    There is Lloyd George to consider, he was supposed to be an insatiable swordsman and it was pre-modern contraception so he may have had a certain number of unknown love children.

    Maybe not enough to outcompete Johnson, I have heard numbers in the 13+ range for him.

  1106. @German_reader
    @A123


    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.
     
    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren't fascists, they're communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of "fascism" only reinforces the framing that "fascism" is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.
     
    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a "book of migration", and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it's unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @Coconuts, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops’ conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a “book of migration”, and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus…

    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism. I have seen eminent British historians of the Third Reich like Michael Burleigh obliquely touch on this point ‘OT content in Hitler’s speeches would be an interesting topic for research, but…’ It is a spicy theme, given how widely read the Old Testament was in Europe, its spiritual authority and what it contains, it seems improbable that it didn’t influence European ideas on nation and ethnicity.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism.
     
    I haven't read it, but this book by eminent scholar of nationalism Anthony D. Smith seems to deal with such themes:
    https://global.oup.com/academic/product/chosen-peoples-9780192100177?cc=de&lang=en&#

    I read Burleigh's History of the Third Reich as a teenager, don't remember that much tbh, but his central thesis of "Nazism as political religion" sounds a bit too much like "When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag" for my taste.

    Replies: @German_reader, @iffen

  1107. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You don't get the point: there is no way to demand a fulfilment of a contract from a party that wasn't a part to the contract - by definition, children are too young to contract for anything, so it is up to them in the future to decide. They have zillions of ways to change it, devalue it, tax it, etc...if they think they are being screwed by what you put in place, they will change it and there is nothing you and your feeble army of elderly no-kids-LGBT can do about it. It is a pyramid scheme and that depends on the willingness of the new people - young people in this case - to keep it going. Once they quit, there is no scheme, no contract.

    Your argument that politically this is an untouchable "sacred cow" holds today. But I can list for you dozens of previous sacred cows that were discarded or modified. It happens all the time when a society changes and a new generation sees no benefit in obeying the sacred cow. It is driven by self-interest and markets. Yours and your elderly cohort power in that market in the future will be very weak, if you think voting decides these things you have not been paying attention to human history. Voting only validates what those in charge want to happen - if the young ones in the future decide that you get less, you will get less. Period.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    if the young ones in the future decide that you get less, you will get less. Period.

    If the young in the future decide that I should get less, then they’ll get less too (but they never will). Have you ever thought about that? I guarantee you that the government will continue to make payments till the end of time. Taxpayers that are employed have been paying 3% of their earning since 1949, strangely enough, there’s been no talk about increasing this rate? There’s already no money within the social security trust fund, it’s continuously being ransacked to pay for other reckless spending projects, and there’s no end in sight. The social security payments are already being funded by huge IOU’s that the government puts into the trust fund that will be paid into the future… It’s been doing this for quite some time now, and they will continue to do this into the future, staving off any large scale riots. The government will not abscond on its promises to me or to your kids or anybody else, they’ll just keep on printing checks. One thing to keep in mind is that at some point, inflation will hit the fan bigtime. The government never promised anybody that a gallon of milk will never cost \$5, \$10, \$15 or even \$20 dollars. Better tell your kids to go into dairy farming – it could become very lucrative. 🙂

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits - but not for themselves, for the future generations. And opened up borders to get cheap labor that benefits the old and hurts the young.

    That is a tough record to defend, so you hide behind generalities. At some point the system will have to adjust because the inflated numbers will get too out-of-whack. When that happens, the decisions will be made by the younger generations.


    One thing to keep in mind is that at some point, inflation will hit the fan bigtime.
     
    We better hope so. Inflation, properly managed, is a more orderly way to get out of a financial collapse caused by way too much debt, leverage, over-valued assets, and pensions. An alternative are defaults, loss of faith in any non-real assets, and potential mayhem. The people working at the time of this adjustment are in a better position than people on past promises (like yours and endless similar ones in Europe). Look at Russia in the 90's for a potential analogy, the pensions became worthless overnight.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1108. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    if the young ones in the future decide that you get less, you will get less. Period.
     
    If the young in the future decide that I should get less, then they'll get less too (but they never will). Have you ever thought about that? I guarantee you that the government will continue to make payments till the end of time. Taxpayers that are employed have been paying 3% of their earning since 1949, strangely enough, there's been no talk about increasing this rate? There's already no money within the social security trust fund, it's continuously being ransacked to pay for other reckless spending projects, and there's no end in sight. The social security payments are already being funded by huge IOU's that the government puts into the trust fund that will be paid into the future... It's been doing this for quite some time now, and they will continue to do this into the future, staving off any large scale riots. The government will not abscond on its promises to me or to your kids or anybody else, they'll just keep on printing checks. One thing to keep in mind is that at some point, inflation will hit the fan bigtime. The government never promised anybody that a gallon of milk will never cost $5, $10, $15 or even $20 dollars. Better tell your kids to go into dairy farming - it could become very lucrative. :-)

    Replies: @Beckow

    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations. And opened up borders to get cheap labor that benefits the old and hurts the young.

    That is a tough record to defend, so you hide behind generalities. At some point the system will have to adjust because the inflated numbers will get too out-of-whack. When that happens, the decisions will be made by the younger generations.

    One thing to keep in mind is that at some point, inflation will hit the fan bigtime.

    We better hope so. Inflation, properly managed, is a more orderly way to get out of a financial collapse caused by way too much debt, leverage, over-valued assets, and pensions. An alternative are defaults, loss of faith in any non-real assets, and potential mayhem. The people working at the time of this adjustment are in a better position than people on past promises (like yours and endless similar ones in Europe). Look at Russia in the 90’s for a potential analogy, the pensions became worthless overnight.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations.
     
    How exactly are the kids getting less? They’re still paying the 3% that I’ve had to pay all of my life. If anything, they’ll get paid more by virtue of ongoing cost of living increases (COLA). What exactly did we “soak up” that isn’t available to the kids?

    If you can’t answer these two basic questions, then it’s actually you that’s talking in generalities (that aren't true or just don't make any sense).

    Replies: @Beckow

  1109. I wonder if the people who put out a bowl of candies on Halloween, with a sign that says “take one” are 1.) all progressives, and 2.) all know that someone will come by and probably swipe the whole thing.

    #1 seems to be mostly true as far as I can test it, with memories of acquaintances.

    More fantastically, one could suppose that it is done by some to teach kids about the tragedy of the commons. And to give diabetes to those kids with evil genes, so as to lessen their reproductive chances.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations.
     
    How exactly are the kids getting less? They're still paying the 3% that I've had to pay all of my life. If anything, they'll get paid more by virtue of ongoing the cost of living increases (COLA). What exactly did we "soak up" that isn't available to the kids?

    If you can't answer these two basic questions, then it's actually you that's talking in generalities.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1110. @iffen
    @songbird

    Fee fee fi fi fo fo fum I smell smoke in the auditorium
    Charlie Brown Charlie Brown he's a clown that Charlie Brown
    He's gonna get caught just you wait and see
    (Why's everybody always picking on me)

    Replies: @songbird

    I wanted to add Schroeder too, being told “I hope you don’t play anything by a dead white male.” (I once observed a classical musician I know being told that.) But it was to long to be part of a trifecta.

    R&B might have been the earliest sign of black worship in the US, after jazz. Like, jazz it was something really pushed on the public without high demand for it, at first. A lot of the lyrics, even in the ’50s are shockingly thinly veiled sexual analogies.

    Not to mention, music was also the excuse they used to put blacks on television, where the visual medium provided the ultimate tool for low budget color-signaling, which soon became a runaway process, of super-intense propaganda, ultimately proliferating into the monstrosities of advertising that one sees today. That is why I do not like to evidence of such acts on Chinese or Russian TV.

    • Disagree: iffen
  1111. @A123
    @songbird


    Japan does not have open borders, but Germany and the West do. Why? Well, by strange coincidence, there isn’t a public figure anywhere in the West who is against open borders who hasn’t been called a Nazi. In fact, I’ll go beyond that, I’m not sure that there is an anon on the internet who hasn’t been called a Nazi for being against open borders.

    Is it accidental? Well, Orwell once wrote an essay where he mentioned that there were people who call cats fascist (which suggests the possibilities for symbol manipulation) and that was a long time ago.
     
    You are attempting to connect two different things. There is always a 'most hated' group. If it was not the Nazis it would be something else.

    The SJW Lügenpresse would be using that 'most hated' group name to smear those who oppose Open Muslim Borders. Thus the fact that it is Nazi rather than something else bears no relevance to your argument.
    ____

    Orwell is a correct reference, but the touchpoint is rather different:

    SJW = NAZI

    Why does SJW Fascism deploys the term Nazi against its foes? It us an attempt to "muddy the water" thus impeding effective communication. They do not want it accurately used about them. The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.

    This is not new. Leftoids have been damaging the language for some time. You cannot have National Socialism without 'left' Socialism. In any rational paradigm, National Socialism would be correctly aligned as an 'extreme left' belief system. SJW Orwellian manipulation has moved the term to be 'far right' even though that makes no sense for a Socialist belief system.
    _______

    I keep hoping that people of Europe will wake up. (1) (2)

    Germany: Muslim Afghan ‘refugee’ destroys statue of Christ inside pro-migrant Lutheran church

    Any German vandalizing a mosque could expect to be charged with hate crimes, yet the German media only spoke of “religious differences” in explaining the possible motives behind the attack, writes Daniel Deme
     

    In Witzenhausen-Gertenbach, Germany, a Turkish national plowed his car into a group of schoolchildren on Friday, Oct. 29. An eight-year-old girl was transferred to a hospital but died hours later, and two girls aged seven and eight were seriously injured. Although the police initially believed it was an accident, new evidence has come to light, and the 30-year-old driver is now being investigated for murder, the HNA news portal reports.

    Police believe the man drove into the group of elementary school students on purpose, according to Der Tagesspiegel. Therefore, the case is now being investigated as a case of murder and dangerous bodily harm.
     
    Whether you agree with me that SJW is a Muslim belief. Or, naively believe SJW's are importing Muslims for some other reason:

    The horror of Islamic violence against defenseless Christian children is unacceptable. Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.

    The only solution to save Christianity in Europe is "Muslim Zero". Merely closing Merkel's Open Muslim Borders and reversing Merkel's Welcome Rape-ugees, is not enough. Those incapable of Judeo-Christian assimilation must be sent home.

    Step #1 in fixing the SJW problem in Europe is reducing the number of SJW aligned migrants. And, everyone should be able to easily agree on that point. If nothing else, they are damaging to the continent's future on an HBD basis.

    PEACE 😇
    ___________

    (1) https://rmx.news/egyeb/germany-afghan-muslim-refugee-destroys-statue-of-jesus-christ-inside-pro-migrant-lutheran-church/

    (2) https://rmx.news/article/germany-turkish-man-accused-of-intentionally-driving-into-group-of-children-killing-an-8-year-old-girl-in-witzenhausen-gertenbach/

    Replies: @German_reader, @songbird

    The only solution to save Christianity in Europe is “Muslim Zero”.

    Not sure what the most efficient way to remediate Europe might be. Send the Somalis away first? Or gather them together in one place, cutting off all subsidies, and threatening to send non-Somalis there, unless they get on the plane voluntarily by a certain date. (Send the Somalis out last, but use them as a tool).

    Again, the best solution is to rent North African land for a Welcome & Containment Center that will house 100% of asylum applicants.

    Granted, Trump’s rumored comments about Haiti could probably be extended to North Africa, if one considers per capita, still I believe that God created the Sahara to prevent sub-Saharans from using MENA as a stepping stone into actual civilization.

  1112. Used to think that Ethiopia had the state capacity to seize a port, if they weren’t afraid of a response from more advanced, woke countries. But I no longer believe so.

  1113. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    I also learned that the local teenagers preparing for their confirmation are reading the Quran, for the sake of finding common ground with Islam in a pluralistic society or whatever.
     
    If you are Catholic at least there are a variety of interesting parallels between Islamic religio-political thinking and traditional Catholic views. For example, studying Jihad will lead to the old 'doctrine of the two swords'; that part of the reason Christ founded the Church was to carry out the struggle against Satan and his power in the spiritual realm, while God had raised up Caesar and other kings to protect against and to wage war on Satan and his human minions in the temporal, political realm. This was why dying for a just cause, especially in a Crusade or for the defence of Christendom, would bring with it various spiritual benefits and speed up a person's journey to heaven.

    Although IMO probably this (and other interesting parallels of a similar kind) won't be part of what is studied in those confirmation classes.

    Replies: @German_reader

    For example, studying Jihad will lead to the old ‘doctrine of the two swords’; that part of the reason Christ founded the Church was to carry out the struggle against Satan and his power in the spiritual realm, while God had raised up Caesar and other kings to protect against and to wage war on Satan and his human minions in the temporal, political realm.

    But that’s in fact a major difference between the development of Latin Christendom and the Islamic world: The two swords theory was developed during the Investiture contest in the struggle between the papacy and the emperor, and was used to argue for the autonomy of each power from the other (I have forgotten which side first developed it – probably the Church reformers, though Gregory VII soon went beyond it and sought submission of temporal rulers -, but if it interests you, there’s detailed discussion of it in The Cambridge history of medieval political thought). Of course that’s a bit of a simplification, and in many Western states church and state are intertwined even today. But in Islam’s political theology there isn’t even a concept of the distinction (let alone separation) of spiritual and secular powers, in an ideal Islamic society everything would be under the caliph, who’s pope and emperor in one person, and all law Islamic law.
    Anyway, it’s one thing to argue against demonization of Muslims as persons. But a lot of Christians (at least in Germany, and probably other Western countries too) go well beyond that and seem downright sympathetic to Islam as a religion, or even entertain ideas of an alliance with Muslims against secularization, which imo is lunacy.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    But a lot of Christians (at least in Germany, and probably other Western countries too) go well beyond that and seem downright sympathetic to Islam as a religion, or even entertain ideas of an alliance with Muslims against secularization, which imo is lunacy.
     
    Thanks for the Cambridge History recommendation and the Anthony Smith article, that is interesting.

    The way I have seen these older doctrines presented (I haven't looked into the history of how they were formulated yet, am getting it from a couple of Scholastic manuals) all power came from God and the purpose of all power was also God; the highest and most perfect realisation of the common good was heaven; the beatific vision, later the resurrection of the dead etc. All other goods and the different levels of spiritual and political organisation needed to realise them were organised in a kind of hierarchy subordinate to this ultimate end. The temporal realm was a means to an end, of facilitating people's entry into the perfect society of heaven.

    This is different from the Islamic vision in that it involves a distinction between the temporal and spiritual powers, but compared to modern secular political conceptions it is still theocratic and so it appears to resemble the Islamic view in other ways at the same time.

