Objection
joined 11 months ago
This is a fair point. We are quite far along on the brain drain already. I suppose I should take the fact that you think I'm too knowledgeable to possibly be an American as a compliment. There are, however, still some intellectuals with a basic knowledge of other countries' histories left here, the stereotype that we're all a bunch of backwards hicks and self-centered chauvanists is only mostly correct.
I used the phrase "century of humiliation" intentionally to draw a comparison between the two. If you talk to Chinese people (for example on RedNote) a lot of them will tell you that they care about science and advancement, not just for it's own sake, but because they have the cultural memory of what happened when they didn't. The century of humiliation is a big reason why the Chinese have got that dog in 'em when it comes to science, while Americans love toying around with antivax shit and similar anti-science ideas because we're so used to being on top and none of our actions having consequences.
China had the same kind of backwards traditionalists back in the Qing that we have today, and that traditional approach get steamrolled by guns and battleships. But we never had that experience. So why not fuck around with forcing Creationism into science textbooks? "What's the worst that could happen?"
Just as the Qing dynasty was committed to doing things their way and refusing to adapt to changing conditions or learning from other countries, you see similar tendencies in the US today. As your disbelief attests, people don't look to other countries to understand why they do what they do or to take any lessons from their history. And those who do are regarded as traitors or spies, just like those in the Qing dynasty who advocated for studying and adopting Western science were. Really, there are a lot of parallels between the two, imo.
Why did Cassandra go around talking shit about Troy's defenses? The only possible reasons are that she was secretly a Greek spy, or she was some kind of accelerationist who just wanted Troy to fall for some reason. At least, that's what people would say about her if she were here today. Truly, she was the first tankie.
The American brain drain is gonna suck for people living here but is also very justified and deserved at this point.
The Americans have gotten so complacent about being on top of the world that lots of people don't think there are any real consequences to anything and just wanna fuck around. We used to be at the forefront of research but now nobody with half a brain would want to come here. We're heading full speed into a century of humiliation and people are just gonna keep doubling down on ignorance and bigotry as things get worse
I guess it depends on how important you view the economic sphere. To me, ending the post-New Deal era economic consensus and ushering in a new era where the power of organized labor was completely crushed with bipartisan support is the defining aspect of his presidency. He marks the beginning of the "culture war" era, when the people would no longer have any real say over how the economy was run so all that's left is fighting over social issues. It seems to me that it's more like he did a few good things here and there but for the most part he was awful, the death knell for any hope of progressive economic policy for generations.
I’m just telling you that no normal (and by normal, I don’t necessarily mean good!) leader (i.e. one who is not a megalomaniac, a narcissist or a (wannabe) dictator) would demand a military parade for their birthday. Honestly not. And even if you don’t care because it’s “symbolic,” you should still care because it shows you the type of person he is.
So if you already have a negative opinion of his character, it reads as demonstrating a negative aspect of his character.
Don't get me wrong, you're right about his motivations, but it's still based on personal interpretation. He's not explicitly saying it's about himself. And it's a reasonable interpretation, but if someone doesn't see him that way already, this won't convince them. This sort of plausible deniability is part of Trump's MO, he wants to be criticized over such non-substantive issues, because it makes it look like it's the most severe criticism people have of him, and it allows him to control the narrative and draw attention to the parade, which the average person will probably not have a problem with, because people like parades.
Instead of taking the bait and freaking over every random, forgettable news cycle, it's better to keep criticism focused on things that have a material impact on people's lives, such as tariffs and deportations. Deportations in particular are much more of an indication of fascism than a parade is - people are being abducted off the streets and taken to black sites with no due process or oversight. If Trump wasn't doing shit like that that actually affects people's lives, he could dance around however he likes and I wouldn't mind.
Maybe I'm just a spoilsport, but my hatred for Trump is disciplined. I don't see any reason to freak out every time he sneezes. I'd rather focus on the important, unambiguously bad things that he's doing.
