06-25-2020, 10:04 PM
(06-22-2020, 03:15 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:(06-21-2020, 07:48 AM)John J. Xenakis Wrote: This stuff is really silly -- Donald Duck comic book level of silliness.
Something might be said for being aware of both systems. We have both pushed rather unusual perspectives from our respective red and blue angle. Mine has given me a mild social advantage. Yours has made you a pariah. I don’t think this is because of accuracy, but rather because of a tendency to think people who disagree with you idiots. Given a choice, who would hang around to be called an idiot?
Friends are easier to lose than to make... this is well worth considering. People who believe conspiracy theories are fools and not idiots... then again nobody wants to be called a fool, either. Obama is a US citizen by birth, and even if he had been born in Kenya he would be a US citizen by birth because his mother was an American. Area 51? Strange things in Roswell, New Mexico? Hogwash.
I try to use persuasion when possible.
Quote:I have not spoken much of Trump. I have on other threads, often with links to sources. I have a possibly all too familiar blue perspective. He is narcissistic, prepares lightly, talks more than speaks, and is more concerned with his own power than doing his job well.
I have come to think of you as highly partisan. Just from negative views of various blue folk I have read here, I suspect you have a quite rosy delusion to counter what has come out in the impeachment hearings, or the early reviews of Bolton’s book, or so many people in this revolving door of an administration. Thus, I have little trust in how you judge people. Your partisan point of view which neglects how much has changed in the Information Age is of very questionable worth.
I concur on this. By all the classical rules, Trump is a horrible leader. He has placed himself beyond objective judgment. He contradicts expertise that might give him good counsel.
Quote:I have this scene played out in my head. Bush 43, Obama and several soldiers and marines wind up somehow in the same town hall setting. The former presidents go on for some time about fighting for hearts and minds. These days, if it gets to an insurgent war, we are fighting to be of benefit to the locals. If in the pursuit of our objectives we cannot improve the lives of the locals, we might as well go home. The young soldiers and marines, however, are not impressed. The opposition has a different skin pigmentation. It is so natural and fun to shoot the men and rape their women. This hearts and minds argument is just no fun.
I am trying to imagine the former presidents being impressed by the argument.
... which is why the Armed Forces legitimately seek as diverse staff as possible by religion and ethnicity for every level. Any soldier who shoot the men outside of standard combat and rapes the women and girls is a war criminal and deserves the full punishment of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. Maybe we behaved better in Afghanistan than in Vietnam...
Quote:Xenophobia and its opposite aggresomania was popular in the Industrial Age. One could keep the elites happy by bringing more territory, resources and wealth under a country’s control. With the invention of the machine gun, nukes and the common use of insurgent proxy wars, it has become more problematic for nations to try to use violence to seize other’s wealth. One is more likely to find one’s self implementing the Marshall Plan or fighting for hearts and minds than it is of raping Nanking.
Eventually, colonial empires were shown to be not worth the cost to the nation even if they were profitable to special interests. With the nuke, areas "cleared" by the nuke may be unlivable for a time. War as Hitler envisioned it entailed driving 'subhumans' out of areas of conquest (if not killing them outright) and seizing the assets, with conquered people given the dubious privilege of being slaves of the German State and German industry. Nukes would now destroy the precious steel mills, mines, and treasures to incorporate into one's empire.
Quote:One thing I have picked up from Generational Dynamics is that is much more common as a major power to pick up war aversion in the west than with with other cultures. India, China and Pakistan are among many who indulge much more in tribal thinking. Autocratic powers are more apt to catch an aggressive attitude from their people or troops, and use it to secure power. This contains a selfish element of doing what is best for yourself in securing power at the expense of doing what is best for your people.
War is a racket... a hustle... a crime.
Quote:A major land war in Asia wouldn’t benefit anybody. The leaders and elites know this. The people don’t care. They get caught up in the old Industrial Age obsession of hurting those with a different skin pigmentation. The leaders play a perilous game between averting war and placating the people. It seems both sets of leaders in the India China affair are trying to resolve this without war, but the town hall in the US would play out less well in countries who had not run into insurgent proxy wars lately. The war aversion is not as much there. Remnants of the old Industrial Age love of war remain.
Note well that industrial production is careening into the economists' bugaboo of diminishing returns. One pair of shoes to a barefoot peasant might be a big improvement in his life, but a hundredth pair of shoes? Not much. Cultural enrichment and wisdom might not have such obvious 'diminishing returns'.
Quote:Conservatives look at history to determine what has always been. Progressives look at history for what can no longer be tolerated. Kings, slaves, dictators have at various times been lauded as the cornerstone of civilization. In a crisis heart, I am not so impressed. I expect those who don’t believe that leaders should have policy that matches science, that believe in violence against minorities, that government should be of the white people, for the white people, by the white people should continue. I am looking for this attitudes should make one a pariah in the near future, that it will be rejected by most as adherents to kings, slaves and dictators were in their times.
Thus, a historian obsessed with xenophobia who does not notice the attitude changes in Japan and the US doesn’t impress me. One who mixes his obvious red ideological bias with his supposedly objective predictions does not impress me. Like I know blue, and generally lean blue, but I don’t recognized myself or anyone I know in the supposedly blue motivations that you sprinkle into your supposedly objective projections. Mostly, though, it is your clinging to the Industrial Age perspective, and ignoring the many things that have changed since World War II. A healthy dose of what has changed seems required.
I can hardly imagine a Second Japanese-American war unless one country or the other goes very bad. Should it be America that goes bad, then it is America that gets defeated. Democracies do not go to war against each other even if the cultures are extremely different. It is easier to understand shared humanity than languages that could hardly be more different.
The Industrial Era, like it or not, is approaching the end. What someone like Marx (for political reasons) saw as a golden age of plenty can scare people for taking away much of what used to be the meaning of life. You work, you make tangible objects that someone sells for a profit, and you live well. Your purpose in life is to collect stuff that enriches your life. Instead the real pay for manufacturing work falls and people start getting chary of collecting clutter.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.