    Since the colonial era there seems to have been some level of sympathy for Islam in the West, like the Spanish 'Africanista' generals who called on the Moroccans in the Spanish Protectorate to enlist for war against the atheistic far-left in 1936 , and the anti-Enlightenment, anti-'demoliberal', pro-monarchy factions in other countries naturally shared a certain amount in common with Muslims who had the same feelings against secular republicanism. But this was a different era, nowadays Western Christianity has absorbed much more liberalism and in terms of cultural vitality is more like a husk compared to how it was then.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity, it is especially ironic if this is being introduced due to Woke influence.

  1114. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops’ conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a “book of migration”, and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus...
     
    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism. I have seen eminent British historians of the Third Reich like Michael Burleigh obliquely touch on this point 'OT content in Hitler's speeches would be an interesting topic for research, but...' It is a spicy theme, given how widely read the Old Testament was in Europe, its spiritual authority and what it contains, it seems improbable that it didn't influence European ideas on nation and ethnicity.

    Replies: @German_reader

    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism.

    I haven’t read it, but this book by eminent scholar of nationalism Anthony D. Smith seems to deal with such themes:
    https://global.oup.com/academic/product/chosen-peoples-9780192100177?cc=de&lang=en&#

    I read Burleigh’s History of the Third Reich as a teenager, don’t remember that much tbh, but his central thesis of “Nazism as political religion” sounds a bit too much like “When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag” for my taste.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @German_reader

    Here's a short article by Smith about the OT as a source for modern nationalism:
    https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/2041/pba151p213.pdf

    , @iffen
    @German_reader

    “When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag” for my taste.

    I agree. Do you have an idea on the when and why that makes sense to you?

    I think that Russia would have had the Gulag regardless of which Bolshevik seized power. I see Stalin as sufficient but not essential.

    I can see Nazism without Auschwitz. Was Auschwitz dependent upon Hitler seizing power and not some other Nazi?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

  1115. Somewhat influenced by Vernor Vinge, I like the idea of naming different parts of the globe, the Unthinking Depths, the Slow Zone, and Beyond.

    Alternatively, I like the idea of banning rap from civilized parts of the world (other than satire), but turning a certain part of the second largest continent into “Zones of Rap.”
    _____
    In reference to my first offensive theory about migration: some of the pregnant women in the caravan headed to the US are carrying four X’s in their bodies. Every invader carries at least one. Considering a reasonable statistical chance (not twinning) the most Y’s that an invader in the caravan can carry is one, and many carry zero.

    I’m trying to develop a new offensive theory about migration. It has something to do with parasitism. The people living in the tropics are the most evolved to live with parasites. The people in the North, though not without parasites, are the least evolved because of frosts and freezes. But, if they survive the horrors of mass migration, they might become the people most evolved for living with parasites.
    _____
    Now that we are getting into stratospheric numbers, I feel guilty about all my shitposts. But it is so much fun, I can’t help myself!

  1116. German_reader says:
    @songbird
    @German_reader


    Not sure though if it’s fair to AK who might want to end his association with UR.
     
    I was thinking this too. Maybe, a name change? Difficulty is coming up with a formula that creates a similar environment. (HBD/geopolitics/what else?) Something that leaves us with the eccentrics but keeps the normies and the full on psychotics away.

    One idea I had would be to suggest something similar to the news aggregator, but maybe with a few more lines, where people could share HBD posts from twitter and geopolitics news stories, while leaving it open to comments. Something that would not run continuously but be weekly or biweekly.
    _____
    Recently been wondering about how the Germans and the barbarians to the north of China were able to form larger confederations at about the same time. Could it have been purely technological? (the stirrup, better agriculture, or trade networks) Or might it have been something social? (culture can be a type of technology.)

    It is tempting to draw parallels to the Arab conquests, and their well-known propensity to punish adultery, which I would argue helped make the men more cooperative and militarily effective. But I don't really know if that was a factor regarding Rome and China, or, if practiced, whether it would have been something even more ancient anyway. Though I am referring to earlier barbarians, I note that the Mongols had pretty stringent laws against adultery.

    Of course, one idea might be that Muslims got it from the Jews. IIRC, Tolkien really admired their martial spirit (why he modeled the Dwarves after them), but they did not seem to be successful against Rome. Though, that was Rome of a different era, and, no doubt, there were other factors.

    Replies: @German_reader

    It is tempting to draw parallels to the Arab conquests, and their well-known propensity to punish adultery, which I would argue helped make the men more cooperative and militarily effective.

    On the other hand, Arabs have practiced polygamy which increases competition among men and undermines their cooperation (I think there’s an argument that the monogamy typical of even many ancient European peoples comes down to European geography, which led to many political units and intense military rivalry…which made widespread polygamy unpracticable since it was necessary to give men serving in war the chance of getting a wife of their own).
    But I admit I know almost nothing about the social mores of Arabia during Mohammed’s time, or if they even can be reconstructed with any certainty (there seems to be considerable uncertainty after all even about the religious landscape of the region, whether it was primarily pagan, or already strongly Christian and Jewish).

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader

    Not sure what to think about polygamy as factor for cooperation. I can think of positive aspects of it for war. But, maybe, not for peace?

    For War: Shaka Zulu controlling the supply of women (preventing young warriors from getting brides, rewarding his older campaigners with them, made the Zulu the only black quasi-state in that area, a powerful war machine against its local competitors. Obviously, war is a way of acquiring women, so it might be said to be good motivation for soldiers to fight.


    I think there’s an argument that the monogamy typical of even many ancient European peoples comes down to European geography, which led to many political units and intense military rivalry…which made widespread polygamy unpracticable since it was necessary to give men serving in war the chance of getting a wife of their own)
     
    Never heard that. Interesting theory, though does not match my instincts, which would mainly be climatic. The difficulty of gathering resources in harsh environments.

    Though, I do not have a unified theory that explains the differences between East and West, or various outliers. But I wonder whether a small units of geography theory would explain Japan.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1117. @German_reader
    @A123


    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.
     
    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren't fascists, they're communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of "fascism" only reinforces the framing that "fascism" is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.
     
    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a "book of migration", and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it's unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @Coconuts, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    churches … promoters of mass immigration

    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions whenever you are unfortunate to come home with their furniture sets to assemble.

    I’m not saying it is sensible to outsource your critical thinking skills to religious cults, but if you have agreed to do this – then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said “Love your neighbor as yourself”. But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication – as your neighbor would be part of your tribe. https://i.imgur.com/jFacMtM.jpg

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways – but nothing can be more clear here.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the refugee crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages – that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc.

    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul it’s best to be not married, but that married is second best option only if you cannot control “sexual immorality”.

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Jognson), then he is in ideal position according to the most clear instructions.

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc – all are united “children of God through faith”.

    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus

    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is “eternal truths”. Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    “Exodus” has a lot of various eternal message (it’s one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.


    You can see why “Exodus” was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

  1118. @German_reader
    @A123


    The Fascist Stormtroopers of Antifa are the new Blackshirts. Everything the fascist Left does is rooted in the same hate that drove Nazi beliefs.
     
    Idiotic normiecon framing. Antifas aren't fascists, they're communists or at least far left radicals and should be named as such. Accusing them of "fascism" only reinforces the framing that "fascism" is the only political evil imaginable.

    Muslim attacks on European Christian sites are intolerable.
     
    This will probably outrage AP and other Christian commenters here, but I have to say I really have no sympathy at all if something like this happens to any church in Germany. The Christian churches in Germany are among the biggest promoters of mass immigration to the country. The Lutheran and Catholic bishops have just published a new theological paper which presents migration as a central topic for the churches (of course they want more of it, also easier naturalization for migrants). Georg Bätzing, Catholic bishop of Limburg and president of the Catholic bishops' conference of Germany, said one has to learn to read the Bible as a "book of migration", and a Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus (which of course ignores that a) it's unclear if there is any historical basis at all to the Exodus story, and b) the OT describes the ancient Israelites as committing mass slaughter at Jericho and other places, so hardly an encouraging precedent for countries affected by mass immigration. But that line of arguing with OT references should of course appeal to Judeo-Christians like yourself).
    So to put it brutally, the churches have only themselves to blame if Muslim immigrants commit desecrations, because the churches are doing everything in their power to bring such people to Germany.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @Coconuts, @Dmitry, @Dmitry

    churches … promoters of mass immigration

    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions.

    This is perhaps an argument against too much outsourcing of your critical thinking skills to religion, but if you have agreed to do this – then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said “Love your neighbor as yourself”. But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication – as your neighbor would be part of your tribe.

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways – but it is one of the most carefully written of his views.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the “refugee” crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages – that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc. (Of course, many of these people are more economic migrants, than real refugees).

    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul writes that it best to be not married, but that married is second best option (“concession”) if you cannot control “sexual immorality”.

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in national self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc – all should be united “children of God through faith” and descendants of Abraham, according to Paul.

    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus

    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is “eternal truths”. Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    “Exodus” has a lot of various eternal message (it’s one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.


    You can see why “Exodus” was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land.
     
    Where they then massacre the previous inhabitants (well, with some exceptions like the captive virgins in Numbers 31, where one wonders what a benign explanation could be). How inspiring. imo one has to be a morally stunted cretin to think these OT stories with their archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive picture of immigration. If one's already in the realm of myths, it would make more sense to use the Aeneis, at least there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness (probably good immigration enthusiasts usually don't know the classics).
    As for the rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we've had similar discussions before, I don't feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues tend to get unpleasant.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    , @A123
    @Dmitry


    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.
     
    Being compassionate can reach beyond one's immediate group. Especially if that neighboring group is capable of compassion. However, there is no reason to believe that this duty reaches to enemies, incapable of compassion.

    To the extent that compassion to non-neighbors (a.k.a. enemies) is required, it must be built around keeping destructive and deadly enemies out of Judeo-Christian lands. One can, and should, help children who have not chosen evil. The best help would be guiding them away of from the evil of their non-Judeo-Christian forebearers.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    , @AP
    @Dmitry


    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.
     
    Sexual immorality would include stuff like watching porn or having lustful thoughts. So I guess a truly asexual person, not just someone who happens to not have a partner. However the modifier to stay unmarried "as I do" suggests that the celibate ideal is a religious one. That is, a monk, nun, or Roman Catholic priest.

    https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/sexuality-marriage-and-family/sexuality

    The teaching here is clear. People can serve God and live the spiritual life both in marriage and in the single life. And people can sin in both as well. “Each has his own special gift from God” (1 Cor 7.7). Saint Paul thinks, however, that among those who want to do as perfectly as they can, they who do not marry “will do better” (1 Cor 7.38–40).

    The spiritual tradition of the Church clearly agrees with the apostle. This does not mean that marriage is in any way disparaged or disdained. It is given by God and is a sacrament of the Church, and those who abhor it for “spiritual reasons” are to be excommunicated from the Church (cf. Canon Laws of the Council of Gangra). It means only that, most practically, one can be a greater servant of God and more perfectly a witness to His unending Kingdom if he gives up everything in this world, sells all that he has, and follows Christ in total detachment and poverty.

    The idea, however, that a single person can indulge oneself in the things of this world, including sexuality, and still be the servant of God in Christ is totally rejected and condemned. One can forsake marriage in the body only for greater freedom from “anxiety about worldly affairs” in order to be concerned with “the affairs of the Lord . . . how to be holy in body and spirit.” The single person who is “holy in body and spirit” has sexual relations with no one.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

  1119. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism.
     
    I haven't read it, but this book by eminent scholar of nationalism Anthony D. Smith seems to deal with such themes:
    https://global.oup.com/academic/product/chosen-peoples-9780192100177?cc=de&lang=en&#

    I read Burleigh's History of the Third Reich as a teenager, don't remember that much tbh, but his central thesis of "Nazism as political religion" sounds a bit too much like "When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag" for my taste.

    Replies: @German_reader, @iffen

    Here’s a short article by Smith about the OT as a source for modern nationalism:
    https://www.thebritishacademy.ac.uk/documents/2041/pba151p213.pdf

    • Thanks: Coconuts
  1120. @German_reader
    @songbird


    It is tempting to draw parallels to the Arab conquests, and their well-known propensity to punish adultery, which I would argue helped make the men more cooperative and militarily effective.
     
    On the other hand, Arabs have practiced polygamy which increases competition among men and undermines their cooperation (I think there's an argument that the monogamy typical of even many ancient European peoples comes down to European geography, which led to many political units and intense military rivalry...which made widespread polygamy unpracticable since it was necessary to give men serving in war the chance of getting a wife of their own).
    But I admit I know almost nothing about the social mores of Arabia during Mohammed's time, or if they even can be reconstructed with any certainty (there seems to be considerable uncertainty after all even about the religious landscape of the region, whether it was primarily pagan, or already strongly Christian and Jewish).

    Replies: @songbird

    Not sure what to think about polygamy as factor for cooperation. I can think of positive aspects of it for war. But, maybe, not for peace?

    For War: Shaka Zulu controlling the supply of women (preventing young warriors from getting brides, rewarding his older campaigners with them, made the Zulu the only black quasi-state in that area, a powerful war machine against its local competitors. Obviously, war is a way of acquiring women, so it might be said to be good motivation for soldiers to fight.

    I think there’s an argument that the monogamy typical of even many ancient European peoples comes down to European geography, which led to many political units and intense military rivalry…which made widespread polygamy unpracticable since it was necessary to give men serving in war the chance of getting a wife of their own)

    Never heard that. Interesting theory, though does not match my instincts, which would mainly be climatic. The difficulty of gathering resources in harsh environments.

    Though, I do not have a unified theory that explains the differences between East and West, or various outliers. But I wonder whether a small units of geography theory would explain Japan.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @songbird


    Never heard that. Interesting theory
     
    It's in Azar Gat, War in human civilization (he probably got it from somewhere else, iirc someone on Sailer's blog mentioned an article about this some years ago, but I've forgotten the details).
  1121. German_reader says:
    @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    churches … promoters of mass immigration

     

    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions.

    This is perhaps an argument against too much outsourcing of your critical thinking skills to religion, but if you have agreed to do this – then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said “Love your neighbor as yourself”. But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication – as your neighbor would be part of your tribe.

    https://i.imgur.com/jFacMtM.jpg

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    https://i.imgur.com/9JWFGbB.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/gBlxhJZ.jpg

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways – but it is one of the most carefully written of his views.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the "refugee" crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages – that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc. (Of course, many of these people are more economic migrants, than real refugees).


    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

     

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul writes that it best to be not married, but that married is second best option ("concession") if you cannot control “sexual immorality”.

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.

    https://i.imgur.com/9PZDLVH.jpg

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in national self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc – all should be united “children of God through faith” and descendants of Abraham, according to Paul.


    https://i.imgur.com/WYoSpZq.jpg


    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus
     
    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is “eternal truths”. Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    “Exodus” has a lot of various eternal message (it’s one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.