If you have an option that doesn't involve giving money to the US government you should probably do that. You're not going to own them by giving them cash.
It is a very important distinction. I can’t even imagine the prime minister of my home country insisting on a military parade for his birthday.
It's not even a real distinction because it's also the Army's 250th anniversary.
Even if that wasn't the case, it's a totally meaningless and purely aesthetic distinction. "Oh this kinda has the vibe of something bad people do," that's the only real objection to it that any of you have.
The legitimate reason to care is because it's glamourizing the US military, which is an incredibly evil institution. Even so, of the things the military does, a parade is one of the most innocent and innoculous. But between glamorizing a shitty president or a shitty institution, why should anyone give a shit?
Insane that there's people in this thread being like, "I should stop paying taxes." Really, this is where you draw the line? Hundreds of thousands of civilians murdered in illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, but Bush never had a parade to celebrate himself so I guess it's fine! I'll never understand liberals' priorities.
Carter was more progressive than a typical liberal? He's the one who abandoned unions and the working class in favor of neoliberalism.
Secession is a really interesting topic to examine because it's virtually impossible for anyone to have a "principled" stance on it.
The one good point I ever heard from an anarcho-capitalist was in regards to the prospect of Catalan secession some years back. Catalonia held a referendum on secession which was not recognized by Spain and was boycotted by those who opposed it. One of the reasons they wanted to leave was that they felt the region was getting a raw deal, giving more tax revenue to the central government than they got in return.
Well, then, there was talk about if that happened, the city of Barcelona might seceed from Catalonia! It had the same complaint that it produced more revenue that went to the rest of the region, and many people there weren't necessarily interested in what Catalonia was trying to do.
If we say that Catalonia should be able to seceed from Spain, then why shouldn't Barcelona be able to seceed from Catalonia? And if Barcelona can seceed, then can a district in Barcelona seceed from the city? And can we not follow this logic all the way down to a single individual seceeding from a district? And if we accept that, then doesn't that imply that anarcho-capitalism, with its concept of a "minority of one," is the correct position?
Well, it's not. Why is it not? Because there are all sorts of reasons why it's unworkable and incoherent, and most critically, it cannot address collective action problems. These are practical considerations, which gives us a hint at what our operating logic ought to be. Very simply, secession should be supported when it's good and opposed when it's bad. Having bigger or smaller polities is neither good nor bad inherently, but rather we must look at things on a case-by-case basis and evaluate what the likely effects are. There simply isn't a standard rule that you can apply to all cases without looking at what the secessionists hope to accomplish and how realistic it is. The correct position is to be brazenly "hypocritical," because you shouldn't operate on the principle that secession is either inherently good or bad. Instead, we need to evaluate the specific material conditions to determine what's best in a specific situation.
Of course, in most cases, states don't want to give up territory without good reason, and unless you have some means of getting the state to do what you want and leave you alone (including but not limited to guns), then it's up to their assessment of what's best whether to allow it or not. You can make the argument that the US should dissolve and balkanize and maybe you're right, but if the government says no, then where does that leave you?
44
https://lemmy.ml/post/28111691/17749466
This is actually insane. Another user was criticizing the New Deal era and brought up a bunch of points, I commented refuting a bunch of their points but describing two of of them, Japanese Internment and the Red Scare, simply as "legitimate criticism."
@[email protected] responded "No they’re not. Those two things were caused by far greater international factors. Like, you know, the 2nd World War."
I cited a commission that found that internment was not caused by a legitimate threat posed by the Japanese but was rather caused by racism and hysteria, and that even Reagan agreed with that conclusion and signed a bill paying reparations to the victims.
Well then the mod responded that I was jumping to "inflammatory conclusions" and "personal attacks" because I assumed that when they said that criticism of internment is not legitimate it meant that they were defending internment. They continued to refuse to explain how else I was possibly supposed to interpret such a claim. I still have no idea. Apparently their stance is, "It's not legitimate to criticize the thing I oppose." If anyone can make sense of that, please enlighten me.
