Generational Dynamics World View

[Marypoza]

(02-13-2020, 05:57 PM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: ** 13-Feb-2020 World View: Liking and disliking

Xeraphim1 Wrote:>   I find myself quite torn here. I intensely dislike Putin and the
>   thugocracy he runs, but I also despise Erdogan and the Islamist
>   dictatorship he's created in Turkey. If there would be no
>   ramifications elsewhere I might support the "let's you and him
>   fight" idea.

>   I think the most important step for the US is to remove all the
>   B61's at Incirlik if that hasn't already been done. Then maybe
>   line up US and European ships in the Aegean to stop the
>   forthcoming boat flotillas. However I doubt any European country
>   has the stones to do that.

This is an interesting observation.

Of course I can't apply the Generational Dynamics analysis methodology
if I worry about whom I like or dislike.  Still, it's a personally
interesting question whom I like or dislike, so your post made me
think about it.

I guess it's not surprising that I tend to like politicians who do
well in Generational Dynamics analyses, and dislike the others.
That's the opposite of finding that a politician does well in an
analysis because I like him.  In fact, likeablity is an extremely
misleading criterion, since it's affected by ethnic or religious
biases.  For example, I try as much as possible to stay neutral
between Jews and Arabs, even though almost everyone else hates one and
loves the other.

Hitler was greatly beloved by his German constituents.  He won
elections, and he was very popular.  But still, he was a genocidal
monster and so I pretty much dislike him.

Bashar al-Assad is an interesting example today.  He is also a
sociopathic monster and war criminal, and gets personal pleasure out
of seeing tens of thousands of his political enemies suffer grotesque
torture and atrocities in his Saydnaya Prison in Damascus.  But my
articles kept getting comments from Russian and Syrian trolls telling
me what a nice guy he is.  I remember one guy explaining that he's a
great, wonderful opthamologist who is trying to lead his nation in the
best way.  I advised him not to seek al-Assad for medical treatment, or
he might have his eyes removed.

I particularly remember one Syrian troll named Jan Fearing.  She would
tell about her visits to Damascus and particularly her interviews with
mothers living in Damascus.  These mothers thought al-Assad was
wonderful and generous to his people, with policies that particularly
benefited children.  Jan Fearing apparently thought that by telling me
these stories, and by being semi-flirtatious with me, I would come to
love al-Assad too.  Good luck with that!  Finally she said, "Well, at
least you aren't calling me a troll anymore."  And I wrote back once
again listing some of al-Assad's atrocities, concluding with "And yes,
you are definitely a troll."

Several trolls talked about how much Syrians loved al-Assad, and how
he won elections.  So if I were to give in to these trolls and to Jan
Fearing's flirtations, I suppose I would like al-Assad too.  But I
don't.  I intensely despise him because of his actions, his genocide,
his ethnic cleansing, and his atrocities.

A lot of people seem to like Vladimir Putin, and there have been
plenty of paid Russian trolls making comments on my articles.  I
started writing about the paid Russian trolls as early as 2014.  I've
always considered complaints that Russia interfered with 2016 election
to be somewhat ridiculous, since Russian trolls are total idiots.

Anyway, Putin is well beloved, but Putin lies about everything.  These
include lying about Russian soldiers in Ukraine, lying after Russians
shot down a passenger plane with a Buk missile, lying about not
invading Crimea, lying about whether Russia is going to annex Crimea,
and then annexing Crimea.  He poisoned people in Britain with nerve
agent Novichok and lied about it.  There are lots more lies related to
Bashar al-Assad's use of Sarin gas and chlorine gas.  And the entire
Astana and Sochi "peace process" with Erdogan was complete joke.  So,
as you can guess, I really dislike Putin.

In America, Trump has made some remarkable achievements for which the
country is better off, contrasted to Adam Schiff, who lied repeatedly
and manufactured evidence, and was a total sleazebag deserving to live
in a sewer.  Schiff is loved by the Democrats and the media because he
hates Trump and the 63 million Trump supporters.

This shows why it would be dangerous for me to base my analyses on
"liking" or "disliking."  People who are "liked" are held to a very
low standard, so they can lie and commit atrocities with impunity.
Hitler was loved, so he could kill the Jews with impunity; al-Assad is
loved, so he can slaughter the Sunni Arabs with impunity; and Adam
Schiff is loved, so he can lie, manufacture evidence, or commit any
crime he wants with impunity.  Trump, on the other hand, is hated, so
he's held to a much higher standard of honesty and behavior than any
Democrat, as a result of which he's forced to be extremely honest.
Another example is Bill Clinton, who is beloved by the Democrats and
media, even though he violently raped close to a dozen women with
impunity.

So now let's turn to Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  He is widely hated in
America and Europe, but I have to consider that to be irrelevant, and
look at his behavior.

Here are some things about Erdogan to dislike:
- He's taken control of the press.
- He's jailed over 100,000 political enemies.
- He's defied Nato and bought Russian S-400s.
- He hates Kurds.

However, all of those things are offset by some real issues:
- Kurds have been conducting terrorist attacks since the 1980s.
- There was a major military coup attempt in 2016.
- He's hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees as a humanitarian gesture.
- The EU has frequently broken promises to him and humiliated him.

So there is some balance between the reasons to like or dislike
Erdogan.

But what I actually like about Erdogan is that he doesn't lie, at
least not more than a typical politician.  If you take a look at those
four criticisms above, he admits them and defends them.  That makes
him different from the sleazebags like Putin, Khamenei, al-Assad and
Schiff, who simply lie through their teeth, and deny what is obviously
true.  There's a certain honesty to Erdogan that I like, and while his
behavior is bad, it's not as bad as the others' behavior.  And as in
the case of Trump, he's forced to be as honest as possible because
he's more "disliked" than the others, and so is held to a much higher
honesty standard.

However, I have to add again, I can't let "liking" or "disliking"
influence my analyses, and I point out, as I always do, that my web
site contains about thousands or articles, analyses and predictions on
hundreds of countries and societies, and they've all turned out to be
true or trending true.  None has been wrong.  By contrast, analysts
and journalists who allow themselves to be led by what they like or
dislike are usually wrong about 50% of the time.

When I was in college specializing in Mathematical Logic, I always
liked to recall something by Bertrand Russell:

Quote:>   "Now in the beginning everything is self-evident, and
>   it is hard to see whether one self-evident proposition follows
>   from another or not. Obviousness is always the enemy to
>   correctness. Hence we must invent a new and difficult symbolism in
>   which nothing is obvious."

Russell's advice is very useful when you're trying to prove something
like the Gödel Incompleteness Theorem, which takes "new and difficult
symbolism" to an extreme, but for Generational Dynamics I don't have
the luxury of inventing new symbolism so that nothing will be obvious,
since the stuff I write is meant to be read by the general public, not
by mathematicians.  But the problem is the same in Mathematics or in
Generational Dynamics -- if you "like" something, or if something is
"obvious," that doesn't mean that it's true, and might sometimes mean
that it's false.

As for withdrawing from Incirlik, that's a bad idea because we're
going to need Erdogan as an ally as long as possible, whether we like
him or not.

-- so lemme get this straight: U like the Donald but not his bff Vlad the lmpuppeteer. Amirite?