    You can see why “Exodus” was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @AP

    But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land.

    Where they then massacre the previous inhabitants (well, with some exceptions like the captive virgins in Numbers 31, where one wonders what a benign explanation could be). How inspiring. imo one has to be a morally stunted cretin to think these OT stories with their archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive picture of immigration. If one’s already in the realm of myths, it would make more sense to use the Aeneis, at least there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness (probably good immigration enthusiasts usually don’t know the classics).
    As for the rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we’ve had similar discussions before, I don’t feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues tend to get unpleasant.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @German_reader


    it would make more sense to use the Aeneis,
     
    Problem with The Aeneid is that it begins dramatically with an act of hubris leading to the chaotic and bloody downfall of a society, in which episode, we receive an iconic image about filial piety.

    It is what makes it a great story, despite being derivative and incomplete. But a very poor story for constructing a globalist narrative. Also, I guess it would valorize Euro conquests and, at best, promote a Castizo futurism, which is not what they want. There is no room for blacks in the story.
    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive
     
    Well obviously basing modern state's immigration policy in ancient world's (beautiful and enchanting) myths, is not a good idea.

    How do you think about road safety engineering, or seismic building codes, or vaccination science - based on the Vedic hymns?

    For people who are religious professionals, their training is religion, not cost-benefit analyses, so I don't think there is anything unexpected if they want to follow messages in the religious text, rather than writing more sensible policy papers.

    -

    These ancient texts from 8th-6th century BC (and probably based in older mythology) are the most inspiring, partly because it talks to more archaic parts of our soul.

    There is also more richness of images and stories. It doesn't have so much in attempts of consciousness to create logical consistency as in the later writings, or to exclude dark or brutal events.

    I haven't read "Aeneid" except skimming pages in the bookshop (which is my superficial education on most of ancient literature), but I can predict it won't go "under the skin" in the way of Homer.

    And even more than the "Odyssey", the myths of Exodus really go "under the skin" of our consciousness and are almost the strongest ones in world culture.

    E.g. We can see how these messages are present in the African American culture of the 19th/20th century America, for example, and they hardly have to worry about a mention of genocides in the text, to use these myths to create their folk songs that reflected their culture experience.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmYCLK19wKU


    there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness

     

    This sounds like more views would be popular with politicians in the Russian postsoviet perspective. Although, Patriarch Kirill says more cynically to paraphrase that "Islamic extremism among immigrants is a problem which we combat, but on the the guest workers are important to build all the cool things being constructed in Moscow".

    rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we’ve had similar discussions before, I don’t feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues
     
    Discussions about religion can be going to subjective issues. But the messages in the texts, especially for the New Testament, are often surprising clear and objective, as expected considering their later date of composition within the Roman Empire, where the writing becomes more didactic and clear than in the older civilizations.

    And religious professionals like Pope Francis in the end has to work with these texts, not much less than a seismic engineer is working with the latest seismic engineering literature and building codes.

    Of course, I wouldn't want to give the work on immigration policy to people whose training is related to perhaps inspiring and beautiful Ancient texts. Rather, it should be to be the most studied by boring and sober people trained with things like crime statistics and cost-benefit analysis.

    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it's not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  1122. @songbird
    @German_reader

    Not sure what to think about polygamy as factor for cooperation. I can think of positive aspects of it for war. But, maybe, not for peace?

    For War: Shaka Zulu controlling the supply of women (preventing young warriors from getting brides, rewarding his older campaigners with them, made the Zulu the only black quasi-state in that area, a powerful war machine against its local competitors. Obviously, war is a way of acquiring women, so it might be said to be good motivation for soldiers to fight.


    I think there’s an argument that the monogamy typical of even many ancient European peoples comes down to European geography, which led to many political units and intense military rivalry…which made widespread polygamy unpracticable since it was necessary to give men serving in war the chance of getting a wife of their own)
     
    Never heard that. Interesting theory, though does not match my instincts, which would mainly be climatic. The difficulty of gathering resources in harsh environments.

    Though, I do not have a unified theory that explains the differences between East and West, or various outliers. But I wonder whether a small units of geography theory would explain Japan.

    Replies: @German_reader

    Never heard that. Interesting theory

    It’s in Azar Gat, War in human civilization (he probably got it from somewhere else, iirc someone on Sailer’s blog mentioned an article about this some years ago, but I’ve forgotten the details).

    • Thanks: songbird
  1123. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land.
     
    Where they then massacre the previous inhabitants (well, with some exceptions like the captive virgins in Numbers 31, where one wonders what a benign explanation could be). How inspiring. imo one has to be a morally stunted cretin to think these OT stories with their archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive picture of immigration. If one's already in the realm of myths, it would make more sense to use the Aeneis, at least there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness (probably good immigration enthusiasts usually don't know the classics).
    As for the rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we've had similar discussions before, I don't feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues tend to get unpleasant.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    it would make more sense to use the Aeneis,

    Problem with The Aeneid is that it begins dramatically with an act of hubris leading to the chaotic and bloody downfall of a society, in which episode, we receive an iconic image about filial piety.

    It is what makes it a great story, despite being derivative and incomplete. But a very poor story for constructing a globalist narrative. Also, I guess it would valorize Euro conquests and, at best, promote a Castizo futurism, which is not what they want. There is no room for blacks in the story.

  1124. @songbird
    @sher singh


    Are you suggesting Anglos aren’t passive-aggressive homosexuals?
    Feminism, LGBT aren’t these all your cultural products?
     
    LMAO. For the last time - I am not an Anglo!

    But, nevertheless, your comments about homosexuals, miscegenation, and pride have struck close to home. The nation of my blood has been ruled by a gay Indian mischling, who calls my people, who trace their main descent in the land back about 1000 years before the Aryans arrived in India, "white." What greater degradation than that?

    Replies: @sher singh

    [MORE]

    https://scottishsikh.wordpress.com/2020/04/20/nihang-baba-tara-singh/

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

    • Thanks: songbird
  1125. @songbird
    I wonder if the people who put out a bowl of candies on Halloween, with a sign that says "take one" are 1.) all progressives, and 2.) all know that someone will come by and probably swipe the whole thing.

    #1 seems to be mostly true as far as I can test it, with memories of acquaintances.

    More fantastically, one could suppose that it is done by some to teach kids about the tragedy of the commons. And to give diabetes to those kids with evil genes, so as to lessen their reproductive chances.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations.

    How exactly are the kids getting less? They’re still paying the 3% that I’ve had to pay all of my life. If anything, they’ll get paid more by virtue of ongoing the cost of living increases (COLA). What exactly did we “soak up” that isn’t available to the kids?

    If you can’t answer these two basic questions, then it’s actually you that’s talking in generalities.

    • LOL: sher singh
    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Mr. Hack

    This reply was intended for Beckow's comment #1110.

  1126. @Mr. Hack
    @songbird


    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations.
     
    How exactly are the kids getting less? They're still paying the 3% that I've had to pay all of my life. If anything, they'll get paid more by virtue of ongoing the cost of living increases (COLA). What exactly did we "soak up" that isn't available to the kids?

    If you can't answer these two basic questions, then it's actually you that's talking in generalities.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    This reply was intended for Beckow’s comment #1110.

  1127. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    I think a more plausible reading of the OT would be as one of the founding texts of divinely mandated ethno-nationalism.
     
    I haven't read it, but this book by eminent scholar of nationalism Anthony D. Smith seems to deal with such themes:
    https://global.oup.com/academic/product/chosen-peoples-9780192100177?cc=de&lang=en&#

    I read Burleigh's History of the Third Reich as a teenager, don't remember that much tbh, but his central thesis of "Nazism as political religion" sounds a bit too much like "When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag" for my taste.

    Replies: @German_reader, @iffen

    “When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag” for my taste.

    I agree. Do you have an idea on the when and why that makes sense to you?

    I think that Russia would have had the Gulag regardless of which Bolshevik seized power. I see Stalin as sufficient but not essential.

    I can see Nazism without Auschwitz. Was Auschwitz dependent upon Hitler seizing power and not some other Nazi?

    • Replies: @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Gulags were successors of Tsarist Katorgas, while Nazi concentration camps were an almost new idea that added a level of active deprivation over WWI POW camps.

    Replies: @iffen

  1128. @iffen
    @German_reader

    “When people turn away from God, the end result is Auschwitz and the Gulag” for my taste.

    I agree. Do you have an idea on the when and why that makes sense to you?

    I think that Russia would have had the Gulag regardless of which Bolshevik seized power. I see Stalin as sufficient but not essential.

    I can see Nazism without Auschwitz. Was Auschwitz dependent upon Hitler seizing power and not some other Nazi?

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon

    Gulags were successors of Tsarist Katorgas, while Nazi concentration camps were an almost new idea that added a level of active deprivation over WWI POW camps.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yes, but the internal exile used by the Tzarists was rather mild compared to the communist Gulag. At some point the quality and/or quantity transforms what "was" into something new.

    I don't see your connection to POW camps.

    We can see parallels between the genocide of the Jews and other genocides, for example, the Armenian one. But again, at some point specific features point to a major difference. I believe that there were roundups of males and mass shootings, but as far as I know the Turks didn't construct any dedicated extermination centers, but rather just killed on the fly.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

  1129. @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    Gulags were successors of Tsarist Katorgas, while Nazi concentration camps were an almost new idea that added a level of active deprivation over WWI POW camps.

    Replies: @iffen

    Yes, but the internal exile used by the Tzarists was rather mild compared to the communist Gulag. At some point the quality and/or quantity transforms what “was” into something new.

    I don’t see your connection to POW camps.

    We can see parallels between the genocide of the Jews and other genocides, for example, the Armenian one. But again, at some point specific features point to a major difference. I believe that there were roundups of males and mass shootings, but as far as I know the Turks didn’t construct any dedicated extermination centers, but rather just killed on the fly.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen


    but as far as I know the Turks didn’t construct any dedicated extermination centers
     
    David Cole (perhaps, you would not believe him) has said the majority of authorities don't believe this. (There is a dispute about what happened later).

    Replies: @iffen

    , @Yellowface Anon
    @iffen

    They are of course different, as in "wartime & nationalist" imprisonments & mass killings -> "ideological" ones.

    , @A123
    @iffen

    Modern incarnations of Far Left ideologies (Socialism, National Socialism, Communism, etc.) deal with "undesirables" in a very permanent manner. Camps, Gulags, Ghettos, and simply extinguishing the unarmed in passing fill exactly the same role. Any difference will be 'of style', not substance.

    Adolf's determination that Jews = "undesirables" was personal to him. That particular mistake may have been diminished or avoided with a different Führer.

    The worst example of this failure mode is probably Marxist Pol Pot's decree that the intelligent = "undesirable". And, he was quite effective at permanently diminishing Cambodia's IQ potential.

    PEACE 😇

  1130. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yes, but the internal exile used by the Tzarists was rather mild compared to the communist Gulag. At some point the quality and/or quantity transforms what "was" into something new.

    I don't see your connection to POW camps.

    We can see parallels between the genocide of the Jews and other genocides, for example, the Armenian one. But again, at some point specific features point to a major difference. I believe that there were roundups of males and mass shootings, but as far as I know the Turks didn't construct any dedicated extermination centers, but rather just killed on the fly.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    but as far as I know the Turks didn’t construct any dedicated extermination centers

    David Cole (perhaps, you would not believe him) has said the majority of authorities don’t believe this. (There is a dispute about what happened later).

    • Replies: @iffen
    @songbird

    David Cole (perhaps, you would not believe him) has said the majority of authorities don’t believe this.

    The Turks built dedicated killing centers where men, women and children were systematically killed?

    Replies: @songbird

  1131. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits - but not for themselves, for the future generations. And opened up borders to get cheap labor that benefits the old and hurts the young.

    That is a tough record to defend, so you hide behind generalities. At some point the system will have to adjust because the inflated numbers will get too out-of-whack. When that happens, the decisions will be made by the younger generations.


    One thing to keep in mind is that at some point, inflation will hit the fan bigtime.
     
    We better hope so. Inflation, properly managed, is a more orderly way to get out of a financial collapse caused by way too much debt, leverage, over-valued assets, and pensions. An alternative are defaults, loss of faith in any non-real assets, and potential mayhem. The people working at the time of this adjustment are in a better position than people on past promises (like yours and endless similar ones in Europe). Look at Russia in the 90's for a potential analogy, the pensions became worthless overnight.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations.

    How exactly are the kids getting less? They’re still paying the 3% that I’ve had to pay all of my life. If anything, they’ll get paid more by virtue of ongoing cost of living increases (COLA). What exactly did we “soak up” that isn’t available to the kids?

    If you can’t answer these two basic questions, then it’s actually you that’s talking in generalities (that aren’t true or just don’t make any sense).

    • Replies: @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You are wrong, the rate in US is 7.65% + employer pays the same, so =15.30%.
    https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/colafacts2021.pdf

    The rate is not what you grandpas used to pay (3%?). Same is true in Europe: rates are higher, benefits are lower.

    My point was about other things: college in US used to be almost free, today young people have an average of $35k debt, health care used to be affordable, housing asset pyramids in most places there are jobs have enriched elderly landlords and impoverished young.

    But above all, the old people support for open borders to bring cheap labor has benefitted them tremendously and hurt younger generation. You don't want to see it, because it is unpleasant for the old to face what they did - but in life there are always consequences. So you counting having a "contract" could be fool's gold.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

  1132. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yes, but the internal exile used by the Tzarists was rather mild compared to the communist Gulag. At some point the quality and/or quantity transforms what "was" into something new.

    I don't see your connection to POW camps.

    We can see parallels between the genocide of the Jews and other genocides, for example, the Armenian one. But again, at some point specific features point to a major difference. I believe that there were roundups of males and mass shootings, but as far as I know the Turks didn't construct any dedicated extermination centers, but rather just killed on the fly.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    They are of course different, as in “wartime & nationalist” imprisonments & mass killings -> “ideological” ones.

  1133. Considering modern Chinese epithets for SE Asians, and the local fauna, I wonder whether one could reconstruct or at least infer that the Negritos were called “monkeys” in ancient times as they were genocided.

  1134. @songbird
    @iffen


    but as far as I know the Turks didn’t construct any dedicated extermination centers
     
    David Cole (perhaps, you would not believe him) has said the majority of authorities don't believe this. (There is a dispute about what happened later).

    Replies: @iffen

    David Cole (perhaps, you would not believe him) has said the majority of authorities don’t believe this.

    The Turks built dedicated killing centers where men, women and children were systematically killed?

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen

    No, his contention is that it is the general opinion of experts that the concentration camps that Nazis built weren't designed as killing camps, i.e., that there were no "killing buildings" built from the ground up, designed for the purpose. According to him, the controversy between revisionists and others is about what happened later.

