01-23-2021, 02:31 PM
The COVID-19 pandemic is 'unnatural' in that such a pandemic supposedly does not fester in an advanced industrial society with a sophisticated political system -- until it does. AIDS at the least was associated (after some other means of infection) with abnormal behavior such as IV drug use or extreme excess of sexuality.
Because of nukes, war has become less attractive even in countries with large military establishments. One of the supreme ironies is that the leaders who dislike war (Lincoln, FDR, Churchill, George H W Bush) conduct it most effectively. The fire-breathing militarists (Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Nasser, Saddam Hussein) bungle it in their arrogant claims of their mastery of history. One of the old causes of war in which some king got angry with another king over some insult. The despots are now mostly dictators and not kings. If it takes gunboat diplomacy to keep the peace (some cranky dictator says. "maybe I shouldn't let drug dealers use my country as a way station, or maybe it's a bad idea to persecute people for their ethnicity or religion"... fine. Maybe that prevents war... and drug trafficking or persecutions.
Because of nukes, war has become less attractive even in countries with large military establishments. One of the supreme ironies is that the leaders who dislike war (Lincoln, FDR, Churchill, George H W Bush) conduct it most effectively. The fire-breathing militarists (Hitler, Mussolini, Tojo, Nasser, Saddam Hussein) bungle it in their arrogant claims of their mastery of history. One of the old causes of war in which some king got angry with another king over some insult. The despots are now mostly dictators and not kings. If it takes gunboat diplomacy to keep the peace (some cranky dictator says. "maybe I shouldn't let drug dealers use my country as a way station, or maybe it's a bad idea to persecute people for their ethnicity or religion"... fine. Maybe that prevents war... and drug trafficking or persecutions.
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.