Since they refused to explain, I took a guess that maybe the misunderstanding was that they were interpreting "legitimate criticism" as "damning criticism," like that because a bad thing happened during that era, nothing good came of it at all. I made it clear that this was speculation and that any criticism of interpreting it that way only applied if that's what was happening.
The mod responded by permabanning me, removing all of my comments so they don't show in the modlog, and adding this:
Edit: the other commenter essentially proved that they were just baiting people into inflammatory discussion. They kept resorting to personal attacks and flip-flopped on their position solely to continue arguing. This behavior is not tolerated here. Please report such trolls in the future.
At literally no point did I "flip-flop" my position of "internment was bad, actually." Nor did I "bait" them, unless "criticizing internment is legitimate," is somehow "baiting" someone into saying "no it isn't." By far the most "inflammatory" thing that was said was when they said that criticism of internment was "not legitimate." The "personal attacks" I made were stating the fact that the position they had expressed was to the right of Reagan on the issue, and also making a quip about a .world mod defending the Red scare and Joseph McCarthy.
This seems to be a case of a clear case of PTB, the mod apparently misspoke but because they're a mod they can just ban people for calling them out instead of owning up to it.
Edit: My comments are still visible on kbin.earth (thank you @[email protected]) so I can provide screenshots:
:::spoiler screenshots
transcript
DISRUPT INTERNATIONAL SHIPPING NOW!!
OGEY
Niche ocean carrier Atlantic Container Line is warning the fines the U.S. government is considering hitting Chinese-built freight vessels with would force it to leave the United States and throw the global supply chain out of balance, potentially fueling freight rates not seen since Covid.
“This hits American exporters and importers worse than anybody else,” said Andrew Abbott, CEO of ACL. “If this happens, we’re out of business and we’re going to have to shut down.”
[...] U.S. is no position to win an economic war that places ocean carriers using Chinese-made vessels in the middle. Soon, Chinese-made vessels will represents 98% of the trade ships on the world’s oceans.
Hey, Abdul-Malik Badr Al-Din Al-Houthi, how'd I do?
Thank you Mr. President, that's exactly what I meant. But why-
Another day, another banger
:::spoiler spoiler
Context:
This comes from a game called "Queen's Wish: The Conqueror," a retro indie RPG. In the game, you play as the third child of the queen of Haven, a large and powerful nation, but up until now you've lived an idle live with little power and few responsibilities. The queen decides to send you off to reestablish control of lost vassals in a remote continent which were abandoned following a major magical disaster.
There are three vassal states and each has two factions who you can choose to support into power, usually one side being more aristocratic and the other being poorer. You also have the choice of how much you actually follow through with your assignment, you can just run around doing your own thing regardless of what the queen wants. But you can navigate a route where you side with the poor while still negotiating agreements as expected of you and feel like it's a "good guy" route. Although the queen would rather you work with the aristocrats, she's satisfied as long as you get either side to win and cooperate, just so long as somebody's keeping the spice flowing, so to speak.
This conversation occurs with a sage/scholar working in one of your forts in that region, who refers to "The Theory of Inevitable Decay." It's missable, but it's a crucial line of dialogue that recontextualizes everything that you're doing. From the beginning, you see a lot of the mess that was left behind and the power vacuum from when the kingdom pulled out before, but then, it sorta seems like you're fixing things, getting rid of bandits and warlords and establishing order, traditional fantasy hero stuff, and with a kinder, gentler hand, even. But even if you as an individual have the best intentions, you're still kind of setting things up in a way that's dependent on a great power a long way away. Haven has its own stuff going on and it probably isn't going to be knowledgeable about the region, interested in it's long-term well-being, or accountable to the people who live there. Sooner or later, it'll get a ruler who doesn't give a shit about a given vassal, and the vassal will fall to ruin - or so the sage suggests.