    Replies: @iffen

  1135. Is the Constitution making a come back? (1)

    Supreme Court appears poised to overturn NY gun control law from 1913

    The US Supreme Court appeared poised Wednesday to overturn a New York law that limits someone’s ability to legally carry a concealed gun in public.

    According to the law, most applicants seeking to carry handguns without restrictions need to get permission from a state firearms licensing officer and prove they have an “actual” need for the weapon for self-defense

    Its a win-win. Should SCOTUS let this stand, it implies that CNN needs “permission” from 50 state “press” officers to operate.

    Defeating this silly law is certainly a step in the right direction. However, I am not going to believe in miracles until the 10th Amendment has meaning again.

    #LetsGoBrandon 😇
    _____________________

    (1) https://nypost.com/2021/11/03/supreme-court-poised-to-strike-down-ny-gun-law-from-1913/

  1136. @iffen
    @songbird

    David Cole (perhaps, you would not believe him) has said the majority of authorities don’t believe this.

    The Turks built dedicated killing centers where men, women and children were systematically killed?

    Replies: @songbird

    No, his contention is that it is the general opinion of experts that the concentration camps that Nazis built weren’t designed as killing camps, i.e., that there were no “killing buildings” built from the ground up, designed for the purpose. According to him, the controversy between revisionists and others is about what happened later.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @songbird

    Oh. I'll let you work on that problem as it is not one that I share.

    Replies: @songbird

  1137. @iffen
    @Yellowface Anon

    Yes, but the internal exile used by the Tzarists was rather mild compared to the communist Gulag. At some point the quality and/or quantity transforms what "was" into something new.

    I don't see your connection to POW camps.

    We can see parallels between the genocide of the Jews and other genocides, for example, the Armenian one. But again, at some point specific features point to a major difference. I believe that there were roundups of males and mass shootings, but as far as I know the Turks didn't construct any dedicated extermination centers, but rather just killed on the fly.

    Replies: @songbird, @Yellowface Anon, @A123

    Modern incarnations of Far Left ideologies (Socialism, National Socialism, Communism, etc.) deal with “undesirables” in a very permanent manner. Camps, Gulags, Ghettos, and simply extinguishing the unarmed in passing fill exactly the same role. Any difference will be ‘of style’, not substance.

    Adolf’s determination that Jews = “undesirables” was personal to him. That particular mistake may have been diminished or avoided with a different Führer.

    The worst example of this failure mode is probably Marxist Pol Pot’s decree that the intelligent = “undesirable”. And, he was quite effective at permanently diminishing Cambodia’s IQ potential.

    PEACE 😇

  1138. @songbird
    @iffen

    No, his contention is that it is the general opinion of experts that the concentration camps that Nazis built weren't designed as killing camps, i.e., that there were no "killing buildings" built from the ground up, designed for the purpose. According to him, the controversy between revisionists and others is about what happened later.

    Replies: @iffen

    Oh. I’ll let you work on that problem as it is not one that I share.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen

    Actually, I'm not very interested in WW2 or the Holocaust. IMO, there is too much of an obsession with both things. WW2 history, to a large extent, is what I would consider "history porn" - much of it is built on video or dramatic images, with a pretty shallow, moralizing narrative. As we move away from it in time, I think it it will become clearer and clearer that it is not the central point in all of history, and that a lot of people were tricked by the vidya.

    Though, I thought you were interested in technical history and distinguishing it from the Armenian genocide, etc. and at what point it differed. I.e. something about a timeline, and at what historical point it coincided or deviated with past history. (I don't believe that the Eisengruppen were something new)

    Guess I was rather mistaken though.

    Replies: @iffen

  1139. @iffen
    @songbird

    Oh. I'll let you work on that problem as it is not one that I share.

    Replies: @songbird

    Actually, I’m not very interested in WW2 or the Holocaust. IMO, there is too much of an obsession with both things. WW2 history, to a large extent, is what I would consider “history porn” – much of it is built on video or dramatic images, with a pretty shallow, moralizing narrative. As we move away from it in time, I think it it will become clearer and clearer that it is not the central point in all of history, and that a lot of people were tricked by the vidya.

    Though, I thought you were interested in technical history and distinguishing it from the Armenian genocide, etc. and at what point it differed. I.e. something about a timeline, and at what historical point it coincided or deviated with past history. (I don’t believe that the Eisengruppen were something new)

    Guess I was rather mistaken though.

    • Replies: @iffen
    @songbird

    Guess I was rather mistaken though.

    Don't worry about that. It happened to me one time.

    I'm not sure what technical history means.

    I made a distinction between the Holocaust and the Armenian one. A distinction that I believe to be valid. I think that comparing the Holocaust to other genocides and massacres is a worthwhile inquiry, even by those of the perpetually aggrieved colonial mindset.

    As to WWI and WWII, they are, imo, the pivotal events of the 20th Century and the after effects still pretty much define the geopolitical landscape.

    Again, I am quite comfortable agreeing to disagree on the subject.

    Replies: @songbird

  1140. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    churches … promoters of mass immigration

     

    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions.

    This is perhaps an argument against too much outsourcing of your critical thinking skills to religion, but if you have agreed to do this – then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said “Love your neighbor as yourself”. But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication – as your neighbor would be part of your tribe.

    https://i.imgur.com/jFacMtM.jpg

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    https://i.imgur.com/9JWFGbB.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/gBlxhJZ.jpg

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways – but it is one of the most carefully written of his views.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the "refugee" crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages – that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc. (Of course, many of these people are more economic migrants, than real refugees).


    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

     

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul writes that it best to be not married, but that married is second best option ("concession") if you cannot control “sexual immorality”.

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.

    https://i.imgur.com/9PZDLVH.jpg

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in national self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc – all should be united “children of God through faith” and descendants of Abraham, according to Paul.


    https://i.imgur.com/WYoSpZq.jpg


    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus
     
    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is “eternal truths”. Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    “Exodus” has a lot of various eternal message (it’s one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.


    You can see why “Exodus” was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @AP

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    Being compassionate can reach beyond one’s immediate group. Especially if that neighboring group is capable of compassion. However, there is no reason to believe that this duty reaches to enemies, incapable of compassion.

    To the extent that compassion to non-neighbors (a.k.a. enemies) is required, it must be built around keeping destructive and deadly enemies out of Judeo-Christian lands. One can, and should, help children who have not chosen evil. The best help would be guiding them away of from the evil of their non-Judeo-Christian forebearers.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123


    28 And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”

    29 But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

    30 Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among [b]thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 On the next day, [c]when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ 36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”

    37 And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.

    Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
     

    I have always wondered who hacked into the New Testament and inserted BS like this.

    Replies: @A123

  1141. @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow


    The kids are already getting less, so your threat rings hollow. This is true in Europe and in US with a few exceptions. If you look at all basic parameters, your generation (and the previous ones) soaked up a lot of wealth, inflated assets, removed many benefits – but not for themselves, for the future generations.
     
    How exactly are the kids getting less? They’re still paying the 3% that I’ve had to pay all of my life. If anything, they’ll get paid more by virtue of ongoing cost of living increases (COLA). What exactly did we “soak up” that isn’t available to the kids?

    If you can’t answer these two basic questions, then it’s actually you that’s talking in generalities (that aren't true or just don't make any sense).

    Replies: @Beckow

    You are wrong, the rate in US is 7.65% + employer pays the same, so =15.30%.
    https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/colafacts2021.pdf

    The rate is not what you grandpas used to pay (3%?). Same is true in Europe: rates are higher, benefits are lower.

    My point was about other things: college in US used to be almost free, today young people have an average of \$35k debt, health care used to be affordable, housing asset pyramids in most places there are jobs have enriched elderly landlords and impoverished young.

    But above all, the old people support for open borders to bring cheap labor has benefitted them tremendously and hurt younger generation. You don’t want to see it, because it is unpleasant for the old to face what they did – but in life there are always consequences. So you counting having a “contract” could be fool’s gold.

    • Replies: @Mr. Hack
    @Beckow

    Well, it's actually 6.2%(the difference from 7.65% is paid to fund the medicare program).But since you were closer than I was, I'll have to concede this one to you.

    You're also right in pointing out that the costs to fund a college education have risen dramatically. I don't know what to say about this one. If it were me, I'd look for a good vocational school where one can get trained in many marketable skills (computers, electronics, mechanics, cooking) and skip the high ticket college degree in "Women's Studies". Also, there are certain licenses that one can obtain that are quite marketable in the computer industry, there may be preparatory or online courses that help to pass these exams, but a few hundred dollars is much thriftier than many thousands.

    Housing? the bubble will eventually burst.

    I'm not so sure that "old people" support open borders as much you think. Most Trump supporters were older conservatives that were all for controlling borders. Sam Walton, is probably for open borders.

  1142. @A123
    @Dmitry


    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.
     
    Being compassionate can reach beyond one's immediate group. Especially if that neighboring group is capable of compassion. However, there is no reason to believe that this duty reaches to enemies, incapable of compassion.

    To the extent that compassion to non-neighbors (a.k.a. enemies) is required, it must be built around keeping destructive and deadly enemies out of Judeo-Christian lands. One can, and should, help children who have not chosen evil. The best help would be guiding them away of from the evil of their non-Judeo-Christian forebearers.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    28 And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”

    29 But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

    30 Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among [b]thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 On the next day, [c]when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ 36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”

    37 And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.

    Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”

    I have always wondered who hacked into the New Testament and inserted BS like this.

    • Replies: @A123
    @iffen


    I have always wondered who hacked into the New Testament and inserted BS like this
     
    Phrases like "The Bible" and "The New Testament" are incorrectly baked into the language. Each version is a translation of an edit of a translation. The best that can be obtained is a Bible that disagrees with other Bibles. Each BIBLE version is the product of flawed mankind (at best) to intentionally pushing an agenda (at worst).

    If a Bible version appears to contain something so anti-survival it makes no sense.... Ignoring it as a type setter's error is fully permissible, and obviously the correct course of action.

    Showing compassion to the victim of thieves makes sense.

    Showing compassion to the thieves on the other hand is stupidity verging on suicide. Economic migrants must be viewed as thieves. They seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

    The tough questions are those like, "What do you do with the children of thieves"?

    Depriving your children to help those children is obviously the wrong answer, so one cannot let them in either. However, ignoring the plight of children neglected by their thieving parents is problematic. The best one can do is try to help them, without letting them in.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

  1143. If Kamala ever becomes president (don’t think it is possible, unless Biden resigns or drops dead; I predict the former), then, at least on the upside, one can look forward to the stadium-wide chants of “Kamala is a whore!”

  1144. @iffen
    @A123


    28 And He said to him, “You have answered rightly; do this and you will live.”

    29 But he, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”

    30 Then Jesus answered and said: “A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and fell among [b]thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead. 31 Now by chance a certain priest came down that road. And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. 32 Likewise a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and passed by on the other side. 33 But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. 34 So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35 On the next day, [c]when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, ‘Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I will repay you.’ 36 So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who fell among the thieves?”

    37 And he said, “He who showed mercy on him.

    Then Jesus said to him, “Go and do likewise.”
     

    I have always wondered who hacked into the New Testament and inserted BS like this.

    Replies: @A123

    I have always wondered who hacked into the New Testament and inserted BS like this

    Phrases like “The Bible” and “The New Testament” are incorrectly baked into the language. Each version is a translation of an edit of a translation. The best that can be obtained is a Bible that disagrees with other Bibles. Each BIBLE version is the product of flawed mankind (at best) to intentionally pushing an agenda (at worst).

    If a Bible version appears to contain something so anti-survival it makes no sense…. Ignoring it as a type setter’s error is fully permissible, and obviously the correct course of action.

    Showing compassion to the victim of thieves makes sense.

    Showing compassion to the thieves on the other hand is stupidity verging on suicide. Economic migrants must be viewed as thieves. They seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

    The tough questions are those like, “What do you do with the children of thieves”?

    Depriving your children to help those children is obviously the wrong answer, so one cannot let them in either. However, ignoring the plight of children neglected by their thieving parents is problematic. The best one can do is try to help them, without letting them in.

    PEACE 😇

    • Replies: @iffen
    @A123

    Your interpretation of the Bible seems comparable to your take on the current state of American politics.

  1145. @German_reader
    @Dmitry


    But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land.
     
    Where they then massacre the previous inhabitants (well, with some exceptions like the captive virgins in Numbers 31, where one wonders what a benign explanation could be). How inspiring. imo one has to be a morally stunted cretin to think these OT stories with their archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive picture of immigration. If one's already in the realm of myths, it would make more sense to use the Aeneis, at least there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness (probably good immigration enthusiasts usually don't know the classics).
    As for the rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we've had similar discussions before, I don't feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues tend to get unpleasant.

    Replies: @songbird, @Dmitry

    archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive

    Well obviously basing modern state’s immigration policy in ancient world’s (beautiful and enchanting) myths, is not a good idea.

    How do you think about road safety engineering, or seismic building codes, or vaccination science – based on the Vedic hymns?

    For people who are religious professionals, their training is religion, not cost-benefit analyses, so I don’t think there is anything unexpected if they want to follow messages in the religious text, rather than writing more sensible policy papers.

    These ancient texts from 8th-6th century BC (and probably based in older mythology) are the most inspiring, partly because it talks to more archaic parts of our soul.

    There is also more richness of images and stories. It doesn’t have so much in attempts of consciousness to create logical consistency as in the later writings, or to exclude dark or brutal events.

    I haven’t read “Aeneid” except skimming pages in the bookshop (which is my superficial education on most of ancient literature), but I can predict it won’t go “under the skin” in the way of Homer.

    And even more than the “Odyssey”, the myths of Exodus really go “under the skin” of our consciousness and are almost the strongest ones in world culture.

    E.g. We can see how these messages are present in the African American culture of the 19th/20th century America, for example, and they hardly have to worry about a mention of genocides in the text, to use these myths to create their folk songs that reflected their culture experience.

    there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness

    This sounds like more views would be popular with politicians in the Russian postsoviet perspective. Although, Patriarch Kirill says more cynically to paraphrase that “Islamic extremism among immigrants is a problem which we combat, but on the the guest workers are important to build all the cool things being constructed in Moscow”.

    rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we’ve had similar discussions before, I don’t feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues

    Discussions about religion can be going to subjective issues. But the messages in the texts, especially for the New Testament, are often surprising clear and objective, as expected considering their later date of composition within the Roman Empire, where the writing becomes more didactic and clear than in the older civilizations.

    And religious professionals like Pope Francis in the end has to work with these texts, not much less than a seismic engineer is working with the latest seismic engineering literature and building codes.

    Of course, I wouldn’t want to give the work on immigration policy to people whose training is related to perhaps inspiring and beautiful Ancient texts. Rather, it should be to be the most studied by boring and sober people trained with things like crime statistics and cost-benefit analysis.

    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it’s not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it’s not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.
     
    If you think about some of these teachings in a wider context, important questions arise; for example, say you have a mostly Christian country, or where Christianity was formerly the majority faith but is struggling to survive, the issue of permitting the entry of large numbers of non-Christians is that they may undermine people's chances of salvation by fostering the spread of religious confusion. (Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ). There may also be issues if the new arrivals contribute to alienating the population from its rulers (Aquinas mentions things like this in his book on kingship), and efficient use of resources to assist people in need. I suppose the Pope has to weigh up these different considerations.

    Replies: @German_reader, @Dmitry

  1146. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    For example, studying Jihad will lead to the old ‘doctrine of the two swords’; that part of the reason Christ founded the Church was to carry out the struggle against Satan and his power in the spiritual realm, while God had raised up Caesar and other kings to protect against and to wage war on Satan and his human minions in the temporal, political realm.
     
    But that's in fact a major difference between the development of Latin Christendom and the Islamic world: The two swords theory was developed during the Investiture contest in the struggle between the papacy and the emperor, and was used to argue for the autonomy of each power from the other (I have forgotten which side first developed it - probably the Church reformers, though Gregory VII soon went beyond it and sought submission of temporal rulers -, but if it interests you, there's detailed discussion of it in The Cambridge history of medieval political thought). Of course that's a bit of a simplification, and in many Western states church and state are intertwined even today. But in Islam's political theology there isn't even a concept of the distinction (let alone separation) of spiritual and secular powers, in an ideal Islamic society everything would be under the caliph, who's pope and emperor in one person, and all law Islamic law.
    Anyway, it's one thing to argue against demonization of Muslims as persons. But a lot of Christians (at least in Germany, and probably other Western countries too) go well beyond that and seem downright sympathetic to Islam as a religion, or even entertain ideas of an alliance with Muslims against secularization, which imo is lunacy.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    But a lot of Christians (at least in Germany, and probably other Western countries too) go well beyond that and seem downright sympathetic to Islam as a religion, or even entertain ideas of an alliance with Muslims against secularization, which imo is lunacy.

    Thanks for the Cambridge History recommendation and the Anthony Smith article, that is interesting.

    The way I have seen these older doctrines presented (I haven’t looked into the history of how they were formulated yet, am getting it from a couple of Scholastic manuals) all power came from God and the purpose of all power was also God; the highest and most perfect realisation of the common good was heaven; the beatific vision, later the resurrection of the dead etc. All other goods and the different levels of spiritual and political organisation needed to realise them were organised in a kind of hierarchy subordinate to this ultimate end. The temporal realm was a means to an end, of facilitating people’s entry into the perfect society of heaven.

    This is different from the Islamic vision in that it involves a distinction between the temporal and spiritual powers, but compared to modern secular political conceptions it is still theocratic and so it appears to resemble the Islamic view in other ways at the same time.

    Since the colonial era there seems to have been some level of sympathy for Islam in the West, like the Spanish ‘Africanista’ generals who called on the Moroccans in the Spanish Protectorate to enlist for war against the atheistic far-left in 1936 , and the anti-Enlightenment, anti-‘demoliberal’, pro-monarchy factions in other countries naturally shared a certain amount in common with Muslims who had the same feelings against secular republicanism. But this was a different era, nowadays Western Christianity has absorbed much more liberalism and in terms of cultural vitality is more like a husk compared to how it was then.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity, it is especially ironic if this is being introduced due to Woke influence.

  1147. @Beckow
    @Mr. Hack

    You are wrong, the rate in US is 7.65% + employer pays the same, so =15.30%.
    https://www.ssa.gov/news/press/factsheets/colafacts2021.pdf

    The rate is not what you grandpas used to pay (3%?). Same is true in Europe: rates are higher, benefits are lower.

    My point was about other things: college in US used to be almost free, today young people have an average of $35k debt, health care used to be affordable, housing asset pyramids in most places there are jobs have enriched elderly landlords and impoverished young.

    But above all, the old people support for open borders to bring cheap labor has benefitted them tremendously and hurt younger generation. You don't want to see it, because it is unpleasant for the old to face what they did - but in life there are always consequences. So you counting having a "contract" could be fool's gold.

    Replies: @Mr. Hack

    Well, it’s actually 6.2%(the difference from 7.65% is paid to fund the medicare program).But since you were closer than I was, I’ll have to concede this one to you.

    You’re also right in pointing out that the costs to fund a college education have risen dramatically. I don’t know what to say about this one. If it were me, I’d look for a good vocational school where one can get trained in many marketable skills (computers, electronics, mechanics, cooking) and skip the high ticket college degree in “Women’s Studies”. Also, there are certain licenses that one can obtain that are quite marketable in the computer industry, there may be preparatory or online courses that help to pass these exams, but a few hundred dollars is much thriftier than many thousands.

    Housing? the bubble will eventually burst.

    I’m not so sure that “old people” support open borders as much you think. Most Trump supporters were older conservatives that were all for controlling borders. Sam Walton, is probably for open borders.

  1148. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    archaic morality could in any way be used to paint a positive
     
    Well obviously basing modern state's immigration policy in ancient world's (beautiful and enchanting) myths, is not a good idea.

    How do you think about road safety engineering, or seismic building codes, or vaccination science - based on the Vedic hymns?

    For people who are religious professionals, their training is religion, not cost-benefit analyses, so I don't think there is anything unexpected if they want to follow messages in the religious text, rather than writing more sensible policy papers.

    -

    These ancient texts from 8th-6th century BC (and probably based in older mythology) are the most inspiring, partly because it talks to more archaic parts of our soul.

    There is also more richness of images and stories. It doesn't have so much in attempts of consciousness to create logical consistency as in the later writings, or to exclude dark or brutal events.

    I haven't read "Aeneid" except skimming pages in the bookshop (which is my superficial education on most of ancient literature), but I can predict it won't go "under the skin" in the way of Homer.

    And even more than the "Odyssey", the myths of Exodus really go "under the skin" of our consciousness and are almost the strongest ones in world culture.

    E.g. We can see how these messages are present in the African American culture of the 19th/20th century America, for example, and they hardly have to worry about a mention of genocides in the text, to use these myths to create their folk songs that reflected their culture experience.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fmYCLK19wKU


    there the immigrants and the natives eventually make peace and coalesce into a new people destined for imperial greatness

     

    This sounds like more views would be popular with politicians in the Russian postsoviet perspective. Although, Patriarch Kirill says more cynically to paraphrase that "Islamic extremism among immigrants is a problem which we combat, but on the the guest workers are important to build all the cool things being constructed in Moscow".

    rest of your points, I agree with some, disagree with others, but since we’ve had similar discussions before, I don’t feel like going into more detail, especially so since discussions about religious issues
     
    Discussions about religion can be going to subjective issues. But the messages in the texts, especially for the New Testament, are often surprising clear and objective, as expected considering their later date of composition within the Roman Empire, where the writing becomes more didactic and clear than in the older civilizations.

    And religious professionals like Pope Francis in the end has to work with these texts, not much less than a seismic engineer is working with the latest seismic engineering literature and building codes.

    Of course, I wouldn't want to give the work on immigration policy to people whose training is related to perhaps inspiring and beautiful Ancient texts. Rather, it should be to be the most studied by boring and sober people trained with things like crime statistics and cost-benefit analysis.

    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it's not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it’s not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.

    If you think about some of these teachings in a wider context, important questions arise; for example, say you have a mostly Christian country, or where Christianity was formerly the majority faith but is struggling to survive, the issue of permitting the entry of large numbers of non-Christians is that they may undermine people’s chances of salvation by fostering the spread of religious confusion. (Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ). There may also be issues if the new arrivals contribute to alienating the population from its rulers (Aquinas mentions things like this in his book on kingship), and efficient use of resources to assist people in need. I suppose the Pope has to weigh up these different considerations.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ
     
    Indeed, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity
     
    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn't this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    , @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    From what I saw (perhaps not in a representative area), when you go to services in a Catholic church in North West Europe, most of the audience in the church can be Poles, Africans, Filipinos and also Indians (or people who look Indian).

    In certain areas, these nationalities seem to be their "main market". So if the churches had a cynical self-interest as the motivation for their views - they would probably support more immigration from those countries in particular.

    However, of course, teachings of the New Testament often imply you should avoid self-interest in many areas, and this is part of its mystical and universalizing value - that you might feel like you are sacrificing.

    If the churches started to say we need more immigrants from Poland, Africa, South America and the Phillipines, and less from the Middle East, it could seem to be cynical.


    issue of permitting the entry of large numbers of non-Christians is that they may undermine people’s chances of salvation by fostering the spread of religious confusion

     

    If you look at the previous Pope before Francis (he's Pope Benedict XVI) - he had presented a speech in September 2006, where he has indirectly seemed to criticize Islam.

    I think this is viewed as a diplomatic failure though, and the current Pope is being careful not to sound critical of other religions.

    Even though the speech seemd to be criticizing Islam very politely when you read it.
    https://i.imgur.com/VDBlm4V.jpg


    https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html

  1149. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it’s not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.
     
    If you think about some of these teachings in a wider context, important questions arise; for example, say you have a mostly Christian country, or where Christianity was formerly the majority faith but is struggling to survive, the issue of permitting the entry of large numbers of non-Christians is that they may undermine people's chances of salvation by fostering the spread of religious confusion. (Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ). There may also be issues if the new arrivals contribute to alienating the population from its rulers (Aquinas mentions things like this in his book on kingship), and efficient use of resources to assist people in need. I suppose the Pope has to weigh up these different considerations.

    Replies: @German_reader, @Dmitry

    Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ

    Indeed, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity

    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn’t this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?

    • Replies: @AP
    @German_reader


    So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls.
     
    Indeed. One would be more sympathetic towards allowing mass migration if the price for entry were full conversion, with some way of monitoring (Inquisition?) to insure compliance and prevent crypto-non-Christians. Probably the number would be cut down to those who really need to escape their country, and the product would not be particularly dangerous.

    Replies: @A123

    , @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Traditional Christianity is declining fast in Europe, and the Muslim population grows rapidly. But the Middle East itself is rapidly secularizing, although at a stage of around a century behind, so it probably likely that a high proportion of Muslims in Europe will be also secularizing. It's unlikely that the European Muslims would be so out of trend with their home countries.

    So Europe is not a growth market for Christianity, but neither necessarily (although at an earlier stage) will be for Islam - probably over the century will seen as another place where Muslims lose their religion.

    Meanwhile, in Africa, both Islam and Christianity are growing rapidly.

    So if you were excited for either religion, then Africa is where the exciting things are happening. That's where the missionary activity is actually having a lot of results.

    Probably Pope Francis , and other leaders, are prioritizing Africa. If you look at the missionary groups, this is where the focus seems to be going. Mainly Africa, with some smaller focus for Asia and Latin America, on such websites.
    https://catholicworldmission.org/

    While in countries like Brazil, Catholicism is losing terribly many people in the last years to Evangelical Christianity. Protestantism is cannibalizing other Christian branches in Brazil, and Catholicism could be rapidly in danger there.


    large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity
     
    There are Christian groups that try to convert you (everyone) in streets in Europe - but these do not seem to be very "traditional" branches.

    I think they are a kind of evangelical student groups, inspired from America, and I've been given free bibles and other literature in the streets (which I actually read, as probably one of the few people who use their gifts) from them.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    , @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.
     
    It's true that traditional Christianity has weakened very significantly in Western Europe, but I think the people left who still believe in it won't be in favour of mass immigration by Muslims. This is something more likely to be popular with liberal Christians and the liberals in the Church hierarchies. IMO increasingly these are even smaller in number than traditional Christians and shrinking due to age (their beliefs may be de facto indistinguishable from secular progressivism), but they are more listened to in the wider political sphere.

    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn’t this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?
     
    The new thing is about marriage law, where both Muslims and Humanists seem to have been petitioning for reform; it is one of those cases where views on the nature and content of marriage, even the form, are so diverse between groups in the UK that trying to maintain the old system (based basically on civil and church marriage) is no longer sustainable. More examples similar to this may arise in the future, as the population becomes more ethnically and culturally diversified.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1150. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ
     
    Indeed, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity
     
    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn't this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls.

    Indeed. One would be more sympathetic towards allowing mass migration if the price for entry were full conversion, with some way of monitoring (Inquisition?) to insure compliance and prevent crypto-non-Christians. Probably the number would be cut down to those who really need to escape their country, and the product would not be particularly dangerous.

    • Replies: @A123
    @AP


    One would be more sympathetic towards allowing mass migration if the price for entry were full conversion, with some way of monitoring (Inquisition?) to insure compliance and prevent crypto-non-Christians.
     
    I concur.

    Your prescription is in line with an axiom of civilization. -- Assimilation is the core of any successful nation's migration policy.
    ___

    The largest issue facing most of Europe is those who will never assimilate are present in large quantities. This is an imminent threat to native citizens. And, it damages budgets, schools, and other institutions needed for a cohesive, enduring country.

    The issue that must be faced is how to return (or move on?) those who will never assimilate.

    Once the number of failures is rapidly diminishing, that opens options. One such opportunity is for a limited number of well screened, high quality candidates under the method you propose.

    PEACE 😇
  1151. @Dmitry
    @German_reader


    churches … promoters of mass immigration

     

    Which is sensible from their perspective, as the instructions of Jesus on this kind of topic, have been a lot clearer than the average IKEA instructions.

    This is perhaps an argument against too much outsourcing of your critical thinking skills to religion, but if you have agreed to do this – then what is in text.

    Leviticus 19:18 had said “Love your neighbor as yourself”. But in the Old Testament this might have a tribal implication – as your neighbor would be part of your tribe.

    https://i.imgur.com/jFacMtM.jpg

    Jesus says this is the secret to inherit eternal life, but only if “your neighbor” is understood as not necessarily being a member of your tribe.

    But precisely, according to Jesus’s instructions, people from different tribes, are your neighbor, if they show mercy to you.

    https://i.imgur.com/9JWFGbB.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/gBlxhJZ.jpg

    This is consistent theme of Jesus, that he says in many different ways – but it is one of the most carefully written of his views.

    He is consistently breaking down the idea of tribal identity, and that you should only help people from the same background as yourself.

    To respond to the "refugee" crisis of the 21st century, according to the teachings of Jesus, is few clearer messages – that you show mercy to people from another tribe/religion, etc. (Of course, many of these people are more economic migrants, than real refugees).


    outrage AP and other Christian commenters

     

    AP is saying to Mr Hack that he needs to have children, to sustain the Ukrainian nation.

    In canonical text of the New Testament, Paul writes that it best to be not married, but that married is second best option ("concession") if you cannot control “sexual immorality”.

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.

    https://i.imgur.com/9PZDLVH.jpg

    As for the Ukrainian national continuance. This is a very sympathetic cause for those of us who inherited the modern culture of belief in national self-determination, considering that Ukraine is a vulnerable country both economically and geopolitically, which needs more young people to renovate it.