Anyway sorry I posted this in the wrong comm, this is just an interesting bit of dialogue from a video game with absolutely no relevance to modern day politics 😇
0
"We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings." - Ursula Le Guin
Lots of things are impossible until they happen and become inevitable. The human mind has a tendency to place things in that box that don't really belong there. We can see it in people's personal lives, "Oh, I could never possibly stand up to my parents!" and then they do, and the chips fall where they may. "I could never leave everything behind and move to another country/city" but you take a leap of faith and you make it work. "Oh, I could never become a soldier," but then you find yourself in the trenches and you become one. Humans are far more adaptable than we give ourselves credit for.
But the things that need to happen are things that we have determined rationally. The bias that exists in our minds when there is such a conflict is to ignore reason and evidence and think that we have to follow our self-imposed restraints and limitations, and if that's not enough, well, too bad, maybe it'll still be fine somehow. It is easier to simply pretend a physical problem doesn't exist then it is to confront a psychological barrier - but the physical problem remains whether we acknowledge it or shove it aside.
It is abundantly clear that there is a mismatch between what the US political reality is capable of delivering on and what actually needs to happen, on an increasingly large number of issues. Wealth inequality increases every year, and there is no path to stopping it. Every year we get closer to ecological collapse, heading towards tipping points that will spiral out of control. And of course, the military-industrial complex gets larger and larger, now fueling a genocide with overwhelming bipartisan support.
All of these things need to change, but it is also impossible for them to change. So we have no choice but to do the impossible (see the invisible, row, row, fight the powah). It is impossible that we could convince the democrats to change, they are too attached to their corporate donors. Too bad, we'll get them change anyway. It is impossible that we could build a third party, it isn't viable in FPTP. Too bad, we will build it and make it viable anyway. It is impossible that we could resist the strength of the military and police. It is impossible to organize a general strike. Boycotts can never work. The king would never allow us to have a constitution. Too bad.
The limits of existing political systems have been overcome in the past even when they seemed impossible, and the desperate need for change means that the limits of this one will be too. Shit is headed towards the fan, and things will change, for better or worse. The longer we wait, the more shit will build up. Only by finding a breach in "impossibility" can we start to address any of these problems.
Where will that breach be found? Who knows? All we can do is search for cracks and hit them as hard as we can until we find a way to break the limitations. We can discuss where to focus our efforts and that's a valid and important discussion to have. But we cannot allow the functions of the existing system to limit our efforts to break out of it. You cannot be so concerned about damaging an already sinking ship that you won't rip off a plank to hold on to.
I don't really care who you vote for or don't vote for. Follow your conscience. What's important is that you have your head in the game. What matters is recognizing the the things that what needs to happen is a function of immutable natural laws while what can happen is a function of mortal laws and conventional wisdom. When there is a mismatch, to uphold the ideas of "what can happen" is to reject that "what needs to happen" is actually real, which is no different from thinking you can change the laws of physics by passing a bill in the senate. The "reason" of conventional wisdom must be kicked to the curb in favor of actual reason that says things need to change, and that it's necessary to go beyond the impossible to make it happen.
How would you answer this, and how would you expect Chinese netizens on Xiaohongshu to answer?
I will link to the thread in the comments because I want you to take a moment and think about it first.
17
Add "Havana Syndrome" to the list of fake stories that you're not allowed to question on .world
(lemmy.ml)
The first sentence on the Wikipedia page for it calls it "a disputed medical condition." Even the CIA itself has admitted that cases are not caused by "a sustained global campaign by a hostile power." The State Department similarly released a report that it was highly unlikely the symptoms were caused by any sort of directed energy weapon. In fact, seven different US intelligence agencies released a consensus statement saying, "available intelligence consistently points against the involvement of US adversaries in causing the reported incidents."
But the clowns on .world don't care about things like truth or evidence, or even direct statements from the people who's boots they have in their mouths. If it makes an enemy of the US look bad, then it is absolute truth, and anything short of complete faith and loyalty must be purged from conversation.
Rare video clip of a .world mod
:::spoiler Offending post
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