    But in the Ancient World, Paul (nor other writings in New Testament) is not concerned about laws for national or tribal considerations, as long as you are baptized and believing.

    The important thing is not to be born in certain tribal background with its laws (as it had been to some extent in the Old Testament), but that if you have faith and baptized, you become part of this new nation of believing people. Not only people in Ukraine are baptizing, but also in Ethiopian, Poland, Philippines, etc – all should be united “children of God through faith” and descendants of Abraham, according to Paul.


    https://i.imgur.com/WYoSpZq.jpg


    Catholic theologian from Vienna came up with the idiotic argument that migration is inscribed into Catholicism, because Catholics got their faith from a people who were refugees in the Exodus
     
    Because it is probably not historically true, in sense of archaeologists. But what is in religion, is “eternal truths”. Like what is important for most people reading in Iliad, is not whether it matches archaeologists, but what is its eternal message.

    “Exodus” has a lot of various eternal message (it’s one of the most beautiful stories of the Ancient World). But part of its inspiration is this narrative of slaves being liberated and returning to a promised land. Here is both a message that could seem to be particularly impressive for slaves, and a message for refugees.


    You can see why “Exodus” was strongly influential in the African American folk musical tradition in the 19th century, many former slaves. A lot of the traditional African American songs are referencing about Exodus.

    Replies: @German_reader, @A123, @AP

    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.

    Sexual immorality would include stuff like watching porn or having lustful thoughts. So I guess a truly asexual person, not just someone who happens to not have a partner. However the modifier to stay unmarried “as I do” suggests that the celibate ideal is a religious one. That is, a monk, nun, or Roman Catholic priest.

    https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/sexuality-marriage-and-family/sexuality

    The teaching here is clear. People can serve God and live the spiritual life both in marriage and in the single life. And people can sin in both as well. “Each has his own special gift from God” (1 Cor 7.7). Saint Paul thinks, however, that among those who want to do as perfectly as they can, they who do not marry “will do better” (1 Cor 7.38–40).

    The spiritual tradition of the Church clearly agrees with the apostle. This does not mean that marriage is in any way disparaged or disdained. It is given by God and is a sacrament of the Church, and those who abhor it for “spiritual reasons” are to be excommunicated from the Church (cf. Canon Laws of the Council of Gangra). It means only that, most practically, one can be a greater servant of God and more perfectly a witness to His unending Kingdom if he gives up everything in this world, sells all that he has, and follows Christ in total detachment and poverty.

    The idea, however, that a single person can indulge oneself in the things of this world, including sexuality, and still be the servant of God in Christ is totally rejected and condemned. One can forsake marriage in the body only for greater freedom from “anxiety about worldly affairs” in order to be concerned with “the affairs of the Lord . . . how to be holy in body and spirit.” The single person who is “holy in body and spirit” has sexual relations with no one.

    • Replies: @Mr. XYZ
    @AP

    Off-topic, but I have a question for you:

    In the event of a full-on outright full-scale future Russo-Ukrainian war, could we see Russia occupy everything to the east of Kiev and create an independent neutralist East Ukraine led by Yuri Boyko (or by Viktor Medvedchuk) and propped up by Russian bayonets (the Donbass would presumably be outright annexed by Russia in this scenario)? I mean, the much poorer Soviet Union managed to do this in East Germany for almost half a century, so if the willpower to do this would be there, it might actually be doable. But of course this would virtually certainly mean a complete and total rupture of all of Russia’s relations with the West. Expulsion from the SWIFT banking system, crippling North Korea-level sanctions, et cetera.

    Such an independent East Ukraine would, again, be formally neutralist–so, not a member of the Eurasian Economic Union or anything else (for Eastern and Southern Ukraine, the current situation is something like this: 25% pro-Eurasia, 25% pro-neutrality, 50% pro-Europe. So, a pro-neutrality course could get the support of all of Eurasianists as well as all of the neutralists, who combined make up half of the population there. Though the younger generations could end up being more of a problem over time, especially if they are much more pro-Western than their elders are) but a state that would still rely on extensive trade links with Russia as well as on cheap natural gas from Russia. It would be a kleptocracy along the lines of Yanukovych’s regime, but perhaps a bit more competent and less brutal. West Ukraine (so, Kiev, Uman, and everything to the west of them) would of course be free to join both the EU and NATO, if these blocs would actually be interested in them. But Russia will make permanent neutrality a precondition for any Ukrainian reunification in such a scenario, similar to what the Soviet Union did for German reunification in the 1950s with the Stalin Note (the West declined, of course).

    So, what do you think?

  1152. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    But considering the training of the religious professionals, it’s not too easy to condemn them for how they are interpreting.
     
    If you think about some of these teachings in a wider context, important questions arise; for example, say you have a mostly Christian country, or where Christianity was formerly the majority faith but is struggling to survive, the issue of permitting the entry of large numbers of non-Christians is that they may undermine people's chances of salvation by fostering the spread of religious confusion. (Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ). There may also be issues if the new arrivals contribute to alienating the population from its rulers (Aquinas mentions things like this in his book on kingship), and efficient use of resources to assist people in need. I suppose the Pope has to weigh up these different considerations.

    Replies: @German_reader, @Dmitry

    From what I saw (perhaps not in a representative area), when you go to services in a Catholic church in North West Europe, most of the audience in the church can be Poles, Africans, Filipinos and also Indians (or people who look Indian).

    In certain areas, these nationalities seem to be their “main market”. So if the churches had a cynical self-interest as the motivation for their views – they would probably support more immigration from those countries in particular.

    However, of course, teachings of the New Testament often imply you should avoid self-interest in many areas, and this is part of its mystical and universalizing value – that you might feel like you are sacrificing.

    If the churches started to say we need more immigrants from Poland, Africa, South America and the Phillipines, and less from the Middle East, it could seem to be cynical.

    issue of permitting the entry of large numbers of non-Christians is that they may undermine people’s chances of salvation by fostering the spread of religious confusion

    If you look at the previous Pope before Francis (he’s Pope Benedict XVI) – he had presented a speech in September 2006, where he has indirectly seemed to criticize Islam.

    I think this is viewed as a diplomatic failure though, and the current Pope is being careful not to sound critical of other religions.

    Even though the speech seemd to be criticizing Islam very politely when you read it.

    https://www.vatican.va/content/benedict-xvi/en/speeches/2006/september/documents/hf_ben-xvi_spe_20060912_university-regensburg.html

  1153. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ
     
    Indeed, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity
     
    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn't this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    Traditional Christianity is declining fast in Europe, and the Muslim population grows rapidly. But the Middle East itself is rapidly secularizing, although at a stage of around a century behind, so it probably likely that a high proportion of Muslims in Europe will be also secularizing. It’s unlikely that the European Muslims would be so out of trend with their home countries.

    So Europe is not a growth market for Christianity, but neither necessarily (although at an earlier stage) will be for Islam – probably over the century will seen as another place where Muslims lose their religion.

    Meanwhile, in Africa, both Islam and Christianity are growing rapidly.

    So if you were excited for either religion, then Africa is where the exciting things are happening. That’s where the missionary activity is actually having a lot of results.

    Probably Pope Francis , and other leaders, are prioritizing Africa. If you look at the missionary groups, this is where the focus seems to be going. Mainly Africa, with some smaller focus for Asia and Latin America, on such websites.
    https://catholicworldmission.org/

    While in countries like Brazil, Catholicism is losing terribly many people in the last years to Evangelical Christianity. Protestantism is cannibalizing other Christian branches in Brazil, and Catholicism could be rapidly in danger there.

    large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity

    There are Christian groups that try to convert you (everyone) in streets in Europe – but these do not seem to be very “traditional” branches.

    I think they are a kind of evangelical student groups, inspired from America, and I’ve been given free bibles and other literature in the streets (which I actually read, as probably one of the few people who use their gifts) from them.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Traditional Christianity is declining fast in Europe, and the Muslim population grows rapidly. But the Middle East itself is rapidly secularizing, although at a stage of around a century behind, so it probably likely that a high proportion of Muslims in Europe will be also secularizing. It’s unlikely that the European Muslims would be so out of trend with their home countries.

    So Europe is not a growth market for Christianity, but neither necessarily (although at an earlier stage) will be for Islam – probably over the century will seen as another place where Muslims lose their religion.
     

    This could happen to Muslims in Europe, but at the moment something different is going on where some of these diaspora communities in the UK and France are more religious than in their countries of origin. I was listening to some French sociologists talking about the abandonment of secularisation theory to take account of the new forms of Islamic religiosity in their younger Muslim populations (Guillaume Durocher had some stuff on this as well), and there was a recent British book called 'Among the Mosques' about Islamism and UK Muslim communities that describes the same phenomena.

    They may secularise in time, OTOH it seems hard to say what the impact of significant demographic growth on these communities may be, and from the HBD perspective, what impact the issue about declining IQs and growing numbers of people with hereditary tendencies towards being religious will have.

    Replies: @Dmitry

  1154. @A123
    @iffen


    I have always wondered who hacked into the New Testament and inserted BS like this
     
    Phrases like "The Bible" and "The New Testament" are incorrectly baked into the language. Each version is a translation of an edit of a translation. The best that can be obtained is a Bible that disagrees with other Bibles. Each BIBLE version is the product of flawed mankind (at best) to intentionally pushing an agenda (at worst).

    If a Bible version appears to contain something so anti-survival it makes no sense.... Ignoring it as a type setter's error is fully permissible, and obviously the correct course of action.

    Showing compassion to the victim of thieves makes sense.

    Showing compassion to the thieves on the other hand is stupidity verging on suicide. Economic migrants must be viewed as thieves. They seek to enrich themselves at the expense of others.

    The tough questions are those like, "What do you do with the children of thieves"?

    Depriving your children to help those children is obviously the wrong answer, so one cannot let them in either. However, ignoring the plight of children neglected by their thieving parents is problematic. The best one can do is try to help them, without letting them in.

    PEACE 😇

    Replies: @iffen

    Your interpretation of the Bible seems comparable to your take on the current state of American politics.

    • Thanks: A123
  1155. @songbird
    @iffen

    Actually, I'm not very interested in WW2 or the Holocaust. IMO, there is too much of an obsession with both things. WW2 history, to a large extent, is what I would consider "history porn" - much of it is built on video or dramatic images, with a pretty shallow, moralizing narrative. As we move away from it in time, I think it it will become clearer and clearer that it is not the central point in all of history, and that a lot of people were tricked by the vidya.

    Though, I thought you were interested in technical history and distinguishing it from the Armenian genocide, etc. and at what point it differed. I.e. something about a timeline, and at what historical point it coincided or deviated with past history. (I don't believe that the Eisengruppen were something new)

    Guess I was rather mistaken though.

    Replies: @iffen

    Guess I was rather mistaken though.

    Don’t worry about that. It happened to me one time.

    I’m not sure what technical history means.

    I made a distinction between the Holocaust and the Armenian one. A distinction that I believe to be valid. I think that comparing the Holocaust to other genocides and massacres is a worthwhile inquiry, even by those of the perpetually aggrieved colonial mindset.

    As to WWI and WWII, they are, imo, the pivotal events of the 20th Century and the after effects still pretty much define the geopolitical landscape.

    Again, I am quite comfortable agreeing to disagree on the subject.

    • Replies: @songbird
    @iffen


    As to WWI and WWII, they are, imo, the pivotal events of the 20th Century and the after effects still pretty much define the geopolitical landscape.
     
    Most dramatic counter-argument is undoubtedly Sweden. They sat out both wars, have been enmeshed in peace and prosperity. Essentially, the postwar environment, without the consequences of the war. Some who doubt the dramatic effects of peace, try to say Sweden was psychologically linked to other countries and harmed by their misfortune, but I think this is rather spurious.

    Counting the interwar period, 1914-1945, is only 31 years. The postwar period is already almost 2.5x that, and growing

    I think the colonial maps can just be tossed out. I rather doubt Austria-Hungary would still be together. Many of the other map changes aren't as important as they may have first seemed. The EU has encompassed some of the divisions.

    We can lament the dead. But the past, before germ theory and antibiotics, was filled with even more of it. Some of the people who died were too old to have children. Look at TFR, and a growing number would have had no descendants now. Obviously, it doesn't all wash out, but the effect is smaller than one would first suppose.

    The bombed out cities have been rebuilt. Some of the losers look like winners now. And some of the winners look like losers. And many people alive now are descended from crosses of the combatants.

    I could go on, but don't want to be tedious. After all, you may be right that they were the defining moments of the 20th century. Might even be true now, in 2021. But we are 76 years past the last war, and only 80 years from 2100, when Nigeria will have 750 million people, and Africa four billion. And the average IQ of English (white) is expected to be 85. Then, I think we can say with confidence, that relatively few people will see it that way. Those who are still intelligent enough to ponder it, may look to longer arcs, the end of colonialism or the advancements in communication and transportation (which themselves were to a certain extent important factors in both wars.)
  1156. @AP
    @German_reader


    So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls.
     
    Indeed. One would be more sympathetic towards allowing mass migration if the price for entry were full conversion, with some way of monitoring (Inquisition?) to insure compliance and prevent crypto-non-Christians. Probably the number would be cut down to those who really need to escape their country, and the product would not be particularly dangerous.

    Replies: @A123

    One would be more sympathetic towards allowing mass migration if the price for entry were full conversion, with some way of monitoring (Inquisition?) to insure compliance and prevent crypto-non-Christians.

    I concur.

    Your prescription is in line with an axiom of civilization. — Assimilation is the core of any successful nation’s migration policy.
    ___

    The largest issue facing most of Europe is those who will never assimilate are present in large quantities. This is an imminent threat to native citizens. And, it damages budgets, schools, and other institutions needed for a cohesive, enduring country.

    The issue that must be faced is how to return (or move on?) those who will never assimilate.

    Once the number of failures is rapidly diminishing, that opens options. One such opportunity is for a limited number of well screened, high quality candidates under the method you propose.

    PEACE 😇

  1157. @iffen
    @songbird

    Guess I was rather mistaken though.

    Don't worry about that. It happened to me one time.

    I'm not sure what technical history means.

    I made a distinction between the Holocaust and the Armenian one. A distinction that I believe to be valid. I think that comparing the Holocaust to other genocides and massacres is a worthwhile inquiry, even by those of the perpetually aggrieved colonial mindset.

    As to WWI and WWII, they are, imo, the pivotal events of the 20th Century and the after effects still pretty much define the geopolitical landscape.

    Again, I am quite comfortable agreeing to disagree on the subject.

    Replies: @songbird

    As to WWI and WWII, they are, imo, the pivotal events of the 20th Century and the after effects still pretty much define the geopolitical landscape.

    Most dramatic counter-argument is undoubtedly Sweden. They sat out both wars, have been enmeshed in peace and prosperity. Essentially, the postwar environment, without the consequences of the war. Some who doubt the dramatic effects of peace, try to say Sweden was psychologically linked to other countries and harmed by their misfortune, but I think this is rather spurious.

    Counting the interwar period, 1914-1945, is only 31 years. The postwar period is already almost 2.5x that, and growing

    I think the colonial maps can just be tossed out. I rather doubt Austria-Hungary would still be together. Many of the other map changes aren’t as important as they may have first seemed. The EU has encompassed some of the divisions.

    We can lament the dead. But the past, before germ theory and antibiotics, was filled with even more of it. Some of the people who died were too old to have children. Look at TFR, and a growing number would have had no descendants now. Obviously, it doesn’t all wash out, but the effect is smaller than one would first suppose.

    The bombed out cities have been rebuilt. Some of the losers look like winners now. And some of the winners look like losers. And many people alive now are descended from crosses of the combatants.

    I could go on, but don’t want to be tedious. After all, you may be right that they were the defining moments of the 20th century. Might even be true now, in 2021. But we are 76 years past the last war, and only 80 years from 2100, when Nigeria will have 750 million people, and Africa four billion. And the average IQ of English (white) is expected to be 85. Then, I think we can say with confidence, that relatively few people will see it that way. Those who are still intelligent enough to ponder it, may look to longer arcs, the end of colonialism or the advancements in communication and transportation (which themselves were to a certain extent important factors in both wars.)

  1158. @AP
    @Dmitry


    So if Mr Hack is not married and also controlling “sexual immorality” and celebate (let’s assume this is not the 21st century, and he is not living like Boris Johnson), then he is in ideal position according to Paul.
     
    Sexual immorality would include stuff like watching porn or having lustful thoughts. So I guess a truly asexual person, not just someone who happens to not have a partner. However the modifier to stay unmarried "as I do" suggests that the celibate ideal is a religious one. That is, a monk, nun, or Roman Catholic priest.

    https://www.oca.org/orthodoxy/the-orthodox-faith/spirituality/sexuality-marriage-and-family/sexuality

    The teaching here is clear. People can serve God and live the spiritual life both in marriage and in the single life. And people can sin in both as well. “Each has his own special gift from God” (1 Cor 7.7). Saint Paul thinks, however, that among those who want to do as perfectly as they can, they who do not marry “will do better” (1 Cor 7.38–40).

    The spiritual tradition of the Church clearly agrees with the apostle. This does not mean that marriage is in any way disparaged or disdained. It is given by God and is a sacrament of the Church, and those who abhor it for “spiritual reasons” are to be excommunicated from the Church (cf. Canon Laws of the Council of Gangra). It means only that, most practically, one can be a greater servant of God and more perfectly a witness to His unending Kingdom if he gives up everything in this world, sells all that he has, and follows Christ in total detachment and poverty.

    The idea, however, that a single person can indulge oneself in the things of this world, including sexuality, and still be the servant of God in Christ is totally rejected and condemned. One can forsake marriage in the body only for greater freedom from “anxiety about worldly affairs” in order to be concerned with “the affairs of the Lord . . . how to be holy in body and spirit.” The single person who is “holy in body and spirit” has sexual relations with no one.

    Replies: @Mr. XYZ

    Off-topic, but I have a question for you:

    In the event of a full-on outright full-scale future Russo-Ukrainian war, could we see Russia occupy everything to the east of Kiev and create an independent neutralist East Ukraine led by Yuri Boyko (or by Viktor Medvedchuk) and propped up by Russian bayonets (the Donbass would presumably be outright annexed by Russia in this scenario)? I mean, the much poorer Soviet Union managed to do this in East Germany for almost half a century, so if the willpower to do this would be there, it might actually be doable. But of course this would virtually certainly mean a complete and total rupture of all of Russia’s relations with the West. Expulsion from the SWIFT banking system, crippling North Korea-level sanctions, et cetera.

    Such an independent East Ukraine would, again, be formally neutralist–so, not a member of the Eurasian Economic Union or anything else (for Eastern and Southern Ukraine, the current situation is something like this: 25% pro-Eurasia, 25% pro-neutrality, 50% pro-Europe. So, a pro-neutrality course could get the support of all of Eurasianists as well as all of the neutralists, who combined make up half of the population there. Though the younger generations could end up being more of a problem over time, especially if they are much more pro-Western than their elders are) but a state that would still rely on extensive trade links with Russia as well as on cheap natural gas from Russia. It would be a kleptocracy along the lines of Yanukovych’s regime, but perhaps a bit more competent and less brutal. West Ukraine (so, Kiev, Uman, and everything to the west of them) would of course be free to join both the EU and NATO, if these blocs would actually be interested in them. But Russia will make permanent neutrality a precondition for any Ukrainian reunification in such a scenario, similar to what the Soviet Union did for German reunification in the 1950s with the Stalin Note (the West declined, of course).

    So, what do you think?

  1159. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    Based on the fact that other parts of the Gospels insist on the importance of belief in Christ
     
    Indeed, I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me. So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.

    I have been reading Charles Maurras lately so may be becoming more favorable to the UK using the monarchical elements in the constitution to revive the practice of having multiple law codes according to religion and ethnicity
     
    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn't this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?

    Replies: @AP, @Dmitry, @Coconuts

    So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.

    It’s true that traditional Christianity has weakened very significantly in Western Europe, but I think the people left who still believe in it won’t be in favour of mass immigration by Muslims. This is something more likely to be popular with liberal Christians and the liberals in the Church hierarchies. IMO increasingly these are even smaller in number than traditional Christians and shrinking due to age (their beliefs may be de facto indistinguishable from secular progressivism), but they are more listened to in the wider political sphere.

    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn’t this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?

    The new thing is about marriage law, where both Muslims and Humanists seem to have been petitioning for reform; it is one of those cases where views on the nature and content of marriage, even the form, are so diverse between groups in the UK that trying to maintain the old system (based basically on civil and church marriage) is no longer sustainable. More examples similar to this may arise in the future, as the population becomes more ethnically and culturally diversified.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    The new thing is about marriage law, where both Muslims and Humanists seem to have been petitioning for reform
     
    "Reform" in what sense? Is there a serious push for making polygamy legal? Maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but now that marriage for homosexuals has become accepted, I wonder what else could be there to "reform" about marriage.

    Replies: @Coconuts

  1160. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader


    So one would expect that the Christians promoting mass immigation would at least engage in large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity in its traditional sense is pretty much dead in Western Europe, not even its adherents seem to really believe in its doctrines anymore.
     
    It's true that traditional Christianity has weakened very significantly in Western Europe, but I think the people left who still believe in it won't be in favour of mass immigration by Muslims. This is something more likely to be popular with liberal Christians and the liberals in the Church hierarchies. IMO increasingly these are even smaller in number than traditional Christians and shrinking due to age (their beliefs may be de facto indistinguishable from secular progressivism), but they are more listened to in the wider political sphere.

    Why, which problems would this solve in your opinion (and isn’t this already posible in civil lawsuits in the UK, if both parties agree)?
     
    The new thing is about marriage law, where both Muslims and Humanists seem to have been petitioning for reform; it is one of those cases where views on the nature and content of marriage, even the form, are so diverse between groups in the UK that trying to maintain the old system (based basically on civil and church marriage) is no longer sustainable. More examples similar to this may arise in the future, as the population becomes more ethnically and culturally diversified.

    Replies: @German_reader

    The new thing is about marriage law, where both Muslims and Humanists seem to have been petitioning for reform

    “Reform” in what sense? Is there a serious push for making polygamy legal? Maybe I’m lacking in imagination, but now that marriage for homosexuals has become accepted, I wonder what else could be there to “reform” about marriage.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @German_reader

    From what I was reading they want to change the restrictions on where weddings can happen, what wording/other elements the ceremony has to contain, and who can register them (this seems to involve allowing people other than registrars and C of E vicars to register marriages). Can't remember about polygamy, it could be covered by some of the wording but I'm not sure.

    I have heard that some polyamorous people have been wanting that though, as well as Muslims. Possibly it will be the next campaign.

    Replies: @German_reader

  1161. @Dmitry
    @German_reader

    Traditional Christianity is declining fast in Europe, and the Muslim population grows rapidly. But the Middle East itself is rapidly secularizing, although at a stage of around a century behind, so it probably likely that a high proportion of Muslims in Europe will be also secularizing. It's unlikely that the European Muslims would be so out of trend with their home countries.

    So Europe is not a growth market for Christianity, but neither necessarily (although at an earlier stage) will be for Islam - probably over the century will seen as another place where Muslims lose their religion.

    Meanwhile, in Africa, both Islam and Christianity are growing rapidly.

    So if you were excited for either religion, then Africa is where the exciting things are happening. That's where the missionary activity is actually having a lot of results.

    Probably Pope Francis , and other leaders, are prioritizing Africa. If you look at the missionary groups, this is where the focus seems to be going. Mainly Africa, with some smaller focus for Asia and Latin America, on such websites.
    https://catholicworldmission.org/

    While in countries like Brazil, Catholicism is losing terribly many people in the last years to Evangelical Christianity. Protestantism is cannibalizing other Christian branches in Brazil, and Catholicism could be rapidly in danger there.


    large-scale efforts to convert Muslim immigrants and thereby save their souls. Their failure to do so imo indicates that Christianity
     
    There are Christian groups that try to convert you (everyone) in streets in Europe - but these do not seem to be very "traditional" branches.

    I think they are a kind of evangelical student groups, inspired from America, and I've been given free bibles and other literature in the streets (which I actually read, as probably one of the few people who use their gifts) from them.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    Traditional Christianity is declining fast in Europe, and the Muslim population grows rapidly. But the Middle East itself is rapidly secularizing, although at a stage of around a century behind, so it probably likely that a high proportion of Muslims in Europe will be also secularizing. It’s unlikely that the European Muslims would be so out of trend with their home countries.

    So Europe is not a growth market for Christianity, but neither necessarily (although at an earlier stage) will be for Islam – probably over the century will seen as another place where Muslims lose their religion.

    This could happen to Muslims in Europe, but at the moment something different is going on where some of these diaspora communities in the UK and France are more religious than in their countries of origin. I was listening to some French sociologists talking about the abandonment of secularisation theory to take account of the new forms of Islamic religiosity in their younger Muslim populations (Guillaume Durocher had some stuff on this as well), and there was a recent British book called ‘Among the Mosques’ about Islamism and UK Muslim communities that describes the same phenomena.

    They may secularise in time, OTOH it seems hard to say what the impact of significant demographic growth on these communities may be, and from the HBD perspective, what impact the issue about declining IQs and growing numbers of people with hereditary tendencies towards being religious will have.

    • Replies: @Dmitry
    @Coconuts


    diaspora communities in the UK and France are more religious
     
    If you look at the children of the Muslim immigrants UK between 1989-2008, they have a fertility rate around one less child than their parents.

    So it seems to indicate a high proportion of the children of the Muslim immigrants, are using family planning in the 1989-2008.

    To use family planning, would indicate that much of them are not part of religious cults that can control this aspect of their life. So this fertility fall could possibly be indicator of a relative secularization compared to their parents, or at least of a high proportion not following prohibitions of the stricter forms of the religion.

    https://i.imgur.com/boKZdSD.jpg


    Islamism and UK Muslim communities
     
    They're in risk of becoming a longterm underclass. This London wealth distribution was such an indicator. This will possibly slow the secularization process as well contribute to various other problems among them.

    https://i.imgur.com/b1mpZvI.png

    https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/news/inequalities-and-disadvantage-london-focus-religion-and-belief/


    But underclass in the UK, is still very wealthy socioeconomically people compared to most of the world, and so you might expect it will be more than high enough to allow the levels of secularization seen in Turkey or North Africa today.

    You would hardly expect that Europe will be very fertile soil for religion this century, even among underclasses.

    -

    Subsahara Africa, on the other hand.

    It's producing at least 200 million more Christians and Muslims each decade.

    Abrahamic religions will still be doing well this century. But their centre of gravity will be changing by the middle century to Africa.

    For example, Catholicism is growing each year even as a proportion of the world population. But the number of Catholics is decreasing in Europe. Latin America has still some slow growth. Africa is a rapid growth market.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z6glIsZAR2w

  1162. @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    The new thing is about marriage law, where both Muslims and Humanists seem to have been petitioning for reform
     
    "Reform" in what sense? Is there a serious push for making polygamy legal? Maybe I'm lacking in imagination, but now that marriage for homosexuals has become accepted, I wonder what else could be there to "reform" about marriage.

    Replies: @Coconuts

    From what I was reading they want to change the restrictions on where weddings can happen, what wording/other elements the ceremony has to contain, and who can register them (this seems to involve allowing people other than registrars and C of E vicars to register marriages). Can’t remember about polygamy, it could be covered by some of the wording but I’m not sure.

    I have heard that some polyamorous people have been wanting that though, as well as Muslims. Possibly it will be the next campaign.

    • Replies: @German_reader
    @Coconuts


    I have heard that some polyamorous people have been wanting that though, as well as Muslims. Possibly it will be the next campaign.
     
    I think it's quite possible, if you think marriage is merely about "love" and people taking responsibility for each other (as was one of the arguments for homosexual marriage), how can one reject it? One could even argue "The more love, the better", "the more people involved, the greater the solidarity" etc. Present Western societies will find it difficult to come up with effective counter-arguments (except maybe that polygyny is patriarchical). But maybe there aren't enough people who really want it, so maybe it won't happen.
    Thanks for your answer, maybe I'll try to look up more details about those calls for "reform", sounds potentially interesting.
  1163. German_reader says:
    @Coconuts
    @German_reader

    From what I was reading they want to change the restrictions on where weddings can happen, what wording/other elements the ceremony has to contain, and who can register them (this seems to involve allowing people other than registrars and C of E vicars to register marriages). Can't remember about polygamy, it could be covered by some of the wording but I'm not sure.

    I have heard that some polyamorous people have been wanting that though, as well as Muslims. Possibly it will be the next campaign.

    Replies: @German_reader

    I have heard that some polyamorous people have been wanting that though, as well as Muslims. Possibly it will be the next campaign.

    I think it’s quite possible, if you think marriage is merely about “love” and people taking responsibility for each other (as was one of the arguments for homosexual marriage), how can one reject it? One could even argue “The more love, the better”, “the more people involved, the greater the solidarity” etc. Present Western societies will find it difficult to come up with effective counter-arguments (except maybe that polygyny is patriarchical). But maybe there aren’t enough people who really want it, so maybe it won’t happen.
    Thanks for your answer, maybe I’ll try to look up more details about those calls for “reform”, sounds potentially interesting.

  1164. @Coconuts
    @Dmitry


    Traditional Christianity is declining fast in Europe, and the Muslim population grows rapidly. But the Middle East itself is rapidly secularizing, although at a stage of around a century behind, so it probably likely that a high proportion of Muslims in Europe will be also secularizing. It’s unlikely that the European Muslims would be so out of trend with their home countries.

    So Europe is not a growth market for Christianity, but neither necessarily (although at an earlier stage) will be for Islam – probably over the century will seen as another place where Muslims lose their religion.
     

    This could happen to Muslims in Europe, but at the moment something different is going on where some of these diaspora communities in the UK and France are more religious than in their countries of origin. I was listening to some French sociologists talking about the abandonment of secularisation theory to take account of the new forms of Islamic religiosity in their younger Muslim populations (Guillaume Durocher had some stuff on this as well), and there was a recent British book called 'Among the Mosques' about Islamism and UK Muslim communities that describes the same phenomena.

    They may secularise in time, OTOH it seems hard to say what the impact of significant demographic growth on these communities may be, and from the HBD perspective, what impact the issue about declining IQs and growing numbers of people with hereditary tendencies towards being religious will have.

    Replies: @Dmitry

    diaspora communities in the UK and France are more religious

    If you look at the children of the Muslim immigrants UK between 1989-2008, they have a fertility rate around one less child than their parents.

    So it seems to indicate a high proportion of the children of the Muslim immigrants, are using family planning in the 1989-2008.

    To use family planning, would indicate that much of them are not part of religious cults that can control this aspect of their life. So this fertility fall could possibly be indicator of a relative secularization compared to their parents, or at least of a high proportion not following prohibitions of the stricter forms of the religion.

    Islamism and UK Muslim communities

    They’re in risk of becoming a longterm underclass. This London wealth distribution was such an indicator. This will possibly slow the secularization process as well contribute to various other problems among them.

    https://www.trustforlondon.org.uk/news/inequalities-and-disadvantage-london-focus-religion-and-belief/

    But underclass in the UK, is still very wealthy socioeconomically people compared to most of the world, and so you might expect it will be more than high enough to allow the levels of secularization seen in Turkey or North Africa today.

    You would hardly expect that Europe will be very fertile soil for religion this century, even among underclasses.

    Subsahara Africa, on the other hand.

    It’s producing at least 200 million more Christians and Muslims each decade.

    Abrahamic religions will still be doing well this century. But their centre of gravity will be changing by the middle century to Africa.

    For example, Catholicism is growing each year even as a proportion of the world population. But the number of Catholics is decreasing in Europe. Latin America has still some slow growth. Africa is a rapid growth market.

  1165. To use family planning, would indicate that much of them are not part of religious cults that can control this aspect of their life. So this fertility fall could possibly be indicator of a relative secularization compared to their parents, or at least of a high proportion not following prohibitions of the stricter forms of the religion.

    It would be a more useful indication if bans on contraception use and large family size was an important religious teaching, say as in Catholicism. But it is probable that in Islam teaching of this kind is not as fixed and does not have the same level of religious importance. For example, if it was a clear indication of Muslim religiosity, the Islamic Republic in Iran must have suddenly become much less religious in the late 80s, when the Ayatollahs ordered the beginning of the very successful contraception and population control program, then the Ayatollahs must have suddenly became more religious in the early 2010s when they reversed the policy. Instead it looks like the Islamic tradition on these topics has more flexiblibility than Catholic teaching.

    That book by Ed Husain and the French research was showing that in other areas the younger generations have a stronger Islamic identity than their parents and grandparents (who may have identified with particular nations rather than Islam), are more interested in political Islam, the women wear things like the Hijab more than their parents and so on, so in these other ways they are trying to resist European secularisation. Ed Husain makes the point that this makes them outliers compared to young Muslims in places like Turkey

    You would hardly expect that Europe will be very fertile soil for religion this century, even among underclasses.

    At the moment I would agree but am keeping an open mind given some of the developments we are seeing and which are predicted, like the steep increases in the size of the Muslim origin populations of the UK and France in the next couple of decades. It’s hard to say what impact something like this will have on general trends.

    The emergence of para-religious phenomena estranged from liberal thinking like the Woke movement (it is relatively weak in the UK and France but appears to be stronger among the better educated, especially women), and, as can be seen in France, the re-emergence of sacred nationalism are additional new elements that may also prefigure new developments in religion in Europe.

    • Replies: @Coconuts
    @Coconuts

    I had a couple of further thoughts about this, the first was the habit British of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin have of bringing wives and husbands from Pakistan and Bangladesh, because this must be something that slows down integration into wider British culture at the same time as expanding their diaspora.

    The other thing, maybe Islam is in some fields a more pragmatic and flexible religion than either Christianity or Orthodox Judaism, and this reduces the scope for the kind of conflict and disagreement that favours the emergence of secularism?

    , @Dmitry
    @Coconuts

    One of the interesting dynamics of the immigration in the UK, is that Hindus and Chinese immigrants already have lower fertility rates than the native anglosaxons (W.British).

    If you subtracted the Indian Muslims from the bars, the Hindus probably have significantly lower fertility rates, even closer to the Chinese.

    https://i.imgur.com/vYaNQtz.jpg

    This is kind of matches when you see that elite universities have multiple times higher number of Indians/Chinese students, than would be representative of their population.

    I wouldn't be surprised if Hindu girls, will be rapidly the proportionally most educated population in the UK. The Indian girls seem even more common than the Indian men in these universities.

    These highly educating Hindu girls that we could see anecdotally flood the elite universities (like Oxford University, etc) will likely be pushing down the fertility rates, as they enter the more time-using professions (like doctors, lawyers, etc).


    younger generations have a stronger Islamic identity than their parents and grandparents (

     

    What can be seen in the graphs of the overall Muslims in the UK, is an economic underclass.

    This combination of economic underclass and religion, can be surely a particularly dangerous one. Islamic terrorism is not perhaps reduce in Europe even if part of the Muslim population would secularize?

    Although the overall standard of living is so high that I still question to what extent you can say they experience "difficult life" - that's the Islamist extremist violence could be supported by relative inequality, rather than actual difficulty.


    religious importance. For example, if it was a clear indication of Muslim religiosity,
     
    That can be true, although Islamic religiosity was usually viewed as encouraging higher natality.

    Also first generation immigrants from poor countries to the West, have more children usually - probably because of the incentive structure - i.e. "anchor babies", to access generous welfare services, etc.

    It's also often that only one person in the couple has the right to live in the new country, so that there is an incentive to marry.

    Even Polish women immigrants in the UK have a significant climb of fertility in the early years of their immigration.
    https://i.imgur.com/7S5czrc.jpg

    And for example, Bangladesh immigrants in the UK might still have a higher fertility rate than in Bangladesh now. In the last decade, it seems even Bangladesh might be converging to UK fertility rate, even with completely different economic development there.

    https://i.imgur.com/eQax6AB.jpg

  1166. @Coconuts

    To use family planning, would indicate that much of them are not part of religious cults that can control this aspect of their life. So this fertility fall could possibly be indicator of a relative secularization compared to their parents, or at least of a high proportion not following prohibitions of the stricter forms of the religion.
     
    It would be a more useful indication if bans on contraception use and large family size was an important religious teaching, say as in Catholicism. But it is probable that in Islam teaching of this kind is not as fixed and does not have the same level of religious importance. For example, if it was a clear indication of Muslim religiosity, the Islamic Republic in Iran must have suddenly become much less religious in the late 80s, when the Ayatollahs ordered the beginning of the very successful contraception and population control program, then the Ayatollahs must have suddenly became more religious in the early 2010s when they reversed the policy. Instead it looks like the Islamic tradition on these topics has more flexiblibility than Catholic teaching.

    That book by Ed Husain and the French research was showing that in other areas the younger generations have a stronger Islamic identity than their parents and grandparents (who may have identified with particular nations rather than Islam), are more interested in political Islam, the women wear things like the Hijab more than their parents and so on, so in these other ways they are trying to resist European secularisation. Ed Husain makes the point that this makes them outliers compared to young Muslims in places like Turkey

    You would hardly expect that Europe will be very fertile soil for religion this century, even among underclasses.
     
    At the moment I would agree but am keeping an open mind given some of the developments we are seeing and which are predicted, like the steep increases in the size of the Muslim origin populations of the UK and France in the next couple of decades. It's hard to say what impact something like this will have on general trends.

    The emergence of para-religious phenomena estranged from liberal thinking like the Woke movement (it is relatively weak in the UK and France but appears to be stronger among the better educated, especially women), and, as can be seen in France, the re-emergence of sacred nationalism are additional new elements that may also prefigure new developments in religion in Europe.

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Dmitry

    I had a couple of further thoughts about this, the first was the habit British of Pakistani and Bangladeshi origin have of bringing wives and husbands from Pakistan and Bangladesh, because this must be something that slows down integration into wider British culture at the same time as expanding their diaspora.

    The other thing, maybe Islam is in some fields a more pragmatic and flexible religion than either Christianity or Orthodox Judaism, and this reduces the scope for the kind of conflict and disagreement that favours the emergence of secularism?

  1167. @Coconuts

    To use family planning, would indicate that much of them are not part of religious cults that can control this aspect of their life. So this fertility fall could possibly be indicator of a relative secularization compared to their parents, or at least of a high proportion not following prohibitions of the stricter forms of the religion.
     
    It would be a more useful indication if bans on contraception use and large family size was an important religious teaching, say as in Catholicism. But it is probable that in Islam teaching of this kind is not as fixed and does not have the same level of religious importance. For example, if it was a clear indication of Muslim religiosity, the Islamic Republic in Iran must have suddenly become much less religious in the late 80s, when the Ayatollahs ordered the beginning of the very successful contraception and population control program, then the Ayatollahs must have suddenly became more religious in the early 2010s when they reversed the policy. Instead it looks like the Islamic tradition on these topics has more flexiblibility than Catholic teaching.

    That book by Ed Husain and the French research was showing that in other areas the younger generations have a stronger Islamic identity than their parents and grandparents (who may have identified with particular nations rather than Islam), are more interested in political Islam, the women wear things like the Hijab more than their parents and so on, so in these other ways they are trying to resist European secularisation. Ed Husain makes the point that this makes them outliers compared to young Muslims in places like Turkey

    You would hardly expect that Europe will be very fertile soil for religion this century, even among underclasses.
     
    At the moment I would agree but am keeping an open mind given some of the developments we are seeing and which are predicted, like the steep increases in the size of the Muslim origin populations of the UK and France in the next couple of decades. It's hard to say what impact something like this will have on general trends.

    The emergence of para-religious phenomena estranged from liberal thinking like the Woke movement (it is relatively weak in the UK and France but appears to be stronger among the better educated, especially women), and, as can be seen in France, the re-emergence of sacred nationalism are additional new elements that may also prefigure new developments in religion in Europe.

    Replies: @Coconuts, @Dmitry

    One of the interesting dynamics of the immigration in the UK, is that Hindus and Chinese immigrants already have lower fertility rates than the native anglosaxons (W.British).

    If you subtracted the Indian Muslims from the bars, the Hindus probably have significantly lower fertility rates, even closer to the Chinese.

    This is kind of matches when you see that elite universities have multiple times higher number of Indians/Chinese students, than would be representative of their population.

    I wouldn’t be surprised if Hindu girls, will be rapidly the proportionally most educated population in the UK. The Indian girls seem even more common than the Indian men in these universities.

    These highly educating Hindu girls that we could see anecdotally flood the elite universities (like Oxford University, etc) will likely be pushing down the fertility rates, as they enter the more time-using professions (like doctors, lawyers, etc).

    younger generations have a stronger Islamic identity than their parents and grandparents (

    What can be seen in the graphs of the overall Muslims in the UK, is an economic underclass.

    This combination of economic underclass and religion, can be surely a particularly dangerous one. Islamic terrorism is not perhaps reduce in Europe even if part of the Muslim population would secularize?

    Although the overall standard of living is so high that I still question to what extent you can say they experience “difficult life” – that’s the Islamist extremist violence could be supported by relative inequality, rather than actual difficulty.

    religious importance. For example, if it was a clear indication of Muslim religiosity,

    That can be true, although Islamic religiosity was usually viewed as encouraging higher natality.

    Also first generation immigrants from poor countries to the West, have more children usually – probably because of the incentive structure – i.e. “anchor babies”, to access generous welfare services, etc.

    It’s also often that only one person in the couple has the right to live in the new country, so that there is an incentive to marry.

    Even Polish women immigrants in the UK have a significant climb of fertility in the early years of their immigration.
    And for example, Bangladesh immigrants in the UK might still have a higher fertility rate than in Bangladesh now. In the last decade, it seems even Bangladesh might be converging to UK fertility rate, even with completely different economic development there.

  1168. @AP
    @Mr. Hack


    Why should all of these benefits that you allude to be tied to whether somebody has reared any children in their lifetime?
     
    It costs $233,000 to raise a child in the USA (not that I or most parents care, we would have our children regardless of expense, unless it came to a point of starvation or something).

    Children continue society and culture. People who have them, have taken great expense for the benefit of others. Those who do not, are often in essence freeloaders. They spend most the money indulging themselves.

    A just solution would be to impose a $233,000 tax across the lifetime of each childless person, starting at age thirty, which would be refunded once the person has a child (a married couple would have to have two children for full credit). In this case no one could accuse the childless person of being a freeloader, they are now paying their fair share. If someone just doesn't like children, can't attract a spouse or isn't interested in such relationships, or doesn't want to raise kids it is fine, as long as they pay their fair share. The tax can pay for schools or to feed poor kids or whatever.

    I suppose proof of donation equal to $233,000 can substitute for the tax.

    Is there a lack of people in the world?
     
    There is a lack of people in the European world. Don't you care about it?

    Why should a single person be burdened with paying any taxes that go to help the rearing of children to an indigent family?
     
    Because those children will be the future of the society. Whereas the lifetime single person has chosen not to help sustain a future.

    To allow a fat and mendacious government bureaucracy to get fat
     
    This is true. There will be waste. Which is why it's better for people to have kids than to pay the tax. But money spent to make a bureaucracy fat, is still better than money spent to make a lifetime single person fat. The bureaucrat will still raise kids onto whom he or she will pass on the culture.

    Replies: @Yellowface Anon, @Dmitry, @Mr. Hack, @Barbarossa

    It costs \$233,000 to raise a child in the USA

    I have 5 kids and I assure you, that number is insane. The biggest cost I have is food, quite honestly. There are massive amounts of basically unused second hand kids clothes for pennies on the dollar and my kids don’t have mountains of toys or electronics.

    We do homeschool, so that is an added cost, but not excessive.

    I suppose a lot of this figure includes college, but I’m certainly not planning to encourage my kids to go to college unless they have something specific and necessary in mind. College is not the investment it once was…

    I suppose it would be possible to spend that much money on raising a child…if one really tried, but that would require doing a lot of stupid excessive things that aren’t necessarily in a child’s best interest anyhow.

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